The Quality Of Her Tears Ch 01

There was no doubt: she was crying. It triggered a reflex in him to reach out and comfort her. Except – he didn't. Why should he? She wasn't the one hurt, was she? He was. So why should she be the one crying?

And yet, she was.

Clear liquid trembled on the lower rims of her beautiful eyes – reflecting the candlelight. For a moment it clung to her painted lashes before sliding down her cheeks – leaving traces of gray.

Her make up had been impeccable when they left the house earlier that evening. But of course it would be, as tonight was a special night. It was the evening of the day she had been married to him for exactly two years.

It started off perfectly. Like always he'd had to wait for her to finish dressing. He had phoned to delay the arrival of the limousine that would take them down town. Already arriving half an hour later than planned, it stood idling for another quarter of an hour in front of their house.

When she at last came down the stairs, she was a goddess. Her silk dress was new. Its hue shifted from ultramarine to a deep night-blue with every step she took. It hugged her body, looking as snug as the very cocoons the silk had been made of. The top showed her pale cleavage; the skirt's hem shied away from her knees just enough to remind the world of her glorious legs.

He watched how the delicate bones in her instep shifted as she came down the stairs on heeled sandals. Her fingers clutched the leather purse he'd bought her in Milan last year. She'd done up her blond hair to display her neck and show off the diamond pendants that dangled from her earlobes. They matched the necklace on her chest.

He remembered shrugging when the set's price tag indicated it would cost him half of his year's bonus.

At the bottom of the stairs he embraced her. His lips nudged the soft spot where her throat met her shoulder. The subtle perfume clung to his nostrils. He could still smell it now, as he wondered why he embraced her. Was it a thank-you for a few unforgettable years? Or was it just an expression of his admiration for the way she had made herself look tonight?

With a smile she softly pushed his head away, not allowing him to smudge her hard-won perfection with a kiss. And when she told him they were late already, the sheer audacity of the remark made him chuckle. He smiled and opened the front door to lead her to the waiting limousine. Why call it a limo, he thought, when you pay the full price?

All the way down town he mused over the bizarre cocktail his mind had been mixing these last few days, adding the bitter to the sweet. He had known the sweetness for almost three years; the more recent bitterness added a new tang. Together they created a mixture of melancholy and nostalgia; you'd better sip it with caution.

As he looked out of the window of the cruising car, his hand touched the outline of the gift box in his pocket – such an ironic comment on their marriage it was. On the outside it suggested great and expensive things to be found within ­– and well, he couldn't deny they were costly indeed.

He'd known what secret the box concealed, and now she knew it too. But it surprised him that she would weep because of it. Not that she sobbed or cried, she just allowed the perfect tears to roll down her powdered cheeks.

One fell on the silk of her dress, making an even darker spot on the night blue fabric. The other one seemed more unruly – it kept dangling from her chin.

His eyes left hers, following the trail of spilled moisture. His gaze traveled down the cleavage of her tightly packed breasts. They became a blur as his eyes focused on the object lying before her on the table. The box, though only an inch in height, seemed an insurmountable wall.

Inside it he found her eyes again – upside down now and printed on shining paper. They were as bright and sparkling as the real ones. He saw her perfect nose pointing up to her carefully painted mouth. It didn't smile, he saw. It would have been impossible anyway. One might say it formed an O – a wide, very wide O. But the O did not frame the dark cave of her mouth, where her perfect teeth and maybe her tongue would have shown. No, her mouth closed around a hard and shining cock that was just a fraction too large to be his.

Carl.

Should I introduce my wife Mia to you at all? It's obvious she will be removed from my life very soon, so what's the use of telling you where we met, how deeply I fell in love with her and how exciting and satisfying my life with her has been? As you see I'm putting it all in the past tense. There won't be a new today with her, much less a tomorrow.

But well – I guess it would be rude to tease your curiosity and not deliver. Mia has been too important in my life anyway to be erased like that. She has been a part of me. Losing her is like an amputation, I guess – like the loss of an arm, a leg...a heart?

And yet, why bother? The content of my gift-box proved that our marriage had been a lie. Why cling to a lie? Why go on loving a fiction?

