Authors: Nate Allen
People don’t walk into obsession, they find themselves there, and as a matter of self-preservation, upon that finding, they sometimes have to deny it. To be aware you are in denial is to
not
be in denial. How fucked up is that? But he would eventually say he wasn’t denying it, just not acknowledging it. Rhonda and Chunk knew something was up with the man, but he wasn’t volunteering information. Rhonda wasn’t one to refrain from stating the obvious though, and she would inquire about his love life. He would tell her not to worry, that she was still number one in his heart, as she then told the boy to hush and informed him that women “
ate men like him
” where she came from. “
I’m not a barbeque sandwich,
” he reminded her lovingly.
It was about this time he began to reveal elements of what was going on to his friends, never revealing much though, they would only come to know her as the “
married girl
.” It all began to make some sense, the polarities in his behavior, the spring in his step, and the periods of distant preoccupation. This had been going on for seven months and he hadn’t made nary a suggestion of it, partly because he knew he would not have an agreeable audience with his two friends, and mostly to protect the woman,
the married girl
. It took something like this to get him to open up vaguely.
Jake couldn’t explain the woman’s behavior, and he tried. He had obviously ignited something in her, and it had quickly become a wildfire and made of him an ill-equipped makeshift smokejumper starting
backfires
to contain the blaze. Unaware to her, and much to her dislike, a marginally effective invisible cockblocker, or box-blocker as the gender may be.
He wasn’t just trying desperately to funnel all the action his way, but to protect her. “Goddamn woman …why can’t she just behave?” he wondered. It was probably somewhere about here on this trek, in a moment of honesty with himself, he had to admit he wished he’d lifted her from the marriage when she’d come to that brink and he had the chance. In retrospect it didn’t seem conscionable
but
cowardly. You should never start something you don’t have the courage or heart to finish.
He would give his attorney friend the background info on William Barry, not how or why he knew it though. Rhonda would get the assault charges dropped, Barry’s record, despite Jake’s
supposed
unawareness of it, made him a perceivable threat, and therefore his actions deemed reasonable in that regard. The “leaving the scene” went away as well, but the DWI charge would stick since Jake was at the legal limit, and that alone would have serious consequences and financial ramifications for the self-employed single-dad. Rhonda was rightfully worried about him. He was her guy, and it was unusual behavior for him, and she would tell him in that way only true friends can, not what he wanted to hear, but what he needed to. There is a distinct difference between hearing and listening however, and he
heard
what she had to say he just wasn’t
listening
. He would be less forthcoming as well.
Jake was learning the hard way some things about the woman he loved. She was apparently a non-discriminating gal, an equal opportunity adulteress. “I expect she’ll sleep with her husband next,” he thought. And it was right about this time he gave some consideration to involve the man, why should he be doing all the work? He had Glen’s cell phone number, late one night after he’d had a few cold ones he got curious about the man, so he *67’d his number blocking it from display, and called the university directory and got his extension.
It was well past midnight, he knew he wouldn’t be there, so he proceeded to dial it, “
Hi you’ve reached Professor Glen Johnston, and this is the week of… I will be out of the office until Monday, you can leave a message, or if you need to contact me you can reach me on my cell at 919-555-5168,
” Jake made a note of the number, it seemed a waste of potentially valuable info otherwise.
Glen unfortunately sounded like a nice guy over the phone, perhaps they should get together and discuss his wife who was fucking everything insight…or out of sight as it were. Rhonda had a similar message on her phone, and it didn’t strike him as unusual. So he had the man’s number in case he needed to enlist his help, even if doing so put himself at risk.
North Carolina is one of a few remaining states that still have an
Alienation of Affection
law on the books… we are
steeped in tradition
and stubborn after all… It has its origin rooted in the idea of a spouse as
property
, the loss of which had a negative impact on the household, however in recent times it had become
distorted
in a sense and used to punish infidelity and avenge one’s assaulted ego, though extremely rare …like making a public admission of inadequacy. Its not a criminal offense, but a tort, a civil action that allows a spouse to seek damages against a third party whose conduct deprived the husband or wife filing the action of the love and affection that previously existed between husband/wife and his/her spouse.
Now there’s room for debate about whether that previously existed or not, the
preponderance of evidence
leaning towards the “
NOT
”… Jake would argue her affections for Glen Johnston were quite intact …it was her legs that kept falling apart. If he were guilty of anything it would have been
Criminal Conversation
, or adultery, and if that became an issue or went to trial it was gonna be a
class action
lawsuit.
Unseen, he had all the appearance of a man trying to keep the marriage together, but Glen wasn’t doing his part, and Jake thought it time to share the burden. “I’ll send him a text,” he thought, it would need to sound like it came from a woman, ambiguous and vague as to who specifically it was regarding, only give him reason to take a closer look at his wife, and in the process,
once
again
, hamper her scamper, stomp her romp.
Jake knew all about disposable cells, he was always bumping up against them trying to catch up to people in his Investigator role with Rhonda, while her reputation and clientele had improved over the years, she had not abandoned her original bread and butter. Respected and popular with the population of defendants charged with DWI and drug arrests, those who often need help but can’t afford it. She was afforded the proper respect on the street because of the openness of her heart for such cases, but a few of them often repaid her kindness with skipping on the bill, and Jake spent a portion of his time trying to track them down to garnish wages, or work out payment arrangements, and would often receive a percentage of what he recovered as a result.
He knew how to find people who didn’t want to be found, and often frequented the parts of town the police don’t go alone in an effort to do so. As her agent, he had his own street-cred as well because he was fair, and while he could be an asshole when the situation demanded, he wasn’t unnecessarily an uncompromising hard-ass. He had such a phone he had purchased with cash several months ago, long enough that any store surveillance would have routinely been written over …though the place he bought it in southeast Raleigh, probably only had the cameras for appearance.
