Thanks to Yorkie Chai for the edit
*
Jack sat in his darkened office, staring into nothing. Nothing. That described his marriage to perfection: nothing. The shock had long since worn off, replaced by . . . nothing.
No anger. No grief. Just empty; a hollow void. For the first time in his life, he had no idea what to do next; unpredictability, a new concept for him.
It might have been easier if she had died. What she did was death in a way: a metaphorical death, instead of an accident, or disease, or murder. "Murder."
It was an option, but no. He looked around. At his work place. In his building. He'd worked too hard, made too many sacrifices, borne too many insults and injuries. He looked at the framed portraits of his heroes: Percy Julian, the man who inspired him on this path, and Booker T. Washington, founder of his alma mater. "I can't give this up. Not for her," he told them. Still, the thought of that woman, in his house, on his bed . . .
Something happened inside him: a rising, bubbling heat, poisonous, yet good at the same time. He recognized the rage: a rare emotion in his life. He owed his parents for that. "You're pissed 'cause life ain't fair?" his pap used to tell him, "Use the anger boy. Don't let it use you." It was the hate. He hated her with every fiber of his soul.
Brad Wa entered the room. He was one of the few permitted unrestricted access to the office. Access was necessary to his job. He carried a flash drive, probably containing the latest figures for Jack's new project. He didn't expect to see his friend in the office. He started at the sight. "Jack?"
"Brad."
"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be at the conference."
"I switched with Hank. I gave my lecture yesterday. It's the same crowd, same reporters, just earlier. I came home early to surprise Renee . . . she's having an affair Brad."
"Oh," Brad was sympathetic but his lack of surprise spoke volumes.
"You knew?"
"I suspected."
"You son of a bitch! You should have said something!"
"What? What should I say? You were hard in love with her Jack. Would you believe me? And what would you have done? Look Jack, you're my best friend, but I stayed away from your personal life. Difficult. You know how the game works with CIA. Uncle Sam wants you nice and happy and making things for them. So long as she's not sleeping with some Chinese or Russian, and that guy she's with is definitely too stupid to fuck his own ass, much less spy; we don't care. Uh, you didn't do anything bad did you?"
Brad was worried; losing the world's greatest chemist to a murder charge would cause serious complications, as would covering up the crime scene, but Brad was more concerned for his friend. They'd known each other since junior high.
Jack knew Brad was right. If he'd told him his suspicions Jack would refuse to listen. "She doesn't know I'm here . . . they don't."
He'd had the cab drop him off a couple of blocks from the house. He snuck through the back in case she was home. If not, a bottle of wine, some red roses, and his nude body on the bed would be waiting for her.
The sighs and grunts from the bedroom sent chills into his spine. He recognized her voice. The other sounded familiar but he couldn't place it.
He took off his shoes and crept upstairs. His house was new, modern, not at the stage where a stray footfall would cause a creak. He could sneak in like a burglar, and be out with no one knowing. The door to the bedroom was open but its angle let him peer inside without being noticed. The sight drew the blood from his face.
She was nude, in bed with Derek.
The fucking yoga instructor?
Renee was on her back, her short, auburn hair splayed out in wet red-gold curls on the pillow. Her pale, pink skin glowed with sweat. Her pink pussy, shone wet with cum. Derek, his sculpted, light tanned body displaying a similar glow, lay by her side, prodigious cock flaccid against his groin.
"Well!" she gasped. "That was a good session. Better than the last time."
"I try to please," Derek smiled. "You up for another?"
"Let me catch my breath first."
They lay on the bed; Jack watched quietly. No cigarettes after sex. His wife didn't smoke and Derek, he knew, was a health nut. "Time to go Jack," he thought numbly. He wasn't going to watch his wife betray him like some fucking voyeur. Before he turned to go, though, Derek spoke again. And his wife answered. And Jack listened as his wife, Renee, gutted him.
"How long is he gone again?"
"Three days," she replied. "You think you can go that long?"
"Not three days," Derek laughed.
"Oh I think you can. You certainly do much better than Jack," she laughed back.
"Why did you marry him anyway?"
"He's rich."
"So that's the only reason?" Derek pressed.
"Well, there's that and, well, I thought he'd be much better in bed, considering."
"I'd heard stories about niggers and their dicks. Is he . . .?"
Renee giggled, "Oh, he's above average, not as big as you, and not as good with it either."
She didn't call him out for using that word. Renee, his wife, didn't call her lover out.
"It wasn't just the betrayal," he told Brad over drinks later. "I could handle that. At least I like to think I could. It's just . . . she laughed about it. They both did. And you want to know what else that bitch did?"
The Bedroom
"I wonder what he'd say if he found you were taking birth control pills all this time?" Derek asked.
"Probably 'Renee, I'm very disappointed,' like my father, or my old college professor," she snorted. "As if I actually wanted his children. I'm not giving up this figure for anyone, certainly not him."
