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House of Cards Ch. 01

By: ohio



Here's something to think about: even little things can destroy your life. An example: If it hadn't been our 16th Wedding Anniversary, Marianne and I would have been eating dinner at one of our usual favorite places, instead of the fanciest restaurant in Cleveland. If it hadn't been such a fancy restaurant, I wouldn't have seen her face as she sat down--I would have been standing behind her and holding her chair, instead of letting a waiter do it. If I hadn't seen her face, I would have missed the little grimace of discomfort as her bottom touched the chair.

She saw my concerned look, and before I could ask anything she said, "Just a muscle cramp—my calf is sore today for some reason." Then she quickly went on to change the subject: "Oh Tom, what a beautiful restaurant this is. Thank you for bringing me here tonight!"

Here's something else to think about: Often we know something long before we realize that we know it. Marianne's grimace was a face she had made before, when she was suffering from what we jokingly called the "Honeymoons". When we were first married, on one of our honeymoon nights in Puerto Rico we had a lot to drink, and made love so vigorously (and so often) that the next day her pussy lips were sore and swollen, and it was uncomfortable for her to sit down. We had to take a day or two off from regular fucking, though we found many other ways of giving each other pleasure! The same thing happened during our "Second Honeymoon" six years later, when we left the kids with my parents and spent a week in Cancun. One exciting and passionate night of sex led to two days of soreness for Marianne —thus the name "Honeymoons".

Since then our sex life had calmed down quite a bit, as I guess it does for pretty much every married couple raising children, and the "Honeymoons" had not happened again. But the look on Marianne's face on our Wedding Anniversary was the "Honeymoons" look, and I recognized it right away, though I didn't realize until later that I had.

In fact our anniversary dinner was wonderful, and so was the rest of the evening, though not without a surprise—again, one whose meaning I didn't understand until later. Throughout dinner we shared great food, two bottles of champagne, and lots of happy memories. We talked about our two teenagers, both away for the summer at camp. We laughed about the awkwardness of our early dates in college, and about how it took a few tries until we knew what we were doing together in bed. Marianne had slept with two men before me—each of them only once, and without much pleasure. I'd had a steady girlfriend in high school, but she wouldn't let me fuck her until a month before graduation, and we'd done it only a few times before I left for college.

When Marianne and I got home from the restaurant—tipsy and very much in love—I carried her up to the bedroom and began to strip her naked, but she stopped me. 

"Tom, wait. Let me put on the new nightie I bought just for tonight."

She disappeared into the bathroom, and by the time I was naked and in bed, she had emerged in a long pale blue nightgown that was nearly transparent. Her lovely breasts and perfect nipples showed clearly, as did the dark bush of her pubic hair. At 38 Marianne was gorgeous. The inevitable effects of bearing two children had been held at bay by good genes and lots of exercise (we ran 3 miles together at least twice a week). She was statuesque and magnificent—5'8" with dark hair and brown eyes, with wide hips and long legs. To me she was even sexier than when I first met her nearly two decades before. I had been in love with her—and in lust with her—ever since.

After some passionate necking and touching, I moved lower on the bed, seeking to raise her nightgown and arouse her with my tongue. Marianne adores it when I lick her, though she's much less enthusiastic about going down on me. Almost always our sex together includes some time with her enjoying my tongue and mouth between her legs. For this reason it surprised me when she stopped me.

"No, Tom, please. Tonight I want to be just for you." She gently forced me back down on the bed, stroked my cock, then took it into her mouth. When I reached for her pussy with my hands, meaning to pleasure her while she pleased me, she again stopped me.

"No, honey. Tonight has been so wonderful—let me just do this for you."

As I said, Marianne usually isn't so crazy about giving me blow jobs, but this one was sensational. She teased me, with her warm breath and her tongue and her lips and her hands. She got me close, then backed off with a wicked smile and stroked me softly, looking into my eyes and ignoring my groaning pleas to let me come. She licked down my shaft and lovingly took each of my balls in turn into her mouth, stimulating them gently with her tongue. Then she started it all over again! "Please, Anni, please! Let me come!" It must have been nearly half an hour of agonizing pleasure before she finished me off, taking me deep into her mouth and letting me shoot an enormous load of cum down her throat. My hips jerked and I groaned uncontrollably as the pleasure shot through me.

I lay there, spent and gasping. "Anni, that was unbelievable!" I said, using the pet name I often called her by during sex. By the time it had occurred to me that we hadn't fucked, and that I hadn't licked her or stroked her, the light was out and she was snuggled under my arm, relaxed and warm. When I once more said, "Honey, what about you?" she replied sleepily, "All for you tonight, darling."

So—why would I think about either of the strange little moments in the evening? No reason to. Who would care about a little grimace, or refuse a loving blowjob? No one. And that included me, until precisely eleven days later when my world began to crumble around me.

I had come back late Saturday night from a two-day conference in Chicago. I'm an engineer, and there was a meeting to discuss new federal load-bearing rules for commercial buildings. By the time I got home from the airport it was after 1 am, and I knew Marianne would be asleep. I stopped by the laundry room and took a minute to empty the dirty clothes out of my suitcase into the hamper. As I bent down, I noticed a pair of her panties that had fallen behind the hamper and were nearly hidden against the wall. 

It was a silky black thong—in fact, her only thong, the one I had bought as a sexy present a year before and which she saved for special nights with me. Marianne is not a big fan of thongs—"They're not so bad if you feel like flossing your ass-crack!" is what she said to me once—but she wore that one a few times because she knew it excited me. I hadn't seen her wearing it in some time, but here it was, crusty and stiff on the crotch with what could only be a man's cum. One sniff confirmed the evidence of my eyes.

You know how sometimes in stories a character will claim "my head spun", and the reader thinks it's just a figure of speech? Well, my head spun. I felt dizzy and lightheaded, and I nearly tumbled to the floor. I kind of stumbled back into the kitchen and collapsed into a chair. I felt as though I had been hit in the back of the head with a 2 x 4.

Over the next few minutes my mind played every trick it could, as I tried desperately to make this something other than what it had to be. Could the panties have been lying there for months, since the last time she'd worn them with me? No—the hamper got moved every couple of weeks when the room was swept. Could she have worn them one day recently without me noticing? No—I saw her get dressed every morning. Could it have been my cum, from the last time we made love? No—that was three days before my trip, and she put on regular panties the next day. Could the mess in them be Marianne's own juices, maybe the result of a masturbation session while I was away? No—I knew what cum smelled like.

In the end, my mind caught up to what I already knew in my heart. My wife, the woman I had loved with my entire being for more than 16 years, was cheating on me. I didn't cry then; I was too stunned. I just sat and stared vaguely around the kitchen, drank a beer without tasting it, and let the inevitable questions pile up in my brain and stomp all my happiness to death. Who was it? How long? Did she love him? What would this mean for our marriage? Did we even have a marriage left? What would I do? 

I am not one of those men who is turned on by the idea of their wives fucking another man. In fact, the idea doesn't give me a hard-on; it revolts me. I had never had fantasies about her with someone else. I didn't want her to screw someone else; I didn't want to watch it; I didn't want to think about it. And she knew that.

Marianne and I had made a commitment to one another to be faithful. I guess every married couple does, at least at the moment of the wedding, but we had also discussed it since then. At a neighborhood barbecue, about 8 years into our marriage, I'd been drawn aside by a casual friend, a nice but somewhat stuffy fellow named Harry. We sometimes made fun of him behind his back because he spoke in a kind of pedantic way, and was never without his pipe in his mouth. But a nice guy nonetheless. He took me for a short walk, and in a roundabout way told me that he and his wife Eileen were swingers, that they were attracted to Marianne and me, and that they hoped we might try swinging with them.

