"So, how's the little wifey?" Henry Morefield asked me with a big grin on his too-wide Irish face. "Barefoot and pregnant?" He chuckled all the way to the tee. Out of respect for the game I let him complete his drive before I answered, popping open a beer as I did so. It was a warm January for our little corner of the South, which meant it was perfect weather for golf, if you didn't mind the fairways having that icky brown color and the players wearing the ugliest sweaters on the planet. Henry had joined me at the last minute when my client I'd reluctantly agreed to play with cancelled out with an emergency. Henry had had a contract signing planned, but it had fallen through, too. We hadn't spoken much since he helped me with that little contract I forced Mary to sign, and I appreciated the chance to catch up.
Even though I'm not particularly fond of golf -- a "good walk, spoiled", as the man said. But like the three-martini-lunch and the client dinner/strip club, it was a necessary part of the job. And today there wasn't any pressure, since there wasn't a client, and I found I was actually enjoying the game.
"A little of both," I sighed. "But she won't be my wife for much longer."
"Oh?" he asked, as he put his club away. "Is she fulfilling her agreement?"
"Oh, yeah, I'm getting head left and right," I assured him. "And other stuff, if I want it."
"Sounds like a good deal," he murmured, hesitantly. "Apart from the whole she's-carrying-a-bastard-in-her-belly thing."
"Yeah, that's a little hard to take on a daily basis," I sighed. "Excruciating, actually. That was supposed to be my baby, and we were supposed to share this whole experience. Now . . . well, I mostly leave her alone about the pregnancy."
"Well, she won't be pregnant forever," he said, in an attempt to sooth me. "Right. So when she's not pregnant, then what do I do?" I asked. I meant it to be rhetorical.
"My advise? Toss her ass out. Get your jollies however you need to to move on, then send her packing and start over."
"And part of me wants to do that," I agreed, as I approached the tee.
"Desperately. Getting a lot of strange pussy after too long of a drought has been very . . . motivating."
I waited until I had put my ball in the air -- a fair shot, landing about two hundred yards in the fairway -- before I continued. "But the other part of me wants to forgive, forget, reconcile, and try to salvage our life together. We were in love, once. I could be again. With the Mary I married, not the cheating whore who lives with me now."
"Not sure that the woman you married can every come back," he grunted as I got into the cart and he took off towards our balls. "Not in any way you could trust her."
"And that's the thing," I agreed. "That's it exactly. How can I ever trust her again? I mean, I know there has to be a way. I've even found a way, I think, at least to truly test the theory."
"What? This should be interesting," he chuckled evilly.
So I told him. I'd come up with the basics of the plan when I had been shacking with Susan up in Canada, and had been refining the details in my mind ever since. It was, at various points, cunning, crude, and cruel, but it should get the job done, to my mind. When all was said and done I would know without a shadow of a doubt just how much Mary loved me and how faithful she was, and that would tell me much of what I wanted to know before I proceeded with the rest of my life.
Henry listened attentively until I wound down. Then he shook his head in amazement.
"Big, hairy brass ones you've got, Bill," he sighed admiringly. "Never would have . . . looked at it that way. Seems like an awful lot of trouble for a woman who's cheated on you. But hey, tell her that her old car drives like a fucking first-time blowjob!" he added, smiling beatifically." I had sold Henry the car I'd bought Mary for her birthday within hours of her telling me she was leaving me.
"It'll be worth the time and trouble, just to know for certain. That way I can put it in the past one way or another."
"And in the mean time?"
"I watch her get fat and abuse the hell out of her mouth," I said, chuckling evilly. "That part, at least, is without any potential moral murkiness. At least from my point of view -- I'm sure a friendly neighborhood feminist would have all sorts of rude things to say about it."
"I still think you should just throw the bitch out," Henry sighed. "It'd make the paperwork a hell of a lot simpler. .
"Yeah, but it would deprive me of my amusement," I countered. "Honestly, I'm just not ready to let her off the hook, yet. One way or another."