Chapter 7

She let me go after that and I decided that it was late enough to make my next call. I knew a guy who worked out at the gym that did investigation services.

“Otto,” I said when he answered. “Sorry to call you so early, but I need your help. Are you free?”

“No, but I’m easy,” he joked in his thick German accent. We chuckled a bit at that and I got to the point.

“Otto, my wife’s fucking around on me. I want so much evidence that I can hand her a ten pound book of pictures and a full spindle of DVDs. Can you do it?”

He asked me where she was getting together with the guy, who he was, what her habits were and similar questions. I told him I wanted the house wired for video and that there might be a second house, but I didn’t have the keys yet.

“I want to find out about him too,” I added. “When I have all the evidence, I’m considering dropping a copy off to his wife so she can rape him in divorce court. Get everything you can. Phone calls, texts if you have a way to spy on those, photos, videos, DNA, a 3D-printed model of the two of them fucking, you name it.”

“You want the 3D model life sized?” he asked with a chuckle. Otto liked to laugh. He was really likable guy.

“Hmm,” I said, considering his question. “I think something that’d fit on the corner of a desk. We can sell them in the gift shop as paper-weights.”

“If we got the life-sized one, you could beat the shit out if it to your heart’s content without going to jail,” he pointed out.

“Okay, that’s tempting,” I admitted. “Get me a price on that and we’ll see.”

He chuckled and told me he’d be by my place in an hour to install the equipment at the house.

I looked at the real estate website for houses that I thought I could afford on my own as I waited for Otto to arrive. My boss called and asked what was going on. He was concerned and looking to see if he could help. He was good to me, allowing me time off for my fighting career when I needed it. I told him Barb was cheating on me and it had gotten to the point where I needed to do something about it.

“I’m sorry as Hell about that,” he said sadly. “I liked Barb. What can I do to help?”

“Well, do you know a divorce lawyer? The kind of Hell-spawn that makes the sharks get out of the water when he goes swimming?” I asked.

“Unfortunately,” he said dryly. “Let my call my ex-wife and get the number for you.” Ouch.

“If you can just give me a name, I’ll do the leg-work from there,” I assured him quickly. I didn’t want to put him to that kind of trouble.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I have to talk to the ex soon anyway. I’ll email you the details later in the day.”

“Thanks,” I said sincerely. “Sorry to need to take the extra time. I’ll be in tomorrow if I can. I’m trying to get it cleared up today.”

“Nah, take the time. The schedule’s light as it is,” he said.

I made some breakfast after that, puttered around the house and generally killed time until Otto showed up. He was a full service pervert. He installed cameras in every room of the house, wired them into the ducts and connected them to a receiver that he connected in my home office. It took most of the day and I made us some lunch while he worked, helped him out with what I could and told him a little about the situation.

“You gave us a great head-start,” he said. “We know who he is, where they meet and what their schedule is like. How long do you want the investigation to go?” he asked.

“We’ll see how much dirt you manage to dig up in a month and we’ll go from there,” I said with a shrug. “I want to have so much, that it’s overwhelming.”

“You know most of this isn’t admissible in court, right? I can take still photos and those are fine, but video and conversations are a no-no.”

“It’s not for court, Otto,” I told him. “It’s ... This is the only way for me to find out what’s going on in my marriage. California doesn’t allow me to divorce for anything other than irreconcilable differences, so there’s no point to dragging the details into court. No, this is because I don’t trust her anymore and I need to know what she’s up to.”

He nodded and showed me how the receiver worked. The cameras were motion sensitive and uploaded fifteen minute clips to the receiver which would then upload them to Otto’s cloud storage as well as storing them. He told me that I could access the cloud and he set up a login for me to reach the specific box these were stored in. Conversations would be captured by the cameras as well as separate microphones in each room so they could be reviewed as an audio file rather than watch the video. I was about to go down the rabbit-hole and I felt like this was the last step toward the end. It had started with the discussion about how she wanted me to get a mistress and I felt like it was going to end when I watched to recordings from the five days that I was away.

He was out the door before 4 and everything was cleaned up and tidied. The receiver was stashed behind the monitor for my desktop and connected directly to the router. I’d given him a check for the first month’s surveillance and he promised to get back in touch with me after the holidays to discuss what they found. I gave him the other address and told him that I’d want to know if they met there if we couldn’t get the keys to get in there to place gear. He promised to figure something out.

I called Cecilia at 4:30 and she put me on hold for a few minutes. When she came back, she was speaking in very hushed tones. “Okay,” she said softly. “I talked to her for a lot of the day. We were the only ones in the office for a lot of it, doing paperwork. It’s ... Let’s do dinner at my place instead.” That told me that things were worse than I thought and she was worried I’d come unglued in the middle of a restaurant.

“That bad, huh?” I asked dryly.

“Let’s just say that I want to talk in private. Pick up Chinese and meet me at the house. Marty’s gonna grab some, but his bowling league is tonight, so he’s gonna give us some privacy to talk.”

