Unfaithful

"What?"

"The lack of trust, the criticism there but unspoken, and the reason that you have been cold and distant since I came home."

"You're blaming me?"

She paused and took a deep breath. "Please, let's not fight. This is hard enough without the anger. The point of this evening was to start to put this behind us. Anna said to keep it loving and simple. You took me by surprise with your question, but I should have remembered I was married to a lawyer."

"Anna who?" I asked.

"Anna Swenson from the hospital. I've been seeing her about our problem, and she suggested we come to counseling together but that first I come clean with you. She suggested that I get you in a receptive mood first and remind you of the love we share."

"Anna is the short, stout psychiatrist," I said.

"Yes, she is very good and has experience in these situations."

"Situations?"

"Jimmy, my love, please. Right now, for our sake, stop playing the lawyer. I knew we had a problem when I walked off the plane. You had suspicions. I could see them in your face and feel them in your kiss."

"Okay, but don't make this my problem," I said.

"I won't. This is very much our problem, and I admit my fault. But we need to work together to solve it," she replied.

"How do we do that?" I said.

"First I have to get the problem out," she said and paused to kiss me before she laid it on me.

I was silently cringing as she began to speak.

"I was prepared for the privations. The humid heat, the lack of sanitation, and the endless bugs. Spiders as big as your fist. The awful food was no great burden. You lose a few pounds. So what? You are helping in ways so incredible, people who are in such dire need.

"This was the greatest adventure of my life, and each day brought a new and greater achievement. The suffering I saw was indescribable, but the feeling you get from easing that suffering is beyond any experience imaginable.

"But it's the endless day-to-day terror that eventually grinds you down. The Rwanda-backed rebels don't distinguish between combatants and humanitarian workers. The government troops can't be relied on and can be as dangerous as the insurgents. It's difficult to tell who's on your side, if anyone.

"We lost people. Friends killed in the crossfire. Men and women seized in the night. Some we found later, raped, tortured, and murdered," she paused, looking at me.

Simone's eyes searched me, looking for sympathy and understanding. I let my arms envelop her and said, "You knew these things. I had warned you before you left."

"I know," she said, "but you can't know the terror until you face it or how great the need you feel just to be held in a pair of strong arms until they are not there. I needed you desperately, but you were far away," she said, pressing her face into my chest.

With a sigh, she began again.

"Leroy was a tall, handsome black man. He was a Chicago native and a nurse practitioner. I met him the first day I was in Katanga. Leroy had been in camp long enough to know the ropes. He made it a point to look after the new girl from New York.

"Of course, Leroy wanted into my pants, and he flirted outrageously. Lots of our co-workers were hooking up. It was part physical need and mostly a sense that tomorrow could bring death. I held out. I was married and knew my husband would not betray me. Why should I betray him because I was scared and lonely?

"Laura was a black nurse from Atlanta. She was my tent mate. There were twelve countries represented just in the medical staff, but I tended to stick with the Americans. I grew close to Laura. One day she and a team left to visit a site just five miles from our main facility. She never came back.

"It was two days before their burned vehicle was found. They recovered what was left of the men but not the women. Laura was simply gone, never to return. It might have been me. That night, I walked into Leroy's arms and was his companion in every way for the next five months.

"The day Leroy left for home, I took up with Jarred, a doctor from LA. I fucked Jarred on the morning I left. Before you ask, it wasn't just sex. It was more than that, but it was only a temporary relationship. My being with Leroy and Jarred was a thing of the time and place. We had no existence in the world beyond the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"Please tell me you understand," she concluded.

I did understand. I didn't like it, but I understood what had happened. She lay there in my bed, draped over me. For all her five feet and ten inches, she was a slight, fragile thing. I loved her dearly, but at that moment, I also hated her. She had betrayed me in more ways than one, and now all I felt was foolish.

"Say something," she demanded.

"What's to say? What will ever make us right again?"

"Anna says that we should go through counseling together. She says that we can put things right if we work at it together. Will you come?" she asked.

