Chapter 2

So that recouped some of my lost salary, but when Stacy finally got home that night and I told her about it, she gave me that same odd kind of knowing smirk as before and went into the bedroom.

Damn, had all that contempt been there all along and I was just now seeing it?

I tried to use the phone to call out for pizza, since neither of us was apparently interested in cooking. She was on the line when I picked up and she just banshee'd: "I'M ON THE FUCKING PHONE, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!"

Now how am I supposed to know when another person is already on the line? It's not like an office phone where you have multiple lines and the little lit indicators shows that a line is active.

I went out to the Subaru and drove down to Papa John's to get dinner, pondering the ups and downs of these past two days. I had to laugh about the crazy twists and turns of luck these past 24 hours. I was feeling relieved and pretty good and figured I was lucky, and so I thought it was time to challenge fate.

I parked down the row from Papa John's, walked into the next-door convenience store and bought a whole two weeks' worth of plays in the Humoga-Millions lottery. As play numbers, I used all the salaries that had been tossed around. In numeric order, I marked in 28 (for $28K: Gloria's original salary and my first new salary), 40 (my current new salary), 44 (Gloria's first new salary), 50 (Gloria's current new salary), 65 (my old salary), with the Humonga-ball number being 3 for the big whoop $3K savings that Cedric got after all the dust had settled.

The outside display card said that the lottery winnings were up to about $71 million and the biweekly drawing was tonight. I put the lottery ticket in my wallet and went into the carry-out. Ten minutes later I toted the pizza boxes to the car and headed home, with the smell of hot pepperoni making my mouth water.

That pizza was destined to get damned cold before anyone ate any of it that night.

When I waltzed in, calling out that I had dinner, Stacy was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of bourbon in front of her and the bottle right within reach.

Now neither of us was much of a drinker. Mostly a glass of wine or a beer now and then. The hard stuff was for guests when we entertained. Which was never, so I stopped stocking it some time ago.

That bottle of Jack Daniels I'd given away back in the office was something I had taken away from a secret boozer at the company. I caught him hitting it out back one day. He wound up getting fired anyway, and I had never gotten around to disposing of it until that going away chat with Olly and his buddy.

But there Stacy sat with a half-empty tumbler. She had been sipping at it; her face was splotchy red. I idly wondered where the booze had come from.

She ignored the pizza box and stared down into her glass of courage.

"Jeff, we have to talk."

And there it was!

I sat down across from her, wondering what the hell was going on. "We have to talk" in a marriage is the equivalent of "Incoming!" when you're in combat.

I assume she'd been trying to work up the courage for who knows how long to say what was on her mind. The ethanolic fortitude must have been just what she needed.

What she had to say was short and decidedly nonsweet.

"I'm filing for divorce," she said. "This is a no fault state and all I have to put down for grounds is that there are irreconcilable differences."

I was ... what? Absolutely blind-sided!? Gobsmacked!?

I sputtered and stumbled over my own words, looking wildly about, and finally staring at her. She was looking at me, but was not seeing me. I felt once more what I had sensed before — she was there, but not there. This had been one of those non-sex weeks, but it had been barely a week since she had been passionate. What had happened? Why was this happening?

I tried to get her to tell me what was going on ... what was wrong. What had I done to make her want to leave? I asked her couldn't we talk things out; get some counseling, and all that. I asked her what she wanted me to do.

"Just let it go, Jeff, we're done," was what she finally said.

I know I wasn't very coherent. But it didn't matter; Stacy had made up her mind and had already packed her bags.

"I'll be staying with a friend," she announced. "I'll come back for the rest of my stuff on the weekend. This is a community property state., You can have the house, but when the court does the property split, you'll have to sell it and split the equity, or keep it and pay me half of the equity. Either way I get my money, so I don't really care. There is nothing here for me.

Apparently that included me.

