Chapter 21: Pillow Talk

Dexter opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Janet snuggled against him and rested a hand on his chest.

“Good morning,” Dexter said.

“Good morning.”

“It’s been a long time since I woke up with you snuggled up against me.”

“Remember when we used to spend all day on Sundays doing this.”

“That’s one of my favorite memories of our marriage.”

“Mine too.”

“What happened?”

“We had children. They won’t let you stay in bed all day.”

“That’s right. I guess it has been eighteen years since we spent all day in bed together.”

“It’s hard to imagine that much time has passed.”

“I don’t want to bring up a touchy subject, but we’ve been divorced for almost two years and separated for three.”

“We’ve never talked about that day except for the text message that I sent you,” Janet said quietly.

“I know. Do you want to tell me about it from your side?”

“Do you really want to know what happened that day?”

“Yes.”

“I’d had really had a bad morning that day. Nothing had gone right. I was mad at everyone and really needed to vent my anger. There wasn’t anyone I could get angry at. You know, you can’t yell at your boss and quit. You can’t yell at any of your coworkers or you’ll get fired. So who was left? The only name on the short list was you.”

“I guess I should feel honored, but I don’t,” Dexter said.

“You didn’t even know I was mad at you, did you?”

“I had no clue.”

“I sent out that text message figuring that I’d get a call from you within two minutes. I waited and nothing happened. Then I figured that maybe you were in a meeting and couldn’t call, so I waited some more. Thirty minutes and nothing. I really started getting worried.

“I waited an hour. There was still no call from you. I wondered if you had gotten the message. I tried calling you, but there was no answer. I tried calling a couple of times and then my calls went straight to voice mail. I knew then that you had turned off your phone.

“Needless to say, I wasn’t getting any work done. My boss came over and started giving me a hard time. I told him that I had a bad case of PMS and that he should give me some space before I bit his fucking head off. He backed away so fast it was incredible. I should have used that threat earlier.

“I went home expecting to find you there. You weren’t there. I looked around the house. You can’t imagine how I felt when I discovered that your stuff wasn’t there. I was shocked. I went to the bathroom and threw up.

“I knew you were gone. That wasn’t what I had wanted. I couldn’t understand how you could leave me like that. I couldn’t understand why you left without telling me.

“I spent the evening in bed crying. Every time a door opened or closed I hoped that it was you, but it was one of the kids. I grabbed the cell phone every time it rang thinking you were calling me. My boss only called me once that evening. His secretary only called me once. I was a basket case.

“That was my day. It was actually better than the month that followed it. I didn’t know that anyone could cry like that.”

“Sorry.”

“So tell me about your day.”

Dexter was quiet for a moment wondering how to explain what he had felt.

“You’ve seen the video of me getting fired.”

“Yes, I have.”

“Well, I knew the minute I walked into that meeting that it was the last day I would be working there. It had been coming ever since the day that Mark died while talking to me on the phone.”

“I didn’t know he was talking to you when he died.”

“Yes. I heard the crash. I didn’t know what the weird noise was at the time. It wasn’t until I got called in to Mr. Morris’s office that I learned Mark was dead. That’s when I was temporarily offered Mark’s position. I turned it down.”

“I didn’t know that,” Janet said.

“Mr. Morris was not happy that I turned the temporary position down. In fact, he took it as a personal insult. If I had known that, I would have been much more insulting. I knew, at that moment, when I walked out of that office, that I was going to be fired ... and soon.

“I spent the next two months downloading every confidential memo that I could find on the company server, knowing that there was some major dirt buried there. I gotta tell you, I found it by the truckload. Every one above me had been lying to me. They were making promises they had no intention of keeping.

“It was criminal. I really couldn’t believe that so many people had absolutely no morals. I was at a point where I didn’t trust anyone.

“Anyway, I was fired at that video-recorded meeting, and escorted out of the building, without even a chance to stop by my office for my personal items. I can’t really tell you what I was feeling the moment I stepped outside of that building. I was worried about what was going to happen next. I was ecstatic that I had actually stood up to those lying bastards.

“I was thinking about starting a small computer repair company just to be doing something until I was able to arrange for something a little more substantial. I knew I was going to sue the company for everything under the sun. They had screwed the wrong guy and I was vowing vengeance.

“Eric called me and told me he was leaving the company. He had thought things were looking up with the kind of changes I had been making in my department. He was going to replicate them within the other departments. My firing killed those plans. He was fortunate that he had been offered another position.

“I had just basically hung up after talking to him and gotten into my car when I got your text message. You were the only name on my short list of people who I still trusted. Reading that text message, I felt like someone had grabbed me by the scrotum and twisted my nuts clean off!

“One moment I was making plans on how we could get through things and the next moment I had nothing. I looked around and didn’t see any friends on my side. You had abandoned me. The kids weren’t talking to me even when I tried to engage them in conversation. All of a sudden, I didn’t even have a place to live. I kept wondering what the fuck I was going to do.

“Well, I went my lawyers office and told him to file for divorce. You wanted it, you got it. I did all of the financial shit. I took half of the money and closed out all of the credit cards. Hell, I was unemployed and was sure that I couldn’t even depend upon you for a place to live.

“I stopped by the house, grabbed my stuff, and drove off to a cheap motel. Then I went to dinner. I don’t remember the evening that well. I was kind of numb.”

Janet said, “Let me guess, you had a steak dinner.”

“Yes.”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever met whose ‘comfort food’ is a Porterhouse Steak.”

“What can I say?” Dexter said.

Janet asked, “Why did you assume that I was having an affair?”

“I had no idea that you were mad at me. Since I didn’t know that, then what was the only probable explanation for why you wanted a divorce? An affair. No other explanation came to mind.”

“I guess it’s a reasonable assumption,” Janet said.

“I think so, too.”

Janet said, “You know, I never thought about how hopeless things must have seemed to you when you discovered that I wanted a divorce right after you had been fired. In the space of thirty minutes, you lost your job, your family, and your home. No wonder you were pissed at me. In my defense, I didn’t know you had been fired.”

Dexter said, “A lot of anger and pain was because you chose to text me. I felt like you didn’t respect me enough to tell to my face that you were leaving me. I was hurt. Deeply. I didn’t feel like I deserved that kind of disrespect.

“There was a lot of anger there, but it was mostly pain. Every time I had to deal with you, that pain just exploded in my chest. I wanted to retreat into a cave and lick my wounds, but that wasn’t possible. I spent some time out in the woods alone, but that only allowed me to heal enough to deal with other people. There was no way I was ready to talk to you or even about you. I wanted to erase you from my life.