Stories from author justthejanitor

[Brainmetal]

Gold for Plastic

By justthejanitor ©

Sitting on my porch on a warm spring day, smelling the lilacs and lavender while savoring the taste of cold lemonade in my mouth, it was hard to get my head around the idea that anyone would want to live life differently than this. But, of course, people do, they do it all the time. And at least a few of them knowingly trade the promise of this away for something different, for something poorer, something golden for something plastic.

There wasn't anything particularly unusual about my courtship with Megan. We met right after college, dated for a couple of years, fell in love and got married. There was no real drama involved and almost everyone who knew us mentioned that they were confident we'd get married from the time we first got together. Now, we may not have been a modern Romeo and Juliet, but most people thought we made a great couple and time spent with each other was easy and fun and we never really tired of each other. At least I felt that way.

I guess our life as a married couple wasn't particularly noteworthy either, but I was happy. She worked at a publisher and I got a pretty good job as a programmer for a software company. We were renting a half of a duplex, saving for a house. We had two cars, a big TV and a pet fish. We liked the usual stuff, going to movies, out to dinner, dancing and we got more than our fair share of sex. We planned for the great American Dream and, as soon as we had enough money set aside, we were going to start a family. We talked about our future like we could order it from a catalogue. We wanted 2 kids at least, a boy and a girl, and a house with a porch and a fireplace and a big back yard with lots of shade trees. Life was good, and looked like it would only get better.

Our trajectory toward the picket fenced American dream was right on target until the day Megan met Theresa Thomas. Theresa worked in the copyright office at Megan's company. She was single and carefree and, as Megan saw it, led an incredibly interesting life. After they first met, I remember Meg coming home night after night to tell me all about Theresa and what she said or what she wore or who she argued with or what she'd done at some party. It wasn't long before Theresa became the required topic of conversation at dinner, after the movies, in the hot tub, whenever. Honestly, it didn't bother me at first, but after a while I noticed that Megan didn't just admire Theresa's life, she actually envied it. She talked jealously of the trips she took with her boyfriend and the carefree existence she had, attending parties and concerts and going to high end restaurants. The unstated message was that she wanted more of what Theresa had, and gradually, that message started to rankle.

A couple of months after they met, Megan started bringing Theresa around to grab a bite and hang out, and so I got an early firsthand dose of my wife's apparent role model. Now, I'll be the first to admit that she was nice looking. She had smooth, olive skin, jet black hair worn long, a curvy, well-proportioned body and dark, penetrating eyes. But, as attractive as she was physically, her personality was really annoying to me. She carried herself in a superior manner, and seemed to have an expectation that the people around her were there to serve her. It wasn't uncommon for her to make jabbing remarks about the great unwashed that didn't run in the circles she did and, generally speaking, her inferiors essentially consisted of the vast majority of the people she met, and I'm pretty sure that included me.

Initially it wasn't clear where the arrogance came from. She'd gone to the community college and certainly didn't seem like some sort of an intellectual giant, her job was no great shakes and she definitely didn't have a lot of her own money. Sure, she was good looking, but she wasn't exactly super model stuff and there are lots of equally pretty girls without that kind of attitude. Honestly, all I could conclude was that her sense of superiority was directly related to her perception that she associated with a better class of people. She had a habit of going on and on about the opinions and habits and possessions of a group of people she socialized with, all of whom were directly or indirectly connected with some sort of local tycoon named Gabriel Putnam. Theresa became acquainted with Gabriel, through a friend of his named Stuart, who she'd met and started dating a year or so previously. Now they both spent a lot of their free time at Gabriel's house, which turned out to be some gargantuan mansion on the outside of town. As far as I could gather, Gabriel didn't have any real accomplishments of his own, evidently getting all his money by being born into a family that controlled an obscenely profitable chemical company. And so, with no real responsibility, he'd managed to perfect the art of living a life of leisure and evidently went out of his way to share his life style with anyone he deemed worthy of becoming his friend. Not surprisingly, his mansion was the focal point for all the 'beautiful people' in town and they'd gather there to party five or six nights a week. It wasn't long before I realized that, if you didn't habituate Gabriel's house, then you weren't really worth the time of day, at least in Theresa's little world.



Well, based on Megan's growing adoration of everything Theresa, it was pretty clear to me that she was craving a night at Gabriel's in the worst way. So, it came as no surprise when she came home one Thursday in an incredibly manic mood after Theresa had invited her to go to Gabriel's later that night to introduce her around. I guess I assumed I was going too, but when I asked what I should wear and what time we'd be leaving, Theresa made it clear that it was a girl's night and that I was going to be out of the loop. At that point, alarm bells started going off in my head, but they were just faint enough that I didn't panic completely.

The alarm got considerably louder when I saw Megan come out of our bedroom wearing a fairly provocative black dress that showed off her legs and cleavage and that she'd gone all out on her makeup and her hair. When she dolled up like that she could be breathtaking and that night, wearing a dress that showed off all of her beautiful curves, she looked every bit the part of a sandy haired, brown eyed, pale skinned dream; a cross between the peachy country girl and some bikini model dressed to the nines. Really, she was just so gorgeous that it was making me queasy thinking how other men would be scheming to try and get lucky once they got an eyeful of her, and I developed an overwhelming impulse to ask her to cancel or insist that I go too. But before I figured out a diplomatic way to broach the subject and voice my concern, she was out the door with Theresa and on her way.

After she left, it didn't take long before I realized that waiting around the house while she partied was going to drive me crazy, so I decided I'd better occupy myself somehow and I figured I could catch a football game with my buddies. My best friends were Greg Martin and Bill White, a couple of guys in the neighborhood that I could always count on for company. I'd known Greg since college and Tom since we'd moved into their neighborhood and along with their wives, Sally and Julie, we spent a lot of time socializing together. The men would often golf, or watch football together and it wasn't uncommon for the girls to go shopping or even to the spa together. As couples we'd go to the movies or bowling or miniature golfing and even took a couple of vacations as a group.

A night watching football with them wasn't at all unusual, but going over to their house without Megan was definitely out of the ordinary and both Sally and Julie wondered what was up. I guess I was pretty vague about the answer, so like dogs hovering around a cornered squirrel, they kept pressing until they got the whole story out. Nobody said much, but I did notice some raised eyebrows and the men nervously ribbed me about my wife looking to upgrade. I laughed at the jokes, but I really didn't think it was all that funny and I'm pretty sure everyone started to feel my discomfort.

Megan got home around 11:30 that night and couldn't stop talking about the people she met and the good time she had. She seemed a little buzzed, which didn't surprise me because she was never averse to drinking a fair amount in social situations. It didn't take long before her enthusiasm about her evening out started to annoy me. Sure I understood it was fun and interesting for her, but hearing her gush for a couple of hours about the people she met at a party I wasn't welcome at had me grinding my teeth and looking to change the subject.

Listening to her review of the evening, a few names kept coming up over and over. The super rich Gabriel was evidently 'charming' and 'witty' and a gracious and generous host who was quick to lavish food, booze and compliments on his guests. As a popular, attractive, ultra-rich single guy, Gabriel played the part of the ultimate in bachelor eligibility, with women of every age hanging on and around him all night long. Not far behind him, though, was a guy named Palmer, a local lawyer, who seemed to be a very close friend of Gabriel's. Megan described Palmer as having a commanding personality, conveying with some evident admiration how he dominated conversations and tended to be the focus of attention even if Gabriel was in the room. Apparently, everyone seemed to know him or of him and he was a fairly popular guy and, based on Megan's smile and excitement as she recanted the evening, she was very flattered that he spent a lot of time talking to her. Then there was Theresa's boyfriend Stuart, who, according to Megan, seemed a little younger and a little more 'playful'. I guess Theresa was all over him all night, but that didn't surprise Meg because, apparently, over-the-top public displays of affection were commonplace at Gabriel's.

I listened to her drone on about what a great time she had over the next few days and a couple of times I got close to saying how lame I thought it was to fawn over a bunch of socialites and their wanna-be hanger-ons, but I figured I'd just sound bitter or jealous or both. Eventually, my non-responses must have sent a message because she finally dialed back the conversation about the mansion and its ever-so-interesting occupants and visitors.



About a week later, she got invited again. This time I insisted on going along and was more than a little relieved when she didn't object. The mansion was just on the outside of town and was a huge pseudo-classical monstrosity complete with porticos and decorated columns , statues, fountains and a whole lot of square footage. It had a long driveway and there must have been 25 cars parked along it and on the adjacent lawn. Once inside, Megan showed me around a little. The mansion was absolutely massive and the party was spread all through it with people eating in the dining room, talking in a gigantic living room, playing pool in a game room, sitting in the hot tub, swimming in a hug pool or watching a movie in a media room. Really, people were everywhere, talking, laughing, gesticulating, drinking and touching.

Eventually, we found Gabriel and Palmer with half a dozen other people in a 'den' off of the main hall. She introduced me and they seemed nice enough. Both Gabriel and Palmer looked to be in their early 40's, both were well tanned, wore expensive clothes, cologne, that sort of thing. They both had the easy, confident manner of men who felt in complete control of their environment and they moved from conversation to conversation with incredible ease and confidence. Anyway, they both greeted me fairly warmly, made a little small-talk, asking about my job, my educational background and then politely moved on to talk with more interesting people, mainly some pretty girls, including Theresa and my wife. Maybe I looked a little lost, so someone got me a drink and motioned to a nearby couch where I sat down with Megan and a group of 4 or 5 socialites for what turned out to be, for me anyway, a stunningly boring conversation about the merits of vacationing in Venice versus Florence followed by comments on the appropriateness of the behavior of a number of fashion models. I tried to stay engaged, but after half an hour, I lost the battle to boredom. Remembering a room with a TV playing a baseball game, I whispered to Megan that I was going to look around some more and she nodded ok. I spent the rest of the evening watching a high definition whitewash of a game with another guy who was trying to pickle himself in scotch. By the time the game ended, he was snoring and I was more than ready to find Megan and go home.

But, finding Megan didn't turn out to be quite so easy. She wasn't in the den or the dining room or the living room or any of the big rooms off the main hall. For one, heart pounding moment, I figured the only rooms left were the upstairs bedrooms, but on my way to the stairway I spotted her on one of the smaller patios outside of the kitchen and dining room. For a moment, and only a moment, I was relieved to find her, but my relief washed out of me like a flushed toilet when I was able to completely take in the scene. Megan was standing by a fountain, closely facing Palmer. He had a drink in one hand and had the other arm wrapped low around her waist with his hand on her butt. He laughed at something she said, paused to take a drink and then lowered his head to nuzzle her neck. She laughed at what he was doing and in a half-hearted effort, gently pushed him away with her free hand. I felt like my heart was exploding and I bolted through the patio door and was at the fountain within seconds.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey, what the hell is going on?" I half-shouted as I pulled his hand off Megan and roughly pulled her away.

Megan looked mortified and Palmer reacted with a surprised glance that melted into something that seemed vaguely amused.

"I'm just enjoying talking with your wife, nothing to get worked up about."

"Uh, that's enough enjoyment asshole; she's married you know and we don't go for that sort of thing." I think he was trying to look conciliatory, but all I could see was a smirk.

Megan began turning beet red as I frog walked her away and I thought it was over her own embarrassment at being caught in a compromising situation. I learned just how wrong I was when she hissed into my ear:

"Matt, don't be an ass. Palmer is a friend and one of our hosts. You are totally overreacting. Seriously, you're embarrassing me and need to apologize right now."

I was stunned. I had nothing to say to this, so I mumbled something about him more likely getting a broken jaw than an apology, and kept walking her off the patio, through the house and out to the car. Both of us were really fuming and we said nothing for most of the ride home. Finally she turned to me and said; "What the hell possessed you to humiliate me like that in front of my friends?"

I spit back, "What the hell possessed you to start making out with a guy in public?"

"We weren't making out. We were just flirting a little and I see nothing wrong with it. You're fucking overreaction is the real issue."

The argument went on like that for the rest of the car ride, the walk up the driveway to the house, the entire time we got ready for bed and right up to the point we both pretended to fall asleep. I was taken aback by her behavior, but completely flabbergasted at her defense of it. I had to ask myself a million times if I was overreacting, if this kind of thing was really normal for a married couple, if somehow I should see it her way. But I couldn't and remained astonished that she thought a behavior that was clearly out of bounds to me, was ok to her. How could we see the situation so completely different?

By the next morning, things were still a little chilly, but had improved to the point we could talk to each other. I considered having a big sit-down discussion about the night before, but I got lazy and decided to let it slide. Really, I guess I talked myself into believing that she was so embarrassed by her own behavior that she must have decided to downplay its significance, otherwise the defense of her actions made no sense to me.

But, when she got an invitation to Gabriel's again on Saturday I put a quick stop to any idea that she would be going. We had already agreed to a barbecue at Sally and Greg's, which, in my view, was going to be a lot more fun and it would have been really rude to cancel. Also, I was still mortified by her behavior on Thursday and wasn't at all interested in giving Palmer, or any other guy there, another shot at my wife.

Not surprisingly, Megan was none too happy with my decision and she sulked and griped the whole morning. Her mood hadn't improved any when we got to the barbecue and she pretty much refused to socialize at all. She drank more than usual, gave one word answers, didn't laugh or even smile at all, and sat by herself every chance she got. Finally, when she was alone in the house, I went inside to confront her.

"Hey, what the hell Meg, you're really messing up this party. Sally just asked if you were sick or something and I had to just say you're in a bad mood. I know you're pissed at me, but don't take it out on everyone here. You need to come out and at least try and have some fun."

She gave me a sour look and said she wanted to go home. I asked her again to stick around and try and have some fun, and then she really blew up.

"Look Matt, I know you like boring things like barbecues and like to have boring conversations with boring people like Greg and Sally and Bill and Julie and are perfectly happy coming to this boring place to have....."

She stopped in mid-sentence because of a crashing sound in the kitchen immediately behind us. We both turned to see Sally, who was on her knees, desperately fumbling at the shattered pieces of a serving plate. She'd obviously heard everything Megan had said.

"Sally, I'm, uh, sorry...." I choked out while Megan sat there silently,

Sally smiled painfully. "Oh, it's ok, it's a cheap plate..." She said, painfully pretending they were both talking about the plate while she picked up the last few pieces. We watched in silence as she left the room and then sat there for a few moments more, still saying nothing. Finally, Megan turned to me and started. "Look, Matt, I didn't..."

I held my hand up for her to stop. "You win. I'm going to let everyone know we are leaving. I'm pretty sure it's going to be impossibly awkward if we try and stick around."

I walked outside to our friends whose conversation stopped suddenly when they noticed me on the deck. I had no idea what to say so I decided on something that everyone knew wasn't true. "Hey, you guys, Meg isn't feeling so good, so I think we're going to cut it short and just go home. We'll catch you later." They all murmured something about hoping she'd get better and that we'd see each other soon. There didn't seem like there was anything else to do, so I got Meg and left.

I was on a low boil the whole ride home, saying nothing, realizing if I opened my mouth I'd explode. She sat quietly looking out the passenger window, but didn't seem to be particularly remorseful. No tears, no attempts to apologize or justify, nothing to make me think she was sorry.

I was so perplexed by her recent change in attitude that I didn't even know how to start to question her about her behavior , so all I could muster when we got inside was to say "You can really be a little shit sometimes Meg." She looked back at me defiantly and simply replied: "Now you know how it feels to be embarrassed in front of your friends." We spent the rest of the night in silence.



There was a gradual thaw over the next few days and by mid-week, things seemed to be back to normal, or what had become normal. We talked and laughed and watched TV and had sex. But the new normal also included Theresa, so she came over twice later in the week and she and Megan spent those evenings watching TV, listening to music and talking.

One thing that didn't happen that week was a trip to Gabriel's. I figured that maybe Meg decided she'd overdone it a little because she didn't even ask to go. But, she did bring it up the next week and by then I'd cooled down enough to say ok. I really didn't need another night at the snob-house, but there was no way I'd let her go alone after what had happened the last time. She made me promise I wouldn't cause problems and I made her promise she'd use a little better judgment when she flirted.

The scene at the mansion was pretty much the same as before with maybe half again as many people. Palmer and I managed to shake hands and apologize to each other and the evening settled down into a series of elitist conversations that couldn't have been duller to me. Megan was behaving herself and I was bored so we agreed that Theresa would bring her home and I left early. That seemed to work out ok and for a while, that became the pattern once or twice a week. I'd stay for an hour or so, talk a little, get bored and leave early and Theresa would bring Meg home later on. Megan seemed happier and I found I was adjusting. It seemed like a win-win.

About this time, things started heating up at work. There was an important update to some software that was already past its release date and it was turning out to be really, really buggy. I was pulled off all of my normal duties and put in charge of fixing it, and, as usual, I wasn't getting a lot of help. My boss made it very clear to me that it would be really good for my career if I could get this fixed within a couple of months and also suggested that they might have to look for someone else if I couldn't. So, naturally, I knew I'd be spending a lot of time at work after hours and on the weekends.

This wasn't the first time I had to put in long hours at work over a long stretch and I was expecting Megan to throw a fit. Previously, when this sort of thing happened, Megan would bitch about it and make me promise to make it up to her with a nice vacation or something. This time, though, she barely complained at all and said she was ok with it as long as she could hang out with Theresa and the rest of her new friends when she got lonely. I suppose I should have had some serious misgivings about that, and I guess I did feel a little nudge of concern, but I knew it would be a huge issue if I left her alone at home night after night without anything to do. So I got her to promise to behave and made peace with the thought she'd be hanging out at Gabriel's a lot without me.

Over the next couple of months I worked my ass off on the project and was not only getting rid of the bugs, but made a couple of upgrades in the code itself. I was happy with my work and so was my boss, so things at work were ok. Things at home seemed ok too. Meg and I weren't fighting at all and when we did have time to spend together, we got along great. Really, except for the work-imposed limited time we had together, everything was pretty much the same as before Theresa came around.

Maybe one thing that was a little different was the sex. What we did and how we did it didn't change much at all. Our typical time in the sack had always started high intensity with a lot of oral sex and a pounding session, usually with her on her knees or on top. Then she'd bring me back up with her hands or her mouth and we'd have a nice, long, luxurious fuck with her on her back. That pattern was pretty much the same still, except that Megan was now really into the ambience. She'd make sure candles were lit or some flower petals were on the bed or some nice music was playing. Frankly, that sort of thing did nothing for me, but she'd also started wearing lingerie before and sometimes during the sex, and I loved that. Corsets, garters, cat suits, heels, leather, she wore all kinds of stuff, and it was all like crystal meth for my libido. Seriously, just the mental image of her lying on the bed in some smoking hot lingerie with maybe a thin sheen of oil on her body was enough to get me completely unhinged right in the middle of work.

Now, of course, I didn't want to upset the apple cart, but I did want to how the clothing change came about and so, one night after a particularly steamy session in which she'd worn a smoking hot corset, I had to ask where she'd gotten it.

"I got this shopping with Theresa at Guinevere's. Do you like it?"

"I love it. In fact, I pretty much love everything you've been wearing lately to bed." I hesitated a bit. "What, uh, inspired you to start wearing these outfits?"

"Oh, mostly talking with Theresa. She always dresses up for Stuart and after listening to the results she gets, I wanted to give it a try." She smiled. "You seem to be ok with it, so I kept it up."

"Uh, yeah, I'm definitely ok with it," I said, gazing at the way the corset shoved her breasts up.

"See, Theresa isn't so bad. You should lighten up on her. She knows what she's talking about when it comes to the bedroom and that's good for you."

"Yes, I guess I can't really argue with that." I said, as I watched her tits rise and fall above the corset with her breathing. Very briefly, a disturbing thought flitted at the back of my mind. "What if I'm not the only one that Megan's newfound love of lingerie has been good for?"



Well, after a couple of months, I finished debugging and sprucing up the software and it finally got out. It turned out to be so successful that my bosses bumped up my position and gave me new responsibilities and a raise. The price for that, though, was that while I was working less than I had during the de-bugging crunch, my hours were still more than they had been in the past. So, to some degree, we'd kept up the pattern that had been established in the months before. We had a little more time to spend together, but if I had to work late, Megan would head out to Gabriel's for the evening, which was usually a couple of times a week.

Valentine 's Day was coming up and I got it in my head that I wanted to buy Meg some more lingerie. She loved to wear it. I loved to look at her in it. It seemed like a great idea. So, when I got home a little a little earlier than expected one night and found a note that said she was out with Theresa, I figured this might be a good time to go shopping at Guinevere's. Now, Megan had a particularly hot black corset that really got my motor running and I decided I'd love to see her in a red one. But, getting the right size on clothes is always a problem for me, so I thought I'd better check the tag on the corset or even bring it in to compare before I bought anything new.

The problem, though, was that I couldn't find the damn thing. I checked in all her drawers, in her closet, in the laundry, pretty much everywhere. I sat for a minute trying to decide where else it might be when a faintly disturbing thought came to my mind. "Maybe I can't find it because she's wearing it right now." I brushed the thought away at first, but the more I considered it, the more likely that possibility seemed to me. And then an even worse thought, "If she's wearing it, who is she wearing it for and what are they doing?"

My mind was now vacillating quickly between being certain she was entertaining some man at Gabriel's and deciding I was being paranoid and that there must be some other explanation. Eventually, though, the suspicious part of me started to win out. I called her cell phone and it went to voice mail and then called Theresa's and got voice mail too. I could think of no other way to find out what was going on than to actually find Megan and see what she was doing, and that meant going to Gabriel's. I hesitated for a couple of minutes, debating whether finding and confronting her was wise, but ultimately I realized I had to know. I got in my car and drove to Gabriel's.

There were only a half dozen or so cars parked around the driveway when I got there. When I saw one of them was Megan's, I knew I was on the right track, but my heart dropped into my stomach and I felt like my life was starting to come apart. I parked, walked deliberately up the drive and knocked on the door which was answered by Jordy, a huge, amiable black man with a shaved head, whose job was to keep things quiet and safe. I considered trying to push past him to get inside, but even though I'm a pretty big guy, Jordy had 50 pounds of muscle on me and I knew I wouldn't get far. I decided to play it as cool as I could; I said hi, chatted a little and acted like I was expected. He recognized me from my previous visits and didn't put up any sort of a roadblock when I ambled past him into the house.

As casually as possible I began searching for any sign of Megan. I checked the patios, the dens and the living rooms. When I entered the kitchen I saw Theresa and Stuart, seated at a table, drinking some wine and eating some sort of cheese. They were both dressed in bathrobes, and Theresa's hair was uncharacteristically unkempt. Everything about them seemed post-coital. She looked up when I entered the room and her mouth dropped open in surprise and I thought I caught a hint of worry in her eyes.

"Theresa, where's Megan?" I asked as coolly as possible.

"I, uh, I'm not sure she's even here. I thought she might be at home," she replied nervously.

I snorted and gave her an incredulous laugh. "Try again Theresa, I know she's here."

As Theresa was trying to formulate another lie, she gave things away when I saw her eyes nervously shift towards a stairway that I knew led to some of the upstairs guest rooms. I set my jaw, moved quickly to the stairway and started up, 2 steps at a time.

"Matt, stop. Matt...don't." Theresa was almost pleading.

At the top of the stairs was a hall with maybe half a dozen doors coming off either side. I had no option but to try them all. I opened the first door carefully and saw a lump lying on the bed in a darkened room. My eyes adjusted and I realized it was just some guy who was taking a nap. The next two doors yielded empty rooms, but there was a couple on the bed in the fourth room. The room was about as dark as a high end restaurant so I had trouble making things out as the only real light came from half a dozen candles on the headboard as well as some faint light coming through a window and the minimal amount of light from the door I'd just cracked open. The couple on the bed didn't respond when I slipped into the room and I thought they either didn't hear me or were so used to people looking in inadvertently that they simply weren't fazed by the idea of a temporary or accidental audience. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out the back of a woman, slowly, rhythmically rocking her pelvis over the man below her. She was leaning close to him, supporting her weight with her hands resting on either side of his neck. They were making very soft, murmuring sounds; the room smelled of oranges and candles and sex. Her back glistened with a thin film of sweat and her light colored hair hung down to brush against the man face. I looked closely at the woman and caught a look of her face in the candlelight as she turned slightly. It looked like Megan. I stepped a little closer and my foot struck something on the floor. Looking down, I recognized her black corset. My heart broke. I leaned back against the wall, found the light switch and turned it on.

Megan turned quickly and looked back at me. First I saw annoyance, then surprise, then something else, fear maybe, I wasn't sure. She rolled off the man and I could see it was Palmer, sweating, aroused and more than a little annoyed. Megan sat upright beside him, looking straight at me. She was completely naked, shining with sweat, her hair was wild, her nipples were an engorged red and her face was flushed from the sex.

She began to speak, haltingly, her voice thick with a hint of both anger and worry. "Matt....why....how....why are you here?"

"I came to see my wife." I said, flatly. "Nice to see you honey."

We stared at each other, looking for something, anything, that would make this situation understandable or acceptable. I could see she was on the verge of tears and, although I didn't realize it at the time, I think I'd already crossed that boundary myself. But along with pain, I could also feel anger welling up inside me, white and hot and explosive. I felt my fists tighten, my jaw clench and my nostrils flare. I stepped purposefully toward the bed, toward Palmer, and I could see fear in his eyes. I knew I was going to beat him senseless, to hurt him physically like he'd hurt me, but as I got close to the bed a large black hand grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around. Suddenly, I was facing Jordy, and he looked angry and resolute. I pushed off him to take a step backwards toward the bed, but he grabbed me in a bear hug and started dragging me from the room. I managed to get my hands on his shoulders and took him down to the ground and we wrestled there for a minute. I was able to get free momentarily and started toward the bed again and when Palmer saw this he essentially cowered like a little boy behind Megan. But, Jordy caught me again and this time was able to drag me back out into the hallway. He pushed me against the wall and started speaking in a quiet, earnest voice.

"I can't let you do this, man. It's my job. But think for a second. Just think. That guy is a first class prick for sure and you'd probably feel better for a while by sending him to the hospital....or worse. But is it worth jail time? Is he? Will it change anything if you hurt him? Or kill him? Think, man, think."

I continued to struggle against him for a minute or two, but his words sunk into me. I could accomplish nothing here by either talking or fighting. My shoulders slumped in capitulation.

"Shit." It was all I could say.

I looked him in the eye and nodded, he let me go and I started walking down the hallway. Near the end, I turned and saw Megan by the door, in a robe, looking after me.

"I'm sorry Matt." She said.

"Bitch." I answered back and watched more tears gather in her eyes. She didn't follow me as I started down the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs I ran into Theresa, still in her robe. She had a look of uncertainty and maybe a little bit of concern about her.

"Don't do anything rash, Matt. She loves you. You love her. Don't screw that up."

I looked at her and laughed, bitterly. Without answering I walked out of the mansion, got into my car and drove home.



Once I got home, I felt paralyzed. I had no reference for what I was supposed to do now. Pack and leave? Pack her stuff? Wait to have a big discussion? Get a lawyer? Get a gun?

Lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling I obsessively and unproductively considered the merits of all my various choices, my mental indecision playing against a confused emotional backdrop of anger and heartbreak. Time slipped by, and I was still on the couch when Meg got home around an hour later. Her arrival took the decision about what to do next out of my hands. The big discussion option became step one.

She'd been crying and she had no makeup on, but her hair was damp and I could tell she'd taken time to grab a shower. I sat up as she entered the living room and she carefully sat down in a chair facing the couch. She looked at me with sadness and uncertainty and I thought maybe she thought I'd start the conversation. I had no idea what to say at that moment, so I waited her out.

"Matt, I'm sorry you saw that. I know how bad that had to hurt and I'm sorry. I never, ever wanted to hurt you like that. You know that, right?"

I digested the little she had just said. Sorry that I saw it. Sorry that it hurt. I didn't hear that she was sorry that she'd done it or even any suggestion that it was a mistake that wouldn't ever be repeated.

It took me a minute to compose myself and organize my thoughts enough to reply. "Well. It does hurt. It hurts a hell of a lot really." I looked to gauge her reaction, but nothing really changed. I realized I had to know what she was really thinking, what she was planning, because any plans I could make were totally dependent on her, I felt like she had all the cards.

"So, Meg. What are you going to do? You coming to get your stuff and move in with him? What?"

She looked shocked and replied aggressively. "No Matt, God no." She paused. "I love you. I love being your wife. I hate it that I've hurt you. I want to keep things like they are. "

I could see she was sincere, but something about the way she was talking bothered me. "What do you mean you want to keep things the way they are?"

She looked down biting her lip and fumbling with her fingers. It looked to me like she wasn't sure what she wanted to say. "Look Matt, you're really emotional right now and I don't think this is the best time to...."

"You've fucking well got that right. I'm very fucking emotional right now and I think you could say I want to get a few things straight." I was practically spitting the words at her.

She seemed a little cowed by my aggression and anger, but her eyes didn't leave mine. "OK , what do you want to know, then, Matt?"

"Well, for starters, what the hell kind of a relationship do you have with Palmer? Are you in love with him or what? And....and.....again, what exactly do you mean by you want to keep things the way they are?"

She still looked uncertain and uncomfortable. But I was now seeing something else in her eyes, something like defiance.

"I wouldn't say I'm in love with him. Not in the same way I'm in love with you. Maybe it is a kind of love, I suppose, but..."

"A kind of love? What the hell kind of love is it Meg? The kind of love a married woman can have with another man? What is that, exactly, because I'd really like to know?"

"You can love more than one person, Matt in more than one kind of way. I'm married to you, but I'm not locked in some sort of emotional prison where I can't reach out to others...."

"Good God, Megan, what the hell are you talking about? Reaching out to others? I just caught you in bed with another man, not giving out free meals to the poor or buying Christmas presents for your Mom and Dad. What the hell kind of love allows a married woman to hop in the sack with another man?"

She looked like she was searching for the right words. I was furious and getting more impatient and I think she could see that her answers had been making things worse.

"Our relationship means a lot to me and to him. I enjoy his company and he enjoys mine. He fills out my life..."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I was practically screaming at this point. "You sound like you aren't even sorry that you've been screwing him. You sound like this is.....this is.....normal, acceptable behavior...."

"Normal Matt? What the hell is normal?" Now she was getting a little aggressive, and the way she was defending herself with defiance and anger was confusing and frustrating me. "Is it normal to artificially restrict all of your romantic feelings to one person for life? Is that normal Matt? "

"Yeah....yeah, I think it is. I mean, normal is you sleep with the person you are married to. You reserve that kind of....that kind of love.....for your husband. That's normal Megan. That's what married people do. That's what the hell is expected." I was breathing hard and staring incredulously at her. I went on. "My God, Meg, it sounds like you want to keep this going. That you....that you want both of us at the same time. Is that what you mean by 'you want to keep things the way they are'? You can't seriously believe that's possible."

"Look Matt, like I said, you're really emotional right now and you're not in the frame of mind to rationally evaluate this." She waited for a second, maybe thinking I'd interrupt, but I let her continue. "My relationship with Palmer doesn't and wouldn't ever affect the relationship I have with you. There isn't any real reason I can't have a close relationship with both of you. And, if you love me, and cared for my happiness, I think you'd make the sacrifice to your pride, and that's the only thing you'd have to sacrifice, and allow me to see Palmer." She was using a measured voice and her words came out as if she were delivering a practiced speech. Maybe it was. Still, though, I was having trouble really comprehending what she was saying.

