“Cosa, I say this as your therapist and friend: Bolivia is the worst thing you can do for yourself and your marriage.”

Cosa bit her lip, her eyes watering excitedly behind thick-rimmed glasses. Her fingers tugged on a lock of mouse-brown hair, sticking the prickly split-ends into the corner of her mouth. She twitched and looked up into Dr. Tammy’s imploring blue eyes.

“Look, alright. I just know he’s cheating on me. But it bugs me that he won’t admit it – even if his aloof smugness divulges all,” Cosa said, her gnawed fingernails grabbing at the suede chaise longue.   “Does he think I have a hole in my head that I’d miss all the signs?” She poked a finger emphatically at her scalp. “That slippery salamander, he brushes by me, looking at me – with that phlegmatic face of his – and not mentioning a word about the penetrating conversations he and his prim, fire-headed teaching assistant have late into the night!” She violently shook a fist at the ceiling, nearly falling out of her seat.

            After a pause, Dr. Tammy looked up from the yellow notepad she had been busily scribbling on as Cosa raged. Her patient’s head jerked from side to side, trying to read what Dr. Tammy had written down. With a glossy-lipped smile, the therapist shifted the papers out of sight.

“And how does that make you feel, Cosa?” said Dr. Tammy in a sugar-sweet voice.

“Right, how do I feel about my husband cheating on me with some slut puppy. I feel as if some anthropomorphic creep is making pig-faces at me through the subway window as the train pulls away. I feel like Maurice is the lousiest lout around. I feel almost as upset as I did when my dad left me and my mom in New York when I was six to be with some banana-haired bimbo in Chattanooga.”

Dr. Tammy pressed her lips together smugly, seemingly pleased at Cosa’s deep-seated Daddy distress. She reached across the office and softly patted Cosa’s knee.

“It sounds like this is less about Maurice and more about your feeling abandoned by your–”

 “Because he smells like eggs! Eggs smell like sin, it says so in the Bible. Hell smells like sulphur. I’m not saying I’m Catholic like my mother, but I think the Bible’s got it right when it comes to some things like the way guilt smells.”