He stood at the sink, squeezed toothpaste on his toothbrush, and thought: I can not think of her; not today; not on our anniversary. Seven years, he’d been married to Nancy. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven years.

The Seven Year Itch––He thought of that movie. With Marilyn Monroe and the famous white dress and that horny, middle-aged married guy, all fantasy and false hope; all desperate for sex with a woman who sought relief from the summer heat by cooling her underpants in the freezer. And could you blame the married schnook? Of course you couldn’t. Oh, what was the actor’s name? Just last week, he read about the movie in the New York Times, an article on Billy Wilder.

The Seven Year Itch. Is that what he had?

Tom Ewell! The actor was Tom Ewell. Well, Evan wasn’t like Tom Ewell and Jeanette wasn’t like Marilyn Monroe. Jeanette didn’t keep her underpants in the freezer...although she did wash her lace thong in the hotel ice bucket.

Yes, he’d been married to Nancy for seven years, but they lived together, first, for two. Which means, technically, today is their ninth anniversary, not their seventh. Anyway, The Seven Year Itch was fiction. And his situation...he didn’t know what his situation was.

He was sitting on a bench outside a hotel in West Hollywood, his cello in its case on the sidewalk beside him, a Winston cigarette between his gifted fingers, blowing smoke rings toward a sad, skinny palm tree, thinking how, later, when he called his wife, she would ask if he’d been good about not smoking and he would say: Yes, he’d been very good. Perfect, in fact.