19-04-2019, 10:40 PM
A CHEATED HUSBAND
PART 6
I went to a Holiday Inn nearby and took a room for three nights. That would get me to the weekend, then I could figure something else out. My adrenaline and rage had drained away, leaving me exhausted, empty and sad. It was still only 8:30pm. I called Steve at home. "Hey Steve, it's Tom. Calling you sooner than expected—I think I really do need to talk to someone tonight."
"Sure, Tom, of course. Shall I come to your place, or do you want to come here?"
"Actually, Steve, I'm at the Holiday Inn on 12th, in Room 417. Any chance you could come up and bring a few beers? I'm afraid it's a long and sad story."
"I'll be there in 20 minutes."
I had a couple more beers with Steve as I told him the whole story, from our anniversary night to the thong panties to my tape of Marianne and Eddie in the motel. When I was finished he just looked at me in sad surprise. "Jesus, Tom! Of all the wives we know, Marianne is just about the last one I could have imagined..." Embarrassed, he didn't finish the sentence. Instead, he continued, "What can Andrea and I do to help? Do you want to stay with us? What are you planning?"
"Thank you, Steve. I don't really know yet—I've got this room til the weekend, then maybe I'll find an apartment. As for plans, I've only got two at the moment: not to see or speak to Marianne, and somehow not to fall apart completely. Maybe you and Andrea could have dinner with me in the hotel restaurant tomorrow, just so I have some company?"
"No, Tom, you're coming to our place tomorrow. I insist."
I thanked Steve, and after he left I put out the light and was quickly asleep. It felt like the end of a very important chapter in my life, but perhaps fortunately I was just too tired to lie awake reflecting on it.
********
I woke at 7am out of a horrible dream, thrashing and sweating. It had been beautiful at first. Marianne and I were at home in our bed, making slow love to one another. We kissed deeply, then smiled lovingly at one another as I stroked into her from above, in the missionary position. After a while there was another man in the room, off in the corner, watching us. I couldn't see him clearly—he was just a dark shape. Then he approached the bed. I still didn't recognize him.
Then the picture swung at a crazy angle, like a camera panning in a movie. Now the view was down from the ceiling. The man, who must have been Eddie, had taken my place! I was standing in my bedroom, watching Eddie and Marianne fucking on the bed. Somehow I couldn't move, couldn't make them stop. They knew I was standing there, but they didn't care. Marianne glanced once at me without expression, then turned back to her lover. She was groaning and crying out, saying "Eddie! Oh, yes, baby, you're the best! Never stop fucking me! make me forget all about my husband!" It went on and on, until she came with a scream I'd never heard her make in all our married years. That's when I woke up.
I thought a quick shower might help, but it took longer than expected, because I broke down and found myself leaning against the wall, sobbing. Eventually I calmed down, and dried myself. "Today is the first day of the rest of your life," I thought grimly to myself as I dressed. "Some life I've got now."
After a quick hotel breakfast I went into work, and asked the company's receptionist, Alice, to come into my office for a moment. She was a quiet but cheerful woman in her fifties, and we had always had a cordial relationship.
"Alice, I'd like to ask a favor, if you don't mind. Marianne and I are having some problems, and I really don't want to see her or talk to her right now. If and when she calls, would you please keep a record of it for me but tell her I'm out of the office, or in a meeting? She can leave a message in my voicemail but I do NOT want to speak to her. Likewise, if she comes to the office, please make sure she's told that I'm not available."
Alice looked at me and nodded, a bit sadly. "Tom, I'm so sorry. Of course I'll take care of that. At the end of each day you can check with me to see whether she's called. Please let me know if I can help in any other way." I thanked her, and she turned to leave, but stopped at the door.
"Tom? I'm so sorry for what you're going through—but I can't help but hope that you and Marianne can work through this. I don't think I know another man who has been as happily married as you have been until now."
To my surprise I found that I could work. Somehow having confronted Marianne with the proof of her cheating had moved me to the next stage in dealing with this. It didn't weigh me down quite so much. I had absolutely no idea what would happen, but for some reason I was able to focus on the practical problems of my job.
