Carmen Sorrento wanted me to fuck her. Naturally, I wanted the same thing. We sealed the deal on my purple futon. Sold to me by a fellow with an uncanny resemblance to the fucker who successfully coveted my wife Monica, both men shared the same olive complexion, busy moustaches and wavy black hair. Unfortunately, lots of hard looking and edgy men, men of a certain coloring and churlish character appealed to my soon to be ex-wife. On that day several weeks after the break up of my marriage, I wanted the bastard in hell but first I wanted to torture him. My personal favorite was the idea of cramming him in a fifty gallon drum punctured with tiny holes, tossing the barrel into the drink, watching it bob about in the water and then inexorably sinking, this fellow's screams loud and clear until silenced by the cold water as it rose high enough inside the barrel, flooded his mouth, filled his nostrils. As the cylinder disappeared under the waves, drops of water looking like dollops of mercury first on the sealed lid and then total dunking under the water my final glimpse of the fucker's death trap. No, I needed two drums: one for good old Mark and one for dear sweet Monica.
Looking at the doppelganger of Monica's lover made me squeeze my left fist until its knuckles turned white. Fortunately, I restrained the impulse to punch the guy. I purchased the futon with as little conversation as the transaction allowed. I knew on an intellectual level this man had no responsibility for my wife's adultery. Or maybe he did, Monica was free with her favors and maybe she had fucked this guy like she had fornicated with all her other dark men. What made me squeeze my left fist bleach its knuckles white, to imagine his battered body sprawled in a wreckage of futon pads and the splinters of broken wooden frames came from that dark place in every man's soul where such things as reason, common sense and compassion are dispatched in the manner of snow flakes landing on a camp fire.
I had adored my wife and during our eight year marriage I never cheated on Monica. Unfortunately Monica could not make the same claim as I found out in late July of 2001 when my fishing trip floating down Oregon's Rogue River came to a bust. My buddy Max Schmeling, the claims adjustor not the heavyweight boxer, got word his father had just died of a heart attack and he had to fly to Denver. That left Joe Murphy and me to fish for steelhead. Then Joe broke his left arm and the fishing trip we planned for nearly a year ended four days early. That evening shortly after 8 p.m., my marriage ended early too. After a six hour drive home, I left my fishing gear in the trunk and still attired in my fishing togs, I carried one grande decaf lattes and one tall decaf CafΓ© Americano from Starbucks into my secluded house. I heard the grandfather clock ticking in the entry way and the much louder sounds of moans from the direction of the master bedroom. Was my little blue eyed, red haired vixen watching a porno while I fished? I smiled anticipating making love to my lovely wife.
At the bedroom door, I squatted down, gently placed the two cups of coffee on the carpet. I pushed back on the bedroom door and my eyes saw what my ears already had heard. Still squatting I could see Monica in the middle of our queen sized bed astride a beefy man covered with lots of black hair on his head, under his flaring nose and thatched across his chest, legs and no doubt his back. His skin, the color of brown gravy, made Monica's freckled flesh all the whiter.
Monica bounced up and down on the man. Pleated blue curtains draped the window to the left of the bed. Four candles I had purchased in a store at the mall, never to be used by me and my woman were in use now. Flame levitated on each candle, the oval shaped cylinders shined brightly as they melted away under the dollops of fire. Residual light danced about the vaulted ceiling, cast a buttery glow on my wife and her lover and painted shadows on the globes of Monica's ass and shoulder blades. Occasionally, I could see the man's pubic hair, a cloud of black, before Monica's haunches smashed down on it and his prick battered deep into her. She leaned forward; the man sucked the nipples of her large firm breasts. Monica gripped the top of the bed's headboard and bucked up and down on the man's swollen cock. "Fuck me with that nice sweet cock," Monica said.
Bolero, barely audible, played on the compact disc player.
"What the fuck," I said. Monica and her lover finally realized they had an audience. Monica squealed and broke her connection with the man under her.
I had kicked over the two coffees as I stood up and stepped into the bedroom.
Monica gripped the blue sheets and dragged them up to her chin. At that moment I wished I was returning from a hunting trip instead of a fishing trip. With a rifle or a shotgun I could have plugged them both. My fly rod still in the car offered not much utility in the way of homicide."Jack, don't do anything stupid," Monica said.
"God damn it did you have to use the fucking candles," I said. I turned on my heel, squished through the coffee pooling on the floor and fled from the house. Before backing out of the driveway, I paused to pond my fists on the steering wheel. Tears bigger then the drops of flame on the candles rolled down my cheeks and I screamed in rage.
In the weeks that followed we separated and divorced as quickly as Monica unlinked from her lover. I learned my marriage was a sham from nearly the beginning. Monica had a kept a series of lovers throughout our marriage. She had fucked them numerous times in our bed, in our cloistered backyard, seedy motels and wherever else she deemed appropriate. The guy I caught her with was only her latest paramour.
My grandfather, the man with my greatest respect, when he heard about the breakup, did not say "I told you so" but I knew he was thinking it.
When I had announced my plans to marry Monica, my grandfather had said, "Son, that woman may be too much for you to handle."
My grandfather, a veteran of the 101st Airborne in World War II, a trooper who slugged his way from a beach in Normandy, France on D-Day to Bastogne in Belgium where he was severely wounded was the wisest of men and I should have listened to his sage advice.
Not me, I knew better. I loved Monica and she loved me and that was all that mattered.
Jason Finlander, my grandfather, was his own man. No one had a memory of him ever losing an argument. He could be loud, obnoxious, and contrary and his word was his bond. Anything he did, he did his best and he expected the same standard of conduct from his family and his employees.