Ep. 01: Wendi

February 28, 2020:

It had been a long, trying day. I just buried my second wife, Linda, who had lost her battle with stomach cancer, said goodbye to everyone at the cemetery and came home. I was looking through all of the old stuff I would have to go through when I saw it – the letter that changed my life forever. The calligraphy looked just as fresh as it did that fateful day. I grabbed a beer and headed out to the balcony and thought back over the years.

...

June 1987:

My name is Joe Neely, and at the time of this story, I was a supervisor for a team of field service engineers – read, technicians. You know, the guys who fix your office equipment when it breaks down. I started working for the company right after I got out of the service in early 1984. I had just finished a four-year stint as a radio operator in the Marine Corps, so I took my two-year electronics degree, my honorable discharge, and headed out for greener pastures.

I got the job right away and found I was really good at it. Not only did I understand the electronics, but I also had the ability to work with the customers and I enjoyed what I did. I didn’t make a whole lot of money, but I made enough to pay the bills and get by. I also took night classes and eventually got a four-year degree in Electronics.

The company I worked for had customers all over southern California, and quite a few in more upscale areas like Century City. One of their clients was a law firm that boasted a number of high-profile clients – celebrities, politicians and others who seemed to have more dollars than sense, if you know what I mean.

Wendi Patterson was a junior attorney with a law firm in Century City, and at the time, she also doubled as their purchasing agent. It was her job to be the company’s liaison with the vendors, so that meant we saw each other quite often. Our relationship was always professional – she being the client and myself acting as the agent for one of their vendors, but I admit – I often fantasized about having her long legs wrapped around my body.

After I became a supervisor, she expressed concern about a machine they had that kept breaking down. I knew the piece of equipment well, having serviced it myself a number of times. When it worked, it worked great, but as time went on, it seemed to always be down for one thing or another. I thought she was going to cry when she told me her management was not happy with the way she had dealt with the problem.

I knew what she meant – this was a company whose management didn’t understand that mechanical devices sometimes break and eventually needed to be replaced. To them, it was her fault the machine was down more often than it was up. I let her vent, listening to her concerns and suggested she upgrade to something new. I even offered to sit with her and the sales rep if that would help. Her face lit up when I suggested that.

“You’d do that for me, Joe?” she asked. I nodded my head.

“Sure, Wendi,” I said. “I’d be happy to do that for you.” She squealed and planted a kiss on my cheek.

“Thank you so much, Joe,” she said, smiling. “I can’t tell you how much that means to me.” I smiled back and told her I would speak with a rep that afternoon. Remember, at the time this happened, it was 1987, and not everyone had a cell phone.

After speaking with the rep that day, I called Wendi from the office and made an appointment for us to meet the next day. We got together and discussed several options. She listened to the rep closely, but looked to me for guidance. I liked the machine the rep initially suggested, but after looking at the history and the usage of their current equipment, suggested spending a little bit more to get something that would weather the use a little bit better. She liked that idea as did the rep, since that would mean a little more in commission for him.

The paperwork signed and the purchase order approved, we were on our way. I even supervised the installation and showed her and some of her co-workers how to use some of the new features. When I was finished, Wendi pulled me into her office.

“I can’t thank you enough for all your help, Joe,” she said. “I came this close to losing my job,” she added, holding two fingers close together. “You saved my hide. There’s got to be something I can do to thank you.” Sure, I thought, give me one night between those wonderful legs. But, the professional side of me spoke out instead.

“Just doing my job, Wendi,” I said. “You don’t have to thank me.”

“Yes, I do,” she said, writing something on a piece of paper. She handed it to me when she was finished. “I’ll meet you at that address at 6:00 tonight, and it’s on me.” I recognized the address – it was a fairly expensive steakhouse that sat next to a night club. I had often thought about going there, but knew it was way too expensive for me.

“Wendi, this is...” I began, but she waved me off.

“This is the very least I can do,” she said. “Dress casual and bring your appetite. I hope you like to dance, by the way.”

“I do,” I said. She smiled.

“Good,” she said. “I’ll see you there, then.” We had a great time that night and spent at least an hour getting to know each other. Wendi came from a fairly well-off family of lawyers, so she decided to follow in her father’s footsteps. At the time, she wasn’t seeing anyone exclusively, but, she said, she hoped to change that soon.

I told her about my upbringing in Roswell, New Mexico, and my tour in the Marines.

“Were you ever in combat?” she asked.