"This is unbelievable."

"Matt, couples do this all the time."

"Maybe, but as far as I'm concerned, those kind of people really aren't committed to each other, aren't even really married. You know that. You know that I don't 'get' the whole open marriage thing. In fact, you pretty much thought the same thing once upon a time..."

"I'm not talking about an open marriage where we go around and fuck whoever we want...."

"You could have fooled me, 'cause I'm pretty sure I just saw you fucking around with Palmer."

"I don't want to sleep around. I just want a relationship with Palmer and with you. I want to be your wife and his....his...."

"His what? His slut? His party girl? What?"

She bit her lip, thinking. "I don't know......his....his mistress, I guess. I want to be your wife and his mistress. That's the way things have been the last month or so and that's what I want going forward."

I was speechless, staring at her with my mouth and eyes wide open in surprise and disbelief. Finally, I found a few words. "His mistress? You want to be his mistress? You know Meg, this isn't the 18th century and we don't live in Versailles and Palmer isn't some kind of a lord."

I was standing now and I took a step toward her, and pointed to myself. "And you know what else? I'm not some kind of a wimpy assed dandy that is willing to put up with this shit. I'm not going to flush my self-respect down the toilet just so you can play at being Marie Antoinette or whoever the hell you want to be."

At this point I was so angry and confused and frustrated that I felt completely out of control. I couldn't take any more and knew that if I kept arguing with Meg, things would probably get worse. For the first time ever, I understood how a man could strike a woman, and I didn't want to cross that line.

"You know what Meg," I finally said, moving toward the door. "I'm out of here."



I stormed out of the house, got in my car and started driving around aimlessly. Eventually, I stopped at a bar and had a few drinks but my mood only got worse. By now it was well past 2 a.m. and my mind was virtually torturing me with replays of the fight I'd had with Meg. At this point, I really wanted to stop thinking about it and somehow, someway, I knew I had to get some sleep. Benadryl always throws me for a loop, so I picked some up at a drugstore and checked into a motel. With the help of the liquor and the late hour and the Benadryl, I finally managed to drift off to sleep in spite of myself.

I woke up around noon the next day and it took a few minutes to get oriented. It was Saturday. I didn't have to go to work. I was in a motel because I'd had a fight with Meg. The fight was because she wanted to keep sleeping with her lover. I felt a wave of nausea wash over me, my heart sank and my mind was instantly on fire again.

Feeling a terrible sense of loneliness and rejection, I tried vainly to make any kind of sense out of my situation. Nearly beside myself with anxiety, I realized that I was in desperate need of perspective and counsel. I needed a friend. Like a robot, I drove over to Bill and Sue's.

When I got there, they could tell immediately that something was very wrong. I looked and sounded like a wreck, which seemed about right because that's pretty much the way I felt. Bill got me a beer and we sat down together in the living room. Even though the fight with Meg was dominating my mind, it still took me a while to get the story out to Bill. It hurt to tell what had happened. It hurt my pride. It hurt to admit that the woman I loved was so very different than I thought she was. It hurt to admit that another man had managed to get a claim on her.

Bill listened carefully to the story. He didn't rush me or ask many questions, but kept shaking his head in disbelief through my whole discourse. I was on the verge of tears and had to stop to get myself together a couple of times.

"How are you feeling now? Are you going to be ok tonight?"

"I don't know Bill. Honestly. I feel like shit, I guess, but I think I'll be able to keep it together."

"How do you feel about Meg, though? Frustrated? Homicidal? Conciliatory? What?"

I thought about that for a minute. "Lots of things I guess. I'm furious what she's done. I guess I'm sort of humiliated too. I mean, she knows I'm not going to put up with her having a lover. She knows that. So, I guess it feels like she's really just left me for some other guy...."

Bill shook his head. "She didn't leave you Matt. She left herself. She left behind what she used to be and became someone else. She hasn't been the same for a while. I think so, Ted thinks so and the girls do too. The current Meg really isn't the woman you married. "

That made a lot of sense to me and I nodded as I considered what he'd said.

Bill patted my knee, stood up and said "Hold on a second." He went to the kitchen and came back with a card and handed it to me. It was the business card for a lawyer named Charles Taylor. "Look, I don't know if this is necessary, but I think you need to at least think about some of the legal stuff. This guy's pretty good." Bill explained. "He helped with my brother in law's divorce and I think he'll be fine for you. As far as I can tell, if it comes to divorce, you two shouldn't have a whole lot of things to squabble about, so you might not even need a lawyer. But, if her boyfriend is a lawyer, I think you'd better call someone like this guy to even things up just in case."

What he was saying made sense to me and I told him I'd give Taylor a call Monday morning.

I hung out at Bill and Sue's almost until midnight and, after turning down an invitation to spend the night, drove back to the motel and sacked out there.

The next morning I went home in order to get some clothes and stuff. Meg wasn't there and had left a note explaining that she tried to get hold of me but couldn't because I'd left my cell phone at the house. She asked me to call her and said that she had taken her things and moved out so that I wouldn't have to. She spent half a page apologizing about how I found out and tried to explain, again, how she really thought we could make our marriage work even if she had a relationship with Palmer. She promised that I'd get all the attention and love I needed. Finally she asked me to call her so that we could talk some more.

I thought about what she'd written. I thought about what she'd become. I thought about her request to talk but I couldn't see the point. I didn't call. I didn't answer my cell. I stared at the TV without comprehending what I was watching, I listened to some music, I curled up in a ball and tried not to cry. Eventually I was able to get some sleep and put the worst weekend of my life behind me.

As planned I called Charles Taylor Monday morning. I was able to get an appointment a few days later and took a couple of hours off work to meet with him. Fortunately, his office was fairly close so it was easy to get there and back without missing much work. Taylor mostly did divorce cases and, from what I'd heard, usually did fairly well for his client. He wasn't a scorched earth kind of a guy, but he had a reputation for protecting his client's interests without starting a war. I was mad, for sure, but I guess if I was going to start exploring legal remedies, I wanted to make sure I didn't burn any bridges in case Meg came to her senses and I changed my mind.

We went over the facts of the marriage. How long we'd been married, what we had in the bank, what I was making, what Meg was making, what we owned. He told me it really didn't matter much why we were getting divorced, especially since there were no kids. I could be a meth addicted Satan worshipper or she could be a prostitute that liked to bring any number of STDs home and it wouldn't really change the outcome substantially. Still though, he wanted to hear my story. I wasn't sure if he was just curious or if he thought the background would help him decide how he ought to represent me.

So, I took my time and told him about the events of the last couple of months. He listened pretty carefully and nodded or shook his head to show his agreement or distaste for what I was saying. When I mentioned Palmer's name, a look of recognition came over his face.

"Are you talking about Palmer Atkinson?"

"Yeah, that's the guy. You know him? He's a lawyer I think."

"Sure, we were in law school together, same class in fact. " He paused a minute, maybe deciding if he should give out any more information. "You know, his name is really Peter. He goes by Palmer because he thinks it sounds more sophisticated or something."

"No shit." I laughed a little. "I guess it's all about appearances with him."

"Yeah, mostly. He's not exactly a 'shoulder to the wheel' kind of a guy. I'm pretty sure he finished right near the bottom of our class and I really doubt he ever passed the bar. From what I hear, he never really got around to practice law."

I was a little surprised to hear that. "He seems to live the high life, nice clothes, nice car. What does he do for cash?"

"Yeah, well, his wife is some sort of an heiress so I guess he hit the marriage lottery, so to speak."

I was stunned. "His wife? He's married? Really? What the hell?"

Taylor frowned. "Sorry, I figured you knew about that. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's married. Or at least I'm sure he has been. " He sat back. "You think it will make a difference to Megan if she doesn't know?"

"It might. But then, her being married didn't make much of difference to her, so maybe not."

Now I had one more thing to think about. If she didn't know, would it matter to Megan that he was married? If it did, would it matter to me if she wanted to come back at this point? I had my doubts about either question until some of her words from our confrontation came back to me: Couples do this all the time. She knew. She knew and it didn't bother her.

I spent the next few days in continued, self-enforced, isolation. I kept my cell phone off and refused to answer the home phone. Megan left half a dozen messages about how 'we needed to talk' and asked me to call, but I just really didn't see the point.

I did read the e-mails she sent. She wrote, long, complicated, meandering notes trying to get me to see things from her point of view, painting a picture of how our life together wouldn't be so different if she developed some 'outside interests' and how I would be free to do the things I enjoyed without her interference. She mentioned that she saw her relationship with Palmer as being self-limited, that it was something she needed 'for a while' but that she couldn't know how long, exactly, it would last. I continued to be incredulous, writing that having sex with another guy wasn't an outside interest of a hobby like a knitting club and was a behavior that few married men would consider. She completely dismissed what other couples did, claiming we shouldn't be slaves to convention and writing, again, about how her relationship with Palmer wouldn't take anything away from 'us'. She tried to compare her 'physical relationship' with Palmer to a whole body massage I'd arranged for her during a vacation we'd had about a year after we married, saying that it was 'different' than what we shared, no better and no worse. She went on to point out that he had some common interests with her, like travel, and cultural things, that I didn't share and that her relationship with him helped her to satisfy those interests. She claimed, somehow, that her relationship with him was similar in some ways to the one I had with Bill or Greg because we had a common interest in sports that she couldn't share with me. At that point, I was so frustrated I stopped responding, and, as with her phone calls, began ignoring her e-mails also. I felt I had to, it seemed like we were speaking different languages.

About a week after my visit with Charles Taylor, Theresa came by. She showed up just after I'd gotten home from work, dressed casually in jeans and a winter jacket, sunglasses perched on a knit cap. I decided not to invite her in.

"What do you want, Theresa?" I asked flatly.

She gave me a look of controlled hostility. "Why aren't you talking with Megan?"

"I think we've pretty much said all there is to say, Theresa. I've got all the information I need at this point and I frankly don't want to hear any more about her relationship with Palmer or how she wants to be his slut or how I should be super excited to put up with that shit. I have to wonder what the hell kind of a woman Palmer's wife is to go along with this crap." I was using a purposefully harsh tone, trying to make it clear to Theresa that I was hurt and angry and not in a mood to 'make nice' in any way. She wasn't fazed.

"You know, Megan's actually met his wife, Matt. They get along ok. In fact they understand each other very well because she's had a couple of boyfriends herself. She lets Palmer do what he wants to be happy and she gets the same consideration. She just isn't a possessive ass like you are." Theresa let that sink in for a second, and then softened her voice a little. "Look Matt, Meg loves you and you love her and just because she has some interest in another guy, you're letting your ego get in the way and you're trying to trash a perfectly good relationship. Nobody is going to be happy if you keep this up."

"Really Theresa? Is that the best you can do? That's pretty much the same argument Megan used last week so I guess I'm a little curious. Are you using her words, or was she using yours? " I actually really wanted to know the answer to that question. How much of this came from Theresa's influence and how much was some sort of a latent fantasy that Megan always had but I just wasn't aware of. Had Megan been mutated into another Theresa, or was this alternate persona always there, just waiting to come out under the right circumstances. I got no hint from Theresa, though, because she completely deflected the question.

"What difference does it make who's using whose words? The fact is that just because you can't handle that Megan has some needs that you can't fill, you're willing to torpedo your entire relationship. It's pitiful really."

I knew she was trying to hurt me when she said I couldn't fill Meg's needs and, the truth is, she did. Sex with me evidently wasn't enough to keep her physically satisfied and my social skills weren't enough to pass muster either. But to describe my objection to her affair as pitiful was really too much. Anger and frustration had been welling up inside me the whole time we talked and it all erupted like a red hot geyser as I launched into a diatribe in a rush of bitter and resentful words. "Pitiful? The fact that I expect fidelity from my wife is pitiful? Seriously? How about this, Theresa, how about the idea that someone who can't stay faithful to their wedding vows is pitiful? How about the idea that the real way to torpedo a supposedly loving relationship is to have sex with someone outside of it?"

Theresa looked like she wanted to respond, but I was on a roll now. "And speaking of needs, what if Megan develops a need that neither the shithead Palmer or I can fill? What then Theresa? Does she pick up a 3rd lover? And if he isn't quite enough, does she get a 4th? Hell, maybe she should just fucking put her 'needs' on Craig's List and hookup with the perfect asshole to fill each one. How about that Theresa? She could get one guy to fuck her ass really hard and another guy who's really romantic to dote on her and some rich guy to buy her all kinds of expensive stuff and another guy with a really long tongue to give her oral sex......"

Theresa finally interrupted. "Leave it to you to take this to some ridiculous extreme. Why can't you just deal with the current reality and address what she wants right now?" She seemed like she was trying to calm me down by sounding reasonable or sophisticated, but I wasn't buying.

"Sorry, but Megan crossed the 'extreme' line when she decided she needed to have 2 men and expected me to be ok with it. It's not right Theresa. It's just not right." I stopped and fumed while I caught my breath for a second and when Theresa didn't respond, I launched in again. "And....and, what about my 'needs'? What about the fact that one of my 'needs' is to have a faithful wife who is devoted to me enough to....uh....not fuck other guys? How am I going to get that 'need' filled in this little relationship you envisioned for Meg and me?"

By the end of my second tirade, Theresa was visibly frustrated. "Again, Matt, what the hell has changed for you personally if Megan spends some time with another guy other than a blow to your pride? Are you really going to force Megan to choose? Because I really don't think you can make her give up Palmer right now, and even if you could, she's going to be pissed at you forever and she might end up seeing him or someone like him anyway. Why force her to make that choice? Why can't you be happy with what you've got now....with what you've had for the last couple of months? Have you really been that miserable?"

I was tired of arguing and sick of Theresa, and, as I thought about what she had been saying, I realized neither she or Meg had any understanding of where my mind was at. Suddenly my choices seemed clear and I shook my head and with a resigned voice saying, "I'm not going to make Megan choose."

"You're not?" She seemed slightly puzzled, maybe a little hopeful that she'd gotten through to me.

"No, I'm not." I motioned toward the kitchen. "Hold on a second, I've got something I want you to take back to Megan." I walked quickly to the kitchen, grabbed Charles Taylor's business card and returned to Theresa at the door.

"Here, give this to Megan. It's my lawyer's card. If she goes to his office in the next couple of days, she can start signing off on the divorce without having to be served at work. It'll save embarrassment."

Theresa stared at the card incredulously. "Wait, what is this? I thought you just said you weren't going to try and force Megan to give up Palmer."

I shook my head in mock disbelief. "You and Meg just don't get it, do you Theresa? No, I'm not going to make her choose because there is no choice any more. I guess you both seem to think that there is some sort of negotiation going on, but there isn't. The marriage is over, and I think that pretty much happened when she shacked up with Palmer. And, honestly, if that hadn't done it, when I saw how much she disrespected me by thinking that I'd be willing to go along with it, well, that pretty much made it absolutely final."

Theresa's look of surprise faded to one of understanding and maybe a little fear. "You're not even going to fight for your marriage? People work this sort of thing out....."

I actually laughed at that point. "As far as I'm concerned, there's no marriage to fight for. Understand this, Theresa, the marriage is over and there are no choices or negotiations anymore. Please be sure to make that clear to Megan, because, frankly, I don't really want to talk to her any more than I have to."

Theresa looked stunned as I slowly closed the door in her face.




Gold for Plastic Ch. 02

I actually laughed at that point. "As far as I'm concerned, there's no marriage to fight for. Understand this, Theresa, the marriage is over and there are no choices or negotiations anymore. Please be sure to make that clear to Megan, because, frankly, I don't really want to talk to her any more than I have to."

Theresa looked stunned as I slowly closed the door in her face.




I found that ending a marriage isn't as easy as closing a door. Sure, I'd made my decision and I knew that it was the right one since I knew I couldn't possibly live with the arrangement Megan had wanted. But, even though I'd smugly declared the marriage over to myself to Megan and to Theresa, I was having a lot of trouble adjusting to the situation. All the time and all the emotion and all the effort I'd put into a 5 year marriage seemed wasted and I couldn't shake the feeling that every moment of happiness I'd had with Megan was either a lie or had been tainted by what she had done.

It seemed that everything I did and everywhere I went reminded me of Megan and happier times. I found myself walking out of a restaurant without finishing because my meal was the same thing I'd ordered the night I asked her to marry me. The tulips blooming around the neighborhood were a painful reminder that they'd been her favorite flower. Labradors were her favorite dog, rock her favorite music, vanilla her favorite smell. Sunny days reminded me of days outside, camping or gardening or simply taking a walk. If it rained, I was reminded of lazy days by the fire, snuggled together in a comforter, slowly succumbing to the urge to make love. It became impossible for me to sleep in 'our' bed or eat at 'our' table or even live in 'our' house and I eventually had to move out of the duplex altogether.

Honestly, I was absolutely miserable and I wanted to believe that she was feeling the same loneliness and sense of loss that I was suffering from and that she'd at least voice some sort of regret. The marriage was over, I knew that and I knew that it had been my decision, but I desperately wanted some sign, some signal she had valued our relationship and that, on some level, she deeply regretted her choices. Sadly though, other than a few halfhearted attempts to get me to change my mind, she essentially gave up and it was clear that she was more than willing to let our marriage go quietly.

I knew it was probably easier for her, because she had a lover, someone she could be with that would blunt the pain and make it easier for her to move on. It seemed unfair to me, somehow, that Megan got to continue with half of what her life had become and I was left without any of mine, particularly since the half she had included some new and apparently exciting things. Although I didn't and couldn't know everything she did that summer before the divorce was finalized, I was aware that she spent most of her free time with Palmer and Theresa and their group. I also knew that she took at least two vacations with him, one a weekend to San Francisco and another week long trip to Europe. If she was missing me in any way, her new lifestyle was surely mitigating the pain.



The divorce was finalized a few months after my doorstep conversation with Theresa and without much acrimony. The financial stuff was fairly straight forward. Since I had originally stayed in the duplex I had to give her some cash for the furniture we owned, but otherwise, things sorted out pretty uneventfully. We each took half of our savings, our own clothes and our other personal stuff. She took her car, I took mine.

Even though I was the one that initiated the action, I couldn't shake the depressing feeling that it was maddeningly easy to end a marriage that we'd each promised would last until the day we died. And, even though I was already having a tough time adjusting, I was surprised with how empty I felt when we finally signed off and I watched Megan walk out of the lawyer's office, no longer my wife. I was staring off into space, thinking about how strange and sadly surreal and clinical the divorce proceeding had been when I heard Taylor clear his throat. I glanced over at him and saw a look of concern.

"You ok?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine, why?'

"Well, you don't look fine."

"It's been a tough day, you know? End of something that I thought was good and that I thought was going to last forever. Hard to swallow." I was shaking my head slowly, trying to keep my emotions in check.

"Are you having second thoughts about whether splitting up was the right thing to do?" Taylor asked.

"I don't think so, no. I mean, she completely betrayed me when she started shacking up with Palmer, so I wanted out, I wanted a divorce, even though I knew it would hurt." I thought for a minute. "But, I guess I wanted her to pay some sort of a price. I mean, she's the one that trashed our marriage. She's the one that should be in pain. But here I am, I can barely function I'm so upset and she walks out of here to her boyfriend and will just go on. I guess I want her to feel some regret too. I want to hear her say she screwed up and that....that I'm the better man or something. I want her as unhappy as I am now."

Taylor listened to me carefully, nodding sympathetically with what I was relating. He seemed to want to say something, but I got the feeling he was debating whether he should or not. Finally, he cleared his throat and carefully started talking.

"Look, I've seen a lot of marriages dissolve and I've seen a lot of ex-husbands and ex-wives wish for just what you said. They want their ex to suffer for what they've done. They want them to have some sort of an epiphany that they've made a mess of their lives and they want the satisfaction of having them come on bended knee and cry about how unhappy they've become and how sorry they are and how much they wish they could change what they did." He looked at me closely, a look that said he wanted my full attention.

"But here's the deal. That almost never happens. And, even when it does, even when the tearful ex admits in exquisite detail everything that they've done wrong and all that they're sorry for, the admission doesn't do all that much for the smart people, because they're the ones that adjusted well after the divorce, that have moved on. They've got a new wife and new kids and a new house and a new life and they've stopped caring all that much about their old life and their old wife and their old hurts. Look, I don't know for sure, but my guess is that, someday, Megan is going to regret what she's done in a big way. But you can't wait for that day. You have to start living your life in a way that you really don't care all that much how she feels. It's the only way to stay happy. Hell, it's the only way to stay sane."



I didn't take Taylor's advice at first, although I thought a lot about it over the coming weeks while I stumbled through life, trying to adjust to the great gaping emotional wound that Megan had left me. The wound demanded my attention, reminding me of my loneliness, of her betrayal and of my apparent failure as a husband and as a man. In my best moments it was like a tethered wolf, snarling to get my attention and threatening to overwhelm me if I let it unleash itself. At my worst, it felt like some sort of mortal injury that would inflict an unbearable and relentless pain until it utterly consumed me. At work I was essentially unapproachable, writing code in silence, never talking or smiling with my associates. When I was with my friends, I moped, almost aggressively, and brought a dark miserable cloud of uncomfortable gloom into their homes. When I was alone, I'd stare at the TV or the words in a book or at the ceiling, waiting for the hour hand on the clock to magically move me closer to something resembling happiness. When I slept, it was only after I had cried.

This kept up for weeks, maybe months. I wanted to take Taylor's advice. I wanted to stop thinking about Megan and just be happy. I wanted to have a new wife and a house and a baby and a dog. I just couldn't see how I could get there from where I was at. I felt like some man without clothes or tools or even a map, sitting on an ice float in the middle of the ocean who just wanted to get home or at least get warm. How do you will yourself to become something that you aren't? To feel something that you don't?

Ultimately, I guess it was my friends that started to break the ice up for me. Over time, in their company, I slowly started to enjoy things that I used to do; playing games, watching sports, hiking, going to the movies. They were good enough to keep putting up with my moods and relentlessly tried any number of things to help lead me out of my melancholy. And so, with each passing week I'd talk a little more, smile a little more and, eventually, laugh a little more.

One night after we'd all had dinner and played a couple of video games, they all ganged up on me and insisted that it was high time I started dating again. In mock anguish, I accused them of trying to get rid of me and that they wanted to pawn me and my problems off on some poor, unsuspecting girl. They pressed on and presented me with an ultimatum, an offer that they thought, correctly, I couldn't refuse. They had 6 tickets to a concert that I was dying to go to. One of the tickets was mine, if and only if, I could get a girl to go with me. Of course they knew I might try to scam them just to get to the concert, so there were a couple of provisions. She had to be unmarried and unrelated. She had to be roughly my age so I couldn't invite one of the old widows from work. And she couldn't take money in exchange for a date, which pretty much ruled out my first plan of inviting one of the working gals from downtown.

There was a cute brunette with a nice figure at work I'd been a little friendly with that turned out to be available and willing to go. I felt awkward at first, but in the end, we had a reasonably good time. The concert was great and we stopped off for a late night snack and some drinks afterwards and I even got comfortable enough to ask her out again. We saw each other a couple of more times and had some fun, and, while we both knew that we were never going to be a couple, the time I spent with her gave me the courage and the ego boost to keep trying. Over the next few months I gradually started dating with some frequency and it wasn't long before I was going out pretty much every weekend. I found that there were a number of girls at work or at a gym I joined or from a couple of parties that I attended that were more than a little interested in me. Their attention and interest really helped me feel better about myself.

While I really enjoyed their company, I didn't, or maybe, couldn't get serious with any of these women. I got close enough with a couple of them to have sex, which, for the most part, was very good and sometimes even a little bit wild. But, it was all purely recreational, not the kind of sex that grew out of a desire to get really, really close, the kind you had with someone to tell them how you really felt about them. The kind you had with someone you wanted to marry.

All this time I still found time to hang out with my friends. We'd do all the usual stuff and they'd quiz me on all my latest dating adventures. Sally and Julie were especially interested to know which ones I really liked and who I thought I might get serious with and were invariably disappointed when I didn't develop a relationship. I figured that sooner or later they'd try and take a more active hand in getting me fixed up in a long term relationship, so I wasn't particularly surprised when I came over to watch the Super Bowl to find, in addition to the 2 other couples, a pretty gal about my age who just happened to be there to watch the game, but was, quite clearly, my date for the evening.

Her name was Leanne. She had strawberry blonde hair that she'd pulled back into a pony tail, accentuating a cute round face that featured a little upturned nose and was sprinkled with a few freckles. She was smallish, probably a full foot shorter than me, and she had a slim figure, but with exactly the right amount of curves in the important places. She had a lazy, toothy smile and was very easy to talk to. It didn't take long before I realized that she either really liked football a lot or she'd been coached very well by Bill and Greg because she said the right thing at the right times. That made it super easy to start a conversation and it didn't take long before we were talking, arguing and joking about what was happening on the field. But, by the end of the game, the conversation topics had drifted beyond football and we talked about work and ourselves and life in general. She was a nurse that had grown up in the area and was working at a local hospital where she met and become friends with Julie, who was also a nurse.

To my surprise, I also learned that she had a boyfriend, a guy named Danny, who was one of the number crunchers at the hospital and was out of town for the weekend. From what she said, I gathered that they'd been in a pretty serious relationship for some time and had been essentially engaged, but, for a variety of reasons they'd both decided it would a good idea to step back and reassess. She talked about him in a clinical, almost dispassionate way, as if she was trying to avoid saying anything that might make her emotional and embarrass her.

So, since her relationship was no longer strictly exclusive and she was feeling a little lonely on Super Bowl Sunday, Julie had invited her over. This news, of course, took me somewhat by surprise, because I figured Julie and Sally to try and set me up with highly available women. When she left after the game, the women started the inevitable questioning about what I thought and if I'd ask her out again and so I brought the fact that she had a boyfriend up.

Julie tried to explain. "Well, like Leanne said, they were pretty serious for a while, but they aren't now, and they are both seeing other people from time to time. "

"But, she still has a boyfriend and she made it pretty clear that they nearly got married."

"There's a very big difference from nearly married and married." Sally replied flatly.

"How about almost married and completely available? That's a pretty big difference too." I shot back.

Julie scoffed. "Come on, she isn't 'almost married' now. That was months ago. And, frankly, I think that ship has sailed."

"How can you know that? I mean if it was over, she would have said that. And, honestly, I really don't want to get super involved with a girl who is one step in or out of a committed relationship. It seems like a bad idea to me."

Julie raised an eyebrow. "You looked like you had a good time. It couldn't have been that bad of an idea."

"I had a great time, absolutely, but that's part of the problem." I thought for a moment and then continued, trying to be careful not to hurt their feelings too much with what I was going to say. "I just really don't want to get burned right now. Seriously, I really appreciate you trying to set me up like this, but I just don't get why you thought this would be a good idea for me. "

Julie had a thoughtful, somewhat surprised look about her. "We weren't setting you up."

I laughed. "Oh come on. 3 couples. A big introduction. No place to sit except beside her. Don't try and BS me; that was a clear set up. "

"Again, Matt, we weren't setting you up." Julie paused and looked at me closely. "We were setting her up."

"Huh?" I answered as eloquently as possible.

Julie smiled. "Look Matt, for a couple of months now, you've been doing just fine getting dates and I'm pretty sure it won't be long until the right girl comes along for something more serious. You don't need our help. She, on the other hand, needs a really good guy."

She paused again, looking uncertain as to whether she should continue. "Matt, the truth is that her relationship with Danny has gotten more than a little toxic, but she just can't seem to let it go. She needs someone like you to help pry her out."

I was stunned by what Julie had just said. I still felt like a new colt trying to find its legs in the dating world, so the idea that Julie and Sally thought I was doing great caught me by surprise. Additionally, given my recent experiences, I didn't like the idea of playing 'the other man' to a woman who wasn't quite out of her relationship yet. Did I really want to help 'pry' any girl away from another guy? Did I want to be a watered-down version of that asshole Palmer?

It would have been an easy decision if I hadn't had a very good time with her, but, I did and I couldn't shake the thought that, other than the boyfriend thing, she seemed to have everything I wanted. So, I ended up bouncing the 'call her or not call her' ball back and forth in my mind the rest of the night and the whole next day at work. By Monday night, I figured it couldn't hurt if I'd cautiously reach out just to see what would happen. It took a little bit to build up the courage, but I eventually gave her a call to ask her out the following Friday night for dinner and maybe some dancing. She seemed happy to hear from me, but put on a disappointed tone when I asked about Friday, saying that she already had plans. I figured this was the brush off and started trying to back out of the conversation gracefully, but she quickly followed up by saying she was free on Saturday and hoped that would be ok. It was.



I wanted to get to know her and figured that it would be best if we had plenty of opportunity to talk, so I took her to a nice quiet Italian restaurant. It was great. She loved the food and we spent so much time talking we essentially closed out the place. I'd promised some dancing, but by then it was so late that we ended up getting some hot chocolate and took a chilly walk along the downtown lakeshore. We stopped for a minute under a streetlamp at one of the small parks, talking and looking out at the water. The snow was falling gently and settling on her hair, her cheeks looked rouged with the cold and her frozen breath came out from her pink lips in lazy little puffs as she talked. At that moment, I felt like I was in some sort of a fantastical snow globe, part of a winter paradise in the company of an angel.

Her breath and her voice and the atmosphere gradually led my eyes to lock onto her moving lips, and when I couldn't stop staring she smiled and cocked her head slightly in anticipation. Leaning over, I kissed her gently, and then more deeply and gradually wrapped my arms around her while she took hold of me. The cold and the public setting limited how long we kissed, but the effect was deep and dramatic. The kiss wasn't and couldn't be a prelude to some sort of sexual encounter, but it was powerful in what it seemed to say, a reflection of a growing emotion I felt for her and what she might be starting to feel for me. Holding hands we moved along the lakeshore for a while more, talking a little more shyly, walking a little more slowly and a little closer together. For me, the evening had been nearly perfect, but eventually it had to end, and I took her back to her apartment. I'd promised myself that with her situation with Danny, I wouldn't pressure her for anything more than a good night kiss, so, when she didn't invite me in I was maybe a little disappointed, but I didn't push. We left with a kiss and a promise to go out again when she was available. I knew I'd have to work around Danny, but I suddenly didn't mind having to share a girl, at least for a little while.

I texted her off and on during the week and even talked a couple of times on the phone. She had plans again for Friday but said she could clear her schedule for another Saturday date. It also turned out that the only thing that disappointed her about our first date was that we'd missed the chance to go dancing, so I made sure to arrange for that to happen. Our dancing date started more or less where we'd left off from the week before. We sat and talked through about half of the faster songs but almost never missed a slow one, dancing closely and so comfortably that it seemed like we'd been together for a long, long time.

But as good as it made me feel to be with her, I was struck that I'd felt this way before and found it more than a little disturbing that if I really fell in love with her, I'd be extremely vulnerable to more heartbreak. I wanted to be with her, but I had to protect myself. I had admonished myself that I couldn't surrender to my feelings and to her until I was sure she'd give herself over to me.. I wouldn't expose my freshly healed wounds to another emotional trauma.

