Just a quick, and I do mean quick, as in I thought of the idea, wrote it and had CTC edit it in one day. Thanks Lovey.
I think it's a unique plot but if I'm wrong, I'm sorry for the bum steer.
You can thank Charlie for the title, I do.
No sex, just consequences.
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IN A DAZE, not even realising I was doing it, I stepped down off the little ladder I'd dragged from my closet and staggered back toward the bed. When it hit the back of my knees, I sat heavily; staring at the thing revealed by the open, dangling cover of the smoke detector. All the implications of why and how the object of my stare had gotten to be where it was, and exactly what it meant, flooded my mind.
I'm not absolutely sure when the suspicion firmed in my head that Veronica, my wife of three years, was cheating on me, but firmed it had. From the research I'd done, she was showing many of the classic signs of an adulterer.
The sudden change from never having to go away on overnight trips for her job, to having to go away for the whole weekend, as she was right now, just solidified what had been making me nervous for a while. I mean, who leaves for a work trip on Friday afternoon? Or to put things in their correct timeline, three hours ago. At least the last short-notice two-day trip she'd taken had been a less socially disruptive mid-week one.
Looking back on it, the suspicions probably began to raise their ugly heads around a month ago. I'd come back from a trip of my own to find Ronnie suddenly changed. Colder, more emotionally detached than before, less affectionate by a large factor.
We always had sex after I came back from a trip, but this time she made her excuses and begged off. I'd tried for a couple of nights after that but was rebuffed. Considerate guy that I was, I stopped nagging; hoping she would come out of whatever funk she was in. I realised that here we were, a month later, and we hadn't made love since the night before the first trip. Peering up at the smoke detector above the bed in the bedroom of our apartment, I now knew why.
The sudden change in one behaviour prompted me to look for other differences. With my eyes opened, there was no shortage of clues. I caught her looking at me when she thought I was otherwise occupied, then she would look away when I glanced toward her.
Was it my imagination or did her, 'I love you's' seem a little forced these days?
Further, many aspects of her routine had changed recently. Ranging from a dramatic increase in girls-nights-out, suddenly guarding her computer and changing the password, taking phone calls, then walking out of earshot while speaking, to conversations with her best friend, Julie, in the kitchen ceasing abruptly when I walked in the house.
They were all there, and all reinforced my mounting paranoia. Not wanting to accept what I now strongly suspected, I began cataloguing when I thought she had the opportunity. I followed her on her next girl's night and was pleasantly surprised she was exactly where she was supposed to be, behaving exactly how a wife should.
In a fit of minor spite, I changed my login password as well. If she was going to keep secrets, I'd be damned if I'd give her free access to my stuff.
Her actions and attitude affected me. Some nights I couldn't guarantee I was calm enough to pretend normality at home, so I stayed later at the office, or went to have a drink with friends.
I hated what she'd reduced me to. Things like, I'd taken to ringing her desk phone at lunch times. I hated even more seeing, over a series of weeks, a pattern form. Where she'd previously always taken a bare half for lunch, she now took an hour or more most days. Plenty of time for lunch with a lover. Just enough time for a quickie? Unfortunately, part of my job description was to cover the reception and phones over the lunch hour, so I could never stake out Ronnie's work to follow her. I suppose I could have taken a day off I suppose, but subconsciously I was afraid of what I'd uncover.
I was frustrated that our finances didn't stretch to hiring a P.I. to follow her on her first ever overnight work trip, two weeks ago. Ringing her at all hours while she was away, she never failed to answer promptly and never seemed out of breath, but I knew she was a smart woman.
How smart was revealed by the object exposed by the dangling smoke detector cover over the bed. One sight of that object, and I knew instantly not only that she was cheating on me, but that she was going to extraordinary lengths to make sure I didn't find out.
All my suspicions coalesced that afternoon. Wanting to see my wife before she left to see her lover for the weekend—I suppose in the vain hope I could remind her enough that I loved her to stop the plan—I came home a little early, timing it so she was home from the office, but had yet to leave for the airport.
She wasn't expecting me, obviously, and came out of the bedroom looking guilty as hell. I sat on the bed until she had no choice but to go into the bathroom to finish her make-up. Then, I subtly checked the closet and under the bed; nothing. Then checked her phone was still protected by an unknown password and carefully lifted enough clothes from her suitcase to ascertain there was no suspicious lingerie or cocktail dresses packed.
