The Illers: a Love Story

The Killers: A Love Story

I needed a break from the book trudge that my alter-ego is in the middle of. So another one of my quasi-romances. I adapted the theme from The Killers, hence the name. And like the original, nothing in this story is as it appears. I hope that you enjoy it - but please send me feedback either way - DT

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The Killers: A Love Story

I met Janet at State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. I was 22. And weird as hell back then.

I had always found school boring. So I spent my adolescence growing up in the hacker culture of Northern Virginia.

Needless to say, that scene will make you unconventional - to say the least.

I never studied computers per-se. I just saw the world different from normal peoples. And my out-of-kilter perspective helped me see things that most folks missed.

Which is useful when I was looking for holes in your security scheme.

It wasn't strictly electronic cracking. In fact I favored the social engineering side of the house, particularly when it came to manufacturing spoofed credentials.

That's how they eventually caught me.

I wasn't hacking. I was sitting in an Undersecretary of State's office smoking one of his contraband Cubans.

What can I say? The Secretary had excellent taste in real Cohibas.

Nonetheless, I had forgotten about the pungent smoke that was wafting under the door.

I considered it a boyish lark.

They considered it a crime.

The INR liked the fact that there was nothing that I couldn't crack. So they gave me two options. Go to jail, or go to work for them.

Hence, a year later I was the in-house geek for the Principal Assistant Deputy Secretary's Current Intelligence Unit.

I didn't repair them. I hacked them on orders.

Janet was the financial analyst detailed to the CIS staff. She was helping them connect the dots on a particular problem that the US was having with a French diplomat.

I believe that the eventual goal was something involving blackmail.

Anyhow - the project wasn't memorable and nothing significant came of it.

The only earth shaking outcome was the presence of Janet herself.

She was so hot that every male at CIS, and maybe some of the females, wanted her.

I was a wallflower then – not that things have changed much. So I never thought to pursue her.

But the head of my unit wined and dined her throughout the project. And it would have been a miracle if he wasn't fucking her.

I wasn't a member of the alpha-male pack. So I never knew for sure.

My relationship with Janet was different. Janet did the financial analysis and she was always coming to me with requests for information.

The cracking process often ran well into the night. And since it never dawned on me that I had a shot, we interacted as colleagues and friends during all those hours.

We both have an over-developed sense of humor. So we laughed a lot. And we spent a goodly amount of time together just talking, or sharing the other day-to-day things that people who work together do.

Little did I know I was romancing her? But I'm a nerd and what I don't know about the human condition would fill the seven seas.

On the other hand I DID know that Janet was a ninja assassin when it came to numbers. And combined with my particular skills we were a lethal team.

She asked ME if I wanted to get a drink on the day that we nailed the individual in question.

I said, "Isn't Rick taking you out someplace to celebrate?"

She looked scornful and said, "We did this together – just you and me - not THAT jerk."

There was some bitterness in her voice. I guessed that the tempest in THAT particular tea-pot had finally boiled over.

I may be a geek. But I am no fool. If the hottest woman in the entire Foggy Bottom wanted to grab a drink with little-old-me I was out the door and hoofing it across Washington Circle toward One-Fish-Two-Fish before she could put her coat on.

She had a dirty martini. I had a beer.

She was drawing all kinds of attention from the male populace. Most of them were wondering what the fuck she was doing with the likes of me.

I didn't blame them. Janet is gorgeous in a dark Mediterranean kind of way. But it is her eyes that distinguish her from other beautiful women.

Her eyes are big and round and sexy. But they are ice blue, like the Arctic Sea. The odd contrast in coloration with that perfectly proportioned dusky face is captivating.

Janet is also very smart. Her MBA is from Stanford and she graduated from their B-School when she was just 21.

But I would be a liar if I told you that the first thing I noticed about her was her intelligence.

The thing that grabs everybody's attention is her curvy little body and her big tits. I make no excuses. I'm a guy and a mind is terrible thing to motorboat.

I looked into those eerie pale blue eyes and said, "Do you want to talk about it."