When I took her home, she invited me in for some coffee, and we talked for a half hour or so before we started to kiss. After necking for a few minutes, things started getting very, very warm. The kisses became more desperate and I found myself running my hands over her butt, pulling her closer to me. That led to a hand slipping under her shirt and then under her bra to feel her full breast, soft and smooth with a hardening nipple at the center. She was breathing very heavy at that point and one of her hands had slipped to my crotch, pushing and rubbing me through my pants and now my self-made promises to go slow were being overwhelmed by my desire for her. My hand slipped from her breast to the waist of her pants and below, finding the edge of her panties and then a small tuft of hair and then soft, pliable, spongy wet folds. As I cupped my hand around her sex, I looked in her eyes and saw that she wanted me and that she would put up no effort to stop me. But I also saw just a hint of fear, a slight worry and I was suddenly reminded that I was entering very dangerous territory. Despite my pounding heart and poorly controlled lust, I abruptly pulled my hand out of her pants and leaned back away from her.

"Leanne, I...maybe I better go."

Her look was a strange combination of disappointment and relief. "Why Matt? Is something wrong? "

"Look, I don't think I can really keep myself under control and things are....things are going fast here. Faster than they should. I think, maybe.....we should slow down."

Her slow, lazy smile spread across her face and then she laughed. "Isn't that the line the girl is supposed to use? Are we playing a role reversal game? Should I tell you it will be ok and I'll respect you in the morning?"

That made me laugh. "I guess most guys don't turn this sort of thing down very often, do they?'

She kept smiling. "Not unless they're gay. You're not gay are you Matt?" She laughed again.

"No Leanne, I'm not gay and I think the tent in my pants should be exhibit number one against that idea." I was smiling, but I could tell she wanted some sort of explanation, some idea of where I was coming from. I bit my lip, trying to find the right words to explain my situation.

"Here's the problem for me. I don't think that I'm....." I couldn't think of how to finish, so she tried to help.

"You don't think you're ready to have sex yet after your divorce? Is that it Matt?"

"No, no, I've had a lot of sex, that's not it at all..." I stopped suddenly because she was frowning and I'd obviously said exactly the wrong thing. I started to sputter a little to try and correct my mistake. "Wait, that didn't come out right. What I meant to say is I've had sex with a few girls, recreational sex, meaningless sex, since I started dating. And....and, I don't think I can do that with you. I can't have casual sex with you because my feelings aren't....they aren't casual."

I was beet red both with embarrassment from the clumsy way I'd described my recent sexual activity and how I'd further revealed how I felt about her. I looked at her earnestly, hoping she could grasp what I was trying to say, hoping I wouldn't have to say more.

She stopped frowning, but still had a puzzled look about her. "Are you afraid of having a relationship with me? Of having something that's not casual? Is that it?"

I shook my head slowly; she still wasn't quite getting it.

"That's not really it, no. It' tough to get across what I'm feeling." I was talking deliberately now, choosing my words carefully.

"I really want to be with you, in every way and all the time. I want that desperately, but I know, because of your situation with....with Danny, that can't happen right now. I understand that. I do. But the way I feel about you, sex with you would be....would signal a....a commitment on my part. I wouldn't, I can't make love with you casually. It has to be in the context of a commitment. It could only happen if I could commit myself to you and that can only happen if you get to a place where you could commit yourself to me. Does that make sense? Do you understand what I'm driving at?"

Now she smiled, broadly, genuinely. She put her hands on the sides of my face, pulled me to her and gave me a long, romantic kiss.

"I understand, I think, Matt. Sex with me would be an expression of love and a promise of.....fidelity. And you can't do that right now, because I can't make that promise. Is that it?"

I took a deep breath, feeling a sense of relief. "That's it Leanne. That's it exactly."



Over the next few months I saw Leanne as much as I could, working my time in around her days and nights with Danny. We had a lot of fun and we were getting closer. In the back of my mind, I knew I was playing with emotional fire, risking another heartbreak, but I was also happier than I'd been in a long, long time. Maybe the smart play would have been to back off until she was through with Danny, but, at that point, I couldn't bring myself to even consider that option.

Things were fine until July when a 3 day weekend that included the 4th was coming up. We hadn't made any official plans, but we'd talked and I had assumed we'd get together again. I'd called her a couple of times during the week just to talk and had agreed we'd play the coming weekend by ear.

But, on Friday afternoon, I gave her a call to find out what time I could pick her up and I could tell right away that our plans to get together were in trouble. She hesitated a lot when I asked what she felt like doing and it was obvious she had some bad news that she didn't want to break. When she finally came out with it, I felt like I'd been kicked in the gut. Danny had surprised her the night before with an invitation to go to Vegas. They were leaving for the weekend right after work and wouldn't be back until late Monday night. She tried to be reassuring and I tried to be gracious, but I'm sure a little bitterness came through. How can you not be at least a little unpleasant when the woman you're falling in love with announces she's going on vacation for a few days with another guy?

It was a bad weekend for me and I tried to make the time pass by hanging out with friends, but mostly I was an emotional zombie and it seemed, for the most part, like my life was simply unraveling again. I felt alone and abandoned and with a sense that it wouldn't get better, imagining what they were doing, gambling, having dinner, walking hand in hand, having sex, getting closer. The images I was conjuring were eating away at me and turning my dark mood midnight black.

On Saturday night, I had a dream. I was in a hotel in Las Vegas, walking down a hallway, identical to the one in Gabriel's mansion, with rooms on either side. I'd opened several doors, looking for Leanne, but hadn't been able to find her. As I approached a final door, I could hear the sounds of sex, moaning, murmuring, gentle slurping noises, and with a trembling hand, turned the knob and went in. I was struck by a vision that I'd seen before. A woman, her sweaty back to me, astride a man, smoothly and enthusiastically riding him, her hair wildly draping his face as she bent down to kiss him. The lights went on and she rolled off him. It was Leanne, and she was riding Danny, but he looked like Palmer. She smiled at me and laughed. "Sorry Matt, but you're just not enough to take care of a woman by yourself." She turned back to Danny, my heart exploded and I woke up in a start, sweating and breathing like a panting dog in summer.

Sunday morning, staring at the ceiling in my bedroom, I realized reluctantly, that chasing Leanne was now making me almost as miserable as I had been at the time of my divorce. I had to stop the bleeding and move on. I couldn't afford the emotional price I knew that I'd pay if I allowed myself to fall completely in love with a woman, only to lose her to another man again. If I couldn't control how she felt or acted, at least I could control how I did. I had to put a tourniquet on the relationship.

She called me late Monday night when she got back, but I didn't answer then or when she called a couple of times on Tuesday. I suppose I was being a coward, because I didn't want to tell her of my decision, but I made myself talk to her on Wednesday.

"Hey, Matt, I've been trying to get a hold of you. Is everything ok?"

I was cautious and circumspect in my answers. "Yea, everything's fine. How was Vegas?"

She didn't answer right away, and I suspected she was formulating the appropriate reply, something truthful that wouldn't hurt me too much.

"It was fun. Some gambling, dinner. Caught a couple of shows, that sort of thing. Not the greatest time of year to go to Vegas, though. It was really hot."

The conversation continued on, but I wasn't being very talkative. I think she was waiting for something, maybe an invitation to see her, but I wasn't offering. Finally she asked when we could meet up for a date or just to spend some time together.

I took in a deep breath. "Well Leanne, I don't know. I think maybe it would be a good idea if we stepped back some. Maybe gave each other some room."

I heard her gasp quietly over the phone. Her voice was trembling a little. "Why Matt?"

"Leanne, look, I guess I don't feel comfortable continuing on like we have been. I had a really shitty weekend and the truth is I just don't think I can take a lot of that sort of thing at this point in my life. I've had a lot of heartache over the last few years and I can do without it." I heard sniffles and a little cough.

"I see. So, are you just mad at me for going to Vegas? I'm sorry it was last minute; I didn't know what to do. Danny had already bought the tickets and I...."

"Leanne, it's not really just about you going away for the weekend." I interrupted. "It's that the trip finally brought the reality of your relationship with Danny into sharp focus for me. I guess....I guess I've been kidding myself, ignoring the fact that you have a pretty intense relationship with another guy; intense enough to fly away for a weekend vacation. And now, now I'm not....kidding myself."

I went on. "I guess I thought you were in a relationship that was dying out, something that was casual enough that I could live with. But thinking back over the last few weeks and about the trip I can see that just isn't the case. I can see that the two of you are making a pretty strong effort to try and move forward. Which is fine, it's great, I'm in no position to complain since....since I knew about it when we started going out and I went into it with both eyes open. You didn't hide anything or cheat. But, still, I guess I maybe got the wrong idea and I'm finding that being the 'other guy' isn't really good for me right now, so I have to back off. Think about it Leanne, this will probably will be good for you too. You won't have to juggle your schedules or make excuses and I won't be some sort of obstacle in the way of you and Danny."

She'd been listening to me, letting me talk, breathing raggedly in a way that sounded like she was trying to suppress a sob. Finally, when I stopped she said. "Is that what you think? That you're some sort of obstacle? That you were just some 'other guy' that I was using for fun or something? When we were together what did I do to give you that impression? "

"I don't know Leanne. I don't know what you think of me or us. So, tell me, please, what exactly am I to you? Because, honestly, I can't figure it out."

She started to cry. "I was trying to find out Matt. I...I...thought we were trying to find out what we were. What we could become."

My heart went out to her because she sounded so distressed, but I reminded myself of what this conversation was supposed to be about and so I restated my case. "Look, I'm not trying to be a jerk, or give some sort of ultimatum or make you feel bad, but I can't keep doing this right now. Like I said, I think it would be best for both of us to simplify what's going on and, realistically, that means you and I have to back off each other. If we do, I won't hurt so much and you won't have to work around me while you try to sort things out with Danny."

Leanne sniffled some more. "I guess I didn't know you were hurting that bad, Matt."

"I was." I said.

"I am." I thought as I said goodbye and hung up the phone.



The next few weeks I did my best to get buried in work. I'd gotten another fairly significant assignment that was requiring a lot of time and concentration and I was grateful for the distraction. It helped the days pass a little more smoothly and, getting home late, made the nights a little shorter. On weekends, I sought out my friends to hang out with and tried not to be Mr. Gloomy.

Julie and Sally were pretty sympathetic, although they gave me a hard time at first. Julie seemed to think I shouldn't think about giving up, that if I waited, her relationship with Danny would almost certainly crater and we'd eventually be great for each other. I expressed my doubts that she'd be getting over Danny soon, or ever. I made it pretty clear that staying away was pretty tough on me and that I had no hard feelings for her but I just couldn't pay the emotional price to keep pursuing her. I remember Julie saying "the price of regret is pretty high too" under her breath.

So there it was again. Lonely at night, hurting, thinking about a woman I cared deeply about who was spending her time with another man, trying to salve the pain by working hard and pretending that rooting for my favorite baseball team and playing video games was enough to keep me happy when I was home. I was miserable.

One night, around a month into this, I was woken out of a dead sleep by the sound of my cell phone going off. I looked at the clock, saw that it was 2a.m. and rolled over without answering. But, I started obsessing that, at that hour, it might be something really critical, maybe my Mom or Dad was sick or something, and so picked up the phone and saw I had a text. It was from Leanne and it was a very simple message.

"I really miss you."

I must have looked at the words for 20 minutes, thinking about her, wondering what she was doing and why she texted me now, in the middle of the night. I imagined that she was having a rough night and that she must be really in need of a friend. Suddenly this self-imposed exile didn't make a lot of sense to me. I was lonely and unhappy and obsessed with her, and she wanted to be with me enough to send that text at that hour. She hadn't betrayed me; she just couldn't give me the reassurance that I needed as I allowed myself to become more attached to her. I texted her back.

"I miss you too."

The next day, I gave her a call and, after a few awkward moments, we were talking as if nothing had happened. We talked and texted off and on during the week and I finally asked her out to dinner. That led to more dates and more time together and it wasn't long before we were spending several nights a week with each other. She was still seeing Danny, but her dates with him were becoming very sporadic and she actually cancelled on him a couple of times to be with me.

By now it was mid-September and we had a Friday night date for dinner and a last outdoor concert before the summer completely died. After the concert, we walked through the park, holding hands, talking, laughing and kissing. Sometime around midnight, we went to an all-night coffee shop and had desert, holding hands across the table, unable to take our eyes off each other, the conversation never lagging, even for a moment. Eventually it got so late that the date had to end, but neither of us wanted say goodnight. I desperately wanted to take her home, but knew if I did we'd almost certainly fall into bed together and, without a firm commitment from her to be exclusive, I felt it would still be a mistake to make myself too vulnerable.

She was disappointed when I told her I'd better take her home, but she made me swear that we'd see each other later in the day, since it was already early Saturday morning. It wasn't a hard promise to make.



Leanne took the earliest possible opportunity to cash in on my promise by showing up unexpectedly around 8 in the morning, laughing at me as I answered the door in an old robe, unshaven and with bed head, announcing that she was going to start the day right. She said she wanted to show off her cooking skills and, while I showered and shaved, she made a couple of omelets and some hash browns. We had an animated talk over breakfast and argued playfully about what we should do that morning. Ultimately we decided to visit the planetarium and spent the morning and part of the afternoon watching presentations about the stars and the planets.

Around mid-day, we grabbed a small lunch at a nearby sandwich shop and then took a little walk in a neighborhood park. The conversation there lagged a bit and, in the quiet, I saw Leanne bite her lip, thinking about something she evidently wanted to say. Her hesitation worried me, because I didn't want to hear anything difficult.

"Matt, I need to tell you something." She started.

"Do I want to hear this?" I choked out.

She looked thoughtful. "Some of it, probably not. But I think I need to tell you about....about..." She stopped, evidently trying to find the right words; my heart was going a million miles an hour.

She started again. "Look Matt, you never asked about what I was doing with Danny on our dates, you know, physically. And I appreciate that, it was polite and talking about it would have been--actually is-- pretty uncomfortable. But, I want you to know that....that we didn't sleep together very often. Maybe once or twice a month, at most, since you and I have been seeing each other."

Hearing her talk about sleeping with Danny, even if it was infrequent, hurt, but I was breathing easier now. I didn't want to hear about her having sex with Danny, but what she was saying was a lot easier to hear than what I was most worried about--that she'd decided to be with Danny exclusively. She was looking right at me now, her eyes meeting mine.

"The other thing is, that, the last couple of times, even before Vegas, I really felt like....like I was cheating. Like I shouldn't be in bed with him, that I shouldn't do that to you. That night...the night I texted you, Danny had come on pretty strong and I just couldn't do it, I had to say no. He got a little mad and I asked him to leave and he did, but he was pretty upset. All I could think about was how I really wanted you there to hold me and make it better. I wanted to be with you and, even if I couldn't, I wasn't going to cheat on you."

I was breathing easier now. Her 'confession' was a relief to me and, like magic, my mood had brightened, I was smiling and was actually feeling a little giddy.

"Matt, one other thing, and I know it's none of my business...." She stopped, biting her lower lip in uncertainty, looking, somehow, like she wanted me to rescue her or something. Stupidly, though, I had no idea what she was trying to say. "What?" is all I could get out.

She turned red and continued. "I know you had a lot of....girlfriends before me and I wanted to know if, well since we've been going out, have you....."

I got it now, but the impishly mean part of me wanted her to squirm just a little, she was cute when she squirmed.

"Have I what?" I asked, trying, but failing, to keep a straight face. I found myself smirking, barely able to keep from laughing.

She could see I was messing with her and she struck me playfully on the shoulder.

"I can't believe you are going to make me ask you." She raised her eyebrows and her eyes bore into mine. "OK, Matt, have you been having a lot of sex?"

Waiting for the answer, her face softened into a mixture of embarrassment, hope, fear and maybe curiosity.

"Oh, yea, I guess I say I have been. Quite a bit really." Her face clouded over and I quickly added, "Of course I've been alone every time." I made a show of looking at my right hand while I flexed it open and closed a couple of times.

A look of recognition and relief washed over her face and she laughed a little. She grabbed my right hand and while looking at it said "I guess I should be pretty jealous of you, since you've had my Matt pretty much too yourself."

I sucked in my breath and put on a face mocking discomfort, feigning I had something difficult to say. "Leanne, it's not just my right hand. I....I don't know how to say this but I've....I've been with my left hand too. I'm so sorry. I just couldn't help myself...."

She laughed again, put her arms around me and, kissing me gently after each word said "From....now.....on....your....hands....will.....be....for.....touching.....me.....and....not....for ....you." She ended with a long, sensuous French kiss.

I wanted to say something incredibly erotic and romantic. I wanted to impress her with my depth of feeling and give her something to remember forever. I wanted to be Keats and Don Juan and Cyrano de Bergerac all rolled into one. But, at that moment, all I could think to say was "How about we go back to my place?"

She was breathing hard still, looking at me with bedroom eyes and holding me like she wouldn't let me go, but then she said something I didn't expect at all.

"Uhm....how about if I meet you there in a couple of hours. I have to take care of something first."

I was more than a little surprised and more than a little deflated. I asked what she had to do, where she was going, why she couldn't do it later; but she was evasive, and given my recent track record, I was more than a little worried. We walked to my car and I drove her to her place. She ran to her own car, got in and took off without going in to her apartment, driving like she was shot out of a gun.



Her sudden departure left me thinking a million miles an hour. Naturally I imagined that she had something going on that was more important than being with me and I felt pretty crappy about it. I'd gone from being sure that she wanted to be with me to being not so sure about anything in about 10 minutes. I drove home, grabbed a beer, flung myself on the couch and started watching some old movie. Two more beers, a ham sandwich, another old movie later and I was getting pretty convinced I'd be spending another night alone when, suddenly, my front door opened with a bang. It was so loud and unexpected that I jumped up off the couch, thinking it was the cops or maybe something worse.

Leanne burst into the living room, threw her arms around me and kissed me aggressively.

"Missed you." She said and started rummaging through her purse, eventually pulling out a giant pack of condoms which she threw on the coffee table and kissed me again.

"That's a lot of condoms." I mumbled, with my lips still smashed against hers.

She pulled back a little and reddened. "Uh, I didn't want to take the chance that....you wanted to use them and that...um....you were out, so I picked some up."

"So, uh, you took 3 hours to buy condoms? Is that what you've been doing?"

She looked at my chest, grabbed my shirt and started slowly undoing the buttons as she talked.

"No. I went to see Danny." She looked up at my face when she said that, undoubtedly seeing a look of extreme consternation. "It's not what you might think. I had to.....I had to tell him that it's over. We've been together a long time Matt and I didn't want to do it on the phone, he deserved a face to face talk. It would have been cowardly otherwise."

I was relieved but still puzzled. "You had to do it tonight?"

"Yes Matt, I did. And I did it for you, for us." She was finishing taking off my shirt, staring intently at me, her mouth inches away from mine, her breath mixing with mine as she talked. "Remember you told me you couldn't have recreational sex with me? That you felt too strongly to do that and that you wanted sex to reflect a commitment? To reflect fidelity? Exclusiveness?"

I nodded.

"Well, it will. It's going to. And I had to end it with Danny officially to make it so." My shirt was off and she was kissing down my chest. Between her kisses and the rushed explanation that carried some life changing implications about our relationship, I was having trouble thinking.

"So...uh....this will mean that....." I couldn't get anything else out.

"This will mean that I intend you to be the last man I make love with." She looked up at me and raised her eyebrows. "And it sure as hell better mean I will be the last woman you are with."

By now my pants were half way down my legs and she was pulling on my erection with long, sensual, luxurious stokes, my own secretions wetting her hand. All I could do was smile, nod stupidly and reach for her blouse.

Within a few minutes we were in bed, naked, kissing and rubbing each other with a sort of desperate desire and anxiousness. I kissed down her neck, her breasts, her belly, down her thighs and all the way to her feet and then started back up again, stopping at her crotch where I spent some time blowing and licking and kissing. Finally I pressed my mouth against her and began to use my tongue and my lips, gently at first and harder and harder until she pressed herself back against my mouth, hard enough I thought she might bruise my lips. As she pushed against my mouth I slipped two fingers inside of her, curled them forward and began to rub against the soft spongy wall, keeping my mouth busy against her outer hardness.

It wasn't long before she moaned and then very nearly screamed and her hips bucked against my face like a rodeo horse. I kept my mouth against her until her hips slowed and then stopped and I crawled up to even my face with hers, kissing her cheeks and her neck and her shoulders, avoiding her mouth in case she didn't want to taste herself. She'd have none of it and she pulled my face to her and we began kissing deeply again.

I needed her then more than I needed anything ever in my life and I began to slowly push myself into her. She responded by moving her legs farther apart and then wrapping them around me and we began to rock into each other, slowly and then with more speed and conviction. We had as much sweat slicked skin touching as possible, her legs around my back, our chests and bellies pressed against each other, my forearms resting on hers with our hands interlocked and resting above our heads, all while we continued to kiss. This wasn't the kind of sex people have for fun, we were doing what lovers do, what a couple that has shut out the entire outside world does when they only want to be with one person, when they very nearly want to be the only thing in the world at all.

I wanted it to last forever, but when she arched her back again and started to scream in my mouth, I had to release myself in her. We lay there, panting, kissing, smiling, and giggling over small talk, whispering faint 'I love yous' for some time. And then we did it twice more, each time nearly as satisfying as the first and stayed and slept in the bed until late Sunday morning when we did it again. We never used the condoms.



Over the next couple of days, Leanne moved into the duplex with me. She hung her clothes where Megan's used to be and her makeup and shoes . We ate together, watched TV together, showered together and slept together. It felt every bit like a marriage to me and, after a couple of months of this, I didn't see the point of not making it official. I asked her to marry me in the same Italian restaurant we went out to on our first date and she responded by lunging across the table to throw her arms around me, spilling water across the tablecloth and getting red sauce on her blouse.

For Thanksgiving, we went to her folk's house so they could meet me. They'd evidently been a little concerned that Leanne was jumping too quickly into a rebound relationship and they had also worried some about my divorce. They stopped worrying when they saw us together and after Leanne explained, in private, the circumstances of my divorce. I was nervous, but I think I made a fairly good impression and by the end of the weekend her family was treating me like an old friend with her parents already asking about our plans for children.

Leanne and I didn't see the need for a long engagement and we got married in a pretty little country chapel on a crisp, snowy, February Saturday. It was a small, intimate wedding, attended by family and a few close friends. I had a tough time deciding on a best man, so Bill and Greg split the duties while Leanne's sister was the maid of honor. Both Julie and Sally were bridesmaids and, true to form, they'd practically taken over the preparation of the wedding, sweating the details that neither Leanne or I were particularly interested in. We flew to St. Thomas the day after our wedding and spent a very relaxing and memorable honeymoon there. We had such a good time that we promised each other we'd go back, maybe for our 10th anniversary.

Over the next couple of years, Leanne and I saved our money and eventually bought a house. It was a 4 bedroom fixer-upper with a nice porch and a sizeable yard with trees and a flower bed. On the day of the closing, Leanne announced she was pregnant and by the time we'd redone the inside of the house, we had a new baby boy to occupy the freshly painted nursery. Our lives changed with the birth of Tommy, but I couldn't be happier. We were becoming the family I had always wanted.



Not long after Tommy was born, there was a shooting at Gabriel's. It turned out that some guy's wife had gotten into the scene with one of Gabriel's friends and he didn't take it quite as phlegmatically as I had. He got a gun and, after shooting Jordy in the leg, marched through the house until he found his wife and her lover, both of whom he plugged before turning the gun on himself. I guess his wife lived and Jordy was ok, but the shooter and the lover both died. The trial was full of salacious details and, as you'd expect, became big news, even making headlines on the national broadcasts. I guess the Putnam family didn't care much for the publicity and they gave Gabriel an ultimatum, eventually making him sell the mansion and essentially exiling him back to the family compound in Ohio.

Around the time of the trial, I was at a party at Bill's house and I recognized Charles Taylor with his wife. I went over to say hi and he remembered me. We made some small talk and he seemed genuinely happy with the way things turned out for me. As I was about to step away, he smiled and asked what I thought about Palmer.

"Honestly haven't thought about him for a while. What do you mean?"

"Ah....well, I guess you haven't heard, but he got divorced."

"His wife finally dump him for cheating?"

"No, that's the funny thing. They had this....uh....open marriage and I guess she ultimately got tired of Palmer and fell in love with one of her boyfriends. Anyway, she had an iron-clad prenup so Palmer was SOL when she dumped him."

"So, what happened then? Did he and Megan....."

"No, I don't think so." He interrupted. "He had to leave town to find some work and I'm pretty sure he left alone. Turns out he has zero skill as a lawyer, which should surprise no-one. I think he's working a 9-5 job at his brother's hardware store in Pittsburgh. Kind of funny, huh?"

"Yeh, I guess it is. A bit of a step down, huh?"

Taylor laughed and gave me a wink. I was reminded what he'd said to me in his office the day of my divorce, and realized how right he was. Things didn't work out for my one-time rival and Megan and, while it was of interest, but I didn't need to know that to be happy. I had a family to care for and to love and that was really all that mattered to me.



I did see Megan again one last time around 3 years later. It was at a nursery and I was with my boy, who was sitting in a cart while I looked through some flowering plants. Leanne, who was around 7 months pregnant with our second child, was checking out some trees on the other side of the nursery. As I pushed the cart down a row of Lavender, Megan was on the far side of the aisle, browsing, holding a basket with some herbs. She hadn't changed that much, maybe put on a little weight, but really about the same. I saw her first, or at least I think I did, and called out to her. She looked up at me and smiled while I approached, pushing my cart.

"Hey Matt. Wow, it's been a long time. How are you?" Her smile quivered just a little as she looked at me, making her look more vulnerable than I ever remember seeing her. I smiled back, told her she looked great and said things were fine with me. She nodded and then turned and smiled at Tommy. "And who's this little guy?"

"This is my son Tommy. Tommy, can you say hi?" As usual he became a little shy and very quietly mumbled something that could be taken as a greeting.

"He's a cute little boy." She said smiling. "So, how are you Matt? What are you up to?"

We started talking a little about gardening and then caught up on how life was generally going. She was still at the same job making pretty much the same salary. She wasn't seeing anyone seriously and hadn't been for some time. I wasn't absolutely sure, but based on how she said things, I got the impression that her relationship with Palmer ended long before he had to leave town. She mentioned that Theresa had married Stuart, but I guess mutual commitment didn't quite work out for them and they got divorced within a year. After that Theresa moved in with Megan but they eventually stopped getting along, and she moved out after a few months. So now, Megan was living alone in a small, downtown apartment without much green space. She said she was shopping for herbs to put in a small window box and was jealous of the big garden I was planting.

As we finished talking, Leanne showed up and I introduced her. We chatted for a couple of more minutes and then we said goodbye and Leanne and I checked out and left for the car. But, as usual, Leanne forgot something and ran back into the store while I pulled the car up to the exit. A couple of minutes later, Leanne emerged and seemed a little bothered. I asked if she was upset, but she quickly put on a smile and shook her head no, claiming she was just trying to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything else. We went home and spent a typical spring day gardening and goofing off. Ultimately Tommy and Leanne and I ended up on our porch swing, drinking lemonade, smelling the lilacs and listening to the sounds of the neighborhood.

Leanne broke the silence.

"So, what did you and Megan talk about before I got there?"

"Nothing really, just gardening and stuff. I really didn't have all that much to say. It was a little awkward, really."

"You didn't say anything mean?"

"Of course not. Why would you ask that?" I was puzzled.

"Because, when I went back into the store, she was standing in the same aisle crying her eyes out. I had to sneak around her so she wouldn't see me. She seemed really upset."

I shrugged my shoulders in reply as I didn't know what to make of this. But as I thought on it, I remembered all the plans Megan and I had made when we got married. The plans to have a house with a garden and trees, to have an unbreakable relationship and to have a close, loving family and I thought maybe I understood why our conversation was so upsetting.

I remembered what Charles Taylor had told me years before about 'moving on' to the point that I wouldn't care whether Megan would regret her choices. I had eventually taken the advice and it had served me well, but it wasn't completely accurate that I didn't care at all about how things had turned out for her. I had moved on and loved my life with my wife and my son and my home. But as I looked out from my porch to my front lawn, my arm around Leanne, Tommy in my lap and the smell of lilacs wafting through the air, I realized what Megan was missing and had an inkling that she knew what she was missing too. I guess a truly caring and benevolent person wouldn't take any pleasure in the misfortune of another, but I couldn't help it. Megan had traded gold for plastic, throwing her dreams away for some short term excitement and hadn't been able to get them back. I pulled Leanne closer to me and smiled.

[Brainmetal]

Sycamore Hill

By justthejanitor ©

People have asked me when I first knew something was wrong with my marriage, and the truthful answer has always been that it's hard to say. By the end, of course, the issues were obvious, but I should have known the marriage was in trouble long before then. I've discovered, though, that love can play tricks on your mind, and hide away obvious problems, especially if those problems are variants of old behaviors ; behaviors that worsened gradually enough that the short term differences are barely noticeable even if the long term changes are immense. Like some sort of an eclipse where the daylight gets progressively dimmer until you suddenly realize you're immersed in complete darkness and you don't know how it got that way.

I'd known Lara to be moody since the day I met her, and honestly, in some ways it endeared me toward her. The periods of icy indifference were relatively uncommon and the contrast made the times she was cheerful and full of life seem even better. My mom and had been that way and my dad seemed to be happy, so when it came time to consider marriage, I was pretty sure I'd be able to put up with it, and that-overall- life would be ok.

We met when we were juniors in college, working at a bookstore just off campus. I saw her as a brooding, more serious version of the girl next door, a reticent, melancholy beauty who seemed to be complicated and a little bit broken. Her dark wit appealed to my sense of humor and the sad aura of compromised self-esteem brought out my innate desire to be a rescuer. We talked at work for weeks before we started dating and then gradually became more serious, until one night, while I was trying to comfort her in the middle of an inexplicable crying jag, she threw her arms around me, called me her hero and begged me to promise that I'd never abandon her. That moment supercharged my desire to be a knight in shining armor and we became an inseparable couple, for better or for worse.

Two years after graduating college, we officially tied the knot and, for the first 4 years of our marriage things were ok. Not perfect, not terrible, but OK. I brought flowers home and she cooked special meals, she complained I watched sports too much and I made an issue of her buying too many clothes, we had fights, we made love, we were frustrated at times and incredibly happy at others. Good times, bad times, but, generally speaking, we were ok and there was little doubt in my mind that we loved each other. I felt in my bones that it was just a matter of time before we'd go from a couple to a family and that we could weather any storm, that we were in for the long haul.

I'd been working at an insurance company as an actuarial since graduation and was slowly improving my position, working hard, being reliable, putting my shoulder to the wheel in hopes of establishing a career, creating some security. Overall, I liked the work. It paid the bills.

Lara had a business degree and got a job at a large medical clinic after graduation, but found the work tedious and unfulfilling. So, a little over 8 months before everything finally came apart, she quit her administrative job and went to work for Williamson's charities, raising money, administering funds and helping to keep the organization-which was generally staffed by amateurs- running smoothly.

