The Folded Clock: A Diary

Chapter 24: July 14

Today I met for coffee a friend who, a few years ago, told me the most perplexing lie. She told me she was having an affair with a married man at work. (This part was true.) The only other details I gleaned from her confession — offhandedly mentioned — were these: The man lived in Connecticut. He had three children. She told me enough about him, in other words, that I could sleuthily Google her small company and discover his identity if I wanted to. Was I supposed to do this? I wasn’t sure. To be safe, I didn’t. I would respect, as she apparently wanted me to respect (since she hadn’t outright told me his name), both his and her privacy.

A week or so later, however, I decided oppositely. She’d felt bound by discretion but, at the same time, badly wanted me to know. Maybe she’d made a promise to the man, who was married and obviously trying to keep things under wraps, not to tell anyone, not a soul. She’d given me the search terms so that she could tell me without telling me. Obviously she expected me to Google her love affair. I did. The only man at her company who lived in Connecticut with three children was named Ryan. Ryan, I now knew without her needing to break her vow of secrecy, was the man in her office with whom she was sleeping.

A few months later, I was shopping with this same friend. (Obviously we are not such close friends that we see each other frequently.) I asked her how “things” were going. She said she was in love but miserable, and that the situation had become really complicated with Nick’s wife.

“Nick,” I said. “Who’s Nick?”

She seemed surprised that I shouldn’t know who Nick was.

“Nick’s the guy,” she said, leaving the rest unspoken. Nick’s the married guy I’m having the affair with.

We kept shopping but I was quietly confused. I’d Googled all of the men in her workplace. I knew enough about Nick, in other words, to have confidently excluded him as a suspect. Nick lived in Brooklyn and had two kids. And yet she’d told me that the man with whom she was sleeping lived in Connecticut with three kids. Ryan was her only coworker who lived in Connecticut with three kids. So she’d known that if I Googled her affair using the data points she’d provided, that I’d be steered toward the wrong man. Had she done this on purpose? Was this a test? If so, had I passed or had I failed? Years later, I still don’t know.