The Lovers

1. I felt ill and canceled my seminar in Ethics and Logical Propositions. I drove home early. The city streets were strangely empty due, no doubt, to the fact that I drove during the lazy hours between lunch and the conclusion of the workday.

   1. The drive was not unpleasant. The mid-sized city in which I teach is attractive, although its location in the Midwest means that I have lived my adult life far from the centers of culture.

      1. I have little to no resentment concerning this fact. 

2. When I arrived home, I found my husband’s cream-colored sedan parked sideways in the driveway with the driver’s door ajar. I saw that the front door to our house was, likewise, ajar, although the garage door was shut.

   1. Had my husband been injured?

   2. Had he been shot or stabbed, driven home, and crawled inside the house to die?

   3. My excitable mind raced.

3. I left my own car in the road and rushed inside. I hoped that, after exiting his car, my husband had not staggered up our suburban driveway, pausing beneath the peak of the imposing gable or leaning against our matte-black garage door, all the while nursing a bullet wound or other grievous wound.

   1. Surely the neighbors had seen nothing from the street that would humiliate him or, by proxy, that would humiliate me.

   2. I will extrapolate. We own a tasteful home along a street set with tasteful homes. We own a home replete with high, vaulted ceilings and an ostentatious number of windows along a street set with homes replete with high, vaulted ceilings and ostentatious numbers of windows. Needless to say, I did not want my husband to embarrass me in such a community.

4. I passed through the foyer. I stepped into the large, open-plan kitchen and living room. My husband was not there. I felt relief, having expected the worst: bloodstains and a cooling corpse. I heard unplaceable sounds from our bedroom, which was tucked at the end of a hallway at the farthest end of our home. I decided to investigate.

   1. The hallway had always intimidated me. Walking down the hall reminds me of entering the throat of a large creature. I am never confident that I will reemerge on the other side. Passing through it, between imposing photographs of my husband’s parents and one of my own grandfather, felt like navigating a familial gauntlet.

      1. I wondered: were my own death to occur, would my husband frame my image and add it to the hallway mausoleum?

5. I walked down the hallway. Our dog, who had been standing anxiously by the door when I entered, trotted beside me.

   1. His name is Benjy.

6. In our bedroom, I positioned myself behind a room divider which blocked the doorway from view. I recognized my husband’s labored breathing coming from our bed. I inclined my head to the left and peered out from behind the room divider. My husband was in our bed with another man. Their two nude torsos were stacked, one atop the other, sweating and heaving next to a heap of clothing. The men kissed passionately as they rolled back and forth across our royal blue duvet cover.

   1. The heap of clothing included: a houndstooth blazer, a light jacket, shoes, two pairs of jeans, a t-shirt, and a white button down.

7. I thought I recognized the other man—the one who was not my husband—but I struggled to place his face, partially because it was obscured beneath my husband’s own face, beneath his hands, his broad chest. The stranger’s hips pumped in time with my furiously beating heart.  

   1. I recognized in my husband’s lovemaking certain actions which he frequently and skillfully performed with me when we were engaged in lovemaking.

   2. I hesitated for a moment and continued to watch the men make love. It seemed that my husband’s stamina with this man was boundless.

   3. This stood in stark contrast to the lack of sexual endurance that my husband had exhibited with me in recent months.

8. My mouth went slack. My mind, to indulge a cliché, became utterly blank. I stood as still as an ox.

   1. I had observed minor hints that my husband was unfaithful, but I had dismissed them, telling myself that I was imagining things. For example: over the previous six months, he spent increasingly long hours at work, sometimes going to his office (or so I was led to believe) late at night or on Saturday afternoons

      1. Even if my husband were to be unfaithful, I had hoped that he would maintain a minimum of decorum.

         1. The current activities taking place in our marriage bed were anything but decorous.

9. I briefly considered vomiting on the floor.

   1. I changed my mind, although the taste of bile filled my mouth and I felt the burn of stomach acid at the back of my throat.

10. I left the bedroom door without being seen. I tiptoed to the kitchen and poured myself a large glass of merlot. The wine sloshed from the bottle and formed spindly legs along the sides of my goblet. I knew the wine would stain my teeth and lips red. But I liked the image: the cuckolded lover, angry and bloody mouthed.