"Jeff, I'm filing for irreconcilable differences, but the real reason is irreconcilable boredom! If it weren't for the trips I got us, you'd sit on your dead ass all the time. All you want to do is talk and read and go for walks and fuck. I want some freedom, and night life, and a lot more fun in my life.

"It'll take just over six months for the final decree. I'll be filing next Monday."

She seemed to be pretty much up on divorce law, I thought. When your brain is frozen, you always seem to notice little irrelevancies.

After she left, I sat staring at the bottle, sorely tempted. But I put it away and called Gloria, who by then seemed to be my only real friend. I don't know what she was doing, but when I said I needed a friend, she said she'd be right over. And she was; her car pulled up in 25 minutes.

We sat down and ate reheated pizza and I told her what had happened. We were sitting on my couch by then, and as I got to Stacy's last words I lost it and teared up. Not very manly of me, but hell, I told you I could be girly-man-like. Then the uptight proper Miss Gloria Halop drew me into her arms and pulled my face down to her glorious bosom.

But I didn't even notice. I was too busy crying. Also not very manly, but what did I care? If Gloria took me for a wuss, so what?

My marriage maybe hadn't been all that great, lately, but I went into it full of love for Stacy. How could I not weep over what had happened to that? I still had residual feelings for my wife, even then. Old feelings don't shut off in a few seconds. They're more like a giant flywheel, spinning with a huge amount of rotational momentum. All those feelings were built up over the years. Eventually the wheel will slow down, and finally it will stop. But it takes time, unless someone applies brakes.

I told Gloria everything. Eventually I got to the sex, in that odd on-again off-again pattern, and how it had been pretty good, I thought. But with newfound hindsight I could now recognize it as fairly perfunctory. Any two healthy people could have had what we had, but there had been an ingredient missing. And as I pondered it, with my face between Gloria's large, soft, warm boobs, I recognized the missing ingredient. Love. From Stacy's side. No, along with the absence of love, was the absence of Stacy. She had been there in the flesh, but not in spirit. I had been a convenient fuck partner.

As I came back into the here and now, I realized how nice it felt to be where I was. Without thinking I started nuzzling through the fabric of her blouse and stiff bra. Gloria didn't do or say anything. I reached up and cupped my hand over the tip of the breast I wasn't nibbling on. I felt her sharp intake of breath. And still she did nothing.

Then I came to my senses and realized that this was Gloria!

I suddenly came up for air, and I'd bet my face was as red as Gloria's. Nothing more happened and nothing ever was said about it. We both sat back a little bit apart and continued to talk.

I began going over the past year or so of the marriage. Just talking it all out to my friend. There had been a subtly slow erosion of warmth and openness. Stacy had never been careful about money, but in the recent run-up to this bombshell, in hindsight, she had gone profligate. I'd looked up the recent credit card statements and they had a lot of added charges.

Gloria told me I'd be wise to do a number of things to protect myself, like canceling out our joint charge cards. I could do most of it over the internet, as long as I could pay them off. All I had to do was log in properly and I could move money around.

Once Stacy had started putting her paychecks in her own accounts, I had phased out our joint checking and savings accounts. Now both were in my name. I had to pay off as much as I could of the credit card balances, which flatlined the cash I had available in savings. I was left with one Visa Card that still had a balance, but it had some room on it and I was able to get her name off it. I would pay off the rest of her charges in a few months, and it left me one card that I could use.

I could do it all over the internet, although I had to take some phone calls to confirm some of the moves. They were all 24-hour operations. Taking the confirmation callbacks on the home phone number of record and answering the little security questions got everything done.

I called the 24-hour classified ad line of our big local daily newspaper. I dictated one of those ads about no longer being responsible for the debts of Stacy Markey Grundvig, nee, Stacy Lynn Markey and charged it to my one remaining Visa card. Then I got a 24-hour locksmith service to come change the door locks and I reprogrammed the garage door opener code. I left a message on Stacy's cell phone that she would have to get me to open up the house when she came by to get her stuff. She didn't call back or respond otherwise.