Enough of this lamentation, even though I think I am entitled to some. Let's try and compartmentalize the hurt. They say it was what made the Titanic unsinkable, remember? Well, that worked fine, ask Leonardo di Caprio.

Sorry, I should not succumb to my weakness for sarcasm, even if I prefer to call it irony. They say it is the pathetic armor of the wounded romantic.

So, what happened? A good question I can only answer partially for now. To stay with the big legendary ship – I only know the tip of the iceberg. I assume there is a lot of ice still under the surface that I don't know of. When a guy discovers he has been naïve, you can bet he will be the exact opposite for a very long time to come – too long a time, I'd say. It is what treason does – it ruins trust and it ruins it for a very long time, maybe forever. It also doesn't stop at trust. It gnaws at the very foundation of a guy's life, his confidence, his energy, his concentration, and his sleep.

And yes – treason it was.

I didn't find out in one of the classic ways. There was no coming home early and for god's sake no sniffing of crusted panties. There were no carelessly left condom wrappers either – the pictures suggest she never used them anyway. That of course might have led to another way of finding out – pregnancy or painful pissing. But no; and no telltale phone bills or credit card slips either. There was no change in her behavior. She did not work late often or go partying with the girls. She has been dressing well all her married life and her professional activities have always been way too varied to find incriminating patterns.

I never believed in a marriage where wife and husband share every minute of their free time together. I like to play golf, she hates it. She loves the opera and sure, I went to a few with her, but more often she goes with friends. She works out, I run. I trusted her, she trusted me. She was right, I was wrong.

So, what did happen? One doomed but bright Saturday morning I found a short note in my golf bag. I was looking for my driver, ready to tee-off at the eighth hole. Tacked to the note was a picture of Mia kissing a guy in an elevator. His hand was inside her jacket, rubbing her breast through the fabric of her blouse – or under it? Her eyes were closed. Her long pale fingers caressed his hair. Her lips were open in an inviting way – a very inviting way.

I was playing golf with Tom Mansfield and two strangers who had been added to our flight. Tom Mansfield is an ex-colleague I'd been playing with for over three years. I am convinced that I did see neither picture nor note in my bag before the eighth hole.

I never showed Tom the objects I found, but I am sure he noticed the distress they caused. He must have wondered why I suddenly started playing lousy. And I don't think he believed the lame excuse I offered after the ninth hole. Headaches don't usually come up this suddenly.

Finding my car, I sat in it for a while, thinking of nothing as I stared at the picture. Only then did I see what was written on the note. It was a very short message. To be precise it just said: "Call us," with a phone number.

I suppose more impulsively wired guys would at once have punched the number into their cell phone, seething with anger. Not me – I am the slow burning kind, meticulous to a fault. It might be because of my profession. I research paintings for big vending houses, collectors and museums to see whether they are true or false. There is no use following up on your first impression there. Too often a perfect Monet turns out to be a clever imitation – or a stunning Rembrandt proves to just be an inspired attempt of one of his apprentices. Not to imagine the horror of dismissing a perfectly real early Van Gogh. I usually deal with less famous masters, but you get the drift.

Before I can act I always need every detail, even in this case, when all I had was a picture and a phone number. I supposed the handwriting was a woman's, but not Mia's. The numbers and letters were very round; the l's had fat loops and the writing itself showed a distinct flourish. That and the use of purple ink convinced me the writer must be a woman. But hey – I am not a graphologist and my gut feeling might be nothing but prejudiced sexism.

The picture was small – about 3 by 5 inches, and far from perfect. Obviously the photographer had been in a hurry and the light he'd had to work with came mostly from the weak overhead fixtures in the elevator. The face of the guy was in shadows. It was nearly impossible to see who he was, even if you'd known him. He was a bit taller than Mia. It might make him almost as tall as I am. His hair seemed dark and curling in the neck. He looked familiar.

