SCENE 1
His name was Carl. Carl Montefiore. He was a tall, angular guy--good-looking, I guess--with a smug look. Even if he hadn't been fucking my wife I would probably have wanted to kick the shit out of him.
But at the moment his look wasn't smug--it was stunned. When I came into his office he thought he was meeting a prospective client for his software firm, not coming face-to-face with a cuckolded husband. He stood to greet me with an affable smile, and I could see he didn't even remember my face, though we had met several times.
"Good morning, Mr. ... Regan, is it? Nice to meet you--please have a seat." His handshake was firm and confident, the mark of an accomplished salesman.
I sat; looked at him coldly for a few moments; then spoke.
"Actually it's not Regan, Carl--it's Proctor. David Proctor--as in, husband of Lauren? Lauren Proctor from your Human Resources Department, the one you've been banging for a couple of months now?"
His face got very tight and he just looked at me, not saying anything. I pulled a bunch of photographs out of an envelope and dropped them in front of him.
"That's you and her at the Best Western Kenwood Inn, on Montgomery Road. Room 128, right around the back. You guys seem to like the same room every time."
More silence. "Who pays for the room, Carl--you or my charming wife?" I knew the answer, but I wanted to see what he'd say.
"I pay," he said, finally, his eyes looking past me to the far wall. "I have an ... an arrangement with the manager there--we do their bookkeeping and reservation software."
More silence. I was in no hurry. I was angry, of course--fucking furious. But I'd been that way for nearly five weeks, so I was in no rush.
"Okay," he said finally. "So you know--what do you want?" He looked older all of a sudden, like the energy had gone out of him. "What do you want from me?"
"Outside in my car, Carl, is a big manila envelope addressed to your wife's office. I'm going to be dropping by the FedEx office as soon as I leave here, unless I get a great deal of cooperation from you during this visit."
His face turned pale but he managed not to jump out of his chair. I admired his composure, in a funny kind of way.
"I don't ... it would be pretty bad if Emily found out about this."
He looked at me. "What do you want me to do?"
I passed a sheet of paper over to him. "Read this over. Then call my wife, right now, and have this conversation with her. You can change the wording, change whatever fucking pet name you use with her, whatever--make it sound natural, like she'd expect you to sound. But set it up just the way I've written it."
He read it through carefully, then looked up. "I don't know if Laur... if she's going to go for this."
I laughed. "Carl, I've heard the audio of a half-dozen of your little get-togethers with my wife. You guys have been doing things a lot kinkier than that."
He actually blushed when I said I'd heard them together. He thought some more, frowning. Then he said, "and if I do this? What then?"
I shrugged. "Then you're rid of me. And whatever you and Lauren do, after today, I don't give a shit."
"And that FedEx envelope for my wife?"
I shrugged again. "I'll throw it away."
"You give me your word on that, Mr. Proctor?"
I leaned forward. "You're hardly in a position to bargain, Carl. But yeah--you've got my word."
He read my script once more; then he looked back at me, and when I didn't move a muscle he sighed and picked up the phone.
SCENE 2
Me and Lauren? Mostly the same old story--no need to draw it out. We met when she was in college and I had my first job. It was a blind date--she was a good friend of my cousin Marie, who thought we'd really hit it off, and we did.
Our courtship was utterly typical, but that doesn't mean it wasn't terrific. I loved Lauren by about the fifth date, and she seemed to feel the same way about me. The sex was a little vanilla at first, a little careful, but we really opened up to one another and it got better and better. We were married after about 14 months, with Marie as her maid of honor and my brother Bobby my best man.
We had Tina almost right away, an unplanned but wonderful event. She's a tennis star, a great student, and a talented artist--a fantastic, energetic, lovable girl, and I adore her. Lauren and I always used to say we only had one but we got the very best kid around.
I would have said Lauren and I had a great marriage and a great life; in fact I did say it, all the time, whenever anybody asked how things were going. She was sometimes a little bit of a flirt with our friends, at parties, but she always reassured me afterwards--in fact our love-making was never better than after we'd been out with other people and she'd confirmed for herself how attractive she was to men.
There was never any doubt in my mind about Lauren's devotion to me, not once in 19 years. No tell-tale signs, no vague looks or sudden rushing home for a shower, no late nights at work, no hickeys or scratches on her body. Nothing. We didn't have more sex, or less. We didn't have better sex, or worse. I would never have known.
Oh I guess, in retrospect, that Lauren was maybe a little happier that spring, a tiny bit more lively and fun. But it wasn't much, and I would never ever have noticed, if not for learning about her affair.
It was Tina who found out. That was one of the worst things about it, though all of it was bad. On a Saturday afternoon in early April of her senior year. I was out helping my brother move some furniture, and Tina was supposed to be gone for the day at a tennis tournament. But the courts were flooded from a downpour the day before and the tournament got canceled. Tina's teammate Avery dropped her off back at the house around 11 am, hours before she was expected home.
Tina dropped her bag, got a Diet Coke out of the fridge, and reached for the phone to call a friend about a party that night. She hit "speaker" without realizing her mom was on the phone, and heard a man's voice say, "... your tight little pussy again."
Stunned, Tina quickly switched off the phone. After a minute or two she quietly crept down the hall and peered into the master bedroom. Lauren was lying back on the bed, wearing only a pair of panties. One hand was inside those panties, stroking herself lazily, and the other was holding the phone. Tina heard her say, "oh yes, baby, I can hardly wait too! Can we do Monday this week, or do I have to wait until Wednesday for that nice big hard cock?"
Backing away from the door, Tina retreated to the kitchen, grabbed her tennis bag and left the house. She walked over to the playground at the nearby elementary school and sat there crying for two hours. Then she pulled herself together, wiped her face, and walked back home.
I didn't hear anything about this for nearly two weeks. All I knew is that Tina was withdrawn, morose, and sullen. Like a typical teenager, I suppose, except that she'd always been so sunny and cheerful. I asked Lauren if something was going on, and she was as mystified as I was.
When Tina finally broke down and told me, it was on the way back from the sectionals. She'd played much worse than usual and lost to a girl from Lockland High School whom she'd beaten four times in the past two years--and I could tell she wasn't herself.
So I made a detour to a Starbucks, bought us each something from the drive-through, and parked the car in the big lot of a nearby Walmarts. And I said, "baby, tell me what's going on."
She shrugged. "Nothing. I played lousy, that's all."
I reached over and touched her shoulder. "Tina, you know I don't care about that. It's just one tennis match. But...but you've been unhappy for a couple of weeks now. Please, talk to me. Talk to your old clueless dad who loves you."
Then I waited. I'd learned over the years that Tina could never stand the silence.
She just looked out the window, not moving, and suddenly I saw tears on her cheeks. Without turning her head she said, "daddy, mom's cheating on you."
"What?!" I was on the verge of yelling at her that it was ridiculous, it was insane, was she crazy? Instead I held back. I bit my tongue and I waited. And she told me the whole story. Coming home early, what she'd heard and what she'd seen.
SCENE 3
Of course it was impossible for me to believe. I believed what Tina was saying, but I couldn't begin to believe what it meant, what it had to mean. We cried together for a little while, and then I asked her to keep the secret while I looked into it a little.
So we made a kind of pact, Tina and I, a little private deal to keep all our suspicions and our feelings from Lauren. It brought us closer together, actually, though we'd always had a great relationship.
And I did what the poor sucker husband (or wife, I guess) always does in such situations--spent several grand on a private investigator and let him do his thing. Three weeks later I had the report, the photos, the audio.