I was pretty shocked by this, but I calmly told him I'd think about it and discuss it with Marianne. But I said, "I don't know quite how to bring this up with her—I think she will find it pretty shocking." Harry just grinned at me. "Don't worry about that part, Tom," he replied. "Eileen is talking to Marianne about it right now!"

I was amused by how carefully they had planned it, and I promised Harry I'd speak to Marianne and let him know. I was at least a tiny bit tempted—Eileen was a short, curvy woman with a voluptuous figure, and also a lot of fun—but I couldn't imagine Marianne having any interest at all in swinging, or in Harry.

After the party, Marianne brought up the subject on our walk home before I could even say anything. "Can you believe that, Tom? Harry and Eileen swingers? And they want us to join them?"

"I was pretty surprised too, honey. I wish I could have seen your face when Eileen suggested that we swap with them."

Marianne laughed. "Well, I was taken aback. But I just politely said we'd talk about it, and let them know. No sense in saying something rude."

Later, in our bedroom, I returned to the topic. "Well, Marianne, do you have any interest in their offer?" "God, no, Tom!" she replied. "Can you imagine me in bed with that pompous man? Not in this lifetime!"

"But Marianne," I kidded her. "Don't you want to find out if he takes his pipe out of his mouth when he's fucking?" We both dissolved in laughter. It was clear that this wife-swapping invitation was not going anywhere!

I went on. "Honey, more seriously. We've never discussed the idea of swapping. I don't think it's anything I want to do, but are you tempted? Never mind Harry and Eileen—I mean with anyone?

She looked at me thoughtfully. "To be honest, Tom, I'm at least a bit curious. As you know there were only those two awful ... experiences I had in high school, and then no other man besides you in my life. So I can't help but wonder what it would be like with someone else. I love you and I love making love with you—it's not that I'm dissatisfied. I can't imagine finding a better lover. But I am a little curious."

She continued, "On the other hand, I don't want you having sex with anyone else! The thought of you holding and kissing another woman, of being between her legs, of putting your beautiful penis inside her, giving her the pleasure you give me—the idea of it makes be physically ill.. I want you all for myself! Our love-making is special to me because it's just for us, because neither of us ever shares ourselves with anyone else in that way."

I smiled at her, full of love for my amazing wife. "Anni, that's just how I feel. Sure I occasionally see a hot woman and have a brief fantasy—but our life together and the specialness of our sex are just too important to me. It's horrible even to imagine you with another man. I guess we are both just stick-in-the-muds, for whom marital fidelity actually matters!"

"Then come here, my stick-in-the-mud husband. I'm in the mood for some boring, maritally faithful sex!"

A few minutes later came the final, delightful surprise of that evening. As we fucked energetically in the doggy position, the two of us climbing towards orgasm, Marianne suddenly cried out, "Fuck me Harry! Give it to me, Harry—let me have that big dick of yours!"

I gasped, then collapsed in laughter along with Marianne. All thoughts of orgasm were forgotten as we howled together, tears of laughter running down our faces. I felt like the husband of the most wonderful woman in the world.

Now, as I thought back to that happy evening, my misery deepened. What had happened to the loving wife who was committed to ME, who had decided to refuse everyone else? I've always been a thoughtful and deliberate person—determined, but not quick to act until I knew everything about a situation. Even in my shock, and my despair, I already realized I had to know more. I couldn't confront Marianne, couldn't cry or yell or beat her or move out, until I knew the whole story.

The thought of making love to her in the next few days, of snuggling with her in bed, of pretending to be happy and in love when I actually felt like screaming, made me sick. How would I be able to hide my feelings from her? I actually thought for a moment, "How can I lie to my loving wife?" Then almost instantly came the answer: She's been lying to me! She's been cheating on me! She's been fucking God-knows-who behind my back, for God-knows how long!

By the time I climbed slowly up the stairs into my bedroom, it was after 2:30. Thank God I didn't have to face Marianne that night! When I got into bed, she murmured a hello without waking, and molded her body tightly up behind me, with an arm around my chest. I couldn't stand it! I wanted to cry. I wanted to kill her. I wanted her to tell me that this was just a horrible dream.

I hastily got back out of bed, pretending I needed to pee, and waited several minutes until I was sure she was completely asleep again. Then I crept back into bed, holding myself as far from her as possible, and stared open-eyed into the darkness, waiting for the most unlikely thing of all: sleep.

The next morning was Sunday, and I didn't awake until after 10:30—Marianne had let me sleep late. I could hear her downstairs, humming in the kitchen, and the smell of coffee wafted up to me. I stretched and yawned, smiling at the bright sunshine streaming in through the window. Perhaps a picnic today with Marianne? Then, after just a moment, the memory of what I had discovered the night before knocked the breath out of me, and the smile off my face. I remember thinking to myself that July 11th, the night of my return home, would probably forever be burned into my memory as the worst day of my life. But I was wrong about that: it turned out to be the 12th. 

House of Cards Ch. 02



I sat and thought for a few minutes before going downstairs. How was I going to face her? I wasn't ready to talk about her cheating—I needed to know the details. But I've never been good at lying, either, and Marianne was quick to pick up on any little look on my face. I have always loved her sensitivity to my feelings, and those of others. She notices other people, their moods, their preferences, better than anyone I have known. That is surely part of why I loved her so much.

Unable to decide what to do, I headed down to the kitchen, vaguely thinking I'd just smile a lot and keep her from noticing how I was feeling. Well, THAT plan lasted all of about ten seconds.

"Hi sleepyhead", she greeted me with a warm smile and a mug of coffee. "I was afraid you'd miss this beautiful day! But I know you must have gotten in very late last night. How was the meeting?" Having just handed me the coffee, she took it back from me, put it on the kitchen table, and hugged me tightly to her, kissing the side of my neck. I hugged her back mechanically, aware of her warm body under the robe, having no idea what to say. I wanted to cry.

When we broke the hug I turned away, grabbing my coffee, and pretended to gaze out at the back yard. "Yes, it is a gorgeous day. I was thinking we might go down to Forbes Lake, take our swimsuits and a picnic, and spend the day down there."

"What a great idea!" she replied. "I've got lots of stuff for sandwiches, and it's too lovely a day to spend all of it indoors. However," she went on with a smile in her voice, "I think we have some unfinished business from last night to take care of first!" I knew what she meant—we always made love when either of us came back from a trip, but she had been asleep when I came upstairs the previous night.

At that moment all I could think about were her panties, covered with someone else's cum. The idea of fucking her unfaithful pussy filled me with anger and despair. As she started to draw me back to her, taking my hand and leading me towards the staircase, she saw on my face some of what was in my mind.

"You know you owe me at least two or three orgasms, and .... Tom—what is it? You look as though you've just seen a ghost in the yard!" Marianne stopped, let go of my hand, and looked carefully up into my face. "Are you not feeling well?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "I picked up a stomach bug on the trip, and I'm still feeling a little queasy. Perhaps we could postpone that debt I owe you until later?" I tried to make my voice cheerful, even teasing, but I could see from the look on Marianne's face that I had not completely succeeded.

"OK, honey. I'll pack some nice simple food, nothing fancy or spicy. Maybe a day in the sun will help you feel better." She still looked a bit doubtful, but she didn't question me any further. I took a quick shower, she packed us a lunch, and we drove down to our favorite lakeside picnic spot.

That afternoon was wonderful—and unbearably awful. We spent the day just as we would have if nothing had been wrong. We sat together on a blanket, sharing our lunch and talking about the children and about my trip. We put lotion on one another and lay in the warm sun working on our summer tans. We swam across the lake and back, then rested on the floating raft for a while before swimming in to shore. In late afternoon she took a nap, with her head resting on my chest, as I pretended to read the Sunday paper but actually suffered with thousands of painful thoughts and feelings. If I hadn't been in agony about her infidelity, it would have been a lovely, relaxing day spent with the woman I loved most in the world.