At the end of the day I stopped by Alice's desk. She smiled and told me that Marianne had called four times. I returned to my office to check my voicemail, and found two messages from her.
"Tom, honey, it's Marianne." I could hear the tears in her voice. "Oh sweetheart, I am so sorry, so very sorry! I would give anything for this not to have happened!" Terrific, I thought angrily—all you had to do was not fuck that asshole!
"Please call me and give me a chance to talk to you. I know you're hurting, I can't even imagine how angry you are with me. Please give me the chance to help you understand, and to make it up to you!"
The second message was shorter. "Sweetheart, it's me again. Please call. I'm just dying, thinking of how upset you must be."
I deleted the messages, and drove to Steve and Andrea's for dinner. They were waiting with lasagna, a salad, some wine, and a lot of warm sympathy and friendship. Steve had filled his wife in on at least the basics of my story, and she was nearly in tears when she told me how sorry she was.
"Tom, I want you to know that the whole thing is a mystery to me. I've known Marianne for years, and she just adores you! I know you must be unbelievably upset, but please don't forget what a great marriage you have had until now."
"Thank you, Andrea," I said with a sigh. "I know in my brain that what you say is true. But I feel like something's been torn out of me—I'm empty, and kind of dead inside right now. Steve probably told you how she lied twice to my face when I asked her about this, and only admitted it when I played her the tape of her and her boyfriend actually fucking. She somehow found a way to raise the level of her betrayal even higher."
Andrea nodded, and said nothing for a minute. Then she asked, "Tom, how would you feel about my talking to Marianne? I wouldn't be speaking for you, of course—just reaching out to her at a tough time. She's our friend too."
"Yes, of course," I replied. "I'm sure she'll be glad to have a friend to talk to. Maybe she'll want to give you the true version of the whole nasty story—she certainly didn't want to tell it to me."
Over the next week or so, not much changed. I went to work—where I ignored all of Marianne's phone messages—went back to the hotel and went to bed. On the weekend I found a small furnished apartment near the office that would do for a couple of months, until I was ready to make more long-term plans. I went back to the house twice during the day—driving by first to make sure Marianne's car was not there—and picked up some clothes, my toiletries and my computer.
One night after midnight I decided to retrieve the recorder from Marianne's car, just to see whether she was still in touch with Eddie. There seemed no point in leaving the recorder in place, so I just removed it from the trunk and drove back to the hotel. The device had recorded 8-10 calls over several days, all of them about Marianne's work except for one, recorded mid-morning on the day after I walked out.
"Eddie? Hi, it's Marianne ... Yes, I know I don't usually call you, but I needed to this time. ... Listen, let me just speak, baby, OK? Tom has found about us, and I can't see you any more. ... Yes, somehow he recorded me talking in the car, and even us at the motel on Tuesday. ... Yes, it was pretty X-rated. He's walked out on me, and wouldn't even talk to me on the phone at work this morning. ... Yes ... Listen, Eddie, stop and listen to me! You've known since the beginning what the ground rules were for me. My marriage to Tom comes first. I tried everything I could to keep him from finding out, but I blew it. Now I have no idea what will happen, but all I care about is making this up to my husband. ... Yes, Eddie, of course it was great for me too. ... I'll never forget it either. ... Eddie, stop. Don't make our last conversation an argument. We knew it would come to an end. No hard feelings, OK? ... Yes. ... Uh-huh, me too. And I wish you the best. ... Yes, thanks. I'm going to try. ... OK, take care. Bye."
I was calmer now than when I'd heard her earlier conversations with him, and more able to think things through. On the one hand, it was clear that Marianne still wanted to stay married to me. She wasn't leaving me for Eddie. In fact, in all her conversations with him she had reminded him that her first priority was the marriage, and her extreme care in hiding her adultery from me seemed to prove that.
On the other hand, her obvious closeness and affection for Eddie tore me apart. A wild one-night stand, or even a two-week affair, would have been far easier to take than having to think about them fucking over and over for months—for who knew how long?
