Flyover Country Ch. 01

"So ... I gather "three months" is how long y'all have been fucking, is that right?" I asked.

Faye nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"Is that right? Three goddamn months?" I was getting a little more irritated. "ANSWER ME, DAMN IT!" I roared when she hesitated.

"Yes dammit, JUST three months, Matt!" She paused. "So ... what about it, honey? Can we put things right and move on? Want me to call Brianna right now, baby?" she asked, almost pleading.

"Good God, no!" I shot back derisively. "I wouldn't touch that skanky bitch's cunt with somebody else's dick ... and not your cunt either, not now. God only knows what filth and diseases are swimmin' around in you after you've been fuckin' Asswipe and Mrs. Asswipe all this time!"

Faye shrank away from my accusations, against the sofa cushion. She was taken aback—fundamentally shocked.

I cut her off before she could recover. "WHY? WHY DID YOU FUCK AROUND BEHIND MY BACK, DAMN IT FAYE!"

She didn't answer immediately, still shocked.

"WHY?" I shouted again, leaning forward in my chair. Faye's eyes grew round and huge.

"WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO FUCK THOSE TWO GODDAMNED LOSERS WHEN YOU KNEW I WOULD HATE IT?" I yelled.

She swallowed hard, clutching the seat cushion with both hands.

"WHY?"

Faye shook her head like a boxer trying to shake off a storm of punches to the head.

"ANSWER ME, GODDAMN IT! WHY?" I bellowed.

"BECAUSE I WANTED TO!" she screamed. "WHY DON'T YOU GROW UP MATT!"

"I WANTED TO GET OUTSIDE THIS DAMN BOX WE'RE IN ... AND IT WAS A HELL OF A LOT OF FUN DOING IT TOO, DAMN YOU," she added.

"I DID IT BECAUSE I COULD AND BECAUSE I WANTED TO!" She took a deep breath and glared at me. "This is MY body," she continued, making a sweeping hand gesture down her torso. "I ... JUST ME ... DAMN YOU! I'm the only one who ... gets to say who does what to my body and nobody else!"

I studied her a moment, just looking at her. "Faye ... I don't understand. Where the heck did you get this crap, huh? You're so much smarter than this ... who's been feeding this nonsense to you?"

She couldn't, or wouldn't answer.

I shrugged. If she didn't want to participate, I could keep going.

"Yeah, I agree," I told her quietly. "You absolutely have the right to say who does what to you," I told her, more calmly than before. "But when we got married, you exercised that right, didn't you? Didn't you agree only I got to have sex with you." I paused to let that sink in. Judging by her expression, she didn't appreciate what I'd said. Rather, she resented me bringing it up.

"...But I have rights too, Faye," I remarked. "For instance, I have the right to say whether I'm going to tolerate what you're doing with someone else with your body, and I ... ahhhh ... I'll be exercising that right when I make a decision whether or not to stay married to you." I paused again, wondering if she had anything to say. She didn't.

"Just so you'll know," I told her, offhandedly, "right now, right at this moment ... I'm thinking we're not going to be married very much longer. From my point of view, you've pretty much killed the whole marriage and there's no point even trying to put it back together."

She was shocked. Her face was frozen and her eyes showed complete astonishment. Apparently, she hadn't even considered I would divorce her for just having "a lot of fun."

That was very strange to me. As I'd told her, she was a lot smarter than the way she was acting. I didn't understand where she was coming from, not at all.

She apparently didn't have a quick comeback line so I jumped right back into the conversation.

"So ... that's all there is to it?" I asked calmly. "No sense of responsibility, no respect for me as your husband—your partner in this marriage? You didn't even consider the idea that husbands and wives shouldn't deceive each other ... and they shouldn't fuck around behind each other's back, did you? None of that? Nothing at all?"

She shook her head. The tears finally started flowing. The trouble is, I think they were tears of frustration, not remorse.

"Just, 'if I want to, I get to do it' ... is that right?" I continued.

"In your mind, you can have sex with anyone outside our marriage, no matter what I think or what anyone else thinks either? Just 'I wanted to do it' ... and 'I did it because it was fun?', THAT'S what you're telling me?" She didn't answer.

"WOW!" I exclaimed with false enthusiasm. "That really sums it all up in one slimy, pus-filled little package, doesn't it?"

