Many Thanks to Dennis for editing this story.
*
It was a sad day for me when my best friend in our area of a small Scandinavian town, Jerry Bergman and his wife Christine hosted a goodbye party in his house. Both Jerry and his wife had got new and better paid jobs in a larger town about 350 kilometers away.
Of course we were happy for them and knew that we would meet again a couple of times a year, but both my wife Wilma and I would miss our almost weekly connections with them in the past.
Jerry could have been described to "have the thumbs in his palms", which meant that that he was completely unable to do any practical work with his hands but he was a real nerd about computers and electronic matters. Christine was lousy in cooking but a real expert in tax matters. In fact it was she who had been offered the promotion to a top job at the larger town.
Wilma is very good at cooking, that is why she always gave Christine a hand when she hosted dinners for their relatives and friends. As owner of a small construction company, I did a lot of jobs on their house, which was rewarded with money saving advice about taxes and heavy discounts on the best electronic items and very useful computer programs.
The Bergmans had sold their house to some Alf and Laura Johansson, whom we had never heard about. Though it was two houses between Johansson's house and ours, they invited us and nine other couples from the neighborhood to a barbeque to introduce themselves.
Laura Johansson was a rather nice woman in her mid thirties and to my surprise she seemed to feel a bit uneasy in the crowd of their new neighbors. Her husband Alf seemed to be the quite opposite. He bragged a bit too much to be regarded serious and he was overdoing his attempts to be a good host to the visiting wives. I hardly got to know him because he spent most of the time attending to the prettiest wives, like my Wilma and Anne Ericsson from the house next to them.
At least Anne wasn't impressed of her new neighbor because she told me, "What a damn swarmy type we have here."
But to my surprise, Wilma seemed to appreciate Alf's fawning for her and rewarded him with bright smiles for all his silly jokes and ingratiating comments about her.
Back home after the party Wilma turned mad when I told her, "That damn Alf acted as a shameless pussy hound and to my disappointment it was obvious for everybody that it was only the newly divorced Lisa Wilkins and you, Wilma who were flattered with his interest."
She shouted back to me. "What the hell do you mean by that?"
"Just what I said, other wives regarded him to be embarrassing. Anne Ericsson told me that she wasn't happy at all to get such swarmy type into the next house."
She continued shouting, "Anne always said so and so, why in the hell didn't you marry that sweet pretty Anne instead of a slut as me?"
"Because she was already taken."
"Poor you, but please remember that nobody forced you to marry a shameless slut as me."
The truth was that I had neither seen nor knew anything about Anne when I married Wilma and our marriage had been very happy until a big quarrel eight years ago when a divorce had been very close.
The reason for the quarrel was that I suspected Wilma was cheating with somebody at her job and intended to divorce her. My problem was that the husband is the last one to know and in my case it was too late to find out the truth. Though several important circumstances were against Wilma, she denied all kind of cheating and due to my failure of getting her to confess anything or find the man she cheated with, I gave up the divorce when I failed to get any real evidence about her cheating. Wilma and our children had cried a lot about my intentions. Even our legal system says that rather free a convict when there are doubts about the guilt.
We returned to a chilly marriage, which remained in that level for several months until I had a two-nights affair at a conference. Though revenge fucks says to be bad solutions to marriage problems, it worked for me because Wilma and I began a slow return to a good marriage again. But if Wilma had found out about my wrongdoings, she had probably divorced me.
However, Wilma and I didn't have any further arguing about Alf Johansson after the quarrel we had immediately after his party and I heard nothing about him until Anne Ericsson rang me a week later. She asked me; "Do you know anything about that Alf, I've heard rumors that he's been in jail for cheating fortunes from several women?"
"Nothing at all. Wilma and I had some arguing about him after the party but not a word about him from anybody else since then."
"I've got curious and tried to find something on the net but there are at least a thousand Johansson who are using Alf as their first name and the tax office says he has a secret social security number by court order."
I promised her to keep my eyes open and try to find out something about this Alf.
Then Wilma had met Laura at the supermarket and invited the Johansson's for dinner without asking me. It was too late for any objection, why I decided to be cool and collect information. To my great surprise the dinner went very well. Both Laura and Alf had very good social talents, so I must confess that it was a pleasant evening. No attempts from Alf to show any extra interest for Wilma.
The only problem was that they avoided talking about themselves, so I didn't have very much to tell Anna. The only thing I found out was that both of them had been married before and Laura had two kids who were living with their father. However, in these days such families are common why they were neither any strange nor unusual family.
As Laura didn't know many people in our town it was usually she who contacted Wilma on different matters and Alf still kept a low profile, quite a different from their first party. He did it even when the four of us went out dancing an evening. Though he danced several tunes with Wilma, he always kept his hands at correct places.
I can't explain why I got curious about why Alf had turned to a perfect gentleman. Of course, he was always friendly and polite but somehow I suspected that it wasn't the real Alf. Just as I had expected, Wilma didn't share my opinion about him.
