Two Birds with One Stone

Traci put down her tea and stared into my eyes, trying to stare into my soul, I thought. I didn't have an answer to her unasked question, nor did I have any sage words. I put away my Dewars in the cabinet, put my glass in the sink and headed upstairs to bed. Why, I'm not sure, because I knew without a doubt I wouldn't get any sleep on this night.

Traci came up to bed about five minutes later, curling in up against my back. I pretended to be asleep so I wouldn't have to even say good night.

I got up at my usual 5 a.m., did my morning routine, and headed off to work. Traci was still in bed when I left, meaning she wasn't planning on going in to Softel. I suppose she and Chel will need to figure out what happens next with Jacques gone. That's their problem. Obviously, I had my own problem to figure out.

Work has always been a source of solace for me when things weren't going right in my life, and I was hoping the trend would continue. Work for me is Mayone Pharmaceuticals, where I am the vice president of sales. Even though I'm 45, I am one of the "new breed" in the industry. By degree, I am a chemist, so unlike most of the guys in my industry leading sales, I actually know how the products are made and exactly what they do. I've even been involved in creating one of our products, Cockcrazitol, a pill which helps lower women's libidos for those who are too highly-sexed. That has been a great seller for us, and I have profited handsomely from that.

I also make a very nice salary, and with Traci's nice salary we were doing very well for ourselves: upscale house in a trendy neighborhood, two nice cars, great vacations. Neither one of us will be hurting financially when we get divorced.

There, I thought it. The dreaded "D-word." I hadn't given it any thought until just then, probably because it was a forgone conclusion in my mind from the moment I found out Traci was cheating. With Allison off at college and out of the house, there is really no reason for us to stay together. Aside from the fact that Traci ripped my heart out, this shouldn't be a big deal.

My boss, Arnold Kramer, and I have worked together for 18 years. After five years working as a chemist at another pharmaceutical firm, I met Arnie at an industry convention, and we got to talking about a lot of stuff. He is the one who said I should try sales, and then he offered me a spot in his company. I liked the idea of the challenge, and moved over.

Arnie was 100 percent right in his assessment of my skills, and we've both benefitted handsomely from that. And not only do we work well together, but it turns out he's a hell of a good guy, and we've developed what I hope will be a close lifelong friendship.

Arnie has been married to his wife, Lauren, for about 30 years. He has two grown children and four ... no, five ... grandchildren. He's 52 years old; acts like he's 30. A lot of energy, sharp as a tack. And not only is he smart, but he has no fear about hiring other smart people to work for him. I'd like to think I'm one of them.

Arnie seemed crushed when I told him that Traci had cheated on me and I was going to divorce her. He asked me if I was sure she had indeed cheated, and I answered affirmatively. He didn't push for details, and I didn't provide any. We would talk in due time, and he knew that. He did reach into his card file, though, and pulled out the card for the attorney who represents Mayone. Arnie is incredibly loyal to people who do good work for him, and he trusted the guys at Mayone, who had a small division for divorce work for people in better financial position than the average person. He told me to take whatever "lost time" I needed, but I assured him I only would need to take a few hours here and there -- after all, this should be an open and shut case, I noted. We lived in a no-fault state, both of us would want to do right by Allison, and both of us had our own pension plans we could each keep. We could split the proceeds on the house.

Boy, I missed that one by a mile. When I got home from work that night, Traci had supper practically waiting on the table -- my favorite, Spaghetti Supreme -- and she had opened a good bottle of Merlot. Things looked so good I didn't have the heart to remind her that Jacques was the wine aficionado; I like my spirits distilled. I guess under pressure it's tough to remember everything about both of your lovers.

Traci was her usual chatty self as we ate, acting like nothing had changed between us. I waited about 10 minutes before putting a stop to the charade, finally using those famous four words that no spouse ever wants to hear: "we need to talk."

"No, we don't!" she practically snapped back at me.

I have to admit I was shocked at her response, and her tone. I had caught her, and she admitted to, having a decades-long affair with her boss. She knew how I felt about infidelity. How could she possibly think I would keep her?

