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This story takes its inspiration from so many of the "wife sleeps with boss/rich guy on retreat" stories. I have found the main character's impotence around the bodyguards to be especially problematic for me.

My usual words of warning: no sex, no real BTB.

"Like hell, you are," I said loudly enough that everyone in the room heard. My wife, Sarah, had been keeping her voice down...why, I'm not sure. She had just told me, sotto voce, that she was going to sleep with our host for the weekend, Franklin Barrymore, and that when the weekend was done, she was going to be my totally faithful, completely loving wife.

"Julien," she quietly said, "it's already agreed. I didn't want to do this behind your back -- I felt I owed you the courtesy of telling you to your face -- but Franklin and I ARE going to have this weekend. And as I promised, I will go back..."

"You made that promise before. Why would I ever trust you again?" I said this in a normal voice. Every head was turned our way.

"Sarah," Franklin called out. "Let's go to our room." His hand was outstretched waiting for hers. She looked at me and turned to him. I took a step his way and his two bodyguards stepped in between us.

Now, here's the issue. I'm maybe 5'11". 205 pounds, but not a lot of it muscle. I'm an artist. Not a starving artist by any stretch of the imagination, but an artist nonetheless. Not a ninja, not a weightlifter, not someone who carries anything heavier than a canvas stretched on a wood frame. I had no chance of overpowering one of them, let alone two.

I looked at the guy to my left. He had no neck. It was like God plopped a head onto a giant muscle, then painted a suit and tie on him. The guy to my right was almost as built; he could probably only bench press a small truck. I looked at him.

"Joe, right," I asked. He nodded. We had talked during the day. I think he was supposed to feel me out, see if I was going to cause trouble. He was a pretty good guy. I think under other circumstances, we could have been friends. "You good with what he's doing?"

Joe looked embarrassed. "Jules," I had told him to call me by my nickname earlier, "man, I need this job."

"You need to destroy my marriage?"

"I got a daughter, Anita. She's four months old. I have to work, so I have to pay for a sitter. And kids aren't cheap. Hell, life ain't cheap. It costs a lot. I don't have a lot of skills, man. I need this job."

"You don't need this job. There are others out there." I reached into my back pocket and gorilla #1 moved toward me. "Easy there, just getting my wallet." Everyone, Sarah and Franklin included, had stopped to watch me. "Here's my card. Let me help." Joe took the card, looked at it, at me, then over his shoulder.

"When I was told what was going to happen this weekend, I puked. Like got to the point of dry heaves. But I felt like I had to suck it up, for Anita." He looked at me, eyes glistening. "What would she think of me if I was a part of this?" He walked away, across the great room, opening one of the large wooden doors, and stepped out into the night.

Gorilla #1 stepped into his spot, his face showing no emotion. "I'm sorry, sir, but you will not get past here."

"You going to stop me?"

He looked at me, nodded. "Yes sir."

"Then you're going to have to kill me. Because I am going to go over there and beat the piss out of your boss. And if you stop me, you're going to have to kill me."

"No sir, I can stop you without the use of deadly force."

"You're not understanding. I know you can stop me. There is little doubt in my mind about that. But you're going to have to kill me to do it. You see, if you stop me, I am going to blame you as well as him," nodding my head to Franklin still standing, holding my soon to be ex-wife's hand. "And I am going to make it my point in life to kill you. Look at me, and tell me if you think I'm lying or exaggerating. Oh, I know that you can beat me in a fair fight, but it won't be a fair fight. I'm an artist and I have a great memory for faces. And I have memorized yours. And sometime after you stop me, and I recover, I will look for you. And I will find you. And I will hit you with my truck, and then run you over repeatedly. Or I will buy a gun and walk up behind you and put a bullet in your skull. Or I will set fire to your house in the middle of the night and let you burn to death. And maybe I don't succeed the first or the second or, hell, the third time. But all I have to do is succeed once."

He looked right at me. I could see he was weighing everything in his mind -- if he killed me here, could he get away with it. I saw him look at the door and realized that Joe would talk and would say that he was the only person here capable of it. He then looked at the group of people watching this happen, wondering if any of them would snitch, to save their own asses. I saw him look at Franklin and Sarah, then back at me.

"How do I know you won't do that anyway?"

"Unlike some people here," my gaze resting on Sarah, "I am a man of my word. And besides, what would be the point?"

A pause. A shrug. And he also headed out the door. "Not worth it," I heard him say as the door closed behind him. I turned my head as Franklin also turned toward me. He saw my face, remembered what I had just said, and promptly let his bladder go. Sarah smelled something, glanced down and had a look of disgust cross her face. I took a step toward Franklin and he turned to run, slipping in his own piss and falling face first on the hard wood floor. His head bounced once, then fell to the floor, as he had knocked himself unconscious. I saw a tooth on the floor, blood from the split lip, his pants wet from his terror. I walked up to him, gave his ribs a couple of kicks, and realized that it's no fun exacting revenge on an unconscious victim.

"Don't come home," turning my back on Sarah. She seemed to be gasping for breath, the entire tableau taking 5 minutes at most.

EPILOGUE

It took just over a month, but Joe did call me. With the loss of his income, and the economy as it was, he was having a hard time paying his bills. I had a gallery downtown, where my paintings were available. Oh, they were also available online, but those were the mass produced, touched up transfers. My gallery had the original artwork, which had a much higher sticker price. I convinced the gallery manager that we needed security, and that the security department needed a head of security.

Over time, Joe and I spent a lot of time together and did become close friends, and I became kind of a second father to Anita. As the years slipped by, I became "Uncle Jules". And like most uncles, I spoiled her rotten. Joe objected the first couple of times, but eventually just let me indulge. It wasn't as though I wasn't spoiling my own children -- they, along with Anita, went to a private school with a well earned reputation for its graduates' acceptance to the college or university of their choice.

Yes, I eventually got married again. It took a long time, and lots of therapy, before I was willing to take that chance again. Joe was my best man. Anita was the flower girl. And later on, she became a surrogate big sister to my two girls.

As for Sarah? She took my advice. She never came back to the house, sending her sister, Ally, to pick everything up. None of the furniture, just her clothes. Ally knew me well enough to know not to ask what happened, and only offered that her sister was an idiot. When the divorce papers came, I had my attorney review them, signed off, and moved on. By that point, I was busy with my business, all the while watching Anita fingerpaint off to the side (yes, I did mass produce those fingerpaintings and one year, she made over $250K in sales, proving that the name on the label usually supersedes the value of the item bearing the label.)

Franklin became a laughingstock. Someone caught him pissing himself and knocking out his own tooth on camera. Thankfully, they didn't record my kicking him and the police never followed up once that video came out. He actually had to sell his place at a loss and move out of the area. Too many people made too many comments for him to stay. Damn shame that the video keeps reappearing wherever he lands.