Authors: Eric Jerome Dickey
I said, “She's already here? Your distraught, anorexic wife is here?”
“Already here.”
“She's in the lobby?”
“No, in the garage. She's in my car.”
“How long has she been there?”
“Not long. Not long at all.”
I didn't want to know how it came to be that she was downstairs in his car.
Now I was sober.
I said, “Can you get the room cleaned, pretend you were here alone, maybe rent another room if they have one, take her to a fresh room, and then . . . Wait, can you tell her that you didn't want to drive home in all the traffic and the rain? Can I do something to help you . . . to help not make matters worse for you?”
“Things were done before I met you.”
“Let me get my things. I need to get out of here.”
“Stop.”
“Your wife is here. This is done.”
“We'll leave here together.”
“You said that your wife is in your car, and you want to leave here together?”
“I want to leave here the way we came in.”
“I don't remember arriving here in a hearse.”
“I want to leave holding your hand.”
“Are you mad?”
“You said you wanted to watch the sunrise at Venice Beach?”
“You said your wife is here, so I doubt that is going to happen.”
“There is more to it.”
“What more could there be?”
“Sit down.”
“No. I'm not going to sit down.”
“Let me tell you something.”
“Something happened.”
He nodded. “Something happened.”
“Just say it.”
“Okay. But it's bad.”
“How bad?”
“Bad.”
“Dude, is this regular bad, or police bad?”
“Police bad.”
“How bad police bad? Are we talking tickets or handcuffs?”
“Sit.”
“I'm not going to . . . not going to . . . what is that?”
That was when I saw the damp spots on his suit coat, on the lapel. I thought it was more rain, like the raindrops on his shoulders. But when I touched it, the tips of my fingers came back bloody red.
Then I understood that his wife was waiting in his car.
My world shifted. I felt like a drop of water floating in space. Felt like there was no gravity. Felt like my body was losing its form.
Anxiety had him in its clutches and he couldn't get free. His lips curled in. He quivered. His shoulders slumped. He broke, and he trembled, and it felt like he was about to implode, collapse in on himself, and leave nothing more than a crater where a strong man used to be. I had been that way that day. I had imploded, collapsed, had had no one to support my angst. I put my arms around him. I held on, tried to keep him from tumbling in the wrong direction, tried to hold the big man up straight. My strength came alive. I couldn't stop the implosion, but I held him.
In a voice that was barely there I asked, “What happened?”
“Before this night, some things were already inevitable.”
“What did you do?”
He said, “She noticed my missing wedding ring.”
“What do you mean?”
He held me and rocked, and hummed.
He said, “Can we cuddle for a moment?”
“You want to cuddle?”
“I want to cuddle with you.”
“Now?”
“This might be the only chance we get to cuddle.”
I paused, touched the side of his face. “What have you done?”
“I just want to cuddle right now.”
“Sure, we can cuddle.”
“Clothes off or on?”
“You decide. I'll let you decide.”
“I want to undress you.”
“Okay.”
“I wanted to undress you earlier.”
“I would've liked that. No man has undressed me in a very long time.”
I dismantled him.
The man who wore the suit that symbolized achievement, I dismantled him.
I eased away his suit coat with care, with patience. I paused and cupped the sides of his face with my hands. Gave him eye contact. This was trust. This was honesty. In silence my actions were louder than words, told him I was with him. My eyes said that I wasn't leaving him. I kissed his cheeks, his lips. I undid the buttons on his shirt, pulled its tail from his trousers, undid the buttons at the sleeves, and helped him out of his shirt. Then I pulled away his white undershirt. I paused then, rubbed his neck, his shoulders, and his back. I made him sit and I took away his shoes, the right then the left, and then his socks, the left then the right. I rubbed his feet, and looked at his face. He touched my hair. I told my hair to take away all of his energy, to take the negativity that he couldn't bear and bring it to me. I had been through days worse than this before. Soon I undid his zipper, unbuckled his belt, and pulled his pants away. I had him stand and I pulled his boxers down to his ankles, kissed his legs, his thighs, memorized him before I had him step out of them, then added those to the pile of things he had worn, to the invisible pile of things he had carried throughout his life, a complicated life I had taken for granted.