As we waited for the locksmith, Gloria and I continued to talk. I mentioned that bipolar sex thing: having sex on one week or so and then being cold-shouldered the next. Gloria thought that was strange and wondered if there was anything behind it.

"Jeff, you say she didn't say anything about another man in her life, but I'm suspicious. If there were problems, I'd think she'd want a separation. But she is going straight for divorce. It seems like her strategy's all mapped out and that makes me think there's another man involved. Call it my just being attuned to the devious female mind."

I had nothing to say to that. We sat up late, drinking wine. We came to no great conclusions, but I appreciated her company and her sympathy. It got late, and with the wine in her, eventually Gloria wound up crashing on my couch. After my gaffe, I was the complete gentleman.

She got up sometime in the middle of the night and let herself out to go home.

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So I began my third stint living alone. This time was the hardest. Back when I had never been married before, I had no idea what being married could be like. I wasn't together with Nicci long enough to really settle into married life. All I remember of it was great sex and betrayal.

Oh yeah. Betrayal. My mind went back to that fiasco of a marriage.

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The place I went to for my first real job was not exactly a warm, welcoming town. It was no Mayberry, RFD. It was closed, and insular, and not all that friendly to outsiders, and I was an outsider, not one of them.

After I'd been there five months, I met and fell in love with Nicole Stempler. Nicci was a beautiful woman, and I was just stocky old Jeff. It was almost like something out of a storybook. And in true storybook fashion, Nicci smiled upon my attempts to woo her. I set aside my feelings of unworthiness, courted her and won her hand in marriage, as the storybooks say.

Well, marry in haste; repent at leisure, as they also say. Damn it! Why are they always right?

Much too late to do me any good, I learned that my blushing bride had been something close to the town slut. Apparently damned near every man she met was taken with her, and she was taken by a lot of them. I was new, and an outsider and didn't know anyone there very well, or at least not anyone who could or would have tipped me off.

No one said anything to me about her reputation before our wedding day. Not the people I worked with and not any of my neighbors. We got married in a church full of people who had either known Nicole in the Biblical sense, or knew someone who had. There were some odd things said during the reception toasts but they sailed over my head.

I came home early one day after we'd been married less than a month and found Nicci entertaining two of her old boyfriends. Physically. Simultaneously. The police came and took me away for assaulting the two louts. I'm no Chuck Norris, but I can take care of myself in a fair fight. In that fight, I was outnumbered two to one, but the odds were weighted in my favor since my opponents had their pants and briefs down around their ankles when we started.

Luckily, the magistrate was a believer in old-style family values and justice and ruled it was justifiable something-or-other. Mayhem, maybe? I put those two guys in the hospital.

As I waited for my divorce to become final, THEN everyone came forward and told me all about Nicci's history. Well thanks, but the timing was a bit off!

You want to know what was funny? Nicci kept calling me, from the day I caught her and moved out until the day I dropped my old cell phone off a bridge on the way out of town. I never took her calls. If she called me from an unfamiliar caller ID number, I'd hang up as soon as I heard her voice.

She wrote me letters. I'd like to be able to tell you I tore them up unread, but that'd be a lie. I read one of them out of morbid curiosity. She wrote that she had married me because I turned her on AND was a guy with a future, unlike all of those ex-jocks and slackers that she had been messing around with.

Now get this: she wrote that once we were married, she began to realize that she was falling in love for the first time in her life. She had the gall to write that. But she also said that she had such a slutty hunger for sex that no matter how ardent I was, she would still want more. I guess it was like Chinese food or something. You know, how an hour later you're hungry again?

So she had continued screwing around behind my back before, during(!), and after our wedding day. She said that she had just been too stupid and immature to realize that she had to stop messing around, and had to do something about her hungers. The guys had kept calling her and she'd just gone along the way she had always done. It was just meaningless sex, she wrote.

