Chapter 2

Back inside, I took off my shoes at the door and went to get showered and changed. I looked around the house and suddenly I had nothing to do. I didn’t want to go out, but the walls were starting to close in. I was rescued by the phone. I looked at it and sighed.

“Hello, Jennifer,” I said and informed her that I was recording and asked her consent to do so.

“Yes, Adam,” she said. “You may record our conversation. I’m just grateful you’ll take my calls. How did you sleep?”

“I really didn’t,” I said simply. I wasn’t going to lie to her.

“Yeah, me either,” she admitted. I wondered whether that was from guilt or if she’d gone back to the gang-bang after we talked, but was diplomatic enough not to say so. “I’m glad you haven’t hurt yourself,” she said. “I was worried that you still might.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt myself,” I corrected her. “I was going to kill myself. I already stopped myself from loading one of the guns this morning. Let’s not call it hurting myself. That makes it sound like I’m going to stub my toe.”

“Please don’t kill yourself,” she whispered. “If you’re dead, you can’t punish me. If you die, I’ll end up killing myself too. I’d know that you did it to get away from the pain.”

“I stopped myself this morning,” I told her. “Can I stop myself indefinitely? Probably not. I have to find something to live for or I have to find a way to stop seeing that room and what happened there.”

“I know,” she said miserably. “I wish I’d never seen that room, done those things. I wished a lot of things after we talked. If I’d had the guns, I think I’d have loaded them and gone on a killing spree.”

“That’s occurred to me too,” I admitted. “Did you stay with your parents last night?” I wanted to change the topic, at least for now.

“Yes,” she said. “They told me that you’d prepared them for my arrival. I was embarrassed that they knew, but I was grateful that you’d answered their questions. They wanted me to know that they would never stop loving me. It meant a lot to have that kind of acceptance after what I’d done.”

“I’m glad you had support,” I told her, subdued. I knew where I stood with her parents and it was exactly where I was: on the outside.

“Have you talked to anyone?” she asked tentatively.

“Mitch tried to call. I was throwing up at the time. I didn’t call him back. I haven’t heard from Grant today, but it’s the weekend. He’s probably enjoying his Saturday.” I talked to her in a normal tone of voice, or as normal as my sleep-deprived brain could manage. When I’d listen to it later, I could hardly believe that it was a conversation between the two of us. Neither of us sounded like ourselves.

“I’m sure you’re in his thoughts, whatever he’s doing,” she said. Things were getting awkward.

“Jennifer, eventually, I’m probably going to ask to know what happened. Why, how, when, what started it, probably even who. I don’t know what those answers will do to me, but I know that you were right last night. I’m already dead inside. I know you’re hoping that you can come home and endure some sort of punishment, but I don’t know what I could do or you could do that would make me feel like I’d ever be anything less than emasculated. I’m not trying to punish you, I swear. I’m being honest about it. Aside from the hurt and the heart-break and the anguish, I felt so small to you when I saw that. I felt like what little I had to offer left you so empty that your Friday fun was the only way that you could endure the rest of the week to me. I’m ashamed, Jennifer. I’m ashamed that I’m so insignificant that it opens the door to that. I’m ashamed that all the people I thought were friends thought so little of me that they were glad to help you escape from what you were stuck with. Maybe I shouldn’t feel like that, but it’s what I keep coming back to. If I was so fucking good, you wouldn’t have been on that floor with them. I know I brought this up, but I can’t get that thought out of my head.”

“Just ... keep breathing,” she pleaded. I think we were both crying at this point. “I promise, it’ll get better. Just keep doing what you need to to get through the day and then do what you need to to get through the night. Talk to Mitch when he calls. I know he wants the same thing I do. He wants to make it right.”

“What exactly does Mayor Mitchell have planned to make this right for me?” I asked with a mirthless laugh. “Gonna get me some zoning concessions for having my wife be the entertainment at his parties?”

“After you left, we all stopped what we were doing and realized what we’d done. We all did it to you. None of us are without guilt. We talked about it well into the night. Mitch tried to go after you. He said you wouldn’t stop to talk to him.”

“I really wasn’t in the mood to chat while his dick was still dripping cum in the driveway,” I said. “To be honest, I don’t personally want to ever talk to him again.” I paused and sighed. “Alright. How long has this been going on?” I asked.

“The parties started three months ago, right after the Fourth of July,” she said.

