Chapter 1: An Ideal Husband

I was drinking coffee at our hotel bar just before seven in the morning when my boss Henry strolled up, a partially clad young woman on each arm. He would have made it to the elevators if the shorter girl had not steered the party to the bar where she exchanged torrents of Mexican Spanish with the barmaid. I had been making the coffee last while I listened intently to that same barmaid chatting with a girl cleaning the tables, trying to adjust to the differences between their speech and the classical Castilian I had learned in night school.

Henry was exchanging spit with the taller hooker; behind his back, she was making signs to the barmaid which quickly resulted in a bottle of champagne being placed on the bar. He had, as they say ‘drink taken’ but he seemed to have reached a plateau of inebriation where his brain was functioning, albeit sluggishly. Spotting the bottle, he gave his room number and indicated that he would sign a chit. We had arrived in Las Vegas, Sin Capital of the World, hours earlier in the company of six others for his stag party. I was not one of his close friends, but I had been added to the group to reassure wives and sweethearts that the ‘boys’ would behave.

I had been listening to the conversation in Spanish, eventually making sense of most of it. I had learned enough to know that the smaller hooker was concerned that she would remain in Henry’s possessive grasp for at least another hour, making it impossible for her to collect her young daughter from the childminder. I missed some of the nuances, but I gathered that she wanted the barmaid to call ‘Momma’ to deal with the situation. It was not clear whose mother was intended but both women agreed that she would be less than happy with the request. There was something about the child being banned from the office where granny cleaned, but I did not catch all that was said.

Henry had acknowledged me with a wink when he staggered up to the bar and now he turned to beam at me: “I thought you’d be safely tucked up in bed by this hour, Andrew.” I admitted that I had retired jet-lagged before ten the previous evening and that I was on my way out to enjoy the daylight hours. I had more than half a dread that the sunshine outside would be as phony as the decorations inside. Las Vegas is Henry’s dream town, not mine.

He laughed, turning to the taller escort and grinning at her. “Andrew works for me. He’s our moral compass. “To tell you the truth,” he added, turning back to me, “I didn’t really want him here as a wet blanket.” He reattached his lips to those of the bored girl while I paid close attention to the distress in the voice of the smaller escort.

I quite liked Henry. He had recently been transferred from marketing to take charge of production as a result of a recommendation by a firm of outside consultants. His predecessor was a bit of a micro-manager although I simply ignored him for most of the time. Henry, acknowledging his ignorance, left us to our own devices whilst he spread his bonhomie amongst clients and senior managers indiscriminately. While he certainly was not the answer to the problems besetting the company, he did little harm.

He arranged and subsidized this trip to Las Vegas for a selected few of his colleagues, old and new. I was not there simply as ‘Good old Andy’, the perennial butt of the office jokers – the guy who would always go the extra mile to help you with a problem. I had my own ideas about what ailed the engineering manufacturer I had worked for since I left university more than twenty years before.

I was not on the original list of stags, but a few incautious comments on the morals of Henry’s fiancée at an impromptu rehearsal in the local pub resulted in a change of personnel. I had tendered my resignation the next morning and in a moment of weakness Henry invited me to join the other stags. That was not on my original plan, but it was a gift horse, and I had no intention of inspecting its mouth, so I accepted with a friendly smile.

Henry turned his attention to the shorter hooker who now looked thoroughly miserable with tears in her eyes. I had to do something: I hate to see a damsel in distress.

“I think you should let this young lady go, Henry.” He gave me an unfriendly look that drove me to elaborate. “Her fiancé is a security guard in this hotel, and he comes on duty in about fifteen minutes.” I made my fist into a pistol which I pointed at his eyes to be sure the message penetrated the alcoholic haze.

The barmaid and both decorative escorts were looking at me as if I was an alien from another galaxy. I freely admit that I am not at my best at seven o’clock in the morning, but I thought my idea of an armed and muscular security guard had real merit. Henry looked baffled for a moment, then his face cleared, and he grinned at me: “By that time we’ll all be up in my room so her boyfriend will see nothing.”