    1. To use language precisely, I must observe that all wine glasses are goblets, but not all goblets are wine glasses.

       1. Stemless wine glasses are an outlier and are not goblets, lacking the foot and vertical stem that are essential elements to the category. 

          1. I digress, perhaps to cover my shock and rage with pedantry. Truthfully, I am indifferent to the distinction between goblets and wine glasses.

          2. I stood in the kitchen with my tail-tucked dog leaning pathetically against my leg. I gulped down a second glass of wine.

11. While considering my husband’s ongoing—and audible—infidelity, I found myself pacing along the edges of the broad oriental rug that dominated our living room floor.

    1. The rug was ornately patterned in red and blue. It was a gift from my husband’s mother, on the occasion of our fifth anniversary.

    2. Benjy became agitated. I patted him on his snout.

    3. I too was agitated. I briefly considered patting my own snout, as if I were my own caretaker. I did not pat myself.

       1. The idea was idiotic. I took a large sip of merlot.

12. Still clutching my wine glass, I glanced up at the framed artwork hanging between two picture windows: a reproduction of Van Gogh’s “Café Terrace at Night.” It was one of the few pieces of art that my husband and I both found tasteful: the moody blacks and blues of the night sky and distant buildings appeal to my husband’s melancholy side. For myself, the vicious yellow and orange of the terrace spoke of violence and resentment.

    1. As I drank and stared at the reproduced artwork, its colors stoked a gratifying rage within me.

13. After a final glass of merlot, I began to panic. I felt my carefully constructed life collapsing around me. I set the wine glass on our granite counter and drew my cell phone from my pocket, where it had been nestled since I left work—this detail shocked me—only thirty minutes earlier.

    1. When I placed my glass on our exquisite granite countertop, I did not bother to wipe its base with a clean cloth. The granite could have been marred by my carelessness. This detail alone shows my mental anguish.

14. I stepped outside and carefully shut the door behind me. Benjy had wanted to exit the house with me, but I pressed the toe of my shoe against his snout, keeping him inside. He whined as the door latched behind me.

    1. Sometimes animals need to be dealt with by the application of firm but gentle pressure.

    2. I apply the same logic, coincidentally, to my husband. At times he must be dealt with firmly.

15. I felt my heart racing as I stood outside. The heat of the afternoon was unbearable and I worried that the neighbors might see me. I worried that they would leap to judgment about why I was standing outside my own home at midday.

    1. I backed against the garage door so that the shrubberies on either side of the entryway would block me from prying eyes.

16. Safely tucked behind a shrubbery, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket. I took a deep breath. My head swam and I felt as if I were submerged beneath black water. I called my lover.

17. I should have mentioned previously that I do have a lover of my own, a wonderful man with whom I meet once a month at a discreet but tasteful hotel.

    1. This detail is irrelevant to my fury and sense of impotence and betrayal upon finding out that my husband too took a lover. The two cases are nothing alike.

       1. For instance, my affair—unlike my husband’s, which I assume was first consummated today—has been ongoing for nearly seven years.

       2. As another example, I attach no emotional significance to my affair, while I assume, based on the vulgar and intensely sentimental expressions that I heard my husband bellowing a moment ago, he finds infidelity to be a deeply emotional event.

18. On the second Tuesday of each month at 8:15 pm, my lover and I meet covertly in a room in a certain tasteful hotel (far from the parts of the city that my husband frequents), make love twice, sleep until an hour of the early morning and then return to our own private lives.

    1. My lover is a deeply religious man who does not believe in using of birth control, believing that it somehow offends the Puritanical God he worships.

    2. Fortunately, I am past childbearing age.

    3. The fact that this man is deeply religious yet has no scruples with infidelity (he too is married) is a seemingly contradictory phenomena for which I have no explanation.

       1. I have, in fact, met my lover’s wife only once, although she did not know who I was. The first time my lover and I met, tentatively holding hands beneath a table while both quaffing martini after martini, he showed me a picture of a woman.

       2. “I want you to know,” he said, “I want you to know that I am married.”

          1. I looked at the photograph of his wife. I understood that he was married.

19. My lover did not answer my call.

20. I chose not to worry. Perhaps he was at work, or in the restroom.

    1. The thought crossed my mind that perhaps the unidentifiable man actively making love with my husband, defiling my own marriage bed, was my lover.

