Separate Lives Pt. 01

"You know what, Sherrie? I've been told cheating gets easier every time you do it. Apparently, it is. You sure didn't seem to have any trouble finding places and times to fuck your blond guy. I doubt you would have ever stopped if I hadn't nailed you with some really good pictures...and then filed for divorce." I looked up from my mound of pics.

"You tell me you weren't going to see him any more but, to put it bluntly, I don't believe you," I told her emphatically. "I think you're lying in your teeth."

"It's true!" she snapped. "Right after we went into the room, I told him this would be our last time...I'd already decided to stop seeing him...I was feeling guilty and ashamed and I wanted to end it." She reached out, snagged one of the pictures, and held it up in front of my eyes.

"You see this?" she demanded. "He's trying to hurt me here, slamming in to me really hard. He was punishing me for telling him I wasn't going to be with him anymore. A little bit after you took this, I got away and kicked the SOB in his balls."

I shook my head. I didn't want to see what she was trying to show me...and it really didn't matter.

"It looks to me like you're getting a little rough sex there, and you were liking it," I said. I held up my hand to stop her from saying something.

"But let's say you're telling the gospel truth." I leaned on my elbows partly across the table. "If it's true you wanted to stop fucking him, Sherrie, why the hell didn't you give him a call and tell him? Why was it necessary to give him a good-bye fuck?" She hung her head.

"I know. It was wrong, but—"

"Don't bother, Sherrie! I don't want to hear it! Even if I accepted what you say at face value, I don't believe—and I never will believe it—that you would ever have stopped so long as your slutty secret life was still a secret from me.

"Oh, you might mean what you say. You might have even done it for a week...a month...six months, maybe. But you'd have gone back to him...or found someone else...the first damn time you got pissed off at me again, or you had car trouble, or when you had a fucking bad hair day!

"Sooner or later, you'd have had that urge to get a little "strange" and pay me back for every real and imaginary problem we've ever had, wouldn't you? Isn't that what you were doing, Sherrie?" I had worked myself up again. I had to pull back. I slouched in my chair and tried to look more impassive than I felt. Sherrie was crying again.

"You don't have to talk to me like that," she whispered. "I'm your wife." I looked away in disgust.

"Not for very long," I said cruelly. "We're separated, the courts have recognized it, and all we have to do it wait another 52 days and it's all over with. And besides...I talk to sluts and whores a lot differently from the way I would to my faithful wife, assuming I ever have one again." The tears were rolling now.

"Ron...I'm trying to say I'm sorry for what I've done. Can't you understand that? I'msorry!" I shook my head. Abruptly, I was weary of the whole thing.

"Okay, Sherrie, you're sorry. I'm sorry too. Hell, everybody involved in this damned mess is sorry. So what? Where does that get us?" We sat quietly for a while.

"Sherrie," I said slowly. "You've ripped the heart right out of me." I tapped my chest. "Right here—there's a big hole, a whole lot of emptiness inside me where I used to keep the image of a woman I loved more than life itself...a woman I trusted with my most private secrets...someone I could count on to be good to me when the whole world was against me.

"You were my friend, someone I could talk to...trade opinions about anything under the sun. You were my lover; the one woman in the world I would ever make love to for the rest of my life and the only woman I wanted to make love to me. You took that all away and I can't get it back," I told her. My voice cracked on the last few words and I had to stop. Sherrie was crying harder.

"Ron—"

I interrupted her.

"Sherrie," I said slowly and carefully, "you've half-killed me, fucking that guy...betraying me, betraying yourself, and betraying our marriage." I took a deep breath.

"I sure hope whatever you got out of it was worth wrecking our marriageandhis...'cause I heard this morning his wife kicked his ass out and is filing for divorce too." That was true.

An investigator working for my attorney had tracked down the garage that had sent a wrecker to pick up two sets of slashed tires from a motel, take them back to the shop for repair and return the tires to the motel and mount them on two vehicles. The wrecker driver had remembered a furious brunette woman and a subdued blond man as owners of the cars.

