Here I was at the Corner Café having my dinner. I've been coming here to eat for the last six months. My wife of seven years and I have filed for divorce and it should be final today. For six of the seven years our marriage was great, or at least it was for me.

I sat there eating the ham loaf special while thinking about my past and how we met and ended up where we were today.

We met at a wedding. I was a friend of the groom and she was one of the bridesmaids. At the reception we were introduced and spent a good part of the evening together. She was a beautiful gal. For me it was darn near love at first sight.

I should tell you that we were complete opposites. They say opposites attract and I do believe it. It's both a good and bad thing. I'll try and explain; everything in our relationship was new. She always wanted to do things that I never did. She in turn did things with me that she had never done. I don't mean sexual things, even though that was part of it, but, doing things and going places.

I love sports. So I had a tendency to watch a lot of sports on television. Josie - that's my wife's name but I call her Jo - prefers going out to clubs and dinner.

She works in an office, and I work in a factory.

She loves to dress up. Jeans are my clothes of choice.

She's outgoing and talks a lot. I am rather quite and reserved.

She likes mixed drinks; I prefer beer.

I wanted to start a family but Jo wanted to wait a few years. Something about messing up her body.

I can go on and on about our differences but I think you get the general idea. As I mentioned earlier, this wasn't a bad thing as long as we both tried to put everything into our marriage. It was a give and take proposition. I actually enjoyed going out once in awhile with Jo. She was a beautiful and sophisticated woman. Since she had the brains in the family, I pretty much let her take charge. By that I mean, she handled the bills, bought the furniture, all what I call the girly things. I bought my one lazy boy chair and the TV. Everything else I left up to her.

Now don't misunderstand me here. I let her get all the stuff she wanted. As I mentioned, us being opposites, I really didn't care what kind of furniture we had or what color the rooms were painted. I just let her get what she wanted and we were both happier because of it.

We did do the work on the house together. We painted the rooms together and probably had fun doing it. I took care of the outside, shoveling snow or cutting the grass, depending on the season. She planted her flowers; I wasn't into that.

She preferred dining out, as she called it. I preferred staying home and having a grilled steak and potatoes. This was one of the sorer spots between us. There were a lot of days when I got home first and started cooking something up. I guess you could say I was the cook in our household. Of course that meant we would eat out more on the weekends.

You might wonder if I like to cook, why I was eating out most every night at the café. I guess it's the loneliness. At least here at the café, there were other people around.

If you're wondering what led to the divorce. Jo was having an affair with one of the men at her office. To the best of my knowledge, it began about a year ago. It was odd how I originally found out. I have a cell phone which I very rarely use. One day I was going to call home and tell Jo that I could pick up something for us to eat. When I turned my phone on it told me I had a message. I pushed the buttons and listened to the message.

"Your wife is having an affair. She will be at the Green Grove Motel on Saturday."

I checked and it said 'Unknown caller.' I wasn't sure what to think. We had gotten into a couple of arguments lately about our differences and she told me how I didn't want to do anything. I was like an old man who didn't want to have any fun anymore. We went to bed mad at each other which at the time started to be more frequent. I should have picked up on a problem back then, but I thought our marriage was strong.

The message was left on Tuesday, and it was Friday when I heard the message. It meant that if the message was true, Jo would make an excuse to go out the next evening. I wasn't sure what to do. Should I just come out and confront her? Maybe I should follow her to the motel and confront her there.

I decided to take the high road and when I got home I told her to get ready, that we were going out for dinner. She looked so surprised at me.

"What brought this on?" she asked me.

"Well, you said I was like an old fart and I decided to wine and dine you tonight, and who knows. I might get lucky."

She looked surprised but didn't really say anything. We headed out to the dinner/nightspot that she always liked. It was across the road from the Green Grove Motel. When we pulled up, I saw her glance across the street but couldn't really make anything out of it.

We had dinner and she had her mixed drinks and I had my beer. It was like old times for us. As we were dancing I put my hand on her butt.

"Kevin, what are you doing? People can see where your hand is and what you're doing."

"I'm wooing my wife. I haven't been doing this enough lately."

We were sitting back at our table and I told her we needed to get our marriage back on track. I explained that I knew we had different likes and dislikes but we were always able to work through them. I told her that I thought it was time to start a family. It was hard to read her reactions but I knew something was going on in the back of her mind. I didn't know if she was thinking about what I was telling her or something else.

We danced some more and had a couple of more drinks. She was quiet during the ride home, which was odd in itself. When we got home, we got ready for bed. Her mind was still thinking but she wasn't talking.

"Jo, is there a problem? You've hardly said anything all night. Is there something you want to tell me?" I tried to give her every opportunity to talk to me.

"No," she said, "there's nothing wrong. I forgot to mention to you that a couple of the girls from the office asked me to go out with them tomorrow night."

"Are you going to go or do you want to take in a movie with me and then we'll come home and make love? Maybe even start on that family," I smiled.

She looked nervous. I gave her every opportunity possible to talk to me.

"I promised the girls; maybe I'll call them tomorrow and talk to them. We'll talk about it tomorrow, right now I'm tired. I need to get some sleep."