Lara liked her new job much better and for a couple of months she was happy and upbeat, the warm and fuzzy Lara that made our marriage workable. But gradually her mood soured, the nights became colder, the mornings joyless and I started biding my time, waiting for the happy Lara to reappear.

Except that this time she didn't.

She started working later and later at the charity, claiming that the work load had increased and that she wasn't getting the help she needed, but I couldn't shake the feeling that she was trying to avoid home life. She'd begun to lose interest in some of the things she typically loved to do. Going to the movies, watching TV in front of a fire, eating out, playing a board game. It became apparent to me that she was only going through the motions, and that most of the things she'd previously enjoyed had essentially become chores for her to do, unpleasant responsibilities she had to check off her list at the end of the day.

On a typical good night, she'd come home and eat a quiet dinner with me, watch TV for a while and then move to the couch and immerse herself in her laptop or I-phone, furiously typing texts and e-mails. On a bad night, she simply ignored me, moving about the house anxiously, with a sense of desperation, as though she was waiting for something, almost like a drug seeker wondering where the next fix was coming from. On those nights, she'd barely eat dinner at all before shutting herself away in our guest room to bang away more messages on her laptop without me around.

Sex, of course, dropped way off, and would have ceased altogether if I hadn't insisted from time to time. Prior to this, we'd had a very healthy sex life, making love three or four times a week, with Lara initiating things a fair amount of the time. Some nights were more passionate than others, complete with frenzied, desperate couplings, while other nights we indulged in slow, comfortable lovemaking.

That was all gone now. The few times I was able to get her into the bed with me, she barely participated at all, robotically spreading her legs and absentmindedly pumping her pelvis against me until I finished, essentially becoming a fleshy sex toy.

As the weeks of melancholy and indifference dragged on and on I found I was nearing the end of my rope. I now realized that this time, things might not get better and that the light of my marriage had been growing dimmer by the day and I knew something had to happen, something had to change before things became completely dark.

And then, one night out of the blue, something did; only it wasn't what I'd expected or hoped for.

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On the evening of St. Patrick's Day I'd gotten home early and, in hopes of doing something to make Lara smile, decided to try something she'd enjoyed in the past, a theme dinner of sorts, in this case a meal of corned beef, cabbage and beer that I'd dyed green. She grinned with vague amusement initially and murmured a few compliments, but we settled back into having yet another silent meal together.

She began her fidgety routine again, only a little more pronounced than usual. She'd pick up her fork to stir around her food and then put it back down without really eating. She kept tapping the table with her fingers nervously and, a couple of times cleared her throat as if to speak, but never ended up saying anything.

So, at the end of the meal, I expected what had become her usual behavior with some nervous pacing around while she ignored me until she disappeared for the night. But I was pleasantly surprised when she sat beside me on the couch while I watched a movie and snuggled up. After a few moments she nuzzled her nose into my neck and started kissing me while her hand started running up and down my thigh, and then, hesitantly, whispered a breathy invitation to join her in the bedroom.

I turned the TV off immediately.

When we got into the bedroom she suddenly seemed shy and anxious again. We lay on the bed together and kissed, but I felt like things from her were forced, like she was kissing me out of duty rather than desire.

I tried putting some passion into the kisses and started rubbing her crotch through the soft cotton of her panties to try and get something going, but she responded by pushing me away, standing up and removing her clothes in a nearly clinical way, as if she was simply trying to change clothes quickly, rather than preparing for sex.

As soon as she was naked, she got on the bed again and, without saying a thing, aggressively pulled my face roughly into hers while mashing her lips against mine hard enough I thought we might bruise each other. But, the kisses still seemed automated, and for all of the energy she was expending, the passion seemed false, like she was doing what was expected, what she was programmed to do.

I tried to change the tone, to introduce some tenderness and romance, but she would have none of it and responded by literally pulling my shirt off and attacking my belt, fly and zipper to get my pants off as quickly as possible. I again tried to slow things down a little and asked, in a light hearted way, what the rush was. She responded abruptly, with a little anger in her voice.

"What the hell, Kevin, do you want to fuck or not? Because you sure as shit can't do it with your pants on."

I laughed sheepishly to try and keep the mood light, raised my hands in a gesture to indicate I was on board with her and started pulling my clothes off while she sat and watched impatiently on the bed. I was just getting my pants off, one foot still off the ground, when she lunged toward me, settling on her knees, and took my prick into her hand before inhaling it into her mouth. There was no getting around the fact that, even without any sense of real romance or affection, what she was doing felt pretty damn good, so I stood there, my hands on the back of her head, enjoying the wet, slick sensation of her tongue and her lips, slowly humping myself into her while she furiously worked on my erection.

She never liked swallowing semen so we'd developed a signal in which I'd pull back, gently on her hair, if I was nearing orgasm. When I did, she looked at me with a leering grin.

"Feel good?"

"Uh...yeah, very." I choked out in reply.

"Want to fuck now?"

"Absolutely."

She smiled and crawled onto the bed and I moved toward her, but she held her hand up to stop me.

"Stop there. Just hold on. We're doing something different tonight." She reached under the pillow and pulled out a tube of lube and teasingly waved it at me, smiling coldly while she raised her eyebrows expectantly.

"What...?" I asked, hoping I wouldn't have to guess what she wanted to do.

"Just stand and watch, Kevin. I know what you want."

Facing away from me, she rolled over onto her belly and then up to her knees, arching her back severely until her butt pointed toward the ceiling, and then spread her long, elegant legs to an obscene angle, exposing her crotch and the darker skin between her cheeks. She turned her head to make sure I was watching and then positioned the tube of lube just above the cleavage of her butt and began to squeeze. A large, gelatinous glob rolled down between her cheeks, some of it dripping in long, translucent, filamentous strands to the bed below. She emptied all of the lube onto her butt, watching my reaction the whole time, and then carelessly threw the empty tube to the floor before moving the heel of her hand to her tailbone with her fingers touching the top of her ass. Slowly she slid her hand downward, effectively snowplowing even more lube between the crack, until her fingers rested on and around her asshole. She luxuriously stirred the thick gooey mass around for a moment or two and then smoothly started pushing some of it in with her middle finger.

I watched, completely mesmerized, as her finger continued to move in and out, pushing more and more lube in with each penetration. This was, without a doubt, the most overtly sexual display I'd ever seen and my body, specifically my throbbing prick, was responding as expected.

But deep down, something about the display was disquieting. Lara and I, over the years, had experimented with various positions and sexual techniques, but we'd never tried, or really even considered, anal sex. I know a lot of men have fantasies about it, but, until this moment, it never really appealed to me. Moreover, Lara had told me, quite explicitly, that she was willing to try a lot of things, but she had no interest in anal sex whatsoever and made it clear that she considered it humiliating, unromantic and frankly messy.

So, now, faced with a clear cut invitation to her ass, a warning voice was sounding in my head, telling me something was off. For weeks, really months, our sex life had deteriorated and Lara had become increasingly cold and distant, and now, suddenly out of nowhere, she was aggressively offering something that she'd previously told me was frankly demeaning and inappropriate. It occurred to me that this was some sort of a challenge, a test by Lara to see if I thought enough of her as a person to respect her wishes and turn down an almost irresistible sexual invitation in deference to my love and affection for her. I swallowed hard and began to choke out a few words.

"Uh...Lara...uhm, we don't have to do this. I know how you...uh...feel about this sort of thing and I can tell you that I'm more than happy with the way we normally make love. You don't have to..."

Lara took her hand off her ass, but stayed on her knees, looking back to me with an expression of annoyance and incredulity. She interrupted my stammering sharply.

"What the hell Kevin? Does it look like I don't want this or something?"

"Come on Lara...I know how you feel about...uh...anal sex and I don't want to disrespect you or anything. I want you to know that we don't have to do...do this sort of thing to..."

Her face expression turned darker, her face turning an angry red while she very nearly screamed at me.

"Are you shitting me Kevin? What the hell kind of a pansy-ass man are you anyway? Most men would kill for an invitation like this..."

"Lara, it's just that..."

"Cut the sensitivity shit, Kevin. In fact, just shut the hell up altogether and fuck my ass."

An epic fight between my rapidly developing desire to give Lara's ass a try and the nagging idea that this was some sort of a test was waging inside my head, and I took a couple of hesitant steps toward Lara before pausing. This progress was apparently still too slow for Lara and she began screaming at me again.

"What the hell is the problem Kevin? Do you need some sort of a written invitation? Here, let me spell it out for you." She rose up slightly and moved her right hand back behind her again, pointing aggressively to her exposed ass. "Get the hell over here and stick your cock in my asshole. Is that clear enough? I want you to fuck my ass and I want it right...fucking... now."

With that last angry outburst, any residual reluctance to more forward vanished, drowned by her rather aggressive insults and my still acute sexual drive. I took the last few steps to her and positioned my cock at the verge of her ass as she turned away from me, dropped down to her elbows and arched her back upward again. I touched her skin with the tip of my cock, rubbing the lube a little, and then pressed forward, slowly penetrating her until the head was inside. I'd always heard a guy has to go slow with anal sex, so I paused there, waiting for her to relax, but Lara shouted back at me.

"Don't stop, you faggot, put it in me. Now."

Her incessant taunts were starting to make me more than a little angry and between that and my increasingly uncontrollable desire I gave her what she asked for and shoved the rest of my cock in. She gave a grunt that sounded a little like a cry of pain, but between her insults and the incredibly tight feeling I was experiencing, I couldn't bring myself to stop. I pulled back and pushed in again, eliciting another grunt from her and another surge of pleasure for me and then I simply started to hump, smoothly and slowly at first and then more aggressively, deeper and faster and with less and less control.

I still couldn't tell if her cries were out of passion or pain, but I felt no inclination to pause and sort out what she was experiencing. I was feeling an exquisite pleasure mixed with a sense of anger that was finally being released after months of indifference and borderline contempt that she had demonstrated toward me and our marriage and I just didn't care anymore. This was a release, not only from the limited sexual activity I'd been experiencing, but also from pent up emotional frustration.

But, any thought that should ease up, that I might be breaking her down vanished within a few minutes when she started taunting me again, demanding that I push harder, rougher, that I grab her hair, slap her ass, be a man. My anger toward her surged and I got even more aggressive, plunging into her with abandon, yanking her head back by her hair and throwing taunts back to her, calling her a slut, a bitch, an ass whore, shouting out whatever insult came to my mind without any attempt to filter what I was expressing.

Finally, after several, exhausting minutes of this out of control, hyper-aggressive sex, I couldn't take it anymore and let myself explode into her with a few, final, violent pumps. And then she collapsed, laying prone on the bed while I lay on top of her, both of us panting hard, sweating, saying nothing.

Eventually, I slipped completely out of her and rolled away, noticing a trace of blood on my wet, shrinking cock. I turned back to her, trying to hold her, thinking that I might apologize, but she simply turned her back to me, cold as ever, apparently unwilling to engage in any kind of tenderness. I spoke to her softly for a few minutes, trying to get through to her, but she wouldn't answer, lying on her side, breathing raggedly. After a while, I realized she was crying and I pulled gently on her shoulder to try and force her to look at me, but she firmly resisted. Finally, I raised my voice a little, in an attempt to get through to her.

"Look, Lara, I'm sorry if I was a little rough, and I'm sorry for whatever the hell I've done to make you so mad at me, but we have to talk if we are going to survive. You have to communicate with me."

She snorted in reply, paused a minute and, in a bitter, somewhat sarcastic tone answered.

"Look Kevin, I'm sure your cock could use some cleaning at this point. Why don't you go shower yourself down and leave me alone."

I felt totally exhausted emotionally and couldn't muster the energy to further attempt to get through to her. I considered responding sarcastically, to throw out another challenge, but I just sighed, slid off the bed and took a long, hot shower.

When I was done, I cracked the door to the bedroom and saw Lara, still naked, still laying on her side, staring off into space. She was no longer crying, but her eyes were red rimmed. I trying to talk to her one more time, but thought back on the strange sex we'd had, the contempt and anger she held for me and the complete failures I'd experienced trying to get her to respond to me and decided not to. Quietly I closed the door and wondered grimly about our future together.

As it turns out, this was the last time we had sex.

I wasn't even vaguely surprised that the strange, hyperkinetic sexual episode represented another downturn in the ever- worsening emotional ice bath that had become my marriage. Something had to change.

I broached the subject of couples counseling, of the possibility that she might need to adjust her anti-depressants, that maybe we should take a long vacation together- or even apart-but all my suggestions were met with non -committal grunts or exasperated eye rolls.

I found myself beginning to consider the thing that had previously been unthinkable, looking over the internet for advice on how to end a marriage, perusing the phone book for lawyers, looking for apartments closer to my work.

But somehow I just couldn't quite pull the trigger. I've always been an obstinate guy, and when there was something that I wanted, I'd always been more than willing to go to some pretty extreme lengths to get it. My marriage was important to me, and I just didn't feel right about throwing in the towel just yet. I wanted to keep trying until the bitter end, until I was certain there was nothing salvageable. I was diligently looking for any opportunity to move back on the right track, to make any sort of emotional progress with my wife.

So, when an invitation to go to a party with Lara came up, I jumped at the chance.

@@@@@@

Lara first told me about the invitation over dinner one night, a week or so before the event itself, interrupting another uncomfortably quiet meal with a reluctant, halting, half-whispered explanation of the party. She described it as the sort of thing I hated, a big shindig with stuffy conversation, fancy cocktails and suits and evening gowns filled with highbrow people from the charity that I didn't know and likely wouldn't be interested in. But, she went on to say that I was expected to attend and that she'd be humiliated if I passed on the invitation. Between her rather frank and discouraging description of the event and her subsequent insistence that I attend, It was hard to tell if she wanted me to go or not. But, as unappealing as the invitation seemed to be on the surface, it represented a faint light of hope in the gloom that had become my marriage and I welcomed it, quickly agreeing to attend with her.

Her reaction was tough to read. Superficially, she seemed to be happy that I'd agreed to go, proclaiming how much better it would be to have me there with her, but the expression on her face was oddly discordant with what she was saying, a tension backing the smile in a way that gave a sense of frustration and maybe a little anger.

I felt like I was getting the classic mixed signal and that I was being set up for failure. If I didn't go there'd be resentment for not supporting her, more anger, more silence. If I did, I risked committing some unintentional embarrassment that would linger on as a point of contention, another thorn in the side of our already shaky relationship.

But, I knew our marriage was on life support and in desperation I thought that I needed to push hard for any kind of positive time together, so as her descriptions of the party became increasingly bleak, I did my best to seem more and more interested. I started bringing up the party myself, throwing out questions that would demonstrate my interest, asking what I should wear and who would be there and what I should know or talk about when I mixed in. I even bought a new sport coat for the occasion and surprised Lara with a new necklace and a bottle of her favorite perfume.

The party was on a Friday night and I made it home early from work to get ready, another surprise for Lara since I had a bad habit of being chronically late for social events. When I got home, I found her in sitting on the edge of our bed, her favorite black dressed hiked up to her hips while she pulled on her pantyhose. She was wearing the necklace and the perfume, her hair had been professionally styled and her makeup was exquisite. She looked absolutely gorgeous and I gave out a low wolf whistle and told her she'd be the centerpiece of the party. She gave me a neutral little smile and pulled her pantyhose the rest of the way up before replying.

"Thanks Kevin." She hesitated and her expression changed to something more thoughtful, her brow wrinkled as she bit her lip for a moment before continuing on. "You know, I've been thinking. Maybe we should take both cars tonight, just in case you want to leave early."

I felt a surge of annoyance that Lara still seemed to be trying to get me to cancel. I'm sure my voice took on a petulant tone. "Look, honey, do you not want me to go to this thing? I mean, you keep harping on what a shitty time you think I'll have and now you're suggesting that maybe I should leave early. Are you embarrassed of me or is there something about this party that..."

She abruptly waved both hands at me dismissively and interrupted. "Oh come on Kevin, you've always hated things like this and I was just trying to give you an easy out. If you want to go then fine. I just don't want to hear a lot of complaining or have to leave early, that's all."

The drive to the party was uncomfortably quiet. We talked a little at first, Lara telling me about the mansion the Williamson's lived in and reminding me of some of the charities they controlled and some of the people that might be there, but there was the usual tension between us that kept any real conversation from starting and after a few minutes we just stopped talking altogether and listened to the radio while I drove and Lara looked out the window absentmindedly.

The Williamson's mansion was on the outskirts of town in an area so exclusive that you couldn't really see your neighbors. The driveway must have been a quarter mile long and when we got to the entry area there was a valet who parked the car while we went inside. Lara had been there once or twice before and started showing me around and introducing me to some of the people from the charity. The mansion was predictably opulent with floors of marble and darkly stained wood, windows framed by elegant silk draperies and furniture of mahogany and soft brown leather. And there was art everywhere. Colorful, impressionistic paintings on nearly every wall, marble and granite statuary of different styles and sizes stood watch in most of the corners and all the table surfaces were covered with elegant glass vases. In some ways it felt more like a museum than a home.

I did my best to make a good impression and talked as amiably as possible with everyone I was introduced to. For the most part, the folks from the charity seemed like solid, honest people who were as out of their element in a setting like this as I was. The executives from Williamson's industries were a different story, though. They were dressed more formally, the men mostly in tuxedo's and the women wrapped in incredibly expensive looking dresses and they talked and conducted themselves with an ease and confidence that made it clear that their position as the people who called the shots was unassailable.

After a while, Lara drifted away to hob nob with some of the Williamson people and I found myself discussing the finer points of beer appreciation with a couple of the lower level pencil pushers. One of the guys mentioned that he'd seen a basketball game playing on an enormous TV in some sort of entertainment room and we all slipped away to watch the fourth quarter.

When the game was over, an hour or so later, I made my way back to the main party. I spotted Lara in a group with three or four couples- Williamson people-holding their drinks, nodding and talking, no doubt, about their latest European vacation. The women seemed to be the drivers of the conversation and the men all seemed to be preoccupied with Lara. Not that I could blame them. The black dress perfectly showed off her slim figure and long, graceful legs and, in this lighting, her Olive skin and dark hair gave her an exotic, Mediterranean look that, for me at least, was irresistibly attractive.

I started to make my way toward them through the crowd when I noticed a distinguished looking man, maybe forty-five years old or so, in a brilliant white tuxedo with oiled hair and a deep tan, move confidently into the group. All conversation stopped in deference to his presence and as he began to talk, everyone looked to him attentively. I felt I'd seen or met him before and after a few moments I came to recognize that this was John Williamson himself.

Deciding that I'd rather not get tied down in a conversation with the captains of industry, I simply took a seat at a bar on the edge of the room and watched the group, waiting for it to split up a little before I approached my wife again. Lara, like everyone else in the group, had her eyes glued, admiringly, on Mr. Williamson and I could see that he, like the rest of the men in the group, was more than a little interested in Lara. It wasn't long before he was talking mostly to her, occasionally reaching out to touch her on the shoulder or the arm, constantly flashing her wolfish grin and leaning in close to her replies. After a while, a band started to play music and when some of the couples started to dance, he paired off with her for a few numbers.

Well, I didn't really like Lara dancing with other guys, at least not without my permission, but I didn't want to make a scene, especially with her boss, so I sat at the bar stool, waiting for an opportunity to jump in, quietly fuming while I nursed a drink I'd absentmindedly ordered. I guess I was staring at them pretty hard, undoubtedly with a somewhat menacing look, when one of the most attractive women I've ever met settled into the seat next to me. She was in her early 30s with thick, strawberry blond hair, pale, nearly translucent, marble smooth skin and a soft, voluptuous body that seemed to wiggle in all the right places when she moved. She gave me a tentative smile and nodded to the dance floor and my wife.

"Your wife is beautiful."

I wasn't, at first, certain she was talking to me or that she was referring to Lara, and I couldn't quite clear my head to reply quickly.

"Huh?" I eventually answered dumbly.

"Your wife." She said, nodding again to the dance floor, "she's beautiful. I can hardly blame my husband wanting to dance with her. I hope it doesn't bother you too much." She gave me a warm, knowing smile that was somehow a little sad also.

Coming to the belated realization that the gorgeous women talking to me was John Williamson's wife, I felt my face flush and began to stammer out an embarrassed reply.

"Oh...it's...uh...ok, I just don't mind, really. I'm just...uh...watching them dance her for a while. I'm not really a great dancer so I...uh..."

She tittered at my discomfort, a beautiful, clear little laugh that completely disarmed me.

"It's ok...Kevin isn't it?"

"Yes...how did you know..."

"Oh, Lara and I work together at the charity quite a bit. Naturally she's mentioned you and I saw you both come in together earlier this evening." She smiled at me again and cocked her head expectantly, but, still a little tongue tied, I didn't answer, my mouth opening and closing without making a sound.

"Well, anyway," she said, extending a delicate hand, "My name is Danielle Williamson. It's good to meet you Kevin." I took her hand and shook it and, finally found my voice.

"It's good to meet you too. You have a fabulous home."

She smiled with pleasure at the compliment and we talked for a while about the house and the art and her responsibilities at the charity. She recognized I felt a little uncomfortable at a party like this and suggested I could play some pool in the billiard room later on to kill time. Finally the dance floor emptied as the band stopped playing and Danielle nodded toward my wife.

"Looks like she's free now and I guess you'll want to get back with her and I've got to mingle with the other guests. It's been great talking with you." I nodded, told her I'd enjoyed our conversation and started to make my way to Lara, picking my way carefully through the guests, the waiters and the statues.

When I got to Lara I put my arm around her and gave her a little squeeze. She asked where I'd been and I told her I'd met a few people, including Danielle, and that I'd watched part of a basketball game. I could tell she'd been drinking some and she slurred out a sarcastic remark about the party being the ideal place to take in a sporting event. It was clear that she was a little annoyed with me, but I ignored that and made a valiant attempt to make conversation with her and her Williamson pals. After a while, though, it was pretty clear I was a fifth wheel and I whispered to Lara that I was going to look around some more. She nodded her head to me and I wandered off.

I ended up in the billiard room with some of the guys I'd met earlier in the evening. We pretty much turned the room into the kind of party we liked, rolling up our sleeves, munching on pretzels and drinking beer all while watching ESPN and shooting pool. I'd been there for a little over an hour when Danielle Williamson entered the room tentatively and motioned to me, calling my name quietly. I made my way to her and she bent close to whisper into my ear.

"Uh, Kevin, maybe you should go get Lara. She's...she's had a lot to drink and maybe you should consider taking her home now." We were both embarrassed at her having to tell me this and I nodded in reply and simply said 'ok', letting her lead the way back to the main party were Danielle pointed to a raucous group of people sitting on a pair of couches. I spotted Lara, sitting on John Williamson's lap as though she belonged there, her arm around his neck, laughing loudly and drunkenly at a joke someone had just told. Her hair was a mess and her dress appeared a little disheveled.

I swore quietly to myself and turned toward Danielle, trying my best to choke out an apology, but she waved it off, attributing all the bad behavior to too much drink.

"Honestly, if you just get her home and to bed, it will all be good." She said smiling as I started to make my way to the couches.

I touched Lara on the shoulder to get her attention and quietly told her it was time to go, but she made it clear, in a loud, slurred retort, that she wasn't particularly interested in leaving. I stayed firm and insisted and started to think there'd be a scene until John Williamson himself, who seemed a little embarrassed by the situation, encouraged her to get going. Reluctantly, she stood up, wavering considerably and awkwardly smoothed her dress and gathered her purse before I led her out to the car in silence, supporting her as we walked to minimize her drunken stagger.

Once in the car, she started in on me, loudly accusing me of ruining things for her by leaving early, aggressively reminding me that this was why she wanted to take two cars. I told her there was no way she'd be able to drive home safely regardless of how many cars we took and went on a rant criticizing her drunken antics and overly familiar behavior with John Williamson.

The argument continued back and forth until we got home, when Lara got out of the car before I even pulled into the garage, slammed the car door and stomped her way to the front entryway. After parking the car and getting a quick drink of water in the kitchen, I went to our room and found her already in bed, fully clothed, her arms crossed over her chest while she fumed, conspicuously looking away from me when I entered the room. I tried to start a conversation to get some sort of detente going, but she turned away from me and refused to speak, leaving a cold, silent gap between us.

I slept on the couch that night.

The cold, silent gap between us ended abruptly the next morning when Lara woke me up with a pitcher of ice water to the face followed by a profanity laced diatribe delivered at breakneck speed detailing how thoroughly disgusted she was with my behavior. After wiping my face dry, I matched her volume with suggestions that the ice water was the warmest thing she'd done for me in weeks and that if she liked her friends at the charity so much better, she ought to just hang out with them.

She smirked, bent over and picked up a suitcase, showing it off like it was the answer to my last challenge, turned around sharply and left the living room, the middle finger of her left hand extended upward over her shoulder. She slammed the door and a few seconds later I heard the sound of her car leave the driveway.

So, there I was, left alone at home by my wife, the woman I had loved and the woman who I had come to hate, wondering just how far a man should go before he calls it quits on a marriage. I wasn't sure of the answer, exactly, but I was confident that I was pretty far past the line of reasonable effort.

If this had happened in years past I would have been on pins and needles, waiting for a text or a phone call from her, aching for a chance to exchange apologies and make things right. I would have been frantic trying to figure out where she'd gone, worrying if she was safe, hoping she'd return as soon as possible. But honestly, I just didn't have the energy or the inclination to care anymore. I simply went on living, going to work, watching TV, reading books; but now with the added activity of making phone calls to lawyers.

@@@@@

5 days later I was taking a break from work, sitting in a family law office, waiting impatiently for an appointment with a para legal, when I received two e-mails from Lara.

The first was a cold, terse command, without any kind of a salutation. It read simply: "I'm back. We need to talk. Meet me tonight at home after work." I snorted when I read it, thinking of the hubris of insisting that we meet to work out our problems after she had so thoroughly rejected any opening I'd quite literally begged for in the weeks preceding our epic falling out.

The second e-mail, though, was clearly sent to me as a mistake on her part, probably accidently copying my address after sending the first email. It was a far warmer, more affectionate message that was intended for someone else, someone by the name of 'Chicagoman'. The note alluded to a recent outing they'd had, an evening at a high end restaurant and the theatre followed by a relatively torrid sexual encounter. She signed it "Love, Lara."

I felt two emotions reading the second email.

The first was embarrassment. Embarrassment at my own dedication to a woman and a marriage that wasn't, evidently, worth the effort. Embarrassment at my own naiveté and, really, my own stupidity at having failed to accurately see the true picture of my relationship with Lara. A picture that, somehow, I'd been unable-or perhaps simply unwilling-to face at any time during the gut wrenching unraveling of out relationship. A picture of an unfaithful wife who'd given up on her commitment in order to be with someone else.

The other emotion I felt was pure, white hot, unmitigated anger. I was very nearly choking with it, my teeth clenched so hard that I could barely breathe, my head pounding with thoughts of mayhem.

When I'd read the first note demanding a meeting, I thought that I would simply blow her off and proceed with a divorce, serving her first and then talking through a post-mortem of our marriage later. But now, now that I understood the true nature of our problems, the true nature of her betrayal, I wanted a talk, wanted confrontation, wanted her to own up to her infidelity and explain why, exactly, she thought it was ok to stab me in the back.

I doubt that I made much sense to the para legal as I robotically filled out paperwork and answered questions. My mind was so preoccupied with the realization of Lara's infidelity and my anxiousness to confront her about it that I didn't pay any real attention to what she was saying and just signed my name where she pointed and answered questions in the most superficial way possible.

I called back to work, told them I had a family emergency and went directly home after my time with the para legal, itching for a fight. But instead of Lara, I found a note pinned to the door explaining that she'd been called back to the charity and our talk would have to be postponed.

I was so keyed up that I screamed in frustration, threw open the door and stomped into the kitchen, rubbing my head with both hands, mumbling to myself as I paced back and forth from the kitchen to the living room.

But I stopped in my tracks when I saw that Lara had left her laptop, open and running, on the dining room table.

I knew that laptop had the information that would confirm my suspicious and satisfy unanswered questions. I wanted those answers and I wanted that information, not just to satisfy my curiosity, but to provide tools that I might use to exact some sort of revenge, not just on my wife but on the high and mighty philanthropic captain of industry I was sure she was cheating with.

Without any hesitation, I scooped the computer up, jumped in my car and headed to the one guy I thought could help, an old frat buddy by the name of Virgil Spector.

Virgil was someone who wouldn't stand out in crowd. He was an unassuming guy with an average build and an average face with average brown hair and who wore average clothes . He was, in fact, average in nearly every way except that, like a true nerd, he had an uncanny ability to hack into computers.

Now, everyone knows someone like this, a guy who somehow intuitively understands computers the way most people understand their friends, who know how to get even the most obstinate computer to give up its secrets. In college he honed his skill and sharpened his inclination to break into nearly any system at school at work or on anybody's personal computer, and he did it routinely, to gather information, to get the answers to tests, to pull off elaborate practical jokes or just for the hell of it. His skill eventually turned out well for him and he landed a job in IT security with a local bank, but I knew he still hacked around on the side, just for fun.

So, I was pretty sure that Virgil would be able to get anything incriminating that Lara left on her computer. I called him as I was driving and he sounded like he'd just gotten up from a nap or something and was a little surprised to hear from me, but when I told him I needed some help and implied it had to do with breaking into a computer, he perked up considerably and invited me over.

Virgil lived alone, in an apartment that looked a little like a laundry dump for dirty clothes onto which the garbage from multiple fast food meals and some beer bottles had been scattered. Really, just the classic bachelor housekeeping stereotype.

He had me sit at the kitchen table and, offered me a beer, which I declined. He got one himself, though, and plopped into the chair across from me, took a swig and asked what the problem was.

I described, vaguely at first, and then with progressively more detail, what was happening in my marriage and what I was suspicious of. Virgil listened attentively, nodding or grimacing at the right times, making it clear that he sympathized with my plight. When I finished, he pursed his lips, and thought for a second before pointing to the laptop and speaking.

"So, I take it you want me to break into her laptop and see what the shitty details are, is that it?"

I nodded. "Yeah, pretty much, that's it."

"And if I find some really nasty stuff, what then? I mean, it sounds like you and Lara are through either way. What's the point of digging into this stuff if it won't change the end game?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I guess I just want to know what exactly she's up to and I don't think she'll ever give me the straight story. Plus, if she's fucking the guy I think she is, then I might be able to use the information to make this a little painful for the asshole."

Virgil nodded in understanding. "OK, fair enough." He said, spinning the laptop around and opening it up with a single smooth move of his right hand.

"This will probably take a while, so you might want to make yourself comfortable."

I grunted in agreement and started making my way to his clothes covered couch, thinking to watch some TV or take a nap, but Virgil held me up with one more question.

"Hey...just for grins, you don't happen to know any of Lara's passwords or anything do you?"

"Uh...well, she used Skinnygirl97 in the past, but I really don't think..."

"What happened when you tried to get into her e-mail with that?" He asked tapping away at the keyboard.