We kissed. We kissed and tried to erase dystopia. We tried to make time go in reverse.
He stopped and faced me, looked me in the eye. His eyes took me in like he'd never seen me before. He looked at me and gave me small kisses on my lips, kisses of endearment. I became a high priestess, and he worshipped me as if this were the start of our night. I felt his passion. It remained. In his weariness, in the middle of his crime, his passion for me was stronger. He turned me around, stood behind me and pulled my hair up, kissed the back of my neck, kissed me softly, ran his hands over my curves as if he were meditating, memorizing this moment, then put his face to my neck, tasted me, captured the sight, sound, taste, and smell of me. He reached under my sleeveless dress, eased it up and over my body, over my hips, shoulders, and head. He put that to the side and unsnapped my bra, pulled it away, left shoulder first, then the right. He kissed my bare shoulders and my fingers reached back and touched his face, his hair. He moved in front of me and pulled away my jeggings, then my thong. He kissed my navel, then he picked me up, carried me to the bed, laid me down on my back.
He kissed my tattoos, kissed every tattoo, put his invisible marks on top of what was there. My hands came up, touched my neck, touched the circular tattoos he had already created. I touched my new necklace like it was made of pearls.
We embraced, hugged, rocked to the music coming from the television, held each other close in an affectionate manner, hugged tenderly and nuzzled in the darkness, beneath a solemnness that was eager to descend and reveal all that I didn't want revealed. I wanted now to last until I needed something different. But we don't get to choose. The things we cling to can be taken away. So I would cling to him while I could. We nestled into our pain as the inevitable approached one breath at a time. There was no fondling. We had moved from the childish and juvenile stages of an affair and into the adult stages of a relationship. Somewhere after dusk and before dawn, we had grown in ways unseen to us both. We sought something that lived beyond lust and on the other side of love. We looked for what we could imagine existed in the movies, but would never be able to find.
Skin against skin, I expected to hear a knock at the door, a demanding knock. But there was silence in the hallway. So we continued as we were. Sought warmth and affection from each other, without the quest for sexual gratification. This was an art form, like kissing, like sex, like love.
I turned my back to him and he snuggled up behind me. We became two spoons in a small drawer. My head rested on his chest, my dreadlocks forming a pillow underneath his head. One of his arms was up high, around and under my neck, his other hand around my body, the palm from that hand on my breast, resting over my heart, not massaging my breast but feeling my heartbeat, feeling the life force, feeling the thumping that signaled that this existence continued as it echoed inside me. My hand was on his hand and I felt his heart beating against my back. His life force thumped against my back, sent his vibrations into me. Our energies intertwined. We enjoyed the closeness, the honest affection, and for a moment the cuddling broke the negativity and our curt and troubled breathing eased, and there was the sound of happiness. This is why we cuddle. Cuddling releases a hormone that reduces stress and anxiety. Cuddling is good for the mind.
We didn't talk about racism, discrimination, or xenophobia.
We didn't talk at all.
No sirens.
No ringing phones.
No one banged on the door.
No longer masked in lust.
Living in trust.
I allowed his demons to find a resting place inside my hell.
My darkness enveloped him, became a safe haven for his troubles.
He said, “Houghmagandy. My wife has a membership to Houghmagandy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mentioned a place called Houghmagandy to you earlier tonight.”
“The country club.”
“
Houghmagandy
is an ancient word that means âfornication.'”
“Am I supposed to guess the significance of that?”
“Houghmagandy is the name of an underground swingers' club up in the Valley.”
“You're swingers?”
“I'm not a swinger.”
“You just said you were members.”
“She's a member.”
“And you're not?”
“I'm not a member.”
“You gave her permission to join?”
“She's been a member for years. I just became aware of the place this morning.”
“When she left her iPad on.”
“I saw all the messages about Houghmagandy and Decadence.”
“And what is Decadence?”
“An exclusive swingers' club in the Bible Belt.”
