Chapter 2

At first, I had no idea what to do. I didn't have a clue what I should do. What was the approved reaction from a husband who discovered his wife was cheating on him?

I'm afraid the company didn't get much work from me over the next week and a half. I would be working on something and would suddenly find myself gazing into space, not knowing how long I'd been doing it. A number of the staff members asked me if there was anything wrong, but I always replied there was not. No one could help me through this. I'd have to solve the riddle by myself.

I was able to reason my way through a few things. For one, that the guy felt comfortable fondling my wife in public said they had been having sex for some time. If they were just beginning with each other, he'd still be a lot more tentative. It meant Sherrie had been cheating on me for some time. I wondered when it had begun. I couldn't remember any signs that she was cheating on me. There'd been no attitude changes, or any modifications in our daily life that I could think of. In the final analysis, though, it didn't really matter how long it had been going on. The only important factor was that it was happening.

Second, I wasn't going to put up with her infidelity. I was not going to go off to work each day, wondering who Sherrie was fucking that day. I wasn't much of a church going man anyway. There was no way I was going to turn the other cheek. It wasn't in me to do that.

I couldn't see any point in trying to save the marriage. Sherrie had broken the trust we'd built up over the four years of our marriage. It seemed to me she'd broken it a number of times, judging by the evidence, and I didn't know how it could ever be made whole again. The only thing that logically remained to do was to confront her and get myself out of this mess with my mind as intact as I could. If there was something I'd done so terribly wrong that it prompted a reaction like this from Sherrie, maybe she'd tell me.

I tried to pull my eyes back inside the windows through which I'd been staring blindly. I felt more alone than I ever had in my life. The hurt came in cold waves, alternating with fiery periods of anger. Neither emotion would let me be long enough to do any productive work.

Having decided that my marriage to Sherrie was dead, I set myself the dreary task of finding some quick way out of my pain. The thing was, without proof of some kind, Sherrie would probably be able to take damn near everything we'd put together. Texas courts are not friendly to a man making unsubstantiated allegations about his wife. In the twenty-first century, wives got the benefit of the doubt in almost any situation.

I shoved what loving feelings I had left for Sherrie behind a door in my mind and slammed it shut. I decided I wanted my share of what we had. We had some good equity in the house and the savings account was beginning to show a nice balance finally. We both were making pretty good money, and had been for a year or so. We'd managed to buy some quality furniture and appliances. The cars had both been financed, but we'd been making balloon payments and the loans were nearly paid off. If I wanted my fair portion of what we'd accumulated, I had to catch her red handed. I watched for an opportunity.

On Tuesday, one day short of three weeks after I'd seen Sherrie letting some asshole play with her pussy, she told me she was going to go out Friday night with a group of her girlfriends for a few drinks and lots of gossip. It was something she and a half-dozen women in her crowd did every six weeks or so. She said Connie, Barbara, Miranda, Colleen, Tammy were going along but not Melissa, Sherrie's best friend. They were going to find all the things they could to talk about Melissa behind her back. Sherrie giggled a little about that when she told me.

There was absolutely nothing suspicious about her doing this. She'd done it before on widely separated occasions through the years. I knew in my heart, though, this one was different. I couldn't see anything in her behavior that indicated she was not actually going to do exactly what she told me. But I didn't trust her anymore. I had to verify what she was saying.

"Connie!" I said cheerfully into my cell phone. Connie was one of my wife's friends. She and her husband Art were occasional guests over at what had been "our" house for barbeques and sometimes dinner.

"Hey, tiger," she responded happily. Connie liked to flirt and she took every opportunity. "What's up?" she asked.

"Not much," I said. "I was just wondering if you and Tom have any plans for Friday night... tomorrow evening. I was thinking the four of us might get together for dinner and some cards."

"Hmmmmmm," she said in her mock-seductive voice, "I'll have to check my busy calendar, big boy." There was a momentary pause but not one long enough for her to actually be checking anything.

"No... nothing on tap for that night, sugar," she said. "I'll have to check with Tom but I think it sounds like a great idea... what shall we bring?"

"Just your cute little self, your better half, and a pair of bright smiles," I quipped. I tried to sound upbeat, but inside I was dead. All the pleasure in my life had disappeared over the past few weeks.

"Okay, hon," she said. "I'll give you a call when I know for sure, okay?" She paused briefly.

"Ahhhhhhh, Ron... me and Tom are sure glad you and Sherrie are doing so well, sugar." I frowned into empty space as I listened. "We weren't sure after the Vegas trip that you guys would be able to get things together... you know?" she said in a more serious voice than I'd ever heard from her.