I ran for the bathroom, the phone still clutched in my hand and threw up again. It was stomach acid and the remains of the single cup of coffee, so it came out black and vile. I heaved, choking loudly as my stomach fought to expel food that wasn’t there. I moaned and spat into the bowl, only dimly aware that she was still on the line. I flushed and rinsed out my mouth, but stayed in the bathroom while I finished the conversation, sitting on the tub, facing the toilet.

“Okay,” I said weakly. “That was when the parties started. That wasn’t where the cheating started though, was it?”

She was weeping. She knew that I was getting physically sick from the things she was saying. “No!” she mewled miserably.

“When did that start?”

“In college,” she admitted. “Mitch and I ... we...”

“Are you saying that I have NEVER been the only man in our relationship? Not even on day one? Mitch was bending you over and then sending you out with me for a chaste kiss or sloppy seconds?”

“I didn’t want to but he’s so good in bed!” she wept, pleading with me to understand.

“Just one other thing I wasn’t good enough at,” I said bitterly. I left the room in a daze. “I don’t understand how you could hate me this much. How BOTH of you could hate me this much. Hell, how the THREE of you could. Mona knew back then, didn’t she?” I was starting to get angry again. I took the stairs in an angry rush, spinning the dial on the gun-safe and flinging it open. She heard me load the Desert Eagle and rack the slide. “I tried to be the best boyfriend, fiance and then husband I knew how. I made you the center of my universe! I would have died for you. You couldn’t even say no to Mitch. Our whole life was a lie! How can you even say you don’t want me to die? You’ve been killing me with this for years! WHY?!!? He was SO good in bed?!!? You never ONCE told me you wanted anything more than...” I trailed off and words wouldn’t come. I could only make this wounded, keening noise that sounded more and more urgent. I looked at the gun in my hand and the phone in the other.

“ADAM! NO!” she screamed. “I swear, I’ll never so much as talk to him again so long as I live. Don’t do this! I NEED YOU! Don’t you die on me! Adam, talk to me!”

I slid down the side of the safe and pressed the back of my head against it before turning my gun and staring at the barrel. I knew this was the decision to end all decisions. If I pulled the trigger, all the pain would go away.

I was still making that horrible noise and stopped, clamping my jaws shut as I looked at the gun in my hands, pointed directly between my eyes. She was screaming at me to listen to her and not pull the trigger. Distantly, I wondered if her parents were there with her, whether they were distressed that their son-in-law was about to die or if they were just annoyed at the fuss it was causing.

Suddenly, that pissed me off. I’d been good to them and to their daughter. I’d been cuckolded for the whole time I was with Jennifer. She’d gone to Mitch for sex, withholding it from me on dates because I didn’t measure up or maybe because the evidence of Mitch was still drooling out of her and she didn’t want to get caught. She’d done a masterful job of hiding it for this long. Mitch, the cocksucker, had smiled in my face and stabbed me in the back.

I wasn’t going to pull the trigger. I wasn’t done punishing people yet. “It’s time for me to go,” I told my whore wife and hung up. The phone immediately started to ring. I ignored it and unloaded my gun, putting it away while the phone rang. When it went to voicemail, the phone started ringing again. I let it ring and went back upstairs, wondering whether she’d call Rob or show up herself. Neither one were good choices. Rob was a cop, so she’d call him before the others. Her precious Mitch was too far away and she wouldn’t want to risk me shooting him if I hadn’t committed suicide. Rob on the other hand ... There were plenty of cops out there and most of them had cocks.

I went upstairs and set my video camera up to record the front door. Then I went to my office and sat down. As much as the room next door was hers, this room was mine. She called the phone four times in a row. All the messages were hang-ups. I plugged the phone in and downloaded the conversation to the computer, again, emailing it to Grant right away.

I’d just disconnected the phone when there was a loud knock on the front door and the doorbell rang several times. I didn’t hurry, but didn’t dick around either. When I got to the front door, I opened it and looked at my former friend.

“Get off my property,” I told him and slammed the door in his face.

He started pounding on the door. “Come on, Adam!” he shouted. “Just talk to me! Jennie’s flipping out. She said you’re gonna kill yourself.”

I opened the door. “Does your wife know you’ve been cheating on her every Friday night at Mitch’s?” I asked.

“Calm down, man!” he said, not liking the way this was going. “All I’m here to do is make sure that you’re okay.”

“Mission accomplished,” I snapped at him. “You didn’t care so much about my well-being when you were fucking my wife in front of twenty other people in John Mitchell’s basement last night. Where was your fucking concern then, you piece of shit?”