As we drove back towards town she asked, "Are you feeling better? You certainly seemed fine when we swam today."

"I'm still a bit tired, but I guess my stomach is a lot better."

"That's a good thing," she said with a laugh. "I'm planning to wear you out tonight!" She took one of my hands from the steering wheel and pulled the back of it to her lips, giving it a big kiss while smiling at me. 

Her warmth and attention felt like a knife in my ribs. How could she possibly treat me with such obvious affection when she'd been getting banged by somebody else? Was all this warmth and love just a show, to keep me in the dark? Was it her way of dealing with guilty feelings? Was the wife that I had known for so long such a monster that she could be in love with someone else, yet act as though she were still in love with me?

At home we had an informal dinner, then cleaned up the kitchen together. We didn't talk too much—that was unusual for us, but I found it far less painful to be near Marianne if I didn't have to fake interest in some conversation while masking how I was really feeling. She clearly sensed that something was bothering me, but didn't press me on it.

Once the dishes were done, Marianne took my arm and with a broad smile, led me towards the bedroom. "Now it's time for what you owe me," she said.

I couldn't bear it—absolutely couldn't bear the thought of trying to make love to her, of caressing her body, of licking her or fucking her, while thinking about who else had been doing that to her.

I stopped partway up the stairs. "Actually, Marianne, could we talk for a minute first? I've got something on my mind." I hadn't meant to say anything, but I just couldn't keep it in.

Seeing from my face that the "something on my mind" was serious, Marianne just said, "of course, honey". We went back down to the living room, she sat on the sofa and I in a chair across from her.

I sat in silence for several minutes, having no idea how to begin. Finally I said, "Marianne, you know how much I love you, right?" "Of course," she replied, looking a little perplexed.

I went on. "I want you to know that our relationship is the most important thing in my life. I put it ahead of everything, except our children. It comes ahead of my career, of anything else. And I would never do anything to jeopardize it."

"Yes, honey," said Marianne, now looking a little suspicious. "I feel just the same way about you—you know that."

"Anni, if I had ever made a mistake about something that threatened our marriage, I would come to you and tell you about. I'd beg for your forgiveness, and do whatever it took to make up for it. I would never allow a secret to poison our relationship. And I hope you would feel just the same."

By now she looked—I don't know, impatient? Or was that a slightly worried expression? "Of course I would, Tom. What is this all about?"

I paused again for a moment, unable to go ahead. Then finally: "Anni, I found your thong panties in the laundry room, covered with cum. Are you having an affair? Please tell me the truth!"

As I blurted this out, in my agony, Marianne never moved. But she seemed to stiffen almost imperceptibly, and her face became very pale. Then, after no more than a few seconds, she smiled broadly and cheerfully spoke. "Oh, honey, is THAT what this is all about? How silly! Don't you remember? We made love on Thursday, the night before you left for Chicago. I put those on the next morning, after you left, because I missed you and wanted to think about you while you were gone. I guess you must have really filled me up, because I could feel myself oozing into them all that morning!"

I just looked into the smiling face of my wife, absolutely aghast. I remembered quite clearly—we had NOT made love that Thursday night, because I was up late preparing some documents for the meeting and she had gone to bed. The last time we had sex was a couple of days earlier. Marianne had just looked me right in the eye and lied to me! Pretty convincingly, too—it frightened me that the story she told, with complete composure, was so plausible that I might very well have believed it! Did she really think that I was so easy to deceive?

Full of pain and hurt, and absolutely staggered by her bold-faced lie, I didn't push her any further. What would be the point? Instead I muttered, "OK—I must have forgotten." And then, making a supreme effort to seem convinced, "I'm sorry to have accused you of such a ridiculous thing."

"Sweet darling," she replied, looking relieved. "What an imagination you have! Let's go upstairs and let me give you all the reassurance you can stand."

If you had told me, even two days earlier, that there would be a night when I dreaded fucking my wife, I would have said you were crazy. And yet there was nothing I less wanted to do at that moment. I silently gritted my teeth and said to myself, "OK, you lying bitch! If you can look me right in the eye and deny you're screwing someone else, then I can look you in the eye and pretend to want to fuck you!"

And it turned out I could. What I couldn't do was enjoy it. We did all of the things we usually loved doing in bed together. Lots of kissing and stroking, then me between Marianne's legs licking her to an orgasm or two. I went at her grimly, glad that she couldn't see my face, and determined to lick and kiss and bite her into a frenzy. "You bitch!" I was thinking. "Does that asshole you're fucking get you as hot as THIS?" I made her come quickly, then went right on, stroking inside her with two fingers on her G-spot while I licked and sucked on her clit, until she had two more orgasms and was pulling me up to her, saying. "Please Tom, no more! Come up here and get inside me quick!"

The fucking was much the same. I stroked into her smoothly, regularly, determined simply to fuck the hell out her. I didn't hurt her, but I didn't linger for gentle changes of speed and pressure—I gave her the robot version of fucking, building steadily up and up until I came like crazy, shuddering as I shot into her over and over. I didn't even bother to notice if she came again while we fucked. It was enough that for a few moments, I was able to banish from my mind the image of her lying in ecstasy while some other man pumped on top of her.

After a few quiet minutes, me lying with my head on her shoulder, still not looking at her, Marianne spoke. "My God, Tom, nobody else gives me orgasms like that!" Then, seeing the look on my face, she laughed (she laughed!) and said, "Oh, honey, you know what I mean. There isn't anybody out there who ever COULD give me orgasms like that."

I lay awake long after Marianne had happily snuggled her back up against me and gone to sleep. It was beyond my comprehension that she could have lied to my face like that. Of course, it was also beyond my comprehension that she could be cheating on me, so what's one more lie on top of that?

As I thought back through the preceding weeks and months, I searched for any sign that things were different between us. Any coldness or evasiveness from her; or, on the other hand, any excessive or unexpected affection. At first I didn't remember a single thing—then I thought about our most recent anniversary.

The grimace on her face as she sat down in that fancy restaurant: that was the "honeymoons". Of course it was, I'd seen that look before and knew exactly what it meant. Good God. Had she been fucked into soreness on the day of our wedding anniversary? I got quietly out of bed, grabbed a robe, and headed downstairs, making sure that Marianne was still sleeping soundly.

I sat in the den with the lights off, recalling our sex after our anniversary dinner. My wife, usually so delighted to have her pussy licked and not so interested in sucking my cock, had given me the blowjob of a lifetime, while not letting me lick, or even so much as touch, her cunt. The reason for that was obvious: her pussy was sore, and she didn't want me to irritate it further. Even more important, she surely wouldn't have wanted me to notice that it was sore and swollen. 

Her solution to the problem was as creative as my wife was shrewd: distract me with the sight of her in that nearly transparent new nightie, then say "tonight is for you, honey" and blow me to Kingdom come! (Pardon the pun.) If it hadn't been for my finding the panties several days later, I would have forever been in the dark—the typical clueless, cuckolded husband.

It was clear that now I'd have to begin the dreary and banal job of proving that she was cheating—of catching her in the act, or finding something incriminating that she couldn't explain away. What depressed me, and infuriated me, was thinking about what would come after that. One hell of a yelling match, obviously, but then what? A bitter divorce? Months of apologies (from her) and bitter recriminations (from me)? Was I supposed to go out and find myself somebody else to fuck, which I had no interest in doing? How could our marriage possibly survive, not only the cheating, but all the lying that must have gone with it? And for how long now had it been going on?

