Secret No Longer

[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.]

SECRET NO LONGER

Chapter 14

Face To Face with the Unthinkable

"Have you flown much before?"

The question came from the very personable, neatly-dressed woman in the aisle seat separated from my window seat by an empty one in between, a sign that this was a typical red-eye. As uninterested as I was in conversation right then, I nonetheless found her gentle voice and quiet manner soothing, and soothing things were exceptionally well appreciated right then--indeed, needed.

Momentarily confused, I glanced forward briefly.

"Oh...Oh, you mean this, right?" I replied, mild embarrassment managing to pry a weak, thin, strained hint of a chuckle from somewhere within me, after which I promptly lapsed back into the scarlet-black humor that had suddenly become the essence of my life. She had noticed that I'd been clutching the ends of the armrests with viselike ferocity. What reason could there be for that, this nice lady evidently concluded, besides classic white-knuckle syndrome?

It was the inaccuracy of the conclusion that had prompted my tepid hint of levity. Just a little sheepish, I relaxed my hold on the innocent objects onto which, unconscious of the fact, I had poured out an ocean of rage, frustration and bitterness.

"Actually I have. I guess I'm just tense about...something."

"Sorry to hear that. I hope it's not serious. Anything I can do to help?"

To help, indeed. That gentle speech was helping, but there was really no appropriate way to tell her so. Meanwhile, though, her simple offer had prodded the rage-machine within me into manufacturing a wild torrent of thoughts.

Suppose, just suppose, I somehow managed to give this sweet and quite appealing woman a great line, something so witty and persuasive that it would sneak around whatever lame attempts at charming her into bed which, considering her simple attractiveness, more than a few guys must have tried, convincing her, even if only half-seriously, that a good, hard fuck would solve everything.

A grudge fuck. A real winner.

Right then I was glad I had never learned that art. Never needed it, never wanted it. Rather uncommonly for such peripatetic professionals as I, I had never honed the skills so many others of my colleagues had at charming and hustling women into their hotel rooms. Empty sex with unknown partners with whom no chance of any meeting of minds and hearts struck me as cold and unsatisfying.

And yet, at this moment, the notion of a good hard fuck had a certain appeal to it.

A grudge fuck. A revenge fuck. A fuck designed to lash out, to punish another's shame with shame of one's own.

An overspeeding slide show of improbabilities raced across my mind's eye in response to this woman's kind offer of help, culminating in a spectacular show of sexual frenzy, with her, graphically recorded by an array of well-operated video cameras and edited into a spectacular pageant of lust, all for one intended audience, an audience of two individuals whose gratitude for a lifetime of loyalty, love and trust had turned out to be a supremely callous lust of their own, lust characterized by betrayal, scorn and indifference, and all of these of the most shameful and unconscionable kind.

If it seems such a cliché of fact and fiction, that's because it does indeed happen so often. You know the scene: somebody goes away; somebody returns when they weren't supposed to return; somebody therefore sees something they weren't supposed to see...

Fill in the blanks with any number of variations. In this case, though, there had been a few circumstances that don't show up too often in most tales of this kind.

The task which I was on the east coast to perform had unexpectedly demanded that a piece of equipment be very quickly assembled, programmed and hand-carried from my place of employment to the place where I had been working for many weeks. There had been a failure, and security requirements, some legal, some for the company, some simply sensible, demanded that I personally return, cobble together the item in question, deal with the classified software and data to go in it and then return it to the field location, never letting it out of my sight.

The schedules were inescapable and inflexible. The consequences of failing to produce the item, return upon this particular flight and put it into service on schedule were beyond consideration.

Though I only had a few hours to accomplish the work, I had been fortunate--or rather, what would have been fortunate in any reasonable circumstance, which this particular circumstance most certainly was not--to have time to swing past home and, if I should find my wife Linda home, and maybe my son, Jason, as well, give them a quick little hug and hello on my way through this whirlwind.

There would be no hugs now, not for a long time. Maybe never again.

I had not caught them

in flagrante delicto

exactly; they had just been showering together. But that, need I tell you, was enough and more, and the bits of their overheard conversation heard through the rush of water served only to shatter whatever shreds of doubt or hope remained.

Stupid, a naive sap, an exploited dummy used by cleverer souls untroubled by conscience for what could be gained from him was I, an object to be blithely tossed aside once its usefulness was exhausted, respected not in the least, standing there, inert, this ridiculous box, which was at this moment resting on my lap, then dangling from my shaking hand The rush of the running water, the wisps of chatter, and then the

coup de grace,

a moan of pleasure as the man touched the woman somewhere that no man has the right to touch her except the one man who at that moment instead stood, helpless, numb and paralyzed, listening to the sounds of sin from just outside the door.

What a consummately cruel twist of fate it was that, at this one particular point in time and space that I most deserved the chance to confront the sinners, lay down the law and mete out justice, I should instead be bound beyond consideration of any alternative to turning on my heel and making this flight, forced to postpone my rightful prerogative of action until God only knows how much later, when I might find some way to get home again, left until then to my own means to find some way to calm my mind and bring even a trace of peace to my soul if only for the sake of my ability to function in a project where clear thinking, and quick thinking, were crucial.

