Chapter 15

The kids came home from school to find a note on the kitchen table. Barb read it with a growing sense fear. It was even worse than she imagined.

“What’s the note say?” Robert asked.

“They’re going to be home late and want us to make some stew,” Barb answered.

“Stew?” Robert asked.

“Yeah,” Barb said.

“I don’t know how to make stew,” Robert said.

Holding up the note, Barb said, “She left a recipé.”

The two kids studied the recipé. It didn’t look all that difficult.

Barb said, “I think we know how to do this stuff.”

“Dredge the meat in flour – that means just to roll it around in some flour. I’ve done that. I know how to brown the meat in a skillet. The rest is just peeling potatoes and carrots and measuring out stuff,” Robert said. “I think we can do it.”

“Tbs is a tablespoon,” Barb asked, “right?”

“Yes.” Robert replied, “Do we have all the ingredients?”

“Let me check,” Barb said while turning to the refrigerator.

Across town, Max and Marylou were meeting with Guy in the bar where the robbery had taken place. The men were calmly drinking beers and Marylou was having a wine.

“How are you doing?” Max asked.

“Okay. I’m glad it’s over,” Guy answered. “The kids are having a rough time with it. Ellie wants to sue everyone and their dog. She sounds like a real lawyer.”

“Your daughter sounds like a piece of work,” Marylou said with a grin.

“She is,” Guy said.

Max asked, “How about the boys?”

“Sean is pissed at his mother. She’d had him convinced that I was cheating on her and she was little Miss Innocent. Bill is ashamed over the whole mess. He’s the youngest and is closest to his mother,” Guy said.

“That’s rough,” Marylou said.

Guy said, “He’s halfway convinced the cat is possessed by the devil.”

“You’re kidding,” Marylou said.

“He never takes his eyes off of it,” Guy said and chuckled. “I really like that cat.”

“I can tell,” Max said.

“So what’s up with you two?” Guy asked. “Why did you want to see me?”

Max answered, “We got the whole confrontation on video. With just a little editing, you and the kids will not be seen at all.”

He still couldn’t get over the entire scene. That bit about choosing the cat over his wife was going to be a big hit with the subscribers. The emails they were receiving were mostly of the form: ‘torch the bitch.’ They were going to love the idea that he was trading her in for a cat!

“That’s good. I don’t want the kids involved at all,” Guy said. “I didn’t plan on them being there.”

“I know you didn’t,” Marylou said.

The plan had been to spring it on her the next day while the kids were at school. He still tried to time it for when they were at school, but his wife had stayed out later than planned. It was bad luck that they all arrived together.

“No matter how much we edit the tape, you’ll hear their voices. I don’t think we can disguise them,” Max said.

“That’s okay,” Guy said after thinking about it for a minute. “Edit it, and let me see it before you put it on the website.”

“Of course,” Marylou said.

“All right,” Max said. “That brings up another little problem.”

“What?” Guy asked.

Marylou said, “We’ve got over six thousand subscribers, now. The videos of her calling her past lovers to tell them they have gonorrhea, were a big hit. We’ve got folks from Europe and even Australia signing up for it. More people are signing up for it every day.”

“What will we do now that there won’t be any more videos?” Guy asked.

Max said, “That’s the problem and why we wanted to meet with you.”

“Will we have to close the website down?” Guy asked.

“We’ve got two requests from guys who’ve just caught their wives cheating. One is in Seattle and the other is in Houston. They want to post their videos on our site.”

“Really?” Guy asked.

“Yes,” Marylou said. “The one from Houston sent us the video where he discovered his wife cheating. He came home early and there was a strange car in the driveway. He looked through the window of his bedroom and caught her. He started filming her with his cellphone.”

“What a cliché,” Guy said.

Max said, “It’s good video. You can even hear him tossing his cookies in the bushes.”

“It reaches right out and grabs you,” Marylou said.

“Poor bastard,” Guy said. He knew exactly how the man must be feeling.

Marylou said, “We asked the lawyer, and with just a little paper work, we can add that to the site.”

“I guess we should do it,” Guy said. “I guess it is going to transform into a cheating wives website.”

“That’s what we were thinking. It’s just that it’s a bit more work than we imagined,” Marylou said.

Max said, “It takes a lot of time to go through a couple hours of video to make sure that the appropriate faces are blacked out. Your wife’s sessions usually lasted more than an hour.”

“Don’t remind me,” Guy said.

“It is really going to be a lot of work. Particularly if we start posting more than one cheating wife at a time,” Max said.

“Don’t forget cheating husbands,” Marylou said.

“Husbands?” Guy asked.

“Wives aren’t the only ones who cheat,” Marylou said.

“She’s right, you know,” Max said.

Guy asked, “How many subscribers do we have?”

“Six thousand and still growing,” Marylou answered.

She had been worried about money when she first learned that Max was unemployed. Those fears had quickly been dismissed with the success of the website. Now she was looking at a tremendous increase in their standard of living. The first check had cleared all of their credit card debts, and more. She had plans on paying off the mortgage before the end of the year.

“We can afford to hire someone to run it,” Guy said. “There are enough unemployed folks around that it shouldn’t be too difficult to find someone to do it.”

“We probably need to pass it by your wife. She does own twenty percent of the website,” Max said earning a dirty look from his wife.

Marylou didn’t want anything to do with Maggie. She had watched Guy break down and cry while watching one of the videos of her cheating. That had hurt. For her, the discovery that the elderly neighbor across the street was one of his wife’s lovers had been ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back.’ She felt it was one thing to go out to a bar and pick up men; that made Maggie a tramp. To collect lovers from around the neighborhood was something different. Not only was a family destroyed, but so was a community. Guy didn’t even have neighbors to turn to for support.

“Remind her about the money. Six thousand subscribers is more than a hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue. Even after paying someone to maintain it, she’ll be getting over two hundred thousand a year. I seriously doubt she’ll turn it down,” Guy said.