"So you exclusively see married women, is that it?" There was a bite in Chris' question.

Kenyon shook his head with a defensive smirk, still looking down. Then he paused. His smirk became a huge grin that was so childlike and delighted that Chris began to feel bad about his own attitude, the smile was open and difficult to resist. "Yes, in fact, I have to admit that since Morocco, yes!" And Chris felt alienated again. How could Kenyon make such a confession with the same delight that one might have in announcing a wedding engagement or the birth of a baby? Chris stared back at Kenyon with a marble silence. Kenyon didn't like his friend's look. It was distant and from above, and disappointed.

"Chris, Chris," he continued, trying to win back the warmth of his friend. "You have to understand something. Most of these women are horribly, terribly unhappy in their marriages. They've got to a point where they're stuck. You know what I mean? Where the flow has stopped and they feel trapped and in a kind of rotting tomb, if you'll excuse my images. And often their husbands treat them terribly. Honestly, I'm appalled at the stories I hear, that there are still men, today, that can treat a woman like that. I know it may be hard to believe, I'm sure it's hard to believe, but you have to take my word on this when I tell you that in my experience I'm the best thing that could have happened to their marriages."

"Take your word on it?" Chris said snidely, "How can I take the word of someone who can't even respect a vow, a marriage vow?"

"I'm not the one making the vows!" Kenyon declared back. "I'm not the hypocrite. For all of these religious marriages - these people who marry in churches or mosques or whatever and yet deep down they barely believe in anything really — what's that? And half the time their husband's already cheated on them anyway. Hypocrites. You know, I've read a bit of the Bible myself, believe it or not, and who did Jesus condemn the hardest, not the so-called sinners, but the hypocrites."

"Does the Bible also say that if you just look at a woman with lust in your eye, you've committed adultery?!" Chris responded vehemently.

"Yeah, my case in point." Kenyon slammed his hand against the table. "My point exactly. There you are. I'm only brave enough to go through with it."

"I don't think it was meant that way."

"Take it any way you want," Kenyon said laughing. "The Bible's filled with...you can find a quote in there to justify anything you want to."

Chris was silent. He couldn't claim to really know the Bible any more than someone who had seen Zeferelli's Jesus of Nazareth, so he didn't feel comfortable continuing the argument. Besides, there was something ridiculous about the two of them going on arguing over what the Bible said when it really had nothing to do with the Bible, but with deep, personal feelings and beliefs. Why did it bother him so much? It wasn't as if he were particularly religious himself. And maybe some of these women's husbands really were bastards; he had certainly encountered his share of bastards in his life.

"I can swear to you without any doubt that in one case in particular, our affair actually saved her marriage! It brought things back to life and..."

"And how many have you destroyed!" Chris almost shouted.

"None! None that weren't already dead! None that some hypocrite husband hadn't already destroyed long before I came along! Why would she be running to me if it weren't true!" Kenyon glared back with anger. They both stared at each other, their faces tense, leaning forward. Chris suddenly stuck up his hand with a jerk when he saw a waiter passing by and then said, slowly and coolly. "Can you please tell our waitress to bring our bill?" The waiter nodded and walked on...