“That sounds like an oxymoron. Or at least like hypocrisy.”
“I travel abroad a lot to do business, and when I'm out of the country, she always says she's going to South Carolina to visit a girlfriend from college. She's been going to at least two swingers' clubs.”
“Alone or with her girlfriend?”
“Not alone. She has a special male friend. He takes her to both.”
“Wait. You're telling me your wife not only has cuckolded you, but she's a swinger?”
He said, “She's had an entire other life outside our marriage.”
“One more interesting than playing Candy Crush.”
His voice thickened. “She's a member. She and the older guy are members. They have joint memberships, on his card. It was paid for on his personal American Express Centurion Card, so it never showed up on our accounts. They have been members for over five years. I found out this morning.”
“She's a well-educated woman living in the upper echelon of society, right?”
“Very accomplished and sophisticated.”
“I thought that intelligent people were more likely to remain faithful.”
“Scholarly people are just better at hiding the immoral things they do.”
“What kind of guy was she dealing with?”
“Older guy she's been sleeping with has two PhDs and used to run three companies.”
“Sounds like a regular Neil deGrasse Tyson. You know who the older guy is?”
He frowned at his wounded fist. “I know who he is.”
“Who is he?”
“Family friend.”
“You're joking.”
“He's always been a friend of the family.”
“A friend of the family? How close?”
“Was like a second father to me.”
“That's pretty close.”
“He also stood in for my wife's father in our wedding.”
“When did you find out about your wretched wife's extreme ratchetness?”
“Told you. This morning. I took her iPad, took the evidence and went to pay him a visit. I was going to e-mail the interactions to him, but I wanted to look in his eyes and show him his own words.”
“You had a fight before the sun came up.”
“The fight was unexpected.”
“What did you think was going to happen?”
“Had no idea. He got the first blow in. But the last belonged to me.”
“With a racquetball racquet?”
“No. He attacked me with a racquetball racquet. He came after me with his favorite GearBox Max1 170 Teardrop Racquetâthe racquet I gave him last Christmas. Same type of racquet I used when he and I hit the courts together every second and fourth Sunday.”
“Are those strong?”
“The most powerful, durable racquet ever designed by GearBox.”
“He hit you with a racquetball racquet like he wanted to kill you.”
“He hit me like I had been the one sleeping with his wife for the last six years or more.”
“What did you use?”
“Baseball bat.”
“Damn. I was at Chick-fil-A having a number one, and you were fighting for your life.”
“He attacked me. Then I lost it and beat him with a baseball bat we had bought at Dodger Stadium. We went there to celebrate when Magic Johnson became part of the front office up there.”
“Your distraught wife is panic-stricken because of that fight.”
“So am I. I drove away from the scene, and she ran to the scene.”
“That's the older guy who has been on the news all day.”
“Same guy. He was my friend. He was one of my closest friends.”
“He was an older dude.”
“And because of that, at times he was like a father to me as well. Gave me much counsel during my college days. He was the adviser to my fraternity, was a part of my wedding, and was part of my life.”
“He slept with your wife.”
“He ate dinner at our home. He brought his wife, when he was married. He was good with deception. I didn't see that one coming. My wife always said he was like a second father to her as well.”
“That's sick.”
“I loved him, too. Like he was my father. Like he was my friend.”
“Wait. That makes no sense.”
“I can connect the dots. Where did I lose you?”
“You told me you had met her at Barnes & Noble. You said she was coming up the escalator like an angel. Now you're telling me she already knew the people you knew? She already knew him?”
“I was at the bookstore with the older guy and his wife.”
“You left that part out.”
“I know. I think she was coming to see him. I didn't know they were involved. His wife was with him. I ran into them, then ended up strolling with them, and went to the bookstore to buy a Harry Potter book. I felt that she was coming toward me, but maybe she was going toward him and I got in the way and introduced myself, then introduced her to my friends. She revealed nothing. He revealed nothing.”
“They acted like they had never met?”