"FUCK YOU!" my soon-to-be ex screamed. She'd had enough. She did not like being cornered at the best of times and she especially didn't like having to explain herself. Faye scrambled off the couch and ran for the stairs.

Clearly, in her mind, none of this was her fault. I was just being immature and selfish. I was being mean and ruining all her fun...

What I was, was mad.

"REMEMBER, FAYE!" I roared at her rapidly disappearing back. "YOU WANTED TO DO IT ... AND YOU DID IT 'CAUSE IT WAS FUN! YOU REMEMBER THAT, FAYE!"

* * *

I got up from my La-Z-Boy and walked from the living room into the den, slash, home office where my laptop lay open and booted up in the middle of my desk. I had answers to my questions, I guess. There was no particular remorse; maybe there was a little regret, but not a hell of a lot. Supposedly, Faye was sorry for neglecting to "bring me in" on the debauchery from the get-go, but I wasn't even sure of that, really.

The regret may have been—probably was—confined to the fact they'd been discovered. Faye had been deceiving me for at least three months, and I hadn't had any notion about what was going on behind the scenes. My wife could be lying about the time frame—and I didn't have a clue whether the Asswipes were the first to share my wife. I figured the chances were Faye was still lying.

She wanted me to just roll over and let bygones be bygones. Actually, they all wanted the rancor on my part to just go away. Brianna was willing, apparently, to take one for the team, and do threesomes with my wife and me to "make up" for the time I'd lost. Meanwhile, her husband was going to graciously deprive himself of my wife's cunt. Brianna, meanwhile, was going to help me catch up on the fun and games, and then everything would be just wonderful.

What they didn't want was for there to be any repercussions to come back to bite them in the ass. They didn't want anything exposed to the harsh glare of public view. They knew—whether they'd discussed it or not—they knew, deep down, that their relatives and the vast majority of the people they were friends with, associated with, or worked with, would not approve of what they were doing. No, sirrreeee! They didn't want anyone knowing about all this, but because they didn't want it known, I did.

I hadn't been totally forthcoming with Faye. I hadn't mentioned something else I saw on those websites where folks try to console and advise betrayed spouses. The stats I'd quoted were there. But what they also advised was to expose the affair—expose it far and wide—and make sure everyone knew what the cheating spouse had been doing. It was the first step to recovering the marriage, they said.

I didn't know about fixing my marriage, but I could DO exposure! I already had most of what I needed. I'd already reviewed the fairly short clip taken from the drone, and knew the scenes I wanted to include in a short .avi file. The segment where Faye looked around at the drone, probably wondering what the hell was going on. Her face in that part of the video was clearly slick from Brianna's juices—yeah, that would go right at the end of the video and I'd freeze it.

* * *

It wasn't even 2:30, yet. There was plenty of time. I put in a call to Mr. Rutherford, the owner of the real estate agency where she worked.

"Thank you for calling Rutherford Real Estate, how may I help you?" old man Rutherford himself said when the connection was made. I recognized his voice. Apparently he'd given his secretary the afternoon off.

"Mr. Rutherford!" I said in a serious voice. "This is Matt Singletary, Faye's husband?"

"Yes, Matt," he answered immediately. There was considerable warmth in his voice. His agency had a banner month in sales of new homes just before Labor Day last year. To celebrate, he'd thrown a big picnic out on a patch of land he owned out in the hill country west of town and everyone connected with the agency, and their spouses and children, had attended. Rutherford and I had spent quite a while just chatting about anything that came into his mind.

"Sir...," I continued slowly; I didn't know exactly how to introduce this. "Mr. Rutherford ... do you, by chance, have an email address where I can send you something urgent ... like, right now? I need to send you a short video clip ... ahhhhhh ... on a matter I think requires your immediate attention," I said, kind of formally.

"Sure, son," he replied, "...and call me Martin, okay?"

In seconds I had his personal email address. I addressed a message to him and attached the "highlight reel" I'd just created of the afternoon tryst between my wife, Taylor Hennings, and his wife.

I waited for good ol' Martin to retrieve the email and absorb the contents.

"My God in Heaven," he finally breathed. "My God ... I'm sorry, Matt," he said gently. "I had no idea..."

