Words

I could go on about her family - one sister, a brother in the army doing god knows what god knows where to god knows who, and a father and mother, long since divorced and now friends. I'd only met her brother a few times, him being out of the country a lot, but he'd seemed like a decent enough guy. Concerned about his sister, but not one blind to who she was. We'd shared a beer or ten - those army guys can drink - and had some, well, I'd call 'interesting' conversations. I learned way more about her early boyfriends than I honestly wanted to know.

I could go on about our years together. Growing together, having fun, exploring life and generally acting like teenagers whenever we thought we could get away with it. We were partners, in every sense of the word.

We belonged to several groups together - I read poetry and she...well, she came along and tried. She painted and I...if I'm honest, I didn't even try. I could read and write but my skills ended there. I didn't even know which end of the paintbrush to use. I'd try and do abstracts and she'd come over and look and make comments like "I see you are still in your seven year old period." And then laugh hysterically.

Oh she cracked herself up, my wife.

We both had state of the art mountain bikes and made heavy use of them. The Seattle area is littered with bike trails and we made the most of them. It was our main exercise and we loved it. We even went on biking weekends to Portland and Vancouver.

I don't mean to make it sound like some kind of hippy dippy nirvana, though. We fought. We had disagreements. By god the woman had a temper on her - when she was royally pissed she could make every room Siberia. She had a wicked sense of sarcasm that could really cut right to your core, and when she was really angry, she'd do it right in front of other people, where my only recourse was either to retreat and look wimpy or have a knock-down drag-out cat fight in front of our friends.

I tried both approaches and neither really worked. Me retreating often made the problem go away faster, but made me look like a turd in front of our friends, and me fighting her preserved my pride but made our new fridge, the bed, last that much longer. She knew damn well what she was doing.

It was weird, because to everyone else, she was an absolute delight. Even if she abhorred the people we were with - and she could be biting about some of the people we knew in our social circles - she was so polite and excruciatingly nice to them. It was only me she showed her vast displeasure with, when she felt the need arose. In some ways I felt hugely privileged - it was only me that she felt comfortable enough with for the mask to come off. That's a compliment. On the other hand, sometimes I seriously worried for her mental health.

But what really pissed her off, more than anything, was me attempting to use my 'fucking Jedi mind tricks' on her.

Apparently, when I get into Mediator Mode, as she puts it, I unconsciously adopt a particular stance and facial expression. She picked up very early on what that looked like and that was one thing that no matter what we were arguing about was guaranteed to put it up a level or two. It was at those points that the inevitable "Your family sucks too" kinds of taunts came out. There is no argument that can't be made worse by dragging family into it.

Mind you, she also learned that bringing my mother into it was not a thing she should embark on. A weekend spent in a motel because I threw her out made that point.

In the interests of fairness, though, I should also point out that it's not like she often didn't have anything to scream about. I was - no, am - no picnic to live with. I am moody, I can fly off the handle about something insignificant (never drive with me when I've had a bad day), I tend to look down on stupid people (and we are ALL stupid at some time or another), and I have been known to enjoy the strip club on occasion, even knowing what it represents in terms of women's exploitation.

I was as capable as she was of provoking a bad situation, although I did prefer to deal with it behind closed doors.

She knew when she'd overstepped the mark. She knew it very soon after, once her heat had died down and I often got lots of apologies and then the next week, I'd be hard pressed to even get up in the morning.

I should talk a little about our sex life. It was nothing short of spectacular. Well, I thought it was, anyway. We were nothing short of perfectly coupled in the bedroom. Or the living room, or even the back of the car, one night in Victoria, up in Canada.

We explored each other, were honest about fantasies (at least I was. Turns out she wasn't - not completely), we did some risqué things - going out to dinner with her wearing no underwear and a short mini dress, never knowing who she was flashing, stuff like that. We played a couple of games of me picking her up in a motel bar, till one night some guy hit on her and didn't want her to say no, and it took me explaining the facts of life to him while gripping his balls through his suit pants, and we never did that again. Again, I never did. With what I know now, who the fuck knows if she did.

