ten
PAUL
Before
SOME PEOPLE JUST can’t understand when things have run their course.
Rebecca and I had barely made it back to the car following our encounter with Sheila when my phone started buzzing off the hook. I hadn’t had a chance to properly collect myself when the onslaught began. I somehow knew, as soon as my pocket began vibrating, exactly who was on the other end of those texts.
I had, of course, blocked Sheila’s number on my call list, but here were a batch of messages coming in from an unknown number that could only belong to one person. Of that I was certain.
As he often had, Wes served as the perfect alibi. I was still shaky from the near run-in, and I was worried that I had somehow betrayed the situation to Rebecca. I could sense the change in myself following the incident, and I was afraid that my wife, as distracted as she’d seemed lately, had picked up on something. So when I drew the phone from my pocket and Rebecca asked if everything was okay, I at least had the presence of mind to blame Wes and the prospect of a new property on the market. The nature of the texts that were flooding my phone’s display was, of course, of a much different stripe.
Great to see you today. You look well.
What a beautiful wife! What a beautiful couple!
Gosh, she looked so contented. Poor thing. She must have no idea who she’s really married to.
You two really deserve one another.
I’VE ALWAYS CONSIDERED myself a reasonably savvy bullshitter, but even I could feel the lies oozing out of me like toxins. After returning home that day, I spent the rest of the afternoon between the office and the back porch, in an attempt to convince my wife of a lie that I could barely get my head on straight enough to try to sell. I made a big show of taking my laptop out back as I called Wes to cross-reference figures and whatever other professional-sounding nonsense I could think of. Thankfully, it was one of those mild winter days, although the adrenaline coursing through my body was making me largely impervious to the weather. I remember the experience being akin to what one describes when recalling an out-of-body event. And as soon as I hung up the phone and folded the laptop closed, Rebecca was all over me.
“Quite an afternoon of wheeling and dealing, huh? Wes really has you all worked up.”
“Yeah, he’s really hot for this property. Talked my goddamn ear off all afternoon. Sorry, babe.” I can’t remember being more thirsty.
“Hmm.” Her eyes seem to be staring through to the back of my skull.
“What’s that?” Calm the fuck down, man. Breathe.
“Oh, nothing.”
Something. Definitely a very big something. “You seem like you’re think—”
“It just . . .” The pause stretches out for an unbearably long time. “Doesn’t strike me as his style. Wes always seems so calm and collected.”
Fuck. “I know, it’s strange. He’s not usually like this. But this property really seems unreal.” I do my best to hold her stare, in spite of the fact that my eyes are burning terribly. I want nothing more than to blink. “But, you know, it’s usually with the customers that he maintains his cool. He can get a little revved up behind closed doors.” You’re overselling. Stop blathering, you fucking dummy. You’re going to blow everything. Stop. Talking. “Yeah.”
“Huh.” She seems to consider this. “I see.”
As the afternoon faded into evening, I was finally able to get my head on straight enough to relax into what I felt to be some sense of normalcy, or at least the appearance of it. By this point, I had texted Wes to let him know that I needed a well-timed phone call during dinner prep. As I had volunteered to handle cooking duties that night, I figured that I could leave my phone on the counter while I had my hands full, allowing Rebecca to see Wes’s name come up on the screen when the call came in. The timing worked out beautifully, and for a moment I thought I was in the clear.
Then the next wave of texts came in.
Paul, you really looked happy today. I’m happy for you. No hard feelings, okay?
I really do have fond memories of us. Let’s just leave things where they are.
Let’s let sleeping dogs lie, you lying dog. Enjoy your sleep, with your wife this time.
I didn’t remember tasting a single bite of the food I’d prepared that evening. There was a rage seething behind my eyes that rendered all other senses moot. I did my best to entertain Rebecca’s questions about the property that Wes had supposedly pitched me earlier in the day, but I was so distracted that the best I could do was to cobble together a template based on features from other houses I had sold. I was too deep inside my own head to notice if Rebecca actually bought into the yarn I was spinning.
The next thing I remember was the sex. There was a hunger to the fucking that I hadn’t experienced with my wife in ages. Suddenly, I was present again. She bit my earlobe as she coaxed me out of my pants and began working me with her hand. What followed was a tidal pull of raw, animal passion. I remember unleashing on her ferociously, as if I could exorcise my mistress by conquering my wife. I remember being terrified at catching myself and realizing how thoroughly I had given over to reckless abandon. But the thing that I remember the clearest—the thing that terrified me most of all—was that look in Rebecca’s eye; the look that encouraged me, that spurred me on, that delighted in the pain and the savagery and the madness of it all. I swear that in that moment I picked up on a flash of pure hatred lurking in her eyes, and I had no idea whom it was directed at.
That night, she slept like the dead.
When I was sure she was under, I swiped my phone from the nightstand and slunk out of our bedroom and into the hallway. I was ripe with the scent of sex, keyed up, and half-crazed. I should have left well enough alone, but I gave in.
Noticed you weren’t wearing your ring earlier. He finally left your crazy ass, huh?
As soon as I hit SEND my adrenaline spiked. I felt nauseous and lightheaded. I had to lean against the wall to balance myself. I waited for what felt like hours for her response.
Why are you so sure that HE left ME?
THE NEXT MORNING, I was the first one up. I slipped out of bed and headed downstairs to put on a pot of coffee. I let Duff out and filled his food and water dishes. I found my phone and read the waiting text from Wes asking if things had shaken out okay the night before. After responding, I plugged the phone into the adapter to charge the dwindling battery before I let Duff back in. He darted right for the bowl and I took that as my cue to get going on the pile of unwashed dishes from the night before.
As I scoured the pans and set them in the drying rack, my mind began to wander back to the events of the previous evening. Images fuzzed in and out of my head like a hastily edited highlight reel. Just as I was zoning out, the vibration of the phone against the countertop snapped me back into the room. I reached for it, anticipating a response from Wes. What I got instead jolted me completely out of the remnants of my daydream.
A slew of images came through from Sheila’s new number. After a moment of hesitation, I opened the texts to find photos that she had taken when we were together. There were photos of me at the beach with the dogs, a shot of the dogs running around together in her yard, and a plausibly innocent selfie of her with me in the background.
The one that caught my attention, however, was a shot I hadn’t realized she had taken. It was in her home, post-sex, and it was an image of me walking to the bathroom, naked. My face was obscured, thank fuck, but I certainly recognized my own build. As my eyes took in the photo, my breath caught in my throat. My gaze reflexively darted toward the staircase, to make sure that Rebecca hadn’t come down the stairs at what would have been a very inopportune moment.
My brain began racing. What does this crazy bitch want from me? Why the photos, why now? She’s been sitting on them. He’s out of the picture. Maybe seeing us sent her off the deep end. Christ, how far down the drain has she gone? And how much is she willing to pull down with her?
As I was working through all of the permutations, my phone vibrated again. I opened a single text message from her, the last one I would receive, before she fell eerily silent.
You’ve made your bed.
I’M A REASONABLE PERSON. I find that most people are. But want to make a reasonable person behave irrationally? Just impose irrationality upon them, and your work is done. Certain chains of events, once put into motion, are nearly impossible to stop. And there are boundaries that, once violated, serve to strip away any expectation of protection for the violator.
The way I see it, Rebecca never really had a choice.