“Like they were total strangers. She chatted me up; sat with me talking about Harry Potter, flirted with me while her lover and his wife were at the next table drinking tea and eating muffins. My friend's wife kept staring at her with a strange smile on her face, and she had become cold and unfriendly, but I assumed that was an older woman's jealousy sparked by undeniable youth and beauty. Some women hate what should be celebrated. They left us there, left us there talking and getting to know each other. I was unaware, but like I told you, his wife, his ex-wife, was always mistrustful. My wife was never able to look his wife in the eye. Never could.”
“I know what happened. I don't believe in coincidences, so I know.”
“Tell me.”
“Her jealous ass was following her lover, then happened to meet you.”
“I guess she was following him. Maybe she wanted to size up the competition. Or maybe, like me, she was just passing through The Grove, saw him, and followed him, initiated some sort of lover's game.”
“She knew he was there. That's why she was alone. I'm a woman, and I know the heart of a woman. She followed him and wanted to see what his wife looked like. She wanted to see how they interacted as husband and wife. She wanted to see if their relationship lined up to whatever lie he had told her. She didn't like what she saw. What she saw let her know that he'd never leave his wife and be with her. My guess is that's why she was so receptive to you out of the gate. She rubbed it in her lover's face. You were the ultimatum. He hated her being with you but couldn't open his mouth or do a damn thing about it.”
“You've drawn an interesting scenario; complicated, yet very simple and direct.”
“She slept with you the next day.”
“She did.”
“I bet she gave him twenty-four hours to make up his mind. He couldn't leave his wife. She was envious of her old guy's wife, and she wanted to hurt his heart, too. I'll bet he knew she was going on a date with you. If you didn't tell him, she did. He couldn't say anything, of course; plus, it might've helped to quell his wife's suspicions. Your wife, before she was your loving wife, she had you to anger him, to force his hand. No man likes being backed into a corner. No woman likes to feel like the fool. That probably put a rift between them, but at some point they went back to hooking up. You dated her and made it possible for them to be seen together in public and draw no suspicion. Hey, are you all right? You don't look too well.”
“I've moved from denial to anger to bargaining to depression.”
“Acceptance? How far away are you from acceptance?”
“Now I accept it. I have no other choice but to accept it. Again, I'm the idiot savant. I can start a business, can run a business, raise capital, assemble team members, develop marketing strategy, but with women . . . it's like I'm good at algebra but have been given a problem in physics. I hate to admit it, but maybe I have what some call situational stupidity. Emotions take root and obstruct my ability to reason, and because of that I can be indistinguishable from a person who is just plain stupid.”
“I guess we have something in common. You are with women the way I am with men. I get emotional, and because of that, I, too, am an idiot savant. They were in your face, and you had no idea?”
“You wouldn't look at them and think anything. He's older than her goddamn father.”
“If you say so. But I know you've heard of Viagra. That blue pill keeps old players in the game.”
“He may have been like her father, but she was in bed with him like he was her husband.”
I said, “That's disgusting.”
“With me, I thought her sex drive was low, or I didn't please her whenever we did have sex, which was a rare occasion, but I guess it was anything but. She preferred someone else, for whatever reason.”
“She knows you and him got into it?”
He said, “She ran to that sonofabitch as soon as she heard he'd gotten what he deserved.”
“His being attacked came on the news, and she ran to him.” I asked, “Does she know you did it?”
“She knew. She knew that it wasn't a home invasion. She knew she had been exposed. Took six years, but she was exposed. Her iPad was unlocked, went missing, she saw my bags, so she knew.”
“Wow. Text messages and instant messages don't lie.”
“She tried to purge everything on the Cloud, but it was too late. She came back from Zumba, or wherever she was, called me a hundred times, saw the special report on the news, probably received two dozen phone calls about the old man people saw as her second father, and ran to the hospital.”
“All of that, and she had the time to be jealous?”
“She was like that.”
“Again, ratchetness.”
“I'll tell you everything that happened tonight.”
“I think I know.”
“Actually, you have no idea that you are sitting in the eye of a storm.”
“What did I miss?”
“You were almost murdered.”