“I get it. You’re pissed,” he said, holding up his hands in a calming gesture. “We all fucked up. Tell us how to make it right.”

“Kill yourselves,” I said. “Write fat confession letters and then take poison or eat a bullet, like I’ve been planning to do most of the day. Every one of my friends. EVERY ONE OF YOU! You gang-banged my wife and laughed at me. In fact, you were SO busy laughing at me that you didn’t even notice I’d been standing in the back of the room for an hour.”

He put his head down. “I’m sorry, man. I don’t know what to say to make this right.”

“You’re a cop. Trust and loyalty to you should be the most important things in the world. You need to trust your brothers and sisters on the force to have your back.” He nodded. “I put that same trust in you and you shot me in the back. I hope you loved her pussy. I hope it was the most fantastic fuck of your life, because no matter how many promises you keep for the rest of your life, you have to go to your grave knowing I’d have never fucked YOUR wife if I’d had the same chance you did with mine. How’s that make you feel, Mister ‘Serve and Protect’?” I asked, mocking his credo.

He nodded. “Yeah, I’d want to shoot you. You carrying?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I locked my gun back in the safe when I figured she was gonna call you.”

“You knew it’d be me?” he asked, surprised.

“You’re the cop. If I’d shot myself, you’d know who to call. And if I’d turned murderous, you’re expendable. There’s plenty of other cops with cocks when her snatch gets needy.”

“Dude! Come on! That’s your wife!”

“Really? She looked very wifely last night. Did she bother to tell you what started her into panic mode to call you?” He shook his head. “Yeah. Not surprising. She told me when the parties started happening. We weren’t even married six months and she was everybody’s whore. What really blew it for me was finding out she’s always been Mitch’s whore. He was fucking her when he introduced her to me and they just never stopped. How many of you was she banging back then? Were there orgies on nights she was ‘studying’? Was she slipping off with you guys one or two at a time when I was distracted at parties?”

The look on his face told me what I needed to know. “Adam, it’s nothing more than some harmless fun. She’s always loved you, but she needs-”

“I don’t need to hear any more,” I said. “She can get her needs scratched by everyone in Seattle for all I care. You helped destroy my life and last night I got to see and hear how funny it was to you. Does it even bother you? Or are you just hoping that Jennifer will need her itch scratched by Friday?”

“You’re never gonna forgive any of us, are you?” he asked sadly.

“Why should I?” I asked him. “I’ve been throwing up since I found out last night. Every single one of my friends and most of my coworkers were there. Everyone I trusted in the world has betrayed me so completely that I don’t want to leave the house without a gun. I don’t have any dignity left, I don’t have a job I can go back to and the one friend I can be sure of is Grant, because I know that he’ll never touch pussy no matter who it is. You’re fucking lucky I didn’t shoot you through the door and call 911 that there was an intruder.”

His eyes widened at that and he realized that it would have been easy enough to get away with killing him. “What are you gonna do then?” he asked.

“If that was any of your fucking business, I would have told you,” I sneered at him. “Get the fuck out of here and tell her to send someone to get her car or I’m calling a tow-truck Monday morning.”

“Isn’t there any way to fix this?” he asked. “We’ve been friends for a long time.”

“No, I’ve been a friend. You’ve been stabbing me in the back and using me to get close to the pussy for that time,” I told him bluntly. “Jennifer’s told me she’d be willing to have me beat her for the rest of her life to make it up to me. Maybe I’ll take her up on that. I don’t really know any more. All I know is that you’re still here. Why is that?”

He looked at me like he wanted to say something, but he just grimaced and returned to his car. I watched him drive away and then went back inside, locking the front door, but not moving the couch back. I put the chain on the door, just in case, she showed up and decided to sneak in the house to force the issue.

I talked to Christina later that day and managed to keep my composure when I told her how long the cheating had been going on. She sympathized and told me that she’d keep checking in with me. She seemed very sweet about it. I felt like I could talk to her. Trust wasn’t in my vocabulary, but I could talk to her. She was okay. She hadn’t done anything to me.

I skipped dinner and went to bed early, feeling light-headed. I knew I’d been running on rage and adrenaline all day. I wanted to sleep, but I kept hearing her bantering with the men she was fucking.

I watched the sunrise and I poured myself a cup of the cold coffee I’d made yesterday. It was rancid, but I drank it cold rather than make a fresh pot. I didn’t think I’d ever eat again. Maybe that was how I’d kill myself, I thought miserably.