"Neither did I, Martin," I replied stoically. "But what I wanted to draw to your attention, sir, is that this was going on just after noontime today—see the date-time stamp there in the lower right-hand corner? This was actually going on before that, of course. I have no idea what time this little orgy started—only when it ended—which was right after that last little bit of action you see there.

"The point is, sir, one of your managers, and his wife, are having sex with a subordinate—my wife—and it's on-the-clock. They're doing crap like this on your dime."

He was quiet for a long moment. I'm quite sure he suspected this situation was a textbook example of a lawsuit waiting to happen, and I was betting I'd have standing to file it. What the adulterous trio had done, surely caused "great pain and suffering" in my life. Isn't that how a ton of lawsuits start out?

Because it was on company time, when both were supposed to be working, Mr. Rutherford's nice little operation could be sued for every nickel he had. But I hadn't even mentioned doing that.

"I'm open to suggestions...," he said cautiously.

"Oh, I don't have any suggestions to make, sir," I replied. "It's your business you're running there and I'm just bringing some ... irregularities ... to your attention. What you do with this information is totally up to you."

"I see...," he said hesitantly, and perhaps a little disbelievingly.

"Absolutely, Mr. Rutherford. I'll be divorcing my wife, of course, so these people of yours have killed a marriage, but what you do with them as your employees is totally up to you.

"Okay? Well, sir, I need to get off the line and ... well, I need to do some needful things, as Grandma used to say. Goodbye, sir, and thanks for all your kindness," I told him.

"I ... well ... goodbye to you also, Matt. I'm really, really sorry this has happened."

"Not your fault, Mr. Rutherford. Some folks just don't have any particular sense of integrity... Goodbye, sir."

I touched the disconnect icon and went on to the next item on my list.

* * *

I set up a text messaging group consisting of all of Faye's family—all her brothers and sisters, as well as her mother and father—all her friends, those whose cell numbers I knew, and all the neighbors who'd shared their phone numbers with us. I attached the same video clip I'd sent Mr. Rutherford to a group message and sent it on its way.

Then I waited. "Exposure" of these three happy little fuckers was about to happen in a big way, and their happy little, crystal-perfect world—where people had sex with each other without any consequences—that world was about to come crashing down.

* * *

Faye came down the stairs slowly, holding on to the railing at the bottom for a long moment while she gathered herself. I guessed she wanted to try again to reason with me and get me to come over to her side.

"Honey...," she began, "you're making too big a deal about this, baby. Look, we're all adults; a little sex isn't going to make any difference to our marriage. I love you, you know that, right? I would never do anything to deliberately hurt you, honey. I just got things backwards . I know it was you I should have been talking to right from the beginning. I'm sorry baby ... really sorry ... and I want to make it up to you in every way I can, okay?"

I sat back down in my La-Z-Boy and waited. I didn't bother listening very closely to what she was saying. Nothing she could say would make any difference now. The phone on the kitchen wall rang loudly. Irritated, Faye glanced in that direction, but didn't move that way.

"I think you should get that," I told her without any heat in my voice. "I think it's for you."

Stepping to her left, to just inside the kitchen doorway, Faye reached to take the receiver off the hook and put the instrument up to her ear. "Oh, hi, Dad. Listen, I can't really talk to you right now. Can I call you—"

I'd really thought Mr. Rutherford would be the first to call, but her father was apparently quicker on the draw. I could hear him all the way over here.

"WHAT THE SAM HILL ARE YOU DOING, FAYE ANN?" he shouted. "WHAT'S THIS FILM OF YOU LETTING SOME LOW-LIFE BASTARD STICK HIS GODDAMNED PENIS IN YOU ... OUT IN PUBLIC!!? It wasn't a film, of course, but Faye's father grew up in another era entirely.

Faye jerked around and stared at me with a expression of horror on her face. I wasn't sure she even breathed for several seconds. It looked to me like Faye's little universe was already beginning to implode.

"Remember what you said, Faye?" I asked, just loudly enough for her to hear me. "You did what you did because you could ... and because it was fun, right?" I reminded her.

She looked at me numbly. She was listening to her father rip her up one side and down the other, but I don't think she understood a word he said.

"Well, baby," I continued, "I did this just like you said. I did it because I could, and I have to tell ya, it was damned good fun!" That last part was just me being mean, but I wasn't in a charitable mood.

