Chapter 4

Seconds later, Ellie and I stood by the elevators in a nervous state. I reached over and squeezed her hand to confirm that she wasn’t alone in their situation. I got a wan smile from her. We heard the elevator start to change floors and both took large breaths to force ourselves to relax a little and prepare for our forceful approach to get them to the restaurant. We’d rehearsed this part with each other a dozen times, so were ready if either or both balked.

The elevator door opened and Mitch stepped out with Lisa slightly behind. She carried a small gym bag. In the flash of a second, I stepped beside my wife and presented her with a small bouquet of flowers that I’d brought for the occasion. I smiled broadly. “Hi Honey. Let me carry that bag for you. It looks heavy.” I pulled the bag out of her hand, sure that it held some valuable evidence. As I took the bag, I could feel her burner phone inside the bag; Greg had told me about that.

At the same time, Ellie had captured Mitch in a polite hug and kissed his cheek in a wifely manner. She gave him a greeting, although the shock on his face had made him freeze in position and look pale as a ghost. I glanced over and caught his eye, although he didn’t want to look at me, yet he felt compelled to understand what was happening.

I said in a jaunty tone, “Come on; we’re going to dinner here. We have special seats for you. It’s set up.” I pointed with one hand as I took Lisa’s arm in the other.

Ellie and I each marched our spouse towards the open restaurant door. They were so stunned that they seemed to come along willingly. Lisa had started sputtering as soon as she saw me, having no idea what to say but feeling compelled to deny, lie, spin, or obfuscate what had just been happening.

Halfway to the restaurant door, Lisa emitted a small sob. Yep, she’d been caught red-handed by the person she least expected to see at the motel. I waved at my mom sitting with Ellie’s kids and our own teens as we passed by. Lisa saw them and sobbed more loudly. She’d started to say, “No, no, no. Oh, shit.”

Our friend Ben held the restaurant door open with a smile as though he were greeting the four of us as the long-time friend that he’d been. He’d already told me that he never wanted to have anything to do with either Mitch or Lisa again. After this night, they would be dead to him.

As we came through the door to the restaurant area, everyone at the ‘party’ stood and applauded the guests, as though they were welcoming a new bride and groom at a reception in their honor. Some that we’d primed, gave out a few false cheers and hurrahs. The forced smiles didn’t reach people’s eyes.

Almost as quick as she’d started Lisa got her emotions partly under some control. She was aghast at seeing her parents and Mitch’s parents, some grandparents, an aunt, and then her work colleagues. My mother escorted the children into the place and to her table with my father. Ellie’s children went to sit with her parents.

Lisa started to mutter under her breath, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” Her face and neck were flushed, not from the sex she’d just had, but from the ensuing panic and loss of control in her life.

Ellie and I led Mitch and Lisa to a slightly raised dais where there were side-by-side seats facing everyone at a table for the two of them. They were the guests of honor – of dishonor. Adjacent to their table was a lectern with the notes that I and Ellie had pieced together for our remarks.

We seated the couple and Ellie and I moved behind the podium. Mitch and Lisa were blushing and flummoxed so much I thought they’d pop a blood vessel. Both had tried to speak as we brought them from elevator to table, but we’d each cut them off with urges to hurry or something about the meal. They both were truly flabbergasted by the assembly of people in the ‘audience’ – witnesses to the end of their lives as they knew them.

I spoke to the group through the microphone, “Please be seated. Dinner is now served. As you dine, Ellie and I have a few prepared remarks and some presentations to make.” I made sure to sound upbeat with my tone of voice. This needed to sound like a joyous event, when in fact it was the opposite.

Almost immediately, on cue, several waiters and waitresses swept into the room with trays of food. The basic dinner was a salad, salmon steak with some trimmings, and later a dessert. The children got burgers and fries, and chocolate milk to their delight.

I spoke to the group as the servers quickly dished out the plates, serving Mitch and Lisa first. Each of them looked at their dinner plates as though they might be poisoned.

The situation was truly ludicrous. Behind the ‘special’ couple on the large projection screen, there were scenes of their various rendezvous over the past month since Greg started working for us. Some were pretty ‘R-Rated’, but I knew my kids could handle that. Ellie assured me that all kids that age had seen far worse.

I leaned into the microphone on the lectern with a big smile and started to speak in a rousing and enthusiastic tone. “Let’s thank Mitch and Lisa for showing up tonight. It takes courage – real guts – to show up when you’re been ... how shall we say ... exceptionally social with someone else’s spouse.” My tone remained upbeat and positive.

“Moreover, based on the live feed from Room 312 that we had projected on the screen behind our special couple for the past hour, we can guess that they must be exhausted, yet here they are – all that duplicitous activity plus double lives, secret texts, alibis, and so on – they must be really fatigued. I know Lisa was always tired when she got home from her liaisons on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Mitch.” My voice was almost jubilant, keeping to the sarcastic nature of the dinner.

There was some applause of ‘welcome’ in the room, but it died out quickly. As I spoke both Mitch and Lisa started to gasp at the implications of what was going on. They looked at each other in panic, but knew they were captive. Lisa was muttering one string of epithets after another. Her favorite seemed to be, “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Not only had she been caught, but she was also being humiliated in a strange manner that didn’t compute in her head.

The audience chuckled and laughed at my euphemism for fucking – being social. As I spoke the display behind the couple came to life with more of the photos Greg had assembled. These were mostly PG-rated because the children had joined us, but they showed Lisa and Mitch holding hands, kissing, hugging, and going in and out of the hotel with the various dates over the past month overlaid on the photos. The fact was obvious that their fuck that afternoon had not been the first time they were together. I noted my daughter explaining that to our son as she guided his attention to the large screen.

I went on in a light mood, “Well, we know that this couple has stamina and can go the distance, twice tonight since we started watching on the large screen, and based on other statements we’ve heard from them, they wish they had more planned for later.” I was sounding enthusiastic, as though I were talking about star football players achieving athletic greatness. I added, “Of course, stamina is no substitute for honesty, but who needs that when you’re so good at coming up with alibis and falsehoods and wrecking some marriages.

“I guess at this point, at least for my wife, I want to congratulate her for her ability to multi-task. She always told me that women were better at that than men. In her case, she was multi-tasking our marriage and family life along with a long-term, flaming affair with my best friend up until tonight, Mitch. She wasn’t doing too good a job on our marriage, but boy were her fictional stories well thought out about why she was working late. Give he some applause of appreciation for her skills at deceit, lying, and unfaithfulness.”

I milked a round of applause from the assembled crowd of about thirty or forty people.

Lisa was stunned and looked wide-eyed as though someone had just drugged her. Her eyes had become the size of saucers and her mouth was agape at my humorous remarks delivered in the tone of a late-night comedian. Every word I spoke came in a happy manner, sounding cheerful and buoyant.

Lisa had been caught when she least expected and exposed publicly, yet those around her still weren’t castigating her in anger. By my jaunty tone of voice and the appearance of things, this function appeared to be a happy event – funny even, but she couldn’t rationalize the disparity with the words or what she’d been doing for nearly a year. Mitch wasn’t much different. The flowers that I’d presented to Lisa remained clutched in her hand; however, I could see her white knuckles, suggesting she was trying to hold onto some unusual reality.