I am not intuitively sensitive but I had just spent ten straight sixty hour weeks interacting with the woman.

I knew that she and my asshole boss were an item, even if he WAS married. And I assumed there were issues.

She looked at me amused and said, "I thought I did twenty minutes ago. But not now, let's talk about something else. How about you and me?"

I was puzzled. I said, "What ABOUT you and me."

I know... I'm dense.

She looked even MORE amused and said, "You are the only guy in the place who hasn't hit on me. What's with that?"

I had no response. I just looked at her mystified. I said, "Why would I hit on you?"

She said, "What's the matter? Don't you like girls? Or do you have somebody hotter than me stashed away somewhere?"

I said, "I have a one bedroom apartment in Franconia - and a cat.

"I like girls. They just don't like me."

She said, "Why not? You are tall and good looking. You are NOT an asshole. Which is something that I can't say for most of your gender.

"And you are a genius at what you do.

"In fact you are extremely intimidating to people who know how sinister your black arts truly are."

Okay, she was making me seriously ill-at-ease. Women like Janet do not even NOTICE men like me. Let alone pay them compliments. What was she up to?

I took an agitated sip and mumbled, "I have never been successful with women. I think it's a matter of confidence. But I am also way too introspective and totally introverted

"Shy, awkward and tongue tied are not exactly attractive features with most girls."

She looked at me with those amazingly intelligent eyes and said, "I'm not most girls.

"We have worked side-by-side for two months. I know that you are a social-retard. But when we are together, just you and me, you are funny, insightful and very deep.

"More important you seem to have a sense of values and that is extremely important to me.

"I get tired of fighting off men. Every one of them thinks that they get to fuck me if they buy me a drink.

"On the other hand you give me respect, and you treat me like a peer and friend. And frankly I want to find out if this leads to something else if you are interested."

Who wouldn't be interested in the smartest and I might add hottest woman in the entire State Department?

Roslyn was a lot closer than Franconia so we went to her place.

She may be intellectually advanced but I also discovered that Janet is extremely accomplished in the more physical aspects of the womanly arts.

Can you say "sexual animal?"

Simply put, she loves to fuck. She loves everything about the act. And all of her enthusiasm and passion is channeled into very creative ways of making us both happy.

I am a relatively low key guy. But Janet's passions and her fantastic little body could get a Rapa Nui statue caught up in the moment.

She never gets tired, there is nothing she won't try and she is always ready for another romp.

We were married exactly thirty two weeks after that conversation. Nobody anywhere thought it would last.

But it did, for the next 15 years. Apparently opposites CAN attract.

Of course our marriage wasn't all peace and tranquility. We had our occasional disagreements. And they could get stormy.

Both of us are strong willed and we both have our opinions. Especially Janet, who has a Mediterranean temper.

I am Germanic by extraction and so I tend to quietly brood – a lot like Hamlet without the skull.

But she blows up. And when she does she lets me know exactly what she is thinking.

Nonetheless - since she really loves me those storms quickly pass. And the subsequent make-up sex is always extremely satisfying.

If our life together seemed to be ideal, that will probably explain why it was such a shock to learn that things might not be exactly as they seemed.

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There might be a grand plan. But nobody has seen fit to share it with me.

As far as I can tell, life is nothing more than a series of random encounters that we weave into meaning by the choices we make.

If we choose wisely - the good will outweigh the bad - usually.

But karma is a heartless bitch.

And so if you choose to live on the edge, you will eventually fall off.

Thus, as the old jailhouse saying goes, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

I was living proof of that.

I was in Chicago one fine spring evening because conventions are big business.

Every convention needs speakers. And I have been inside on a few of the comings-and-goings in America's putative War on Terror.

So I get a lot of requests for talks.

That was why I happened to be sitting at the bar at Gibson's Steakhouse in Chicago.

I was part of the line-up for one of those godawful professional events, where none of the talks make the slightest bit of sense. But everybody leaves feeling "informed."

