Landis, Jonathan
JOURNAL ENTRY 01

I woke up and went to work one morning, and when I got there everyone in the office was going on about some animal attack in Nevada. The news media make me want to puke; it's all fear mongering. I started drifting backward in my mind to earlier that morning, lying in bed next to my wife, not thinking about work or CNN or vicious mauling or Osama Bin Laden. My wife when she first wakes up, soft-skinned, blonde hair catching all the sunlight from between the blinds, brown eyes like some mythical goddess's. After three years of dating and six years of marriage, she still takes my breath away in the morning.

Everyone at work was surfing the Internet to find more updates about what was going on instead of doing their work. At first, they were saying that some kind of lizard jumped out of a petting zoo cage and attacked a pregnant woman. Then it turned out that it ripped her baby out of her stomach or something disgusting like that. The guy next to my cubicle keeps talking about Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster and flying dinosaurs in Zimbabwe. He thinks it wasn't some Gila monster or monitor lizard, and I ask him who cares because we'll never know for sure. He says that he cares and that he bets that I think Al Qaeda were the ones who flew planes into the Twin Towers. I say for God's sake give it a rest, and he grumbles at me.

Someone else finds leaked pictures of lizard footprints and this disemboweled-looking lady being hauled off in an ambulance. Everyone gathers around to catch a glimpse of it, and it makes me want to be sick. I ask my boss if I can leave early, tell him I think I might be coming down with something, but really I'm just fed up with all the idiots and the U.F.O. theories. I mention this only because of its future relevance.

What really happened that day is this: When I get home several hours earlier than usual, my wife is bent over our coffee table with some guy I've never seen before screwing her from behind. I kind of figured everyone who goes through adultery suspects it beforehand, but I honestly had no idea. Standing there in the doorway, I searched my mind for what felt like hours to try and find some clue that I must have missed to explain how this happened. I can't find a thing, not a single thing. This woman who had been my best friend, my soul mate, the love of my life, my blushing bride of six years... here she is in the throes of the ultimate act of betrayal. A betrayal of biblical proportions. And I know then and there that there is no going back, no repair, no hope, no future, no forgiveness.

First thing I feel is hot, liquid pain coursing through my insides, followed immediately by the most unbearably heavy despair. It is somewhat apparent to me that I am capable of killing both of them, but instead I turn right around, and just like in a movie, my wife is yelling behind me, trying to explain. Explain what? I don't know: I just keep walking. I guess I could have gotten in my car and started driving, but instead I walked straight down the road, half expecting her to pursue me, and when she didn't, I just kept walking until hours melted away without my knowing it.

I entertain the idea of dropping in on a friend or relative and asking to sleep on the couch, but there will be an inevitable barrage of questions, and the thought of speaking exasperates me. Sleeping in my car occurs to me, but the thought is swiftly dismissed by the apprehension of coming into contact with the adulterous whore that wears my wedding ring. The disquiet eventually becomes torturous curiosity, and I find myself walking back toward my house. By this time, the sunlight is long gone and I start to wonder what time it is. I discover that my car keys are still in my pocket and think that if I can just get to my car, I can just as easily drive it away. But to where? I stop a block or so from our apartment and stare ahead, but my brain takes advantage of the silence and starts to churn up all the stagnant misery I had been allowing to fester in my skull. As if what I'm feeling is a headache, I grapple at my head, squinting fiercely, and feel the weight of the world begin to bow my spine. Then I'm sitting on the sidewalk crying. The weight of it all, much too much.