"I was hoping we could at least talk like civilized adults before I have you served," I said to her as calmly as I could.

"You can do whatever you like about having me served; I'm not giving you a divorce," she said with more than a hint of irritation in her voice. "The bottom line is you love me and I love you, and I won't let you go. I'll fight this every step of the way. You're being stupid and going to ruin the best thing you've ever had, all because your pride is wounded."

I started to respond, but she wasn't done and cut me off.

"Up until you found out about Jacques and me, did I ever give you one reason to doubt my love for you? Did I ever slight you in any way? You absolutely got as much good sex as you wanted, and I made sure I took care of you in every way, physically, mentally, emotionally. Are we not each other's best friends?

"If you hadn't found out through some fluke, you would have gone to your grave loving me completely until your last breath. You would never have been the wiser. Can't we just go back to that?"

"No, because I did find out. You don't love me as much as you say you do, because otherwise you couldn't have given yourself to another man, both body and soul. You knew it was wrong, so you kept it hidden from me. I don't call two decades of deception love!

"Bad enough you've been having sex with another man for two decades, but you admit to me you also love him. You've been intimate with him in ways you've been intimate with me. How is that loving me?!

"Forget the sex for a moment, as if you could. Don't you see that every ounce of love you gave him you were stealing from me?"

"I had more than enough love for the two of you," Traci yelled back at me. "He was man enough to see that. But I knew you weren't, so I never told you. And now you're proving me right."

"Man enough? I wasn't man enough because I wouldn't have let you have a sex partner and semi-husband on the side? That's absolute crap! I wasn't stupid enough to let you do that to me willingly, so you made the decision yourself, for yourself -- yourself completely. This was all about what you wanted ... and got. And trust me, I have no doubt that had I not found out, I would have gone to my grave a completely happy man ... and the world's biggest chump. And you could have just inscribed it on my fucking tombstone ... Here lies Rick Avendale ... world's happiest chump. He thought life was great ... because he had no clue his wife had two husbands."

Viewing and the funeral were three days later, on a Monday. I didn't attend either. I got up like any other morning and went to work. When I got home, Traci and Allison were in the kitchen, still in the clothes they wore to the funeral. I went over to my daughter, who had driven in from college to attend, and tried to give her a hug; after all, she hadn't been home in about two months. I said tried, because the hug never materialized. At first, she recoiled at my touch, then she turned her back on me and moved away, crying softly. Traci put her hand on my forearm, and gently shook her head.

Under normal circumstances, I would have taken the hint and let it be, but these were no longer normal circumstances. I growled, literally, under my breath. I went upstairs to the bedroom, got enough clothes for several days, got my toothbrush and hygiene supplies and left.

Traci started blowing up my phone almost from the minute I walked out. I let them all go to voice mail. I had to give Allison credit for one thing, though: unlike her mother, she wasn't pretending everything was going to be all right. Somewhere along the line she decided I was the asshole in this play, and she was going to make me pay. Well, if she was going to make me pay by ripping my heart out, she accomplished her mission. Not only wasn't she my child biologically, but she just made it abundantly clear she was no longer my child emotionally. This just keeps sucking worse by the minute.

On Tuesday I took some lost time, went to the bank and did the old split all the accounts into hers and mine. I closed out our credit cards, opened a new one in my name only, and made an appointment with the lawyer recommended by Arnie. He squeezed me in for Thursday.

I hadn't slept in three days when I went in to see the lawyer on Thursday. I swear to God, but his name was Mike Squelch. I was hoping he was a much better lawyer than his name made him sound. There really wasn't much to discuss, I thought. I gave him a detailed rundown of the affair, and said I wanted out with my half as soon as possible. I also told him I wanted Jacques' estate sued for child support. OK, if she was no longer my child in any sense of the word, then let her real father pay for her. I'm done being a schmuck, I told Mike.