"I didn't try, I mean, I figured I wouldn't be able to find anything myself."

"Yeah, well it might have saved you a trip over here," he said as he pivoted the laptop toward me. "Take a look."

I moved back to the table and saw that he'd opened her e-mail account.

"I'm sure she's deleted all of the incriminating stuff." I wasn't particularly confident of my words, suddenly feeling more than a little foolish as I moved back to the kitchen table.

"Yeah, well, take a closer look. There are a whole bunch of undeleted e-mails between her and this 'Chicagoman' dude."

I sat down at the table and looked again at the computer, seeing that Lara's inbox was open, displaying maybe 30 or so e-mail threads, at least twenty of which were messages to and from 'Chicagoman'. I shrugged my shoulders sheepishly and shook my head to indicate my surprise and embarrassment that they had been there for me to read all along and then took a deep breath, pulled the computer closer and began to read.

It was clear, from the first message, that 'Chicagoman' is/was, in fact, John Williamson and that the affair had been going on for at least 3 or 4 months, mostly consummated during daytime hours when she was supposed to be working at the charity. The messages themselves consisted of anything from a quick note of thanks or an invitation for another afternoon together to tremendously explicit recapitulations of their most recent tryst. I was, on occasion, mentioned in the e-mails, but only in passing, essentially a subject to be avoided while they planned for their next get together. Danielle Williamson was hardly mentioned at all.

By the time I'd finished reading, the anger that had dissipated somewhat over the last few hours was back, I'd bit my lower lip bloody and I felt myself opening and closing my fists, spasmodically, hot acid rising in my throat. The recollection of her drunkenly sitting in Williamson's lap, thinking that she was making him uncomfortable when they were simply flaunting their affair in my face was particularly galling. That and her general recent behavior toward me, the fact that she had so casually given herself to him and treated me and our relationship like inconsequential lint completed my outrage and I felt any residual inclination to allow for a quiet, uncomplicated closure of our relationship melt away. I wasn't sure what I'd do, but I knew I wanted both Williamson and my wife to feel my heat and I wanted them to feel it in the most uncomfortable way possible.

Virgil gave me a half smile and spoke like he was reading my mind.

"You know, Kevin, thinking back on some of the shit you've rained down on people that have crossed you, I'd have to say that you're probably not going to take this lying down. Am I right?"

I flared my nostrils and nodded my head.

"Well, I don't know what, exactly you're going to do, but if it ends up being something fun, count me in, OK?"

I gave a bitter little smile back. "Ok, Virg, OK."

I sat there for a few minutes more, starring at nothing, tapping my fingers while I fumed and thought. Recognizing that waiting for some sort of malevolent inspiration in how to exact my revenge wasn't presently coming to me, I got up and reached for the laptop.

"You going now?"

"Yep."

"You know what you're going to do?"

"Not yet."

"Hey, then, mind if I keep the laptop, to poke around some more? Maybe I'll find something...usable."

I briefly thought about how mad Lara might be if she knew I'd absconded with her computer, but that realized I didn't really give a shit.

"Yea, please keep it. Look for pictures, videos, anything that I can embarrass that prick Williamson."

Virgil smiled and nodded.

@@@@@@@

Lara was waiting for me when I got home, evidently off work from the charity earlier than she expected. I found her in the living room and, not surprisingly, she was steaming about her missing laptop, hands on her hips, her face already slightly crimson with anger. She addressed me with a sort of snarl, her voice a tight, shrill whistle.

"Where the hell is my computer?"

I ignored the question, walked by her as casually as possible, flopped down onto the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table, a habit that I know annoyed Lara to no end. I made no attempt to look back at Lara but could hear a strain of incredulousness enter her voice as she entered the room after me.

"Kevin, did you fucking hear me? Where is my computer?"

On the drive home I'd thought about playing my cards close to my vest and not let on that I knew about her affair before I had a plan in place to get even, but I knew I didn't have the discipline or patience to pull off some sort of an elaborate surprise that required days, or even weeks, of subterfuge. So, now, faced with another of Lara's hostile outbursts, I decided to go for immediate confrontation and save revenge for later. I elected to open my attack with brutal, unvarnished honesty, partly for the shock value and partly because I was in the mood for a fight and I knew this would get one going. I flicked the TV on and without looking at her, answered as neutrally as possible, taking great care to clear all the emotion from my voice.

"I took your computer to Virgil's as a matter of fact. He's snooping around right now, turning up all the dirt he can on your cheating ass."

She didn't say anything, and I couldn't resist glancing back to observe her reaction. Her teeth were clenched, her eyebrows raised and her face had now turned beet red. I guess I'd hoped for a little surprise and maybe some sort of contrition, some kind of an apology, but instead I was getting pure, unadulterated, anger. After taking several deep breaths that I could actually hear her drawing through flared nostrils, Lara began to spit venom back at me, her voice loud and dripping with contempt.

"My cheating ass? Really, is that what your excuse is?" She began, taking several aggressive steps toward me. "You think that you have a right to go through all my personal stuff just because you imagine I'm with another man? You're fucking delusional..."

I abruptly raised my hand to stop her, more than matching the decibel level of her voice with mine.

"Save it Lara. Just...fucking...save it. I know about it all. The signs were all there, the bitchiness, the Ice Princess treatment, the lame excuses. You're cheating and we both know it, so spare me the denials. Virgil has just been getting the nasty little details for me, that's all."

She stood there for a moment, her hands opening and closing into tight fists, her face a contorted mixture of anger and frustration, breathing so heavily and hotly, I half expected her to spit fire. I maintained my silence, trying to look as smug and unconcerned as possible, afraid, really, to let on that I was feeling any pain at all.

Finally, she abruptly pivoted and started toward our bedroom, stomping away with enough force that I could feel the vibrations through the floor. Halfway down the hall, she turned and shouted over her shoulder.

"I don't have to listen to this ridiculous shit."

"Well, then, by all means, don't. Just get your ass the hell out of here." I answered back as non-chalantly as possible.

For fifteen or twenty minutes, she noisily opened closets and drawers, pulled down a bag from an upper shelf and cleaned out her stuff from the bathroom to supplement the things she'd already taken the week before. When she was done, she came back down the hallway, pulling a suitcase with squeaky wheels behind her. She stopped in the living room and took a couple of deep breaths while I gave her a look that I hoped reflected unconcern and maybe a little bit of boredom.

"Sorry Kevin, I thought we could maybe talk about our issues, but your attitude sucks. I need my laptop for work, so I expect it back within 24 hours. Just put it on the dining room table. I'm going to stay with some...friends. Don't try and follow me." Her voice was measured but melodramatic and she spit out the last few words resentfully as she turned toward the front door to leave. I decided to fire one last shot.

"Well, be sure to tell John Williamson thanks for putting you up. I'm sure you'll be saving a lot of money rooming with him in his big ass house."

That little declaration halted her in her tracks and she slowly turned around and gave me a narrow eyed look of suspicious contempt.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Wait." I laughed. "You can't possibly think I haven't figured out that you've been fucking John Williamson? Come on, Lara, you haven't exactly been discrete and I'm not nearly as clueless as you seem to think I am."

"So that's your game? You plan to fuck up John Williamson because of your suspicions? Something like that?" Her tone stayed contemptuous.

"I don't know, maybe I'll do nothing, maybe I'll show up and make some problems, maybe I'll rain Holy Hell down on all of you. Right now I'm just wondering how his wife or his charities and businesses would view a messy divorce involving John Williamson's name linked to a lot of salacious behavior with a married woman."

Her look of contempt deepened and her tone took on an element of disgusted anger. "You wouldn't dare try anything like that. You don't have the balls to confront a man like Williamson. You'll just cower here on the couch and, as soon as I'm gone, cry yourself to sleep. God you really are pitiful. John is a real man, Kevin, an accomplished man, not some little boy who flails away at life, trying to make his mark in a world that finds him totally and utterly irrelevant. You wouldn't be able to hurt him or his life any more than a little bug can make a difference in yours. Good luck trying."

She'd spit out the last words, one by one, emphasizing the disrespect she'd developed for me. I could feel my heart begin to pound as she screamed on, struggling to keep from overreacting, from exploding out of my chair and slapping her like the bitch she was being. In the end, I managed to simply smile at her blandly and, in a gesture mirroring the one she'd given me a week before, showed her the middle finger of my right hand as she turned to leave.

After I heard the front door slam, I sat on the edge of the couch, rocking back and forth with a growing sense of unmitigated outrage while I thought about our latest, most important, and probably final fight as a married couple. In addition to the anger, I couldn't help a faint feeling of disappointment and surprise. Lara was nothing if not proud and so I didn't expect her to grovel and beg for forgiveness, but I did think she might be at least a little embarrassed if not apologetic.

But even more puzzling were her final comments as she left, essentially taunting me with the idea that I'd resign myself to play a passive role in the demise of our marriage and that I wasn't man enough to stand up to a guy like John Williamson. Although I wouldn't consider myself an out-of-control hothead, I had a long history of accepting and maybe even relishing confrontation, a trait I'd inherited from my father , who encouraged me to make sure anyone who crossed me understood their mistake. In fact, at times, my over-the-top reactions to a variety of relatively minor insults, from inconsiderate slights and improprieties had been an occasional bone of contention between Lara and me. Anyone that knew me, maybe especially Lara, knew that I was a guy who was more than happy to wade into conflict.

I couldn't decide if this was just the only insult she could wave at me in a pinch or she just wasn't thinking at all. She had to know that I wasn't a shrinking violet and that a challenge like that would only peak my interest in a clash. I began to wonder if she somehow wanted me to follow her and find her with another man, that she wanted to show me how thoroughly I'd been replaced.

I stewed on this question for a good hour, trying to talk myself into being cool and letting her go. No need to do something that might land me in jail. In the end though, my aggressive nature won out and I opted for more confrontation. I thought maybe I could put a little scare into the loving couple, or maybe, if I got lucky, get some pictures or other information that might supplement whatever Virgil could find; something that would make them both squirm a little.

@@@@@@@

I pulled into John Williamson's immense driveway about an hour later, looked around for Lara's car and spotted it parked in a guest space by the garage. I thought about sneaking about, maybe going around to the back of the house and looking through a few windows first, but opted for the direct approach, marched up the driveway and knocked loudly and obnoxiously long on the massive front door. I guess I expected some servant to answer, but was surprised when I heard a feminine voice calling out just prior to the door opening to reveal Danielle Williamson, barefoot, wearing a sundress, her hair in thick French braids and with tear streaks running down her pale, otherwise flawless face.

"Oh...Kevin...uh...what can I do for you?" She sniffled and rubbed her reddened nose and eyes as she spoke.

"I'm...I'm looking for Lara. Is she here?" I didn't want to take my anger out on Danielle so I tried to be neutral, but I know my tone was sharp, even a little pushy.

Danielle shook her head. "No. No she's not here." Her face clouded over and then she abruptly burst into tears. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm trying to keep things under control, but it's just so..."

I stepped toward her, put my hand on her shoulder and, as gently as possible, asked what, exactly was going on.

"Oh...I think you know. I think you know that Lara and John are..."

"Having an affair?"

She nodded, evidently unable to speak for a moment. As it occurred to me that Lara's affair was coldly ruining two marriages, causing heartache not just for me, but also for Danielle, my anger peaked again and I became hardened to the idea that she and John should pay some sort of a price for the way they'd betrayed their spouses.

Danielle had been looking at the ground and sniffling, sobbing gently to herself, but when she finally looked up, I caught her eye and asked, more forcefully than I intended. "Where are they?"

She grimaced and covered her mouth and trembling chin for a moment and then began to choke out an answer.

"I'm pretty sure they've gone to Sycamore Hill. She got here an hour ago and they both left in his car."

"Sycamore Hill?"

"It's...it's a getaway for us...sort of a lakeside retreat."

"How do I find it? Is 'Sycamore Hill' all I need to know?"

Danielle shook her head slowly. "I don't know Kevin, maybe you'd better not go there. You seem pretty angry and you don't want to..."

"I'm not going to be violent Danielle. I just want to give them a piece of my mind. That's all." The truth is, I wasn't sure if I'd be violent or not and I definitely wanted more than to give a piece of my mind. I wanted pictures and video and anything at all that could embarrass Lara and John. I wanted some sort of revenge and I wanted it as soon as possible. I spread my hands in a conciliatory, pleading gesture and waited for her to respond. She sniffled a few more times and then looked me in the eye.

"It's an hour or so north of here." She stretched her hand out, palm up towards me. "Let me see your cell phone, I'll put in the put it in your GPS."

@@@@@@

45 minutes later, I was carefully driving my car up a private one lane road flanked on either side by thick stands of Oaks and Maples and maybe even a Sycamore or two. The sun was just setting and in the gloaming I could barely make out the lights of what appeared to be a ridiculously oversized log cabin half a mile or so away.

I made a snap decision to preserve the element of surprise, so I pulled my car off the road and began making my way toward the cottage through the trees. The forest opened up on a broad lawn centered in front of the cottage and I paused when movement near a low security wall 30 or so feet in front of the house caught my eye. In the dim light, I could barely make out the form of a large man crouching behind the wall, evidently trying not to be seen from the driveway. I could only assume that he was some sort of a security detail that had been alerted by my approaching car and was waiting to detain me. Staying in the woods I circled around the lawn toward the lake shore at the back of the house and then, as quickly and quietly as possible, made my way to a porch overlooking the lake, mounted the steps and quietly opened an unlocked screen door.

I found myself in what appeared to be a giant living room that was styled in a sort of rustic opulence that only a man of John Williamson's means could achieve. The floors were burnished red oak partially covered in thick, luxurious rugs and furs, the furniture was all rich, soft leather and the walls were covered with western art, hunting trophies and shelves that contained small, wooden carvings. A huge stone fireplace, unlit, dominated the hall and a pair of stairways ran up either side of the room, giving access to an overlooking, railed walkway off of which projected perhaps a dozen or so doors.

I stood there for a moment unsure what to do or where to go next until I heard something coming from somewhere above me. Holding my breath, I just made out the faint sound of a voice or voices coming from one of the rooms off the upstairs walkway. Moving quietly up the stairs I also began to make out some background music, classical and romantic and could smell incense drifting down the hallway. By the time I was just outside the door, it became clear that I wasn't hearing a conversation, but rather, a loud, frantic, sexually charged exchange dominated by a female voice, Lara's voice. I could now hear every word with a sickening clarity and her pronouncements and the passion with which they were delivered made me grit my teeth until my jaw hurt and I began to see red.

"Fuck me John. Fuck me baby. Use me like your little toy, baby. Push baby, push harder baby. Faster. Oh I love what you do to me. I love what you do to me. I loooove what you do to me..."

Driving to Sycamore Hill, I decided on a plan that involved quietly finding a way to surreptitiously record their tryst and use the video, perhaps by releasing it through the internet, to cause the shit-head Williamson and my bitch of a wife as much public embarrassment as possible. But standing there outside the door, listening to my wife's unmitigated treachery as she begged the asshole to take what was supposed to be mine, I lost any desire to be subtle or quiet or controlled. I pulled my cell phone out of a jacket pocket, set it to video, threw open the door and burst into the room.

What I found was so disorienting that it took more than a few moments to understand what I was seeing.

Lara was standing in front of me, fully dressed in jeans and a pullover sweater, looking mildly surprised. I saw her put a cell phone to her ear and say something like 'he's here now. No, he's in the room right now.' While she was talking, the sounds of passionate lovemaking continued and I was able to discern that they were coming from a pair of speakers sitting on a desk immediately adjacent to a large, 4 poster bed.

The bed was turned down roughly with sheets in disarray and, lying in the middle, half propped up by some pillows jammed against the headboard, was John Williamson. He was on top of the sheets, motionless, wearing only a pair of white boxer shorts, his face a pale gray, and an ugly wound, welling with dark purple blood dominated the center of his chest.

I moved away from the door to get a closer look at John, almost not believing what I was seeing. I could hardly process the surreal combination of my wife talking in a nearly business-like manner on her cell phone with her disembodied sexualized voice percolating through incensed filled air while a dead man dressed only in his underwear reclined in the center of the room on an oversized bed.

I looked closer at the gray face, the lack of chest motion, the ugly, bloody wound looking for any sign of life, any possible way that I was interpreting this wrong, but it was clear that he was unequivocally dead, the very picture of death. I looked back to my wife who continued to talk on the phone. She looked at me without reacting, shaking her head as though she was frustrated with the way things were playing out. I looked back and forth a couple of times, literally unable to move, rubbing my hands through my hair, simultaneously struggling to make sense of what I was seeing and trying to form the will to act.

I was shaken out of my frozen confusion by the sound of approaching footsteps pounding up the stairs and over the walkway. I looked to the door to see a large, pale white man with a shaved head, almost certainly the security guard I'd seen earlier in the evening, plunge into the room. He carried what looked like a 38 revolver in his gloved left hand and some sort of stun gun in his right.

He looked to Lara when he entered the room and didn't seem to see me at first, but she gestured in my direction with a nod of her head and he turned to face me, our eyes locking. He took two rapid steps toward me and then abruptly raised his right hand and fired the stun gun while I instinctively ducked. The probes unspooled with a whirl and embedded into a wood beam beside the bed with a loud crack. I lunged away from the bed and scrambled to the nearest window and shattered it with a small piece of statuary before launching myself through, slicing my jacket and my pants, scraping both arms and lacerating my left leg as I passed through the broken glass to land on the roof of a fortuitously situated garage.

I looked back to the window and saw Shave-head appear. I knew he carried a gun and so, in desperation, I rolled off the garage before he could fire something fatal, falling to the ground with a thud and a grunt. From there I found my bearings and sprinted toward the woods and on to my car, my torn leg aching and my lungs burning as I ran faster and longer than I had in years. By the time I reached the car I was dizzy, exhausted and confused and my shaking hands could barely turn the key into the ignition. I glanced into the rear view mirror and saw lights coming down the drive, so I stomped on the gas and, barely in control of the car, careened through the woods until I made the main highway.



Sycamore Hill Pt. 02

I had no idea what to do, where to go or even, what exactly, was going on. I drove randomly for an hour or so, skirting the smaller communities around the lake, taking care to avoid spending too much time in one area. My leg hurt badly, I had a terrible headache and I couldn't seem to think clearly. I immersed in a thick fog of confusion and my sense of panic wasn't helping me to sort things out. In retrospect, calling the police and reporting the incident seems like the obvious move, but in the moment I was unsure of anything, let alone if or how the police would react if I reported the incident.

Driven by fear and by instinct I started to make my way toward home before it occurred to me that this would be the first place shave-head would look. I decided I needed to go somewhere safe, but someplace relatively unexpected, so I began indirectly making my way back to the one person in the area I thought I could trust.

It was nearly 10 o'clock when I found myself standing outside of Virgil's apartment, hesitantly reaching up to knock on his door. He answered it with an air of annoyance that abruptly turned to surprise and then concern as he noted my condition; bloody leg, torn clothes, babbling semi-coherently about guns and cheating wives and a rich, dead man.

Virgil quickly pulled me inside and cleared his debris covered couch, throwing armfuls of clothes and pizza boxes onto the floor and ordered me to lie down, take off my pants and shut up for a few minutes. He momentarily disappeared into his bathroom and returned with a brown bottle which he uncapped and then proceeded to pour the contents over my leg wound. The pain was sudden, deep and electric and my response was to jerk my leg away and yell at Virgil.

"What the hell is that? What are you doing?"

Virgil looked a little annoyed, shrugged his shoulders and replied. "It's peroxide man. The cut looks bad and I figured we'd better clean it up some. It's either this or some Vodka I have in the kitchen. I thought this seemed like the better choice."

I grunted in agreement but reached out and grabbed the peroxide and proceeded to drizzle it over my leg. Virgil left for the kitchen and came back with a clean towel and some duct tape. I looked at him quizzically.

"Bandage." He said flatly, answering my unspoken question and kneeling by my leg. He folded the towel up, pressed it against the wound and firmly duct taped it to my leg.

"Ok, that should hold for a while. Now, put your pants back on before I get too creeped out. I'll get you something to drink."

I painfully pulled my pants back on and Virgil returned from the kitchen with a couple of beers. He shoved one into my hand and fell onto the couch next to me.

We sat there silently for a few minutes sipping our beers and starring at the trash on the floor until Virgil finally cleared his throat and turned to me.

"So, can you tell me what the hell happened to you without sounding like some sort of a coked up auctioneer?"

I smiled grimly and proceeded to describe to him, as carefully and as controlled as possible, about the strange experience I'd had that night. He listened intently and his expression changed from interest to concern to borderline disbelief as I recounted the events at Sycamore Hill. After I was done, he shook his head as he considered the story.

"You call the police?"

"No."

"Why not? You busted in on a murder. You ought to get the police involved, for your own safety if nothing else."

"I...I just want to think about what to do for a while. I swear to God it with the way they were waiting for me there, Lara talking on the phone, the shaved headed dude firing at me, it was some sort of a setup and I don't know if the police are already after me. And...I just don't get it. If she was having an affair with John Williamson, why have him killed and set me up? It...it just doesn't make sense to me. I want to understand what the hell is going on. I need information. Something...to...try and figure this out."

Virgil pursed his lips and looked at me, evidently weighing whether he should say what was on his mind.

"Are you sure she was having an affair with Williamson? Positive?"

I was incredulous that he'd even ask the question. "Well, shit Virgil. You saw the e-mails. I told you about how she was acting at the fucking party. And...and she admitted it when she left. I mean she threw it right in my face, called me a wimp and announced she was going to him. How the fuck much surer can I be?"

Virgil answered in a calm, measured tone. "Well, from where I sit, she made it pretty easy for you to think she was with Williamson and, honestly, knowing your history, the way she taunted you today was like...like the perfect bait to make you chase her down."

I swallowed hard as I considered what he'd said and pressed my eyes closed in an effort to concentrate against a growing headache.

"Shit Virgil, maybe...maybe she's in with somebody else. Maybe that shaved headed guy. Fuck, I don't even know if I'm playing a game, let alone who I might be playing against. I mean, if you're right, then we have to find out all over again who she's fucking."

"Kevin...let me ask you something." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand nervously while I opened my hands in a gesture to proceed.

"Did you and Lara do some...uh...kinky stuff from time to time?"

The question had come out of nowhere and I couldn't see the relevance.

"What? What's that got to do with what's going on?"

"Humor me for a minute. Anything kinky games at all?"

"Like what Virgil? I mean we've tried a few things like most couples but nothing I'd really consider...kinky. "

"Like...like...well, you know about amateur porn sites right? Couples that like to tape themselves and post it on the net?"

"Sure."

"Well?"

"Huh? Wait, no we don't do that at all, I mean...what? What's this about?"

Virgil rubbed his hands together for a minute and then, in a vaguely reluctant manner wandered to the kitchen table, retrieved Lara's computer and set it on a box in front of the couch. He opened it up and pounded out a few keystrokes before turning it to me.

"Here. Take a look at this video while I...uh...use the bathroom... for a while. Let me know what you think when I get back."

Virgil shuffled out of the room without looking back and loudly shut the bathroom door behind him, signaling that I was alone.

I started the video and within moments felt a sickening lump form in my gut. I'd seen porn before, pictures, videos of all kinds, couples, lesbians, single girls, the whole gamut that most every guy in America indulges in from time to time. But I'd never seen porn that included my wife and I'd certainly never seen myself and I never dreamed that the night she offered me her ass we were being filmed.

I watched with increasing horror as she spread the lube on her ass, as I hesitantly stepped forward and eventually witness my penetration of her ass. I watched for a couple of minutes or less before the pain, revulsion and embarrassment become too much, and shut it down, pinching my eyes shut as if I could extirpate the vision through simple physical effort.

After a while, Virgil made his way back out and sat quietly on the floor by the computer. I could barely look him in the eye.

"Uh...let me explain. She...she...oh God this is so fucking weird..."

"You didn't know you were being filmed at all?"

"Hell no. At the time I wasn't even sure it wasn't some sort of a trap to see if I'd respect her or something. It was completely out of character for her to ask for it and the idea that she'd arranged to have it filmed..." My head was starting to hurt so badly, it felt like the pressure would push my eyes out, I closed them and pushed the heels of my hands into my sockets as hard as I could and slowly spoke to Virgil through the darkness.

"How is this even related to the shit-storm I walked into tonight?"

"It may not be, but...listen, we're looking for someone that might behind this whole thing, someone that got Lara involved, because it doesn't make sense she put this all together herself, right?"

I nodded to him in agreement and he continued. "So, this video... it was attached to an e-mail thread between Lara and some guy that kept asking if she'd gotten it done, like he was daring her or forcing her to do it, and the video was like some sort of proof that she'd gone through with it. I have to wonder if he was, I don't know, maybe checking to see how far she'd go for him."

"What? Why would some guy want to force her to have ass-sex with her husband? That doesn't make any sense. None of this does."

"Yeah, well, I'm not sure it has to make sense at this point, but at least it gives us somewhere to start looking to see who is pulling the strings and why."

Virgil turned to the computer and started banging through some keys. "Hold on, let me get this one e-mail and read it." In less than a minute I saw him raise his eyebrows in recognition. "Ok...here it is...just listen to this, it's from this mystery dude."

He began reading the e-mail in a loud, authoritarian voice, taking on the tone of the message itself.

"Lara, you know me well enough that if you don't do what I say, I will end our relationship. If I can't trust you to do something simple, how can I trust you with my love? How can I trust you to carry out our plans so that we can be together? I'm taking a huge risk for us. You need to show me that you have what it takes and I need to show you what kind of man your husband really is."

He looked over to me and raised his eyebrows, gauging my reaction, which was undoubtedly one of confusion and disgust. I nodded my head weakly.

"OK." Virgil continued. "So Lara answers with an e-mail that she got it done and that she sees the light and was ready to do whatever she was asked."

My head was still spinning in confusion when I mumbled out a question asking if Virgil had any idea who was pulling Lara's strings.

He licked his lips and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands in back of his head. "Some guy named Danny." He said flatly. "You or Lara know a guy of that name that might have a reason to want Williamson dead?"

Virgil's question struck me like an icepick to the chest and, suddenly, in my mind's eye, I could see a seemingly distraught, gorgeous blond woman with perfect skin and a knockout body crying her eyes out as she gave me the directions to her husband's death scene.

"Yeah. I do. Only, Danny isn't a guy."

Combing through the e-mails felt like sitting in the middle of some kind of intervention in which the uncaring participants goal was to get you to see that you are a naïve asshole that everyone hates.

The plot to knock off John Williamson was never directly discussed, but occasionally alluded to and I was discussed in varying, rather derogatory terms, including 'the oaf', 'the prick', and 'the patsy'. The last term made it clear to me what my role in the Williamson murder was meant to be and it occurred to both Virgil and me that it was time to contact the police.

"Should we call?" Virgil asked.

"No, I want to get out of here. Let's just go to the station and bring the laptop. I don't want any misunderstandings. Let's take your car, I don't feel like driving right now."

I picked up the laptop and started limping toward the door, Virgil grabbed his keys and we left the apartment and rounded a corner on the outside walkway to take the stairs down to the parking lot.

As I passed a small alcove opening to some apartment doors, I heard a brief shuffle and then a very distinctive click and turned to find myself looking down the barrel of a gun, held steadily at my head by the shave-headed thug from Sycamore Hill.

"Don't move asshole, don't move at all. One little twitch from you or your friend and I'll blow your head off." His voice was thick and deep with a hint of some sort of an east coast accent. From behind me I could hear Virgil starting to hyperventilate, mumbling out a choked cry.

"Oh God, oh shit..."

Shave-head smiled grimly. "Now, I want you to slowly bend down and lay the laptop on the ground and slide it to me."

There was no advantage in disobeying, so I did as he said, as slowly and carefully as possible. Shave-head made no move to pick it up, but rather pushed it against the wall with the side of his foot.

"OK. Now, I want your car keys."

At this point, I thought I'd play for time and started to shake my head as if to say I didn't have them on me.

Shave-head flared his nostrils and spoke to me through gritted teeth in a clear, malevolent voice. "Fucking give them to me now, because if you don't, one of two things are going to happen. I'll shoot you for the hell of it right away or I'll search you, find them and then shoot you for the hell of it."

I nodded, shrugged my shoulders in capitulation and slowly retrieved the keys from my front pocket to dangle them by two fingers in front of Shave-head. He reached forward and I quickly tossed them over his head, distracting him as I threw myself over the railing to the alley below and felt an electric shock run through my ankle and already injured thigh as I landed.

Ignoring the pain, I made my way to the edge of the building, turned the corner and staggered down an alleyway that was partially blocked by a large, jet black, limousine, the motor still running and one of the passenger doors open.

Leaning against the trunk, still wearing the French braids and clad in the sundress, was the small, seemingly inconsequential figure of Danielle Williamson, holding some sort of a baton in her right hand, her face a mixture of exasperation and surprise. She stood and took a step toward me, raising the baton in front of her, holding it like it was some sort of a sword, but I kept stumbling onward, thinking that even with a hurt ankle and a throbbing thigh, she couldn't offer any real resistance.

I was wrong though. As she shoved the baton into my right shoulder, I caught a glimpse of two spikes projecting from the end and then felt an electrical explosion that stopped me in my tracks and then sent me to my knees as she kept it pressed against me. I lost the ability to support myself and fell to the ground, where she continued the shock until I found myself rolling up into the fetal position, unable to move, barely able to breathe.

And then she spoke. But the voice I heard had none of the softness of the woman I'd met at the party or the vulnerability of the crying wife I'd encountered the evening before. Her speech was direct and harsh and sent a chill through my very core.

"Stay the hell down or I'll shock you until you're a fucking zombie."

She called out to the Shave-head and he shouted something back that I didn't understand and a few minutes later appeared with Virgil, literally in tow, his hands bound together with zip ties, clothesline wrapped multiple times around his torso with one end free to act as a sort of leash. She looked at Shave-head and gestured toward me while keeping the stun baton a few inches from my chest. He nodded and opened up a satchel, pulling out some zip ties and a long length of clothesline and proceeded to bind my wrists and truss me up identically to Virgil, all while I tried to suppress m y ever increasing sense of panic.

"What now?"

The voice came from in back of me, soft and unsure, completely familiar but strangely alien at the same time. I turned awkwardly and saw Lara standing in the flickering light of a dying streetlamp. She was an ill-defined silhouette, and it was hard to see her clearly, but I could make out a stun baton, similar to what Danielle carried, in her left hand and a handgun, probably a 9mm in her right. She assiduously avoided looking at me while she waited for an answer, looking only toward Danielle. Our love had clearly died some time ago, but the idea that she was part of some sort of murderous plot with me as the patsy made my insides turn cold.

Quietly, desperately, I called her name and tried to make eye-contact, but Shave-head raised the 38 to my face, told me to shut up and then ordered me to stand. Between my sprained ankle, the thigh laceration and my tied hands I could barely make it to my feet, rising like a drunken bum.

Trevor, the Shave-head, turned to Lara and tossed her the keys, asking if she'd found my car.

"Yea, it's over there." She said, pointing vaguely to the parking lot.

The Shave-head grunted. "Ok, let's go." He said giving Virgil and me a shove in the direction of the car.

