I sat here looking at a book. It was a book of images that my wife had drawn. You see my wife doodled. She doodled on everything and everywhere. If she was leaning against a dirty car she doodled in the dust. If she was standing on a dirt road she doodled using her foot. She especially doodled while talking on the telephone. We kept a stock of pads of paper right in the phone alcove to keep her from doodling on the bare wood of the desk. When she finished talking and set the phone back in the cradle, she would take the sheet of paper, rip it in half and throw it in the basket under the desk. This way she would have a fresh sheet when she sat at the desk next time.

I don't think she was aware of what she drew, in fact I was almost sure of it. A lot of the images were little stick figures that she had refined over time. With a few strokes of her pen or pencil she could draw them to express her feelings--dejection, surprise, happiness, sorrow--you get the picture. Sometimes if there wasn't a way with just the stick figure to show what she was thinking, she would draw a little round head on the figure. She then would doodle the expression onto the face.

If a friend was telling her about somebody with a broken leg or arm, she would draw the leg or arm with a jagged break in it. Another habit was to always draw a funny clock face with the date and time up in the right corner. This was done as soon as she sat down. She had standard images for her father and mother. She had one for her best friend Mary and Mary's husband, Joe. She even had one for her boss, Tom.

If I called, I knew that she was sitting there drawing me. She had several of me and I could recognize myself by the similarities. If we were talking about going out to dinner, there was me with a steak or lobster or fish or pork. Her mind unconsciously was running through a menu of her choices that she might order.

If I called and we had a wee bit of phone sex or I was indicating that maybe we should have sex tonight, the little stick figure grew a little penis. She had a standard figure for herself. Lots of times these little figures would show interaction. If we planned to get it on tonight and I had called to set it up, her figures would be intertwined.

I asked her shortly after we first met how she got started doing this. She had been shown in first grade by her teacher how to draw stick figures and it just became a habit. So much so, that she wasn't even aware of doing it anymore. If you had asked her what she had drawn on the paper after she hung up the phone, she would not have remembered and couldn't tell you short of being hypnotized.

We met, fell in love and married. I was offered a job in sales right after graduating from college, selling advertisements for the local radio station. Jorja took a real estate course and became an agent for a national realty chain. We settled in to have a good life. Three years after marriage we purchased a house through her agency. The seller of the house really got screwed because the listing agent had low-balled the asking price and passed it on to us so we immediately snapped it up. That's business, I guess.

Our working hours were weird. I worked hard most mornings and Jorja hardly ever had a showing before eleven. I usually hung out making myself useful around the station, but was often home by three in the afternoon. Jorja's job had her working into the evenings taking prospective buyers to properties all over the city. Many days I had dinner alone because Jorja was out. Jorja ate when and where it was convenient as long as it didn't interfere with her job.

We shared the house chores. Jorja did all of the dishes, except those I used when I ate alone--I did those. She shined the house, dusting, making beds, etc. My chores consisted of the lawn mowing. keeping the garage and cars clean and picking up and taking out the trash. I collected the trash from the kitchen, the bedroom and bathroom and the basket by the telephone. Over time I realized that if I looked at the papers in that basket, I could tell who Jorja talked to that day. Usually I could even follow the conversation, as Jorja made what looked like a running cartoon of the whole conversation, doodling as she talked.

This made me feel more connected to my wife, whom I loved dearly. If her agency called and had her set up to show a house, she would draw a little stick house and put the address number in it. The street name was usually under it. This way I often knew just where she was in the evening. Looking to the future, I thought it would be fun to collect these little pieces of paper. I would tape the pieces together and keep them in a folder to present them to her on an anniversary or some important date.

Once in a while if Jorja had been on the phone a lot during the day I might have a little trouble finding the left and right pieces that matched--not often though. I never told Jorja about this little project of mine. Why should I? It was going to be a surprise someday. I was going to present this at our fifth-year anniversary, but I had only been compiling for a year. There wasn't much interesting in the doodles, so I decided on our tenth anniversary--or there were those birthdays every year.

It was well into the sixth year of our marriage, and I hadn't been paying any particular attention to the figures and cartoons. I just sorted them, taped them together and filed them in my folder. As I matched up two pieces one evening, there was a life-size penis drawn across the bottom of the page. What the hell? Why did Jorja draw that? I looked closely. It was mine. I could tell because I have a black mole on one side and it was detailed perfectly. I got out a ruler to see if she had the size right. Yep, six and one quarter inches--that's me all right.

I started at the top of the page looking to read her doodles for the day. Jorja had two property showings today. One was for three in the afternoon and one at seven-thirty tonight. That was where she was right at this moment. I guess she had been talking with her girlfriend, Mary, when the subject turned to sex. It showed Mary's figure intertwined with a male figure. The male figure was considerably larger than Mary's husband, Joe. This one was adorned with what appeared to be an outsized penis.