The picture gave away more of Mia's face. She was shot slightly from the back, but the mirror behind the guy reflected an eye and part of her face. I also recognized the ring in her ear. We bought it when we were in Paris, March of last year, together with the jacket she wore. So the picture could not be older than that. Mia also seemed to have shorter hair in the picture than she had now, but not as short as she had last summer. It still had been long last spring, when she had it cut. So the margin stretched from last autumn through winter.

Mia's one visible eye was closed. The kiss was very intense and the man's hand was deep into the opening of her jacket. I stared hard, turning the picture this and that way, but it was unclear if his hand was over or under her blouse. Did it matter anyway?

I looked lower, seeing her nylon clad knee push forward from her skirt to disappear between the guy's thighs. It hurt seeing her do that. I wondered why it didn't cloud my mind with rage. All it made me think was that it could not have been September or even October. Mia would not have worn stockings like that. Well done, dear Watson.

The lift itself was rather non-descript. The half-closed doors seemed to be made of stainless steel. The place could have been a hotel, but just as well an office building.

I stared through the windshield of my car, not focusing on the row of small trees bordering the parking place. Their fresh new spring leaves were a blur. I knew now why I had concentrated so hard on the picture's details, for after I stopped doing that tears struggled their way out.

My brain screamed to stop this nonsense. It was just a piss-poor picture it cried, trying to silence my gut reaction. But this time I knew that my reliable intellect was wrong. It just dug its proverbial heels in because it didn't want to be dragged into a world of pain.

To be honest, there was very little reason to doubt what the picture told me. So I cried. Then I cleaned my eyes and my face, and dialed the written number on my cell phone. There was a long silence, allowing the pumping of my blood to be noticed – then the electronic equivalent of ringing sang in my ear, five, six times. It changed into a woman's voice telling me I had reached the offices of Jones and Callahan, Investigators, but that they were closed for the weekend. She advised me to leave a message, which I didn't.

I did dial another number, though.

Mia.

I am Mia, the woman Carl Lundgren married and yes, I have to agree with you – I am not a nice person. I also know that you'll like me even less after reading this.

Never worry, though, you don't have to punish me for it; life already did that for you. I've been taught a lesson that will satisfy each and every moralist and reward the multitude of people who told me so.

I am different now – wow, am I different. I guess life changed me so thoroughly that it is hard for me to give you an objective picture of myself back when I was still an arrogant teenager – and an even more arrogant young woman. I'll do my best, though. Please bear with me.

***

Let me start with an observation about truth I made as a child. People always insisted that I tell the truth. But when that truth didn't suit them, they preferred that I lie. And if I wouldn't go along with that, they'd call me an insolent girl or an impudent brat.

Even as a child and later as a teenager I saw the opportunism of all this – the manipulation involved. And I decided I wouldn't have anything to do with it.

Enough was enough, I said when I went to high school – no more false modesty for me, no more hiding of the simple truth: I was more beautiful than any girl or woman I ever met. I had a gorgeous face and body; no other girl in my vicinity compared to me. I knew that time would destroy that beauty, but not yet. Jealous plain-janes might call it skin-deep vanity, but I knew better: beauty was an asset, as long as it lasted. Beauty mattered; wasting it would be a sin.

Be honest – deep down you know that too.

Beautiful girls get higher grades in school, as every pimple-ridden classmate may grudgingly confirm. Beautiful girls find better jobs easier. They get things done by pouting and smiling. They get off the hook by fluttering their eyelashes. It is true, statistics prove it: beautiful people are underrepresented in criminal records. And even if they get caught, their cases go less often to court. In trials they are more often found not guilty and if found guilty their sentences are significantly lower. Did you know, by the way, that beautiful people are usually estimated an inch taller than they actually are?

Yes, one might say it's great to be beautiful. But that doesn't always make it easy. Being born a gorgeous woman guarantees a life filled with dilemmas. They attack you at every corner and there never seems to be a right choice to make. You grow up in a world of envy and even early on you have to decide how to deal with it.

