An Era of Shared Wives

The city has started to treat a married woman as someone the neighbors may schedule. There is a proud, ugly name for the moment, and it means exactly this: wives are no longer kept behind one door. Invitations look like favors. Refusals look like bad manners. / She still wears a ring, and the men who smile at her husband talk as if that ring were a pass they can borrow. The era they boast about has a private cost nobody puts in the group chat.