I put my head in my hands, and I wept. After about an hour, I washed my face with cold water and quietly went back to bed. 



House of Cards Ch. 03



It was quite clear to me: I would have to go on pretending to Marianne that everything was fine, until I had absolute proof of her adultery. And her creative lie to me the day before about her panties indicated that she had no intention of ever confessing. I would have to throw the proof in her face.

One thing in my favor was my job. I had a lot of freedom within my company—I could come and go during the day, to see clients or visit job sites, and it would not seem unusual. On the other hand, the same was true for Marianne. She worked in client relations for a public relations firm, and was always going to lunch or to business meetings. It would be impossible to check her work schedule and find any suspicious pattern of absences from the office.

I had a college friend named Terry, who worked in Chicago in the security and surveillance business. It took no more than a friendly 20-minute conversation, with a bit of catching up on one another's lives, to get all the equipment advice I needed. I told him I was doing a project for a commercial client obsessed with security, and explained that I'd need the latest in miniaturized listening devices that would transmit wirelessly to recorders. He said, "I'll do you one better: everything is digital nowadays, you can record to digital audio tape or even directly to digitized audio files that you can upload to your computer and listen to."

No more than an hour after our conversation, Terry emailed me all the specs, prices, and model numbers for what we had discussed. I drove out to a large electronics warehouse in the suburbs and bought all of what I needed. Nearly $1400 on the credit card—but I figured that by the time Marianne saw the bill, that would be the least of my worries.

I went home to our house, empty in the middle of the day, and set up audio recorders in our bedroom, spare bedroom, guest room, my study, the living room, and the kitchen. Each of them was no bigger than a thimble, and easy to hide. They were all sound-activated, so that they would begin to record whenever someone spoke or made noise in any of the rooms. And each was set up to transmit wirelessly to tiny digital recorders I'd hidden in our attic. Whatever Marianne or I did in our house, I'd have a sound recording of.

Why didn't I use video? The answer may seem surprising. As I continued to torture myself with images of Marianne fucking and sucking someone else, I realized that I didn't want to see those images. Knowing about her adultery was painful enough—hearing it, or hearing her talk to her lover, was going to be even worse. I was afraid that if I actually SAW them together, I would never be able to erase those pictures from my mind. Better, I thought, to be tormented by my imaginings than to have to see the reality, over and over for years to come.

While I was at it, I checked through all our credit card bills and our phone records. I found nothing incriminating: no unexplained hotel stays, no charges at restaurants I hadn't been to, no pattern of frequent calls to any one number besides the familiar ones of our friends and family. Marianne had clearly been very very careful. I realized I would have to check her purse, and put a recorder in her car, in addition to what I had already done.

In the meantime, I went back to my office. Alternately heartsick and furious, I managed to get through my day without my colleagues noticing how I was feeling. That evening after dinner, Marianne and I made our weekly phone call to our kids at camp. This was a new torment, both of us being cheerful with them while I tried to give no hint of my despair.

After Marianne and I went to bed, I waited quietly until I was sure she was asleep. Then I went outside and carefully installed an audio recorder in her car, transmitting to a tiny receiver hidden under the spare tire in the trunk. Returning to the house I went through her purse. To my surprise I found two cell phones—the one she had always used, and a cheap throwaway model, the kind that's used with pre-paid minutes. This explained why there were no unexpected calls on our cell phone bills! I grimaced to myself, thinking again of how careful and systematic Marianne had been in her efforts to deceive me.

Each day that week was worse than the one before. I pretended to Marianne that everything was fine, smiled and nodded and tried to act natural, though I did manage to avoid sex with her by pleading lots of work one night, and a bad headache another. She could surely tell I was still upset about something, but she played the loving wife without questioning me about it. Each night after she was asleep, I listened to all the recorders I had set up in the house and her car, and until Friday night there was nothing interesting.

That night I finally got confirmation of what I was already sure of. It was a short phone call that Marianne received in her car that morning, undoubtedly on her throw-away cell phone. I heard only her side, but that was enough to make things perfectly clear.

"Hello? ... Hey, babe .... Yeah, I'll BET you have! (with a throaty laugh) .... No, I explained that last Monday ... Yes, Tom hasn't said anything else but I can tell it's still on his mind. I have to let a bit more time pass before I can see you again ... Of course I still want to! But you always knew that my marriage would come first —haven't I been clear about that? ... Yes ... Uh-huh ... Yes, I think next Tuesday will work. But let's not go back to the place we've been going, I want to be extra careful. ... Where? ... You mean that place out on Route 8, near the orchard? ... Yeah, we were there three times before, but not in a while. ... OK, babe, Tuesday at 11am. .... (laughs again), Yes, I'm sure you will be ready! ... Me too ... OK, bye."

I sat slumped in my chair in the study, where I had gone to my computer to check the recordings. It wasn't any surprise, I had known ever since finding the thong, but somehow this confirmation still shattered me. Marianne was cheating on me! And had been for some time, it seemed. She was regularly letting another man fuck her, kissing and stroking him, letting him between her thighs, on top of her, beneath her as she rode him, behind her as he plowed her doggy-style...

Judging from her words on the recording, she must have called him the previous Monday (after our conversation about her panties on Sunday) and warned him that I was suspicious, and that they'd have to cool it for a while. Obviously this was no one-time thing, no sudden slip into a single night of passionate adultery. It was an ongoing affair, one that had gone on for months—or years?

My agonized thoughts went on and on, as image after image played in my head like some kind of nightmarish slide show. One of the most special gestures Marianne sometimes made with me was a way of embracing me when we hugged and kissed. Instead of putting her arms tightly around me and pulling me to her with her hands on my back, she sometimes slid her arms up over my shoulders and kept them straight. In this way her arms hung out behind me, wrists dangling. Something about that position that was magical to me: it meant that she was embracing me with no restraint, no holding herself back. She was utterly open to me, completely mine. As I imagined her with her lover, the single worst image of all was of her embracing him in that way, kissing him with her arms flung over his shoulders, giving herself completely to him.

That weekend, the only particular horrible time (in a whole weekend of desperate sadness for me) was a Saturday night party with some of our friends—busy working parents like ourselves whom we don't get to see very often. As Marianne and I circulated, sometimes together and sometimes apart, we were greeted warmly by friends we liked, who were glad to see us and eager to hear how we'd been. Sharing the usual stories, about work and the kids, felt especially desolate to me. Part of me longed to say to someone, "Well, actually, I've not been doing so well. Marianne is fucking some other guy and won't tell me about it, and I'm pretty devastated. But what's new with you?"

On Monday I left work during the morning and drove out along Route 8 to the Sunflower Motel, which I recognized as the one Marianne had mentioned to her lover. It was a strip motel, a row of rooms side by side with parking places directly in front of each room. So I was confident that, if I put a listening device inside Marianne's purse, the recorder hidden in her car would be close enough to record what went on inside—the range of the devices was supposed to be 150 feet.

That night, I got up after Marianne was asleep—I seemed to be doing that every night—and took her purse into my study, where I carefully sewed one of the tiny wireless microphones into the bottom. She would never find it unless she happened to dump out the entire purse and look for it.

I also re-checked all the listening devices, the recorders in the house and in her car. But there was nothing incriminating or suspicious. Marianne had already set up her rendezvous in the Friday phone call, and didn't risk any further communication with her lover.

Marianne's date was for Tuesday at 11. So a little after 11, I left work and drove again down Route 8. Sure enough, there was her car, parked right in front of Room 19. Not at all surprised, yet still even sicker at heart, I took a minute and noted down the license plates of the cars on either side of hers—it never hurts to be prepared.