I realized that I still had no idea what I was going to do. I didn't know what I wanted—besides to wake up and find that Marianne's cheating was just one long nightmare. It had been two weeks since I found her thong with Eddie's cum in it, and five days since I'd confronted her with proof of her affair. I hadn't talked to her since then, though she'd called the office more than twenty times.
I guessed I'd just have to take it a day at a time. When I was ready to move forward, in any direction, I would know. Until then, I'd try just to keep busy and do a good job at work. Anything was better than spending hours staring at the walls, thinking of Marianne.
The following Tuesday I was working on some spreadsheets in my office when Marianne burst in, followed by Alice. Alice said, "Sorry, Tom, I told her you were unavailable but she just ran past me!" I said, "It's OK, Alice—I'll handle it. Thank you."
io©
At a few minutes past eight I knocked on the door. A nice touch, I thought—sends a clear message to Marianne that I don't live here anymore. She immediately opened the door, giving me a shy smile. She still looked pale, but had done her makeup very carefully. My wife was a beautiful woman—in any other context it would have taken my breath away just to look at her.
"Please come in, honey. Would you like a beer?"
I accepted one, and she led me into the living room, guiding me to one end of the sofa. She took the other end, tucking her legs underneath her and facing me. She was obviously incredibly nervous. All the poise I was so accustomed to seeing in Marianne, all the calm she had maintained when she lied to me about her affair, was gone now.
We just sat silently for a few moments, not really looking at each other. Then I decided to speak first.
"OK, Marianne, this is your show. I agreed to give you a chance to talk to me, and I will listen as calmly as I can. I'm not sure whether I'll have anything to say—I'll just play it by ear. Beyond listening to you, I can't promise anything."
"All right, sweetie," she said, almost in a whisper. She looked terrified, and my feelings for her swung back and forth between deep anger and equally deep sympathy. I had loved this woman for nearly all of my adult life. I had never been closer to any other human being, nor trusted one so completely. What did I feel for her now?
"Now that you're here, I'm almost afraid to begin," she said. "I've thought so many times about how to explain—I mean, try to explain, what I did. Finally I realized that I just plain fucked up. There's no way to tell it that will make it any less awful, any less selfish, any less unfair to you. So I'm just going to go ahead and tell it, however it comes out. I know you'll never forgive me—if you ever do—until I've done that."
"But before that, Tom, comes the most important thing. Everything I did—cheating with Eddie, lying to you—was totally my fault. You have been the best, most wonderful and loving husband any woman could have. I love you completely. I have never been unhappy in our marriage, or unsatisfied with our sex life together. You are a caring and exciting lover, and I love making love with you. None of this, none of what I did, had anything to do with dissatisfaction with you. Please believe me!"
I didn't say anything in reply, just nodded. But I liked what she had said.
"OK then." She seemed to be gathering her courage. "I have never—NEVER—done anything with any other man before Eddie. I was completely faithful to you until then, and I wanted to make sure you knew that. I met Eddie last August. He..."
I angrily interrupted. "You've been fucking that jerk for nearly a YEAR?!"
"No, Tom, no! Please listen! No, I haven't—just give me a chance to tell it, OK?"
"Sorry," I said. "I'll try not to interrupt again. Go ahead."
"I met Eddie in the hospital last August. You remember when my mother had surgery, and I pretty much lived in the waiting room for three days until she was out of danger? Well Eddie's brother was dying the same week, of lung cancer. He and I just began talking—two worried, sad people in the same waiting room. We spent a couple of hours together each day. The third afternoon, the nurse came to tell Eddie that his brother had died. He began to cry, and I was there to comfort him. I just held him in my arms for a while. His parents are dead, so this was his only close relative left, and ... I guess you get the picture."
I only nodded, and she went on. "That's all there was then, Tom—just two strangers, and a bit of comfort. I never thought I'd even see Eddie again, and I hardly thought about him after that. Until November."
She stopped and looked at me, perhaps afraid of another outburst. I silently did the math: November to July is still nine months of fucking my wife! But I said nothing, and let her continue.