Each of the billing reports had included the license plate number of the vehicle involved and, once he had that, it was child's play for the investigator to find out the man's name and all kinds of personal information. When my attorney told me the guy's identity, I found a phone number for his home and got in touch with his wife. She became enraged when I told her what I knew. I wasn't surprised she had filed for a divorce too.

Curiously, it seemed there actually had been three teens who had run away from the motel when Sherrie walked out of her room. They may have been involved in some other mischief, but I knew they hadn't done the tires.

I watched my wife cry inconsolably for a while. I wanted to take her in my arms...but she wasn't my woman anymore. She was a stranger.

"Will you tell me why you did it?" I asked. It took her a long time to smother the tears and get control of herself. Melissa and Cal had told me some of what she'd said in Las Vegas. I wanted to see if she could add anything to that.

"I don't know, Ron," she said a little bitterly. "It's like a whole other world in out there. It didn't feel real from the minute I got off the plane. Then I got drunk...the lights were so bright. It was like they hypnotized me. You weren't there and I was mad you wouldn't come with me. Then P—he...was talking to me so nice, telling me how sad it was that I was alone. After a while, I just gave in, Ron." The last phrase was wailed rather than spoken. I looked at her and for the first time I felt contempt.

"Well, that's just..." I said, trying to find the words to tell her how I felt. I gave up. They wouldn't come.

"God damn it, none of that is any fucking excuse!" I said, finally exploding. "First of all, Ihad to go to Denver and fix that damned glitch in the proposed power delivery system. If I hadn't gone, I'd have been fired and if I didn't have a job, we couldn't make the payments on that nice big house you justhad to have a couple years back. Icouldn't be with you in Vegas, dammit! It wasn't a matter of not wanting to. Don't you think I would have if I could?

"What else was it? Oh yeah. You got drunk. Well excuse the hell out of me, sugar pie honey bunch, but who the hell told you toget drunk in the first place. Are you a child that someone has to take a glass of rum out of your hands when you shouldn't be drinking it? Fuck you! You had no business eventhinking of getting drunk if you can't control who you let shove a cock up your damned cunt when you do!

"Bright lights? Hypnotized? What the shit does that mean, Sherrie? Should everyone treat you like you had some kind of mental problem because you might be...uh...hypnotized by the pretty lights? Give me a break!" I took some deep breaths and leaned heavily on the left arm of my chair. Then something else she'd said made me mad all over again. I sat up straight and leaned across the table toward her.

"And...you said he was talking to you real nice. Isn't that just precious? You're an attractive woman, Sherrie. Of course, men are going to come on to you! So what? Who the God-damned hell told you a married woman has a right to eventhink about letting some strange guy console you and flatter you and tell you how rotten it was that your husband wasn't there, huh? That's what he did, didn't he, Sherrie? He told you I was a sorry son of a bitch for not being there for you, didn't he?" She nodded, mopping up some of her tears with an already sodden tissue.

"Yeah," I said contemptuously, "and you lapped it up, didn't you?" I shook my head in disgust.

"Dammit, Sherrie...you talked about being drunk and drinking. You were married. A married woman...or a man...hell, it applies to all of us. The fact is you were supposed to act like you were a recovering alcoholic. I mean that. A married person is like someone who can never touch alcohol...ever!

"But you did. You know what? Thefirst time you danced with him too close...the first time you let him touch your arm in a possessive way, you were an alcoholic breaking your vow to never touch the stuff. Our marriage vows said we would forsake all others, Sherrie...forsake all others. What the hell did you not understand about that?

"Do you think I'm so ugly and unattractive, so inept in bed that I couldn't have been doing what you did? Don't you understand I get chances to spend a night or two with strange women every, single time I go on a trip?

"Dammit, I have to travel seven or eight times a year and every place I go, there's a secretary in the office, a professional woman from down the hall, a waitress in a restaurant or a woman in the hotel bar where I go for a nightcap. Maybe it's just a girl I pass in the corridor going to my room, but every time I go somewhere, there's a woman who Imight be able to fuck, but you know what?I never have! I've been propositioned ten times...I mean by ten women...this last year alone I think, and I've never even given one of them a second's worth of consideration because I had my loving woman at home."