“His first duty is to check the room cameras to see who is sleeping in each room,” I improvised with barely a pause. The two girls still clinging to Henry were staring at me with open skepticism while the barmaid had her apron in her mouth to stifle her laughter; Henry had gone pale. He took his arms from round the waists of his companions, reaching into his trouser pocket to extract a money clip from which he pulled several banknotes which he pressed into the hand of the smaller escort.

The taller girl grabbed his hand, still holding the well-filled clip, and led him off to the elevators. Henry had not regained his equilibrium, although he was composed enough to remember the champagne, so he made small talk while he exited the scene: “Join us for cocktails by the pool, Andrew. About five if that suits you.”

“Actually Henry, I think I’m going to visit Mexico for a few days. Don’t wait for me if I miss the flight home. After all, I’ve nothing to rush home for. Not like you, you lucky dog, marrying the beautiful Vanessa. I wonder if the girls are having fun in Miami?”

Henry’s grin faded and he was looking rather worried as the elevator doors closed. Pete, the guy who had been dropped from the original guest list, had been offering odds on Vanessa bedding a different man each night of their hen party to Florida. Despite his enthusiasm for the two escorts, I was certain that Henry would not be happy if his bride shared his moral laxity. My own wife was not one of the bride’s bachelorettes, but then she had her own more permanent arrangement at home which was why I was here planning a trip to Mexico.

Consuela, the little escort, had departed with her money leaving the barmaid and I facing each other across the counter. She fetched two cups, pouring fresh coffee for us. “She is my sister,” she began, waving in the direction of the exit doors. The lighting in the bar was dim and the girl had spent most of her time at the back of the booth chatting to the cleaner. Now she had moved into the light, the livid scar that crossed her face was all too evident. I did not recoil from her as I had seen enough before Henry arrived to master my shock and revulsion. Someone had deliberately destroyed the beauty of this young woman. She spoke Spanish and I replied in the same language. “I can see the resemblance.”

“She is the pretty one, not like me,” and she brought her hand across her cheek puckering the scar that disfigured her. “Beauty begins here,” I replied placing my hand over my heart. The cleaner gave a snort and broke into rapid speech most of which I did not understand. It included a warning to be careful of the smooth gringo with the peculiar accent. She concluded by gathering up her mops and bucket and leaving.

“That is Castilian, is it not?”

“I learned to speak Spanish in night school in England. I was only listening to learn the Mexican way to speak. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“How much did you understand of my speech with my sister? You must have known it was about her angel so why did you talk about her security guard boyfriend?”

“I thought Henry would be more likely to respond to a threat than show compassion for a distraught mother.”

We were speaking Spanish. I understood every word she said, and it took several moments for me to realize that she was using less patois than when she spoke with her sister and the cleaner. She poured more coffee while she digested what I had told her. Her attractive frown of concentration which made me forget her scar for an instant, had just cleared. It appeared that she had another question, when we were interrupted by another barmaid who clapped my new friend on the shoulder.

“Who’s the gringo, Maria? I thought you had given up the game?”

Maria blushed as she stood up, handing over keys to the new arrival and checking herself out the till. I finished my coffee and was reaching for money to pay my bill when she returned, took the note from my hand and pushed it into my shirt pocket.

“Have you had breakfast? I know a great place off the Strip.”

I am a cautious man, an engineer who is accustomed to checking every step in a process whether it is the design of a bridge or crossing the road. It is a little over four years since I discovered that my wife, the mother of my two kids, was having an affair. It has taken me that long, planning and testing, to bring me to Las Vegas ready to gain my revenge. I may be the least impulsive man on the planet.

