A Girl Named Lila.

I pretend to be normal. Every day, on my way back home to the identical colonnades — where thousands of women like me live with their thousands of husbands exactly like mine, raising thousands of children exactly like ours — I stop at the Central Mall. I go to the gym, not to workout, but to shower and change into the sensible white shirt and trousers that I wore to my pretend-job as a marketing manager at a firm that has never heard of me. I don't know if I have to hide what I really do from my family, I don't know if I ever had to have a family, I don't know why I do any of these things. I have been waiting, for a long time, for reason to present itself to me. I must have a reason, right? Someday, I suspect, I will need it to make that kind of emotional, impassioned argument, the success of which hinges on its pathos and peroration, so as to exonerate myself for all the things I have done.

I don't have a reason.

I think I got married because my job didn't seem wrong enough without it. Morally, I have no issue with what I do. I help women secure enormous divorce settlements by seducing their husbands and providing evidence of it. I could work in marketing, I do have the degree for it, but I don't know why I got that degree. I don't think I will ever use it. I got started in this line of work by accident. I decided to take a year off between secondary school and college, I moved to the city and vaguely toyed with the idea of becoming a model, but I spent most of my time having affairs with rich men who gave me just enough money that I could keep my apartment and buy shoes every once in a while. I continued to do that until the wives of one of the men I was seeing burst into my apartment while I was on my knees, sucking his cock, one evening. I stood in the background while the commotion of their interpersonal communication played out in my living room. He made a colourful case himself, sometimes painting me as the succubus that annihilated his morality, sometimes blaming his wife for her coldness towards his manly needs. She wasn't buying any of it. He stormed out, she remained standing in the room too long for me to maintain the silence.

"I'm sorry," I said to her, feeling something akin to thrill for the first time in my life.

She looked at me, her chin turned upwards, and her gaze like a knife made entirely of ice.

"Why?" She asked.

"Well, your husband..." I started, before taking a beat to consider the situation, "I don't know, actually."

"Don't be," she said, sitting down on my couch, "Thanks to you I can both leave him and get rich from it."

I was surprised, the caprice of her manner was unsettling, like feeling the ugliness of jealously inside you for the first time, it made my head spin, but I felt it, in my stomach. I had been conditioned to believe that in this situation, women attack the other woman, usually with a vicious fervour, but she didn't seem perturbed by my role in any of it at all. Her anger left the building when her husband did.

"Do you have any friends who want to get divorced and rich?" I asked, not even sure where I was going with it.

"What's wrong with you?" She said, getting up and walking out of the door.

A few days later, she came over again, and that time, she brought a friend. That was a decade ago, a decade of seducing men, so women can get rich. I did it for the thrill, not the thrill of seduction because quite frankly, men are easy, and there is no pleasure for me in bouncing on an endless array of cocks while brandishing my tits. No, the thrill is in getting caught. That moment, the moment when the first woman ever, walked in and threw a cheating man's entire life into disarray right before my eyes, while my heartbeat was stuck in my throat, it is burnt into my memory forever. I think about it, often, I wish I could feel that way all the time. That, I believe, is why I got married. After many years of trapping men, the inherent immorality of my job and the thrill of being caught started to abate. If you orchestrate the moment, it eventually loses whatever ability it initially retains to truly surprise you. The humdrum of routine, the acrid stench of doing the same thing over and over again without so much as a shade of alteration in your heart, started to get to me.

So, I got myself a husband.

The discomfort of actively betraying someone, of being deceitful, unknowable, and the ever-present threat of being caught in my own activities, like all those men who have fallen apart right before me, provided the rush I had started to miss. I don't really know my husband well, I don't want to know him well. I met him at a country club. He was old enough to be discerning, yet young enough to be adventurous. He had children that were young enough to require parenting, but old enough to indicate that he was done procreating. We got married within six months of meeting, because I pretended to be the person who only had sex when she is married. I don't know why I did it, I was searching for the personality I would like to have as a wife, and I settled on this one. I call her Lila. He calls her Lila. I had to call her something else, and get the paperwork to prove it, because I couldn't possibly give him a real name. For him, and the kids, I am Lila.

Lila is very submissive to her husband. So submissive, it is almost distasteful. Lila takes her husband's plate to the kitchen even when they are at someone else's home. Lila never lets him see her without lipstick. Lila does as she is told, she dresses pretty, she manages all the affairs of the household. Lila is the embodiment of what women are supposed to be. Lila was surprised by how much she enjoyed sex with her husband. He is a mild-mannered, understated banker with little whimsy, but in the bedroom, he commands his wife like a different man. I wonder if it is because of how I built her, that he found within himself this confident, depraved creature who feels so entitled to the body of his wife, he cannot make love to her, he must ravish her to take possession. I watch, sometimes, as Lila stands before their bed. He likes her to wear nothing but heels in the bedroom. Every evening, before they settle, she takes her position by the bed — she stands with her legs slightly apart, her hands placed behind her head, her gaze steadfastly downcast — as he inspects her body. I don't think he is looking for flaws, as much as he wants her to know that he could look for flaws, if he wanted to.

I wonder what will happen when he finds out the truth. He will, I know that it is inevitable, not only because secrets only get harder to sustain, but also because I am spoiling to get caught. This setup is the most elaborate one I have ever created, but the goal, ever the same, is to attain the thrill of getting caught. Will he lose his temper, I wonder? Will he even believe that the humanoid rendition that is his wife isn't the "real" me? Or will he think that he is the only one who has ever come close to the reality of who I am? Every day, as I drive home, I daydream about the possibilities. Each night, as I reel under somnolence, I let my mind wander. Some days, I am so tempted to turn to him in bed, grasp his arm, and confess my life. The thought is so heady, it makes my breath stop short in my chest, and I have to grasp at something to steady the explosion of arousal in the pit of my stomach. I scry Lila's future in all kinds of ways. Sometimes he gets mad, sometimes he calls the police, sometimes he beats her, sometimes he reveals a secret of his own, sometimes he threatens her with a gun, but every reverie ends in a pitiful appeal for forgiveness I cannot quite write.

I want to be sorry. I just cannot find the reason. For Lila's sake, I hope I do, I'd hate for the poor girl to get shot in the face.