Sorry. Shouldn't swear. Sometimes, well, life gets the better of you, you know? Sometimes you are the windshield and sometimes you are the bug.

For all that, we were happy. At least I thought so. I was. My work occasionally got consuming, and in some situations, I had to travel. I was work for hire for my company and to a certain extent I had to go where the work was. But it was never for long and I would be home again, and it didn't happen that often.

Kristi occasionally traveled to see some tech company who wanted to donate old equipment to her museum for posterity and a couple of times I got to go too, although sitting around watching a bunch of beards droning on about how some hard drive the size of washing machine used to be worth three quarters of a million dollars, and now you could get earrings with more storage capacity than that, was not my idea of a good time.

But hey, I got to play golf in Arizona, in the dead of winter, on Intel's dime, play nickel slots, and do nasty things to my wife on hotel property, so what the hell did I care?

So, back to the evening I was talking about, which is what the story is really about anyway.

I walked into our condo, with its nice view, and threw my jacked on the chair and yelled out, "I'm home. What's for dinner?"

The lights were on, and I knew she was home - I had parked next to her little Mazda Miata Mx5 convertible in the under building parking lot. The entry of our condo was into the kitchen and I busied myself grabbing a beer (low calorie Diet beer, as she called it) and wandered into the living room.

And there she was, sitting on the couch, knees together, looking up at me and biting her lip. It wasn't her that arrested my motion though - it was the guy sitting next to her.

"Honey..." she said, weakly.

I just stopped and stared, not believing what I was seeing. Her body language was contrite, upset, nervous, and stalwart, all in the same set of posture. You can't live with someone as closely as we had for that many years and not know what you are seeing. Well, apparently you can, as I was discovering. But right then and there I could read the entire situation as plain as day.

The guy, well, he was young, had a smile on his face that was just this side of non-confrontational. Not a sneer, but definitely in the same family. A cousin perhaps. It was classic arrogance that was being masked with some semblance of 'sensitivity' on his part. Hell, for all I know, he might even believe it, but the body language was classic possession demonstration and the need to imprint that on the events that followed. I was being told without words that he was the Alpha male here, in terms of owning her.

She was leaning forward, and he was leaning back, both arms spread out along the sides of the couch, one behind her. You could see she was leaning forward a bit so as it to not appear like he had his arm around her. But it also didn't take Einstein to see what she hadn't removed it, either. She was doing her best to not have the situation look too bad, missing the point that the more she tried, the worse it actually looked. Now she just looked guilty rather than contrite.

Just looking at the two of them, I knew what the situation was, at least part of it. I knew what had been going on. I didn't know where they thought it was going - whether this was a confessional and a promise to not repeat, or a 'dear john' moment, or what it was, but I knew what had occurred prior. You can't not, when you see something like this.

I just looked at them for a moment more, then flopped into the chair adjacent to the couch, at right angles to it. It put me right next to this guy, who looked at me with I'm sure he thought was concerned. I could see Kristi frown at me sitting down, and I could read the expressions crossing her face - their placement of sitting was really bad. If I got violent, she wouldn't be able to stop me. But it was too late now.

There was obviously a script here they were playing to, and I had to hold back the anger that was forming in my stomach to understand what that script was.

I popped the beer and sighed, and took a long drink.

She bit her lip again, and I could see she was about to say something but didn't. I assumed it would have along the lines of, "Yes, a beer would be a good thing about now."

I chuckled as a thought occurred to me. It's funny your reactions to sudden extreme stress like this. I'd seen it before and it had always puzzled me. People say the most asinine things, or make some remark, or bring up some point that has absolutely nothing to do with the current situation. In my line of work you see it a fair amount and I'd always quietly wondered at what was going through their minds at that exact moment. Presumably a complete denial of the reality of the situation, and here I was, feeling it myself.

"What?" asked Kristi, a tiny bit of annoyance in her voice that she masked instantly.