Mike said he didn't see a problem with any of it, but if Traci was really adamant about not getting a divorce, a judge could impose mandatory counseling and there could be a protracted back and forth. I told him to go for it, and on Monday of the following week, Traci was served papers at Softel. I'm guessing she was served at 10:07 a.m., because at 10:08 our receptionist said that an irate Traci was on line three.

I hadn't answered any of Traci's calls and texts to my cell phone during the week, and I had instructed the Mayone people to send her calls straight to my voicemail, which they had been doing. But I knew that I couldn't keep ducking her forever, so I told Marlene, our head receptionist, to put her directly through to me when she called.

"You unbelievable asshole ..." I hung up the phone as soon as she finished her first curse.

Phone call number two came 15 seconds later.

"Don't you dare hang up this fucking ..." I hung up again, wondering how long it would take her to realize that she had to be civil if she wanted to talk to me.

Phone call number three took a little longer to arrive. When I answered, she was practically whispering she was trying so hard to control herself.

"You win round one. We need to talk," she said.

"That's just wonderful," I said as cheerfully as I could. "You call my attorney, Mike Squelch at XXX-XXXX, and set up an appointment to see us. You might want to bring along your own attorney as well. Might speed up the process."

The appointment got set for two weeks further down the road. I continued to live in a near-by motel until then, going over to my old house to mow and occasionally pick up some mail and more of my stuff. When Traci saw me arrive at the house the first time, she tried to greet me like her long-lost husband and started to hug me in the driveway, but I physically pushed her off of me and walked into the house.

"You didn't need to tell the world our troubles right out there in the driveway, did you?" she asked.

"Hey, if I'm such an asshole - divorce me," I deadpanned.

The meeting with the attorneys took place on a Friday afternoon at 3. Ever the gentleman, I let Traci run through her argument first, the one about loving me completely and just keeping a little place in her heart for Jacques. And, of course, now that he was dead, everything would just be about me all the time.

"Are you willing to throw away 20 great years over this?" she asked me. "Can our love have meant that little to you?"

"No, it's because our love meant so much to me that we have to end this marriage," I responded. "You completely had my heart and deceived me thoroughly to get it. How can I not see this as a complete betrayal of trust, the very foundation of a marriage. You knew what you were doing was wrong, so you betrayed my trust to get exactly what you wanted -- both of us physically and emotionally. But he knew and accepted it, and I was tricked into it by deception. This divorce isn't on me. It's about your selfishness and betrayal.

"I would never have put up with sharing you physically with another man, but sharing your love with another man goes even further over the line. This hurts worse than if you had just had a cheap, tawdry affair with a big-dicked stud. You loved this guy ... and fucked this guy ... and even had his child! Just because I didn't know didn't make it right. You were both stealing from me.

"It's a good thing he died of a heart attack that day. Because if he didn't, I would've shot him!"

Traci gasped when I made my last statement. I was already in tears.

"You know, in all this, you never once said you were sorry for cheating on me," I continued. "You apologized for hurting me, and I know you are sorry you got caught, but I don't think you are one bit sorry about what you did."

"Rick, I know we can make our part work out. Don't go through with this divorce," she said.

"Our part? It was our marriage, Traci. There wasn't supposed to be an 'our part' and 'your part'. There was only supposed to be us ... forever."

Mike looked at Traci's attorney and said, "I think we're done here. Your client needs to sign the paperwork and get it back to us."

Traci's attorney, a dour-faced, middle aged African-American woman, nodded grimly and stuck her hand out for Mike to shake. Some minor details were ironed out over the next two weeks, and we were officially divorced about three months after that.

Two days after the divorce became official, I had Mike file a suit against Jacques' estate for what was essentially child support and college expenses, although it sounded better when Mike used legalese. I probably wouldn't have done it had Allison not made it clear to me after the funeral that she wanted nothing to do with me anymore. I raised that kid as my own for 18 years, and that's the respect I'm shown? But I guess she had four years to think about it after Traci filled her in, and in her eyes I was no better than a chump. Fourteen years, then, of complete fatherly love, down the drain. So, no, I wasn't the least offended when Mike made the suggestion that we replace the lost respect with some real dollars: 1 million to be exact. I liked Mike's attitude.

