The following actually took place about 24 years ago.
"Damn, she's pissed," Bill, my father-in-law said as he hung up the phone.
It was 1980 and the two of us were working for the same company as engineers on an offshore oil platform in the North Sea. We were scheduled to leave in the morning for home. However, the fellow who was to replace him as chief engineer had been detained at home with some problem and the company had informed him it would be 14 days before another replacement could be on-site.
It seems my mother-in-law was throwing a fit back in Southwest Louisiana because he wasn't coming home on schedule. I really don't know why she was pissed, usually after he was home about a week she was ready for him to leave again. They had been married about 30 years and for 25 of those years he worked offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. He began working overseas about a year ago and I hired on about the same time primarily because of the money and tax advantages.
The real story was my mother-in-law was a bitch. I mean that in the most literal terms. Over the 10 years I had been married to their daughter he had caught her running around on him 3 times that I was aware of. My wife said it had been going on for as long as she could remember. But, I can tell you he was definitely in love with the woman and it didn't seem to bother him. She also had a drinking and prescription drug problem, not to mention that she was just mean as hell to my father-in-law.
"Will you do me a favor?" Bills voice broke the silence which followed after he hung up the phone.
"Sure."
He unlocked the side drawer on his desk and produced a small gift-wrapped box I had seen him buy in London on the trip over.
"On your way home from the airport will you stop off and give this to Nancy?" Maybe it will put her in a better mood. I promised to do it and it wasn't that big a deal because even though their house was out in the country, I had to go within a mile of it on my way home which was about 40 miles north of Lafayette.
The next morning I left the platform and started the long trip home. The worst part of working in the North Sea was the travel. But, the return trip was a hell of a lot better than the trip out. All the way home I thought of my wife and kids, but mostly my wife. I was scheduled to arrive at the airport in Lafayette at 10pm and with any luck at all I'd be home by midnight. I had parked my truck in my brother's shop in Lafayette, so he was waiting on me when I arrived. We hustled the luggage into his car and within 20 minutes I was on my way out of town.
Bill and Nancy lived on five acres in the country. They didn't have neighbors on the sides of their house, but there was one across the road. When I pulled up to the house there was a car I didn't recognize parked behind Nancy's so I couldn't park in the driveway. I parked on the opposite side of the street in front of the neighbor's house. I walked over to Bill and Nancy's house and rang the doorbell but no one answered. The lights were on in the house but turned off under the carport. I was sure she was home, but I was certainly not going to enter the house. There was no telling who was in there with her or what they were doing. I sure didn't want to catch her doing something she shouldn't be doing. As I started back to my truck, I heard Nancy laughing in the back yard. I thought I better see if she was outside before leaving so I didn't have to drive back over here tomorrow.
The carport was built on to the house and there was a storage room at the back of the carport. The entrance to the back yard was through an open breezeway between the house and storage room. Tall bushes grew behind the house and the storage room with the only gap in these bushes at the breezeway entrance. There was a concrete patio off the back of the house with an aluminum awning over it. As I approached the opening to the backyard I could see the lights were not turned on under the patio. When I entered the backyard I froze in my tracks. The lights were off under the patio but the light from the dining room through the sliding glass door was illuminating the patio. Nancy was laying on the cushioned double chaise lounge and some guy was kissing her passionately.
I quickly and quietly took a step back so they couldn't see me and hesitated a moment to make sure they hadn't heard me. I slowly started to retreat and got in my truck. My first inclination was to get out of there without being seen or heard. But, before I started the engine I realized I was somehow turned on by what I'd seen and wanted to see more. After all it had been 96 days since I had sex. I looked over at the neighbor's house. It was dark and both cars were under the carport indicating they were in bed.