He asked a random young woman to leave a message on the phone, coaching her along, it said:
“Hi, sorry I missed your call, leave me an interesting message and I’ll get back to you. Bye Now.
”
His original intent was that he would use it at some point to communicate with Rae so that nobody could tie them together. That way if Glen tried to call back he’d get the woman’s voice, and the phone would have long been gone, it was after all disposable …not an original idea, your fifteen your-old could be doing it, but it’s effective and it happens everyday. But what would he say in the text?
The more he thought about it, the more he thought he might be better served to send it to Rae instead, after all he didn’t want to completely eliminate her activities, just his rivals. And while he’d literally laid the man’s wife out on their dinner table and
stuffed
her like a Thanksgiving turkey, strange as it may sound he didn’t want to hurt Glen’s feelings, knowledge might be power …but ignorance
is
bliss.
What you don’t know can’t hurt you …
or so they say
, and as long as she was married she’d still have need of him he reasoned …his
ir-
rationale no different than her
justifiable adultery.
So he sent Rae the text. What it said was unimportant, only that she got the
message
that someone knew about her extramarital
activities
so to speak, and she received it as evidenced by the equally spiteful response. She wasn’t a woman to be bullied or run from a fight either… And the disposable phone became
disposed
.
It seemed that the things that made them different from other folks might have been what they had most in common, like water and ice, two states of the same substance. Unable to coexist for any length of time before evolving into one or the other, one of them having to concede and undoubtedly making a mess in the process. And it seemed he was
dissolving
. She may have been a prisoner of her circumstances, but she was the “
shot caller
” in the prison yard of
this
relationship. And while he had been successful in editing her visitors list, when all was said and done …
she
still had the final say in who she would entertain.
He was and is a great guy …honestly, but she had
diluted
him. It wasn’t anything time wouldn’t take care of, but right now he wasn’t himself, and neither Chunk nor Rhonda knew all that entailed. At forty-five he was on a spiritual/emotional/sexual scavenger hunt it seemed and she represented a lot of the things on his list. There were others out there that would’ve “fit the bill” of course …but he’d stumbled onto her pretty ass and taken a liking to what he’d
found
…and
lost
his mind in the process.
.
It was now July, and that North Carolina asphalt was getting hot…
He hadn’t lain down with
her
since he’d sent the text. Like a
friendly-fire
incident, it was an undesirable but unavoidable casualty and consequence of the decision. His actions following the business with William Barry had cleared the bench to be sure, but also made her rightfully cautious and left him a bit in the dark as she had abandoned the email account upon the scare.
He had always been able to tell when she’d been busy …or planned to be, even when it wasn’t publicized in her email. She had an unmistakable hesitation in her voice and gaps between her words, probably because she had already discovered it difficult to lie to the man. He now recognized the visual that went with it as he watched her approach, her steps unsteady like those of someone who knows they’re being watched and scrutinized, as though she was having to think about each one, an impromptu model’s first strut down the runway or a baby’s first steps. Did he know about her activities, the lies she had told him beyond Tony? And if he did, was he fucking with her… After the now routine socially acceptable public display of affection, she sat down across from him. It had to be reminiscent of two spies sitting down together, each believing they knew something the other didn’t, and neither knowing as much as they thought, and yet a strange codependency and trust existed because each had
something
the other coveted.
If we were to retrace his steps, he had hacked her email, faked an STD, called the police because she had “
company
,” fucked her brains out, gone so far as to deliberately cause an accident with a felon on probation in an effort to thwart her plans to get together with the man, not to mention broken the bastard’s leg and gotten arrested, and then sent her an ambiguous untraceable text shaking her life up and not left any footprints to speak of. All while the images and imaginings of these other men she didn’t know he knew about were rattling around in his uneasy thoughts. These are generally not considered the actions of a balanced mind. The man was literally
Missing In Action
, the “lights were on” as they say, but “nobody was home,” probably off somewhere
unraveling
… And yet he could still sit across from her, a warm, loving quizzical smile of the boy-next-door variety on his face, indicative of the fact he knew her well enough to know something was on her mind, but leaving the responsibility of what it was for her to say …
because he already knew
. Leaving the poor woman with the uneasiness that she had done something she didn’t want him to know about. It was disturbing, deceptive and cold, in psychological terms they call it “
fuckin’ nuts
,”…or a
Young & The Restless
storyline.
She would tell him about the anonymous message she had gotten, concerned and suspicious of its origin, judging his reaction to the news, but unconcerned that he might’ve sent it …it had placed him front and center of the bull’s-eye, it was illogical that he would, but that was the intent. She would only inquire about anyone in his life who might have reason to be jealous… It could not have been more “
ironic.
”
His demeanor was enough for her to scratch him off any list of potential authors. She never asked him anything like you might expect, and he would never lie to her. On some level she must have simply decided she didn’t really want to know, the answer potentially more unsettling than the question and uncertainty. And once having decided not to go there, the meeting took its usual course, an informal therapy session where she would proceed to tell him all about her woes, and get her “
ego-boost”
prescription refilled before its conclusion. He would never meet anyone who had such a low self-esteem, yet high opinion of her self.
He knew of Glen’s father’s passing, she had called him as soon as she got the news, driving the Suburban and the kids to Norfolk for the funeral, Glen already there. It now seemed his mother who had early onset Alzheimer’s might be coming to live with them. The woman, he learned, had an uncanny knack for stating the obvious, and saying the very thing that every one else was thinking but afraid to.