    2. The two men did have similar builds. Both had a broad, hairy chest. Both of their bellies had once been firm with youth but had started, nearly imperceptibly, to sag.

    3. I quickly pushed the nauseating idea from my brain.

21. Three minutes passed. I tried to call my lover a second time. Again, he did not answer.

    1. I imagined that I heard his ringtone. I imagined that it was sounding within, say 30 yards of where I stood.

    2. I continued to torture myself with such thoughts for another minute or two.

22. At this point, the sun—which I have not mentioned before, although I have spoken of the unpleasant heat—became oppressive. I felt its weight on my back. I was still wearing the cardigan that I put on at the start of my workday, and the heavy fabric became intolerable.

    1. I removed the cardigan with a single, furious gesture.

    2.  I wadded the cardigan into a ball and threw it to the ground.

       1. Here I will mention that the color of this cardigan, like the color of my husband’s car, was cream. I am unsure why we have this apparent affinity for the color.

    3. The thrown cardigan landed in one of the immaculately landscaped shrubberies that constellate the edge of our property and dot our expansive lawn.

       1. I will not need to point out, of course, that neither my husband nor I manicure these shrubs. We pay a small landscaping company to manicure the shrubs.

       2. I wondered if the unknown man in my house—the man currently at work destroying the holiness as well as the frame of my marriage bed—was the same man I had seen on multiple occasions vigorously applying a pair of shears to our shrubs.

23. I shoved my phone into my pocket and walked back into the house. My mind began to race. I felt panic encroaching.

    1. The interior walls of our home, painted an attractive mild green and topped with skylights, began to close in. My field of vision narrowed and became a tunnel.                        

24. Benjy whined and I hushed him with a light tap on the snout. He trotted away from me and the tap of his nails scrabbling against white tile echoed through the kitchen. I shut the kitchen door behind myself with the utmost care. The sounds from the bedroom had quieted, so I assumed that the men had wrapped up their activity.

    1. From personal experience, my husband falls into a deep sleep immediately after making love.

       1. This sleep can last from five minutes to an hour and is frequently accompanied by bone-rattling snores.

25. I was wrong about my husband’s post-coital nap: I heard the squeak and press of bedsprings. The men were awake and moving. I heard my husband’s voice uttering low syllables. It sounded as if he were muttering into a pillow.

    1. I tiptoed to the opening of the hallway, at the end of which was the bedroom.

26. A thought came to me: how had the other man, the one recently having intercourse with my husband, arrived at our home? Only my husband’s car was parked in our driveway.

    1. Of course, the other man could have parked a block away from our house and then walked the rest of the distance. I would not have noticed an unfamiliar car parked down the road.

    2. Or, my husband could have given his lover a ride from somewhere (say, from his office).

       1. This would naturally imply that my husband knew this man from his work.

    3. Or, the other man could have walked. Perhaps he was not a workplace associate but one of our neighbors or, as I mentioned previously, the man who manicures our shrubs.

27. As I listened to both men dress and heard one (who I assume was my husband) run the water and step into the shower, I briefly considered the few unsavory options that presented themselves to me. None were appealing.

    1. I could return to work and forget what I had seen.

    2. I could drive to the office of a divorce lawyer and file the paperwork that would end my and my husband’s union.

    3. I could jump off a bridge.

28. Benjy lay down at my feet and licked my left shin. I decided that I could not bring myself to leap from a bridge.

    1. As I made this decision, I heard the shower turn off.

29. I stood at the end of the hallway, gazing past the portraits towards the bedroom. I heard my husband’s footsteps. He was approaching the bedroom door and, within seconds, would see me.

    1. I had made up my mind at the beginning of this ordeal—when I first heard the two men making love—that I could not bear to be seen. At the moment, I held sole knowledge of two secrets: my husband’s affair and my own. If he saw me, he would know that I had learned his secret, and I would have only knowledge of my own forbidden love left to protect.

       1. I cannot explain why this possibility worried me so deeply.

30. Before my husband could round the corner from the bedroom and emerge into the hallway, I lifted Benjy up from where he lay, mellow and panting at my feet. I slung him in the crook of my arm and, with the other arm, pushed the front door open.