That evening I watched Marianne with extra attention. Could she really conceal from me all traces of her cheating that day? She came home looking relaxed and fresh—she must have showered at the motel, because she didn't go running upstairs for a shower. Her eyes sparkled, her face was full of life and color, and she seemed as happy as ever to see me. For the life of me I still couldn't believe that this beautiful, loving person I cared so much about was fucking around behind my back.

I barbecued that night, and we ate outside on the deck, enjoying the warm summer evening. I was certainly as preoccupied as I had been in any of the past few nights, and I wondered if Marianne would ask me about it. She didn't, and I assume she thought it best not to initiate a conversation that might lead back to the subject of adultery. I think she felt confident that she had headed off my suspicions, but she wasn't about to take any further chances.

While we were doing the dishes in the kitchen, she slid over and put her arm around my waist. "Tom, will you come up to bed early with me tonight? I love these days with the kids at camp, when we can make love any time we like. And you've turned me down twice lately!" She said this last sentence with a sexy smile. Under any other circumstances I would have been hard in five seconds. But I knew—or was virtually certain—that she'd been fucking her lover 10 hours earlier, and her invitation just enraged me. How could she jerk me around like this? Did she think I was a total idiot?

Trying to keep calm, and not let my own feelings show, I replied calmly, "I'm sorry, babe. There's a big presentation first thing in the morning for a new building downtown, and I have to get it finished tonight. How about tomorrow night for sure, OK?" I'm pretty sure she didn't believe my excuse. I could even see her on the point of protesting further, before she decided that it might not be a good idea. Again, the last thing she wanted was for me to bring up my suspicions about her adultery.

So all she said was, "OK, sweetheart. I'll go watch some TV before bed. If you get done and I'm still awake, you come running on up to me, promise?"

I stayed downstairs, more-or-less doing some work while waiting for Marianne to go to sleep without me. By midnight she was out; I could hear her regular breathing from the door to the bedroom. I headed out to her car, got the recording from that day, returned to my study, closed the door, slipped it into the computer and played it back. 

Even at that moment, I still had a tiny shred of hope. Perhaps in some crazy way I was wrong about everything, and it was all some paranoid fantasy of mine. Marianne had been so loving, so warm—how could she be cheating on me?

From the first sounds on the tape, any remaining hopes disappeared.

First I heard Marianne on the cell phone in her car. There was a routine work call, perhaps on her regular cell, then a few minutes after that HE called, and I heard her side of the conversation.

"Hello ... hey baby .... yes, me too .... Are you there now? I can hardly wait! It feels like it's been forever ... You'll just have to wait to see what I'm wearing (with a giggle), I chose it for you to see it! .... Well, maybe for you to take it off me too .... OK, in a few minutes ... Bye."

This much was no surprise, as it merely confirmed the previous call in which they'd set up their date. What came next was worse—much worse.

I heard the noises of her parking, turning off her car, getting out, and locking it. Then a couple of soft knocks on a door, and the sounds of a long, deep kiss, as the door clicked shut. A man's voice said, "Wow, did I need that!" Then a couple more kisses, and then he said, "Come in here and let me look at you. You are SO gorgeous!"

Then Marianne, MY Marianne, speaking back to him, teasing him! In a sultry voice, "I'll bet you say that to all the girls, big fella. Can you back it up? Or are you all talk and no action?" Then she laughed aloud, and I heard more kissing and hugging, with the two of them cooing and moaning into one another's ears.

"Let me go, Eddie," Marianne said. "I'm so hot for it, let me just get my clothes off and you inside me!" I heard the sounds of clothes coming off, then the springs of the bed groaning as one or two bodies came down on it.

"God, it's so big, and so hard, and so beautiful!" Marianne said. "I guess you really DID miss me! Let me suck on it first."

"Only if I can lick you too," the man replied. In no time they were apparently in a 69 position. The talking stopped, replaced by the sounds of sucking, licking and moaning made by two horny people in a hurry.

I stopped the recording, sat back, and stared at the ceiling. For over a week I'd been hoping, praying, denying, suffering, wondering. I felt my life had been destroyed, yet I still had clung to the tiny possibility that I was wrong. Now that was over. The marriage in which I had taken such joy, felt such pride and happiness, was a lie. The woman to whom I had opened myself completely, whom I had given every bit of my love and my trust, had betrayed me in the most basic way there is—she had given herself to another man.

There didn't seem much point in listening to the rest, but I went on, doggedly. As I've said, I am not a man who fantasizes about his wife fucking someone else, or gets turned on by it. Every sound they made, every groan of her pleasure or of his, every squeak of the bed, every affectionate word, felt like a sharp needle plunged deep into me. There was no pleasure for me, no excitement, just an indescribably painful sensation of grief and loss.

They sucked and licked each other for a few minutes, until he said, "Hold on, Anni, I'm going to come!" Apparently she didn't stop, for a moment later he groaned. "Oh, oh, shit, that's incredible, oh, ohhh!" Then he sighed, and said, "Baby, you have incredible lips. That was unbelievable!"

She just giggled and said, "I loved it too, Eddie. Now maybe you could pick up where you left off?" As he proceeded to lick her pussy, I could hear all the little moans and sighs, the ohs and ahs, that until then had been part of my happy memories of our love-making. Within minutes she too was coming, saying, "that's it Eddie—oh, right there! right there! Yes, yes, I'm coming!!"

"Oh, Eddie, nobody does me like you do!" she said to him, a remark that stunned me with pain. "Give me a minute to relax and enjoy that wonderful feeling, then I want your beautiful dick inside me." Then she giggled again, as he growled like a dog and apparently began to sniff and lick all over her body. I couldn't believe how much fun they were having together. It wasn't just the sex—their relaxed enjoyment of each other, their intimacy, just tore me apart. It was obvious they'd been lovers for quite a while, and were very familiar and easy with one another. The fact that he called her "Anni", a pet name that only I used with her—above all in bed--just made it worse. Had SHE suggested that to him?

He must have had no trouble getting hard again, because within minutes they were fucking. From their words to each other, I could tell that he began on top, then she rode him until she came again, and then he rolled her over and fucked her for a long time from behind. By that time Marianne was relaxed and happy, on the far side of two great orgasms. She just lay there comfortably, sighed, and let him have his pleasure. When he began to accelerate towards his orgasm she encouraged him. "That's it, baby—come on, fill me up. Oh yes, I can feel you so deep in me! Cum in me, Eddie, now, that's it!"

He came with a loud, long groan, and then there were the sounds of them getting comfortable to rest in one another's arms on the bed. When they stopped making noise the tape must have stopped recording, perhaps for quite a while, but then came the sound of the shower. They must have been in it together, because I could hear their voices but couldn't catch any words.

But their voices were clearer as they came back into the room and dressed. Above all it was their easy affection and familiarity that broke my heart. This was no one-night stand; Eddie was my wife's lover, someone close to her, someone she'd opened her body to, someone with whom she had taken her pleasure repeatedly. They hadn't just fucked. They'd cuddled, they'd showered together. How else to say it? She'd been with him the way she was supposed to be only with me.

When Marianne headed to the door, they kissed goodbye almost routinely, as husband and wife do each morning. "Bye, baby," she said. "You sure made my day!"

"Anni, sweetheart, when can we get together again?"

"I don't know, Eddie. It all depends on when Tom calms down. He's been so moody, it's obvious he's still wondering about me. I need to be very careful for a while. Call me at the end of the week and I'll let you know how it looks."

"OK, babe," Eddie replied. "But once every ten days is not enough of you for me. I get lonely."

"And horny?" she answered with a laugh.

"Well, yes, that too," he confessed.

