Part Two of Two
Facing the mistake
After exhausting her remaining vacation with six straight days of crying, Paula reluctantly returned to work. Her fuck-buddy, Bart, surely would be angry. She had not answered his dozens of calls, texts and emails. He did not know where she lived. And, of course, he had no idea what had happened.
His back was to the open doorway when she stepped into his office. "We're done," she declared. Her voice was soft but firm. Wounded soft, not sexy soft. As he spun in his chair, she spouted out answers before he had a chance to ask questions.
"It was a mistake. A stupid fling. I don't love you. I don't want you. I know the office is so small that I still have to work for you. But I'm sending out applications this week, and you'd damned well better give me a good reference."
Silence hung for a while before Bart responded, "He knows?"
Paula turned away, partly to hide her tears and partly to enforce the promise she had made to herself not to humiliate Bic by discussing him in any way with her lover. Well, now her ex-lover.
"Does he know who I am? Is he mad? Should I be scared?"
Paula looked back, sizing him up in disbelief that she threw away her perfect life for this.
"I don't know exactly what he knows, or exactly how he feels. We haven't talked. I'm sure he must know who you are. I'm not saying you should be scared. But if you knew who he was, you would be."
"So who is he?" Bart asked with urgent concern.
"None of your business."
"That's not fair. He knows who I am but I don't now who he is? How do I defend myself?"
"You don't, asshole," Paula said as she began moving back toward the door. "What I did was my fault and I accept the blame for it. But seducing married women - and you did know I was a married woman - is dangerous business. I have just one piece of advice for you, and you should listen to it very carefully: There are no coincidences."
Waiting and waiting
At home, Paula spent what felt like hours every day checking and rechecking her cellphone for texts or emails. When it would ring, she lunged for it. But there was nothing from Bic. Wickerhaus and Lankersham provided no insight, and seemed to barely tolerate her calls. She must have left a dozen messages on the FBI emergency contact line. The operator accepted them dutifully, but without result.
Paula was eating tuna out of a can in her kitchen, imagining that Bic was baking pork chops for dinner, when the daydream was interrupted by knocking on her front door. Bic wouldn't knock. Would he? The stranger on the stoop handed her a large envelope. Her heart pounded as she expected to hear the words, "You've been served." But the man departed without uttering a syllable.
Her hand trembling, Paula dumped the contents onto the kitchen table: Assorted financial documents and a note in Bic's handwriting. It read, "This will be helpful to you. The bank account and credit cards are still open. My paycheck will still be directly deposited. I will withdraw $3,000 for living expenses on the 15th of each month."
There was no signature. No emotion. No mention of her betrayal, nor of a divorce, nor of forgiveness. No address or phone number. No indication when or whether he might come home. The detective's wife did spy one clue. There were maybe a dozen little oval wrinkles on the page, each about the size of a teardrop. Paula added about a dozen of her own.
Insights on an ego fuck
Her life slowly regained a semblance of structure, in that she was working, eating and achieving occasional success with sleep. But the unrelenting weight of her situation was crushing. Sometimes almost literally. At random moments she might find herself struggling just to catch a deep breath.
Food had no taste. Music had no beat. When she tried to watch TV, the show she saw on every channel was the same: a fuzzy review of the collapse of her life, played over and over in bleak black and white.
She felt no urge to reach out to others for comfort. Not to her mother, 500 miles east, nor her brother, half that far south. Not to friends, who had once openly admired Paula's obvious marital bliss. None of them had known her secret. Nobody but Bart. And her feelings about him were dead. Not love. She never was never remotely close to in love with him. But not hate either. He might be a pig, but she knew that she had willingly, even eagerly, joined him in the slop.
Bart had been just a thrill, an ego fuck that any new cock might have provided. Yet there was no thrill in the memory. Two weeks into her despair, facing the prospect of another lonely night, Paula let her fingertips wander under the elastic of her panties in search of release. She knew from experience that even vigorous rubbing would be futile without engaging her imagination. Not until reaching a small climax - the only kind available - did it occur to Paula that with no conscious consideration whatsoever, she had chosen to imagine herself writhing under Bic. It seemed that Bart, so recently the subject of her tawdry fantasies, had metaphorically left the building.
