A short conversation about that subject.

The visuals wouldn’t let her deny it.

“Honey, I had to do it. The slimy little bastard had me over a barrel.”

“Nope, he didn’t. Not a barrel in sight on that video.”

“Please don’t be petty. Not now. If I didn’t do it, he was going to block my promotion.”

“So why didn’t you come to me and tell me about it so we could fix it together?”

“If I’d come to you, what would you have said?”

“Change jobs or change marriages.”

“Exactly. I knew you’d say that.”

“And, that’s the point I’m trying to make.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

I sighed. There were a lot of things I didn’t understand. How my wife could spend a whole afternoon fucking her boss, on every piece of furniture in the hotel room. How trust always seems to end up as weakness. How faith is just another word, or else the name of a nice girl that got bullied at school. How that fat cunt could fuck my wife for three hours solid without having a heart attack – the amount of Viagra he had to have taken, his ticker should have blown up and tocked it’s last within minutes. It would only have been fair for that to happen. Evil fucking karma. It never strikes at the right time.

I tried to explain it to her.

“You knew exactly what I would say, and you did it anyway. I’m guessing you’re now going to be all about how I wasn’t supposed to know, how it didn’t mean anything, how it wouldn’t affect us. But you knew! You knew everything. There were no secrets in your world, only in mine. You knew exactly how I would feel, and even then you couldn’t balance the scale in my favour when you weighed it all up.”

“I wasn’t going to be all anything,” she said, shaking her head. “But you knew how hard I’d worked for that promotion. And he was just going to throw all that work away. It would have been such a waste.”

“What would have been wasted? The fact that you worked hard at your job? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do anyway? That’s why they pay you.”

“They would pay me a whole lot more if I get that promotion.”

“Oh well, not a complete waste then. At least I got the knowledge that my wife is a whore.”

Despite the tear tracks on her cheeks, she actually had the balls to look crossly at me for this. “Please don’t let this become about name-calling! Be reasonable, please. Or at least polite.”

“Hang on a sec, you voluntarily fucked and sucked and did god knows what else with that slimy fat fuck for hours on end so he wouldn’t block your promotion, which would have given you a pay raise. Which means you fucked him for a paycheque - money. That’s the very definition of whore in any dictionary you care to name. In fact, your picture may be in some of them under that entry. And I should be reasonable?”

Her mouth opened and closed. I don’t think she had ever suspected this side of me. The Lord of Fucking Smash Mouth.

Of course, it helped that I’d had a couple of hours to stew about it and think of a few choice phrases, while she was freshly into this conversation as soon as she let herself in the front door, with “all the shopping” she had supposedly been doing during the afternoon. Her secretary had obviously told her about my earlier phone call, when she’d informed me that my wife wasn’t available. When I’d insisted there was an emergency, she had then established that my dearly beloved wife’s meeting was out of office. Yeah, I already knew that was going to happen, I just wasn’t sure when. Thanks secretary lady.

“You don’t think I should be allowed to be just a little unreasonable about it? Really? You think I maybe get a hard-on watching you swilling with the hogs, rolling around in the filth?”

She shook her head. This was not how she had foreseen the weekend starting. In her heart she had hoped for a little wine-soaked tete-a-tete with her husband at some fancy restaurant, celebrating her pending promotion. And then just a little more time to set things right before her inevitable doom – not walk into a no-holds-barred verbal brawl to the death the moment she stepped in through the door. Thank god it’s Friday, huh?

“Please, let me think. I need to get my feet under me, to try and explain this to you so you can see it for what it was. It was just an afternoon out of our whole lives, so that we could have a better life for us and our children.”

“What children?” I looked around the room and pretended to look surprised.

“Our future children, I mean.”

“What future children?” I maintained my surprise.

“We planned to have children, three children. We even decided on names for them.”

“Well, I guess now they’ll be called Bastard One, Bastard Two and Bastard Who-Gives-A-Fuck. Because I’m guessing they’ll be born out of wedlock if it happens any time soon. Besides, I call bullshit, bullshit and total bullshit on that idea. You whored yourself out for a promotion, even gave your John everything you had with all the enthusiasm a good whore can muster. I can’t imagine you’d want to give all that up just to have children?”