"It was when you were on that four-day business trip in Phoenix. On the Friday night I had plans to go out with Susan and Whitney (two of Marianne's unmarried friends from her office), and they dragged me to a disco they liked. It was loud, and packed full of people, and lots of fun. You know Susan and Whitney—they love to flirt, and the three of us got lots of male attention. We had some drinks, danced with a lot of guys, and enjoyed ourselves."
"Around 11 we were sitting at our table when Eddie walked in with some friends of his. He spotted me, and brought his group over. I was genuinely glad to see him! I had felt so bad for him when his brother died; now he looked a lot more cheerful. We all made introductions, and they sat and drank with us, and we did lots of dancing. Since you were away I wasn't worried about the time, and it got kind of hot and I got kind of drunk, and ..."
She broke off. "Oh, Tom, I HATE this! It must seem so tawdry and dishonest and just plain STUPID, listening to me! But I swore to myself I would tell you every bit of the story that you want to hear. I will never lie to you again, and I will never fudge the story a little so I don't look quite so bad."
"All of us had done some fast dancing and some slow dancing, switching partners a lot. Two of Eddie's friends were making real progress with Susan and Whitney, and I guess Eddie was focusing more and more on me. I wasn't aware of that in particular, but when I think about it he managed to get me for several slow dances, and he was holding me very close. I felt his erection, but it just seemed kind of flattering, rather than any sort of dangerous situation."
"I realize you've never even seen Eddie. He's younger than we are—29. It's not that he's all that great-looking. He's shorter than you, medium height, medium build. Not bad, but he's not buff or anything, and wouldn't stand out in a crowd. Just a nice, ordinary guy."
I just listened, waiting for Marianne to get to the part that I knew was coming.
"We all got really hot from dancing. There was an open side door to the alley, and I told the group I was going out there for a minute to cool off. Eddie said he'd come along too. Standing outside in the dark, we were just laughing and joking, enjoying the cooler air; and then all of a sudden Eddie took me in his arms and kissed me."
She stopped. Clearly what she had to say next was difficult for her, and she glanced fearfully at me. "It's all right, Marianne. Go ahead—I have some idea what's coming next, and I've got to know. You might as well give me the whole story, with the nasty details."
PART 6
I went to a Holiday Inn nearby and took a room for three nights. That would get me to the weekend, then I could figure something else out. My adrenaline and rage had drained away, leaving me exhausted, empty and sad. It was still only 8:30pm. I called Steve at home. "Hey Steve, it's Tom. Calling you sooner than expected—I think I really do need to talk to someone tonight."
"Sure, Tom, of course. Shall I come to your place, or do you want to come here?"
"Actually, Steve, I'm at the Holiday Inn on 12th, in Room 417. Any chance you could come up and bring a few beers? I'm afraid it's a long and sad story."
"I'll be there in 20 minutes."
I had a couple more beers with Steve as I told him the whole story, from our anniversary night to the thong panties to my tape of Marianne and Eddie in the motel. When I was finished he just looked at me in sad surprise. "Jesus, Tom! Of all the wives we know, Marianne is just about the last one I could have imagined..." Embarrassed, he didn't finish the sentence. Instead, he continued, "What can Andrea and I do to help? Do you want to stay with us? What are you planning?"
"Thank you, Steve. I don't really know yet—I've got this room til the weekend, then maybe I'll find an apartment. As for plans, I've only got two at the moment: not to see or speak to Marianne, and somehow not to fall apart completely. Maybe you and Andrea could have dinner with me in the hotel restaurant tomorrow, just so I have some company?"
"No, Tom, you're coming to our place tomorrow. I insist."
I thanked Steve, and after he left I put out the light and was quickly asleep. It felt like the end of a very important chapter in my life, but perhaps fortunately I was just too tired to lie awake reflecting on it.
********
I woke at 7am out of a horrible dream, thrashing and sweating. It had been beautiful at first. Marianne and I were at home in our bed, making slow love to one another. We kissed deeply, then smiled lovingly at one another as I stroked into her from above, in the missionary position. After a while there was another man in the room, off in the corner, watching us. I couldn't see him clearly—he was just a dark shape. Then he approached the bed. I still didn't recognize him.