We took a couple of steps before Danielle told him to stop. With some annoyance she barked out that the original plans were off because we'd seen her and that we might as well get in the limo for the first half of the ride and have Lara take my car to the meeting place. Trevor gave her a questioning look, but she took a step toward him and mumbled something under her breath about keeping me separate from Lara as much as possible. He nodded and then looked to Lara.

"You know the place?"

"Yea, sure." Her voice sounded unsure, disappointed.

"OK, then. Take his car and we'll meet you there."

She nodded to him, turned and began walking briskly in the direction of my car while Trevor herded Virgil and me into the back seat of the Limo.

The limo was spacious, with plush leather bench seats facing each other across a carpeted open area. Faint running lights partially illuminated the inside of the car. Danielle climbed into the seat facing us, holding the stun baton as well as the 38 that Trevor had been carrying. She trained the gun on us both and strongly insisting we sit still and say nothing. Trevor settled into the driver's seat , briefly glanced into the back to make sure everything was ok and then smoothly guided the car out of the alley and onto the surface streets.

We were heading, north, probably towards either the mansion or Sycamore Hill. Through the limo's running lights and the streetlights that flashed through the windows like a washed out strobe, I tried to take the measure of the other riders. Trevor seemed nervous. His hands gripping and ungripping the wheel as he drove, occasionally let out long, low breaths as if he'd was intermittently holding his breath. Virgil looked like a frightened child, nervously glancing around the car, beads of sweat appearing on his face, too scared to make conversation and too anxious to sit still. I had to wonder if I looked more or less the same. Danielle was oozing confidence and seemed almost bored. She continued to eye us with unconcealed contemptuous amusement, lazily point the gun in our general direction, checking her watch every few minutes.

The fear and uncertainty were generating a sort of nervous energy that made me feel as if my heart was going to explode as well as a kind of paralyzing confusion. But my mind was screaming at me to do something, that my life was hanging by a thread and I was just sitting there watching it tick away.

I decided I had nothing to lose, so I started talk, trying a bluff at first, hoping that I could shake Danielle up. I tried to put some confidence in my voice, but I could hear my own tremulousness when I spoke.

"You know I've called the police. They know what's up so there's no way that whatever you're trying to do here is going to work. "

Her eyes narrowed and she looked at me with angry contempt and I thought for sure she'd tell me to shut up, but then her expression softened to a sort of smug smile before she let out a condescending laugh.

"I rather doubt that Kevin. It's become rather evident over the last few months that you aren't particularly bright, so let me point out some things that should have been obvious to you by now. Your phone has been cloned and we've got a tracer on your car, so we know you haven't called anyone at all and we know exactly where you've been all night. I suppose you could have used Virgil's phone, but I rather doubt that or you wouldn't be turning, what is the phrase from that song? "A whiter shade of pale?"

She stretched lazily and actually let out an exaggerated yawn, feigning boredom.

"In any case, we have little choice but to act as though the police don't know anything. We certainly can't just let you go now, can we?"

"You could run..."

"And leave all that money my poor dead husband would leave to me? I don't think so, Kevin. No, I'm afraid there's no way around the fact that the police are going to find a grisly murder and you will be the one to blame. But it will be tough for you to defend yourself because you'll be dead too. The jealous husband, finding his wife with the rich, philandering businessman, shoots the lover and then turns the gun on himself." She shook her head in mock dismay. "So...very...tragic. But, it's a common story really."

I'm sure my face gave away my puzzlement as I tried to digest what she'd just said. I began to babble.

"Yea, well I think your story is full of holes. I don't own a fucking gun, so the police will wonder about that. And what the hell kind of a guy invites his friend over for a murder suicide? Or...or...or shoots the lover but doesn't plug the wife? Huh? Nobody will buy this at all..."

She groaned in mock exasperation, cutting my diatribe off.

"Oh God you are really dumb, aren't you? "I probably shouldn't really tell you this, but what the hell Kevin, what the hell." She leaned forward as if to tell a secret, smiling smugly.

"First off I think it's a pretty fucking good story. Especially since you'll be using the gun you bought at a gun show a couple of days after half of the charity staff saw your wife essentially dry hump my husband at a the party and then watched you drag her out by the arm, practically kicking and screaming."

"I didn't buy a gun..."

She laughed again.

"Well, that's not what your credit card statement shows, or the records at the gun show for that matter. They'll both say that you bought a 38." She tapped the gun with her stun baton. "This 38, in fact."

She paused as she let that sink in and then started again, gesturing toward Virgil with the baton.

"Now, we didn't plan on your friend here coming along, so he's going to run into some problems in some other part of town. Probably something like a heroin overdose. I suspect nobody will even know he's missing for a few days. There may be an odd piece of evidence here or there, but I'm quite confident that the police will put the scene together the way I've constructed it and make all the loose ends tie themselves up."

I swallowed hard, trying to think of some hole in her story.

"Come on, that won't fly. Do you really think they aren't going to notice your husband was dead for 5 or 6 hours longer than me?"

"Ah...those timelines get fuzzy if the bodies aren't discovered right away, after a few days..."

"After a few days? Lara's going to tell them she hung out for a few days before calling them? You haven't thought this through. The police aren't that stupid."

Danielle studied me with a blank, incredulous look, shaking her head in gentle disbelief as though I was some sort of remedial student that was simply not grasping the obvious. Nothing was said for a moment or two when, out of nowhere, Virgil interrupted, his voice tired and strained.

"Kevin...they're going to kill her too. They're going to find 3 bodies there. All dead by the same gun."

The truth of what he said was immediately obvious to me and I found myself looking at Danielle with even more disgust, blurting out the first thing that crossed my mind.

"My God...you're a fucking monster. " `

Evidently resolved to drop any pretense about what was actually planned, Danielle cocked her head,, looked me right in the eye and smirked.

"So, why do you care? Hmm? She shouldn't mean shit to you at this point and frankly, she doesn't mean shit to me. She's just a tool to me, like everyone else I meet. A tool to use and then discard when it ceases to be useful. "

I'm pretty sure I'd come across sociopaths at school and at work, but I'd never had one so blatantly express their contempt and general misanthropy in such explicit terms. I opened my mouth to respond, but realized there was nothing I could say that would shake Danielle up about the planned murders, so I turned to the Shave-head instead.

"So, Trevor, if Danny here uses everyone as a tool to get what she wants, how you fit in?"

He looked briefly into the rear view mirror and with the force and abruptness of a dog's bark responded.

"Shut the fuck up."

Danielle laughed and leaned forward.

"Trevor and I go way back. We've been together since I was 14 and he's the one person that means anything to me. Without him, I wouldn't have survived the boredom and banality of High School with all the disgusting little pimply boys and vacuous girls. He's the one man-the one person-that I need. So, you can talk all you want, but, really your transparent attempts to create some sort of tension between us are just pathetic. You have to remember your place; you're just another tool and have been for months."

She still sounded confident, but I caught just a whiff of vulnerability, of worry, when I challenged Trevor about her trustworthiness, so I decided to push some more.

"How the hell can Trevor trust you? You probably say the same crap about anybody you need when they're around. I'm sure Lara thinks you and she are true lovers or something."

Trevor glanced in the mirror again and said something under his breath, but Danielle reached back and patted his shoulder without taking her eyes off me.

"You know Kevin, you're an annoying , stupid little fuck. I'm carrying a gun here and you are trying to be provocative."

"Well, so what? I'm dead before the nights over anyway, right? What the hell difference does it make to me if I die here now or in a couple of ours? I'll guess it matters to you some though, since I doubt very much you'd want to plug me right here. "

I started to lean toward her, moving my bound hands toward her slowly but with purpose. "In fact, what, exactly is going to keep me from trying to take away..."

Keeping the gun pointed directly at me, Danielle quickly reached for something at her feet and produced a long black stick.

"Move one inch closer and I'll have to taze you." She said matter of factly, and then, casually reached over to Virgil and touched the stick to his exposed, sockless shin just above the shoe. Virgil's response reminded me of a drawing I'd seen of a soldier who was dying of tetanus, his fists clenched, his back arched severely upward and his teeth clamped into a painful appearing rictus. A moment after pulling back the Taser, Virgil collapsed back onto the bench seat, unconscious but breathing raggedly.

"Would you like another taste?"

I was speechless for a moment, watching my friend convulse, but tried to avoid looking too rattled. "Why taze him? You just like me better or something?"

"No, but I don't want to have to clean you up if you shit your pants, it would make the crime scene a little harder to explain."

"You think you've thought of everything."

"I have."

I raised my eyebrows at her arrogance.

"You know you'll miss something. This will stink like yesterday's garbage and the police will be all over this with a fine tooth comb. I'm guessing your bald boyfriend there probably has some sort of a record, even if you don't, and that combined with the amount of money involved here is going to get their investigative juices flowing."

For the first time, I saw a flicker of doubt cloud Danielle's face, but this was quickly replaced by anger and she leaned forward with the baton extended and I braced for a shock. But then she backed off and laughed.

"Don't try and think so much Kevin, you aren't good at it. Neither of us have records that are discoverable. And besides, why be suspicious of me or Trev when the killer is obvious? It will all see very, very...typical to the police, I'm quite sure of that."

"You think you can pull off the grieving widow act?"

"I can pull anything off. As you know I'm quite the actress and I'm quite convincing. People do what I want because I am what they want."

I snorted with as much contempt as I could muster. "God, what an ego."

"It's not bragging if it's true, Kevin."

She spit out my name like it was a bug that had somehow found its way into her mouth. "Take your darling little wife, for example. She went from the devoted, loving spouse to my little plaything within a matter of weeks and from there it was a hop, skip and a jump to becoming my accomplice in a plan to have my husband...eliminated. A plan that included having you take the fall. Oh, she had some guilty moments from time to time and even mentioned backing out once, but I gave her an ultimatum and she came back to me, begging for another chance, swearing she'd do anything to get back into my bed."

Danielle leaned forward, her eyes locking into mine, demanding my full attention, a malevolent grin oozing from her lips. "And you know what I did then, Kevin? I made her prove her love to me by doing something completely odious, something that, to her, was so disgusting that it took an act of supreme will and love for me to make her way through it."

I looked back at her with a blank face, trying to process what she was telling me.

"Why, don't you know Kevin? I made her have sex with you. And I made her give you her ass. Humiliating, isn't it? To know that sex with you was a sort of punishment? Some horrible ordeal to have to go through to prove her love to me."

She paused to smirk, letting out an arrogant little laugh.

"And then do you know what I did? I convinced her it was rape. I twisted her little mind to see that since she didn't want it and because she hated it, that you must have forced it on her, even though it was her idea—really, my idea—in the first place. So, by the time I was done with her, she was not only completely in love with me, but she hated you. She hated you enough to sell you down the proverbial river, just like a good little tool."

I grit my teeth and waited for a tidal wave of humiliated anger to wash over me before responding, again, as cool and calm as I could in order to limit her satisfaction to the absolute minimum.

"You don't control nearly as much as you think you do. You certainly can't control me."

"Oh, you are so wrong. I could have done things directly you know. Seduced you, turned you into my little plaything and made you kill John yourself, just to be with me. But that would have been a little...messy. It's hard to keep men from bragging to their friends and I might have had some difficulty if it became known that I'd let you fuck me."

"You're insane if you think you could get me to..."

"What you don't think I'd be able to turn you into a little puppet after we had sex? You're not giving your libido enough credit and you're giving your sense of dignity way too much..."

"No, I don't even think you'd have gotten me in bed."

She laughed. "Oh come now, with the looks you gave me at the party? Or even earlier today when I was the femme fatale? You were dying to put an arm around me for comfort, and from there it's a breeze for a woman like me to get a man in bed. What the hell makes you think you'd be able to hold out?"

I let her question sit in the air for a minute and then answered, as casually as my rapidly beating heart allowed.

"I have a rule that I follow pretty strictly when it comes to sex..."

"A rule? Don't make me laugh. Rules of fidelity are like tiny speed bumps for me."

"Oh, it's not about fidelity." I paused for effect and she looked at me with an element of curiosity, waiting for me to finish. "It's just that I only have sex with human beings. And you don't really qualify."

Her eyes popped open in sudden, unpleasant surprise and then quickly narrowed to thin, angry, snakelike slits as she reflexively reached for the Taser and brought it towards me again. Trying to keep any advantage I simply laughed.

"What? Is the queen bitch losing her control?"

Her facial features had hardened into a permanent mask of anger and disgust and she began to spit out words as if they were made of acid.

"I'm losing control, says the chump with the gun pointed at him. Remember Kevin, I've manipulated you from day one. It took a little longer than I wanted because you are considerably more stupid than I thought. I mean, honestly, how could you not think your wife was fucking John after that party? Any real man would have started investigating then. But no, not you, you had to keep trying to...what exactly? Save your marriage?"

She laughed again, a bitter, mocking sound that hit me like fingernails on a chalkboard. "So we had to go farther. We had to literally make you read about it on her computer in order to get you to figure things out. But once you caught on, you were as predictable as we thought, taking the bait and charging out like an enraged bull. In the end you made it so very easy."

I did my best to keep a semblance of a smirk while she delivered her diatribe. "I may have taken the bait, but I can't imagine this..." I gestured to the car and Virgil. "...this is how it was supposed to go. Dragging us at gunpoint back to the scene of the crime after Mr. Clean here lets me escape through window? This was your plan?"

"Plans change, but the result will be the same." She turned her head away from me, and it was clear that our exchange was over.

A few minutes later, we pulled off on a side road for half a mile, eventually stopping amongst some dumpsters and scattered trash in an alleyway between a couple of stores at a warn out strip mall. We sat for a minute, evidently waiting for Lara, Virgil and I anxiously looking around while Danielle kept her gun on us, quietly whispering a couple of things to Shave-head.

Finally, Lara arrived in my car, parked in back of the limo and jumped out awkwardly, nearly falling down as rushed toward us. Trevor the Shave-head waited until she got to the limo and then climbed out of the driver's seat, opened the rear door to help Danielle out, taking the gun from her and keeping his eye on us the whole time. Shave-head started herding us toward our car as Lara stood next to Danielle, nervously rocking back and forth from one foot to the next to Danielle, mostly looking at her, but occasionally glancing over to Virgil and me.

I didn't know Lara anymore, didn't know her mind or understand her at all really. But it seemed pretty clear that she had very little understanding of Danielle, her plans or the eventual end game and I had to believe that if I could get her to see the truth, the plan might start to unravel. I tried to catch her eye, but it was too dark, so I called out to her, yelling out that she was making a mistake, that she was being duped. Trevor immediately brought a Taser to my neck and hissed an insistent warning that I stop making any noise at all. He shoveled Virgil into the front passenger seat of my car and pushed me into the back seat, forcing me to slide over to the driver's side. He climbed in afterwards and started talking in a low, threatening voice, the gun trained on me, the Taser at the back of Virgil's neck.

"Ok boys, this is the way it's going to be for the ride to Sycamore Hill. Any sound out of either of you...and I mean ANY sound, and Virgil here gets a shock. A second sound, a second shock at a higher setting. If either of you push me, I'll fucking shock him to death, OK? Got it?"

We nodded mutely in response.

Danielle led Lara by the hand to my side of the car, and knocked on my window, forcing Shave-head to lean across me and roll it down. She whispered something about keeping me in line and then pulled away, motioning him to keep the window open as she smirked at me.

Danielle turned to Lara and put her hands gently on her shoulders, commanding my wife's undivided, worshipful attention. She began speaking in a soft, soothing, sexy voice, just loud enough for me to make out that she was telling her how much she loved her, wanted her, was looking forward to being with her and that their time was almost there. She added that I was still the only thing that could get in her way and that Lara shouldn't listen to anything her bitter, jealous husband had to say. All through this rather sickening one-sided conversation of unadulterated lies, Lara signaled her agreement by nodding her head, almost like a child anxious to please a doting parent.

Danielle then gently put both hands on Lara's face and slowly moved in to kiss her, Lara accepting her lips with her eyes closed and her waiting mouth partially open . Lara was noticeably trembling and her knees buckled slightly, giving her the appearance of being considerably shorter than Danielle, even though they were roughly the same height. The kiss became increasingly passionate and sexual, Lara letting out little moans each time Danielle's tongue probed into her mouth, her left hand, the one without the gun, running up and down Danielle's side.

When the kiss finally broke, Lara was left panting as though she'd just run a desperate race while Danielle turned to smirk at me once again, making it clear that the kiss was mostly a performance meant to further rub my nose in the fact of the total sexual capitulation of my wife to her. Lara kept staring lovingly, expectantly at Danielle and I could only turn my head in impotent anger and frustration.

A few minutes later we were riding silently toward Sycamore Hill, Lara driving, Trevor still pointing a gun at me and holding a Taser to the back of Virgil's neck. Other than the occasional, muted sound of a passing car, we rode in utter silence, barely daring to breathe loudly, let alone speak.

I figured the drive to Sycamore Hill would be around an hour and there had been occasions when that seemed like a long time to me. But with the bleak reality that my life would likely be snuffed out at the end of the hour, I could feel the minutes ticking by like seconds, like I'd been pushed off a cliff and I could see the ground rushing up to me. I knew I should have been thinking about a plan, any plan, to try and get out of this mess alive, but my mind kept racing from topic to topic as the panic born of a fear of dying began to set in.

I thought of my parents and how they'd handle the news that I'd been killed in some sort of jealous rage, how my mom would likely blame my dad because he'd been the one to encourage me to be aggressive and confrontational. I thought of my friends and how I'd let work, married life and social laziness get in the way of enjoying their company. I thought of my work and my hobbies, sports and music and how I really enjoyed so many things in life. And I thought of Lara and shook my head in continued disbelief at what the woman I loved had become.

A couple of miles away from Sycamore Hill it came to me that since continuing to go along with Danielle's plan would mean death, that doing anything at all was better than voluntarily lying down in my grave. As we pulled up the drive I still had no other plan than to try and get through to Lara somehow, even if it meant risking a shock from Trevor.

Lara pulled my car off the driveway and parked it in a semi-concealed area behind some bushes that were immediately adjacent to the woods I'd navigated the night before. Trevor jumped out of the car and began barking out orders like a cantankerous guard dog, pulling open the doors and hustling Virgil and me out.

He tied a length of rope around my bound wrists and handed the other end to Lara who slipped the loop around her left hand that now also held a baton. Swearing softly he went back to the car and rummaged through the back seat for a moment until he produced another similar rope. He approached Virgil and ordered him to put his hands up so that he could rope him off also, but Virgil simply remained standing without moving, looked over to me and then back to Trevor and then, without any warning whatsoever, bolted for the woods.

Trevor swore loudly and exploded after him, his feet pounding away at a gravel walkway while he yelled for Lara to take me to the cabin. She immediately yanked on the rope around my wrists and began walking briskly up the driveway, effectively pulling me like a reluctant dog on a leash. She wasn't taking chances, sidestepping her way up the driveway with her head cranked over her shoulder so that she could watch me the whole time, the gun in her free hand pointed squarely at the center of my chest. Between the gun and the Taser and my bound wrists, overpowering Lara seemed out of the question. But at least we were alone now and I had my first, and probably only chance to chip away at her resolve and penetrate the delusional fantasy world that Danielle had constructed of lies, lust and false love.

And so, I began to talk. Slowly at first, carefully probing with ideas or comments, observing her reaction, trying to find something effective and then, more quickly and with more desperation as the time I had to turn her mind around began slipping away.

I told her that the plan would never work, that she'd end up in jail, that if she stopped now and ran she might have a chance of freedom with Danielle. I told her she wasn't thinking clearly and that she'd eventually wake up and hate herself for what she was doing, that she could never be happy in a relationship built off murder and betrayal.

By the time we'd reached the house and stood in the great room, waiting for Trevor to return with Virgil, she hadn't answered or blinked or even said anything beyond one or two word orders, acting like an emotionless automaton.

But when I began describing Danielle as a bitch of a con artist that couldn't be trusted, the icy cold façade that had become Lara's face broke and I saw a flicker of anger and doubt. She opened her mouth to speak but then closed it again, retraining the pistol at my chest, her eyes narrowing, her jaw clenched.

It was the first reaction of any kind that I'd gotten, so I pressed my argument forward as quickly and loudly as I could.

"She's a user Lara. She's using you. She doesn't love you, she never has. She's turned you against me so that I could be a patsy in her scheme to..."

Abruptly and without warning Lara screamed her response, thrusting the pistol toward my chest.

"Shut up Kevin. Shut the fuck up. This is all for me and for her. She loves me more than you ever could. She loves me..."

Her voice was becoming strained with an intense shrillness that somehow gave away a sense of doubt about what she'd been saying. We began shouting over each other.

"She doesn't love you. She's fucking using you. I loved you..."

"You didn't love me. You raped me. You raped me and she is saving me from you..."

"I never raped you...you asked me...I asked you. I didn't force anything on you."

"...you fucking humiliated me...just like she said you would. And now you're trying to weasel away the truth because you're scared."

Suddenly we stopped yelling, eyeing each other, our breaths coming in deep, nervous spasms. I was frantically searching my mind for any argument that could make Lara see the truth, see that I hadn't betrayed her but that Danielle would and that she'd suffer the same fate as John Williamson and me. My mind skipped across all the possible things I could say that might possibly break through Lara's psychological barriers and let her see the light, but I could think of nothing, not my protestations of love, not the contents of my conversations with Danielle not even an appeal to common sense was going to make any impact at all. I knew that Lara would have to see for herself where, exactly, she stood with Danielle and Trevor and it occurred to me that would eventually come just moments before the end. If nothing else, I could at least make her alert to that eventuality.

I slowed my breathing and tried to lock into Lara's eyes, tried to get her full, undivided attention.

"Listen to me Lara. Listen to me. You and Danielle were setting me up as Williamson's killer, but she was also setting me up as your killer. The police aren't going to find two bodies; they're going to find three. They'll find me and Williamson all right, the husband and the lover; but they'll also find..."

"Shut up Kevin. Don't you fucking say another thing..."

"Think Lara. Think. Why do you have to be in the room at all but not Danielle? Don't you think Trevor could handle this on his own? If Danielle really cared about your safety wouldn't she keep you out of the way? There's really only one good reason that you had to be there and it wasn't to help Trevor."

Lara was shaking her head angrily, but I could see an element of anxiety appear in her face, I could see the doubt grow.

"They were going to find you on the bed with your lover and me at the foot and we'd all be dead. All the witnesses dead..."

Suddenly Lara screamed and fired the gun into the ceiling, stopping my diatribe short as my mouth turned to cotton and my heart rolled over in my chest.

"If you fucking say another word...one more fucking word...I swear to God I'll shoot you right here and now."

As she re-aimed the gun to my chest, I raised my shaking hands in a gesture of uneasy truce, slowly nodding my head in agreement, hoping that she would calm down and maybe think about what I'd said.

We stood there for a lifetime—or for a few minutes if you believed the clock on the wall -like two angry statues facing each other in a confrontation empty of sound except for our ragged breathing and the blood rushing through my ears.

The silent standoff came to an abrupt end when the front door banged open and Trevor pounded into the room swearing fluently about the problems that Virgil's presence had caused. He stopped in the great room; legs spread slightly, his gun in his right hand, his hand rubbing his bald scalp, taking in the scene for a moment before looking pointedly at Lara.

"Did I hear a gunshot?"

Lara took in a breath and answered in a reluctant stammer. "I...I had to fire a...a warning shot into the ceiling."

"Well...shit." Trevor stated flatly, looking up at the ceiling 30 feet above his head. "It doesn't look like it did any damage so I doubt anyone is going to notice."

He jerked his head toward the upstairs bedroom. "Take him up to the bedroom, I'll meet you there in a second."

Lara nodded obediently and gave a savage tug to the rope before starting toward the stairs. The march toward the bedroom brought us close together and I, one last time, attempted to foster some doubt in Lara, whispering hoarsely as we climbed the treads.

"Lara...listen to me. When he gets into the bedroom he's position you in some way to set up the crime scene, maybe get you on the bed somehow so he can shoot you next to Williamson. But first, he's going to tell you to get rid of your gun. Whatever you do, don't put your gun down. Just don't put it down..."

She turned and looked at me, her face a contorted mask of hate and disdain, briefly waving the gun in front of my face as a warning gesture. She didn't say anything, her expression was sufficient and I stopped talking.

I felt a sickening sense of déjà vu as I entered the bedroom again. John Williamson's body was still there, perhaps a little grayer than it had been a few hours before, but otherwise unchanged, semi-recumbent against the pillows set against the headboard. The broken window to the right of the bed hadn't been altered either, but the speakers that had played the sounds of my wife's fictitious tryst had been removed.

Lara motioned toward a chair at the side of the bed barked out an order for me to sit as she looped her end of the restraining rope around one of the bedposts. And, again, we waited, the tension building up in me so tight that I thought either my head or my chest would explode at any time, the feeling worsening considerably when I heard Trevor's footsteps coming up the stairway.

Just as he had a few hours before, Trevor the Shave-head, burst into the bedroom and took a quick inventory, checking the bed and my position for a moment.

But while Trevor checked out me, I also checked out him out and could see by the way he was assessing the room as well as the people, dead and living, that he was, indeed, trying to sort out how he was going to choreograph the upcoming assassinations. Keeping my teeth locked shut I let out a hoarse whisper, just loud enough for Lara to hear.

"Remember what I told you Lara. Don't put down your gun..."

Lara was watching Trevor closely now, her expression having changed from angry defiance to anxious concern.

After a minute, Trevor rubbed his head again and motioned to Lara with the gun in his hand.

"OK, I think we should do it this way. You get on the bed next to John. We'll arrange it so I'll hold the gun to his head and when I plug him some of the blood will get on you. It will seem more realistic that way."

Lara suddenly took in a sharp breath but otherwise didn't respond, standing motionless, staring at Trevor, her brow wrinkling, biting her lip, thinking. Trevor looked back at her and brusquely reiterated his orders.

"Come on Lara, get moving. And put the damn gun down first."

But Lara just stood there, her whole body wavering slightly like a tree in as strong breeze, seemingly unable to move her feet at all, a little tremor beginning around her lips and chin. Trevor barked his demands one more time but when she still didn't move, he looked at her more closely, took in her doubtful expression, the slow disbelieving shake of her head, the utter and sudden lack of cooperation and his attitude changed, a hint of panic and fear now clouding his face. Without warning he raised the gun in his right hand and fired at Lara.

It was in that moment that I came to realize two important things.

The first was that it wasn't some feat of athleticism or just plain crazy luck that allowed me to escape the tendrils of the stun gun that Trevor had fired at me the night before, because, despite Lara standing still not more than 15 feet from him, the bullet sailed just over her right shoulder and struck the wall behind her.

The truth was that Trevor was just a bad shot.

The second realization was that Lara was not.

She quickly raised her gun and fired twice, striking the Shave-head dead center in the chest and knocking him off his feet, sending him to the floor with a loud thud.

She stared at him for a moment, her head still shaking in disbelief, her mouth opening and closing, silently forming words with no meaning and then she dropped the gun to the floor and followed it herself, collapsing into a heap.

"Oh God." She cried simply. "Oh God."

@@@@@

My memories of the rest of that day are compressed together so that it feels like it all occurred at the same time, like kaleidoscopically juxtaposed scenes in a waking nightmare.

At some point Virgil appeared at the door, hands still bound, the restraining rope dragging some sort of a bracket that he'd been tied to that he had evidently been able to detach. He entered the room cautiously with a look of fear that melted into relief when he saw who was dead and who was alive, sat down on the floor and gave me a look that said 'you've really gotten us into some crazy shit'.

At some point before the police arrived, Virgil and I had managed to completely free ourselves from the ropes and zip ties and were seated quietly in the great room downstairs. One officer stayed with us and took our statements while half a dozen others went upstairs to the murder room, to investigate and question Lara. I was later told that when they arrived in the room, she still hadn't moved, lying in a heap on the floor, crying and muttering softly to herself.

I remember being loaded into a police cruiser, taken to a hospital where Virgil and I were checked out then released. I have a vague recollection of taking a taxi return home followed by an utterly sleepless night in what had been my marital bed.

@@@@@

The trial was, of course, was a headline grabbing circus of sensationalistic half-truths and indecent conjecture. The combination of murder, money and sex was far too much for the press to leave alone and so virtually everyone who was even remotely associated with the story was the target of interviews and speculation. Initially cast as a cold, semi-abusive husband, the press eventually changed their tune when some of the facts started leaking out and simply portrayed me as a feckless man who didn't have a clue about his half-crazy wife. It was a characterization that I couldn't really disagree with.

The court elected to try the women separately when it became clear that Lara's defense would be to paint Danielle as the mastermind, essentially portraying Lara as an enthralled, mentally compromised pawn that had lost the capacity to refuse her lover's demands. I had my doubts about the veracity of this defense because that's not the way I'd really seen Lara during our marriage , but as the trial wore on, I became aware of just how little I knew or understood about my wife and eventually realized that at least some of what her lawyers were selling was rooted in the truth.

Nothing in the case the prosecution built was a surprise to me. They presented facts and witness showing that Danielle, Lara and Trevor had conspired to murder John Williamson and frame me—a dead me—for the crime. Even most of the defense witnesses told the same story, although most of them, me included, testified that Danielle was the driving force and her scheme not only planned for the death of Williamson, but for Lara also, that Trevor had likely pulled the trigger on Williamson and that Lara shot him in self-defense.

But the testimony of the last three defense witnesses took me by surprise.

The first was Lara's mom. She was always a frail looking woman, but at the trial she looked worse than I'd ever seen her, taking the stand nervously, somewhat reluctantly, almost as if the very act of testifying was physically painful. She was so emotional that it was difficult to follow her testimony, stuttering out answers in a voice so quiet and tremulous that the defense frequently had to ask her to repeat herself.

Now, I'd assumed she'd been called as a character witness of sorts, to give testimony about how Lara was essentially a good person that had gotten caught up in a bad situation. But it turned out that her testimony was the first real key in portraying Lara as an emotionally unstable victim rather than a coconspirator. She answered questions at length about Lara's childhood; alluding to some things I had a vague knowledge about, including some early issues with depression, cutting and struggles with authority.

But, then she described an incident that stunned me, an episode in Lara's life that I'd never heard about, something that any husband ought to have known. She explained that when Lara was in high school, she'd had an affair, or rather, had been the victim of sexually exploitive behavior by a powerful adult figure. The predator was her English teacher, a 35 year old woman that Lara worshipped and fell deeply in love with. The affair had gone on for at least a year and Lara had essentially become the woman's puppet, living life completely under her direction. But the evidence for the sexual involvement wasn't rock solid and Lara refused to testify against her lover, who ended up losing her job but doing no jail time.

Lara didn't fare so well and plunged into a deep depression, making an attempt on her life with an overdose. She was hospitalized and then went on for several years of therapy, but she stabilized in college and got even better after she met me, after which she stopped seeing counselors. At the end of her testimony, Lara's mom tearfully related how she had hoped that the episode had been buried solidly in the past once she got engaged, and admitted that she and Lara had gone to great pains to keep me relatively uniformed about her previous issues.