I disengaged myself from her and got out of bed.

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

"I will go to the counseling, but right now I need to be away from you," I said and walked away from the bedroom.

She began crying as I left.

_______________________________

"So, the law school placement office said I should ask for $25 an hour," Rebecca Flynn said. She was the newest applicant for a summer intern position I had posted at the law school. She was the only one worth considering.

Rebecca was a local girl but was attending Cornel. She wasted no time in telling me that she was on the law review and had been offered a summer job by a well-known Manhattan firm. Circumstances had derailed her plans for a summer clerkship in the big city. Her father had a heart attack, and Rebecca chose Dad over her career. I liked that, and the fact that she came from a middle-class family. She needed her summer earnings to fund her final year of law school.

Three months had passed since my appointment as special prosecutor. Tara had been doing the leg work and identifying the targets. I, on the other hand, had been mostly clearing up my outstanding cases. I needed to free myself up for what was coming. I was now ready for the next moves.

Twenty-five an hour was what the schools told the summer clerks to ask. I wasn't sure of the motivation for this. None but the big firms could pay that, and few firms of any size were hiring. The average solo, which I am, will work sixty hours a week, fifty weeks a year to clear sixty thousand dollars. Do the math—that's sixty thousand divided by three thousand hours or twenty dollars an hour. The second-year clerks were asking to be paid more than the owners.

"I'm offering $17.50 an hour," I said.

"Oh," she said disappointedly.

"But I'll make you a deal. Twenty-five an hour for each billable hour you produce and fifteen for all non-billable hours."

She looked at me funny as if I were trying to cheat her. Her view was that all hours were billable. Oh, the naivete of youth. However, in this case, my trick was planned to enrich us both. I intended to bill the state $125 an hour for her services, making a hundred dollars every time she wrote in a billable hour. This was the beauty of having the governor for a client.

The downside of this situation was having the governor for a client—or, in particular, Ms. Wilson. I was three months into my special prosecutor gig, and she had been on my back since the end of the first week.

"The governor would like a progress report," Ms. Wilson had texted me.

I had barely started, and she was looking for results.

"Sorry, independent prosecutor. Will report at end," I texted back.

The following day she called. "The governor would like monthly bills," she said.

"Sixty to ninety days is usual," I replied.

"Not if the appointing authority determines monthly bills are required," Carrie Wilson said in her most authoritative voice.

I suspected an older, more experienced party had informed her how to keep tabs on what I was doing. To get paid, my billing would have to show ordinary and necessary activities and, more to the point, be detailed enough to disclose what I was doing.

Moreover, she could question every entry if she wanted and require an explanation of what it was needed for. In other words, she could track my every move through the billing.

"Are you requiring monthly billing?" I asked.

"Yes, I am. I mean, the governor is."

I liked her. She was smart enough to be wary of me, and, like myself, she could sense that something was not right. By this time, I had read every document in the voluminous Commission on Correction file, and I was sure Ms. Wilson had as well. It didn't add up to a good case against anyone. A political embarrassment for the governor but little more.

I did some superficial background on Carrie Wilson. She'd attended Yale Law and Wellesley. She was a recent law graduate but was not admitted to practice. The governor was no doubt keeping her too busy to sit for the bar exam. She turned down a Second Circuit clerkship to work for the governor and was one of the many hoping to follow him to the White House. She was the daughter of the Westchester Wilsons. Daddy was a Wall Street type, and Mom was one of the society de Voes. They were old money New York elites. Carrie was rich with good connections. Not at all my type, and she had distrusted me on sight. That last one, however, I could not fault her for.

"Okay, I'll take it," Rebecca said, breaking my thoughts.

"Good. You start Wednesday," I said.

We were three months into my special prosecutor tenure, and, so far, I had nothing to show for it, as Ms. Wilson repeatedly told me. Yet, we did have a lead. Tara's feminist lawyer friend had provided us with a way through the silent wall of the prison guards.