“I would,” she said, the tears still falling silently. I wasn’t sure if they were from sorrow, anger or fear. Maybe a combination of all three. “I really would. For you.”

“When?”

“Today!” she stated firmly.

“Fuck that! I’m not putting my cock anywhere near you anytime soon. Mr Slimy managed to paint a whole portrait on and in you. Now I don’t know how many other whores he’s been fucking within the last couple of years, but I’m betting it’s probably more than one. Get the picture?”

She looked confused, and then she looked horrified.

“No! I made him wear a condom.”

“What, even when he painted your tonsils? Because it didn’t look like it. You think your cunt is the only piece of you that can pick up a deadly disease? Are you that stupid?”

I clicked the remote, starting the recording again.”Besides, about that condom...”

She dragged her eyes around to the big screen television as if forced to watch her own death sentence, to see Mr Slimy ploughing her from behind, really furrowing up those fresh fields. He paused, gave a few false coughs to cover him pulling out and slipping the condom off, and then simply got straight back down on the farm. That bareback rider was so daring, he should have been in a circus doing tricks.

I ran the clip on until he gave a huge choking gasp, and pulled out, having filled her with his potentially deadly fluids. I stopped it there. Onscreen, her face looked dreamy, his like he’d just been punched in the gut, and nasty fluids dripped from where they really shouldn’t.

I’d started the video as she opened the front door, and she hadn’t seen that much of the video up to that point. She’s had hysterics when she first saw it, with Slimy doing what Slimy’s do, fucking someone else’s wife - and being very religious and missionary about it. I’d succumbed to a moment of weakness at the look of horror on her face as she viewed her first starring role on television, and turned it off.

This part was so much worse. By then all the pretences of reluctance and ‘just get on with it’ had disappeared, and she was into the moment.

That fucking bastard!” she screamed at seeing his actions with the condom. “How could he do that to me? He promised!”

“Wow, a cheater cheats, what an amazing turn up for the books.”

She was still holding the bags from her pseudo shopping expedition, and she flung them at the walls.

“I’m going to kill that cunt!” she shrieked. Actually, I think she may have very well done that if he had been within reach at that moment. Her face was contorted, the tendons in her neck standing out and her hands quivering in lethal claws. She looked a bit like a velociraptor. I made sure I was out of arm’s length before I continued to torture her.

Yes, yes. I’m a heartless bastard, torturing a beautiful woman for my own gratification. So what? Any hurts would be on the inside, the same place she had wounded me, cutting and cutting and cutting, over and over at my heart, in a never-ending torture of silent pain and doubt, remorse and pleading, rage and agony. You know what I mean. You’ve all been cheated on at some time or another. And if you haven’t then congratulations, you never found out about it. People cheat. All people. Even you. Deal with it.

“You’re going to kill the slime-ball that did that to you? Why would you?”

I zoomed in on her face. Damn, you have to love these smart televisions. Or hate them for giving you the unwanted details. Her face onscreen was a mask of pleasure.

“I don’t know what happened,” she whispered. “He held my promotion over my head and...”

“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. “You keep saying that. We know. Enough already.”

“I didn’t want to do that. Not feel that. I promise on my life that I didn’t. I just thought I could lie there and let him do it for a couple of minutes and it would be over.”

“And then the slut took over.”

She darted a look at me, and then nodded miserably.

“I suppose that’s true. I didn’t know I had it in me.”

“I think we can all tell you knew exactly what was in you. And you loved it being there, as fast and hard as it would go.”

A cheap shot, but mine own, so I was still proud of it.

“I don’t know what to say. Ten minutes ago, I was so happy and so sad at the same time, coming home to a husband I loved and who loved me, to a happy home, to a good meal...”

“And a good shower!” I reminded her. When she looked askance, I put an expression of disgust on my face and twiddled my fingers at her. “To get rid of all those nasty little dribbles on and in you.”

She paled, closed her eyes and then opened them and held my gaze. “I showered immediately afterwards, long and hard. Very hard. And please don’t make an innuendo about that.”

I shut my mouth, forestalling my comment. Fair enough, that one would have been just too easy.

“I was both happy and sad. I was so happy I was coming home to you and your love and that disgusting shit was all behind me. And so sad that I had betrayed you. I am so sorry I did that. More sorry than you will ever know. I betrayed myself as well. I never ever saw myself as that person.”