And yet, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to walk out of the staff door to my luxury hotel with a woman I met barely an hour before. I was driven off to breakfast by a barmaid in a motor car that would not have been allowed to remain on a British road. Maria drove for about twenty minutes into a residential area that appeared shabby but clean. She stopped, not at a café as I expected, but outside a small, detached house where a little girl of about six or seven was playing in the drive.

She rushed over yelling with joy at her Aunt Maria, then going suddenly silent when she saw me sitting in the passenger seat. Maria scooped her up into a hug, laughing at her sudden shyness. Consuela, wearing a toweling robe and fluffy slippers appeared at the door, seemingly unsurprised that her sister had brought me home. Right behind her, dressed in a waitress outfit, was an older version of the sisters. They both spoke at once:

“This is the guy that married me to a security guard,” Consuela laughingly explained to her mother, while Maria told me that her mom needed the family car and that she would drop us off at the diner.

“You don’t look much, but you sure enough made a big impression on my girls,” Mom told me. She had spoken in the strongest dialect I had yet heard but I understood every word. The little girl was introduced as Angelina; she remained clinging to her mother’s robe while Maria and Mom kissed and petted her before joining me in the car.

The diner was just off the strip and seemed to be the place to go for staff going on and off duty. Everyone knew Mom, who served us, and almost as many knew Maria. The story of me getting Consuela out gained in the telling and won me at least temporary acceptance. I had arrived in Las Vegas barely twenty-four hours before where I was immediately immersed in the glamour. Sitting in the diner, it was clear that the veneer was very thin: behind the big bucks in the casinos there are a great many people barely scraping a living.

By ten o’clock the diner had emptied. Mom and the other waitresses joined Maria and me over yet more coffee until they were required to clear up and begin the preparations for lunch when, they assured me, it would be even busier. There had been very little time for talk. I had told Maria about the stag party – I had to translate that as ‘bachelor party’ – and my reason for joining them. All she said about herself and her family was that Las Vegas was an easy place to get in to but difficult to get out of.

I had lost my awareness of her disfigurement. It began at the outside corner of her right eye, crossed her nose and both cheeks to end below the lobe of her left ear. I was only conscious of it now when her face flushed highlighting the puckered, white scar tissue.

We were still chatting when the lunch rush began, so we ordered food and even helped in the kitchen towards the end. All I was fit for was emptying plates to stack them in the dishwasher, but I suppose it freed up someone else for more important duties. After lunch we got back round the table, and I asked for advice on where I could buy a decent automobile. The response was enthusiastic, leading, after a lengthy debate, to a posse in three cars descending on a dealership in the suburbs.

Maria accompanied me on the test drive. Everyone, including me, seemed to regard me as her special project. She had been kind and supportive ever since I made the silly remark that got her sister away from Henry. Now she became very angry when I produced my savings in cash from the money belt holding up my trousers. We were sitting alone in the car waiting for the salesman to reel us in.

“Do you have a death wish? Every time I meet a guy I like, he turns out to be a screwball, but you take the prize, you idiot. If half the folk in the diner suspected you were this loaded they would tear your head off – and they’re my friends!”

“You keep it, then. Its only money and I can’t get too worked up about that after what I’ve already lost.” It is beyond reason that I should say so much to this stranger after four years of keeping all my hurt, and all my plans for revenge, locked in my heart.

“I was going to drive south today as soon as I got the car, but I thought I’d stay on a while now I’ve met you.”

“Let me out, right here, you arrogant bastard.” What did I say?

Then I remembered the new barmaid suggesting that Maria had once been an escort like her sister. She thought I was just like Henry. “I only meant for you to look after the cash for me until I left. It’s years since I’ve enjoyed just talking to someone the way you and I have talked since we met. If I was twenty years younger, I’d ask you to marry me.”

“Why not ask me anyway?”

