Chapter 7: A Stroke Of Consequence

Anne and I have been married for almost nine years.

I guess it is a cliché to say they were the best years of my life. But they were. They were magical and yet so very common. There was the simple ease of being together. The understanding. There was the warm, uncomplicated shelter of her love. The sex too. Sex has always been important to us. Anne was like this delicately tuned instrument. A Stradivarius violin, say. Or a Bechstein piano.

Just playing her took my breath away. Oh yes, I did love to play her. Did. (Have to get used to this past tense. I'll learn, don't worry.)

But Anne was gorgeous in so many other ways. It was a party to simply sit with her at the end of a working day. Just discussing what happened, the little things. Knowing that she'd listen and hear whatever was important to me.

And for me to sit and listen to her common sense, her witty responses.

In the second year of our marriage it became apparent that I could not give her children. It was a cruel blow. I know Anne wanted them. I'd have loved them too.

I considered adoption. She did not want that. She talked about finding a donor. I could not live with that idea. I guess I am a jealous man, after all. (Ha! But you know that by now.)

We stopped talking about it.

I knew it hurt her. It was a sneaking hurt. It was like mourning after a death. I guess that's when Anne decided to make a career for herself. Maybe even a life.

She did the marketing and PR for a fast growing chain of delicatessen shops and catering facilities. She was working hard and doing well. But more than making money she enjoyed working with creative and adventurous people, she said. Adventurous.

It was such a contrast to my job.

I am head of sales at the local branch of a large national insurance company. It is where I started after college. I never saw a reason to leave. It only took me a few years to rise through the ranks to my present position. The only thing that worried me was that my next step might involve moving to headquarters. It would force Anne to give up her precious job.

Ah well ... another dilemma solved, I guess.

Did I ever see a reason to suspect Anne? In hindsight, I guess I might have.

These last months have been ... strange. One weekend she came back from a business trip. At the airport I told her that I would be fine with her getting an in vitro pregnancy. Even with the seed of another man. She cried. So did I. I think we were never as close as we were in the months after that. We were hardly ever apart anymore. And we made love almost every night.

Then she started acting weird.

One night she fucked me like an animal. She was aggressive. She controlled me. And she rode my cock to tatters. Then she came like a volcano. I have never heard her scream like she did. She lost consciousness and slid off my fast shrinking penis.

I just went limp. I never came.

So was this reason to doubt her faithfulness? That she fucked me too hard? That she had an incredible orgasm with me? No, of course not.

I think it would have been unreasonable to expect me to have seen it coming.

They say that shocking events "open your eyes."

Seeing what I saw an hour ago surely qualifies as shocking. But I'd say they grow you a new set. New eyes that were especially made to see things differently. In the final analysis, however, I guess they are just as biased as the old ones.

The old eyes saw and judged Anne in a halo of unconditional love. The new ones see her in the stark and naked glare of betrayal.

Of course new eyes make you see different things. They help you remember moments from the past. Like how she hadn't been home one night. Or how she forgot to call me twice, while away. Another time someone at a party asked her how she had liked the newly-opened restaurant downtown. We had not yet visited it at the time. Of course, she might have gone there with a client or a colleague, but now my new eyes helped me remember that she had blushed.