"Vegas?" I said, a little mystified.

I thought at first she was aware of Sherrie's straying, although I didn't have an inkling how she would have known. The trip she was referring to was one I hadn't gone on because at the last minute, my boss had called, needing me to go to Denver to straighten out a mess in the R&D division in our parent company. Sherrie; Melissa and her husband, Cal; Connie and Tom had gone without me and, by all accounts, everyone had come back with small winnings for once.

Wait! Was Connie saying something had gone on in Vegas? Hell, she had to be... but I needed to know more. It made me sick, but I had to know.

"I don't understand what you're trying to say, Connie," I said. Even I could hear the confusion in my voice. She was silent for a long time.

"Oh... it's just scatter-brained ol' me," she said. "You know how I am... well, listen, I'll get with Tom and check if he's already got something planned for tomorrow or not, okay?"

"Sure. Let me know, all right?" I replied. She said she would. I got off the phone as quickly as I decently could. I was afraid my voice would reveal the pain I was in.

Half an hour later, Connie called back and apologized. Tom had obligated himself to play in a poker game at a neighbor's house. Connie was just as sorry as she could be... maybe next time, she said. I agreed, regretting that they couldn't come. Maybe Sherrie and I would just forget about the whole thing and try again at a better time. Neither of us was fooling the other.

I knew two things now. Something involving my wife had occurred in Las Vegas and Sherrie was not going out with the girls tomorrow night. I had to let the former lay uninvestigated while I dealt with the latter.

I've heard it said that adulterous spouses get into a mindset where they conclude they must be more intelligent than those they are cheating on, simply because they're getting away with what they're doing. They begin to believe they are cleverer than anyone else in the world. Because they manage to deceive their marriage partner for a time, they begin to disrespect him or her and hold their spouses in contempt. Eventually, so the story goes, cheaters start making mistakes because of overconfidence; they don't think anyone else has the smarts to catch them.

I didn't know about all that, this was my first experience dealing with such a thing, but I did know that Sherrie was making mistakes. If I hadn't seen her that day with that sorry SOB in her car at the stoplight, I'd have caught on to her activities eventually anyway. Being in public with that man was a bad mistake. Any one of our friends or neighbors could have been in a van or SUV beside her car--it didn't have to be me.

Not making sure Connie would cover for her was another blunder, a major one. Second, she knew I was friendly with Connie and Tom--even more so with Melissa and Cal. Whatever happened in Vegas was almost certainly known by both couples. Either of them might have called me sometime to give her up. These were loose ends she should have tied up somehow. Her third error was assuming I still trusted her and would stay home like a good little boy while she was out whoring around. Her fourth was thinking I would put up with a cheating slut of a wife.

I smashed my fist down on the coffee table beside me, making the lamp dance around on its base for a long moment. Sherrie was in the shower; she didn't hear a thing. I massaged my hand and wrist, seething inside as I contemplated my wife's betrayal of our marriage, herself and me.

I was worried that my anger was going to take over my whole life. It seemed to me that my jaws were always clinched tight these days and my pulse pounded whenever I thought of what Sherrie and that guy were doing. I was ruthlessly suppressing those feelings when I was around her. It only made the rage burn that much hotter.

The sad thing was that I was actually a little relieved when it became clear tonight was to be their next little get-together for sex. I hated to admit that to myself, but I was. Once I got through whatever I had to face this evening, I'd take what I knew and put it in the hands of my attorney. I had him primed and ready to file the petition for divorce whenever I gave him the go-ahead.

Sherrie left a little after seven o'clock, just as twilight was beginning to make soft shadows all around. She thought I was in the garage straightening up the disorder that accumulates if one doesn't give it constant attention, but I was really just killing time, waiting for her to leave. Now that the evening had come, I was anxious to get things over with and move on with my life.

Sherrie hadn't been interested enough about what I was doing to come outside for a look, much less to spend any time with me. I guessed she was just happy I was out of her way so she could get ready for her date... or whatever she was calling it. That was fine with me. If she'd come out to be with me, she'd have seen the rent-a-lemon I'd arranged for that morning. I hadn't wanted to park the shabby looking wreck on the street; it might have been towed as an abandoned vehicle.

It was a small lie, I suppose--hiding the rental's existence. That's what's wrong with lying and cheating. The lies begin to take on a life of their own and reproduce more of their kind spontaneously.

There were three more lies told as she walked out the door. I wished her a good time and we both said we loved each other. A man and a woman who loved each other wouldn't be doing the things to each other that we were going to do tonight. I told myself I didn't care.