Something in her tone told me that there was a real chance that I was gonna lose it when I heard the details. “What time?” I asked.

“How about 6?” she asked.

“Okay,” I said. I trusted Cecilia. If she thought I was gonna go crazy, then I probably was.

As soon as I hung up, I put in the order for dinner at a place that was along the way. Then I went back into the bedroom and packed as much as I could, figuring that I won’t want to come back here after my conversation with Cecilia. I tidied up, so it wouldn’t be obvious and then I went to pick up dinner. I wasn’t sure what they liked and I wasn’t sure I could reasonably eat with the weight of this conversation over my head.

I arrived about five minutes early and walked up to the door, ringing the bell. Martin answered the door and let me in. “Hi,” he said in a muted tone. I guess he’d been briefed. “Good to see you again. I wish it was under better circumstances.”

“Thanks,” I said with a weak smile. “Me too. It is what it is though.”

He led me inside and took the box from the restaurant from me, taking it out to the kitchen. As soon as it was out of my hands, Cecilia was there, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me. I slipped mine around her and sort of melted into her embrace. Hers was the only touch I’d had since this all started and the gesture of tenderness broke my calm.

I knew that it was going to be a long night when I started sobbing into her shoulder. I’d held myself together through the declarations of cheating, through the casual calls that she was staying out late, through her machinations to keep me distracted, through the fights and the cold conversations, through the endless hours of solitude and the empty moments when she was in the room, but we were both so detached that it was worse than her not being there.

Cecilia’s fingers delicately stroking the hair on the back of my head was such a small gesture, but it was the first source of comfort I’d had in months. I’d made myself hard these past months, thinking that was the way to deal with it. Hardness made me brittle.

I don’t know how long I stood there, but we had to microwave our dinner when I was finally able to pull myself together. “Sorry,” I said to them and excused myself to wash my face and generally clean up.

When I returned to the table, they were both looking at me with concern. “You okay?” Cecilia asked gently.

I nodded. “I think so,” I said, my voice thick. “A little embarrassed about that, but I’m doing better.”

Marty patted me on the shoulder. “It’s understandable. Sissy’s told me a little about your situation and I’m amazed that you haven’t beaten her to a pulp. Sissy says you’re a professional fighter. If you ever lost your temper, there’s no way she could contend with you. Be proud that you haven’t put her in the hospital. I never did half of what Sissy told me and she threw my dumb ass out on the street.”

I nodded, taking minimal comfort from that. “Thanks,” I said, taking my plate from Cecilia. I didn’t feel like eating, but I didn’t feel like living anymore, so I was used to doing what I didn’t want to.

The three of us sat down and chatted about my upcoming fight through dinner. I was glad of the distraction and after dinner, Martin got up to get his bowling bag. “We have a guest room,” he said to me, understanding. “Sissy said that you went to a hotel last night, but you should stay here.” He glanced at Cecilia and smiled. “She told me that you’ve been with her while we were broken up. You don’t have to worry about getting in the way. I know that you could have held onto her and I’d have driven away that night instead of you, but you looked out for her. Let us look out for you this time. Stay.”

I nodded and thanked him. He patted my shoulder again and then he was off to his bowling league so that we could talk.

Cecilia led me to the couch and sat down with me. “Well, I talked to her through a lot of the day while we worked on paperwork, like I said earlier,” she told me, starting the conversation. “She told me all of it, I think. She said she forgot your birthday, like totally spaced on it. She told me that she’s had Brad over to the house she bought for you, she admitted that she spends more time with him than she does with you. She was very candid about it. She was also very upset about it. She may be the absolute most self-absorbed person I’ve ever met and this is LA. That’s saying something. She’s determined to fix things and she wants my help. Are you okay with that? If you’re not, I’ll tell her that I have to stay on the sidelines.”

I nodded. “Sure,” I said. “I don’t particularly feel like I want to be married to her anymore, but before I file papers and have her served, I’ll give it a chance,” I promised.

“Have you started the process yet?” she asked delicately.

“I’ve laid the groundwork,” I said miserably. “I hired an investigator and I’m looking for a lawyer.”

“Why the investigator?” she asked curiously.

“I’ve decided that I’ve suffered for long enough. I want the option to hurt Brad. The only thing I have to hurt him with is telling his wife what he’s doing. She won’t believe me without proof.”

“Are you sure that’s how you want to do this?” she asked.

“No, but I want the option when I DO decide whether it’s right for me or not,” I said. “I know that once I do that, there’s no taking it back, but they’ve ruined my life. Why should THEY get their happily ever after while I sit here miserably and wonder where I’m going to live when it’s all over?”

She nodded. I think she got it. “Well, I hope you’ll talk to me about it before you do anything permanent,” she urged me.

I nodded. “You’re pretty much the only person I trust in the world. I have other friends, but I could give you a loaded gun and trust you not to use it on me. I don’t think there’s anyone else in the world that I could say that about.”

