Free Heartburn by Nora Ephron

seen a beautiful black man cruising the bus terminal the night before, and was going back to find him. And that was the last anyone saw of Mr. Abbey.
    I was fascinated by the story. I couldn’t believe that anyone would be so sexually driven that he might actually skip lunch—and after an auction! I think of myself as a healthy person with a strong sex drive, but it’s never occurred to me to forgo meals. I said this to Mark later. I said, perhaps this is the difference between homosexuals and heterosexuals, perhaps this relentless priapism is characteristic of the obsessive, casual sex that lasts so much later in the lives of homosexuals than in heterosexuals. And Mark got this look on his face, thisincredulous look, that at the time I thought meant he couldn’t believe I could have such a short memory. Had I forgotten the first months of our courtship? The hours and hours of sex, the smell of it everywhere, in the air, on the sheets, on my hands, in my hair—had I managed to forget all that? (Of course I hadn’t; on the other hand, we never once had less than three meals a day, so there.) Now, of course, I know about Thelma, and I realize that Mark’s incredulity arose simply because I knew so little about him and
his
relentless priapism, knew so little about
men.
When will I ever learn? When will I ever understand that what’s astonishing about the number of men who remain faithful is not that it’s so small but that there are any of them at all?
    I see that once again I’ve gotten off the track, that I’ve drifted back to Mark, to Mark and Thelma, but I can’t help myself. When something like this happens, you suddenly have no sense of reality at all. You have lost a piece of your past. The infidelity itself is small potatoes compared to the low-level brain damage that results when a whole chunk of your life turns out to have been completely different from what you thought it was. It becomes impossible to look back at anything that’s happened—from the simplest exchange between the two of you at a dinner party to the horrible death of Mr. Abbey—without wondering what was really going on. See the couple. See the couple with the baby. See the couple with the baby having another baby.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Everything, as it happens.
    But I was telling you about Mr. Abbey’s death for a reason, and it has nothing to do with betrayal. I simply wanted you to understand that when my group was robbed, I was almost grateful: it gave me another shot at being a witness to a crime.And this time I knew stuff, I really knew stuff. I had actually laid eyes on the bugger. I couldn’t wait to be deposed, or whatever it is they call what they do to you.
    They took us to the station house in a paddy wagon. This was fairly insulting, since we were the victims, but the detective in charge of the case had so many statements to take that he wanted to do it with stenographers and typewriters and tape recorders nearby. We spent the afternoon in a small green room and each waited his turn. First the police talked to Vera, because she was in charge of the premises, as they say, and then they talked to Vanessa, because she was the most famous and beautiful (I’ve come to terms with the fact that Vanessa is the most famous and beautiful, but it really irritated me that day since after all I was the one who knew the most about what happened), and then they talked to Diana because she insisted she would hold them responsible if she missed her Supersaver flight to Los Angeles. Finally Detective Nolan got to me.
    I told him everything. I said the robber was about six feet tall. Sandy hair. Watery blue eyes. A little squint. Pinkish complexion. A long, thin nose on a wide, shiny face. Weighed about 165—I can never be sure what men weigh. A fat neck. A red and green plaid cotton shirt, a khaki jacket, jeans and running shoes. I first noticed him when a Japanese man on the subway took my picture. My guess is that the