Not much else in my life has followed along the beaten path so I suppose it was inevitable that the circumstances of my divorce would be no different. I'd married Mandy when she was young, only nineteen. I was a junior in college back then and she was studying to be a cosmetician at the same school. As a struggling History major I used to pinch pennies when I could. One such way was by getting my hair cut at the campus' cosmetology building. It was free since it allowed the students to practice on actual people. It was here that I'd met Mandy.

I knew we were different the entire time and I should have intuited that the relationship would not work well. I was from a middle-class upbringing, raised in the sheltered suburbs of Seattle. Mandy was from a poor, trailer-trash type family. Both of her parents were alcoholics. Her older brother was in prison for rape. Her sister was a high-school dropout with three kids, strung out on crank. Mandy had seemed however, to be above all this. She took good care of herself and was striving toward an employment goal. She drank very little and only occasionally smoked a little grass with me. She was intelligent and easy to talk to and had little contact with her family. My impression of her back then was that she'd had a hard life and was working strenuously to pull herself out of it.

She was also very good looking; the best looking female who had ever shown an interest in me, and I'd be lying if I said that factor hadn't been a major one in taking up with her. I was very shy in college, getting dates only when the woman chose to be the aggressor; something that didn't happen nearly enough. We got married less than three months after we'd met. By the time I graduated with a BA degree in History and began working as a teacher for the Seattle Public School System, we had a young daughter and another one on the way.

Life in the early days with Mandy wasn't ideal but it had never struck me as particularly unpleasant either. She was a good mother to our kids and helped bring in the family income by working part-time in the late afternoon and on weekends at a beauty salon. If there was anything that really stands out about those times it is difficulty in conversation. As the years went by she became harder and harder to talk to, keeping more and more inside her.

Since I was a child I've loved to write stories. During my college years I took as many creative writing courses as my general education requirements would allow. I polished and refined my technique, always treating it like an intense hobby. By the time my second child was born I'd published six short stories and historical essays with various magazines, the prestige of such endeavors far outstripping the meager payments they provided. My first year as a History teacher I wrote a novel, working on it in my spare time over a period of six months. After more rejections than I can count, a publishing house finally bought the rights and printed the book as a paperback. It did moderately well in sales, just well enough for them to offer me a three-book contract.

Since then I've published six more books, all in the same genre. None of them have been bestsellers and no hardback publishers have ever approached me. There's a good chance that you've never even heard of me before, that your eyes passed over my books in your local booksellers without the slightest ding of name recognition or interest. My contract fees and royalties combined only account for about twelve thousand dollars a year; certainly not enough to quit work for in and of themselves. But by the time of my third novel I was in fact able to give up teaching and work full time on my writing thanks to a pleasant quirk of the writing business that I'd been previously completely unaware of.

Some might call it selling out and I suppose in a way it is. It's one of those things that could only exist in a capitalistic society. What I'm talking about is product placement advertising. Ford Motor Company was the first to contact me. They offered me six thousand dollars to have the main character in my next book drive a Ford automobile. Two fast food chains came next, actually bidding with me for the privilege of having my characters consume their food or conduct meetings in their establishments. I score eight thousand a book for that. I get ten thousand a book from Smith and Wesson for arming my characters with their firearms. They even give me a list of specific models as suggestions. My two biggest advertising contracts come from a large beer maker who pays sixteen thousand for having my creations drink their brand, and a tobacco company who pays me twenty-two thousand to have my protagonist characters smoke cigarettes. They particularly like it when I have the character in question return to cigarettes after a long absence while he or she is under stress. They once gave me a five thousand-dollar bonus for a graphically good description of how it felt to have that first cigarette when the shit started hitting the fan.

So I'm not stinking rich or anything, but I'm comfortable. Mandy and I bought a large house in an affluent suburb and settled down to the task of raising our children. It was when I quit work, I believe, that the problems really started. The communication problem increased to the point that, if we weren't fighting about some stupid thing, we weren't talking at all. Our sex life ground to a screeching halt. She kept herself away from home as much as she could get away with, working as many hours as she could arrange to do even though we no longer needed the money. A small part of me suspected she might be having an affair but I didn't know what to do about it. I would have filed for divorce if not for two little things: Becky and Sarah; our two daughters.

I love those two kids like I'd never loved anything or anyone else on the face of the Earth. They are what it's all about. I was around them every day, taking care of them while Mandy was out, and I was constantly in awe of them; their innocence, their bright, inquisitive minds. They were and are what made each day worthwhile for me. I knew if I divorced Mandy that my time with them would be drastically cut. The courts in our state do not favor the father in custody disputes. As it turned out however, Mandy herself solved this particular problem for me.

I'll never forget that early June day, when Becky was five and Sarah was nearly four. Mandy had been at work, or so I'd thought, and the two girls were playing contentedly with a dollhouse in my study while I worked on my latest novel. I was trying to figure out a way to incorporate Goodyear tires onto my main character's Ford automobile without sounding too obvious about what I was doing. Goodyear had promised me four thousand for an honorable mention in this publication. Suddenly the doorbell rang.

I got up, irritated, and walked through the house to the front door. I peered through the keyhole, spying two middle-aged men in cheap suits standing on my porch. Figuring they were salesmen or religious fanatics, I almost left the door without opening it but when they rang several more times and then pounded with their fists, I gave up and opened it, prepared to send them away post-haste.

They addressed me by name, which gave me pause. Salesmen or religious fanatics would not have possessed that information.

"Yes?" I said, curious now.

