Rachel -
Right now my life was in mortal danger and I didn't even know it. I was doing my best to help my husband and if that meant throwing Grayson under a bus. Fine. Anyway, I knew now that what Jim and "his people" had told me was probably much more the truth than not. My new life was nerve wracking in ways I had never expected to ever have to experience. It was nerve wracking reestablishing my intimate relationship with Grayson. It was nerve wracking worrying about Jim and how he could possibly accept and forgive my continued fucking Grayson.
I hated that I was basically being FORCED to do that against my will, now - but I was also fearful at first Grayson just might be tired of me in that role, and therefore probably in the professional role as one of his go-to lawyers. I prayed a lot for guidance and courage. It was nerve wracking all ways. Suddenly I was very much NOT in control of my own life and in possibly terribly consequential ways.
The truth is all kinds of cheaters eventually find themselves in much the same straights. "It's just sex!?!" Then how come so many actual murders happen because of "just sex" in even this day and age in ALL the most modern and sophisticated countries in the world? Elaine had certainly slapped some sense into me by reminding me of the lessons of my Jewish religious AND ethnic heritage regarding sexual morality. Family is crucial. Marriage is a crucial part of family. Children can then be protected, raised, and taught in a stable marriage and even though Jim never embraced Judaism himself as a religion - my children by Jim would still be considered Jewish. And I still believe Jim would make an excellent father - once he left this business, maybe. I think now maybe that's why having children right away was never brought up by Jim. On the other hand my own reasons were basically even more selfish - I was too much "career" oriented and indulging my own hedonism and foolish fantasies, too much into Mammon.
"Thou shalt not commit adultery" was just the most common sense wisdom in the world, actually. It helped keep marriages alive and at least the possibility of having and raising children in a good "alive" marriage. And now I HAD committed adultery and my marriage was in tatters and barely on life support. I was out of choices. All I could do now was follow the lead of all the great Jewess heroines of the past. Do whatever it took to honor G-d, preserve my marriage, and save "my people" - and "my people" wasn't just Jim, and my family, but all my fellow American citizens as my first priorities.
I hope I would have arrived at this belated common sense wisdom even IF Jim had not been such a special man. Despite my blindness in allowing Jim to literally pull the wool over my eyes and become partially diminished to me, he WAS beyond special to me and always would be. This made it both easier to dedicate myself to preserving this marriage, but also much more fearful of the great pain and heartache that would ensue if I failed.
And I damn well might fail. Jim just might leave me and move out again if I was of no use to him in this endeavor because now even Grayson no longer wanted my body. I needed another man to want me, to give my body to him, in order to stay close to Jim, my husband and now my boss. How fucked up was that?
I did have to call Grayson when I was told he was finally back in town. He got back from Iran sometime Tuesday after that terrible for me "cards on the table" Saturday. I finally called him Wednesday about 5PM. I was almost surprised he answered his private cellphone when he saw it was me. He was very short with me at first and it wasn't looking good. After my conversations with Jim and Dr. Ruth, where we brainstormed different scenarios, I finally offered Grayson not just myself but "one of my college girlfriends who is in town visiting me and she was just WILD in college. She'd love to be with us for an evening..." and that was a good enough hook. The "college girlfriend" was actually Elaine.
Elaine was quite the pro and I learned even more watching her and really paying attention, now. But for me, personally, the sex was even more degrading than it had been before. Grayson caught that and loved it. And I knew - well thought - Elaine would report to Jim and tell him every damn thing I did to Grayson, to her, and allowed them both to do to me.
That got me back in with Grayson but it still wasn't the same as before. Grayson seemed tired and under a lot of pressure. I got the impression he kept me around now as merely the easiest thing for him. He didn't bring any other girls or women home, like he couldn't be bothered. Of course I was changed also but tried to keep my own nervousness and unhappiness buried.
Right now I was in Grayson's private jet - a modified "private" Boeing 707 no less, that Grayson bragged John Travolta once owned - and I was on my knees doing him yet again while we were somewhere over the Atlantic on our way to Paris.
What I learned MUCH later was that we were being shadowed by two USAF F-22 Raptors in total stealth mode for most of that trans-Atlantic flight. No transponders active, no active radar and radio transmissions, just reception only.
They were receiving radar info and further guidance info from an EC-3 AWACS on a "training mission." Ironically this EC-3 was also a modified Boeing 707. We were all at the mercy of some shadowy someone who could order those planes to shoot us down and kill us all at their command. And Jim wasn't even in that decision loop and neither was Elaine. It was now at the "Cowboy Rob" and maybe even a higher level.
Then the lead plane received a terse command, "Initiate - and hold." And 30 seconds later both planes received, "RTB - acknowledge in 10." And our shadows disappeared.
It was just a training mission. Maybe. One plane had activated one of its special Sparrow AAM's and received a good and strong radar lock on our 707. The pilot stated, "showing ready. Showing active. Showing acquired and locked. Ready to release." As part of the cockpit recorder log. This meant that the missile had successfully rotated outside the interior weapons bay of the F-22, became "turned on" electrically active, including activating its own guidance radar, found and locked on the target, us. Meanwhile the radar profile of the F-22 shot way up with the weapons bay doors open. The EC-3 was monitoring that for evaluation and did receive a sudden weak "blip" close to Grayson's 707 track. The F-22's themselves with their Sanders/General Electric AN/ALR94 Electronics Warfare system equipment
indicated the plane was not under any kind of radar surveillance except from the EC-3 about 400 nautical miles away, when all this happened.
The missile did smoothly power down and retract into the enclosed bay at command and the blip disappeared as well from the EC-3 monitors as suddenly as it had first appeared. For a few seconds we were just a button push away from death. But it was just a highly successful training mission, after all.
Sort of like one's mad and estranged husband (or wife) pulling a gun out and cocking it and putting it to your head - just for "training." Maybe that's why Jim told me all this after the fact. Jim was still pretty mad or disappointed in me. Duh. Maybe he just made it up to scare me and re-emphasize how important stopping Grayson was, one way or another. Or maybe it all really happened.
Luckily I did not know any of this at the time as I worked Grayson. Feeding his ego while apparently feasting on his phallic pride in my totally submissive role. Ironically, as I got to acting ever more submissive I was actually gaining more power over Grayson. At least when one considers that "knowledge is power". I was gaining ever more knowledge that Grayson was ever more sloppily dropping around me. This was hubris or karma in action and sans the necessity of any real pagan god or cosmic force. Just human nature, apparently. Power not only corrupts it makes one stupid. He was feeling ever more powerful. And he was also snorting ever more coke and needing my own special ways of stroking his ego ever more frantically.