"Look, Eddie," Marianne said in a more serious tone. "You've known from the beginning how it had to be. Number one for me is my marriage. I won't do anything to hurt Tom, no matter how much I love being with you."

Again I stopped the tape, in bitter shock. "Won't do anything to hurt Tom?" Well I guess you've sort of fucked that one up, Marianne! How about the fact that you tried to pull me into bed with you tonight, just a few hours after you sucked and fucked that clown Eddie? 

I went back to listening, and heard Eddie's voice. "OK, Marianne, I get it. Just do what you can to reassure him, OK? I want to see you more than just once a week."

Once more she returned to teasing him. "Sure you can get it up more often than that, lover?" asked Marianne.

"You know I can," Eddie replied, with a laugh. She gave him one more long kiss, and then she must have headed for her car. I heard the engine start up, and then there were just the sounds of driving. There was nothing else on the recording.

I sat in my dark, quiet study. It was 3:45am. I looked vaguely across the room at nothing, seeing only the wreck of my marriage. I must have sat for half an hour, unmoving, without much thought.

Finally I roused myself. I had to prepare for the inevitable confrontation. The marriage is dead, I thought—time to prepare to bury it. I went back to the computer, compiling a new recording of Marianne's first phone call from Eddie and some excerpts from their motel room exercises. I put that recording onto a tape cassette, hid it in a bottom drawer, and slowly went upstairs to bed. 



House of Cards Ch. 04



The next day dragged. In the morning I was exhausted and depressed; it was harder than ever even to fake any normalcy to Marianne. Fortunately, she had an early meeting and left right away, leaving me to breakfast and the newspaper on my own.

At work I was so listless that my best friend Steve came into my office and closed the door. "Is something going on, Tom? For the past couple of weeks I haven't been able to tell if you've got the flu or if something is eating at you. Want to talk about it?"

I sighed. Steve and I had known each other for ten years—he was my closest friend. "Steve, I don't feel ready to tell you all of it. Let's just say that Marianne and I are having some troubles."

"Oh, no, that's terrible! Andrea and I always think of you as the happiest couple we know! I'm so sorry. You know I'll help however I can. Would it help if Andrea gave Marianne a call?"

"No, Steve, but thanks. I have a feeling I'll be needing to tell you the whole story pretty soon, but I'm just not ready yet. Thanks for your concern, I appreciate it a lot."

"OK, Tom," he replied, with obvious worry in his face. "Whatever I can do for you, all you have to do is name it." I thanked him, and when he left I did a bit better at returning to my work and putting my marriage out of my mind for a little while.

I got home on the early side, bringing a pizza, and made some preparations. When Marianne walked in I was sitting at the kitchen table, with the pizza, two place settings, and a couple of beers waiting for us. "Hi sweetie, what a nice surprise!" she beamed at me, coming over for a quick kiss.

I smiled wearily at her and opened the beers, and we ate companionably. I managed to entertain her with a mildly interesting story about a difficult client I've been dealing with, and we finished our dinner in just a few minutes. Time to get on with it, I thought.

"Marianne, I'd like to change the subject to something a bit more serious." She nodded expectantly but didn't reply.

"A couple of weeks ago I expressed my fears that you were having an affair. You persuaded me that I was mistaken, of course, so I naturally stopped worrying about it."

Marianne still sat quietly, but watched me intently.

"Clearly it was silly of me to doubt you," I said. "You are my loving and faithful wife, and you would never lie to me about something so important as marital fidelity."

"That's right, Tom," Marianne replied a bit sharply, obviously nettled by my sarcastic tone. "Do I have to continue defending myself to you? I thought this was settled." She looked just the least bit annoyed—or worried.

"No, no, Marianne, not at all," I said. "You've explained everything to me, and I'm fully convinced. It's just that there's something I can't quite understand. Perhaps you can help me with it?" I stepped to the cassette recorder on the counter and pushed the Play button. We heard Marianne's side of her conversation with Eddie from the previous Friday.

"Hello? ... Hey, babe .... Yeah, I'll BET you have! (with a throaty laugh) .... No, I explained that last Monday ... Yes, Tom hasn't said anything else but I can tell it's still on his mind. I have to let a bit more time pass before I can see you again ... Of course I still want to! But you always knew that my marriage would come first —haven't I been clear about that? ... Yes ... Uh-huh ... Yes, I think next Tuesday will work. But let's not go back to the place we've been going, I want to be extra careful. ... Where? ... You mean that place out on Route 8, near the orchard? ... Yeah, we were there three times before, but not in a while. ... OK, babe, Tuesday at 11 .... (Laughs again), Yes, I'm sure you will be ready! ... Me too ... OK, bye."

As she began hearing herself, Marianne was startled. She said, "Tom! How did you..." and then was silent. At the end of the conversation I stopped the tape and just looked at her. She was pale, but looked amazingly calm and composed.

"Tom, I guess I do owe you an explanation about this, but it's not what you think." (The fuck it's not, I thought to myself. What is she going to tell me now?)

"Eddie is a new client for the firm. He's a well-known actor, and he's about to face charges for having spent the night in a hotel with a groupie who turned out to be only 15. His manager hired us to work with him on a public-relations strategy, but he's incredibly paranoid right now. I've been working with him in total secrecy, meeting in motel rooms, and no one in the firm besides me and the president even know we have him for a client. It all seems ridiculously cloak-and-dagger to me, but it's what they insist on. I told Eddie I was willing to go along with this, but I was afraid somehow you'd learn about my sneaking around and think I was having an affair. I warned Eddie that if that happened, I would have to tell you the whole story. I don't know how you got that tape of my conversation with him, but now you know everything that's going on."

I just stared at my wife. Who WAS this person I thought I knew, who could lie so convincingly on the spur of the moment? I almost had to admire her skill, even as my rage mounted at her refusal even now to tell me the truth.

I pretended to believe her story, letting a look of gradual understanding show on my face. "OK, Marianne," I said slowly. "I guess I can see how that conversation might have meant something quite different from what I assumed."

She looked relieved. "Well it's my fault too, sweetie. I was sworn to secrecy about this project, but I probably should have told you about it right at the beginning anyway, and trusted in your discretion. I'm sorry you got so upset for no reason." She was smiling at me lovingly, and I could see that she actually thought she'd pulled it off.

"Yes...yes, it all makes sense now," I said. "But then maybe you can explain what this is all about." And I pressed Play again, and the kitchen was filled with the sounds of Marianne and Eddie in the motel room. I'd made a "highlights reel", since I had absolutely no desire to hear the whole thing again. A few excerpts did the job.

"Let me go, Eddie," we heard Marianne's voice saying. "I'm so hot for it, let me just get my clothes off and you inside me!" 

In the kitchen, Marianne gasped aloud. She looked for a minute as though she would jump up to turn off the cassette player, then she just sat back in her chair, staring at the table, looking deadly pale.

A moment later Marianne's voice continued on the tape: "God, it's so big, and so hard, and so beautiful! I guess you really DID miss me! Let me suck on it first." 

Next came Eddie's voice, addressing my wife by her pet name. "Hold on, Anni, I'm going to come! Oh, oh, shit, that's incredible, oh, ohhh!" Then he sighed, and said, "Baby, you have incredible lips. That was unbelievable!"

After that, I stuck with Marianne, first with her orgasm while Eddie was licking her.

"That's it Eddie—oh, right there! right there! Yes, yes, I'm coming!!" And after a moment, "Oh, Eddie, nobody does me like you do! Give me a minute to relax and enjoy that wonderful feeling, then I want your beautiful dick inside me." 

For the grand finale, I had chosen Marianne's words as Eddie finished fucking her.

"That's it, baby—come on, fill me up. Oh yes, I can feel you so deep in me! Cum in me, Eddie, now, that's it!"