This puzzled me. She'd definitely been up to no good in this room when I walked into the house. After that, I checked the trunk of her car for other bags. Nothing, but then she's a very smart woman.
Instead of allaying my fears and lessening my suspicions that my loving wife was doing the dirty on me, the lack of evidence increased them. It infuriated me that she was outsmarting me.
I came up with a plan to catch her that was within my budget. I would invent a work trip away of my own, next week. Maybe Veronica would take that opportunity to invite her lover over while I was away. I would install a tiny camera in the smoke detector above the bed to record the action. It was only a one-bedroom apartment, so one camera was all I needed. Once my suspicions were confirmed, I knew exactly what to do to dissolve this joke of a marriage without being financially raped.
Thus it was, three hours after Veronica left on her second overnight, 'business trip', I'd moved the bed aside, dragged our little three-step household ladder under the centrally located smoke alarm and released the little clip on the side of the device, causing the cover to open and hang down on its hinge.
Inside was an identical camera to the one held in my left hand. A camera that broadcast a signal to a little transponder, that could be secreted just about anywhere. A transponder that in turn relayed a signal to either a monitor for live, or a recorder for later, viewing. I knew with certainty that my wife would have gone for a combination of the two.
So, not only was she having an affair, but was monitoring my whereabouts and behaviour while she was doing it to watch for signs I suspected her. I rose and walked into the lounge. There was another smoke detector, and, sure enough, it contained another camera.
Just to confirm my suspicions beyond a shadow of a doubt, I went over my car with a fine-toothed comb. It took me a quarter of an hour to find the tiny GPS tracker.
I rested my hands on the bonnet, chin on chest, sickened at the thought that right at that very moment, my wife was in another city, being fucked by an unknown stranger. Or was she? Suddenly, I remembered how stridently Veronica had refused my offers to drop her at the airport. I lifted my head, staring sightlessly at the garage door, while my thoughts raced. Could it be she hadn't flown anywhere? Could she be somewhere in town right now, overflowing with her lover's cum?
No. The woman I knew was way too smart not to make the guy wear a rubber. Too much chance of passing on an STD to me.
I shook my head, realising I was distracting myself; deferring the inevitable conversation with myself. Could I forgive my wife sleeping around on me? Never! There, conversation over. I'm an impatient bugger. The thought of waiting till she returned on Sunday night to confront her wasn't an option. I needed to find her and get it over with immediately.
Veronica handled all the family finances. I pulled all the latest bank statements from the filing cabinet and looked at the last month. Nothing unusual until I got to the line, 'transferred to account number XYZ', an amount of $500. Logging on to Netbank, I plugged in the given account number. I looked in the little notebook, where my wife kept coded passwords, found an unfamiliar one, then guessed the code on the third attempt.
The account was a credit card I didn't know she owned. The latest transaction was not three hours old. At a budget chain motel not a ten-minute drive away.
For some reason, the knowledge that she was footing the bill for her tryst with her lover, made me angry. The knowledge that she was effectively stealing our money to do it, made me livid.
Further up the statement was a record from the same motel that coincided with her first supposed trip out of town. Further above that, the entry from when she'd bought her surveillance equipment. Ironically, she'd bought it from the same store I did. A glance at the statement showed she'd made the purchase three days after I'd returned from my last trip. So, she'd probably met the cunt while I was away. That made sense.
I knew if I went over there in anywhere near my current frame of mind, I might kill someone, so I sat down and took some deliberate deep breaths. Time to think. Did Veronica know I'd found her cameras? Did she have her laptop continually feeding footage as she lay on her back being ploughed by whoever he was? Unlikely. I couldn't see her being as heartless as that. After all, I knew one of her motivations for taking such extraordinary lengths to prevent me discovering her affair was to save me pain. It must have been, otherwise she was far from the loving person I thought her to be.
More likely was that she was recording the camera footage. Going back out to my car, I took down the details of the GPS tracker and googled it. Sure enough, it had a software function that could alarm to a cell phone when the unit was on the move. So, no need to disturb her lover's and her consciences by having feed from our house up on the screen the whole time. All she had to do was keep an ear out for that alarm. Sneaky bitch.