I took another drag of beer, then said, "I was just thinking. I know you so well. I can read your body language. I was just thinking that you couldn't possibly hide your body language like this in a situation like this, not when you know them so well. And then it occurred to me that you've done exactly that, haven't you? I had no clue."

She grimaced slightly, then took a breath.

"Well, yes. I guess so. But that's partly what this...intervention, I guess, is about."

"Intervention?" I interjected, dripping sarcasm from the word. "Is that what you are calling this little event? Why not something nicer? Get together, perhaps? Come to Jesus even?"

It came out before I could stop it. I shouldn't have though. I am usually better than that.

"Mike..." she said, reproachfully, using that two-tone way people use to verbally stress a two-syllable word.

"Oh by all means, dear wife," I said, stressing the word 'wife' in the same way. "Do go ahead. I wouldn't want to derail your script."

I glanced at the guy sitting next to her, and noticed he had one of my beers open in front of him. The white-hot rage I was feeling - really starting to feel - got an inch whiter.

"Mike, you just said it yourself. You had no clue. I think it's fair to say then that in reality, you not only didn't notice, but there was nothing to notice. Right? No tell tale signs, no dropping in affection or sex. Right?"

She was right. I hadn't noticed. I wasn't really looking either, but implicit trust will do that to you. But still, I'm an observant guy. My job depends on it, and it's not like I take her for granted. Even eleven years in, I was still buying her flowers for no reason, having them sent to her work, taking her away for weekends, buying small trinkets - anything to keep showing her how much I cared. Which made this all the more sick, from my point of view.

My mind was going at 320 miles an hour, asking questions I had no answers to. Had I not given her enough? What else could she have wanted? What drove her to this? WHY???

I struggle to get control of my emotions. I would never get answers if I went off, severely really tempted as I was. I was smart enough to know that at some point I was likely to, but I wanted answers first and this was a way to get some. I wouldn't get all of them, and she'd outright lie to me about some it - that was inevitable. I knew she still loved me, and she wouldn't want to hurt me any more than she had to, so I knew she'd lie about the things that she judged would. It was only human.

But that was the thing. I knew she loved me. I was a 100% sure of it. Even with the evidence that that love had been shared around, I was still convinced of it. Maybe I was fooling myself, but I dunno - you just know some things in your life, and I knew she loved me. I guess I was just fooling myself about the 'to the exclusion of all else' part of the sentence that should have followed on.

I just gestured with the beer, not trusting myself to speak yet.

Kristi took that as an affirmation and continued, in the most measured voice she could.

"So, logically then, if I never gave you less than you had always had from me, how are you impacted by this? I'm still the same person I always was. This..," she gestured at the man sitting next to her, "is just an...extra dimension. That's all. Nothing changes. I still and will always love you and be everything to you that I've always been. And I want the same back. Surely you can see that? You've lost nothing here."

So that's how it was. She was actively hoping that I'd go for this. See it from her point of view. It was clever. She was attempting to do to me what I do professionally. Make me see it from her point of view. Walk in her shoes, metaphorically.

There as silence for a second. Then she said, "It's not you, Honey. Not in any way. You are not lacking at all. Please understand that. You rock my world and always will. I just..."

"You just what, Kristi?" I said, marveling at the fact that I hadn't turfed the coffee table over yet and maimed someone. "Just needed more than I could give? The flowers, the presents, the weekends away, the love," I sneered on the last word, "just not enough for you? Does he have a huge dick? Is that it?"

"I..." Kristi's reserve began to crack and her voice and face trembled. I could see tears starting.

The guy sitting next to her leaned forward with a worried expression on his face, glancing at me with animosity.

"Kristi," he said, with a surprisingly deep voice, "Babe.. it's ok. Hold in there, like we said."

His arm along the back of the couch came forward to cup her body.

I did loose it a bit then.

I leaned forward, and said, "Hey dickwad. I can call you Dick, can't I? We are almost blood brothers." And in doing so, I put my hand on the back of his, that was still on his lap.