Then the picture swung at a crazy angle, like a camera panning in a movie. Now the view was down from the ceiling. The man, who must have been Eddie, had taken my place! I was standing in my bedroom, watching Eddie and Marianne fucking on the bed. Somehow I couldn't move, couldn't make them stop. They knew I was standing there, but they didn't care. Marianne glanced once at me without expression, then turned back to her lover. She was groaning and crying out, saying "Eddie! Oh, yes, baby, you're the best! Never stop fucking me! make me forget all about my husband!" It went on and on, until she came with a scream I'd never heard her make in all our married years. That's when I woke up.
I thought a quick shower might help, but it took longer than expected, because I broke down and found myself leaning against the wall, sobbing. Eventually I calmed down, and dried myself. "Today is the first day of the rest of your life," I thought grimly to myself as I dressed. "Some life I've got now."
After a quick hotel breakfast I went into work, and asked the company's receptionist, Alice, to come into my office for a moment. She was a quiet but cheerful woman in her fifties, and we had always had a cordial relationship.
"Alice, I'd like to ask a favor, if you don't mind. Marianne and I are having some problems, and I really don't want to see her or talk to her right now. If and when she calls, would you please keep a record of it for me but tell her I'm out of the office, or in a meeting? She can leave a message in my voicemail but I do NOT want to speak to her. Likewise, if she comes to the office, please make sure she's told that I'm not available."
Alice looked at me and nodded, a bit sadly. "Tom, I'm so sorry. Of course I'll take care of that. At the end of each day you can check with me to see whether she's called. Please let me know if I can help in any other way." I thanked her, and she turned to leave, but stopped at the door.
"Tom? I'm so sorry for what you're going through—but I can't help but hope that you and Marianne can work through this. I don't think I know another man who has been as happily married as you have been until now."
To my surprise I found that I could work. Somehow having confronted Marianne with the proof of her cheating had moved me to the next stage in dealing with this. It didn't weigh me down quite so much. I had absolutely no idea what would happen, but for some reason I was able to focus on the practical problems of my job.
At the end of the day I stopped by Alice's desk. She smiled and told me that Marianne had called four times. I returned to my office to check my voicemail, and found two messages from her.
"Tom, honey, it's Marianne." I could hear the tears in her voice. "Oh sweetheart, I am so sorry, so very sorry! I would give anything for this not to have happened!" Terrific, I thought angrily—all you had to do was not fuck that asshole!
"Please call me and give me a chance to talk to you. I know you're hurting, I can't even imagine how angry you are with me. Please give me the chance to help you understand, and to make it up to you!"
The second message was shorter. "Sweetheart, it's me again. Please call. I'm just dying, thinking of how upset you must be."
I deleted the messages, and drove to Steve and Andrea's for dinner. They were waiting with lasagna, a salad, some wine, and a lot of warm sympathy and friendship. Steve had filled his wife in on at least the basics of my story, and she was nearly in tears when she told me how sorry she was.
"Tom, I want you to know that the whole thing is a mystery to me. I've known Marianne for years, and she just adores you! I know you must be unbelievably upset, but please don't forget what a great marriage you have had until now."
"Thank you, Andrea," I said with a sigh. "I know in my brain that what you say is true. But I feel like something's been torn out of me—I'm empty, and kind of dead inside right now. Steve probably told you how she lied twice to my face when I asked her about this, and only admitted it when I played her the tape of her and her boyfriend actually fucking. She somehow found a way to raise the level of her betrayal even higher."
Andrea nodded, and said nothing for a minute. Then she asked, "Tom, how would you feel about my talking to Marianne? I wouldn't be speaking for you, of course—just reaching out to her at a tough time. She's our friend too."
"Yes, of course," I replied. "I'm sure she'll be glad to have a friend to talk to. Maybe she'll want to give you the true version of the whole nasty story—she certainly didn't want to tell it to me."
Over the next week or so, not much changed. I went to work—where I ignored all of Marianne's phone messages—went back to the hotel and went to bed. On the weekend I found a small furnished apartment near the office that would do for a couple of months, until I was ready to make more long-term plans. I went back to the house twice during the day—driving by first to make sure Marianne's car was not there—and picked up some clothes, my toiletries and my computer.