As if her circumstances were not bad enough, a police spouse begins each day with the real possibility of ending it widowed. The risk may be recognized with an extra embrace or a long good-by kiss on the way to the door. But for Paula there were no more embraces, no more kisses. Just the fear that Bic could die today without knowing how sorry she was. How much she loved him. Only him. And without an opportunity for her to seek absolution.
That fear, more than everything else, led Paula to seek counseling. It was not with the police psychologist, but a woman that he had recommended. Twice a week Paula met with her for an hour. Absent the husband, the counselor could hardly assess the prospects for the only thing now driving Paula's heart: a reconciliation.
If there were only limited insights to the couple's future, the sessions drew out some telling ones about Paula's own past. Her teen years were frustrating, marked by too much acne and too little shape development. Her beauty bloomed late, in college. And despite semi-serious relationships there, some deep part of her longed to recover the missed years of high school dating and young male adulation. Bic, while truly being her knight in shining armor, also was a subconscious competitor, diverting too much attention from her at gatherings of friends and relatives. The counselor explained that Paula was dry tinder for a spark from a smooth talker like Bart.
This new ability to grasp the motivation for her infidelity provided a small but perceptible lift in her spirits. The sun shone brighter, and the breeze tasted fresher as she emerged from the entrance of the counseling office and toward her red Hyundai Elantra just a few steps away. Running late, Paula had been fortunate to find an empty parking spot right outside the front door. She vividly recalled pulling right in, and her tires bumping the parking block hard. So how was it that her car was now backed into the same spot? She always hated backing up. She didn't think she had ever backed into parking place in her life.
A hopeful sign
A fresh flood of tears soaked the front of her sweater as she climbed behind the steering wheel. She was still receiving Bic's signals! He must have used his spare key to sit right in this car. In this seat. Just within the past hour. She climbed out and stood, suddenly aware that he might still be nearby. Maybe hiding. Maybe watching her reaction. A scan left to right revealed nothing. But how do you spot a surveillance expert? She realized that she would see him only if he wanted.
Paula was so overwhelmed that had traffic not been light, she might never have reached her office safely. Her new office. True to what she had told Bart, she found another job in her old line. The miles between the former lovers brought her comfort, although whatever attraction she ever felt for him was long gone anyway.
She presumed that Bic's pranks during the affair were a sort of warning: A way to communicate that he knew, without actually telling her he knew. And, oh God, how she wished she had heeded those signals from the start. She bit her lip as she considered the remote possibility that if Bic had seen the affair stop quickly, their marriage might even have endured without a confrontation.
But what could be the purpose of today's prank? She settled on two possibilities that melded into one: He wanted her to know he was still watching, which implied that he still cared. And, given where her car had been, he probably knew she was receiving counseling.
When Paula walked outside the next morning, she glanced up and down the street. Was he watching? Since yesterday, she felt his eyes on her all the time. What should be creepy was instead oddly reassuring. She allowed herself the fantasy that if she stumbled on the sidewalk, he would emerge from nowhere in time to catch her. Just as he must have tried to stop her when she was stumbling with Bart.
More weeks passed without another sign. Paula despaired. Had he lost interest? Had she misread his turning around her car? Or had she just been wrong about the way she had parked it? Was there some way to construe it as a goodbye? She called his FBI contact number regularly, if less frequently. At police headquarters, Bic's partner and boss said that since they were not part of the task force, they had no contact with him. She wasn't certain they would tell her either way.
Perhaps - and she hung her hopes on this - Bic was out of town on assignment, as Lankersham said. It would suggest that her husband had made his presence known on a visit back. His assignment would last at least six months, his boss had told her. Two-thirds of that had already passed.
Terror knocks
It was five months to the day of Bic's departure that someone banged on Paula's door about 7:15 a.m. Her racing heart beat even faster when she peeked out a window to see two men in suits on her doorstep, one with a small gold shield clipped to his belt and a leather credential case in his hand.
She held her breath before opening. Five seconds, ten. It was as if by stalling she was prolonging Bic's life. They banged again and she relented.
The taller FBI man first verified that she was Bic's wife. "He's been hurt," the man said, adding words that Paula initially did not hear. She was busy processing the implication that the love of her life was at least alive.