"Guess you fooled me, huh?" I said bitterly. "If I'd only known."

I shook my head disgustedly. There was no sound but crying in the room for a long while. Sherrie just sat there hunched over. Her shoulders were shaking from the sobs she didn't want me to see. I didn't know why Sherrie had wanted to talk to me but it was I getting in most of the talking. I started up again, breaking the long silence.

"You should never have let that SOB touch you at all, Sherrie," I said, starting in again. I couldn't let this topic die—it was killing me.

"The first time he did, and you let him get away with it, you took a swallow from the cup that you couldnever drink from if you wanted to stay married to me. The first time you let him kiss you...you did it again. The second he put his hand on your ass...your breasts...ah, hell. What's the point?"

Abruptly, my rage left me. I slumped in my seat and tried to breathe slowly.

"I don't know else there is to say, Sherrie," I said finally. "I just know you've ruined something that was really beautiful, you know that? Now, I don't have anything but pain...and itwon't go away. I loved you with all my being. Hell, I still love you, I guess. I haven't learned how to turn it off yet and then back on like a faucet the way you have."

"Ron..." Sherrie said tentatively. "If you can still love me, we could try again..."

She stopped when she saw me shaking my head.

"But...you made love to me so...so good that Sunday before you left me," she wailed, shaking her head in confusion.

"Not hardly!" I said brusquely. "I wasn't making love to you that night, Sherrie...I was fucking you and making you come over and over so you'd remember it when I left. I'm sorry I did it now. It was a mean thing to do—something childish, arrogant, and worthless. I'm sorry I did it," I said. Sherrie looked shocked and then dismayed. She'd pinned her hopes on me having a desire to get back with her. We sat looking at each other for a time.

"Oh, and no...I can't try again," I said, remembering the question.

"I don't have anything left to trywith, Sherrie," I said, at last. "I don't believe a word you say. I know for a fact that you've lied in your teeth every day since you started fucking that bastard. You were deceiving me every minute of every day and that's one cruel, heartless thing to do to someone who loves you.

"I can't possibly trust you anymore, Sherrie...I can't imagine ever trusting you again out of my sight. I can't live that way, Sherrie." I sighed, leaning my head back on the back of the chair and looking up at the ceiling tiles.

"I don't know what I did to deserve this, Sherrie," I said musingly. "Based on that last night of sex we had together, I seem to be able to satisfy you sexually. If I can't, you're one hell of an actress...I never saw so many fake orgasms all strung together that night if that's what you were doing." I was quiet for a bit, trying to get it all straight in my mind.

"You know, Sherrie...I know I'm not perfect. I don't always see when you're unhappy about something. Sometimes I don't pick up on your signals quick enough. I know there are times you want to talk to me and I'm wrapped up in something else and I don't understand. There are times I don't know have a clue what it is you want me to do...and I'venever learned how to talk to you when you're mad.

"But—right off the top of my head—I've never shut myself off from you. I try to be considerate, even if I don't succeed all the time. Hell, I only watch one football game a week on TV just to make room for a little extra time with you on weekends. I take you out when we can afford it, I bring you flowers or a little something every so often. I guess I don't do everything I could, but I try. I guess there are a lot of times I'm not the man I'd like to be...but what the Goddamned hell did I ever do to you to make you do something like this?"

"Nothing...nothing at all, Ron," Sherrie said in a rush. "It was just me, all right? I did something incredibly mean, and stupid, and spiteful...and I'm sorry for having hurt you. I'm so ashamed and I feel so...so...unclean...that I did those things with him. Ron...I feel guilty all the time now. I wish...I wish so bad that I could go back and stop myself...but I can't, Ron. I can't push some "undo" button and make it all go away. I wish I could." She was quiet. I guess she was all cried out for the time being.