One night after midnight I decided to retrieve the recorder from Marianne's car, just to see whether she was still in touch with Eddie. There seemed no point in leaving the recorder in place, so I just removed it from the trunk and drove back to the hotel. The device had recorded 8-10 calls over several days, all of them about Marianne's work except for one, recorded mid-morning on the day after I walked out.
"Eddie? Hi, it's Marianne ... Yes, I know I don't usually call you, but I needed to this time. ... Listen, let me just speak, baby, OK? Tom has found about us, and I can't see you any more. ... Yes, somehow he recorded me talking in the car, and even us at the motel on Tuesday. ... Yes, it was pretty X-rated. He's walked out on me, and wouldn't even talk to me on the phone at work this morning. ... Yes ... Listen, Eddie, stop and listen to me! You've known since the beginning what the ground rules were for me. My marriage to Tom comes first. I tried everything I could to keep him from finding out, but I blew it. Now I have no idea what will happen, but all I care about is making this up to my husband. ... Yes, Eddie, of course it was great for me too. ... I'll never forget it either. ... Eddie, stop. Don't make our last conversation an argument. We knew it would come to an end. No hard feelings, OK? ... Yes. ... Uh-huh, me too. And I wish you the best. ... Yes, thanks. I'm going to try. ... OK, take care. Bye."
I was calmer now than when I'd heard her earlier conversations with him, and more able to think things through. On the one hand, it was clear that Marianne still wanted to stay married to me. She wasn't leaving me for Eddie. In fact, in all her conversations with him she had reminded him that her first priority was the marriage, and her extreme care in hiding her adultery from me seemed to prove that.
On the other hand, her obvious closeness and affection for Eddie tore me apart. A wild one-night stand, or even a two-week affair, would have been far easier to take than having to think about them fucking over and over for months—for who knew how long?
I realized that I still had no idea what I was going to do. I didn't know what I wanted—besides to wake up and find that Marianne's cheating was just one long nightmare. It had been two weeks since I found her thong with Eddie's cum in it, and five days since I'd confronted her with proof of her affair. I hadn't talked to her since then, though she'd called the office more than twenty times.
I guessed I'd just have to take it a day at a time. When I was ready to move forward, in any direction, I would know. Until then, I'd try just to keep busy and do a good job at work. Anything was better than spending hours staring at the walls, thinking of Marianne.
The following Tuesday I was working on some spreadsheets in my office when Marianne burst in, followed by Alice. Alice said, "Sorry, Tom, I told her you were unavailable but she just ran past me!" I said, "It's OK, Alice—I'll handle it. Thank you."
io©
At a few minutes past eight I knocked on the door. A nice touch, I thought—sends a clear message to Marianne that I don't live here anymore. She immediately opened the door, giving me a shy smile. She still looked pale, but had done her makeup very carefully. My wife was a beautiful woman—in any other context it would have taken my breath away just to look at her.
"Please come in, honey. Would you like a beer?"
I accepted one, and she led me into the living room, guiding me to one end of the sofa. She took the other end, tucking her legs underneath her and facing me. She was obviously incredibly nervous. All the poise I was so accustomed to seeing in Marianne, all the calm she had maintained when she lied to me about her affair, was gone now.
We just sat silently for a few moments, not really looking at each other. Then I decided to speak first.
"OK, Marianne, this is your show. I agreed to give you a chance to talk to me, and I will listen as calmly as I can. I'm not sure whether I'll have anything to say—I'll just play it by ear. Beyond listening to you, I can't promise anything."
"All right, sweetie," she said, almost in a whisper. She looked terrified, and my feelings for her swung back and forth between deep anger and equally deep sympathy. I had loved this woman for nearly all of my adult life. I had never been closer to any other human being, nor trusted one so completely. What did I feel for her now?
"Now that you're here, I'm almost afraid to begin," she said. "I've thought so many times about how to explain—I mean, try to explain, what I did. Finally I realized that I just plain fucked up. There's no way to tell it that will make it any less awful, any less selfish, any less unfair to you. So I'm just going to go ahead and tell it, however it comes out. I know you'll never forgive me—if you ever do—until I've done that."
