Have You Ever Seen Something You Weren't Supposed to See?

Hello. That headline above is today’s Weekend Gene Pool question, the one you are invited to answer and I am permitted to use, and respond to, in next week’s Q’s and A’s. In return, as always, I shall now fulfill my side of the covenant by entertaining you right here.

This question, as you surmised, is based upon the enormous gift accidentally bestowed upon Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, by the simpering imbeciles in Donald Trump’s cabinet. That is unlike any such accidental disclosure of which I am aware, but it is not the only accidental disclosure of which I am aware.

Many years ago, Marc Fisher, my friend and colleague at The Washington Post, received an email from a woman he knew only slightly — she was the wife of a source of his, whom he knew much better. The letter was hott. It steamed with earthy urgency, like, you know, sauna stones dashed with water and essential eucalyptus oil.

Marc instantly realized this wasn’t intended for him. Nor was it for the lady’s husband. From the context, it was clear this was an ongoing clandestine relationship.

So.

What to do?

Emergency Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Okay.

Have you answered? Good.

You sure?

Splendid.

What Marc actually did would qualify as “other,” had there been such a choice.

He did not tell either person. But he did not do “nothing,” either.

Marc is a journalist. What he did was write about this incident in The Post, without names or easily identifying facts.

And I, as part of our covenant, am going to reprint that brief 1999 story in its entirety here, for you:

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By Marc Fisher

She was the wife of a man with whom I'd had a correspondence, a matter of business. The three of us had met briefly, cordially.

This message was not business. It began, ''Finally, a most beautiful day, dearest. . . . ''

The name that followed was not mine. Nor was it her husband's.

The message was the product of a fluttering heart. Suddenly, this woman's world appeared fresh and sweet. Each day since they'd met, she had found something new, something fascinating.

It got worse. Quickly.

''The very first thing I saw was your eyes, the mirror of your soul. . . . '' Next she focused on his mind, his soul. By the middle of the e-mail, she was talking about how she had begun the relationship without any erotic impulse. That, she said, came much later.

Hold on. I was not supposed to be reading this. It was for the Other Man. My eyes glanced at the top of the screen. Definitely my e-mail address. Clearly, she had clicked the wrong line in her address directory when she sent her love note into cyberspace. Perhaps his last name was similar to mine.

But what to do? I could reply to the message with something bland, such as, ''Your message of Sunday morning (she wrote it at 9:46 a.m., perhaps while her husband was out buying her croissants and the Sunday paper) was misdirected to me. Cheers!'' But then she'd see which message she'd sent to me, and she would die of embarrassment. I would be indirectly responsible for the demise of a woman whose only crime was love.

Alternatively, I could do what one generally ought to do when life gets strange: nothing.

Perhaps the Other Man would never get to read these lustful lines. That would be his loss. Perhaps the woman was fretting over his failure to respond in kind. But if I kept the misfired message to myself, I might help save my acquaintances' marriage. Perhaps her fascination with the Other would cool.

Alas, there was a twist: The couple had invited me to dinner, under circumstances that would have made it too awkward to decline.

Did I owe it to the husband to say something, perhaps simply to notify him that some unspecified message from his computer had gone astray? (They must have shared a machine, because my prior e-mail had been solely with him.) Should I make up some excuse to avoid sitting with husband and wife, the illicit knowledge dancing about in my brain? Would my unconscious conspire to make me say something horrifying at dinner? (''Hey, how's the Other Man?'' or, ''Finally, a most beautiful day, dearest'' or, ''You're not going to believe the e-mail I got the other day!'')

I asked wise friends for help: Most women said I should discreetly go about my business and leave the woman to her dalliance. Most men thought I should go about my business and ask lots of probing questions to figure out exactly what was going on between husband and wife and report back to them with all the details.

I chose the path of least resistance. I did nothing.

Then, about a month after the first message - now only a few days before I was to see the couple - my e-mail delivered another surprise.

This time, she was more intimate. There was talk of time together, of dinner, of a kiss. She recounted conversations, letters, expressions of ardor. ''As long as we are alone together, where and how does not matter,'' she wrote.

Things had apparently progressed. The Other was now the ''most loving'' and ''most beautiful'' man on the face of the Earth.

On the appointed evening, seated between husband and wife, I was the nervous one. I was the one studying every motion, every utterance. Did she pass him the pepper with a touch of disdain? Was there antagonism in that question about the dessert? Did she really have to leave to finish some innocuous errand?

She played her role perfectly. He seemed oblivious. Later, when I was alone with him, he talked about his dreams for their next years.

I said nothing to prick his balloon. Not even when he asked me to keep up an e-mail correspondence with him.

I went home rattled, still uncertain - had I muffed a chance to save him from disaster, or had I stayed out of something that was none of my concern?

In the end, I wanted nothing more to do with husband or wife. Their marriage would be what it would be. A computer, or the slip of a finger, or the recklessness of love, had swept me into private lives, places I was not meant to be.

Soon thereafter, I went out and bought formal note cards and envelopes. I took my daughter to the post office, and we bought lovely stamps, suitable for accenting the most emotional messages. Private messages. Which would then be sealed inside envelopes. Which would then be addressed by hand.

—

That’s it. That was 1999. Marc just told me that as far as he knows, husband and wife are still together.

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So. That’s your challenge for today. Have you ever seen something you were not supposed to see, and how did it work out? It could be something personal, such as something of this nature, or something of business / career / political consequence, such as something of the Jeffrey Goldberg nature. It could be something you literally saw, or read, or heard, by accident. Anything that delivered you a dilemma, even a momentary one. Funny is good. Poignant is good.

Okay, that’s it. As always, send your stuff to the Questions and Observations button. If you want to remain anonymous, please say so:

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