All things considered, the weather hadn't been a concern. This night had been planned for months. It wasn't simply a matter of scheduling and finding the right time. If that had been all there was to planning this night then the weather might have been considered, but instead it was only afterthought.
This night required a different type of planning. My wife Bella and I had decided months before, after much discussion and disagreement that we would make this night happen. It required manipulation. It required patience. Most of all it required that we control our desires and appetites until the time came and the moment happened.
All our planning, manipulation, and patience had brought us to this point. And now we just needed to exercise enough self-control to allow events to unfold. One misstep would ruin everything. One wrong word or false move could bring down months of work.
The foundation was built, the house was framed, and now we could move forward.
Rain had been predicted. We knew that much, but the preparations for this special night had not included close monitoring of the weather. A little rain was of no real consequence, or so we believed.
Bella and I lived in a big old house well off the main road. The house was surrounded by woods and built upon a hill. It was not our house. It belonged to the old man who lived upstairs who rented us the basement and left us to our devices. The house was over a hundred years old and had been in his family for four generations. He was the last of his line, never married, without any children, content to live out his days in isolation.
He rented out the basement in order to pay the taxes on his sizable estate. It was like a large apartment, with six rooms, ample space, and all the amenities one would need. It had come decorated with antique furniture and fixtures which made one feel like they had traveled back in time when they were inside. The fireplace in the living room was flanked by mounted animal heads, a moose to the left and a boar's head to the right. Their eyes appeared to follow as you moved about the room, and while we considered taking them down, the old man upstairs had been very insistent that we change nothing, that we not redecorate, and that the basement apartment remain just as it was.
We had rented the basement apartment in part because of Bella's need to be away from crowded places with too many people and too much noise. We needed a quiet place where she could feel at ease. She suffered from schizophrenia and her symptoms were magnified by exposure to an influx of variables over which she had no control. She tended to perceive people she did not know as threats. Unfamiliar sounds were a sign of something sinister. In our quiet apartment the variables could be controlled and limited.
We kept her condition a secret from the landlord, who considered her to be "odd." He was himself quite eccentric and this oddness did not seem to bother him. Most of the time, Bella was quite amenable and one would not suspect she was in any way "touched," as her mother called her when referring to her condition. At other times she seemed quirky, given to flights of fancy and a vivid imagination. With medication and regular visits to her therapist, she had become capable of handling the challenges of everyday living, as long as she was in an environment she felt she was in control of.
She found the sound of rain to be calming, which was why on this night, when our grand plan would come to fruition, I had little concern about the weather. Bella could stand in the rain for hours, and I would be driven to lead her back into the house, fearing she would become sick and need the care of a doctor she was not familiar with, or worse a busy hospital with far more stimuli than she could bear. The rain was calming, but a violent storm accompanied by thunder and lightning was a different animal.
The rain was steady, but calm, before Erika arrived at our door. She was Bella's therapist and had been treating her for the better part of three years. They had known each other longer than Bella and I had been married. I had taken Bella to see her for the first time not long after we began dating, soon after the first signs of her schizophrenia began to manifest in her behavior. Erika had taken a special interest in Bella's case, and although I am often ashamed to admit it, she also took a special interest in me.
Erika was a psychiatrist and her patients universally called her Dr. Erika because her last name was long and difficult to pronounce, a strange and unusual last name of Eastern European ancestry containing an abundance of letters from the back end of the alphabet. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, with blonde hair and big eyes so brown that in the right lighting they looked like black opals. One would never suspect she was a doctor of any kind by the way she dressed and presented herself. She always wore a short skirt, high heels, and a low-cut blouse that drew your gaze uncontrollably towards her very ample cleavage.
She only took female patients, probably because most male patients would be unable to concentrate on therapy and treatment. She was like the personification of the most obvious sexual fantasy of men, a tall blonde with an incredible body who wasn't afraid to put it on display.
Dr. Erika had asked to meet with me before Bella and I took our vows. It was a professional consult, as she was concerned I was not fully aware of the challenges of marrying a schizophrenic. We had numerous sessions over the next few months, and while I engaged with Erika because I wanted the best for Bella, I found myself unable to contain my desires when alone in a room with this beautiful, intelligent woman who began to haunt my dreams and appear constantly in my fantasies. Eventually, when I would make love with Bella, I would find myself imagining it was Erika beneath me and not my wife.
I decided to tell Dr. Erika I could no longer take sessions with her. She asked me why, and I told her I simply did not believe it was a good idea. She pushed for a deeper explanation, insisting we needed these sessions to better understand and do what was best for Bella. So, I confessed to Erika that I could not stop fantasizing about her and imagining being with her and that could certainly not be good for my relationship with my wife.
"Someone who chooses the life you have, to knowingly marry a schizophrenic with severe agoraphobia... very few would choose the life you have chosen," she told me. "There are those who find themselves in your situation, but not by choice, as the symptoms usually manifest after rather than before the marriage."
"I love Bella and I want what's best for her," I told Erika. "Our sessions have been helpful as far as expanding my understanding of her condition and so forth, but maybe there is another shrink I can meet with, someone who can understand the situation?"
"I said you were a very special case," Dr. Erika told me. "That isn't just because you chose to marry a woman who presents many challenges."
"What then?" I wondered.
"You are a very attractive, compassionate, and insightful person. I find you charming, witty, and with many qualities I find both rare and endearing. My interest in you isn't strictly professional."
That exchange was the beginning of our affair. Before I left her office, Erika gave me a pass key to a hotel room. It was in one of the most exclusive hotels in the city and it was there we met regularly for the next few months.
Our "new sessions" as she called them always involved role play, usually a variation on a theme where I was the psychiatrist and she was some kind of nymphomaniac under my care.
