Chapter 1

My wife said she was allergic to semen, so every time we reached the final moment, she made me take care of myself.

But she was willing to swallow her lovers’ stuff.

In seven years of marriage, she took exactly twenty-nine lovers.

The thirtieth young man sat naked in the middle of the studio while Vivian Blake focused on drawing a nude sketch of him.

When I pushed the door open, the sound of charcoal scraping against paper stopped dead.

“Isn’t drawing outside enough for you? You had to bring him home to draw him?”

Vivian did not even lift her head as she pulled a palm-sized sticky note from beside the easel, scribbled a few strokes on it, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it at my feet.

“There, I made up your drawing.”

That night, the light in the studio stayed on until after midnight.

Early the next morning, Vivian was furious at my indifference.

But she had forgotten that we had an agreement: every time she made me angry, she had to paint a portrait of me.

Once the portraits reached one hundred, we would get divorced.

The sticky note she drew with an eyebrow pencil last night was the ninety-ninth.