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My wife banged so loudly on the door the pills in the medicine chest rattled in a way I found, amid my tears, eerily pleasing. "Heidi Klum's here," she said. I dunked my head underwater and resurfaced, saying, "The model?"
    "Yes — and she's wearing just paint."
    "Huh."
    "I'd told you I wanted to finish all that work in the garden before the sun went down. Can you deal with her?"
    "I guess," I said, contemplating, as if for the first time, the strange motion with which the hairs

on my chest swayed underwater.
    "You guess or you will?"
    "Will!"
    She stood as if in a moment of silence for my contempt before padding off toward the garden. I emerged from the bathroom in the white robe I'd stolen from a Hyatt in Big Sur, on a truffle-hunting trip I'd won in a raffle. The robe hadn't come with a matching belt — part of my justification for stealing it — so I had to walk around holding it shut. Though I'd never dressed like a woman, nor desired to, whenever I wore the thing in front of company I always felt strangely whorish, like a stripper who'd just finished working a bachelor party.
    When I got to the living room, Heidi Klum was sitting on our couch. Her legs were crossed, the extended foot pointing with a definitive arch to the floor. The woman was indeed wearing just paint. A yellow bikini, in fact. "Um," I said, careful not to let the robe slip open as I took a seat across from her, "it's a pleasure to meet you."
    "Your wife is adorable." Her German accent was staggeringly sexy.
    "Sure," I laughed, at once trying and not trying to discern if any pubic hair protruded through her painted bikini bottoms. "So uh . . . something to drink?"
    Heidi flashed a smile that single-handedly explained why companies pay thousands for such a specimen to wear their products, and then said, "She already offered. I'm cool."
    I sat there staring at her.
    "That painting," she said, pointing above me, "that yours?"
    "Yes! I mean . . . you like it?"
    "What is it?"
    "Oh, it's — sometimes I think it's a — oh, you're just going to think it's stupid."
  

  "Don't be shy. Tell me, silly."
    I opened my mouth and then said, "Nah."
    "Oh, don't be a shit. Come on."
    "Okay, I think it's — oh, you're going to think it's stupid."
    "It's not becoming, this modest stuff you have."
    "You're right."
    "I'm not right. It's just, you know, an opinion."
    "Okay, you ready? The painting. It's God."
    She chewed on the insides of her lips as she examined it.
    "There is a God," I said, "and he's an ironist."
    Heidi burst into laughter only Julia Roberts could replicate. She was the first person to truly get the joke, though it wasn't necessarily a joke, or maybe it was. "Anyway," I went on, "I only started painting a few months ago, but it's such an expensive craft, so I try and — "
    "Do you want to make love to me?" she said, re-crossing her legs.
     My monogamous cock grew ferociously erect. I crossed my own legs and said, "Absolutely." She nodded somewhat dryly, as though the idea of a man wanting her bored her to tears. "That is," I said in an attempt to redeem my eagerness, "I'd appreciate that. But I'm afraid I'll have to pass — " I pointed toward the back of the apartment, as though that particular section represented my marriage — "I'm . . . married."
    "I'm sure your wife won't mind."
    "Oh, I doubt that. " I held my hands up. "All due respect."
    She didn't respond, so I leaned forward and said, "You two have a conversation about it?" She shrugged again, this time with such a look of sudden boredom I lost my hard-on.
    I held the robe tight and hurried to our small backyard, where my wife stood on her tippy-toes, peering over the fence.
     "Heidi Klum wants to fuck me," I muttered, careful so the neighbors wouldn't hear, "I mean, if that's cool with you."
    "Check this out," she said, "it's a dead squirrel. You never see dead squirrels back here."
    I joined her in peering over the fence.
    "You authorized this?" I asked, referring to Heidi, not the squirrel.
    "No, not at all!"
    "You think she's lying?"
    "I don't know what that woman's doing in our house. But be nice to her. She's famous." Amid the purpling dusk, my wife looked really pretty, and I wanted to kiss her. But I held back. She picked up a caterpillar she'd found crawling on my robe and said, "I don't know what to do with you anymore." She dropped the caterpillar onto the woodchips, and I began to wish she'd cupped it in her hand and pet it, named it — something tender.