My topic was, "National Security, Why I Sleep like a Baby." The punch line is, "Don't babies wake up crying and wetting themselves every two hours?"

You get the message – right?

The conference was held at the Thompson, which is convenient to ORD. So I flew in late one afternoon. The aim was to do my thing. And then fly out early the next day.

Pocketing a hefty "honorarium" for my services - I might add.

As is my usual routine, I headed for the nearest saloon.

I hate air travel. So I like to have a beer, or four when I am on the road, just to settle my jangled nerves. And I had noticed Gibson's across the street.

The place was packed but there was one seat at the bar. It was located next to a species of varmint that I particularly loath. But it was the only one available.

If you spend any time in an upscale bar you'll recognize the breed.

They are still young enough to be "special" in their own minds. They just hadn't lost enough to have any common sense.

They are always alpha-males, youthful, trim, good looking. Their style is impeccable and their come-on-is failsafe.

They were in with the in-crowd in high school. They pledged the best fraternities in college. And their degrees are from the most elite schools.

These two sounded like technical support for a vendor who was at the conference. Most of the companies pay a premium to the guys who are willing to travel. And that usually includes a generous expense allowance.

It's a gypsy life. But if you are young and have no attachments it can be fun for a while.

Like every OTHER member of that genus, these fellows were eternally on the hunt.

Their need for sex had nothing to do with warm-and-fuzzy connection. Those boys were in the game strictly to run up the score.

Women were just prey to them.

Their random copulation was like crack cocaine. Each conquest gave them a fantastic high. But they crashed and burned if they didn't keep it coming.

So they were always on the prowl.

I ordered a cold Gamma-Ray Pale Ale. I'm into craft beer. It's a weakness.

The bartender set 18 ounces of that marvelous fluid in front of me. He also looked totally disgusted with my two neighbors. They must have been there for a while.

When I sat down they were in the process of recounting the hottest of the hotties they had come across in their travels.

Both of them were drunk. So short of putting in ear plugs I couldn't avoid overhearing their conversation.

It was an enlightening peek into the tree-house.

They seemed to be rank ordering the candidates based on looks and general degree of hotness.

The most revealing part was that neither of them knew any names. They just used tags, like "the redhead in San Francisco with the big jugs", or "the Latina from Orlando with the big buns."

It was like listening to a couple of guys talk about zoo animals.

The dude directly on my left was telling the guy on the far side about his most recent discovery.

He said, "The one that gets my vote was the chick I met in Atlanta a month ago.

I didn't fuck her but my buddy did and he said that she was the hottest piece of ass he had ever had - and he ought to know because he's fucked them all.

"She was maybe five-two but she had tits that were easily Ds. They'd look huge on a woman six inches taller. But they were monsters on her."

The other guy chimed in with, "Yeah, I like them really big. Could you see her nipples?"

Brilliant conversation. And remember, half the bar could hear those two drunken morons.

This was getting so bad that I was thinking of standing by the window, anything but listening to them blow smoke up each other's pant legs.

The twit on my left continued with, "She was with a guy who I knew from school so I sat down with them. They were having a romantic little dinner.

"She was really quiet the whole time we talked. You know how submissive women can be when you're giving them what they need to have."

They both chuckled lecherously. I nearly retched.

"My buddy was one of those guys who we really looked up to in school. Wasn't much in the classroom but DAMN was he EVER successful with all the ladies

"You know the type – totally dominant. And he loved to show off his power over the ones he was fucking. I never actually saw it but I heard that his dick was huge.

"Some guys would be pissed if you joined them when they were about to get laid. But not this guy.

"Whit could care less. He knew he had her totally under control. He just wanted me to see what a stud he was."

That was accompanied by lewd chuckling over the guy's stud-hood. In the universe that those two cretins inhabited that accolade ranked right up there with winning the Nobel Prize.

The guy next to me continued with, "We talked for a while and I noticed that she was wearing a ring. I actually asked them if they were married.

"That set off a lot of laughter on Whit's part.

