"The Tech Rep" by James Michener; continued

Third, practically every tech rep I have 
known has had trouble with women.  He loves 
them...invariably he loves them in a tough, 
manly Sort of way.  But he cannot live with 
them.  They baffle him, confuse him, tear him 
to Shreds with their feminine 
inconsistencies.  If you had Summoned one 
hundred tech reps to a convention in Bombay, 
you would find that at least eighty of them 
were divorced, some more than once.  But in 
the bars, when the convention meeting was 
over, you would not find them complaining 
about their former wives.  They would speak 
most often from deep confusion:  I don't know 
what happened.  She couldn't stand life away 
from home I guess.  You would hear no 
recriminations:  After all, I was scheduled 
to be in Formosa for seventeen months.  There 
was no place for her, so I left her in 
Amarillo and never saw her again.  But you 
would hear some hilarious stories:  I met 
this cute chick in Kowloon and set her up in 
a millinery shop in Hong Kong.  A business 
partnership.  I put twelve thousand dollars 
into the deal, and I had been in Hokkaido for 
exactly two months, when she sold the place 
and ran off with the twelve thousand...and a 
newspaper man from the Chicago Tribune.