Chapter 8: What Party?

It was starting to get dark and Marissa hadn’t come home yet; concerned I called her cell phone. After ringing and ringing, it went to voicemail, so I left her a message to call.

My nose kept wanting to bleed and so I went into the bedroom to lie down and the next thing that I knew, I was waking up to the sunshine streaming through the window. I looked over at Marissa’s side of the bed and saw that it hadn’t been slept in. “What the fuck?” I muttered.

I realized that I was still dressed and swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up. She must have gone to bed in the spare room to not wake me. Then I noticed I had blood on my shirt, so I started to unbutton it. Ginger looked up eagerly from the floor, probably anxious to get out to pee.

Still feeling groggy I shuffled into the bathroom to pee myself as I pulled off my shirt. Ginger padded in and looked at me expectantly. “Just a minute girl,” I said as I finished and flushed. “Let’s get you outside.”

Ginger eagerly followed me down the hall and as I passed the spare bedroom I looked in, expecting to see Marissa asleep, but the bed was empty and hadn’t been slept in. “Was she on the couch?“ I wondered. I plodded on. The house seemed empty. She wasn’t on the couch.

Opening the French doors to let Ginger out, I said loudly, “Marissa?” to an apparently empty house. Was she still at the neighbors? Ginger looked at me questioningly as she crouched over the lawn to pee. “I guess your mistress isn’t here,” I told her.

After the dog came back in, I found my phone and noticed right away that there were no messages before dialing my wife’s number. It immediately went to voicemail. “Shit!” I exclaimed; she’d obviously spent the night at Tony’s. “Well, fuck her,” I muttered, pissed. I wasn’t about to crawl over there to get her.

Noon came and no Marissa. But instead of getting angrier, I was starting to get worried. Finally, at two in the afternoon I swallowed my pride and drove back over to Tony’s.

He answered the door wearing an untied black terrycloth robe with nothing underneath. “Hey neighbor how’s it going?” Just like nothing was wrong.

“Is my wife here?” I said a little testily.

“Of course, she is. Come on in. We’ve been kicking around decorating ideas all morning. Come on in.” He stepped aside. “I decided to skip mass this morning. Hope my mother won’t be pissed.” He grinned.

I walked in and there was my wife, wearing a white fluffy robe that was several sizes too large. I couldn’t tell if she had on her swimsuit underneath or not.

“Hi honey.” She came up and put her arm around me. I could smell the alcohol on her breath and wondered if she was already drunk. “Tony and I have been looking up furnishings online. We were wondering when you’d come over. Do you want to see some of the things we found?”