I had developed a plan in my head for punishing Marizona for letting her old college sorority sister, Stephanie; get her drunk and having sex with multiple men while away on her trip to Atlanta. I hadn't been able to watch the whole video that Stephanie had gleefully sent to me that would verify that Mare had actually indulged in a drunken night of sex with three men, but I knew from Mare's and my past that it more than likely had happened.
I left the diner I'd eaten breakfast in and drove to one of the nationwide home improvement and building supply stores that was close to mine and Mare's home. (For the NASCAR fans, it's the one that sponsor's Jimmy Johnson.) I picked up a keyed interior door hardware set before heading over to Mark and Angie's house. I would need both of them to help me if I wanted to have the first phase of my plan complete before Mare returned home.
"Joe, I didn't expect to see you today. Are you okay, now? You were pretty upset when I saw you earlier." Mark said to me after answering my knock on his door.
"I'm better than I was, but I wouldn't say I'm okay. Can I come in? I wanted to ask you and Angie if you'd help me today." I replied uneasily as the idea of what I was planning asserted itself within my head.
"I'm sorry, Joe. Yeah, come on in. I already told you Angie and I would do anything we could to help you or Mare any time you needed us. Have a seat in the living room and I'll go find Angie."
I trudged across the plush burgundy colored carpet in my best friend's living room and plopped down on the loveseat of their living room set. I would have to turn slightly to my left when he returned with his wife and they sat on the couch which I was sure they would do when they joined me.
"Joe, where's your cell phone?" Angie yelled at me as soon as she and Mark had returned to the living room. "Mare has called four times in the last hour wanting to know if you've talked to either of us. She sounded really upset the first time she called and she progressively sounded even more distraught in the following calls. The last time she called, all I could understand was that you were right, but she didn't listen and she'd driven you away again. What was she talking about and why are you deliberately ignoring her?"
"I'll explain what's going on and what she was talking about if you promise not to answer any more calls from her until you've heard what I have to say. You need to promise me you won't tell her about what I've been doing, where I'm at, or the fact that you will be picking her up at the airport instead of me. What I'm about to do may seem cruel to the both of you, but I can't let what I think happened last night go unpunished and I need Mare to finally understand that I was right about her "almost a sister to me" BFF Stephanie. Will you both promise me that and, more importantly, can you keep your promises?" I said to them with a determined tenor to my voice.
After they had both promised that they could, I told them about the worst night of my life before the one that had only ended a few hours earlier even though I'd promised myself I'd never tell it to another after my little car ride with my father in-law, Roberto Ortiz. Their reaction to my tale of woe went from shock to surprise and back to shock when I explained to them what I was going to do and asking for their help. Angie's phone had rang twice during the first few moments of my story and but she didn't answer and then silenced the ringtone after the second call which let me know that it had been Mare who called both times.
After I was finished telling them what they needed to know, they followed me home and Angie watched enough of the video to confirm my suspicions about the previous night's activities while Mark helped me move the junk that was piled up in the small room on the first floor that would soon be my bedroom. He helped me break down the queen sized bed in the upstairs guest room and move it and a chest of drawers downstairs to my room. I installed the new hardware set in the door while Angie and Mark move as many of my clothes that would fit into the smaller, than I'd been using, closet of my new room.
When we had moved as much of my things as we could into the room I'd exiled myself to, Angie gave me a hug and a sisterly kiss on the cheek before she ran out of the house unable to stop her tears any longer. I saw the glisten of tears in my best friend's eyes when I went to shake his hand in thanks for what he'd done for me. Mark grabbed me into a bear hug and I could hear the pain and sadness in his voice as he swore to me that he'd always be there for me no matter when or where I needed him.
I stood behind the shut front door as tears of my own flowed down my cheeks after they'd gone. I went upstairs to begin carrying my everyday toiletries from the master bath down to the first floor bathroom I'd be using for the foreseeable future. I couldn't have imagined anything could have made the day any worse than it already was, but reality and imagination collided in a big way when I opened the medicine cabinet in the master bath to get the replacement blades for my razor.
I hadn't had any reason to open the cabinet all week so when I opened it that morning and saw that familiar circle of pills that every boyfriend or husband who's significant other used as their birth control method would recognize; reality grabbed my brain in a stranglehold and I again found myself on my knees in front of the porcelain bowl expelling my stomach contents into it. I would have to confirm it with Angie, but I very seriously doubted that the men Mare had been with the night before had bothered with protection and Mare wasn't in her right mind so the possibility of her thinking of it was very remote, extreme corner of the Earth remote.
On top of everything else that had happened; the probability of Mare being pregnant was something else I had to worry about. If she was, it might be the one thing that would lead to our divorce. Everyone would think of me as being a bastard about it, but I wasn't going to be a father to someone else's child. Mare being raised Catholic meant she'd probably never agree to an abortion so if she refused to give the unconfirmed, but beyond a shadow of a doubt child I believed she'd conceived during her drunken night of debauchery, up for adoption; our marriage would be over.
I placed her birth control pills in the center of what would be her bed until we either reconciled or separated from her actions and her devotion to Stephanie. I left the upstairs portion of our home not knowing when or if I'd ever enter it again.
I wrote three notes to leave for Mare in the short time I had left before my departure from the house. I taped the first note to the front door, left the other in a sealed envelope beside my cell phone and the den's computer, and the third on a small table I'd positioned to the side of the stairs to the upper floor. I ignored the ringing of my cell phone after I'd turned it back on and left the house that I no longer considered a happy home to await Mare at the restaurant/bar that was built beside and partially over the small lake near the house.
My first note to Mare read:
Marizona,
I haven't fled like I did the last time this happened, but I need you to hear and see what I heard and saw almost the first thing this morning.
My cell is in the den. Please listen to the voice mail that I received from your cell last night after 2 A.M. After you have listened to it, watch as much of the video that is on the computer as you can stomach. I only made it to where you were in the back of the limo. Angie only made it to the point of you being airtight by your "friends". It was two hours into the video before Angie had to quit watching it so I think you need to watch it at least that long.
When you've reached your limit, open the envelope on the desk.
DO NOT OPEN IT UNTIL YOU'VE WITNESSED FOR YOURSELF WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT! Joe