We got into bed and I tried cuddling up to her.

"Kevin, not tonight, I'm really tired."

Well, I guess I got my answer. I would wait to see what tomorrow would bring. I tried my best and would have to see if she would follow through with her plans. I knew one thing for sure; if she went through with this, our marriage was over.

Jo's family was pretty nice to me. Even though they always thought that Jo was too good for me, they went along with her decision to marry me. I guess most parents want their daughter to marry a doctor, lawyer, or business person. I was a high school graduate and worked in the factory. I worked hard and brought in about the same amount of money as Jo. Financially we were on equal terms. The people we usually associated with seemed to be her problem. I treated everyone the same. I always told Jo that a suit doesn't make the person; the personality and moral structure does.

Jo's older brother was a banker. He really didn't make a whole lot more money than me but I guess it was the prestige of his position.

Jo had a sister who was two years younger than her. She was kind of my gal pal. If I wasn't married to Jo I wouldn't need to think twice about going out with Billie. Yes, her name is Billie. She was the sort of black sheep in the family. She liked sports, beer and pizza. She wasn't into the real girly things even though the few times I saw her dressed up she was a knock out.

She would kid with me and always told me that when I got tired of Jo that she would be waiting for me. I always laughed but Jo and her parents didn't think it was funny. I never took Billie seriously even though I really cared for her. It was kind of funny how much she looked like Jo, only she dressed down and kept a tom boy haircut. She dated some but never seemed to get serious about anyone.

I keep getting off track here. Back to the affair. We didn't make love that night after our big dinner and dancing. It made me believe that the phone call I received was real. Jo got up the next morning and was on the telephone. She walked into the other room to talk. When she came back, she said she decided that since she told her girlfriends that she would go with them that she wanted to keep her word.

I looked at her and was just about to tell her about the phone call message I received, but I needed to catch her at the motel. If she would deny it, she might do it again so I thought up a plan to be there that night. I told her I was going out with the guys and would probably be home late and not to wait up for me. We were going to the sports bar and watch some sports on TV.

She almost seemed relieved. I put up a good front but inside I was hurting bad. If she followed through and had an affair, I knew our marriage would be over.

I remember reading a story where a man thought his wife was having an affair and he made a bunch of phone calls and had people going to the room. I remember how that made me laugh and thought it was funny at the time. I decided to do a little of that, just to interrupt their affair. I didn't even know who the guy was yet. I wasn't sure what I was going to do about it when I found out. I wasn't a wimp and knew I'd have to confront the bastard.

Jo went into the bathroom and I took the telephone and hit *69. In our area it would bring up the last call. The phone rang and a man answered the phone.

"Is this Jim?" I asked.

"No," you have the wrong number," the voice said.

"Is this 327-4432?" I asked

"Yes, it is, but I'm not Jim. I'm Paul, Paul Reaburn. There's no Jim at this number," the voice said.

"Sorry to bother you, I must have written down the wrong number," I said.

"No problem, we all make mistakes," he laughed.

He had no idea the mistake he just made telling me who he was. I now remember meeting him at a few of the functions. He had a cute little wife but always hung around mine at the different company events. I never thought much about it but now looking back I guess I took too much for granted.

When a marriage fails it usually takes two to tango. Very rarely is it all one person's fault. In this case I do believe Jo has to take the brunt of the fault. I sat back in my chair wondering where I didn't do enough. Should I still try and confront her? Maybe I was still all wet and this was just a bad dream.

Throughout the day I made different plans as to how I was going to deal with this. I went to the motel and found out there was a reservation for Mr. and Mrs. Paul Reaburn. I mentioned to the clerk that they were friends of mine and were on their anniversary. I left a bouquet of flowers and an envelope with a letter to Jo in it. I asked the clerk to deliver it to them sometime after nine that evening.

I called three pizza parlors and asked them all to deliver a pizza to Room #136 that evening after nine also. I called from the motel lobby so it would show up on the caller ID. I wasn't sure what else to do so I headed home. Jo was taking a shower and getting ready to go out. She had some really sexy clothes set out to wear. When she got out of the shower I asked her one last time if she wanted to cancel her plans and I'd cancel mine and we could be together.

"What's your problem? I'm just going out with the girls. I should be home by one o'clock or so. Enjoy your night out with the boys," she said.

I knew that was it. I went and cleaned up and when I got out of the shower Jo had already left. I guess she didn't want to face me. Probably a little remorse.

I was really feeling low and I'm not sure I was even thinking straight. I took my hand gun and put it in my glove compartment. I don't know why I took it with me but I did. I headed over to the Green Grove Motel. I saw a car parked along the side of the building next to Room #136 but it wasn't Jo's. It made me feel a little better till I saw Jo's car parked across the street at the same restaurant we ate at yesterday. I figured they parked his car at the motel and drove hers over to the restaurant. I parked on the other side of the motel where I had a good view of the restaurant. At about 8:45pm I saw a smiling Jo and her boyfriend get into her car and head on over to the motel. She parked her car along side of his on the side of the building.