I get to the bar, and, by unspoken agreement, my wife is already there, flirting madly, squeezed in with a suitor on each side. Did she see me come in? I can't tell. In any event, within minutes I am in the men's room, masturbating furiously, recalling the days when we used to fuck in public restrooms, always the ladies', me squatting on the toilet seat during interruptions.

It was back then that she masterminded our first dress-up. She took care of all the details, became a nurse with the personality of a hairdresser, and prescribed me some weed. I will never forget that as soon as the first words were out of her mouth in that Nassau County honk, I just started laughing and laughing and did not stop for five minutes. And of course now, as I step up to introduce myself to my wife, whose radiance easily emerges through her cartoonish layer of makeup, it happens again. Everyone stares for a few seconds, but then it's game on.

"Can I buy you a drink?" I say, and she slides through the esses in "Absolut and soda."

"How about something you can't see through?"

"How about you pick?"

I like the fact that, though it's a small-town bar, my wife is dressed up like a mid-range prostitute — it eases the burden of my acting job. The men in attendance clearly like it too. I wait until she nears the bottom of her drink to slip in the poison, thinking that she can choke it down in one granular gulp. She rarely drinks, and I wonder how many she had before I got here. I wonder how much fun she was having before I arrived, whether she secretly hoped that I would chicken out or get lost on the way. She looks so good, she is so free from judgment, she attracts with real gravity. Everything that I love about my wife — her trusting way, her complexion, her wit — is magnified. She begins to slur and sway. She becomes fully immersed in her character, hammering the flat vowels and dropping g's all over the place. She is blabbering on about her imagined work as a secretary, her travails and her girlfriends, when she deviates from the agreed-upon script, whispering, "Take me home and fuck me."

It's not clear that she'll be able to stand up. I don't want to be thrown off-track or to be pummeled by chivalrous strangers. But she pulls off this final act with the panache and humor that has always graced her fantasy roles, teetering on her high heels, grabbing me just enough. In the parking lot I press her up against the car, kiss her deeply, briefly move my hand into her miniature skirt, and then fold her in.

Details, details. I have forgotten the birth control. It's been so long since there was any need for condoms or the pill, it didn't even dawn on me. So I screech into a convenience store on the way home and stagger into flourescent reality. I get the skins. I spy some baby oil and think that she'll deserve a rubdown later on after such a performance. I walk past the value-added coffee-brandy milk drinks and pluck one out of the cooler. I stand before the clerk in my suit, smelling like good vodka and bad cologne, my gelled hair vertical, my dick plainly horizontal. The clerk tells me that I am unfit to purchase alcohol and, furthermore, that my lubricant is incompatible with my prophylactics.

But nothing can derail me. A block from home, I am too anxious and turn down the wrong street, against one-way traffic. My victim is squirming in the passenger seat, laughing and gently touching herself. Anything seems possible.