In one smooth motion, I grabbed his index finger and just pulled it up and back. He had no option but to go with it, or risk it being broken. With his arm around Kristi, he had nowhere to go and as I raised the finger and put more pressure on it, bending it at an angle, he contorted his body to relieve the pressure. He couldn't move more than that, being trapped with his arm behind Kristi.

"Mike, please..." Kristi said, helplessly. I threw a very quick venomous look in her direction, then concentrated on this dick head in front of me. She didn't move, which was wise, although she looked like she wanted to. Even she wasn't that stupid.

"Listen, asswipe. That's my wife there. Whatever you think you've been doing, she is still my wife." I put extra emphasis on that word, being the finger back even more.

"That's my couch you are sitting on, in my apartment, drinking my beer. And frankly, shit for brains, I am not impressed with any desire you may have to be a white knight. You are here because the slut," Kristi moaned slightly at that word, "wants you here, but I don't want you here. So shut the fuck up and don't say a word, or more bad shit will happen. I've got your ass and I've used four fingers on one hand to do. Don't piss me off any more than you already have, or more bad shit will happen to you. Capice?"

He nodded somewhat desperately, and let his finger go, and he sat back, removing his arm from Kristi, rubbing his wounded finger hard, looking at me through narrowed eyes.

I kept his gaze. "Not a fucking word, asswipe. Remember that."

I turned my gaze to Kristi, who paled a bit more, then recovered herself. "That was un-necessary Mike. James wouldn't have tried to hurt you. He's just here for me. To show support. To let you know he's no threat."

"Really? How nice for him. He'd still better shut up, though. I won't hit you but by god I feel like hitting someone right now, and he's here."

"Mike, please. Please understand. We didn't choose this. It just happened."

"What happened, Kristi? Did you trip and fall on his dick?" I'd read that line in several stories and it just came out.

She sighed. "No, nothing like that. We just worked together and... it happened. I'm sorry. I don't know what to say. I love two men. I love you. I always have and always will. But I love James, too. I can't explain it. It's not the same... there are parts that are, but, I love you both in a bit different ways. Please, please try and understand."

I took another drink of beer while I considered my response. I put the beer down and then just said, "Bullshit."

She bridled. "No it isn't. You know I love you. You can't doubt it. I've never shown you anything else but consideration and love, and you know it. Even when..." she faltered, then continued, "... other things were happening, I made doubly sure you never got less than the full of me. That will never change."

She looked at me, intensely, as though willing me to challenge it. She was already stating things in a way that denoted that this was the way things would be, going forward. Classic leadership wording. You talk as though this was already the situation, and people then believed it was, and started finding ways to accommodate it in their reality. Not today Kristi, I thought.

The thing is, with what I do, the whole vulnerability thing, bringing people together through common themes, playing on their sense of importance and fair play, while it can really work wonders in bringing people together, it can, in the right hands, do exactly the opposite.

I don't do that - or at least I try not to. While I can see what binds people together, I can just as easily tear them apart. It's like a massage therapist. They know where the nerve clusters are and can, if they really want to, make as much pain as they soothe, with their hands on your body. I can do the same. I just really hate having that ability. When you are angry, you can really destroy someone.

And I was angry right then. So very angry. She needed to both know my pain and she needed to know she caused it, and she needed to know the reality of her future, and I was going to fuck that future up. All with words. Right there and right then.

Looking back, I'm part ashamed of myself for what I did, and part proud that I stood up and simply wouldn't just roll over and be steam rollered. What I did wasn't good. But on the other hand, what was the alternative? I wasn't going to give her what she wanted, because it wasn't what I wanted. At all. It was the opposite of what I wanted. There simply wasn't any middle ground here, at least not as I saw it. If we'd decided to open up our marriage together, then that's one thing. But we hadn't, and I never would have anyway. I was a one woman man. So what she wanted was, by the very definition, the opposite of what I wanted. What she wanted wasn't in me to give her, and by having this asshole sitting next to her, and the way she was behaving, she was signaling that this was all she would accept.