Robert Leboc was an officer at Van Patten CF. He was remarkably ordinary except for one little fact. Bob was going through a divorce from his second wife. The couple had two children each but none together. Bob was a bit of a squirrel. He put away every free dime he had, and the current Mrs. Leboc wanted her share. Money was the only thing holding up the divorce, and the fight had turned bitter.

Bob could account for every asset except a five-thousand-dollar cash withdrawal. It was a transaction that he couldn't, or, more likely, wouldn't explain. We had obtained a wiretap warrant that would show up on the end-of-month time records, but for now, it was a secret known only to the judge, Tara, and myself. My new law clerk was going to wade through the prison records while I zeroed in on what we were actually interested in. Hopefully, the suspects and Ms. Wilson would mutually be fooled.

My private life had progressed no further than my investigation had. Simone and I had been in counseling with Anna Swenson twice a week. The first few sessions were all about establishing that Simone had transgressed and was deeply sorry. Anna was rather hard on my wife, but this was all by way of showing how impartial she was. The counseling quickly devolved into an elaborate dance. Simone was sorry, and I was expected to forgive her, and then we were to go through a process of rebuilding our relationship. Unfortunately, I was stuck on the forgiveness part.

Anna finally broached the problem. "It isn't just the infidelity, Jim, is it?" she had asked.

"No, I guess the problem is bigger," I said.

"Well, tell me what it is," Simone demanded.

"You abandoned us, the girls and I, and you will do it again," I said.

"How can you say that?" Simone questioned.

"Now, let's try to understand. Feelings are what they are," Anna cautioned Simone.

That was more than two months ago, and we never did get through to each other. I was growing sure that the counseling would not work. The sex had also fallen through the floor. We were drawing further apart. I was hurt, and she was angry—and becoming more so every day. Simone believed that I should accept her apology and that we should move on. I didn't see how an apology was going to cut it.

The Pediatric Benefit dance was the last Saturday in June. The new director of Memorial Hospital's pediatric services was the Dinner Dance chairwoman, Simone Redmond. My wife had taken back her maiden name. I learned this when I saw the invitations. The co-chair was Dr. Eshe Faraji.

I was in a rented tux for the occasion. There was no mistaking the origins of my formal dress or ignoring the comparison with my wife, who looked like a million dollars in her skimpy black dress. She was the star of the evening, if you discounted the handsome doctor Faraji who monopolized my wife as his dance partner.

The only one who seemed the least upset by Faraji's attention on my wife was her friend, Claire, who was accompanied to the event by her husband. But Deke seemed only a placeholder. Claire was dressed to the nines, in a manner too sexy for the mother of three. However, who was I to object? My wife was dressed like a single woman on the prowl.

In comparison to their fashionable and elite style, both Faraji and Curoso made me look like a shabby wannabe. Deke and I could not compete, and it was obvious that no one, including our wives, was paying us the least attention. There was an exception; Anna Swenson sought me out.

"How you doing, Jimmy?" Anna asked.

"Been better," I replied.

"My papa always said that it's best to hold salt in an open hand," she said.

"I'll remember that the next time I'm holding salt."

"She loves you, and he doesn't have a chance," Anna said.

"True, but she is basically unfaithful, and we both know that."

_______________________________

My first visit to Van Patten CF was long overdue, but I knew the answer to my quest was not to be found there. Nevertheless, in the first week of July, I took the ride to the prison and made my required call on the superintendent. The prison was no more than a set of housing units surrounded by a twelve-foot fence, which was topped with razor wire and a curlicue of steel ribbon adorning every few inches with a bowtie of metal blades.

An inner fence sectioned the facility into four quadrants. I was headed for the administration quadrant, but first I had to pass through the main gate. This was nothing more than a square concrete box, twenty feet per side, bisected by metal detectors. There were three gate guards: two males, and a female. They were cold, to begin with, but became frigid after I gave my name. I was walked through the metal detector, wanded, and patted down.