The next witness was the defense's psychiatrist, a prim and proper woman that looked like a librarian, complete with horned rim glasses and hair in a tight bun. She gave her testimony sitting bolt upright, hands folded in her lap, answering even the most salacious questions with a business like, monotonal voice that made her sound somewhat disinterested in the trial as a whole.

She detailed Lara's involvement with Danielle, describing how they'd met on the job and that Danielle, a woman who was a master manipulator, immediately recognized Lara as someone she could dominate. She described how they became friends at first and how Danielle created a need in Lara to please her, first with the quality of her work, then with her company and finally with sexual favors. She began to eat what Danielle suggested, dress the way she wanted and act the way she insisted. It wasn't long before Lara would do very nearly anything that Danielle requested. In essence, according to the psychologist, Lara was recapitulating the experience she had with her high school teacher, only with a much stronger, more dominant woman.

The psychiatrist went on to explain that the one thing Lara resisted was playing a part in the ultimate betrayal by participating in her scheme to have me killed and framed. But by manipulating Lara into accepting that the St. Patrick's fuck was actually rape she was able convince her that I wasn't worth protecting and she finally fell in line. Finally, she gave her professional opinion that Lara was laboring under a delusion that made it impossible to challenge Danielle's declaration of right and wrong, let alone tell her no.

The final witness was Lara herself, looking wan, exhausted, and maybe somewhat sleepless. Like her mother, she could barely hold it together on the stand, often pausing to compose herself for several minutes at a time. She reiterated the same story and line of thinking that her mother and her psychiatrist had offered and generally cut a sympathetic figure when questioned by the defense.

But the main prosecuting attorney, a grim faced man with a sharp, piercing voice, wasn't letting her off the hook, and hammered her when she tried to play the abused wife, especially when she alluded to her conviction that she'd been raped.

"Ms. Foster, are you telling me that the encounter you had with your husband on the night of St. Patrick's day was a traumatically unwelcome sexual advance that made you afraid of him?"

Lara looked down and in a near whisper answered. "I...I...yes. Yes it was unwelcome and it..."

The prosecutor interrupted as she hesitated. "You know Ms. Foster, we've submitted the transcript of that encounter, which you had recorded, as evidence and we'd be happy to play it for the jury to challenge your testimony here. Now, let me ask you again a little more bluntly and with the reminder that we can play the recording. Did your husband assault you?"

Lara looked up, tears starting to form in her eyes, shaking her head. "No."

"Did he emotionally abuse you?"

"No."

"Did he, in fact, do anything at all to deserve to be injured by you or your accomplice, let alone be essentially executed?"

Lara was openly crying now, shaking her head violently, as if to protect herself from the accusing words that the prosecutor was hurling at her. But he wouldn't let up, redoubling his verbal assault.

"And yet, Ms. Foster, you would have us believe that at the time you were willing to participate in a scheme to have your husband murdered because—in your mind—he somehow deserved it? That he had it coming? In light of the evidence, the transcript and the video recording and the witnesses who have all testified that your husband was nothing other than a loving, dutiful spouse, tell us please, Ms. Foster, why on earth should we believe for a second that you are anything other than a cold blooded killer? Why should we believe that your state of mind was such that you honestly thought it was ok to have your husband killed?"

Now Lara's whole body was shaking and she was hyperventilating, looking wildly back and forth between the judge and the jury and the prosecutor, who was beginning his question again.

"Tell us Ms. Foster, tell us why we should think that you believed..."

And then suddenly, Lara half rose out of her seat and in a shrill, strong voice, a near scream, answered.

"Because...because when your heart wants something to be true, even if it's something horrible, even if it makes no sense at all, your mind will believe it. Your mind has to believe it, because it's nothing, nothing at all without the heart."

The courtroom became suddenly silent and the prosecutor, who for the first time in the trial was taken aback, waited for a few moments before asking his last set of questions. It wasn't long after that the prosecution rested.

The jury came back within a few hours, finding Lara guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping in the second degree, the judge sentencing her to 10 years in prison, well under half the time Danielle eventually got.

I remember watching the bailiff leading her out of the court, shuffling with her head down, her shoulders lurching from poorly controlled sobs. I watched her carefully, looking for my wife, looking for the woman I loved, but I couldn't find her. The truth was, if I'd been paying attention, I wouldn't have been able to find her for quite some time.

She was the one being led off into prison, but somehow, I felt like I'd received a sentence too. I'd loved her fiercely and had given her and our marriage my best, but it wasn't enough, I wasn't enough. My mind could rationalize that it wasn't my fault, but that's not the way I felt and, as Lara had said in her outburst, the heart calls the shots.

I was standing in the courtroom, looking blankly at the wall, considering my unfortunate past and my uncertain future when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see Virgil giving me a somewhat tentative grin.

"Hey Kevin, nightmare's over, right? The bad guys are in jail and the good guys are alive."

I sniffed dismissively and shrugged my shoulders.

"Yea, I guess. I don't mean to be maudlin, but somehow I feel like I've gotten a prison sentence too. I see a lot of lonely times coming down the pike, starting with tonight."

Virgil began shaking his head in emphatic disagreement.

"No...no...no...no, Kevin. No lonely nights for you. From here we are going to the nearest bar to start the therapy Dr. Virgil has prescribed for you."

"What, get drunk every night? I don't think that's going to work bud."

Virgil cocked his head and broadened his smile.

"Nah, that's not what I have planned. A bunch of booze won't help, I know you well enough to understand that. What you need is a girl, a girl that you can rescue, a damsel in distress. Someone pretty, but one who's not loony toons. And I'm going to help you find it."

He clapped me on the shoulder s, raised his eyebrows ridiculously and nodded his head looking for agreement. I couldn't help but chuckle, my first genuine laugh in months, realizing he was almost certainly right. The only way to quiet the memories of my turbulent past with Lara was to create new ones with a new woman. My head new it, but more importantly, my heart felt it.

I nodded to Virgil, slapped him on the shoulder and followed him out the courtroom door.

[Brainmetal]

The Furniture Store

By justthejanitor ©


It was a cold and gray November day and I was standing in a vacant lot in Chicago, the damp wind chilling me to the bone as I took in my surroundings. Small chunks of burnt wood and soot-stained dry wall combined with bits of broken glass to litter the ground while little bits of lightweight trash skipped through the lot, pushed by the incessant wind. It struck me that the scene was an appropriate metaphor for what my life had become, a burnt out empty shell of what it had been, cold and desolate, a monument to loneliness and bitterness and failure. I kicked at a hunk of concrete and continued to perseverate on what, if anything, I could do with what I had left.

---()---

I met Olivia at charity fundraiser a few weeks after my twenty-ninth birthday. At the time, I was essentially second in command of the family retail business, and my Great Uncle Seth, the main shareholder and CEO, ordered me to attend to fly the flag, try and make friends and maybe drum up some business. The event was beyond boring, loaded with overly dramatic, self important people who thought that raising a few thousand dollars to help build a local library put them on a similar plane as Mother Theresa. I was trying to be nice, nodding, smiling absentmindedly, occasionally biting my tongue until it nearly bled and desperately hoping, somehow, for a chance to make an early exit when she quietly slipped into the seat next to me, flashed a thousand watt smile and started talking like we were old friends. Olivia was lithe and graceful, a thin, brown-haired, bronze skinned beauty that oozed confidence and made conversation easy and, suddenly, I didn't mind the fundraiser at all.

I've always been a fairly hard driving, competitive guy in school, at work or playing sports, but had never been particularly comfortable in social situations. I'd been more or less married to my job since business school and that, in combination with my inherent social awkwardness, made it doubly tough to develop any kind of experience with women. My resultant shyness meant I almost never approached a woman for a date unless I'd known her for a long time, but I found Olivia irresistible and, by the end of the evening, I'd asked her out to dinner. We ended up having a great time and, contrary to my fears, we had a number of mutual interests and had plenty to talk about. I quickly became infatuated with her and the feeling appeared to be mutual and by the time I'd taken her home, it was very clear that we'd be seeing a lot of each other.

We dated off and on for a couple of months as the romance built up momentum and it wasn't long before we were seeing each other a couple of times a week and had started spending a fair amount of time on each date necking. Now, I obviously liked her and was more than a little interested in taking her to bed, but I wasn't sure at all how to take the next step forward without risking a painful rejection or even spooking her permanently. One night, though, Olivia made it clear that she thought I was dragging my feet way too much when, in lieu of a good night kiss just outside her front door, she literally took things into her own hands by unzipping my pants and pulling me into the house by the one appendage I was sure to follow.

I was no virgin, but I also didn't have a lot of experience with women, and I'd always thought that lustful passion was a male thing. Olivia disabused me of that notion with great alacrity. She gave me a ride that would make a mechanical bull look tame and by the time we were done, I was completely and utterly wrung out. It was, up to that point in time, the single most enjoyable thing I'd ever done in my life.

From that point forward, intimacy became frequent and easy as our relationship deepened. Within a few months we were living together and a little more than a year after we met, we were married. We moved into a 4 bedroom house in a nice, tree lined neighborhood, did a little landscaping and got ourselves a dog, and life was very, very good.

Nearly everything about being married agreed with me, the end of a loneliness that I'd been reluctant to recognize, the unconditional emotional support, the physical satisfaction of meaningful sex, having someone to love and to be loved. It was everything that I wanted and more.

There were, of course, some issues. I was always stretched a little thin at work, so Olivia was somewhat frustrated with my availability and I guess there were a few other habits that she found a little annoying. Naturally, there were some things that bugged me too. Maybe the biggest issue was that we had to socialize with her family a lot more than I would have liked. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike her family, they were fine, upstanding people who were generally polite and didn't seem to have any particularly objectionable personality traits, but I just didn't want to spend lots and lots of time with them. Her parents were an outgoing, welcoming couple and they seemed to like me, but they had a tendency to lecture about how we should live our lives, and were putting some pressure on us to have kids. But we were never around long enough for me to get particularly annoyed, so there wasn't too much of an issue there.

Her younger sister Mindy and her husband were a little more problematic for me.

Mindy was a shorter, slightly rounder version of Olivia. She dressed like Olivia and talked like Olivia and when Olivia was around, was never away from her side for more than a few minutes. They were like virtual Siamese twins, whispering conspiratorially, laughing at inside jokes and gossiping about friends and family shamelessly and since she and her husband lived within 15 minutes of us, we spent quite a lot of time together. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, I suppose, and I guess it might have been a bit of jealously, but when she was with Mindy, she wasn't really with me, and that was more than a little frustrating.

Mindy's husband didn't make things better either. He was a tall, blonde, good looking guy named Bruce who was friendly, easy going and, in my view, not particularly bright. He had taken over his family's furniture store in Joliet and that was his favorite- and sometimes only- topic of conversation. He talked about that store like it was Microsoft and he was Bill Gates, bragging on how well run it was and how nobody else in the furniture business knew what they were doing. The issue with that outlook was that the store was struggling and I was pretty sure that anyone with a hint of business knowledge knew that part of the problem was Bruce himself. But, I wanted peace and I wanted Olivia to be happy, which meant not making waves with her family, so I spent more than a few evenings nodding my head numbly as I listened to Bruce drone on.

---()---

We'd been married nearly two years when Olivia first asked me to help out Mindy and Bruce. She'd made a fancy dinner with candles and mood music and dressed in a way that promised a satisfying night in bed, so, like a typical rookie husband, I thought she was just interested in having a great roll in the hay with me. But, as the evening went on, it became clear she had an agenda. She kept talking about how lucky we were to have such a great income and how she felt like we were in a great position to help others. Then, with a look of practiced distress, she went on to confess how worried she was about Mindy and Bruce who were just getting by. It turned out that Bruce owed some money and was having trouble making the payments and, without help, he wouldn't be able to fill out his floor inventory. I could see pretty quickly were this was going, and so I cut to the chase.

"How much do they want Liv?"

She paused and raised her eyebrows in a way that told me I'd short circuited her planned presentation. She chewed her lip, thinking for a minute and then looked shyly into my eyes.

"He needs 50 or 60 thousand. That would make them free and clear."

I nearly choked. Yes we were doing well, but most of my money was tied up in a family trust and that amount would put a very, very large dent in our ready cash. Now I knew I could get money out of the trust if I really needed it, but I didn't look forward to explaining that to Bernie Blackman, our main business attorney who also handled the trust. He'd do what I'd ask, but I knew he'd be all over me for the foreseeable future to get the money back. He wasn't a hard-ass, he just took his job of protecting the money in the trust, as well as the business, very seriously.

Thinking on this, for one of the only times in our marriage, I tried to demur on a serious request by Olivia.

"I don't know, Liv, that's a lot of cash."

She frowned. "Mindy says he's got some great ideas and that they will pay it back right away. They're good for the money, if that's what you're worried about, I'm sure of that."

Well, I wasn't sure about that. In fact, I was pretty confident that I'd be flushing a sizable amount of cash down the toilet if I sent it Bruce's way, but I wanted Olivia to be happy, so I bit the bullet and wrote a check for 60 grand, firmly telling Olivia that it meant we'd have to economize some until the money came back.

Now, I'd heard some advice once that if you loan money to family, you should figure you're never going to see it again. That sets you up emotionally so that relations don't deteriorate if and when they don't pay it back. So, in my mind, this was a gift. A 60 thousand dollar gift to Olivia's sister and her relatively incompetent brother-in-law that I didn't think would actually solve their problem because I knew he wasn't a good enough businessman to turn his store around even with the cash. I wasn't happy, but I wanted to be the good guy to her and her family. I wanted them to like me and I was willing to kiss away 60 grand to make it so.

---()---

Three or four months after I'd loaned Bruce the money, I was home, rummaging through the house for a thumb drive that had some important data on it. I had a bad habit of absentmindedly putting important things in unusual places, so I was pretty much looking through the whole house. After checking all the usual places, I wandered into the guest room and checked around the desk and even looked under the bed. As I stood up, I noticed that it was unusually lumpy, at least by Olivia's household standards, and was definitely in greater disarray than I might have caused with my little search. It seemed clear that someone had slept in it and had hurriedly pulled the sheets and covers up without making it properly. It didn't register as anything particularly important at the time, but later that evening I mentioned it casually to Olivia.

"Hey, was someone sleeping in the guest bed? I went in there earlier and it was pretty rumpled."

Olivia started stuttering out a reply and looked flushed and nervous.

"Uh...uh, well, I, uh, took a nap in there earlier. Sorry...I was doing some cleaning and got so exhausted I just jumped into the bed and didn't have a chance to clean it up any."

At that point in our marriage, I trusted Olivia so much that the idea her explanation was anything other than the God's honest truth never crossed my mind. In fact, I remember thinking how funny it was that she would be nervous or embarrassed about her need to take a nap in the middle of the day.

But the bedspread wasn't the only clue I missed. Over the next year or so, several other, odd little inexplicable things happened that, if I hadn't had my head so far up my ass, would have signaled that Olivia wasn't exactly a paragon of virtue. I took it as Gospel, for example, that her normally low key job as an assistant manager at a small, independent bookstore, suddenly required her to attend a five or six hour uninterruptable meeting that was held every Tuesday. A meeting that was so important that I shouldn't try to contact her at all during that time. I also accepted every single explanation for the little bruises that cropped up on her body, some in relatively intimate places, or the lingerie in the wash that I hadn't remembered her wearing.

And then there was the thing about the orange juice. Olivia had started shopping at some new upscale grocery store, which in and of itself, wasn't a big deal except that she couldn't get a lot of the stuff I liked, including my favorite brand of orange juice. I complained about it and asked her to switch back, but she insisted the new store was better and far more convenient for her since it was right on the way home after her Tuesday meetings. Now, her choice of grocery stores would hardly seem like a particularly powerful indicator that she was cheating, but, it became the piece of information that finally caused me to pause and think, ultimately leading to the epiphany that broke my heart.

---()---

Less than 18 months after the first loan, Olivia started hinting around that Bruce and Mindy might need some more money. Now, he hadn't even paid back a fraction of the original 60 thousand and I was more than a little reluctant to give away additional cash, especially in support of an enterprise that I deemed to be unsustainable. So I blew off Olivia's suggestion, hoping she'd get the hint and stop asking. But she kept it up and suggested that Mindy and Bruce might lose the business if they couldn't upgrade and get more inventory. Still trying to be Mr. Popular, I felt that I couldn't refuse outright, so I eventually agreed to look at Bruce's business plan and tour his store to see what he wanted to do. My hope was that Olivia would let it go if I at least verified that it was a bad investment.

I met Bruce in his store on a Monday morning and with typical unbridled enthusiasm, he took me around and showed me the floor plan, introducing me to the employees, smiling and slapping me on the back like we were greatest of friends anytime we stopped to talk with anyone. He talked about his business plan and with great confidence and earnestness spoke of how he was certain a little more money to improve the stock and a few upgrades would have the store turning a significant profit in no time.

Bruce and I sat down in his office for half an hour and I shared my reservations. As diplomatically as possible, I let him know that I thought the business had some pretty deep problems. I hinted around that, unless he could streamline and cut costs and prices, he was unlikely to really increase customer interest and revenue even with the changes he wanted to make. I even, very gently, suggested that he might want to consider selling the business and take up some other work, but he really bristled at that and reiterated the idea that he felt certain a face-lift would be all that it took to turn the corner.

I didn't have it in me to say 'no' outright to his request for cash, so I explained that I didn't have enough personal money to give him a sizable loan and that it would have to come out of the trust. I told him I'd go back and talk to Bernie and see if he could clear the way for a loan but I couldn't guarantee anything. My plan was to avoid conflict and at least make it seem that I was making a legitimate effort to secure the money for him before breaking the bad news and essentially blame Bernie when we turned him down. Cowardly I know, but I wanted to keep peace in the family and I wasn't in the mood to lose quite that much cash. The truth was, Bernie would pretty much do whatever I asked him to do, but I'd always given an impression to everyone I knew that he was duty bound to keep a tight rein on the trust and I couldn't supersede his decisions. That might seem unfair to make Bernie out to be the bad guy, but, honestly, I think he actually liked the role and he never complained about it to me.

At the end of the conversation Bruce nodded his head and flashed a big, confident smile, giving me the impression that he felt like he'd be getting the loan. He gave me a vigorous hand shake and another big pat on the back, making me feel even guiltier, as I left.

I pulled out of the parking lot and started for the freeway, thinking about my meeting with Bruce and trying to mentally absolve myself of the sins of cowardice and borderline dishonesty that I'd just committed in his store. I was, more or less, driving without paying much attention to my surroundings when I saw something that at first struck me as an odd coincidence but then grew into a vaguely disturbing thought.

It was a grocery store, smaller in size than most of the big chains, painted green with a large sign out front that said 'Salvadore's'. It was so unusual looking that I was sure I'd never seen one before anywhere, but somehow the name rung a bell that I couldn't quite place immediately. I mused on it for a few minutes before it finally hit me. 'Salvadore's was the name of the store that Olivia had started shopping at, the store that didn't carry my favorite orange juice and that was 'so much easier to get to'.

Only this wasn't anywhere near her work or our home or any other place she might reasonably need to be during the week, so it simply didn't make any sense that this store was convenient to whatever she was doing on Tuesdays, unless, of course, whatever she was doing was at the furniture store. Thinking about it, some worrisome possibilities began to present themselves.

I took a 'U' turn and drove past Salvadore's and then back to Bruce's furniture store and sat in his parking lot for a few minutes. I took out my cell phone and verified that this was the only Salvadore's in Chicago and then mused, for 15 or 20 minutes about all the possible reason's she'd be shopping there. I considered the possibility that Olivia's work had another office in this area, that she might be meeting Mindy for lunch, that maybe she was attending a health club or something in the area. But, my mind kept dragging me back to the conclusion I didn't want to face.

Suddenly I wanted more information and I wanted it now and I decided to take the bull by the horns and confront Bruce. I jumped out of my car and walked briskly to the front door of the furniture store, where, I noted the hours painted on the glass indicated the store was open until 8 on weekdays, except Tuesday's when they closed at noon. The cancerous suspicion that had been born minutes before continued to grow.

Slamming the door open, I marched into the store and made a beeline for the first employee that I saw, a rather shiftless middle aged man who was stirring a cup of coffee.

"Excuse me, but...."

"Sorry, I'm on break right now", he interrupted testily.

"Look, I don't want to take up your time, but I need to speak with Bruce McCoy right away. I've been discussing some important financial matters with him and I need some more information."

I looked at him expectantly, but he continued to stir his coffee and even took a sip without even really acknowledging my request. One of the reasons they couldn't move merchandise was becoming obvious and I waited a moment in flabbergasted silence before speaking again, this time with a more insistent tone.

"Uh, seriously, this is kind of important, so can you get him for me?"

He eyed me warily, but eventually a look of recognition came over his face. "You're the guy who was in here earlier with Bruce, right? Hey, yeah, come on in. Bruce is meeting with a supplier right now, but you can wait in the break room for him if you want. I don't think he'll be too long. Maybe a half hour at most."

He led me back to the room at a leisurely pace and left me with a cup of coffee and the remote for the TV. I had a hastily devised plan in place in which I would confront Bruce forcefully and make a few bluffs about having solid evidence that he and Olivia were cheating. I'd threaten that if he didn't come clean right away, the evidence was going right to Mindy and the rest of the family. I figured if Bruce was cheating with her, he'd break right away and if he wasn't I'd just have to live with the embarrassment. Maybe I'd make it out to be a joke or something.

I walked around the room going over the speech in my head, how I'd suggest that I had pictures or tape or even go so far as to say that Olivia had confessed. As I mused about the coming confrontation, I began to absentmindedly look around the room. I rummaged through the magazines a little and clicked through some of the TV channels before I decided to poke around a little for clues.

It gradually occurred to me that if they were using the store to cheat there was a very good chance that it would be in this break room and if they were doing it here, then they were almost certainly using the beaten down couch that I found myself staring at.

For a minute or two, I contemplated the couch with a kind of anger and trepidation. It was a faded and pea green in color with a couple of coffee stains and a tear in the fabric on one of the arms; it had clearly seen better days and would probably be more at home in a junk yard or some sort of second hand store. I pulled up a cushion and my heart rate jumped a little when I saw that it had a fold out bed and that there were sheets on it.

I checked quickly to verify that Bruce was still in his office and then yanked open the bed. The sheets were a jumbled mess, full of wrinkles with a couple of slightly darker, yellowed areas right where you'd expect a 'wet spot' from sex. There appeared to be a lipstick stain or two and the bed smelled faintly of perfume.

With the bed open, I could see some debris on the floor under the couch, so, I stuck my right arm into the space at the top of the bed and stretched and strained to reach the uncleaned carpet below, pulling items up one at a time. Eventually, I recovered a pen, 37 cents in change, a crushed coffee cup, an empty tube of KY jelly and a receipt from a restaurant. The receipt was from a Mexican place that Olivia liked to eat at for lunch, and there, at the bottom was her signature, flowing and elegant and incriminating.

Even looking back, I recognize that the receipt was just a flimsy bit of circumstantial evidence, something that might have been explained away very easily with any number of stories or excuses. But somehow finding it lifted the final fog from my mind and the nasty little oddities about her Tuesday meeting schedules and her bruises and lingerie use and the messed up bed all coalesced to form a clear picture about a cheating wife and a shit-head brother-in-law.

Suddenly my plan to intimidate Bruce into confessing seemed like a bad idea. I wanted clear cut evidence about the affair and recognized a confrontation might throw that off, maybe make it impossible to prove. But now, knowing the probable time and the place of their likely infidelity meant that I would almost certainly be able to gather the information-the evidence-that I needed to be sure.

I folded up the bed and sat on the couch, fuming, my heart racing and my teeth clenched. I'd been screwed a couple of times in some business deals and I remember being cheated at cards once, but I had never felt anything remotely resembling this kind of betrayal in my life. I was on the verge of shouting and crying and screaming and putting my fist through the wall simultaneously. But gradually, out of this emotional maelstrom one burning desire began to emerge. The need to get even.

I calmed down a little and started considering my situation, trying to think in as much of a detached, unemotional manner as I could. I thought about the vulnerabilities of Bruce and of my wife and of how I could exploit those weaknesses to provide some modicum of satisfaction for my bruised ego once I had irrefutable proof.

My first fantasy was to beat the shit out of Bruce, but I only saw jail time there. My second thought was to refuse the loan and insist on getting all my outstanding money back immediately. But, I remembered something Bernie had told me once when I considered getting financing from a bank that was particularly aggressive. He'd advised against it saying that If you owe someone money, especially someone who didn't have your interests at heart, he had you by the balls.

I wanted Bruce by the balls.

I glanced to Bruce's office again and saw that he was standing and shaking hands with the supplier. I waved to him and smiled and he waved back, walked the supplier to the door and then hurried back to the break room.

"Hey, Mike, did you forget something? Do you need some more info?"

I shook my head and smiled.

"Listen, Bruce, I've thought this over and I want to say that maybe I gave the wrong impression earlier today. I really hope you understand that I think you're a great businessman and I think you've got a real winner here with this store. But, as I was driving away, I realized that maybe I got across the wrong message when I asked about....well.... about your contingency plans if things didn't go the way you wanted."

He smiled back. "Oh, no, Mike, I get it. Any good businessman would ask the hard questions."

"Great, great. I just want to be sure that you know that I really like what you're doing here. Plus, you're family and I have to feel like this wouldn't just be a safe investment, it's just the right thing to do for you as a friend and a member of the family as well as a good businessman. So, I didn't want you to go home without knowing for sure that I plan to push really hard to get this money for you and I can't imagine we won't get it. Now, like I said earlier, I don't have that kind of coin in my personal accounts, so I'm going to have request a withdrawal from the trust fund, but frankly, I'm virtually certain I'll be able to make Bernie bend on this and we'll get the money for you."

Bruce was listening with an expectant grin on his face that grew bigger as I talked. "Oh, man, that sounds great. I'm telling you, this business is right on the edge of taking off, so that loan is as safe with me as it is in the bank. You don't have to worry a bit."

"I'm not worried at all Bruce. Bernie will have to draw up some sort of an agreement, of course, since he'll insist on protecting the trust with collateral and what not. I should be able to get things back for your signature within a few days. Unless you have a problem with it, I'll guess you'll have the cash within a week."

---()---

The next morning I wandered into Bernie's office, shut the door and flopped into a chair. Bernie was talking on the phone, making some notes and held up a single finger to indicate that he'd be able to talk shortly. I fidgeted conspicuously while he finished the conversation and he evidently noticed because he looked at me quizzically when he hung up and asked:

"So, Mike, what's got you so nervous this morning?"

I cleared my throat and leaned forward a little to talk.

"Bernie, I think I'm going to need to access the trust for a fairly large loan."

"Yeah, well that shouldn't be a problem I guess. What...uh....what kind of a loan? And how much?" He woke his computer up with his mouse and clicked a couple of icons to reveal a spread sheet that summarized the trust holdings. I cleared my throat and leaned even closer.

"Look, Bernie, before we start doing the paperwork, the first thing I want from you is absolute confidentiality."

"Of course, I'm always...."

"No, look, I want you to understand that this is...unusual... and there may be a temptation to talk to Seth or someone else here at work or in the family. I don't want anybody other than you and me to understand what, exactly, I'm trying to do here."

He squirmed in his chair and wrinkled his brow and, with some hesitation, began a response.

"Uh, Mike if this is illegal...."

"It's not illegal. Not at all. In fact, I want you to create a document that is the pinnacle of foolproof legality."

He cocked his head and I continued on.

"I want to loan some money. I want you to draw up the loan papers. I want the conditions of the loan to be very clear. I want the loan to be appropriately collateralized by the very business I'm planning on loaning it to and I want the penalties for non-payment to be very, very clearly delineated."

"Sounds like you expect a default. Like you want to trap the guy...."

"More or less."

"So, who are you trying to trap and why?"

I hesitated a minute before responding and then looked him directly in the eye. "I want to trap my brother-in-law Bruce. The why is Olivia."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and opened his mouth a couple of times to reply without actually producing any words. Finally he took a drink from a glass of water on his desk and choked out:

"Are you, uh, sure about this?"

"Very." I replied. "Very."

---()---

Within a week the document was drawn up and I personally brought it to Bruce for him to review and sign. He had his lawyer, a small, mousy guy named Tim Sowers, who also happened to be his cousin, sit down with us to go over the document.

"Ok." Sowers started out. "I looked this over last night and it's pretty much what I'd expect for a business to business loan. But, there are a couple of things I want to point out, here, Bruce, before you sign on, ok?"

Bruce, as always, was flashing his insipid smile, agreeable and clueless as ever. "Sure, let me have the info Tim."

Sowers cleared his throat and looked carefully at Bruce, I thought I detected a hint of contempt from him, almost as if he knew how little Bruce understood of how to run a business.

"OK, first. This loan is for $425,000 to be paid back over 7 years. You've got a fairly standard rate here. The payback will begin immediately at a little over 6 grand a month."
Bruce was nodding.

"Now, the actual amount of money you'll get is only $365,000, since we are consolidating this with your loan from a couple of years ago. Mike is going to get his $60,000 back and you'll be getting the rest. OK?"

"Capisce," replied Bruce smugly, with a slight Italian accent.

Tim looked at him again and sighed quietly.

"OK, then. The loan is collateralized. It's tied to your business as well as a property over by Keokuk. Is that the duck hunt?"

"Uh, yeah." Bruce motioned to Bernie as he spoke to Sowers. "They...uh...want to make sure that Mike's trust is, uh, protected in case the business really tanked." He grimaced briefly and then added quickly "But that's not going to happen. The business is in great shape. I think so, Bernie Black seems to think so." He nodded to me and smiled, "and Mike definitely thinks so. Right Mike?"

"Oh, yeah." I answered as enthusiastically as possible. "Bruce showed me the books and I think he's got a winner here. " I smiled. "But, well, I don't know if you're familiar with Bernie or not, but he's very, very conservative and always considers the worst case scenario. He wants to be absolutely sure that the trust is protected, so it's important to him that if, for some impossible reason, the business collapses there will be something else to reimburse that trust with."

Sowers frowned and then looked intently at Bruce.

"You understand that if you default, you could very well lose the business to the trust? Maybe even the duck hunting land? That's been in the family for a while."

"Sure." Bruce was speaking earnestly, maybe trying to convey to Sowers that he understood the warning and was taking it very seriously. "I understand the, uh, ramifications. You bet. But, honestly, I'm very confident in the business and I think it's a lot safer to take this loan than to try and run the business without it."

"You understand that in as little as 3 months of insufficient payment the penalties start to kick in? Right?"

"Sure, I understand." He smiled at me like we had some sort of secret together, like he figured that I'd never really allow Bernie to enforce the penalties for anything but the most egregious violation. I just smiled back.

---()---

At home, Olivia was overjoyed. She kept going on and on about how well Bruce's business was going to do now that he had enough money to fix the main problems. Somehow I managed to avoid blurting out what I was dying to say, namely that the main problem was Bruce himself and no amount of money would fix that.

But, for the next couple of weeks, keeping my mouth shut concerning Bruce's business acumen was about the easiest thing I had to do when I was around Olivia. I needed more information before I'd be able to end my marriage the way I wanted and that would take a little time, so I knew I'd have to have to control my emotions, which ranged, on a daily basis, from melancholy to rage to disgust when I considered her affair. Eating dinner with her without blowing up became a challenge and having sex had become something to avoid altogether, if possible, and when I had no 'out' I was forced to rely on the memory of a rather sordid sexual encounter years before.