“Other than a quick trip to Beirut, no,” I said. I went there as part of the force that relieved the unit that got bombed back in October 1983. After dinner, we went next door and danced the rest of the night away. I found myself liking this girl – a lot. It helped that I found her very attractive and quite sexy.

So, I took it easy and let things run their course. When the night was over, Wendi gave me a scorching hot tongue kiss. There was a lot of promise in that kiss, but a part of me wanted it to last longer than just one night.

We started dating and ended up in a motel room a couple weeks later, too drunk and horny to make it back to either of our places. We screwed each other’s brains out for a couple hours before passing out, naked, on the bed. The next morning, I awoke to find her sucking me off. God, that was so sexy.

About a month later, she took me to her parents’ house for Sunday dinner. They lived in a fairly upscale part of town and I felt a bit nervous about meeting them. Wendi assured me they were just like me and I had no reason to be nervous.

They were polite and treated me okay, but I got the impression her father, Don, didn’t think too much of me. After all, I was way below Wendi on the social ladder. He made it clear that he always wanted her to marry another lawyer, but he said he would welcome anyone she chose to be with. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but I guess it was better than nothing.

I expressed my concern to Wendi, but she just shrugged it off.

“Does it bother you that you make more than me?” I asked. Truth is, she made way more than I did, but she never flaunted it – at least not like most of the people in her social circles.

“I wouldn’t care if you made minimum wage sweeping floors,” she said. “I’d much rather have a good, decent, honest, hard-working man like you than some rich asshole who thinks he can buy his way through life.” My respect and admiration for her grew tenfold after hearing that.

We continued dating and fell in love. In October 1987, I asked her to marry me and she accepted. Her mother seemed happy for us, I thought, but I didn’t quite know what to make of her father’s reaction. He ushered me into his home office and handed me a document.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s a prenuptial agreement,” he said. “Nothing personal, I just want to protect my daughter’s assets. I’m sure you can understand,” he added condescendingly. I looked it over but there was so much legalese it was difficult to understand it all. “Don’t worry, just sign it and I’ll get it notarized and filed,” he told me. I knew better than to do that so I countered.

“My dad once told me never to sign a legal document without having an attorney read through it,” I said. “No offense, but I’d like to have another set of eyes look at this before I sign it.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“No problem,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll find everything in order.” I found out a couple days later that it wasn’t. The attorney I saw, Mark Hempstead, informed me the document was completely one-sided and could be interpreted to mean pretty much whatever a sharp lawyer wanted to make of it. He made several changes to the document and advised me to sign it only in the presence of a notary.

“By the way,” he said as an aside, “Is this Wendi Patterson a lawyer? Her father named Don?”

“Yes,” I said. “How did you know that?”

“Well, my son dated a Wendi Patterson in law school,” he said. “They were quite an item for a while. Didn’t work out, obviously. They were going to be married but he left and went back east. I’m not sure what happened. He never told me.”

“What’s your son’s name?” I asked.

“Carl,” he told me. I made note of that name and asked Wendi about it the next time I saw her.

“Yeah, I knew a Carl Hempstead in college,” she said. “We dated for a while, but it just didn’t work out. He ended up going back east so we ended it. Why?” I told her I had met his father and he remembered her name.

“Must’ve made quite an impression for him to remember me after all these years,” she said. I dropped the subject but kept it in my mental filing cabinet just in case.

Don wasn’t too happy with the changes to the prenuptial, but he agreed, as did Wendi. Wendi told me men were always after her for her money. I could understand that, but I couldn’t help but wonder what Don’s agenda was.

A month later, in November, Wendi and I were married in a nice ceremony held in her parents’ back yard. Neither of us wanted a large wedding, just family and a few close friends. My parents flew out from Roswell and some of my co-workers joined us. The reception was more like a pool party than anything else, and we all had a good time.

Wendi and I went south to Acapulco for our honeymoon and had lots of fun. The next thirteen months or so were great, or at least I thought so. About a year after we married, Wendi became a junior partner in her firm and started spending more time away from home. In addition to late nights and the occasional weekend spent “working with clients out of town,” she started going out with “the girls” on Friday night to blow off steam and gossip. I didn’t care too much for it, but I persevered and did everything I could to support her.

One of the things I didn’t like were the annual trips to New York. The conferences she attended usually lasted a week, but last year, she had to stay a few days longer to meet with important clients. At least, that’s what she told me. I knew some of her firm’s clients were rich, powerful and very famous people who generally got what they demanded, so I sucked it up. I trusted Wendi completely and never thought she’d ever cheat on me, but I still missed her.