"But before that, Tom, comes the most important thing. Everything I did—cheating with Eddie, lying to you—was totally my fault. You have been the best, most wonderful and loving husband any woman could have. I love you completely. I have never been unhappy in our marriage, or unsatisfied with our sex life together. You are a caring and exciting lover, and I love making love with you. None of this, none of what I did, had anything to do with dissatisfaction with you. Please believe me!"
I didn't say anything in reply, just nodded. But I liked what she had said.
"OK then." She seemed to be gathering her courage. "I have never—NEVER—done anything with any other man before Eddie. I was completely faithful to you until then, and I wanted to make sure you knew that. I met Eddie last August. He..."
I angrily interrupted. "You've been fucking that jerk for nearly a YEAR?!"
"No, Tom, no! Please listen! No, I haven't—just give me a chance to tell it, OK?"
"Sorry," I said. "I'll try not to interrupt again. Go ahead."
"I met Eddie in the hospital last August. You remember when my mother had surgery, and I pretty much lived in the waiting room for three days until she was out of danger? Well Eddie's brother was dying the same week, of lung cancer. He and I just began talking—two worried, sad people in the same waiting room. We spent a couple of hours together each day. The third afternoon, the nurse came to tell Eddie that his brother had died. He began to cry, and I was there to comfort him. I just held him in my arms for a while. His parents are dead, so this was his only close relative left, and ... I guess you get the picture."
I only nodded, and she went on. "That's all there was then, Tom—just two strangers, and a bit of comfort. I never thought I'd even see Eddie again, and I hardly thought about him after that. Until November."
She stopped and looked at me, perhaps afraid of another outburst. I silently did the math: November to July is still nine months of fucking my wife! But I said nothing, and let her continue.
"It was when you were on that four-day business trip in Phoenix. On the Friday night I had plans to go out with Susan and Whitney (two of Marianne's unmarried friends from her office), and they dragged me to a disco they liked. It was loud, and packed full of people, and lots of fun. You know Susan and Whitney—they love to flirt, and the three of us got lots of male attention. We had some drinks, danced with a lot of guys, and enjoyed ourselves."
"Around 11 we were sitting at our table when Eddie walked in with some friends of his. He spotted me, and brought his group over. I was genuinely glad to see him! I had felt so bad for him when his brother died; now he looked a lot more cheerful. We all made introductions, and they sat and drank with us, and we did lots of dancing. Since you were away I wasn't worried about the time, and it got kind of hot and I got kind of drunk, and ..."
She broke off. "Oh, Tom, I HATE this! It must seem so tawdry and dishonest and just plain STUPID, listening to me! But I swore to myself I would tell you every bit of the story that you want to hear. I will never lie to you again, and I will never fudge the story a little so I don't look quite so bad."
"All of us had done some fast dancing and some slow dancing, switching partners a lot. Two of Eddie's friends were making real progress with Susan and Whitney, and I guess Eddie was focusing more and more on me. I wasn't aware of that in particular, but when I think about it he managed to get me for several slow dances, and he was holding me very close. I felt his erection, but it just seemed kind of flattering, rather than any sort of dangerous situation."
"I realize you've never even seen Eddie. He's younger than we are—29. It's not that he's all that great-looking. He's shorter than you, medium height, medium build. Not bad, but he's not buff or anything, and wouldn't stand out in a crowd. Just a nice, ordinary guy."
I just listened, waiting for Marianne to get to the part that I knew was coming.
"We all got really hot from dancing. There was an open side door to the alley, and I told the group I was going out there for a minute to cool off. Eddie said he'd come along too. Standing outside in the dark, we were just laughing and joking, enjoying the cooler air; and then all of a sudden Eddie took me in his arms and kissed me."
She stopped. Clearly what she had to say next was difficult for her, and she glanced fearfully at me. "It's all right, Marianne. Go ahead—I have some idea what's coming next, and I've got to know. You might as well give me the whole story, with the nasty details."
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