Why do people say that: "meaningless sex"? It sure as hell was meaningful to me!

Well, as I said, I wasn't married to Nicci long enough to learn what being married is really like.

But I had had five fairly good years out of six with Stacy, and I enjoyed them. They taught me that I liked the companionship and everything that went with that. It was not just the sex, although the sex was an important part of it.

It was having someone there who cared for me. Not just screwing in bed but waking up comfortably entwined with a familiar warm presence. Companionship. Friendship. Knowing that someone loved me, no matter how shittily the rest of the world was behaving.

Even as shocked and angry as I was right now, I knew I could not be happy as a single, not for the rest of my life.

But it sure was beginning to look as if the only women I seemed to be able to attract were betrayers. Or that there was something wrong with me that drove woman into betrayal. Well, ok, that wasn't true for Nicci, she was simply a slut, but it sure looked like it for Stacy.

To make things worse, Stacy was still working at AGC in the travel office and I had to pussyfoot around, trying to avoid her. It was too soon to even pretend that I was getting over her or getting completely out of being in love with her. There was a lot of pain and a big void inside. Someone in a movie once used the term, "soul-sick." I kinda felt like that. The flywheel still had a lot of angular momentum and was still spinning.

I brooded. I had obviously been a big flop as a husband. In hindsight, I thought I could see dozens of ways that I could have done better. Been more attentive to her needs, been more open about my inner thoughts, things like that. Why did I take the most important person in my life for granted?

I was brooding on that one day when Gloria and I went to lunch one day, (yes, lunch! A first!), I happened to mention something to her about all that. Well, I guess I was wallowing in self pity and guilt, or trying to, and she shot me down big-time.

Gloria said that all that was bullshit!

"When did Stacy ever think of your needs, Jeff?" she said. "You struggled to pay the bills and she kept all her pay for herself. She had opportunities for you both to travel, but did she ever book places that you wanted to see? Not that I can recall.

"Anyone can look back and see things they wish they had done better. Hell, we're none of us perfect. But from everything I could see, or any one else who knows the two of you, you were a damned fine husband. Stacy was a drone as a wife, in addition to being six kinds of a fool and probably a cheating slut.

"And believe you me, Jeff, there are plenty of woman at AGC who think you are a pretty special guy."

I said, "What? Really? Who?"

"Never you mind," she said, with an odd look in her eye.

But her first comments turned my thinking around. Now I wasn't all that hot to defend Stacy's behavior so much, that's for sure. I was flattered that Gloria thought so highly of me. I decided to not to ask for more details about the legions of AGC women who might be interested in me. That seemed to be something that Gloria regretted telling me.

When I thanked her for her good opinion of me, Gloria blushed.

From our friendlier relationship and the conversations that came out of it, I'd learned that she was 30 and had never been married. Since college, she had been taking care of her mother, Bessie, who had a sharp mind confined in a slowly degenerating body. It was one of those conditions where the nerves that control the muscles were wearing out and could not be regenerated. Gloria never said whether there had ever been any men in her life; that part of her personal life was still off limits.

That bipolar thing, I'd mentioned: the on again off again sex with Stacy, seemed to fascinate Gloria, and she'd been pestering me for specifics. At first I admitted that my memory was not good about stuff like that, but Gloria asked about my planners.

My planners? It's funny the things that are right under your nose and you never think of them. I always kept a daily planner, a little book tucked in my shirt pocket. I started it to keep track of business appointments and deadlines and the like. But I soon found myself using it a little bit like a diary.

If something happened out of the ordinary, even if it was something personal, I'd make a little note. Like a packrat I'd hung on to all the filled up planners. I figured I could never know when I might have to reconstruct something for a long ago expense account or even the IRS.

We dug them out and went through them for the past year. By now Gloria was an almost daily visitor after work. I offered to stop by her place, but she said she preferred coming over to mine. That was OK with me. Anything to have her company. Like I said, she was my best friend.

