Chapter 20

George and Abby tried to talk me through the disappointment and hurt that followed their betrayal. It didn’t work, so the topic was changed to what was now and what came next. “I don’t care where you go, but you need to go somewhere, because neither of you are sleeping here ... anymore...” I said it so softly that they both flinched as if I’d hit them. To Abby I added, “Come back tomorrow while I’m at the studio and take your things. We can talk in a few days and work out the details of our divorce.” I gave her no hope and no support.

Fortunately they had the grace to pack a bag and go.

When I was finally alone, I realized that it happened again. I was the guy Abby needed to get her over her hurt so that she could leave me and go on to the guy that she’d be with forever. It was obvious that one of my responsibilities on behalf of the universe was to be the bridge that women walked over on their way to the rest of their lives.

I understood, but it still hurt.

When someone moves as fast as I did with Abby, it should come as no surprise when it doesn’t end well. I was a schmuck. That is all there was to it. I knew I was a schmuck, but knowing it didn’t mitigate the hurt. I spent the night brooding and left for the studio very early to get away from myself. George and Abby, wisely worked from wherever they went, presumably George’s condo.

For almost a week I worked like a demon to keep from getting depressed by the whole thing. On the seventh day the front gate announced that Colleen Bell was at the studio and wishing to see me. ‘Might as well hear all the demands that Abby wants to make against me,’ I thought as I waited for Colleen to arrive at my office suite. Somewhere deep inside my wounded ego, I felt a bit buoyed knowing that she would soon be in my office.

I felt a quiver of life in my heart when Colleen swept in like a cyclone, all heels and hose, hair and briefcase. She was dressed for power and stormed in like she wanted to win best out of three falls, instead of cooperating in the opening act in a divorce settlement.

“Mark, you must have had the most unusual marriage in history,” is how she began. “Abby refuses to listen to a single word I say on this subject. She claims that everything – and I MEAN EVERYTHING – that went wrong leading to divorce is her fault and her fault alone.

“I’ve never had a client walk in and demand that I give their spouse whatever they want in a divorce settlement, but that’s what’s happening here. Abby will agree to anything you say ... anything at all.” Colleen was magnificent when she was passionate about anything, and this was no exception. Her face glowed with a blunt vitality that belied her advancing years.

After years of having Colleen as my bedmate and several of them as husband and wife, I couldn’t imagine the heartache I would cause that family if I introduced myself as her former husband. That last few times I tried, I was rejected. It hurt too much to let myself go through it again. Rather than open up all those old wounds, I smiled calmly and waited to see what she would suggest as an opening move.

“Mark, I think you are sitting there waiting for me to start a negotiation. It isn’t going to happen. My client, YOU’RE wife, has given me instructions in the bluntest possible terms. I am to, and I quote, ‘give you whatever you want, and make sure that you know how deeply sorry she is that your marriage didn’t work out.’”

“If that isn’t enough, Abby insists that I tell you that she never wanted to hurt you, is tragically sorry to have fallen for your partner, and that she hopes you will find it in your heart to forgive her, someday.” Colleen looked disgusted as she relayed Abby’s wishes to me.

I was stunned silent for few minutes. That gave me time to absorb several facts. The first one hurt more than watching her take off her clothes and proceed to have sex with George. Abby admitted to Colleen that she was in love with George, which meant that she had moved on from me long before that night. Abby really didn’t care for me like I cared for her.

It wasn’t just sex, though I was very turned on by her small, sensitive breasts and large, sensitive bottom. Sex was a part of my feeling for Abby, but her outrageous happiness and never ending positive personality won me over long before her body. For a time I truly loved Abby in the way a man should experience at least once in his life. Unfortunately her feelings never matched mine. I spent all that time fooling myself. Abby NEEDED me and as I gave her the things she needed most, she lavished me with affection, instead of love. I don’t know how other men feel on the day that they realize the love they poured into their marriage was all one-sided, but I felt like a complete idiot.

Colleen sat patiently while I worked through her revelations. When it was apparent that I was back with her, instead of beating myself up, she discreetly coughed to get my attention, and then asked the sixty-four thousand dollar question. “So, we are at the place, Mark. It’s the place where people have to admit, or at least accept that their marriage is over and it’s time to move on and let go. Abby insists on giving you anything and everything you want, so let’s get down to business and see what we can come up with.”

Colleen’s eyes held mine for a long time while I considered what to say and how to say it. If I wasn’t careful I was going to end up making a fool of myself trying to kiss her. It would not be a good move since in this body I was twenty-two years old and if I worked it out correctly, she was fifty-three. Thirty-two years was simply too much and we’d end up in a bad place at the end. I’d been in a bad place before, sent there by Colleen and Millie. It wasn’t a nice place to live.

“Here is what I think...” Colleen grabbed her pen and prepared to write volumes. “When I discovered Abby, homeless and brutalized by her husband, and then by life, she was a shell of the person you know. To give her choices and control of her life, I gave her debit cards totaling about two-hundred fifty thousand, or so. Then I opened joint accounts for her. There is somewhere around three million dollars in those accounts.