I'm always told (in addition to "kill yourself") that I write too many words. This story is very slimmed down so there are areas which may need more explanation.
I was already suspicious about my wife Elaine and my so-called best friend Martin. I had seen them together too often to ignore what was happening. They had that superior look like they knew the joke. I just never caught them together when I wouldn't expect them to be.
I had become wary of saying anything as they seemed to know everything I did. Call me paranoid but I thought she had me under surveillance. I suspected she had the house and our home computer bugged. I had left my phone at work one night by mistake and she was totally surprised when I came in the door. The next day I checked it and there was a tracker programme which I never installed. That was a month ago.
I decided to work on the assumption that they were having an affair and keeping me from finding out by spying on me. As we hadn't had sexual relations in months, I was happy in that I wasn't getting sloppy seconds.
Now, I could have reacted with anger. Beaten the crap out of him, thrown her out but I had no proof. I'm an engineer so I suppose many would say I was methodical in what I do. Certainly, at work, it takes diligence and perseverance to track down problems, especially if you're trying to stop them happening before they cause damage.
Firstly, I bought another phone which I mated with my other one apart from the tracker. If I left the original at work, I could answer any call from them as though I was there. I opened a new bank account at a different bank and transferred all of my money. I checked out the divorce laws. While I would probably be hit as I earned more than her as we had no children it wasn't onerous. She earned a decent salary so I may get away with no support. The house was rented.
The first open hint that something unusual was about to happen was as we approached Halloween. Martin always held a party though in recent times they seemed to occur when I was unable to attend.
To say I was shocked to see my wife Elaine's Halloween party outfit would be mild. In our four years together, two married, she had never allowed me to know before the party what she was wearing. It was always to be a surprise. Now she had inadvertently been caught by me coming home slightly early.
So why was I surprised I had caught her in her costume? At least that's what she expected me to believe but she's not that good an actor. This was deliberate. Why?
Elaine is 5'6, with 38DD's (okay they attracted me to her in the beginning), slim toned stomach with a little pad of fat above her pubic area. She hates it. It must be all of one pound. She keeps her pubic hair trimmed.
Her costume, I presume was based on Cats. She looked feline with her head totally enclosed in a hood. She must have struggled to put it on. The fabric was skin-tight and showed her breasts off to perfection. There were two zips covering them so one could unzip and have some fun. She wasn't able to wear panties so her pubic hair was obvious. The fact there was a zip there did not escape my attention. I have to say the fabric did show off her toned legs.
When she saw me, she tried to look shocked, "You're home early. I wanted this to be a surprise for you at the party."
"To hell with the party on Saturday, I'm sure we can have fun here ourselves," I replied watching her closely for her reaction. "We can have some fun now," I suggested.
"We can't, I have to be going to help Martin set up," she answered.
"To hell with helping Martin. He never helps us. Far better we get reacquainted, we haven't had time for ourselves for months," I countered.
She was getting angry, "I always keep my word!"
My look suggested otherwise. "What?" she screamed.
"How often have you put me off promising we'll be together the next day in the last six months? Keep your word. Not to me!" I retorted angrily.
She stormed to the bedroom.
When she came out about fifteen minutes later, she was dressed neatly, not what one would expect if setting up a party.
When she saw my face she went, "What?"
I kept my voice neutral which took some doing, "You're dressed for a night in the pub not setting up a party, moving furniture, crawling into spaces. You haven't dressed like this for me for months. Martin's more fucking important to you than me - fuck his bloody party!"
It was my turn to storm away. Her face was a picture. I could see her trying to work out if I knew something.
She wasn't gone long. When she came back in, I was on the computer playing Solitaire. I had turned off all the house power bar the sockets for the computer as I installed new software and changed all my access codes. After that I restored the power.
She spotted the flashlight on the table. "Why's that there?" she asked. "We had a power cut!" I retorted. "If you were at Martin's he would have had one as well probably."
"No, he didn't."
"May have been kids in the sub-station again then."
Elaine made a move on me. "Jon, let's go to bed and make love. You're right we haven't done that in ages and I've missed that."
I answered sarcastically, "I've got a headache!"
The fury on her face was worth the venom she threw at me. It must have been the first time I had ever refused her. She slammed the bedroom door. I slept in the guest room.
The next morning, we would have ignored each other but she had to ask me about my Halloween costume. I surprised her by saying, "I'm not going."
"Why," she almost screamed.
"It's obvious you don't want me to go and neither do most of the others there. I'm treated as a joke. I've had enough. That costume wasn't for me - was it?"
She was stunned. She looked at me but I kept my facial expression neutral. I was getting plenty of practice. Her face was going between anger and trying to work out what to say, what did I know.
"I got it for us. I know we haven't been good lately and I wanted to surprise you, to give you a fantasy. Remember when you said you always wanted to fuck at a party. All you would have to do was unzip me. I was going to describe the outfit and have you meet me at the rear of the lounge. There is a curtain we would have hidden behind as you fucked me. You'd need a condom as I would leak and everyone would know."
I thought, "well recovered." I smiled. I put my dishes in the dishwasher. My silence was getting to her.
"Why don't you believe me?"
I shook my head, "The ice queen thinks a quickie at a party will make up for all the shit of the last year. How many others will need condoms?"
Her eyes just flew wide open. Her anger was off the scale. She never replied just stormed off to catch her bus.
At the office my day just got worse or was it better. Martin is in charge of a work crew who are responsible for the foundations of some of the projects we work on. In recent months his crew were fouling up and making others utterly pissed off with them. I had covered his back a few times.
Terry came in my office to discuss their latest foul up. He was surprised when I said, "have everything in place to dump them on Monday."
"What's up Jon?" he asked.
"Let's go for lunch."
I left my normal phone in the office. During lunch I told Terry I suspected Martin and Elaine were having an affair, that my home and my phone were bugged as they always knew what I was doing. I had thought long and hard about why she had that costume and the only answer I could get was that she wanted me to get caught, to be embarrassed.
Terry had another idea, "Maybe she won't be wearing it, it will be someone else and it's you caught as an adulterer. Maureen has seen that quite a few times."
Maureen's his wife and a lawyer. He phoned her and as we finished lunch, we walked to her office which was only a quarter of a mile away.
Maureen had me stunned when she said, "From what Terry has said, you need to attend that party but not in the costume Elaine has for you. I have a colleague who we use undercover on occasion and she's excellent at totally disguising people. As long as you don't speak, no one will be able to recognise you.