When I stopped the tape this time, Marianne was perfectly still, and as pale as I had ever seen her. Hearing it again had me in tears, but she was dry-eyed. There was complete silence in the room. I watched Marianne for several minutes before she finally raised her eyes to mine, and slowly spoke.

"Oh, Tom. Oh my God. Tom, I am SO sorry. I never meant for this to happen. I never, never meant to hurt you."

I couldn't resist sarcasm. "Why Marianne, whatever do you mean? Weren't those the sounds of you doing public relations work with your important client?"

"Tom, listen. Please. I know I owe you an explanation. Just, please, let me tell the whole story, and don't interrupt me until I've finished. I can..."

"No," I stopped her. I kept my voice quiet, but it probably sounded like an ice-pick. I was as full of rage as I've ever been in my life.

"No, fuck you, no. After you break my heart, after you cut my balls off and stomp on them, after you look me right in the eye and lie to me, you don't get to ask me to sit quietly and listen to your stories. I asked you for the truth two weeks ago. You think I didn't know that story about the thong panties was bullshit? We didn't make love the night before I left on that trip! And even tonight, you had a chance to be honest with me, and you gave me another fairy tale instead!"

"Please, Tom, there's more to this than..."

But I wouldn't let her finish a sentence. "That's my faithful, loving wife, all right! 'Oh Eddie, nobody does me like you do! Give me your beautiful dick!' And all the while he's calling you 'Anni', and eating your cunt. The two of you are showering together, and making plans for next time!"

"Tom, if you'll only..."

"No, Marianne!" By now I was not being so quiet. "You had your chance to be the faithful wife I thought I was married to. You had the chance to tell me the truth, to 'explain' why you've been fucking someone else for who knows how long. You're out of chances now!"

I got up, grabbed an overnight bag I'd left near the door, and walked out to my car. Behind me I heard Marianne, her voice trembling, saying "Wait! Tom, please! Just give me a chance to talk to you!"

I backed out of the driveway and drove slowly and carefully away from my house, away from my marriage, away from my life.

********

I went to a Holiday Inn nearby and took a room for three nights. That would get me to the weekend, then I could figure something else out. My adrenaline and rage had drained away, leaving me exhausted, empty and sad. It was still only 8:30pm. I called Steve at home. "Hey Steve, it's Tom. Calling you sooner than expected—I think I really do need to talk to someone tonight."

"Sure, Tom, of course. Shall I come to your place, or do you want to come here?"

"Actually, Steve, I'm at the Holiday Inn on 12th, in Room 417. Any chance you could come up and bring a few beers? I'm afraid it's a long and sad story."

"I'll be there in 20 minutes."

I had a couple more beers with Steve as I told him the whole story, from our anniversary night to the thong panties to my tape of Marianne and Eddie in the motel. When I was finished he just looked at me in sad surprise. "Jesus, Tom! Of all the wives we know, Marianne is just about the last one I could have imagined..." Embarrassed, he didn't finish the sentence. Instead, he continued, "What can Andrea and I do to help? Do you want to stay with us? What are you planning?"

"Thank you, Steve. I don't really know yet—I've got this room til the weekend, then maybe I'll find an apartment. As for plans, I've only got two at the moment: not to see or speak to Marianne, and somehow not to fall apart completely. Maybe you and Andrea could have dinner with me in the hotel restaurant tomorrow, just so I have some company?"

"No, Tom, you're coming to our place tomorrow. I insist."

I thanked Steve, and after he left I put out the light and was quickly asleep. It felt like the end of a very important chapter in my life, but perhaps fortunately I was just too tired to lie awake reflecting on it.

********

I woke at 7am out of a horrible dream, thrashing and sweating. It had been beautiful at first. Marianne and I were at home in our bed, making slow love to one another. We kissed deeply, then smiled lovingly at one another as I stroked into her from above, in the missionary position. After a while there was another man in the room, off in the corner, watching us. I couldn't see him clearly—he was just a dark shape. Then he approached the bed. I still didn't recognize him.

Then the picture swung at a crazy angle, like a camera panning in a movie. Now the view was down from the ceiling. The man, who must have been Eddie, had taken my place! I was standing in my bedroom, watching Eddie and Marianne fucking on the bed. Somehow I couldn't move, couldn't make them stop. They knew I was standing there, but they didn't care. Marianne glanced once at me without expression, then turned back to her lover. She was groaning and crying out, saying "Eddie! Oh, yes, baby, you're the best! Never stop fucking me! make me forget all about my husband!" It went on and on, until she came with a scream I'd never heard her make in all our married years. That's when I woke up.

I thought a quick shower might help, but it took longer than expected, because I broke down and found myself leaning against the wall, sobbing. Eventually I calmed down, and dried myself. "Today is the first day of the rest of your life," I thought grimly to myself as I dressed. "Some life I've got now."

After a quick hotel breakfast I went into work, and asked the company's receptionist, Alice, to come into my office for a moment. She was a quiet but cheerful woman in her fifties, and we had always had a cordial relationship.

"Alice, I'd like to ask a favor, if you don't mind. Marianne and I are having some problems, and I really don't want to see her or talk to her right now. If and when she calls, would you please keep a record of it for me but tell her I'm out of the office, or in a meeting? She can leave a message in my voicemail but I do NOT want to speak to her. Likewise, if she comes to the office, please make sure she's told that I'm not available."

Alice looked at me and nodded, a bit sadly. "Tom, I'm so sorry. Of course I'll take care of that. At the end of each day you can check with me to see whether she's called. Please let me know if I can help in any other way." I thanked her, and she turned to leave, but stopped at the door.

"Tom? I'm so sorry for what you're going through—but I can't help but hope that you and Marianne can work through this. I don't think I know another man who has been as happily married as you have been until now."

To my surprise I found that I could work. Somehow having confronted Marianne with the proof of her cheating had moved me to the next stage in dealing with this. It didn't weigh me down quite so much. I had absolutely no idea what would happen, but for some reason I was able to focus on the practical problems of my job.

At the end of the day I stopped by Alice's desk. She smiled and told me that Marianne had called four times. I returned to my office to check my voicemail, and found two messages from her.

"Tom, honey, it's Marianne." I could hear the tears in her voice. "Oh sweetheart, I am so sorry, so very sorry! I would give anything for this not to have happened!" Terrific, I thought angrily—all you had to do was not fuck that asshole!

"Please call me and give me a chance to talk to you. I know you're hurting, I can't even imagine how angry you are with me. Please give me the chance to help you understand, and to make it up to you!" 

The second message was shorter. "Sweetheart, it's me again. Please call. I'm just dying, thinking of how upset you must be."

I deleted the messages, and drove to Steve and Andrea's for dinner. They were waiting with lasagna, a salad, some wine, and a lot of warm sympathy and friendship. Steve had filled his wife in on at least the basics of my story, and she was nearly in tears when she told me how sorry she was.

"Tom, I want you to know that the whole thing is a mystery to me. I've known Marianne for years, and she just adores you! I know you must be unbelievably upset, but please don't forget what a great marriage you have had until now."

"Thank you, Andrea," I said with a sigh. "I know in my brain that what you say is true. But I feel like something's been torn out of me—I'm empty, and kind of dead inside right now. Steve probably told you how she lied twice to my face when I asked her about this, and only admitted it when I played her the tape of her and her boyfriend actually fucking. She somehow found a way to raise the level of her betrayal even higher."

Andrea nodded, and said nothing for a minute. Then she asked, "Tom, how would you feel about my talking to Marianne? I wouldn't be speaking for you, of course—just reaching out to her at a tough time. She's our friend too."