She nodded and took my hand, giving it a squeeze. “You’ll get there,” she promised me. “First, we need to figure out what to do about Barb.”

I nodded. “So what did you think about all of it?” I asked, wanting her overall opinion.

“I think that you’ve invested enough in her. Start making withdrawals and big ones. You know she bought Brad a Rolex for HIS birthday? I asked her what she’d gotten him when we talked about her missing yours. It wasn’t a cheap one either. It was an expensive one.”

I shrugged. It was another way that she’d shoved me aside for Brad. “I stopped contributing to the household as soon as she told me she was cheating. I’ve been dumping my pay in a separate account. I’ve also been taking my fight pay in cash and putting it away. Her spending money on him is such a small slap in the face that it hardly matters. I’ve been letting her pay for everything for the past six months.”

“My point is that she was attentive and thoughtful and generous on his birthday and ignored yours,” she said softly. “It’s downright shameful.”

I nodded in agreement. “I thought of getting her a toilet brush for Christmas. It’s sort of the perfect tool for working on our marriage,” I confessed.

We talked back and forth like that for a couple of hours. It was clear that Cecilia’s opinion of Barb was much lower than it had been because of this. She didn’t have a burning hatred, but she was angry with her and she’d lost a lot of respect for her.

“Don’t even get me started about Brad,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “What he’s doing to his wife is shitty, but he has a kid too.”

I nodded. “The doctor that treated me in the hospital said that he thinks Brad loves his wife, but that her body is a turn-off after having the kid.”

“That’s MUCH better!” she spat, her eyes flashing with anger. “She got that body giving him a son and that’s the thanks she gets?!!? Cocksucker!”

I nodded in agreement. “I think that if I decide to bust up his marriage, I’ll make it my mission to put her back in shape to date.”

She nodded. “I think I’ll help. I could stand to lose a few pounds myself. Maybe I’ll join you in the gym.”

I scoffed. “You still look as beautiful as the first time I saw you,” I told her.

“You’re a sweetheart,” she said and patted my cheek. “Back to the topic at hand though.”

“Okay. What are your recommendations?” I asked.

“Give me time to work on things with her and find out whether she’s genuinely committed to fixing things with her or if she’s trying to smooth it over to keep the status quo from changing. If she’s for real, she’ll need time to pull her head out of her ass. If she’s just trying to calm things down, then that won’t take long to figure out.”

I nodded. “I told her I wouldn’t go back to the house unless you recommended it,” I told her. “I’m not staying here tonight, Cecilia. There’s a lot of reasons, but I’ll go to a hotel if you don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be under a roof with her.”

“And WHAT reasons are you talking about for turning down our hospitality?” she asked, crossing her arms and arching an eyebrow.

“It wouldn’t be proper,” I said. “I want you and Marty to work out. Having me hanging around the house would make things awkward. You guys are also happy being back together. I’m still pretty broken from the state of my marriage. Having a front-row seat to that kind of happiness is a cruelty that I don’t think I can take right now.”

“Are those the only reasons?” she asked, her expression softening some.

I shook my head. “I think you know the other reason,” I told her.

“Say it anyway,” she prompted me.

“Because I love you,” I told her softly. “Being this close to you is tempting. Being respectful of you and Marty is a struggle. Normally, it wouldn’t be, but I’m all kinds of fucked-up right now, so I don’t wanna risk doing anything to hurt you two in a moment of weakness.”

She nodded. “You’re a good man,” she said, her voice a little thick with emotion. “I wish...”

I nodded. It was a thought she couldn’t express, one that I understood all too well. My eyes were wet. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

“You can’t go back to her,” she whispered finally. “You’re too good for her. You’re so much better than she deserves. She deserves Brad and his shallow attitude toward his wife.” She looked at me and there were tears on her cheeks too. “You want my advice, well, here it is,” she paused for a deep breath. “Let me work on her. Let her shower you with gifts and money and affection. Let her drag herself through the mud to try to prove that she loves you, then divorce her. Take her for half of everything and walk away. Humiliate her in the divorce. Tell her family and yours what she’s done. I’ll introduce you to every decent woman I know and I’ll start looking to find more until we find you the woman of your dreams. I promise you that we’ll see you through it.” She spoke with a conviction that bordered on zealotry and the flash in her eyes was unmistakable.

I nodded. “So the solution is to use her, bide my time and then when it’s most convenient for me and most inconvenient for her, drop the bomb on her and leave,” I restated things.

She nodded. “She could crawl naked over a mile of crushed glass before I’d think she’d proven that she deserved you.” My admission that I loved her had done something to her attitude. It had emotionally invested her in the outcome and she wanted my happiness on a personal level now. She didn’t hate Barb or Brad, I don’t think. She saw them as the enemy now though and this was war. Sympathy would come after their defeat was crushing and complete and a cautionary tale to future generations. When they were both broken twigs, she’d soften her stance, but while they kissed and cuddled and I was the broken one, there was no mercy.