First Fish (The Heroine)
by Frank Tarloff

Phil started out like a house afire, but now he's in such a rut, grinding out television commercials for an ad agency, that he has lost all confidence in himself; and his wife, like many other women, wonders if she is the cause of husband's decline.

But unlike other wives, Sylvia doesn't let the matter rest there.

With the help of a neighbor, who is liberal with advice (that is, so long as it does not interfere with his regular calls to his analyst), she hires a hooker - a call girl - and in a deliciously comic scene arranges with her to impersonate a highly respectable girl whose seduction would bring back her husband's self-confidence.

Not only does the scheme work, but it works so well that Phil's esteem of himself becomes insufferable.

Until, that is, the comic denouement, which brings matters back to an even keel.