    1. I assume that neither of the men heard me as I fumbled with the doorknob and, a second later, as I shut the door behind myself.

    2. Perhaps the men were idiots.

    3. I had long suspected that my husband was vapid and self-absorbed.

       1. Why, you may ask, did I marry him knowing in advance of his vapidity and self-absorption? The answer is simple although it pains me to say.

       2. I too am vapid and self-absorbed and, until today, I had believed that our corresponding vapidity and self-absorption made us ideal partners.

          1. Detachment and indifference forming the twin pillars of our love.

31. I may as well observe that as I fled my own home, dog beneath by arm, lips still stained red with merlot, I was acting instinctively, with neither thought nor feeling. In other words, I was acting like an animal.

    1. Benjy did not object to this sudden egress from the house.

       1. His ears perked up.

       2. His tail wagged.

32. I rushed past our manicured bushes and looked away from my husband’s car. I left my discarded cream-colored cardigan where it lay.

    1. Good riddance to that unsightly piece of clothing.

    2. I made a brief mental note to never again purchase a cream-colored item of clothing.

33. With Benjy held close against my chest, I trotted down the driveway to the road. Only sixty minutes had passed since I parked, but the shadows cast by the sycamore trees lining the street were already beginning to lengthen.

34. I opened the passenger-side door of my vehicle, tossed Benjy (gently, lovingly, with compassionate and graceful touch) onto the seat, then shut the door again. I entered and sat down in the driver’s seat.

    1. Like a fool, I had left my keys in the ignition. Any passerby could have stolen the car.

    2. I wondered: had I left the keys behind on purpose?

    3. That is to say: upon arriving home, had I known something was awry and made the snap decision to leave my car, my means of transportation and my access to livelihood, supremely vulnerable, as if wishing for a stranger to blow up the core of my life?

       1. I had no time for this line of reasoning.

35. I turned the keys and the engine began to purr. Benjy whined in the seat beside me. He would quickly adjust to these disruptions in his life. He would become accustomed to never seeing one of his owners again. He would be fine.

    1. Dogs are malleable creatures.

36. As I was about to pull away, two men emerged from the front door to the house that, until quite recently, I had happily shared with my husband. Both men were dressed in the clothing that had been scattered across the bedroom floor. As if in unison, both men raised a hand to shield their eyes from the sun.

    1. The two men embraced. They shared a quick peck on the lips. Apparently, the tryst had concluded.

37. I stared at the men as they paused in front of our matte-black garage door. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. An odd feeling crept over me.

    1. I am ashamed to admit this.

38. I could not tell which man was my husband.

39. I could not distinguish which man was the lover.

40. Both men had the same aquiline nose; they shared a strong jaw and a gently receding hairline.

41. My husband—the man I had been married to for over a dozen years and had remained faithful to for several of those—had never worn glasses. His vision was, as he often reminded me, “impeccable.” Yet both men standing in this otherwise mundane suburban setting wore heavy, black-framed glasses.

    1. My confidence began to wane. Who was I to say what my husband did or did not wear; what he did or did not look like?

       1. I wondered if, in our thirteen years of marriage, I had ever looked the man directly in the face or taken the time to commit his appearance to memory.

    2. It seemed distinctly possible that, in fact, my husband did wear glasses.

    3. Perhaps I was confusing details of my lover’s face—a handsome face, square-jawed with an aquiline nose—with that of my husband. Perhaps it was my lover who had never worn glasses.

       1. And, by extension, it would then be my husband with weak eyes and glasses with lenses as thick, as the saying goes, as Coke bottles.

42. My attempt to discern which man was my husband was a spectacular failure.

43. The men kissed a final time and began to amble towards my husband’s car. The men held hands and gazed, sickeningly, into one another’s eyes. One ran his fingers through his hair. The other drew a cell phone from his pocket. I knew that I would be spotted if I remained where I was.

    1. I had already decided—and this is no exaggeration—that I would rather die than let that happen.

44. I shifted the car into gear and pressed down firmly on the gas pedal.

45. I looked back at the men in the rearview mirror as I drove away with Benjy panting in my ear and the scent of dog’s breath filling my nostrils.

    1. If for no other reason than their remarkable and uncanny physical similarities, the two men, I concluded, deserved one another.