"He said, Janet's married all right, just not to me."

Suddenly, I was on full alert. The thing that had caught my attention was the description of the woman and her name. My wife is tiny with big tits and her name is Janet.

Worse, she had recently been in Atlanta with a guy named Whitley Reynolds. He was one of the lawyers she does consulting work for.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Maybe it was sheer coincidence.

Janet's a pretty common name isn't it?

I was now hanging on the moron's every word.

At that point the other dude interrupted to ask the narrator who they sold for.

That might sound like it was a little out of left field. But the only thing those two idiots lived for was sex and selling.

So asking about their line of business was not really that unusual.

The guy next to me said, "She wasn't in sales. She's some kind of accountant if you can believe THAT!!!"

That tore my heart out. Janet is a consulting CPA. And she and Reynolds had been in Atlanta last month. They had been down there four days sorting out the dealings of one of Reynolds's clients.

Meanwhile the clown next to me was regaling his friend with a detailed description.

Apparently his buddy Whit had been trying to fuck her for a couple of months. He said that when she finally gave it up she was an absolute beast.

The guy on the far side, who was obviously drunker said, "So did he give you a taste?"

The first guy said, "Not a chance. He said that she was totally in love with him. And she was so hot that he wouldn't even think of sharing her with any other man.

"I told him that he should give me a call if he ever got tired of her. Man!! She was smoking hot!!!"

That was the point where I tossed a twenty on the bar and exited the building.

Okay, admittedly it was an unbelievable coincidence. Those two douchebags were just passing the time in their normal omnivorously horny fashion.

But things are always within six degrees of separation. And the link of an odd name like Whit, to "accountant" narrowed the coincidence down a lot.

So it was not outside of the realm of possibility that I had overheard something that I was not supposed to hear.

It would be an extreme understatement to say that the next twenty-four hours were stressful.

Public speaking is all about stage presence. My stock in trade is affable good-old-boy with deep IC roots, and it has served me well.

But it is hard to convince a room full of people that you are just a gregarious country gentleman when all you can think about is whether your beloved wife might be a duplicitous whore.

I have worked audiences so long that the actual 50 minutes up on stage was the usual amalgamation of laughs and nebulous information.

But I was purely on automatic pilot. I was too upset.

I had not bothered to call Janet the night before. I knew that would upset her. When we are apart we always talk once a day.

But I had not even come close to getting a grip on my fevered imaginings. And I didn't want to take the chance of tipping my hand.

It was long odds that she was the slut in question. But even the remote possibility had me freaked out beyond all rational limits.

It was really just random talk. Most of the connection was in my own head.

And I was aware even as I listened to them that the narrator was exaggerating in the way that all of those adolescent types do when they are talking about the opposite sex.

Nonetheless, until I found out whether Janet was the woman in question the situation was going to get my "A" game.

And I knew that I needed a plan.

First, I had to play things like our relationship was nothing but puffy clouds, rainbows and unicorns.

If Janet thought I suspected her of anything, it would drive her deep underground. And she is smart enough to bury evidence of any alleged extra-marital shenanigans. So I had to be cool.

I also understood that I was suffering from the "hot wife" syndrome.

Every man wants to be with the hottest woman in the room – the one every other guy wants. But a woman as striking as Janet could have any man with a sultry glance.

Which can induce inordinate amounts of insecurity in a regular fellow like me.

Your insecurity comes from the fact that you KNOW that it is not your overwhelming animal magnetism that is keeping her bound to you. She is with you because she CHOOSES to be with you.

The problem with choice is that the world is full of temptation and people can always change their mind.

So, no matter how secure your bond might be. You always know that your happiness is dependent on your wife's ability to make the right decision.

After fifteen years of marriage I sincerely believed that Janet's character was unimpeachable. And that she would choose marriage over betrayal.

In fact over a decade and a half I had never seen anything in her behavior that would contradict that assumption.

She had not altered her conduct one iota. She had been as loving and attentive as she ever was. And there was no hint of guilt or suspicious behavior.