As usual, Deborah slept well and Jake didn’t. She argued that he’d rest better if he exercised like she did every night, but Jake insisted that he worked out enough while he worked. She spent half an hour on a stationary bike after their light dinner every evening, and sometimes she danced to an aerobics tape. Jake sipped Jack Daniels and stewed about their business problems. They retired together by nine, and they never made love any more because they never took the time off from work to travel, to stay in a hotel, to play.

Jake woke an hour before the alarm, and he worried. He stayed in bed but he didn’t return to sleep. He surveyed his body instead and found pain in his neck, on his brow, around his lower back. He thought about the bistro and admitted that they couldn’t keep pouring money into it; they couldn’t go more than another three months unless something changed. He resented Deborah’s peaceful rest, telling himself he’d be more comfortable without her leg diagonally across the bed, growing sticky where they touched. He tried a little roughly to nudge her away. She stirred and returned to quiet sleep. He thought about fucking her and wished he could get interested.

When his alarm beeped at five Troy Campbell had already been up for half an hour. He didn’t need much sleep: eleven to four or midnight to five did it for him. He usually spent his first hour thinking about business while exercising, but lately he had returned to lust.

He used to be a womanizer. From fourteen to fifty, he did as many women as he could. He had fans among his friends who kept count; most figured he’d bedded more than a hundred. He hounded women when he was single, and he fooled around as much as he could when he was married. Most of his conquests had been one-night stands, but nine women had been real affairs lasting eight to eighteen months. He’d been married six times.

He settled down when he was fifty. That was ten years ago. Married pretty happily to Sara, he decided to try fidelity. His chronic restlessness seemed to pass around then; he found it easier to stay home. And he and Sara had a decent sex life, at least for the first eight years. Then he grew bored with her. Then he became aware of all the prostate problems his friends were having, and he got to thinking that the life of his penis might be coming to an end. He started masturbating more. He tried some novelty with Sara but she resisted. He left home certain evenings and started catting around. But he no longer wanted bimbettes. He sought good sex with good company. He found Karen.

She was a junior partner at the law firm he’d used for twenty years. At first they met almost incidentally; then he noticed her and began requesting that she be assigned to his cases. They spent enough time together to take each other’s measure and like what they found.

Troy knew a sexual relationship would be totally inappropriate. He was married, twenty years older than she, and a client. He found the idea erotic, especially when they faced each other across the mahogany conference table with her senior partners. And he knew she did too; he saw the way her eyes found him, the way she blushed through those transparent cheeks. Their flirtation had grown obvious to them both. He thought he’d try to talk to her at the lunch they had scheduled for that noon.

The roach remained stun-still even after Jake took the lid off the vinaigrette at ten o’clock. It began slow stuttering movements thirty seconds later, but by then Jake had added his secret ingredient to the dressing, and he looked away from the vat while stirring the roach in with that splash of rice vinegar. The brown bug struggled in the eddy of sour liquid at first, then closed in on itself, mindless immobile, and became like a seed pod, like a big coffee bean, in the maelstrom the whisk made. Down at first, then spun into the sides of the empty tornado, riding up the outward-sloping walls of vinaigrette. As Jake removed the whisk the roach bobbed to the surface, put its legs out like catamaran runners, and scrabbled to the edge of the vat. It sheltered under the ladle that Jake left in place of the whisk.