This story started out a few months ago. It was finished, but I did not know what to do with it and was not going to publish it. Then I realised it fitted into the 'First We Practice to Deceive' story theme, so I revived it, did a bit of a rewrite, and let's see what happens. The story plot is not original, I wanted to give my take.
Many thanks to my editor kenjisato for the editing.
_______________________________
I sat in the bar with a beer, looking out the window at the waves on the lake. It was blowing a gale outside, but I knew it was just the prelude to what was about to explode in my life.
At precisely four-twenty-two on Sunday afternoon, twenty-two minutes later than she said she would see me, a text came into my phone. As expected, it was my wife, or should I say soon-to-be ex-wife. The message read, "Where are you?"
The question was -- was she that stupid, or did she think I was so attached to her that I would take everything she handed out to me? What should I do? To ignore her, or at least, get this mess started. I had already switched off my location services, so she could not use the phone-finder app, and I had paid for the hotel using my old credit card, so she could not find the information about the hotel on the banking app.
My reply was, "Gone, for good"
She replied instantly with, "WTF." Then, a few minutes later, with, "What do you mean, I am back home and wanted to give you your present"
I laughed, a present. I replied, "No thanks, what you have to offer isn't a present anymore"
My phone rang, but I cut it off. It rang immediately again, and I cut it off again.
I sent a further message, saying, "Nothing to discuss, you did what you did and now I am doing what I will do"
Her reply took twenty minutes. She obviously had to take time to compose this message. It said, "Dan, what do you mean, what are you going to do? This weekend was a little time for me. I explained everything to you. Now I am back I wanted to give everything to you. I am putting on dinner, your favourite Spaghetti meatballs. When can I expect you home"
I shook my head, she really hadn't listened all week, but she always did have a tendency to being an airhead when she was obsessed with something. Oh well. Her fault!
I'm Dan Simpson and my wife is Marge. Yep, we have heard every joke in the book and a lot more. We have been married for three years, but things between us have been a bit off for a while, and I thought the marriage was drifting onto the rocks; that is, until my wife took the wheel and crashed us right into the middle of them.
What I didn't know was there was a snake in the grass, in the form of one of her co-workers. She, Jackie Devin, was the office party animal, and was whispering in Marge's ear about how my wife needed some 'strange' to liven up our sex lives. The issue commenced last Sunday.
Marge had been strange from the time she arrived home from work on Friday night. The first thing was no drinks after work. Normally, she arrived home at seven-thirty, usually with three or four drinks taken. It often resulted in a row, and certainly, no intimacy.
Tonight, she was home for five-thirty, and made a very nice curry for dinner. She threw herself at me Friday night, and again, Saturday morning. Instead of going to the gym and shopping on Saturday morning, where she would meet up with Jackie, she asked me to go out to the shops and have lunch with her.
Saturday night was the same, a nice meal and sex on tap. On Sunday, she surprised me by saying, "Why not go and play golf today. You haven't been out with the boys for ages."
That was not only unusual, it was worrying. She hated my friends and she made sure I, and they, knew it. I had stopped playing golf on a Sunday about four months ago because the abuse was so bad, I just could not be bothered listening to it anymore.
I also knew she was distracted by something. She spent a lot of time texting on her phone, and she appeared to have a very apprehensive smile, like she was trying to prove something to me.
I decided I would go golfing, but I left with a sick feeling in my stomach. I knew I was coming back to something bad, but what would it be?
By the time I had finished the eighteen holes, I wished I hadn't bothered. My friends ribbed me mercilessly about being henpecked, my game was so rusty it was painful for even me to watch, and the butterflies in my stomach about what I would find when I went home just would not go away.
I took one soft drink and headed for home as soon as I could. As I arrived in the door, I could hear Marge on the phone. Before I could get close enough to hear anything, I heard her say, "He's home got to go. I'll speak to you later." Then, she hung up.
She turned to me with a big smile, but there was something wrong with this picture, and asked, "Did you have a good game?"
I wasn't going to play the game any longer. I had to get this out of the way. So, I replied, "No, terrible. Is everything OK with you? Are you getting me ready for a big after-dinner chat?"