Sunday afternoon, Jennifer’s parents came to take her car away. I watched them from the Master bedroom, looking from between the curtains. Neither of them tried to come to the door. I hoped she was happy. I was going to have to leave the house at some point. I got in my car and left to go drain our bank account some more. I noticed that there’d been no activity on the balance since my withdrawal on Friday night. Maybe she felt too guilty to touch it or maybe she hadn’t had the thought that it might be something I’d do.

The only call I got was one from Christina to check on me. I told her that I really appreciated her being a friend to me and that hearing from her had become the only thing I looked forward to in the day.

“That’s sweet,” she said. “I’m putting in my two weeks tomorrow,” she said. “I’m not sure how fast I’m gonna be able to find another job. If I can’t make something happen, I’ll probably have to move back to San Diego, but if I do, I’ll give you my parents’ number there so we can stay in touch.”

The thought of her leaving Seattle was a little upsetting, since she was my only friend. With all the other upset in my life, it wasn’t hard to hide that though. It was just another kick while I was down. “Use me as a reference,” I suggested.

“You mean it?” she asked.

“If it helps keep you here in town, I’ll be happy to tell them that you’ve been a big help in the office,” I told her. “Hell, if it doesn’t work out and you have to move home, I’ll still be happy to tell them you’re a fantastic worker and they’re lucky to have you.”

“Thanks, Adam!” she said, brightened by my willingness to help out. “I hope I can stick around and see you in a better mood.”

“Me too,” I admitted. We talked about trivial matters and then I let her go.

I turned in early and after hours of staring at the wall, I finally nodded off. Right away, I started awake from a dream of Jennie on all fours. I got up and went to shave and shower. I listened to the rasp of my razor over my skin and remembered how we used to talk in the morning while we shared the bathroom. There was no more sharing, no more talking, no more Jennie, not MY Jennie anyway. She was someone else’s Jennie now. Hell, she was EVERYONE else’s Jennie. I finished shaving and didn’t bother to really pay attention to myself in the mirror. If I had, I’d have been appalled. Two days of skipping meals and sleeping a few minutes at a stretch had taken their toll. I’d been a little overweight from all the time spent in the office with no exercise. Now, I was starting to implode. My cheeks were sunken and my clothes were loose where they had been well fitted before.

I started my car and drove to the bank first. The manager asked me about moving everything to the new account and I told him I’d had a family emergency. I left half of the amount in our main account and switched my payroll to the new account. Not that I expected there to be much in the line of payroll for much longer, but that was that.

My next stop was the office. I went to see Sandy’s boss. I didn’t tell him about the events of the weekend, just that an emergency had come up and I needed to take a few days off. We hand an interesting chat. I told him I was disappointed that the promotion I was told about seemed to have dried up. He confused by the word of a promotion and I was increasingly angry. I suggested he look at my time-sheets, since Sandy was taking credit for the hours I was working. He nodded and told me what I’d suspected, that there never WAS a promotion.

“I came to suspect that over the weekend, Sir,” I said. “If you’ll look at my work hours for the past few months, I’ve been consistently working 70 to 80 hours per week. It’s affected my health and my family. Now, hearing that it was a corporate game? That’s ... I’ll think about my roll here and I’ll stop in to see you later in the week. I should be able to explain more then. If you could keep this between us for now, Sir, I’d appreciate that.”

He nodded and I left the office. A couple of people who’d been there on Friday looked at me nervously and I got on the elevator without stopping by Christina’s desk. We’d agreed to that the night before, but I caught her eye when the elevator doors were closing and she looked worried. Sandy was also trying to get my attention, no doubt to fill me with more flowery promises that meant nothing. I watched him approach as the doors slid shut, whisking me down to the lobby before he could accost me for his version of an intervention. I walked to my car and by the time I got there, I got a call from Sandy.

“Adam, what did you say to Mr. Hall? He’s been furious about something since you left the office. Why aren’t you at your desk?”

“Hello, Mr. Blevins,” I said. “Before we go any further, I need to inform you that I’m recording our conversation. Do I have your permission to continue?”

“What?” He blustered. “Of course not!”

“I understand. I apologize for any inconvenience. Enjoy the rest of your day. Goodbye.”

I hung up and deleted the recording.

I sat in the parking lot and he predictably called right back. “Good morning, Mr. Blevins. Before we continue, I need to let you know that I’m recording our conversation. Do I have your consent to continue?”