Handy Work
Chapter One
In three decades of wedlock, I had never strayed. That Candace had done so -- and so carelessly -- was still mystifying. The romance had flickered out years earlier, and there was plenty of blame at both our feet for that. But we had remained together, going through the motions, as our daughters enjoyed their college years.
But the two- and three-o'clock returns home from hanging out with an exclusive group of friends from an art studio where she had become involved heavily with watercolors led me first to suspicion and then to the discovery that a canvas and paint weren't the limit of her involvement. One of the instructors, a guy 10 years her elder known by the regulars as "Moose," was spending some quality time with her at a local no-tell motel after the studio closed for business.
So I lowered the boom with a full report compiled by a private eye my bad-ass lawyer had urged me to engage. It wasn't cheap, but boy did it yield all the evidence I needed. When she was served with a fresh copy of the complaint --
Tierney v. Tierney
-- just filed in Circuit Court and then the evidence was shared with her attorney, Candace became more cooperative and finally left the domicile, taking most of its furniture with her.
"You're in a good position legally," my lawyer, Eason Masters, told me. "Just don't let her catch you getting laid before the judge grants the final decree or you could fuck things up for yourself."
So my orders required me to maintain zipper discipline for the two to three months that Masters estimated it would take for the court to set me free.
I was doing pretty well for the first few weeks until spring gave way to early summer and sweatshirts gave way to t-shirts. In particular, flimsy crop-top number my neighbor Kim was wearing over a sheer sports bra. The navel on her tight, flat tummy showed just above the waistband of skin-tight bicycle shorts that covered about the top third of her thighs as she struggled to push her mower through her overgrown lawn on the first Saturday afternoon in May.
"This sucks, Gordo," Kim said to me over our shared fence after she killed the engine of her mower at the midpoint of her slog through the thick, tall grass of her back yard.
"Looks that way, Kimmy. Why isn't Roger's worthless ass out here doing it? And why did he let it get this high," I said as we both walked toward the fence.
She raised her eyebrows, cocked her head and shot me a look that, without saying a word, let me know I was one clueless shit.
"How long's it been since you've seen Roger's worthless ass on this property, Gordo?
Helooo
?" she said.
"I kicked the bastard out in March and he ain't coming back. If he tries, he's going to jail."
I was gobsmacked. I guess I was so preoccupied with my own domestic dysfunction that I failed to notice that I had seen neither Roger nor his Chevy Tahoe on the premises in weeks, even though I'd exchanged perfunctory conversational pleasantries when I'd seen Kim outside from time to time.
We had not been besties with our nextdoor neighbors in our middle-income suburb of Memphis, but we had gathered around each other's fire pit a few times to sip beer and gossip. Kim was a nurse specializing in obstetrics at a major hospital and worked strange shifts sometimes. Roger? I never could figure out what he did other than very damn little. Kim seemed to be the breadwinner, and Roger seemed to slide by, coming and going in the middle of the workday fulfilling whatever commitments he had as a "consultant."
"He was in the basement checking on the furnace in late February when a text showed up on his iPhone. He had left it on the sofa right beside me. I picked it up and read it. It was from someone using the screen name "Sweet Taters" and it said, "Missing U," followed by emojis of a heart, and then an eggplant and squirting droplets," she said.
"Before that could sink in, another text popped up and this was a selfie of somebody's tits -- my guess was they were the sweet taters themselves," she said, matter of factly. "And then a selfie of her bush."
So, Kim's narrative continued, when Roger's sorry ass came back upstairs from the basement, she handed him the phone and asked him who "Sweet Taters" was. She said the color drained from his face before he tried to disclaim any knowledge of such a person, that it must have been misdirected to the wrong person -- a manifest and clumsy lie considering she would have to be listed in his contacts as "Sweet Taters" to appear that way as the sender of the text, and the fact that she had called him by name, Roger, in the tawdry thread.
Confronted with that, Roger changed from defensive denials to aggressive retribution. As the verbal exchange escalated, he grabbed her by the throat and slung her onto the sofa, then stood threateningly over her, warning her never to question him again. She went upstairs, called the police and waited. One look at the livid marks on her throat and officers led Roger away in cuffs, charged with spousal battery. A judge ordered Roger's worthless ass to stay at least 500 feet from the house and from Kim, who had already cited the abuse in her divorce filing.
I stood there shaking my head in amazement at the drama that had unfolded next door to which I had been utterly unaware. But competing for my brain's bandwidth was the fact that this gorgeous woman separated from me now by mere inches and a waist-high fence, was also separated and on the fast track to being legally single.
"Looks like we're in sort-of the same boat, doesn't it," Kim said.
On Eason Masters's advice, I couldn't talk specifics of the case, but I told Kim things were going well and that I was probably on track for a final decree in the next month to six weeks. "My lawyer tells me I need to be a good boy til then. No fooling around or I could screw things up. Tells me that I should assume Candace and her lawyer are having me watched for just such a slip-up.
"Mmm hmm," Candace said, trying to suppress a wry grin. "Hard, isn't it?"
I instinctively looked down to see if I was bulging my flimsy basketball shorts. I wasn't, but Kim saw my none-too-subtle glance and burst out laughing. I could feel my face flush in embarrassment as my neighbor bent over, leaning against the fence, howling at my stupidity.