She turned her back to me, counting out the money, so I made no reply. Her profile was scarcely marred by the terrible scar that drew your eyes to her and I understood what a beautiful girl she had been before she was assaulted. Then she turned and smiled at me, making me ashamed of the self-pity I was indulging in. I did not know I was crying until she reached across the seat and wiped a tear from my cheek.

“We won’t get this heap of shit for two grand, but he’ll go for two and a half.” As she spoke, she tucked five hundred dollars into the cup of her bra, then pushed two thousand into her cleavage where it was just visible. “I’ll offer to let him collect the cash with his teeth if he lets you have the car for two thou,” she grinned, putting the rest of the money back into my money belt.

We drove back to the lot where I left the negotiations to my new partner. The group from the diner joined in the uninhibited discussion as did all the employees and several customers. In fact, I was the only one who played no part until the salesmen, grinning broadly, handed me the keys before sitting me at a table to sign transfer documents – but only after Maria had read them through to ensure that I was not cheated.

It had been a lively scene and the party continued as Maria, her Mommy and three of the waitresses climbed into my new car insisting that I make several runs up and down the Strip so they could see and be seen. All the windows were down as they shouted and waved at passing acquaintances; more than once the level of giggling behind me suggested that there was some flashing of boobs. Maria and I were quiet when we eventually returned to the diner. We remained in the car while the others rushed off, suddenly recalling that they were on duty.

“Forgive me, Maria. You were on duty through the night, and you’ve had no rest. Why don’t I drive to my hotel, and you can take the car to get home. Bring it back when you come on duty tonight.”

She turned her full face towards me, repeating the gesture that pulls her scar into a grotesque shape. This time I was ready for it, simply reaching out to stroke her cheek when she stopped. “It’s only the surface that’s ugly,” I whispered, letting my fingers run through her shining veil of midnight black hair. I thought for a moment she was going to cry but then her features hardened.

“I don’t mind my boyfriends being a bit goofy, but I draw the line at weird.” My eyebrows shot up at this description. “You seem to have a death wish. First you hand me your money belt and offer to let me look after it for you and now you offer me your car. Round here people will kill you for twenty bucks – and put you in hospital for a ten-spot.”

I took a deep breath, letting it out as a sigh. And there, in a dusty carpark on the wrong side of the tracks of the glitter capital of the world, I began to tell the story of my life to a young woman I had met less than six hours earlier.

“When my son sneered at me for being a wimp and a cuckold, I decided it was time to leave.” Maria held up her hand to stop me: “You have a son, Andreas?”

“I have the full set, Maria. I have a wife, Susan, who loves another man; I have a daughter, aged nineteen and at university; and I have a son, aged sixteen, who is deciding what his major field of study will be for the next two years. It was that discussion that drove me out.”

We were sitting in the family room of our suburban semi-villa. Mark and his Mum were at the kitchen table with Penny reading a book in my recliner. I was sitting in front of the television set, but I switched it off to take part in the discussion on Mark’s A-level choices. I remarked that a second science would be better than psychology, since he planned to study engineering at university. I remember the exact words my son used to destroy me:

‘Dan says that only losers read engineering,’ he sneered. ‘Psychology is important for scientists.’

I was still facing the television set so I could see my family reflected on the blank screen with enough detail to follow the reaction to Mark’s pronouncement. Penny dropped her book, looked at her mother, then punched her brother on the arm. Susan dropped her head on the table before she too punched my son. It was very clear that they all knew the significant role Dan Peters had played in our family life for the past four years.

Susan is Head of English in the local school and the reason I know that her affair with her Headteacher, Daniel Peters is only four years old is that she did not know him until his appointment. I may be doing her an injustice: it is possible that she resisted his courtship for a week or two before betraying me and our children. She made no great attempt to keep her romance secret, so I became aware of the loss of her allegiance very quickly.

Rightly or wrongly, I decided to say nothing about her disloyalty until the children had left home. In the days when we used to talk, my wife often complained of selfish parents leaving their children seriously troubled when they divorced. When she began her own affair, I tried to remind her of those discussions, but she only became angry and defensive.

