I know LW stories are supposed to dive down into the gory details of marital crime and punishment. But I've got the attention span of a golden retriever, and adultery is so emotionally polarizing that I tend to veer off into aliens, time travel and Greek gods rather than rehash a boring litany of hackneyed grievances.
Lately though, I've been fresh out of new ideas. So, I thought I would pick through the nuances of infidelity, for a particular case. This is the "twins" warhorse, which has been ridden so many times that the poor thing is bowlegged. I tried to keep the interactions real, avoid the biggest cliches and ensure that the responses and behavior were logically consistent with the characters -- please enjoy - DT.
MIRROR IMAGE
The moans were getting louder as I rushed down the companionway. The door was closed. But I was in no mood. So, I barged in. She had been riding him. Now she was in the process of scrambling off and ducking under the covers. I looked at that perfect little body with its tear drop tits, tiny waist, and round muscular ass. It was the same one I'd loved for so long and it gave me a pang.
Her gorgeous face registered embarrassment and something else as she said, cooley, "What the fuck Erik!??" My buddy Steve, chimed in, "Yeah? What the fuck!!? I just plowed ahead, "Jenny's been killed!" They both stared at me incredulously.
I was barely holding it together as I added, "The Italian Police contacted me as soon as I arrived back in Naples. She was out working the dive site, and some incredible motherfucker ran her over with a jet ski."
Jane gasped. Steve just looked at me goggle-eyed. I added, sorrow laden, "It messed up her head so badly that they had to identify her by the boat ID and contact information on the diving gear." They continued to look at me like a pair of sheep.
I had been in Rome all day discussing that very matter with the Praetor. The idiots in the Bay of Naples had been getting increasingly out of control as the summer progressed, which had hampered our work on the sunken city of Baiae.
Baiae was a rocking place in Roman times. It was where the uber-wealthy kept their summer homes... the Roman equivalent of Palm Springs or Vegas. Nero and Tiberius had villas there as did Hadrian. Hadrian even died in his. It was also the place where the Romans perfected the orgy. Or, as some Roman wag put it, "Baiae was where girls went to play at being girls, old women as girls and some men as girls."
Unfortunately, though, Baiae was located in a geologically unstable area called the Phlegraean Fields and bradyseism over the centuries sank it under the Bay of Naples. Now, most of that fabulous city lies ten to thirty feet underwater.
Jenny and I had been doing EU-funded research of the underwater part of the old city through an ANA partnership at the Parco Sommerso di Baia. Since Jenny never went anywhere without her sister, we lived with Jane and her husband Steve on Lagoon 42.
The Lagoon is a lovely fractional-rigged sloop catamaran, configured with separate sleeping cabins in each of the hulls and luxurious common living quarters in between. Weather permitting, we would normally anchor above the ancient city. But the Tramontane winds had been blowing for the past week, so we were tied up at the marina, a quarter mile away.
Anchoring at the dive site was preferable because we didn't have to use a RIB. We would simply surface and dump our gear onto the landing step of the catamaran. The cat also kept the insufferable idiots and their jet skis away from where we were working. Those assholes had gotten so out of control that I had made the hour-long trip up to Rome to talk about it. Meanwhile, we were docked at the Ormeggio Day Dream Mare marina.
Jenny and I were the licensed archaeologists. Jane and Steve were both cinematographers. Their role was to document our conservation work for the Italian government and then turn it into content for our internet channel. The four of us were partners and we made big money off the history nuts who couldn't get enough of famous underwater sites... like Thonis-Heraklion and Cleopatra's tomb in Egypt, or the Antikythera shipwreck, and of course Baiae.
Jenny and I were the stars of the underwater show. We would fin our way over the abandoned streets and tumbled down villas of ancient Baiae, with its intricate statuary and frescos, and Jane and Steve would film it.
Naturally, any small thing we removed from the site had to be GPS-located, photographed, and tagged for the ANA. The Italians are downright medieval about souvenir gathering, so we meticulously logged anything we brought up.
Jenny must have been working on the coordinates of the next part of the project, which was the exploration of the remains of Caligula's famous bridge from Baiae to Puteoli. We were going to start work there tomorrow.
My wife had surfaced next to the dive flag... which was good diver safety protocol. The flag warned people that there were divers in the area. But some drunken fool decided to use it to slalom his jet ski around and Jenny's appearance on the surface coincided with the cocksucker's arrival on a Seadoo.
Shit happens. There's no rhyme or reason for it. A loved one gets hit by a car, or they have a heart attack, or they slip and fall down icy steps and, in an instant, a vital human life just evaporates. In Jenny's case, it was a matter of horrible timing. Five seconds earlier and the idiot would have passed harmlessly over her, five seconds later and Jenny would have been able to dive back down under him.
The utter inanity of the thing was impossible to comprehend. But trust me... it's better to be the victim than the survivor. I know... because that was me. Jenny was at peace at age twenty-nine. While I had a lifetime to suffer and grieve. It was a chilling prospect.
The shock numbs you... at first. Then you get pissed at whatever fucked up deity would allow something like that to happen. I mean, seriously! I was finished! - done! - with the platitudes that organized religion uses to put lipstick on that butt-ugly pig. Now, I was barricaded behind the adamantine walls of my island fortress. While rage at the cosmic injustice burned inside me with the white heat of a thousand suns.
The Italian police told me that - for the sake of honoring my recollection of my wife - I didn't want to see the body. But they still needed a DNA sample from Jane, just to confirm that it was indeed Jenny. They had the offender in custody, but he claimed it was an accident. So, the worst they could charge him with was involuntary manslaughter. The police encouraged me to go after the guy civilly. But I wanted to see the cockroach burn in hell, not sue him.