The next row of doodles showed me and Jorja in a together sexual position. After that she had drawn herself with a look of disbelief on her face. Next she drew herself again with a balloon over her head. In the balloon were two penises. One I took to be mine and beside it one half again as large. The big one must be the one from Mary's lover. I guess Jorja and Mary were comparing dicks and I was coming up short. "I thought to myself, I'm happy with what I have and I thought Jorja was too. I hope she's not overly impressed with what Mary is telling her."

I wondered when this all began so I flipped back through my file. Three days previously Mary and Jorja had talked and I figured out from the doodles that Mary was telling about a new man she was stepping out with. Jorja had drawn Joe's figure showing it crushed under Mary. Mary, the cheating bitch! I was going to watch my wife's little doodles pretty close from now on. I didn't want to see my figure crushed under Jorja.

As the days moved on I followed the saga of Mary's cheating ways. The bastard's name was Leroy and I knew the day that Jorja was told that he was black. She drew my penis and over that she drew this huge black dick. That wasn't the worst of it. She drew herself with an excited expression. Damn! Damn!

I debated giving Joe a 'heads up', but I didn't know him that well. Joe worked construction and was big. He towered over my five foot eleven by five or six inches. I was afraid if I went and told him, he might decide to kill the messenger. That would be me.

Weeks went by and Jorja was still interested. I have to say I was getting some benefits from Mary's affair as Jorja was excited by what Mary was telling her almost every day. When Jorja and I were in bed, she was a tiger. Then one day the doodles really threw me a curve. Jorja told Mary that she was pregnant. It was--it really was true, the information was right there in the doodles. I was the father, or so the doodles said. I believed them, how could I not?

Days went by and Jorja never told me that I was going to be a daddy. I was waiting. Why the holdup? Then things got really serious. I could tell that Mary was trying to convince Jorja to meet her lover. The bitch! Who did I label a bitch? Mary, or Jorja. Damn it, they both were. Bitches, both of them! The doodle of Jorja got pretty graphic and when it showed Jorja and Leroy entertwined, it was time for me to act. I was crushed, but I took the time to go back over the doodles again. A sigh of relief. It hadn't happened yet. It was being set up though, at a small motel not far from where we lived.

This was Monday and it was going down on Friday. I made plans. I drove out to Joe's job site and talked with him. I said that we should go out for a few beers Friday night. He thought that was a great idea, but he was baby-sitting his two kids that night. "Hey, why don't you get a baby-sitter and we'll just go have a couple? We won't be gone an hour, I promise."

Joe was reluctant, but he was sick of baby-sitting every Friday night and he agreed to my plan. He made me promise not to tell Jorja so she wouldn't tell Mary what we were going to do. Ha! Fat chance I'd do that under the circumstances.

Jorja, you stupid fool. Before the week was out she had doodled the motel, the room number, the time and to make it really easy for me, she even had doodled the phone number. I stared at doodles as the week progressed. Jorja seemed to be backing off some, but she certainly wanted to see that big black snake. Mary kept telling her it was nine and a half inches, but I didn't believe that. That would put Leroy into the freak category. There was even one doodle showing Jorja afraid with a big black snake chasing her.

Jorja was pretty nervous Friday morning when I kissed her as I left for work. I was giving her an opening when I said, "You know your biological clock is ticking. Maybe we should start thinking about having a baby."

"Sunday, we'll talk about it Sunday, okay? What brought that on, anyway?"

"Oh I don't know. Mary and Joe seem so happy with kids. I just thought maybe we should have some too." I didn't want an extended discussion so I quickly left for work.

I was curious what I would find for doodles when I got home that afternoon. There were several pages torn up in the basket. I emptied the basket and spread them out on the table. It looked like Mary and Jorja had talked most all morning. The little clock that appeared on every sheet was there to follow them as the morning progressed. Jorja declared she was backing out of the evening's plans. This was at nine-o-five. By eleven-twenty, Mary had convinced Jorja to return to the original plan of joining her at the motel.

Mary was in for it! If Joe didn't take care of her, I'd find some way to do it.

When I picked Joe up, he promised the neighbor that was sitting his kids that he would be back in an hour, or maybe two at the most. I drove to the motel where I could see Jorja's car parked in front of room number six. I pulled in beside her vehicle and shut the engine off. Joe looked at me, "What's up, Sam? I thought we were out for a beer? How come we are here?"

"Joe, I hate to tell you this, but we've got a pair of cheating wives. That's Jorja's car right there and I have information that she and Mary are in room six right now with the bastard that is doing them. I want to bust my wife. I found out about it just Monday and set this up with you to catch them. Are you okay with that?"

"Let's go get the cheating bitches. I'll kill the bastard that's in there with my wife."

"No, no--no killing. They are not worth it. Here is what I plan to do. I'm going to call the room and say this is the front desk and that the motel is on fire. You pound on the door. One of them is bound to open the door. We'll push right in and see what we find." That's what we did.