Incest.

Incest

, for God's sake!

The sin of sins, the ultimate of all sexual desecrations, raging within my own home, my own family, for who knows how long, happening between the woman I have loved, trusted, adored and cared for all these years and the man she and I had procreated together and loved together---

Loved together. The ambiguity of the verb was at that moment excruciating. Love, so variously defined, so differently understood from one context to another.

Right now, though, there was at least one single, consistent definition of love I could embrace. It was the core definition upon which I now bestowed my hatred, despising, rejecting, abjuring it, even before its multiple applications were resolved.

Yes, wouldn't it be a kick, to magically discover in this woman now sitting calmly nearby a sympathy for my plight, of the kind which she would determine was reason for her to join me in a campaign of vengeance? Our campagn's tactic would be fighting illicit lust with our own illicit lust, imparting to some medium, digital, analog, whatever, our own well-calculated fornication, editing and adjusting it for the greatest, most sickening impact, and then presenting it to the miscreants in all its miserable glory, to rub their noses in it, then to shove the stinking evidence up their nostrils until they asphyxiate with the replica of their own depravity.

Revenge fuck. I could use one of those right now.

For a moment I allowed myself to consider how she looked instead of how she sounded. She was truly an example of the kind of woman I find most appealing: a professional woman, career woman, easily comfortable with the role, living the life a true feminist insists should be her option, yet showing no sign of making some kind of strident crusade of it.

I had married such a woman, and had found her no less appealing when, after some discussion, she decided to chuck the rat race and become a stay-at-home wife and mother.

Well, now, that looked like a bad decision. Maybe if she had someplace to be nine-to-five she wouldn't be in the shower cleaning up the evidence of having just been porked by her own son.

Despite the typical wish to be left strictly alone at a time like this I had actually made some effort to engage this woman in some light conversation, simply because her particular kind of gentle speech and quiet manner so soothed the pain, and I wanted to sustain it, prolong it. It was the one and only thing I had encountered thus far that had helped in the least bit to calm me and reduce the tension and frenzy. I was quite aware that I absorbed nothing of what she actually said; it was just the peaceful aura about her, right then so utterly opposed to my own, that was medicine to me. I had to struggle just a little to keep up with her just enough to sustain the conversation. I wished I could tell her what I really wanted, ask her to recite the contents of the in-flight magazine or the ingredients in the little sealed cup of juice I had requested, anything--just to hear that soft, reassuring lilt for a while.

She had asked me some ordinary, friendly questions about my trip and my work. I was in no mood to even think about that, so I used a convenient truth to avoid it: it's classified, I can't talk about it. Sorry. That brought her a smile and some cute little quips about cloak-and-dagger James Bond stuff. So few people know just how phenomenally dull and prosaic the overwhelming bulk of information classified Secret really is.

Let me satisfy your curiosity, beautiful lady. Come with me to my secret meeting-place, 1l:30 sharp. Knock three times on the door--two fast, one slow--and I'll let you in and reveal to you the wondrous mysteries that lie behind the cloak of the classification of Secret. I'll order a fine wine, and we'll celebrate the opening of your starry eyes to the seductive world of espionage with a really hot tumble in the sheets...

Music by John Barry.

Bah.

But I was grateful, though, for this tiny morsel of relief. Kind of ironic, isn't it, that this woman and I would soon part company, bound our respective and different ways, almost certainly never to meet again, and she'd never know of the part she had played in a dark pageant of tortured, twisted thoughts, feelings, fantasies and surmises, nor the simple relief I had found in her gentle presence at a time I so desperately needed it.

I was done sleepwalking through the tired routine of checking into my hotel and now lay on my back, on the bed, totally uninterested in dinner, television, preparing for the next day's work...anything at all. Hours passed as I lay there, staring at the ceiling, uselessly absorbing the patterns in the plasterwork.

I need to think--but not now. Not yet. Right now I must learn to think of nothing. I must vacuum all thought, and more important, memory, from my consciousness until some deeply hidden, unconscious and natural process can have the time to convert the overwhelming avalanche of unthinkable thoughts into a form I can even begin to process.

Remember that clock? The one you read about many episodes ago, the one that so badly tormented Linda with its twin weapons of slowness and inexorability?

It should be no surprise that it was now my turn to fall victim to a kindred machine my hosts had helpfully installed in every room.

2:38 AM

Nobody should be awake at such an hour.

Of course it was about twenty to midnight at home; I had crossed two time zones and stopped in the third to the east to get here. The world would soon come pounding at my mind's front door, demanding function and service, three hours before it would be ready to meet that demand under normal circumstances. And these circumstances were hardly normal

Fate had turned sadistic, throwing only the worse options and possibilties at me--with the blessed exception of that sweet-voiced woman on the plane. I wished I could have asked her to join me for dinner--forget the other fantasies for now--just enjoy her company. But she had someplace to be; I had someplace to be, and both our hands were adorned with wedding bands.

Well, let's hope that hers is not the symbol of crushing agony. That would make one of us.

2:50...

(to be continued)