The phone issued to her by Mr. Rutherford's agency began playing the Star Wars theme and started dancing across the coffee table where she'd left it. I picked it up, tapped the accept icon and walked over to hand it to her.

"Here ... this is for you," I told her. She mechanically took it in her right hand while her dad was still yelling at her from the house phone she held in her left.

Old Man Rutherford was totally pissed also. Faye didn't have the phone on speaker but I could hear her boss plainly and as easily as I'd been able to hear her father. In some pretty scathing words, but no profanity—he never used four-letter words—Rutherford informed my dear soon-to-be ex wife her employment was terminated as of that moment, and so was Mr. Asswipe's.

He also said if Faye wanted to pick up her last check and her personal belongings, she needed to get a move on. She needed to be at the office in half an hour or she'd find the doors locked and she would never be allowed inside in the future. He'd send everything to her, parcel post.

I turned and went out the front door to back my twelve-year-old Land Rover up to the front porch. I was going to be loading a lot of my stuff into it shortly, and I wanted to make the carry as short as possible. I didn't care about the deep ruts the big tires were going to cut in the grass between the driveway and the porch. I didn't live here anymore and the lawn was someone else's concern now, not mine.

* * *

A couple of minutes later, Faye came racing out of the front door screaming, "YOU BASTARD!" at the top of her lungs. She repeated herself several times before she got into her car, started the engine, and sped away.

I sniffed derisively. Actually, my parents had been married for three years before I was born—I definitely was not a bastard—but I really didn't care about her opinions, anymore.

My phone beeped once, and then several more times in quick succession. Because I'd sent the video to a lot of people in that group message, their replies and comments were going to all the other members of that group, including me. A quick look at some of the texts showed Faye was being royally lambasted by her big brother and all of her sisters, as well as her other relatives, friends and neighbors.

I loaded up all my clothing, my guns, and some other personal items; they made a pitifully small pile that fit easily inside the Land Rover. On my last trip through the house to see if I'd missed anything, I put on a bellyband holster, checked the .45 caliber Glock model 38 I normally carried concealed, and tucked it under my shirt. The house was hostile territory now. I'd go armed from here on out.

When I was finished, I made a quick call to my Mom and Dad and gave them a short version of the afternoon's drama. I asked if I could come stay with them for a while.

Their only question was to ask if I'd be there in time for supper or whether they should keep something warm in the oven. It was nice to know there was someone left in the world I could depend on.

CHAPTER THREE

Looking back to that day, and the following week, to a lesser extent. I have to admit even I was amazed at the speed things had gone from zero to DEFCON 5 in nothing flat. "Cocked Pistol" indeed! (That's what the Armed Forces call operations under DEFCON 5 conditions)

With Faye's lack of remorse, consideration of whether to work on the marriage hadn't even been a speed bump on the road to going full nuclear. Heck, it wasn't even a painted line on that road. I never bothered debating with myself about what I needed to do.

The ability to analyze problems on the fly and find solutions quickly was one of my most valuable talents in the firm where I worked. Where others wanted to study an issue to death, hold meetings, and deliberate FOREVER on possible outcomes of any proposed action, I made decisions and implemented them. The vast majority of the time, what I decided to do, worked. Sometimes, what I did wasn't the absolute optimal solution when viewed in hindsight, but whatever I decided was always better than dithering around for a lengthy period. It invariably saved the company time and money that would have been wasted trying to find the best possible solution.

Faye's attitude was that I was making a mountain out of a molehill. She felt she was entitled to make arbitrary decisions about the marriage without the slightest regard for my opinions or the effect on our marriage. That was pure crap.

I didn't even pause to figure out the best thing to do. I just did what my instincts told me was right for me. Right, wrong or indifferent, I did what I did.

I've heard it said there is a fine line between love and hate. Maybe so. I remember I was more than a little surprised when I realized the love I had for Faye was a dying ember by the time our little discussion was complete. What little residual affection there was, faded quickly in the days following.

I could remember loving her, but it was like an echo traveling round the mountains. At first, it's strong and vibrant but, as it reflects around stony ridges, it fades until it's a whisper and then, even the whisper dies.

I focused on a solution I thought most appropriate—getting divorced. Part of what I had in mind was getting out from under the enormous debt of the big house we'd bought (and Faye's expensive car too) so we could get on with our separate lives. My biggest goal was to come out of this with both our credit ratings as intact as possible.