We figured Stacy's little mystery out; or rather Gloria did, over the next few weeks. Since she was certain there was another man involved, it informed her search for clues. At first I was not on board with her theory, what with all of our past discussions of fidelity. But Gloria was pretty good at planting seeds of doubt.

I had begun to wonder about this friend that she had gone to live with. I could not name a single female friend that Stacy had ever spoken of. There had never been any socializing or girl's nights out. I wasn't about to go sleuthing and following her, but Gloria told me that no one among her friends at AGC could name a gal pal of Stacy's. So who was she living with? Surely, Stacy could not be with another man, could she?

Gloria solved the puzzle. Her resolution traced back about a year to a few months after Stacy had gone back to work booking travel for AGC. Picking apart the changed pattern; the bipolar thing, Gloria kept at it until she nailed it.

I'd described Stacy as a woman who liked sex, and our marriage had been very active in that department. Until around that time.

"About a year ago, Stacy got herself a lover," she said, "only he was not available for sex every week. Either he was married and had to spend some quality time with his family, or he traveled, which meant he was in Sales. When he was available, that would usually be for a whole week, and she'd tell you she was working late ... That was bullshit; she was spending the extra time in the sack with him at a convenient motel."

"When she'd been with him, she'd come home all satisfied and make excuses to cut you off. She didn't need sex with you; she was sated.

"But when he was away or unavailable, she'd condescend to sexing with you. You've been playing second fiddle, Jeff. You were her economic support; your income provided her a comfortable home. As soon as she thought that you'd lost your earning power, she went to Plan B: she dumped you and went to live full-time with the guy. So she's divorcing you.

"Once she'd made the decision for the break, the die was cast and you getting your job back was irrelevant."

I wasn't able to think up anything better as an explanation. Shit! She had been unfaithful for a year or more. Stacy had been a tolerater rather than a participating love- partner. All I'd been good for, to Stacy, was to fill the gap; nothing more. She'd been using me as a warm dildo when the better option wasn't available!

And after the way that she had talked about and vowed about fidelity!

Now that she was sure she was on to Stacy's game, Gloria went into full detective mode. She used her girls' network contacts to check out the Sales department schedules and figured out what salesmen were away on the string of nights when I had been getting lucky.

Once they knew what to look for, it wasn't hard to spot the guy. The one guy whose schedule matched was one of the top salesmen, Charley Cowell.

Gloria said she'd never seen the guy, but the story was that Charley was a real handsome hunky dude with a bit of a rep as a player among the ladies. The single girls he'd played with said he was quite the man between the sheets. And well-hung.

And according to her informants, he was a hell of a salesman; between his commissions and bonuses on top of his salary, he made twice what I'd been making before I got fired.

I was plotting under my breath about how to ambush Charley Cowell with a two-by four, but Gloria could read my mind. She told me to forget it.

"It would make your bruised ego feel better for a little while, but it wouldn't solve your problems, it would just add to them. Look, Stacy lied and lied and cheated on you. You want her back?"

I shook my head. The cheating was beyond decisive.

"Ok, so what else does it get you? Assault charges. Even if they take everything into consideration and you get probation or community service instead of jail time, you'll have a criminal record.

"And there's another thing. Now Jeff, I have to be honest here. I don't want to be bruising your ego any more than necessary, but even with a two-by-four, if Charley Cowell manages to avoid your first swing, you'd be in trouble. Charley's a seriously large man and a former college offensive lineman. I'd hate to have to have to come visiting you in the hospital, if you get my drift. I'm sorry if that makes you feel disrespected. I have great respect for you, Jeff, but I'm trying to talk reality here."

She was giving me a hug as she was disrespecting me, and it didn't hurt my ego as much as you'd think it would. I really liked the way she plastered herself against me. Naturally I put my arms around her. I thought, well there went my fantasies of kicking his ass in front of Stacy!