Her attitude also seemed to change just a bit in that time. She became a little more aloof, more like her father. She never directly put me down or belittled me, but there were a few barbs about her new social standing. She traded her Toyota in for a shiny new BMW and of course, her wardrobe got an infusion of new clothing, some of which looked more appropriate for a night on the town.

Things also changed a bit in the bedroom. We didn’t have sex as often as we did before, but still managed to get together about twice a week on average. The rest of the time, she begged off, saying she was too tired, or had a headache.

By the time her 1990 conference began I was almost glad to see her go, as the atmosphere in the house had become thick with tension. It’s not that we were arguing – we weren’t. It was all the things that weren’t said between us. I guess I should’ve known that something was going on by the way she acted. She kissed me on the cheek Friday morning before she left for work and promised to call.

Monday, May 14, 1990:

I got home that night, tired from the day’s work, grabbed the mail out of our mailbox and headed inside for yet another lonely night consisting of leftovers, beer and television. Wendi had been back east for her annual conference, having left the previous Friday night. She promised to call me every night and so far, she had kept that promise, although I could tell her calls were something of an inconvenience to her.

After I grabbed a bite to eat, I looked through the mail. Bills got put into a pile for Wendi and I to go through – we always did that together. Junk mail addressed to “occupant” or “resident” got tossed in the garbage, as usual. One letter, though, was address to me by name. The letter appeared to be on parchment of some kind and the writing was in a style of calligraphy I had never seen before. I almost threw it out, but something told me I should open it. So I did.

The letter was from someplace called “Rhamnousia Gallery” and it was an invitation. To be more specific, it said I was invited to a “private” and “exclusive” showing of a new piece of artwork they had just acquired. I had never expressed any interest in art before, so I thought it a bit odd that I would be invited to such a showing. The letter said I needed to be there at 11:00 am sharp the very next day, Tuesday.

I made note of the address and looked it up in my Thomas Guide. Anyone who lived in southern California back in those days knows what a Thomas Guide is – basically, it was a very well-indexed map book of the area. Anyone who ever did any traveling there back then had one. I found the address and noted it was only a few blocks from my morning appointment.

That night, Wendi called and we talked for a few minutes. She told me about her conference and all the exciting people she met and I told her about the invitation.

“You should go,” she said. “It would do you some good to get exposed to the arts.”

“If you insist,” I said.

“I insist,” she said. We said our goodbyes and exchanged loving endearments before ending the call. I missed her so much, and I wondered if she really missed me as much as she claimed.

The next day, I wrapped up my service call about 20 minutes before 11:00, so I called in and clocked out for lunch. I made my way to the address for Rhamnousia Gallery and was a bit surprised to find it was a fairly large, Gothic house that looked like it could have been in a movie. I verified the address, parked and made my way to the front door, which opened just as I was about to press the doorbell.

“Good day, Mr. Neely,” said the short, trim blonde who opened the door. “You’re right on time. I appreciate your punctuality. Please come in.” I followed her inside and looked around. The place seemed deserted, and was filled with what looked like antique chairs and tables with matching lamps. The walls were covered with portraits of unknown men and women in various poses – some sitting, others standing. None of the subjects in the pictures looked happy at all. I wondered what kind of gallery this was.

“My name is Dr. Adrestia Rhamnousia,” the blonde said, extending a delicate hand. I took it, wondering where she came from and what kind of name was Adrestia. Being in southern California, I had been exposed to all kinds of different nationalities and ethnicities, so I thought nothing more of it.

“You’re probably wondering what kind of gallery this is,” she said, almost as if she had read my mind. “Let’s just say, there’s nothing quite like it anywhere in the world,” she added, with a slight smile. “Please, let’s look at your portrait, shall we?” My portrait?

She opened a set of double doors and ushered me into a room that contained only two chairs and a small table, set in front of a covered portrait on an easel. She ushered me to a chair and stood next to the portrait as I sat down. Once in the chair, she smiled and removed the cover.

To say I was shocked after she uncovered the painting would be something of an understatement. The portrait almost looked photographic, but I could clearly see the brush strokes. It was a portrait of Wendi, sitting at a table in what could have been a restaurant or a bar. She was wearing a black dress that showed quite a bit of her cleavage. I could see the swell of her breasts and somehow knew she wasn’t wearing a bra.

She appeared to be looking up at someone and I could tell from her expression the person she was looking at was special to her – it was the same expression she had given me many times since we became a couple. Her eyes seemed to sparkle and her face was broken out in that special smile of hers.