When I was 18, my friends and I took a road trip to San Diego for spring break. One night, we ended up in Tijuana, blowing off some steam. We drank and watched some pretty explicit and frankly gut turning, sex shows and, ultimately ended up with some whores. Somehow I got paired off with a gal in her early 30s, who had evidently been through a fairly hard life. She wasn't particularly attractive, and probably worse than I remember given my judgment for aesthetic beauty had undoubtedly been compromised by a fairly high blood alcohol level. Even 3 sheets to the wind, though, I had some pretty serious misgivings about taking her to bed and I started making some excuses to try and get out of it. But, my buddies gave me a very hard time, questioning my manhood, my sexual orientation, the whole nine yards.

Feeling like I had no choice, I plastered on a fake smile, took a couple of more drinks in rapid succession, grit my teeth and followed her into a dank, unkempt private room above the bar to get down to business. Now, to get the deed done, so to speak, I found I had to pretend she wasn't even there, like she was just some sort of a sex device. I ended up using her like a piece of meat, and fucked her and got off, right through the noise from the bar and the claustrophobic room, the filthy sheets and the funky smell she gave off.

So for the next couple of weeks, the few times I had sex with Olivia, she became that whore in my mind again. I closed my eyes and held my emotional nose and pounded her like I'd pounded that poor Mexican woman so many years before. Nothing gentle, no attachments, just a biological function no more profound than taking a shit. Once I got started, it became almost too easy to fuck her as hard and fast as I could. I was borderline brutal in my technique and I'd guess it might have even seemed a little like a rape if Olivia hadn't been humping back.

Not surprisingly, Olivia noticed the change and ended up mentioning it, complaining that she wanted to have at least some gentle romantic sex when we went to bed; but on the whole it seemed like she didn't mind getting pounded and considered it a general upgrade over the sex we'd been having to that point.

I guess in another life, she'd have made a good living off of American tourists in Tijuana.

---()---

Getting incontrovertible evidence of the affair turned out to be about as easy as I thought it would. Bruce was using some of the money to do a little remodeling of the store itself and there were quite a few workers wandering around during the day, fixing things up. I guessed, correctly, that no one would notice an electrician who had $500 of my cash in his back pocket slip a camera and recording device in one of the can lights over the break room couch on a Monday morning, a month or so after Bruce got the money, and remove it again two days later.

Now I had a pretty good idea of what Bruce and Olivia were doing, so I assumed I was prepared for what I'd be seeing from the camera. I figured I'd sit in my office at work with a drink and some chips and take it in as dispassionately as possible, like watching a movie.

Well, it turns out that seeing your wife fuck another guy is far worse than just understanding that it's happening. Much, much worse. By the end of the tape, I'd downed enough scotch that I there was no way I could drive home, had trashed my desk, thrown up twice and hurled a paperweight through my office door.

The details are pretty much what you'd expect. I skipped to early afternoon on Tuesday and started watching there at a fast speed until I saw the figure of a woman in a blue dress with a large tote bag, abruptly enter the room, take fresh sheets out of the bag and unfold the couch. I immediately slowed the recording to normal speed and saw, with a sense of grim confirmation that the woman was, indeed, Olivia.

After she changed the sheets, she opened the bag up again and pulled out a bottle of wine and two glasses. She pulled off her blue dress, folded it neatly and placed it on the bag and then waited, in high thigh stockings, French cut panties and a very sheer bra, reading a novel while seated on the side of the bed. It seemed strangely surreal, reminding me a little of an odd exhibition of performance art I'd once seen in New York, in which a barely dressed young woman read strange, new age poetry to an audience that cared more about her boobs than her poems.

When Bruce finally entered the room, Olivia put her book down, smiled and stood up to give him a hug. She then pushed him away slightly, chastising him for making her wait for him to come. He retorted that her problem was that she could never wait to come and they both giggled at what seemed to be an old joke between the two of them.

They kissed for a few minutes and then Olivia reached for his belt, undid his pants and pulled them down around his ankles along with his underwear. He stepped out and she stroked him a couple of times, looking up and smiling at him for a minute before she took it into her mouth. She went at it with a fair amount of enthusiasm for a few minutes while he slowly rocked into her, holding the back of her head with his hands. Suddenly he stopped humping and pushed her head away and she smiled at him, pulled her panties off and lay back on the bed with her legs opened invitingly and obscenely. He knelt down and returned the favor for a few minutes before he stood, pulled his shirt off and mounted her. I was a little surprised that neither of them finished the other orally because, when I was with Olivia, that was a must. But I got the feeling this was their routine, as they'd gone about the changes wordlessly, each anticipating what the next step would be.

The fucking wasn't any more interesting than the oral sex. He pounded her hard, using a steady, metronomic rhythm that I'd have considered boring if I wasn't feeling outrage. Somewhere around the 10 minute mark, Bruce had an orgasm and I got the sense that Olivia came at the same time by the way she suddenly extended her legs and rolled back her head. They lay, quietly, with Bruce still inside her for a few moments until he rolled off onto his side and they began to kiss for a while.

By the time they finally finished, I was so hurt and enraged that I was breathing harder than they were. I knew the images I'd seen had been burned into my consciousness as an indelible scar that could never be erased and as such, never afford any sort of forgiveness for either of the two cheaters. I was glad I had a plan to end, rather than to save, my marriage.

I leaned forward to turn off the video when I noticed that they began some pillow talk. Olivia was laying on her side, with her head up, supported by her right hand over her crooked right elbow, while she traced lazy patterns on Bruce's chest as he lay supine. They were looking at each other, murmuring softly, smiling contentedly. Olivia started to complain lightly about having to use the furniture store as a love nest. Bruce rolled to his side and responded.

"Come on Liv, if we use a hotel we'd definitely leave a trail and we nearly got caught using either of our houses. There really isn't any option."

Olivia shrugged. "I know, I know, but really, I wish we had another place to play. I just don't like this room and changing last week's dirty sheets before making love isn't particularly inspiring."

Bruce reached and stoked her cheek, smiling. "Well, we could always just run off together."
Olivia laughed in response and Bruce's expression became contemplative, his smile fading some.

"Seriously, though, Liv, do you ever regret marrying Mike? I mean, I love Mindy, and she's a good wife. But sometimes....I don't know....do you think it would have been better if, maybe, you and I had gotten married instead?"

Olivia scooted up in the bed until she was essentially sitting up, her back leaning against the couch, her arms wrapped around her knees which were drawn up to her breasts. She looked thoughtfully at Bruce for a moment before answering.

"Come on Bruce. How many times do we have to go over this? What we have is special. Very special. But, no, I don't think it would have been better if we'd gotten married instead. We'd have been very happy together, of course, but I also love Mike and you love Mindy. If you and I were together it would just be us. Mike is a very monogamous guy and he would never develop a relationship with me if I was married and I don't think Mindy would like it that way all that much either."

She leaned over and kissed Bruce on the cheek, rubbing his chest with her right hand.

"The truth is, Bruce that people like you and I have a greater gift for love. We can love more than one person at a time and we.....we should love more than one person. It's right for us to do that. But, Mindy and Mike aren't like that. Their inclination to limit themselves means that they'd never be able to do what you and I do. They'd never be able to keep their emotions straight and keep everyone satisfied."

Hearing that, my outrage peaked and it was then that I sent my paperweight through the office door.

Because I loved her, and maybe because she was the only woman that had ever loved me, I guess I never realized how arrogant, delusional and self serving my wife was. In her mind, somehow, she'd turned her cheating ways into some sort of a virtue. To her, evidently, it wasn't an act that represented a stab in the back of her lawfully wedded husband, but rather, something that increased the love in the world. Something that she not only had the right to do, but had some sort of a moral imperative to do.

I slept on a couch in my office that night and finalized all the paperwork I needed the next morning.

---()---

When I got home the next evening, Olivia greeted me with her hands on her hips and a sour look on her face.

"Where the hell were you last night? I was worried sick. You didn't call, you didn't text, you gave me no clue whatsoever what the hell...."

I stopped her short with an upraised hand. "I was at work last night. I got drunk and couldn't drive home, so I stayed there...."
She gave me a look of complete puzzlement. "Wait...what? You got drunk? At work?"
I smiled and nodded back to her and she continued.

"Well, at a minimum you could have let me know what was going on. I nearly called the police. And....what the hell were you doing drinking at work?" She was still glaring at me, but she continued to carry a look of extreme puzzlement with her question.

Without answering, I brushed passed her into the living room and flopped on the coach, perched my feet on the coffee table, pulled my briefcase into my lap and opened it up. Olivia, gave an exasperated sigh and followed me into the living room to sit, angrily, in a chair opposite the couch.

"Hey, how about some answers Mike?"

"Hmm?

"What were you doing drinking so much at work? What happened last night? What's going on?"

I continued rummaging through my brief case and pulled a couple of folders out, laying them, one by one on the couch beside me.

"Just a second Liv, I want to get things arranged here a little." I sorted the papers a little more, pulled my feet off the table and leaned forward as I replaced them with the paperwork. I rubbed my hands together, as if anticipating a sumptuous meal, looked to Olivia and smiled.

"OK then, let's get started."

"What? Get started...."

"Yes, well, after last night's experience...."

"Last night? What....what happened last night?" Olivia's aggressive attitude when I'd come home was being rapidly replaced by something more passive. I was starting to sense a little fear.

"Can you at least tell me what you were doing last night?"

"Oh....yeah. I was watching a video."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, I was watching a feed I had of you and Bruce fucking on that couch in his break room, and I found it a little disturbing, so I guess I had a little too much to drink. You understand..."

I gave a thin, emotionless little smile back to Olivia whose face had gone from puzzlement to distress and then shock, fear and bewilderment. Her mouth was open half way, making little spasmodic movements, barely opening and closing, unable to produce any meaningful sound. Her eyes, wet and getting wetter, were darting back and forth from the papers on the table to the door and to me, as if she expected someone or something to come through the door, sweep up the papers and make everything ok. Finally she spoke.

"I...I don't understand, Mike. What....what are you talking about?"

"Come on Olivia. You can't be that dense. I'm talking about you and about Bruce and about what the two of you did yesterday and every other fucking Tuesday for at least a year." I gestured to the paperwork in front of me. "I'm talking about the end of our marriage."
Olivia let out a sudden gasp and covered her mouth with her hand for a moment. I waited for her to respond.

"Mike.....we can work this out. I think I can get you to understand...."

"Oh, I think I understand Liv." I pulled a DVD out of the briefcase, held it up briefly and then slid it across the table toward her. "I got all kinds of information last night to help me understand. Really, a veritable gold mine of new facts about my loving wife and my friendly brother-in-law."

She looked at the DVD like it was a poisonous snake, physically recoiling slightly, making no effort at all to pick it up.

"Go ahead Liv, that's your copy. I won't tell you how I got it, but I have my own for future reference and to further my education about your philosophy on love and devotion."

She leaned forward and started to stand and, for a moment, looked like she was going to come to me, but I raised my hand and stopped her, and she sat down. She bit her lip for a second and then, looking directly at me, began speaking again, slowly and deliberately, with a sort of false confidence that I suspect was intended to hide the wavering quality to her voice.

"Mike, look, you have to open your mind and think about this. It doesn't make any sense for you to ruin your life, our lives, because we have different values and.....and talents. I love you and...and have always been prepared to make accommodations for our differences and I hope that....."

I interrupted with a derisive snort. Different values and talents? Really? You think cheating on your husband is some sort of a talent? Because, honestly Liv, I'm pretty sure everyone is up to that, seriously...."

"Talent is the wrong word." She took a deep breath and looked to the ceiling for a moment before looking back to me. "Capacity. I think the right word is capacity. I have a great capacity for love and, I can, and have successfully, loved more than one person romantically at a time. Other than outdated conventions about love and relationships, there is no reason that I can't, or shouldn't exercise my....capacity...."

"Please, just stop. Honestly, you're just making me sick with your excuses. I get it....I got it from the tape, that somehow you think you have some sort of special ability that gives you license to cheat and lie and sleep around when you're supposed to be faithful. But, really, it's just a bullshit excuse Liv. Anyone can have a romantic involvement with a couple of people simultaneously. That doesn't make them lovers with a 'greater capacity'. It just makes them cheaters."

With a flash, the apologetic, conciliatory Olivia was gone, replaced by an angry, aggressive, supremely self-confident shrew.

"You call me a cheater?" She spat at me. "Well, fair enough from your point of view, I guess I am. But, again, I've never lost or suppressed my love for you or my love for Bruce, so I've never cheated on my emotions, never compromised my feelings or my actions because of some medieval code that says I have to confine my relationships to one and only one person. So, yeah, maybe I look like a cheater to you, but when I look in the mirror I have no problem with what I see, no qualms about what I've done, none." She was breathing hard and with passion, her face and chest flushed, fire in her eyes, a look that was daring me to challenge her.

So, I did.

"You want to live like that? Some sort of an open relationship with lots of different guys, loving one guy one day and another the next? Be my guest; to each his own. But it's pure unadulterated bullshit to pretend you haven't cheated, haven't been dishonest, because you never once let on to me that you were out fucking Bruce and you know, very well, that I wouldn't have gone along with that. You know it. " She was feeling my fire and she turned her head slightly from me, avoiding my gaze, but I twisted and turned so that my eyes locked on hers and then continued.

"So you chose to lie by omission. By the greatest fucking omission of truth that I've ever personally experienced. You made me, and practically everyone else, think we were a pair, a bonded pair exclusive to each other. But you went out and started....or continued.....fucking Bruce, hiding your cheap little furniture store trysts as best you could. You told a lie....lived a lie... and no matter what the hell kind of oddball marital philosophy you have, that makes you a cheater."

By now angry tears were running down her cheeks and her mouth was clenched tight, more angry than sad, slowly shaking her head in disagreement with what I'd said, but apparently without the words to back up her feelings. I continued to stare at her, waiting for a response, but when nothing came, I broke the standoff by sliding the paperwork closer to her.

"Read it. Get a lawyer. It's fair."

Finally she spoke.

"And if I don't want a divorce?"

"Then you're out of luck Liv, because you're getting one." I paused a moment and, with a poorly concealed smirk, added, "But, hey, it's not like you're going to be alone."

I moved out that night, leaving for an apartment closer to work and all too quickly reverted to what I'd been before Olivia. A worker, a business man, a loner without the time or inclination to engage in social activities. The hours I spent at work became hellacious, and more than a few people commented on it. But I knew if I sat at home I would simply obsess about Olivia, endlessly playing her affair through my mind, wondering if she was thinking of me or if she was fucking Bruce at any given moment. I really had no choice but to throw myself into work as hard as I possibly could and try get past my marriage as quickly as possible.

My normal inclination in any sort of a contest is to do anything necessary to win and I suppose most people who knew me in the business world would have expected a long, drawn out, aggressive negotiation to reach a settlement. But that would mean delay and interaction and pain and I was willing to pay to get out quickly and cleanly. I offered Olivia a large lump sum in lieu of ongoing support with a threat to withdraw the offer if she didn't acquiesce to a quick divorce.

Deep down, I guess I wanted her to object, to insist that we could work out the marriage somehow, decline the offer and fight for the marriage. I wanted whatever slim chance she thought our marriage had of survival to be more important to her than the money.

It turns out it wasn't.

With some half-hearted objections, she agreed to the terms and, 60 days later, my marriage was over.

---()---

A couple of months after the divorce was finalized Bruce, predictably, started coming up short on his payments. He'd gotten the appropriate warnings and a nasty letter from Bernie letting him know we'd start taking the money any way we could get it. He called and emailed with excuses and promises, virtually begging for more time to pay. I instructed Bernie to play hardball, though, and we made it clear that we would exercise our rights and begin to extract collateral as soon as legally practical. On the eve of a 'workout' session Bruce begged to meet with me personally and I agreed. At that point, I knew he was as desperate as he was going to get and that he'd do anything or take money from anyone in order to stave off the wolves.

I wanted the money to come from Olivia. I looked forward to the meeting.

We met at my office, after hours. Almost all the secretaries had gone home, but my personal assistant, Sherry, lingered on in the outer office, ready to prepare paperwork if necessary. Bruce was nervous, more nervous than I'd ever seen him, giving me a sweat slicked hand to shake as he tentatively entered my office. Lurking behind him, almost shyly, was Olivia and I had a little trouble catching my breath when I saw her.

Olivia sat nearer to me than to Bruce and was wearing one of my favorite outfits, full makeup and flashing her incandescent smile, and there was little question in my mind that she was there to try and bolster Bruce's chances by appealing to my former emotional ties.

I suddenly felt a nearly overwhelming impulse to rush over to her, take her in my arms and kiss her but, understanding the danger of what I was feeling, suppressed the urge ruthlessly, painting my face with a scowl and grunting out some greeting in a reluctant recognition of her presence.

Truthfully, I was more than a little surprised that she had come at all. I'd anticipated this meeting for a long, long time and had carefully scripted in my mind how it would go, but I didn't figure Olivia would be there and worried that her attendance would somehow interfere with my plan to bind her to her lover's failures. I thought about objecting, maybe insisting that she wait outside, but finally decided her presence might actually make the outcome more satisfying.

Bruce started in by trying to charm me. After shaking my hand he smiled as much as possible and started with some small talk about how he wanted to try and make things right, wanted me to be happy and how he hoped I knew how much he respected me and that he was so sorry about how things had worked out. I was incredulous that he apparently wanted to resume a friendship of sorts, that he seemed to think we could all be buddy-buddy again.

I wasn't buying. Without cracking a hint of a smile, I stared him down and with as little emotion as possible stopped his little speech.
"Bruce, please, cut the shit. Your apologies are meaningless to me, ok?"

He rocked back in his chair, taking on an expression as though I had struck him and then he pressed his lips together, took a deep, worried breath through his nose and nodded his head in acquiescence before beginning again.

"OK, sorry Mike. Let's get to business." He looked at me as though it was my meeting, like he thought I should proceed, but I just spread my hands out in an expectant gesture, and waited for him to state his case.

He licked his lips nervously and ran a trembling hand through his hair before starting to ramble about how he had every intention to pay the money back but the he was a little short 'at the moment'. He described how Bernie was playing hardball and expressed his doubts that I knew how much pressure he was putting on him to pay. Then he went on to talk about how the business was on the verge of recovery and that with just 'a little time' he'd be able to get his head fully above water. Finally, he finished by trying to make the case that I'd be better off financially if I gave him more time.

I leaned back in my chair, slowly, carefully studying Bruce's nervous smile, the thin film of sweat that was appearing on his forehead and the poorly controlled tremor that his right hand was exhibiting as it rested on the table between us.

"Bruce, if you were anything other than a blatant bull-shitter, I think I might consider giving you an extension."

His eyes opened wide in surprise and distress and he leaned forward, getting ready to protest when I stopped him with an upraised hand.

"Come on Bruce, you must know it's nearly impossible to trust a man who didn't think anything of fucking his married sister-in-law. You must know that asking for a financial favor from the husband of that same woman is laughably ridiculous."

Bruce fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair while Olivia cleared her throat nervously and interjected with a plaintive voice.

"Mike, please, you can't punish Bruce because..."

"I can do whatever the hell I want, Olivia." I snapped, giving her a look of unmitigated hostility. "And, just why are you here anyway?"

"I thought that I might be able to prevail on you for....old times' sake. I still care for you and I thought that..."

I interrupted her abruptly and loudly. "You thought wrong. Frankly, your presence is just serving to remind me how Bruce here figuratively screwed me by literally screwing you. So, do yourself and Bruce a favor and sit back and try and look pretty and keep the comments to an absolute minimum."

Tears were appearing in her eyes and her chin started to wrinkle, but she did as I'd insisted and leaned back in her chair quietly. I turned back to Bruce.

"OK Bruce, so this is the way it's going to be. You're going to pay back on time, on a strict schedule or I'll start going through a 'workout process' to get what I can out of the collateral assets."

Bruce was shaking his head aggressively. "Come on Mike. You can't take my business from me. You can't..."

"I can and I will if you don't pay, Bruce. My advice is to get the money. Look to your family. Find a bank. Sell something. I don't care. Just get the money or I'll take what I can."

"But....but....you know the banks aren't loaning to me or I would have gone to them in the first place. And my family....they can't help. They don't have that kind of dough..."

I looked Bruce squarely in the eye. "Don't give me any shit about your family not having any money, I know they do."

"No....no, they don't. They would help if they could, but they just can't."

"What about her?" I jerked my thumb over to Olivia. "Have you asked her for money?"

Bruce sat back. "Liv? Liv doesn't have..."

I laughed. "Sure she does. I cut her a check for a hundred and fifty grand. She's got plenty of money. Don't you Olivia?"
I looked to Olivia with a smirk and Bruce looked to her with a question on his face. As I suspected, he wasn't aware of the lump sum payout. She suddenly looked nervous, maybe a little nauseous.

"Well, yes, I do but....but I need that money...."

I laughed again. "Whoa there Liv. I remember how 'safe' you thought it was to give money to Bruce when you talked me into helping in the first place. Why hesitate now? I mean, come on, don't you have confidence in Bruce here to turn his business around? Aren't you here to help convince me he's good for the money? If you think it's a good investment for me, why not for you?" I was giving her an expectant, malevolent grin.

She swallowed hard, looked to Bruce for a second and then back to me. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and, with a vaguely defiant tone, announced that she could certainly make up the difference for a while. Bruce smiled at her and she smiled weakly back and they left with Bruce walking with a little more confidence and Olivia with her shoulders sagging in disappointment. As I held the door open for them I left them with one last admonition.

"Remember, Bruce, I don't care how. I just want the money."

"You'll get your money." He spat back at me.

Olivia looked worried.

---()---

Over the next few months I kept on trying to find solace in my work. Businesslike and efficient with everyone, I continued to avoid any kind of personal conversation at all cost, completely eschewing any social opportunity, preferring, instead, to work or to be alone. I was desperate to keep the betrayal and treachery of my wife off my mind, but everything seemed to remind me of her, even, of course, the monthly check from Bruce came across my desk. The check brought a kind of bitter satisfaction, a sense that, to some degree, I'd been able to drag the authors of my unhappiness down into misery with me.

Things got a little worse when Mindy contacted me. She e-mailed me a couple of times and even called me on the phone. I was rather surprised to find out that Bruce and Olivia had come clean to her, no doubt with a watered down version of their affair, and that she'd taken it fairly hard at first, but eventually forgave them both. To my disappointment and horror, she vaguely implied that she'd had some idea that they had been lovers, and that they'd come to some sort of an arrangement in which Bruce and Olivia continued to see each other. She even made a half-hearted attempt to get me to consider taking back Olivia. My answers to her were bitter and abrupt and I was fairly sure I'd left her in tears by the end of the second call, after which I didn't hear from her again.

Mindy's apparent tolerance made it clear that the emotional price that Bruce and Olivia were paying was far less than I hoped. My great fear now became that somehow, someway the store would become solvent, that Bruce would pay off his debt, repay Olivia and that they'd all be satisfied with the outcome financially as well as emotionally. That they'd leave me behind, shaking their heads collectively at the poor wretch who simply couldn't understand what modern love was all about.

I needn't have worried.

---()---

The furniture stored burned to the ground nine months after my meeting with Bruce and Olivia. The fire was a spectacular two alarm job that threatened some adjoining structures and headed up the nightly news. I hadn't seen the story, but Bernie had and he called me immediately to discuss the ramifications. He was livid with me for taking on the risk because he was certain that the trust had flushed a fairly large amount of cash down the toilet. I mollified him by promising to buy out the liability of the loan personally if default were to occur assuring him also that the properties themselves were worth something simply because of location.

The obvious questions about the fire were asked and, when accelerants were detected, the insurance company immediately balked at payments. With no income from the store, Bruce completely defaulted on the loan and I acquired a smoking ruin of a lot and 35 acres of duck hunting land on the Mississippi.
The criminal investigation proceeded for nearly six months. The detectives put together a fairly good circumstantial case against Bruce and Olivia. They could show that the store was hemorrhaging money and that Olivia was forking out larger and larger monthly sums to keep it afloat. Bruce had made several desperate attempts to get loans from other sources but failed and then, as quietly as possible, made a last ditch attempt to sell the business. But, there were no buyers, even for a steeply discounted price.

The investigators couldn't produce any evidence that Olivia or Bruce were near the store the night of the fire or that they'd acquired anything to start or accelerate it, but their case was built on the theory they'd hired a pro to torch the store. They found numerous searches containing the term 'arson' on Olivia's home computer, phone records that showed communication with at least two men with arson convictions and noted that she'd withdrawn fifteen grand in cash one week before the fire occurred.

Olivia and Bruce had fairly good representation, undoubtedly bought with whatever money she had left, and the DA knew he'd be in for a fight, so he started to deal. I guess they started with first degree arson and fraud charges and started dealing down from there. The defense wasn't budging for anything less than fourth degree arson, and so a game of chicken started with a court date set.

I was on the witness list, waiting in the outside foyer on what was to be the first day of the trial. I was sitting on a hard wooden bench, reading the paper and absentmindedly tapping my foot on the tile floor when a court official came out and announced that the trial was off, that they'd finally cut a deal and that we could all go home. As I was gathering up my stuff to go, Olivia and Bruce came through the room, accompanied by some officers and their attorney. A couple of reporters jumped up and shoved microphones under their noses, but they declined to comment and the reporters turned to their lawyer instead.

Bruce met up with Mindy and left the room with some officers, but Olivia looked in my direction and without hesitation, she approached me to talk. I have to admit, I admired her courage to face me under the circumstances.

"Well, Mike, is this your happy day? Is this what you wanted, for me to be punished for my sins?"

I gave a bitter laugh and shook my head derisively. "I wanted a faithful wife and a successful marriage. I was never going to get what I wanted from you. Absent that, I just wanted my money. "

She sniffed at me. "Well, you aren't getting any of that now, are you?"

"Oh, I got some of it back and I've got the store."

She laughed. "And what will you do with that? Has it stopped smoking yet?"

"You'd be surprised what a competent business man can do with a good piece of property, even a smoking one."

Her nostrils flared and her face hardened a little. She took in a deep breath and paused for a moment before talking again.

"And you're happier now? Alone? Without anyone? Married to your work for the foreseeable future?" She gave me a knowing smirk. "Don't deny it, I know you. I know how terribly distasteful it is for you to go out and meet new people."

"I'm working on that, Liv. I loved you, but you aren't the only woman in the world you know."

She smiled confidently. "No, I'm not. But I don't think you are going to be able to find a...what do you business types call it? An equivalent replacement? Whether you like it or not, you are going to miss me."

I leaned close to her and whispered into her ear.

"I might be a little lonely, but you won't be, will you? I mean, the good news is that you'll be holed up in close quarters with a bunch of fairly androgynous women that you can share all this abundant love you have with. It will be a win-win for you and the dykes."

Olivia surprised me by suddenly losing her cool at my last comment, recoiling from me as though I was radioactive, her face a mask of contempt and her eyes flashing with anger. She breathed in deeply, her chest heaving aggressively a couple of times, and then she exploded.

"You fucking, prudish, self-centered, emotionally dwarfed asshole." She screamed as the officers pulled her away from me to the door. "You're going to be in a shithole just like I am. Alone, without anyone. Married to your fucking job......"

Watching her scream at me, recognizing how the love she'd had for me had evaporated completely, leaving only a kind of contemptuous hatred, I was struck with a sudden wave of melancholy. I fought the urge to react in a way that would betray my pain, smiled thinly, and mumbled out some kind of crack about her public use of rather offensive language. But, she simply continued her diatribe as though I'd said nothing.

"...but it won't be long before I'll be out of my prison and moving on, but you'll still be alone, wishing you could be with me. And then....and then, years from now, when you're married to some boring little ex-secretary, you'll still wish that you'd just accepted..."

The door closed on her, abruptly snuffing out the rest of her rant. I turned and walked out of the courtroom.

---()---

My afternoon had been cleared for the trial, so now, without any appointments or meetings and fighting a growing sense of gloom and loneliness, I went to the burned out lot and thought about my life.

The temperature dropped and the wind continued to whip my jacket and burn my face as I looked around, still considering what I could do with the wreckage. I wasn't sure if I could salvage the situation at all, and my main inclination was to sell it off, forget about the loss and concentrate on what I'd always done. That was the safe thing to do, maybe even the smart thing to do.

But I knew there was another option. I could take a risk and rebuild, maybe even put up another furniture store. I mused about the possibility of successfully selling furniture from the same place where Bruce had failed. I thought about making a big deal of it with lots of advertising, billboards, maybe even some TV commercials; things that Bruce and my ex couldn't possibly miss. Just to rub it in, I might even name it 'Olivia's' and have lots of 'fire sales'.

It struck me that the decisions I'd be making about the lot were similar to those that I'd been unconsciously making about my life in general. Olivia had been right about me. My natural tendency, really my only social inclination before I met her, was to withdraw, to avoid the risk of intimate relationships and concentrate on work. I could see that I was drifting inexorably to a lifetime as a loner, a financially safe but relatively joyless existence. I was becoming, again, what I was comfortable with, doing the safe thing.

I sat down on a block of concrete and took another look around, still weighing my options, still considering my future. I was stuck between my fears and my wants, the ingrained habits that had served and defined me and the desire to change, to be different.

I was about to leave and return to work, to let things ride on and put off the decision for another day, when a few rays from the late afternoon sun filtered through some clouds and between some buildings to illuminate a wall painted with graffiti on the other side of the street. The lighted glinted off the wall with a burnt orange glow, giving an incandescent quality to the concrete and the writing. The words were written in bold, white letters, clear and easy to read.

"Go for It."

I'd always been dismissive of superstitious people and the way that they let inconsequential, objectively irrelevant things rule their lives as signs or habits. But here, sitting on a slab of concrete in the November cold, the words struck me as fate, like a message from God.

I pulled out my cell and made a call to the office, getting my assistant.

"Hey, Sherry, who was the architecture firm that designed the new mall that got all the press? The one with all the glass and the fountains."

"Uh....Hammer-something I think....." She hummed lightly to herself for a couple of moments while she checked. "Yeah, Hammerstone. They're based here in Chicago it looks like."

"OK, look, could you set me up with a meeting as soon as possible?"

She hesitated a second. "Are we...uh....building something?"

I looked around the lot, seeing the new store in my mind's eye and suddenly felt a surge of confidence. "Yes, yes I think we...I think I am."

"Uh...ok. Sure boss, anything else?"

I chewed my lip for a second as my eyes came to rest once more on the graffiti across the street, reading again the imperative to 'Go for It'.

"Yeah, Sherry, there is one more thing. You know that rep for the knock off jeans, the tall blonde girl, Brenda? Brenda White I think..."

"Yes...." Sherry's voice was becoming more incredulous and I had to wonder if she thought I was having some sort of a breakdown.

"Can you get her number for me?"

"Sure, sure boss. Uh....do you want me to get her on the line?"

"No. No, I'll make the call myself. Thanks."