To further take the sting out of her words, she leaned forward and brushed her lips against mine in a sweet, tender, completely unexpected kiss. How could I be pissed off at her after that, even though I still felt that she wasn't giving me credit for being able to handle myself.

I thought; tell that to Nicci's bed buddies!

But reality was reality; in this I knew she was right.

The bottom line about Stacy was that for all of her strong convictions and bitter experiences, and vows about faithfulness; all it took to seduce my wife was a skillful seducer, a bigger cock, possibly some sexual techniques that it took a big cock to achieve, and a bigger income than me. I didn't figure that Stacy would have blown up our marriage just to be a kept woman. I suspected that Charley was dangling the old carrot of a marriage down the road.

In addition to whatever else he was dangling.

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I was trying to adjust, but not feeling very good about myself on almost every level. A failure as a husband, a two-time loser at marriage, and a proven also-ran in the sack department, it seemed like.

Gloria and I went out to lunch almost every day now, and my head was so far up my ass I never even noticed how differently we were getting along. Not at first. But things were improving, gradually. Every so often I would lose myself in my work and could spend a whole day without feeling down on myself.

Then, on this one day, we were in the small Production floor snack room and someone said something about Stacy and her new guy Charley Cowell, and it got to me. We were still married for Christ's sake and she was openly shacking up with the guy.

And I was under strict orders about even thinking about two-by-fours.

So on that day I froze up and shut down my first hot reactions. I quietly got up and went back to my desk and soldiered though the rest of the workday. But Gloria had seen my face when I heard that remark, and she watched me all that day. Then she simply would not let me go off to my home alone at quitting time. She invited me out to dinner and spent the evening trying to cheer me up.

"Jeff, you are a much better person than her," she said. What she is doing is giving her body to a guy she thinks will be a better meal ticket. What else is that but whoring?

"And you have it all over him, too. Charley Cowell may be a top salesman, but he does that on his aggressiveness and charm, things that he was born with. You were born with a quieter manner, but you are a decent charming highly intelligent man. And everything that you have, you have worked hard for. Charley breezes into an office and everybody immediately likes him and they are willing to do business with him. He has never shown any evidence of having an original thought, except maybe when it comes to seduction.

"You? Well, I've never seen anyone who was as good a problem-solver as you. And what about all those ideas you have about changing Tech Lit? Where do we stand on that now?"

Well she knew how to change the subject and get me going, that was for sure. I did have some ideas, and they were pretty novel for a conservative place like AGC. I knew from bitter experience that none of them would ever fly as long as Cedric was in charge, but I kept working on them — refining them.

They were damned good ideas, I thought. And talking about them to a sympathetic listener took my mind off the other stuff I kept thinking about, all the negative stuff about myself.

As I said before, I had been thinking about the possibilities of online publishing.

[Jeff's Note: The stuff that comes now is maybe kind of boring if all you're interested in is the personal stuff. Feel free to skip it unless you're really into publication detail. Ok, you have been warned.]

The way we did our documents at AGC was a traditional model. We had all of our printer-ready electronic files stored across town with a sheet-fed press printing service: Acme Printing. When we got down to a certain level of inventory of a document, I'd get a tickler email from the inventory database and would call Acme up and order a press run, usually around 250 to 500 copies.

It worked, but it was pricy. Small press runs were expensive per copy. So why didn't we order a more cost-effective run, like about 10,000 copies? In printing, the bigger the run, the lower the cost per copy.

Well, this is technical literature, and one thing constant about TechLit is that it changes — all the time. That's because the products and services that were documented in the TechLit were always being tinkered with. Customer feedback might identify a problem and that would get our engineers busy on a fix. Or a parts supplier might discontinue a part that we used and we would have to use an alternative. Or someone might just spot an error in our TechLit. The QA in Pubs was sometimes sloppy, and there was no way that Gloria and I combined could catch all the errors, although we did our best. Things like that happened fairly often.