Out of Focus Pt. 01

"I will have this registered at the DeKalb County courthouse this very afternoon," declared the lawyer, as if it were simply business as usual. I guess, for him, it really was.

I would only find out years later, during the divorce, that the pre-nup was entirely one-sided. It turned out that provisions concerning penalties in any divorce proceedings that might be related to infidelity really only applied to me!

Any infidelity incidents that might be associated with Francine were basically covered in the pre-nup as if it were a 'Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free' card. I was basically screwed!

And it turned out that Francine's infidelity had not only started before we had formally sent out the wedding invitations, as I found out many years later in conversations with acquaintances--she had actually mentioned her escapades at my expense to some of her friends. She had even allegedly let herself get caught up in a frenzy of suck-and-fuck antics at her bachelorette party, along with some of her friends from school. Her mother did not attend that party, and I heard only later that her sister, Alicia, had reluctantly attended, but had left early when things had only started to get out of hand with some of Francine's friends.

My own bachelor party had consisted of my brother and best man, Carl, taking me out for drinks and fun, along with a couple of my few male friends. We had hit a couple of the strip clubs for which Atlanta is infamous--to the extent that, at one point, the NBA had had to establish an "Atlanta Rule" for the visiting teams, along with expectations of the players' maintaining some semblance of above-board actions NOT overtly involving the strip clubs in Atlanta when the they came to town.

We had stayed relatively tame, though. Carl had bought a lap dance for me from one stripper, but she was about fifteen years older than I was, and there were no untoward or lascivious activities later, like a one-on-one visit to the VIP room or anything like that--like I said, relatively tame. None of us had even got stinking drunk, although we were definitely feeling good by the end of the evening--if a little tired.

Rehearsals, rehearsal dinner, wedding, and reception were all top-of-the-line. My dad, a pilot for Delta, could afford a reasonably good rehearsal dinner, and did so--at a nice restaurant in Decatur. The Thompsons threw a gala event for the reception following the wedding at Druid Hills Country Club.

It was at that reception that I noticed that Steadman Carstairs was back in town for the event. I had heard around town and in the offices that he had had to break things off with Francine well before she and I had become an item. He had gone north to get his MBA at Harvard and would be studying in Cambridge for almost the next year or so. Evidently, he had already met and was pretty involved with a Wellesley girl.

Francine, while making the appropriate rounds with me, and welcoming everyone, nevertheless appeared to be paying special attention to Steadman Carstairs. I thought, at the time, that it was simply sentiment left over from their former relationship. Many years later, I would discover that I should have paid closer attention to Francine's 'special' attentions to Carstairs and those 'special' attentions that he paid to her.

Our honeymoon, paid for by J. Carter Thompson, found us having an enjoyable week in Grand Cayman. Intimacy between Francine and me seemed to deepen, and I began to believe that, despite the gynecological imperatives of the timing of our nuptials, we were actually developing love for each other.

Upon our return, we settled into the condominium that Francine and I had purchased and set up as our home together in Decatur, only a few miles from her childhood home in Stone Mountain.

****

The plane from Minneapolis lifted off smoothly while the video screening of the safety information--that was no longer demonstrated these days by the live flight attendants--finished on the screens that extended from the ceiling above the center aisle.

The head flight attendant got on the intercom and announced that cabin service would begin once we were at a suitable altitude and the captain had turned off the 'Fasten Seat Belts' sign. Then she said, "Our estimated flight time to Atlanta is two hours and forty-two minutes. Current temperatures in Atlanta ..." I simply tuned her out at that point.

****