"I can't keep from wondering, Sherri," I said in a voice barely above a whisper. "When did you make the decision that you could fuck him and it would be all right? Andhow did you make a decision like that, huh? What made it "okay" in your mind to use sex with someone else to solve a problem you had with me, huh?"

"I nevermade a decision to do any of that, Ron," she said in the same voice. "If I had been making decisions, I wouldn't have made this bad a mistake...it just happened...I didn't want it...I didn't go looking for it," she said.

That did it. I'd had enough. I straightened up in my chair and started gathering the pictures together and patting them into a neat stack. I was fed up with all the bullshit.

"No...it didn'tjust happen," I said briskly. "Come on, Sherrie. You weren't just walking through the casino that night and suddenly find a strange cock sticking out of your pussy. No sireee, Bob, that's not what happened. Youlet this happen. Hell, Sherrie, let's be frank here...youmade it happen after you got back home. And, by the way, you damn suredid want it, and you most emphaticallydid go looking for it—at least here in the town we live in, even if I believe you when you say you didn't in Vegas.

"Shit, take a little responsibility for this, Sherrie. This wasn't a lightning bolt coming out of a clear sky. You did it, you liked it, and you kept on doing it...period!" She just looked at me. She was in shock, I guess.

"And it wasn't a mistake, either," I added. "A mistake is when you reach for a can of tomato soup on a supermarket shelf and you come away with mushroom instead. Hell, this is more like the mother of all catastrophes.

"And...I guess that's just the way it's just going to have to be, Sherrie," I told her. "I can't live with a woman I can't trust. They don't have chastity belts any more...and I wouldn't lock you in one if theydid. If I have to worry every time I leave your side that you're going to be fucking some guy when I'm out of sight...well, I'd rather just get out of the situation. I'll leave you to every Tom, Dick, or Harry you want to fuck...or do all three of them at one time, for all I care." I put the pictures in my inside jacket pocket and stood up.

"I don't have anything else to say, Sherrie, and the time we agreed to talk on is almost over. Do you have anything you need to say to me?" She stood and looked me in the eye across the table.

"Just one thing, Ron...and then you can go if that's what you want. I just thought I could explain to you what happened and...see if we might could find a way through this..."

I snatched one of the pictures from my coat pocket. I held it by one corner and showed it to her.

"Sherri, I don'tneed an explanation.This is it. This is what happened! This one photograph tells me everything I need to know. If it didn't, what Cal and Melissa told me would have done the job sooner or later. I don't understand where you're coming from.

"Don't you get it? When you went up to your room in Las Vegas with that man and closed the hotel door behind you, you shut me out of your life. You killed the marriage with just that one act. All the rest of it is just shit piled on top of more shit. There is nothing you can explain away. The facts are the facts...and nothing on God's green earth is going to change them.

"I don't know what else I can say. Well, how about if I say there isno explanation that will change a damned thing. Does that make it any clearer?"

She seemed to summon some last bit of courage. In the process, she completely ignored what I'd just said, I guess. She surely didn't comment on it.

"Ron...I love you and I will always love you...I want you to remember that," she said. "I've been selfish, petty...I've screwed things up bad, but I won't ever stop loving you...can you understand that Ron?" I nodded. I shrugged.

I didn't doubt she thought she did, standing with me in this room and at this moment. But it was an awfully one-dimensional, self-serving love if it was flexible enough to let her to do what she'd done. I pulled my jacket into a better fit across my shoulders and turned away from the woman who had been my wife.

"Ron, I'm—"

"Sorry...yeah, I know," I muttered, not looking at her. I didn't say anything else, and neither did she.

Sherrie didn't try to touch me as I walked out the door. I was glad. Because I knew whatever she felt for me...deep inside, locked away in a vault I'd never open again, I still loved her as much as the day I'd married her.

Love couldn't overcome this. She'd dishonored our marriage and me. There was nothing left to salvage and it was best left behind. I shut the door behind me, closing it firmly but without making an echo boom down the corridor.

End Part I