I recognized the necklace she wore – it was one I had given her for Valentine’s Day that year. But I noticed something else that disturbed me – her wedding and engagement rings seemed to be missing. There was a ring on her right hand – it was a dolphin ring I had seen her wear many times. I don’t know where she got it, and never pressed the issue. I looked at Adrestia, confused.

“What’s going on here?” I asked. “How did you get this?”

“We received this over the weekend,” she said. “And I thought you should see it for yourself.” A flag suddenly went up in my mind – how could she have known this was my wife and gotten the invitation to me in the mail so fast? I set that aside for the moment.

“But this is a picture of my wife,” I said. “When did she pose for this? Where’s her wedding ring and who is she smiling at?”

“You are correct,” Adrestia said. “It is a portrait of your wife. It was done late Friday night. The other questions will be answered in due course. That is, if you really want the answers.”

“Friday night?” I asked. “But she just got into New York Friday night. I spoke to her on the phone when she got to her room.”

“And what time was that?” Adrestia asked.

“I guess it was about 3:00 pm,” I said. That would have made it about 6:00 pm Eastern time. Wendi told me she had just gotten to her room after dinner and was going straight to bed. I remembered she sounded exhausted.

“Look at the watch on her arm,” Adrestia said. I looked closely and could see the watch she always wore. It was somewhat difficult to make out the time, so Adrestia handed me a magnifying glass. As I looked, I could see the watch showed 9:15. How was this possible, I wondered.

“But this could have happened at any time,” I said.

“This was done to exact detail at the time it happened,” Adrestia told me. That meant Wendi had gone out after we had spoken. I was in shock at the implications. Had she lied to me? Was she seeing another man? What the hell is going on here?

“I’m sure you have many questions right now,” Adrestia said. “Perhaps you should return later tonight, say about 9:30 or so.”

“Why?” I asked. “Is there more?” She smiled and sat in the chair next to me.

“Perhaps,” she said. “But you’ll never know unless you return.” She handed me a key. “Please, feel free to come any time you wish. But I strongly suggest you come back tonight at 9:30.” Confused, I took the key from her and put it in my pocket. Thanking her, I stood up to leave. She escorted me to the door and smiled as I left. “Remember,” she said. “9:30 tonight.”

I drove off in a state of confusion. Why did Adrestia want me back at 9:30 tonight? Is Wendi cheating on me? If so, with whom? And, I wondered, should I mention this to her when she calls? Or should I let this play out to see what is going on?

I managed to make it through the rest of my day – don’t ask me how – and got home a little after 5:00. The phone rang as soon as I walked in the door. It was Wendi. I thought about confronting her, but decided otherwise, at least until I had more information.

“Hey, sweetie,” she said. “I miss you so much. How was your private showing?”

“It was, uh, eye-opening,” I said. “I may go back to see what else they have to offer.”

“Good,” she said. “You could use a little culture, you know.”

“So how is your trip so far?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

“Not too bad,” she said. “Mostly dry lawyer-talk, you know.”

“Meet anyone interesting?” I asked.

“Oh, one or two people, but nothing like you,” she said.

“Got any plans for the evening?” I asked.

“Oh, a few of us are going to grab a bite to eat and a couple drinks,” she said. “We might do some dancing, but that’s pretty much it. How about you?”

“Not much, just going to eat, maybe watch a little TV, but that’s all,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Just so long as you’re not out partying.”

“Yeah, that’s me, one big party animal,” I said, laughing. She laughed with me.

“Talk to you tomorrow,” she said. “Love you.”

“I love you, too,” I said. We ended the call and I sat there, looking at the phone wondering if she truly meant what she said. I ate, and watched a little television, but my mind was on that painting. There were just too many questions but no answers. I knew it would take me a good 45 minutes or so to get to the gallery, so I kept a close eye on the time and left about 8:35.

I got to the gallery at 9:25 and let myself in. The inside was darker than before and it appeared as though I was the only one there. It felt a bit creepy to me and I looked around, almost expecting to see eyeballs follow me as I moved. I went to the room holding the portrait and opened the door. Adrestia had apparently covered the painting after I left, so I uncovered it and got the shock of my life.

The picture had changed – completely. Wendi was now standing, her back to me, and she was next to another man, who had his arm around her. His right hand rested on her ass, and her left arm was around him. As in the previous picture, her rings were missing. They appeared to be walking away and Wendi was looking back. The look on her face told me everything – it was her, “I’m horny and I want to fuck” expression. I had seen it many times.