I expected a phone call from Chel when she was served, but instead I got one from Traci. Chel probably figured I would take the message better coming from Traci, although she figured wrong.

"Was this just another way to get back at me? Are you hurting for money?" Traci said when I picked up.

"Well, hello to you to, too, Mrs. Avendale. So nice of you to ring." It's not like I didn't know why she was calling.

"You do realize this makes you look like a total jerk, right?" she commented.

"You do realize I raised another man's child for 18 years while you and Chel and Jacques were having a good laugh at my expense? And that said other man's child now thinks I'm nothing more than a schmuck? I don't give a shit about what any of you think."

I hung up without saying good-bye.

I'm guessing that Traci expressed to Chel my position, and what a stubborn bastard I can be when I'm right about something, because after first having her lawyer try to bargain down Mike, she just wrote me a check for the million.

And, as it turned out, a few months later, Chel could easily afford that million, because she sold Softel to a Japanese company for $8 million. With Jacques no longer there to run things, it was probably a shrewd business move.

This is where the story probably should have ended, but as the old newsman Paul Harvey used to say, "And now for the rest of the story."

Two days after the sale of Softel, $2 million was deposited into an account in my name in the Cayman Islands. It was my "finder's fee" for Nakatomi Ltd. getting Softel within nine months after an anonymous Nakatomi attorney and I signed a deal stating just that, no matter how it happened and what role I had in it actually happening; if Nakatomi had purchased Softel by a certain date, I would get a finder's fee. After that date, the deal was off.

So right about now you're wondering how I played a part in the Softel deal. It's a little complicated, but the short story is I wasn't completely truthful with you earlier in this tale. Much of this yarn was based on truth, but some of it was based on what could have been an Academy Award-winning performance given by me, the guy who appeared completely clueless. Let me explain.

I actually was a clueless bastard up until about a month before Jacques died. Then I was approached by a certain Nakatomi attorney who wanted my help in brokering a deal with Jacques for Softel.

"Why do you want my help, other than the fact that my wife is Jacques' right-hand man?" I asked innocently enough.

"Because we know you are a smart man, and we figure you'd be up to the challenge and the payday for outmaneuvering the man who has been cuckolding you for years behind your back," the attorney said.

To say I was in shock would be an understatement. Traci was cheating on me, and this guy from Japan knew about it? Are you fucking kidding me?

Turns out Nakatomi had been researching several firms, and when these guys research, they do everything but a body-cavity search. They easily found out about Jacques and Traci, and how Chel and both daughters fit into the mix as well. They figured -- rightly -- that I'd be more than willing to do whatever I could to help them. But it had to be done fast, because they were looking at several other software firms, and I had to deliver within a nine-month window.

First, though, they showed me their evidence of Traci's infidelity. They had photos, videos, phone calls, trip receipts, everything. I had everything in my hands to bury the two of them, and then they incentivized me. I make a very good living, and I didn't necessarily need the money, but they offered me $2 million to help them get the company away from Jacques. Hell, at that point, I would have helped them for free, but I wasn't about to tell them that. I just had to figure out my course of action, and I had to make sure the money came to me after the divorce, so I didn't have to split it since we live in a no-fault state.

But first I had to calm myself down so as not to give myself away. My honest first thought was to wait until their next tryst, break in on them and shoot both of them, but being Bubba's cellmate for the rest of my life didn't appeal to me. So I had to play it cool, and continue to act like I didn't know a damn thing -- something I had been doing for 20 years already, so what's the difference if I played along a little longer.

I told Arnie what I had found out about Traci and Jacques, but I didn't tell him how I found out. We sat around late one night at the plant with a bottle of Don Julio tequila, throwing out ideas about what I should do. Finally, after drinking about half of the bottle, he looked at me earnestly and said, "Damn son, isn't it just the shits that the guy who invented Cockcrazitol has his wife fucking another man? You should have slipped some of that stuff to her, Rick."

That's when the light bulb went on, although I didn't say anything to Arnie, for obvious reasons.