Twenty minutes later, I was walking up the path to the administration building. The superintendent's office was a short walk from the building entrance. Her secretary was at the door waiting for me and showed me the way. The superintendent's office was large but starkly furnished. The furniture was Corecraft, the ugly prison-made furniture sold only to the government by law.

Superintendent Camilla Blake was a woman of average height and was in her early fifties. She had graying dark hair and wore a blue-gray dress suit that would have served a school principle well. Hers was an attractive but stern face with strict features. She rose from behind her desk to greet me and led me to a seat at a small conference table. Her desk and a small loveseat with matching chairs completed the room's furnishings.

The conference table was small but adequate to seat eight or so people. As we were seated across the table, I noticed that her face was familiar to me, although I could not recall ever meeting her.

"I was glad to hear that you were the one appointed," she began. "We do know each other casually. My grandchildren go to school with your daughters."

Thus prompted, I recalled where I had seen her before. Her daughter was a tall blond woman, with I remembered a son and daughter both older than my two.

"I thought I recognized you," I said.

"Yes, your daughters are lovely, as is your wife. She, of course, has my admiration and that of my staff, particularly the medical personal. We use Memorial Hospital, where your wife works, for our inmates outside medical care. Your wife is a remarkable woman. You must be very proud of her."

"Yes, I am, as are our daughters. We are a fortunate family," I replied.

"As I said, I welcomed your appointment to this task. We are a family here, and as with your wife, we serve a humane purpose. Ours is not a fully appreciated occupation, but it's a beneficial one. You, I have learned, are a good man whose character springs from within. You don't wear it like a robe to judge others," she said.

"Well, you give me more credit than I deserve. Don't credit me with my wife's good works. I have a job to do here, and I will carry out my function to the best of my abilities, which may cause some pain," I said.

"I am judging you by the care I have seen you give to your daughters. All I'm asking is an impartial and understanding treatment of my people," she said.

"I fully intend to be fair and impartial both to your staff and the inmates of this institution. I have a high opinion of Van Patten CF, as does my wife. She has often commented on how dedicated your medical staff is. I think the medical care given to the prisoners often surprises people. I know that is not always an easy task. Female inmates, in particular, often require more routine services that only outside medical personnel can provide," I said.

"Yes, an astute observation. Our internal women's health services are adequate, but gynecological and surgical services are provided from the outside," the superintendent acknowledged. "Memorial is not the largest hospital in the area, but it provides us adequate care for our women."

I did not miss the word "adequate," nor was I unaware that the regional medical center had far more facilities than Memorial did.

"Well, to the reason for my visit. I have hired a law clerk, a young law student to assist with the investigation. I will be sending her here to do my preliminary investigation. She will need a place to work and will review certain records—mainly staff assignment and time records, as well as inmate housing records. I know you could stand strictly on protocol and make it difficult for us to gather the information we need. But I'm hoping we can work in tandem to get this done quickly."

"You will have my full cooperation in releasing anything not actually protected by statute, and as to sealed records, we will identify them so you can seek a judicial subpoena," she said, and I could tell she was relieved that I was proceeding in such a mundane and low-key a manner.

I felt not a shred of guilt that she had misjudged my character or been taking in as to the actual method of my investigation. While I seemed to be pushing paper, Tara would be listening in on her staff's conversations. Just like any other successful prosecutor, I intended, as far as I was able, to invade the privacy of her staff and induce them to turn on each other. I was selling my soul for the governor's gold, and by the time the superintendent and Ms. Wilson figured that out, I planned to have the goods on someone.

It was Simone's turn to pick up the girls, but she had texted me that she had taken them to her mother's so we could spend the night alone. Something was up with my wife. There was no green lace when I arrived home, just an unhappy-looking woman.

"We need to talk," Simone began.

"I thought that's what we'd been doing in our counseling sessions with Anna," I said.

"We've been married ten years and together longer than that. I know you, Jimmy. You're not an open person. You have a devious mind which is given to concealment and deception. It was never easy being your lover, knowing that I couldn't fully pass through that curtain that you hide behind. But I always knew your heart was true, and you've been a great husband and father," Simone said.