I quickly concluded that the only way to save my children from trauma was to pretend not to notice that my wife loved another man. I reasoned that the kids were innocent and deserved stability at home while they tackled the problems of leaving childhood behind. I suppose I imagined that their adolescent self-absorption would make them blind to the dalliance of their mother. Now, Mark’s familiar use of the name ‘Dan’ shattered that illusion. There was nothing to be gained by me continuing the pretense of not knowing what was going on.

It was, of course, perfectly proper for a headteacher to offer an opinion on the choice of A-levels but Mark should have referred to him as ‘Mr. Peters’ or ‘Desperate’, the nickname he was known by (after Desperate Dan, a character in the Beano). There was a degree of intimacy in using his Christian name that suggested an acceptance of his intimate role in our family affairs. The subsequent shadow play I witnessed on the blank television screen confirmed that my whole family knew and, at least to some extent, approved of my wife’s liaison. When I rose from my seat, I had resolved that it was time for me to leave them to my successor.

Maria and I were interrupted at that point by a waitress bringing out yet more coffee. Even with the windows down it had become too hot in the car, so Maria and I had moved to a bench at the side of the diner. “So, you discovered your wife was cheating on you and just soaked it up?”

“I decided to keep the family together until the kids left home, but I set plans in motion. That’s why I was ready to move less than two weeks after my son sneered at me. Dan was taking something I no longer valued, so I could live with his theft of Susan’s affections. I accepted being a cuckold, but I reject the idea that I’m a wimp.”

“The jury’s out! It’s too hot here and we’ll be interrupted every few minutes. Let’s swing by my place to pick up a fresh uniform for tonight, then we’ll go back to the hotel. We both need a shower.”

I almost asked if we would share the shower, but instead offered her the car keys. I was jangling from all the coffee, and I was dazed by the unaccustomed warmth of the afternoon sun. The change of uniform turned out to fill a gym bag and took almost half an hour. I spent the time, happily enough, enjoying a dolls’ tea party hosted by Angelina. She came out of her shell, revealing family secrets with innocent glee. I think she treated me as an honorary girl.

Back in my room at the hotel, Maria emerged from the shower in a sports bra and knickers at least as concealing as bikini bottoms. She perched on the bed with a bottle of water from my mini fridge. Greatly daring, I donned my shorts after I had showered alone, without putting on a shirt.

“I presume you were out of love with your wife before Dangerous Dan made his move.”

“It’s Desperate Dan, but the concept is sound. Susan has always considered herself smarter than me – arts trump engineering in her view. I’ve always tried to please people and it seemed to be important to her, so I didn’t argue. Same with most things, I suppose – there are very few things its worth falling out about.”

It has always surprised me that other people do not understand that simple truth. Arguing about the minor things in life wastes time that could be better employed. The mistake people make is in thinking that I give way out of weakness. Susan believing she is better than me does not make it so; the only result is that I lose respect for her judgement. A simple example is letting her choose the curtains, let us say; I accept her choice but privately deplore her taste if she gets the choice wrong.

When we were first married, she would ask my opinion before I allowed her the final choice. I do not think she realizes, even now, how much she was influenced by my opinion. I did offer suggestions even after she stopped seeking my views, but I gave up when my comments were greeted with sighs at best, frequently accompanied by scathing comments.

“It took me a number of years to understand that I had loved my image of the perfect wife, and that the reality was very different. I’m sure I was as big a disappointment to her as she was to me. Dan lifted a load of expectation from me, to tell you the truth.”

“I could line up a hundred girls who would kill to have a husband like you – and I’d be at the head of the queue!”

“Wouldn’t they be annoyed when they found I wasn’t a tiger between the sheets,” I laughed. “After all, here we are, half-naked, alone in a room and I’m scared to glance at you in case you think I’m looking at your cleavage.”