For example, at fourteen I had no entourage of girls. Every popular girl is supposed to have them, if only because she attracts the popular boys for them. You know, uglier girls picking up the crumbs that fall off my table? I tried to make a few, but I guess I was too intimidating or whatever. The only ones that stayed were these ugly, nerdy girls: fat, with rabbit's teeth, glasses that made their eyes bulge and no taste or money for decent clothes. I really didn't know why I kept them – maybe for the contrast? You know, go take a closer look and you'll see how many beautiful girls have short and ugly friends.

So there was one of them who suddenly got all-angry with me after I forgot to tell her I went to the movies with this awesome eighteen-year-old guy. Why did she get angry? As if he would have chosen her? Fat chance. Beautiful girls date all the time and ugly fat girls don't. Was it my fault? Okay, I had promised to go to that movie with her, but come on – should I have chosen her and missed the excitement of snatching Dave away from Lisa-with-the-stuffed-bra, who was flaunting him as her exclusive boyfriend? For Christ's sake, I dumped the slob the next day, he meant nothing to me. But my so-called friend had to throw a tantrum, yelling she didn't ever want to be seen with me again. As if I cared.

Sigh – dilemmas.

Then there is the matter of clothes. At school I looked better in a sack than most girls did in silk. It wasn't something I asked for; it was a fact of life. Boys liked what I wore, no matter what it was. They whistled when I wore a simple pink T-shirt. They hardly looked up when Chrissie or Sandra wore the same one. So girls got pissed at what I wore, whatever I wore. What could I do? Dress down all the time – tug away my boobs, hide my legs? Should I have tied my blond curls into a severe library lady's bun just to avoid envious remarks? The guys would still have whistled anyway.

As I said – dilemmas.

High school is hell for beautiful girls. I know, most girls would commit murder for even a single day of popularity. But ask them again after a full year of 24/7 attention. I had to fend off boys from day one. If I hadn't turned them down every girl would have called me a slut. So I lived like a nun, just to avoid being shut out. And then I was shut out anyway for being an arrogant iceberg. If ever there was a no-win dilemma! Do I isolate myself from the boys so I won't be isolated by the girls or vice versa? You tell me.

I have these sparkling blue eyes. I have my perfect 100-watt smile. A pencil won't stick to the bottom of my tits – or the bottom of my ass, for that matter. I have perfect legs that never end. But what did it all do for me? I'll tell you what it did

to

me. It made me into what everybody already said I was behind my gorgeous back – a stuck up bitch. And it kept me a virgin until I went to college. You see, all the other girls got fucked; I didn't even get kissed. I scared the boys away. They got all tongue-tied around me, just to call me names after I left. When at last my little brother offered to take me to the prom for lack of invitations, I retired to my room. I closed the door and cried for two days till the damn event was over.

When you are a truly beautiful girl, college isn't much different from high school. My grades weren't bad. Well, I am not dumb and there weren't many distractions to keep me away from the books, were there? The few girls I befriended were dating their ugly asses off and here I was, sitting pretty on my lonely island. Being the perfect ice-queen had become second nature. Boys were intimidated and even the teachers gave up after a few nervous tries.

I knew it would help my grades to be friendly with the teachers. High school taught me that. It had also taught me where being friendly with teachers gets you. Once I allowed a math teacher to find my tits inside my top and get his bearded lips around a nipple. But when he guided my hand into his open fly to produce his crooked little pecker, I ran to find a toilet and emptied my stomach. Being beautiful leaves one pretty intolerant of ugly things, I guess – especially when they want to put them in you. Anyway, math always stayed my poorest grade after that.

Of course you would expect me to be a model and yes, I was for a while – there might even still be a few old magazines around with my face on them. Maybe you heard how girls are supposed to be nice to photographers and producers to get anywhere at all. Well, I was friendly as friendly goes; I flirted and smiled. I suppose you know that there are enough moments when it is just professional for a model to be naked. There are also a lot of perfectly legitimate moments for men on sets to touch a girl.

I was touched a lot. I also was whispered to a lot. And when I gave the impression to not understand the hints, there were always these more experienced girls to teach me. (Experienced in broader fields than just modeling.) They were more than willing to explain to me how important extra-curricular services are for an aspiring young model. It added up to yet another dilemma – should I accept being fucked to obtain a serious model career? Or not?