I knew I had hit a nerve because the mask slipped and the smile vanished, being replaced with a look which suggested she was terrified. I just turned and headed up the stairs, saying, "Obviously, you have something planned, so I'm going for a shower before we arrive at the big reveal in your timetable." Yes, I was being a bit of a prick, but I knew this perfect-wife act was not for my benefit, and I wanted her to know it, as well.
I was just drying myself when Marge came into the bedroom. She said, "Come down when you are finished, I want to make a suggestion to you. We both know our marriage needs a reboot and I think I have found it."
Well that was, at least, an improvement. Over the last number of months, she had point blank refused to discuss our marriage. The problem was, did Marge come up with the solution, or did Jackie make the suggestion? If it was the latter, I had a feeling I wasn't going to like it.
Once I had changed, I went downstairs to find her sitting in the office, working on her computer. We had a large, two-person desk, which meant we could both work at either side of the table and we had both set up our own spaces. Mine had a desktop, printer and trays; hers had a laptop, printer and a large space which she filled with junk, mostly magazines.
I sat down opposite her and she looked up at me and smiled. She began her explanation of her thought process. "You look refreshed. I was hoping to speak to you after dinner, but you jumped me a bit. You have been saying for a few months our marriage has been drifting to the rocks and, although I knew that, I didn't know what to do. Jackie noticed how depressed I was and she eventually got it out of me that I was worried that our marriage was going off course. We talked and she said she used some tricks to keep her marriage fresh."
At this point, I held up my hand, and interrupted, "I thought Jackie had divorced twice and says she will never marry again. Is she really a good person to be taking marital advice from?"
Marge looked at me. For the first time since I came into the office, I noticed she was wearing glasses. Marge need glasses but never wore them, unless she was in deep thought about something. Clearly, this was serious for her. I just hoped it was sensible.
She continued, "Both her husbands were older than her and were a bit old fashioned. I know you are more with the times." She then reached over to the pile of magazines and took the top one. She flicked through it until she arrived at a page that had been turned over, clearly marking the spot. She handed it to me, saying, "Jackie said she was going to use this to lighten up her second husband, but he just could not see the benefits. I can see it easily and I know your mind will clearly pick up on it."
I took the magazine but kept looking at Marge, I knew she wanted to say something, but was clearly waiting until I started reading.
She would not hold my eye contact and she returned her attention to the computer screen. As I slowly looked away from her, I noticed her printer had several pages on it which she had just printed out.
I, firstly, closed the magazine to see which one it was. It was a women's magazine, one with a reputation for being a bit over the top. I knew she didn't buy this magazine, she preferred ones with more gossip, so it had been given to her. I checked the date and it was over a year old.
I looked up to see her looking at me and she was biting her bottom lip. When I looked up at her, she averted her gaze back to the screen. She was absolutely terrified of what my reaction would be. This was not shaping up well.
I opened it at the marked page and pushed the folded page back. The headline told me just how big a mess I was in. It read, "The answer to a drifting marriage: Cuckold your husband to get his juices flowing."
I threw the magazine across the desk, where it landed on Marge's keyboard and I just said, "NO! Not a fucking chance."
She looked up at me, and pleaded, "Will you not read it? There are case studies of how this works and the results have been spectacular. Jackie said her second husband researched it and he was interested in it, but ultimately was just too old fashioned."
By this stage, I was taking deep breaths to try to reduce my anger, but it wasn't working. I hissed at her, shouting, "Well, if rejecting this is old fashioned, then I'm as old fashioned as him. Even presenting this is grounds to end our marriage; if you go ahead with it, our marriage is over, finished, finito. Do you understand?"
"Jackie said you would be initially upset, but you need to see the benefits. I have shown you what I can be like when I am happy. This weekend has been great. Doing this once a month will make every weekend like this," she said, in a voice which was half pleading, half whining. P
I didn't think she spotted it, but it grated on my nerves like someone running their fingernails down a blackboard.
I shook my head. "Marge, this weekend has been fake. Not only would I not accept what you are offering as a price for you being a slut; I promise you, I will walk out that door and never be back. No ifs, no buts, no attempts at counselling or reconciliation. Do I need to make myself any clearer?"