Idleness and Unrest

Idleness at the advertising agency leads to unrest, so Alex enjoys hooking up with his unhappily married friend, Hilaria, on company time. The trick's to score a job that yields an abundance of fulfilling downtime and refuse to be robbed of it via promotion. Indulging in under-the-radar employer-financed recreation is wholesome healthy fun. Playacting and technology facilitate success.

The first paragraph:

It's a sunny mid-July Tuesday in Manhattan, the thermometer's nearing ninety, the specific location's Tudor City Greens opposite the United Nations, where many employees of midtown firms are passing their lunch break, relishing verdant respite from the city's clutter and clamor, hues of grey and beige. Hilaria Hath, a slender fit woman of above-average height, mid-back length vaguely wavy red hair, animated almond eyes, comeliness that frequently attracts lingering glances on Manhattan's sidewalks—a former yoga instructor, who easily passes for over a decade junior of her thirty-three years—is seated on a bench in the shade of one of the towering trees not toppled by Superstorm Sandy. She's a surgeon's wife, married for two years and three months—the marriage is childless, her husband's too preoccupied at the hospital to desire children. He's often too preoccupied to pay little more than cursory attention to her—habitually climbs into bed with the sole intention of sleeping, disinclined to become intimate. Hilaria didn't marry to be treated like a showpiece instead of a person, the security and status of being a physician's wife means nothing to her. So she's become intimate with Alexander Alexis, even if she was never consciously casting about for extramarital relief.