Chapter 9

The next few days it was like living in an igloo. We certainly went through the motions: sharing meals, watching a movie on the flat screen. But there was no cuddling on the couch, no nice little conversations where we’d finish each other’s sentences. She tried on Saturday to start up. “Come on, Mark. We’ve got to talk about this. You know this won’t change anything. This is US. You and me.”

I demurred. “I think it DOES change things. EVERY thing. Save it for Dr. Applebottom on Tuesday. We’ll do better with a moderator.” I took a sip from the bourbon and water and put the glass down. After a break, I got up and went to my office. I locked the door and reviewed the tapes from my hidden cameras.

I watched as she came out of her royal bathroom and flopped on the bed, nude but wearing her “lounging heels.” They were white and had a silly looking puff ball at the toe. She laid back and started to fondle herself. She’d never done that before. Of course, I never had a hidden camera pointed at her bed before. So, who really knew. “Oh, Mark.” She was rubbing her clit with a circular motion. Her clit wasn’t THAT big, she was rubbing her whole mound. Now she zeroed in on the centerpiece. “I want you back ... It’s been so long since you were comfy with me. Except for Rufus the other day.” She clenched her thighs tightly. “He was so rough with my poor bottom. It took me a whole day to recover.”

She slipped her fingers down and was now rubbing her labia. It would have been sexy, but part way through, it occurred to me that she was pointing her cunt – treacherous cunt – at the camera on my dresser.

So ... she’d found the hidden camera in the fake bottle of ibuprofen, had she? I clicked off the replay of her morning play. I didn’t want to hear her “Oh. Oh ... Yes, honey. Oh yes.” That was undoubtedly the culmination of the scene. I could see it on the internet from a Russian teen, pretending to be surprised by her fake step-dad in her school uniform. Not that the dad was going to be in the school uniform.

I went into the bedroom and changed into a pair of sweat pants. “I’ll be about an hour or so,” I said on my way out the front door.

“Where are you headed?”

“The gym,” I answered. “Gonna try and get rid of this bowling ball I’m carrying around.” I patted my midsection.

“Oh,” she started to uncoil from the couch. “I could go...” the door ~snicked~ closed behind me on her final words. “ ... change and go with you.”

...

Tuesday morning. I left for the counseling session at Dr. Applebottom’s early. I hadn’t met her before, although I did check her out online.

Kathy was there when I arrived and the Doc opened her door promptly. “Ah. Mr. and Mrs. James. Come in.” There was a couch and a couple of arm chairs in her room. I voted for the chair. “Suppose we start with why you’re here? Who wants to start?” She picked up a black rubber ball. “I find it easier to take turns. Whoever has the ball has the floor.” She smiled. “No interrupting.”

It was a good technique for controlling a potentially contentious meeting. I used it myself. It was a small, soft ball. Wouldn’t hurt if somebody really hurled it at somebody.

I grabbed the initiative. I raised my hand. She looked at Kathy and then tossed the ball to me.

“We’ve been married for 14 ½ years. I thought they were good years.” Kathy started to say something, but the good doctor raised her hand.

“You’ll get a chance, Kathy. Go on, Mark.”

I smiled and tossed the ball in my hands. “Then, a week ago. On Thursday, I got a ‘fuck you announcement.’”

Kathy could not hold back. “It wasn’t a fuck you announcement!”

I held the ball up. The doc said “Let’s try to use less combative language, all right Mark?”

“Okay. I’ll tell you exactly what happened. I came home at my normal time. There was a bourbon and water – I never drink before dinner. Well, I used to never drink before dinner, anyway. On the table. She had poured it for me. She was sitting on the other side of the room. I sat down. Then she announced that ‘Nothing was going to change between us,’ but that she was going to spend the weekend with some man named Lucas. That’s why I called it a ‘fuck you announcement.’ No preamble. Not the start of a conversation. Just ‘I’m going to do this.’ Okay. I’m done for now. Over to you Mrs. James.” And I lobbed the Talking Ball – that’s the term I used in my arbitrations – to her.

Kathy took the ball and slammed it down on the couch where she was sitting. “Okay, yes, I said that. I told Mark that I didn’t want to hide anything from him. That this was just a one-time thing, that I needed to do. That it wouldn’t change anything between us. And, yes, I was going to spend the weekend with a man I met at work. He was an important client.”

The doc took a turn. “And you thought he’d just accept your announcement, that you’d be going on a weekend with this Lucas fellow?” I was glad to see that she’d adopted my categorization of it as an ‘announcement.’ That was why I started off that way. “That seems to be rather abrupt.”

“Well, I thought about it, and I didn’t think there was any other way to do it. We had a good relationship, and that he’d understand my needs.”