"We're Detectives Watson and Langely from Seattle PD." He paused and they both flipped open leather badge carriers, displaying their credentials. "Homicide division. May we come in?"

"Homicide division?" I said, all sorts of evil possibilities going through my mind. "What's this about?"

"If you let us in," Watson said seriously, "we'll tell you."

I did so, leading them to the front room and inviting them to sit. The tale they then told me took me completely by surprise.

Mandy had been having an affair, but that is not the surprising part of the story. She began seeing an ex-con loser who was a friend of her sister's latest boyfriend. This had been going on for some months and as near as I can figure, Mandy fell in love with the guy and wanted to marry him. Simple divorce, and the inevitable alimony and child support that would have followed was apparently not enough for my beautiful wife.

She asked her new boyfriend if he knew of anyone who could be hired to kill her husband and make it look like a random thing. She'd explained to him about the two life insurance policies that would have provided about half a million dollars apiece. She explained to him about the skyrocketing book sales that would have inevitably followed my demise, pumping fresh royalties into her account. He'd listened carefully to her suggestions and said he'd think about it.

I must say that this two-time loser Brenton Hamilton, a crank addict, a wife abuser, and a general dirtbag, has done a lot towards restoring my faith in humanity. Despite what he was being offered, he was appalled by her suggestions. He told his parole officer what Mandy said. His parole officer told the Seattle Police Department. Homicide detectives quickly met with Hamilton and a sting operation was set up.

Detective Watson posed as an outlaw biker hitman and met with Mandy, the entire meeting taped on video and audio. She agreed to pay the sum of ten thousand dollars to have me killed. She told him my schedule, pointing out the fact that I made a habit of visiting a particular yuppie coffee shop at a certain time each day and suggesting a robbery of the coffee shop would make an ideal "random" event.

Detective Watson gave her every opportunity to back out of the deal but she persisted. Finally, a third meet was arranged and Mandy handed over three thousand dollars as a down payment on my murder. She was taken into custody less than thirty seconds later.

I can't begin to tell you how shocking it is to see your wife coldly arranging your death before your eyes on videotape. I was speechless to say the least. I would never have direct, face-to-face contact with my wife again and I never plan to. She was brought to trial on the charge of soliciting a murder for hire. I testified against her in a limited capacity, my most powerful evidence the bank statements indicating the withdrawal of the down payment money. She was convicted in less than thirty minutes by her jury and sentenced to six years in the Washington State Penal system. After the trial I took Mr. Hamilton to a bar and bought him all the drinks he could consume. To this day I write him a check for a thousand dollars every month and mail it to his current address. His likeness has been featured as the friendly snitch in my last three books (and he smokes Camels, which brings in another eighteen thousand dollars from that tobacco company).

The divorce went off without much of a hitch, as did the custody arrangements. I pay no alimony and never will. I was granted complete custody of the two children. Mandy, who will get out of prison in a few years, has been forbidden to ever see, approach, or contact either me, Sarah, or Becky in any manner whatsoever. It has been made clear to her that if I was to die in some unfortunate manner she would still never acquire custody or get her hands on any of my money. In retrospect I'm almost glad for what happened. I got off cheap in more than one way.

Following this my life became pretty sedate. I watched my kids, took them to school each day, and picked them up. Nobody in my happy little neighborhood knows about the history of my wife and me. I try to write at least ten pages a day, which keeps me well ahead of my contractual schedule of 1.5 books per year. I haven't remarried and I don't even date seriously for reasons I'm about to explain.

I found myself without a social life nor any hopes for one. The only time I am without my two daughters in tow is when they are in school. During this time I write, I exercise, I smoke a little grass or drink a little beer (I have a lifetime's free supply of beer from my brewery contract). I watch the History Channel on cable, making comments to myself about how they've sensationalized everything in the interest of ratings. I read pornography or look at pornographic images on the Internet and whip my weasel to them. Certainly none of the characters in my books have such a boring life, but I'd always been content with the way things were.

About a year ago however, things began to take a turn toward the more interesting, driving me into a way of life I never would have believed had I read about it somewhere. It began with the park and still centers around it.

Adjacent to the elementary school my daughters attend is a small city park. It has a sandbox (actually sawdust), some swings, some monkey bars, some spring mounted rocking horses. Along the concrete paths, which encircle the children's play area, are several sets of metal benches where parents can watch their children recreate. I developed the habit of walking the girls over there after school so they could play for a half hour or so when the weather was tolerable (in Seattle, tolerable has a different meaning than in other places-we go outside and play in conditions that would keep people in normal cities boarded up inside their homes). I quickly noticed that I was not the first one to have this idea.

As I've mentioned before, I live in a fairly affluent suburb. The houses are all over four hundred thousand in price range and are occupied by just about what you'd expect in such a place. As I've discovered, the husbands of these households are typically professionals of some sort that make pretty good bank at their respective positions. For the most part, the wives are young, college-educated housewives who maintain part-time jobs at best. They tend to be very attractive, doting mothers of an average of two children. They are your PTA members, your church volunteers, and your charity drive leaders. They gather at the park along with me each day to do the same thing I do, watch their children play on the park's enticements.

They noticed my presence immediately once I began hanging out there. There was no way they couldn't have; I am usually the only male in attendance at those hours. I don't know what they thought of me at first. Probably that I was an unemployed husband whose wife was bringing home the coin, or some such thing as that. They could tell I wasn't a child molester or anything since I had my two daughters consentingly with me at all times. I always had the bench to myself, even if there was standing room only at the other benches. I believe I even sensed some vibes of disapproval and mistrust radiating off some of them. None of them ever talked to me or approached me for the first several months.