Jack could count, on the fingers of one hand, the moments in his life he was angry enough to kill. Every experience up to that moment became minor irritants.
"I would have done it, you know," he told Brad. "If I had a gun, a knife, anything that kills. Fuck the consequences."
"I'm not surprised. I'm not sure I wouldn't have done the same."
"She made a fool of me Brad. They both did. Ten years wasted. How the fuck did I let her in?"
Brad looked on his friend in quiet sympathy. He hurt for Jack. He had suspicions about Renee from the first time they met, but background checks produced no foreign connections.
Just your basic gold-digging slut, and racist at that. I should have told Jack the instant I got a whiff.
He knew proof would have broken Jack's heart, but better that than this shattered man now. All at once, Brad was filled with rage and hate towards Renee. Jack was a good man, gifted, a genius, and that bitch screwed him like a joke.
"My blindspot."
"What? Oh," Brad said, roused from his thoughts.
Jack and Brad often talked about his blindspot. It went all the way back to junior high. They met as seventh graders (sevies, the older teens called them). Well, Jack wasn't exactly a normal seventh grader. He already had a chemistry degree from Tuskegee, and was working on his masters at MIT, but a twelve-year-old super genius still needed things to learn, like any other twelve-year-old.
He and Brad bonded over their unconventional backgrounds. Brad's parents were from Taiwan. He was born and raised in Chicago. Jack's parents were from Alabama. Jack was born in Guam, and spent his early years in Okinawa. His father was a decorated Marine and career military officer. His mother taught math in schools around the world. They recognized their son's high I.Q early, and made sure of his advanced education.
As it stood, achieving status as a black kid with a college degree, in a mostly white school, went for a great deal of social awkwardness. It was easy to bond with one of the few Asian kids present.
Brad turned out to be as perceptive as Jack's parents, and became almost like a brother. There was even a crush for awhile but Jack pointedly told him he couldn't love him that way. It broke Brad's heart, but the relationship recovered, and evolved into a deep friendship.
The course of the boys' friendship wound through junior and high schools, college, and careers. Brad admired Jack's open mind and genius but noticed a certain blindspot. It involved people, specifically, people of a certain type, quite often women. Not all bad women could get through to Jack but some . . .
Brad remembered Cindy Harper, a beautiful bitch of a cheerleader, who cozied up to Jack in their sophomore year, used him to ace a chemistry exam, and then set him up for a vicious humiliating practical joke, courtesy of the swim team, that made him the school laughing stock. Brad had to pick up the pieces.
Strange though; just a few weeks after the goal post incident, Cindy had to leave school for a month, due to a severe skin condition, later found to be an allergic reaction to a mysterious chemical that found its way, by equally mysterious means, into her makeup and skin cream.
It didn't do well for the cheerleader's social life after her hair, eyebrows, and lashes fell out, and she caught a severe case of acne besides. She recovered but never came near Jack again. And the swim team . . . Brad smiled. People still talked about it. It actually went national.
Speaking of beautiful bitches, "It's Cindy all over again. You'd think I'd get smarter after that. Kept my distance from the bad ones, and Renee comes along, and I think she's different, and she turns out to be the worst.
"Renee's a sociopath, Jack. They're clever."
"A racist one at that," Jack agreed, "I thought I knew her." He'd crept away, the sounds of their fucking mocked him as he left the house.
"I was in love. Too fucking in love and too busy with the business. I'm a super genius and yet blind as Stevie Wonder in a coal mine. Ten fucking years, and I never knew."
"A lot of people have contradictions, Jack."
The two friends sat and drank. Jack flashed back to the first time he met Renee.
He was giving a lecture at Berkeley, not paying much attention to his own words, still heady from his recent Nobel. He spoke on autopilot, throwing out memorized theories, facts, and discoveries like a preacher.
As he continued, he became increasingly drawn to a young woman near the front; pretty, with short, curly, auburn hair. He noticed her, she noticed him noticing her. "She had the hook out, I guess," Jack told Brad.
She came to him after the lecture; a twenty-five year old grad student, he found out. She didn't seem one of those gushy fans; Jack was impressed. He didn't remember much about the conversation, something about his carbon atom idea that got him his Nobel, too entranced by her hazel eyes, her curvy body in the sweater and tight jeans, her New England accent with the Connecticut lilt. Beauty, intelligence, and personality. "All a bunch of bullshit."
"That's how they work," Brad agreed.
Jack and Renee dated for two years before they married. Brad was best man. He kept his doubts about Renee carefully hidden, but he'd dropped hints to Jack over the previous two years.
"And I never really saw it. Never caught your warnings. Sorry Brad."
"Nothing to apologize for. Besides, they were my personal opinions. I could've been wrong. I've been wrong before."
"Not this time."
They drank their beer for a few moments. "So, what are you thinking?" Brad asked.
"Revenge of course."