"Yes, of course," I replied. "I'm sure she'll be glad to have a friend to talk to. Maybe she'll want to give you the true version of the whole nasty story—she certainly didn't want to tell it to me."

Over the next week or so, not much changed. I went to work—where I ignored all of Marianne's phone messages—went back to the hotel and went to bed. On the weekend I found a small furnished apartment near the office that would do for a couple of months, until I was ready to make more long-term plans. I went back to the house twice during the day—driving by first to make sure Marianne's car was not there—and picked up some clothes, my toiletries and my computer.

One night after midnight I decided to retrieve the recorder from Marianne's car, just to see whether she was still in touch with Eddie. There seemed no point in leaving the recorder in place, so I just removed it from the trunk and drove back to the hotel. The device had recorded 8-10 calls over several days, all of them about Marianne's work except for one, recorded mid-morning on the day after I walked out.

"Eddie? Hi, it's Marianne ... Yes, I know I don't usually call you, but I needed to this time. ... Listen, let me just speak, baby, OK? Tom has found about us, and I can't see you any more. ... Yes, somehow he recorded me talking in the car, and even us at the motel on Tuesday. ... Yes, it was pretty X-rated. He's walked out on me, and wouldn't even talk to me on the phone at work this morning. ... Yes ... Listen, Eddie, stop and listen to me! You've known since the beginning what the ground rules were for me. My marriage to Tom comes first. I tried everything I could to keep him from finding out, but I blew it. Now I have no idea what will happen, but all I care about is making this up to my husband. ... Yes, Eddie, of course it was great for me too. ... I'll never forget it either. ... Eddie, stop. Don't make our last conversation an argument. We knew it would come to an end. No hard feelings, OK? ... Yes. ... Uh-huh, me too. And I wish you the best. ... Yes, thanks. I'm going to try. ... OK, take care. Bye."

I was calmer now than when I'd heard her earlier conversations with him, and more able to think things through. On the one hand, it was clear that Marianne still wanted to stay married to me. She wasn't leaving me for Eddie. In fact, in all her conversations with him she had reminded him that her first priority was the marriage, and her extreme care in hiding her adultery from me seemed to prove that.

On the other hand, her obvious closeness and affection for Eddie tore me apart. A wild one-night stand, or even a two-week affair, would have been far easier to take than having to think about them fucking over and over for months—for who knew how long?

I realized that I still had no idea what I was going to do. I didn't know what I wanted—besides to wake up and find that Marianne's cheating was just one long nightmare. It had been two weeks since I found her thong with Eddie's cum in it, and five days since I'd confronted her with proof of her affair. I hadn't talked to her since then, though she'd called the office more than twenty times.

I guessed I'd just have to take it a day at a time. When I was ready to move forward, in any direction, I would know. Until then, I'd try just to keep busy and do a good job at work. Anything was better than spending hours staring at the walls, thinking of Marianne.

The following Tuesday I was working on some spreadsheets in my office when Marianne burst in, followed by Alice. Alice said, "Sorry, Tom, I told her you were unavailable but she just ran past me!" I said, "It's OK, Alice—I'll handle it. Thank you."




House of Cards Ch. 04



I closed the office door and looked at Marianne, who was standing in front of my desk still breathing hard from her sprint down the hall. She looked fantastic. She also looked terrible. She was the same beautiful woman, with the terrific figure that looked good in virtually any outfit. And she had clearly chosen one of her most flattering summer skirts, with a sleeveless top that showed off her arms and a bit of her cleavage.

On the other hand her face was lined and drawn. She was pale, and had big circles under her eyes. (I suppose I probably did too.) It was easy to imagine her, alone at home, wondering whether and when she would see me again, driving herself crazy with guilt and self-reproach. Good! I thought. That's what she should be doing!

"Marianne," I said calmly, "you shouldn't have come. I don't want to see you or talk to you right now."

"Tom, how long are you going to make me wait?" She was very anxious, even a little frantic. "I sit at home going over it and over it. I know you're angry, but I'm suffering too. Please, please won't you listen to me? Can't we try to move forward and get past this?"

"Well, no, Marianne, actually not yet. I don't know when I'll be ready, but I'm not ready now; and I have no idea if I will ever 'get past this', as you so gracefully put it. Please leave my office." Part of me almost couldn't bear to be so cold to her, but the rest of me was eager to hurt her. I felt I had more than enough reason to be a bastard!

Marianne sat down in a chair, a determined look on her face. "Tom, I am not leaving this office until you agree to talk to me. You'll have to call the police. And as they drag me out I'll tell everyone you work with how my husband has left me, won't speak to me, and won't even tell me where he's gone!" She began to sob, putting her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

I watched her silently for a moment, torn between the urge to comfort her and the desire for her to continue to be miserable. Finally I grabbed the tissue box and handed it gently to her.

"Marianne, let's make a compromise. It's the middle of my work-day. If you'll agree to leave now, I'll agree to come by the house tonight, and we can talk."

She looked up with a hopeful expression. "That's great, sweetheart. Why don't you come for dinner? I can make the..."

"No, Marianne. Not for dinner—this is not a date, and it's not a romantic evening at home together. I'm agreeing to give you a chance to say to me the things that are on your mind."

She looked as hurt as if I'd slapped her. She looked down at her lap, and said quietly, "All right. 8 o'clock?"

"Eight o'clock," I replied. "I'll see you then." 



House of Cards Ch. 05



At a few minutes past eight I knocked on the door. A nice touch, I thought—sends a clear message to Marianne that I don't live here anymore. She immediately opened the door, giving me a shy smile. She still looked pale, but had done her makeup very carefully. My wife was a beautiful woman—in any other context it would have taken my breath away just to look at her.

"Please come in, honey. Would you like a beer?"

I accepted one, and she led me into the living room, guiding me to one end of the sofa. She took the other end, tucking her legs underneath her and facing me. She was obviously incredibly nervous. All the poise I was so accustomed to seeing in Marianne, all the calm she had maintained when she lied to me about her affair, was gone now.

We just sat silently for a few moments, not really looking at each other. Then I decided to speak first.

"OK, Marianne, this is your show. I agreed to give you a chance to talk to me, and I will listen as calmly as I can. I'm not sure whether I'll have anything to say—I'll just play it by ear. Beyond listening to you, I can't promise anything."

"All right, sweetie," she said, almost in a whisper. She looked terrified, and my feelings for her swung back and forth between deep anger and equally deep sympathy. I had loved this woman for nearly all of my adult life. I had never been closer to any other human being, nor trusted one so completely. What did I feel for her now?

"Now that you're here, I'm almost afraid to begin," she said. "I've thought so many times about how to explain—I mean, try to explain, what I did. Finally I realized that I just plain fucked up. There's no way to tell it that will make it any less awful, any less selfish, any less unfair to you. So I'm just going to go ahead and tell it, however it comes out. I know you'll never forgive me—if you ever do—until I've done that."

"But before that, Tom, comes the most important thing. Everything I did—cheating with Eddie, lying to you—was totally my fault. You have been the best, most wonderful and loving husband any woman could have. I love you completely. I have never been unhappy in our marriage, or unsatisfied with our sex life together. You are a caring and exciting lover, and I love making love with you. None of this, none of what I did, had anything to do with dissatisfaction with you. Please believe me!"

I didn't say anything in reply, just nodded. But I liked what she had said.

"OK then." She seemed to be gathering her courage. "I have never—NEVER—done anything with any other man before Eddie. I was completely faithful to you until then, and I wanted to make sure you knew that. I met Eddie last August. He..."

I angrily interrupted. "You've been fucking that jerk for nearly a YEAR?!"

"No, Tom, no! Please listen! No, I haven't—just give me a chance to tell it, OK?"

"Sorry," I said. "I'll try not to interrupt again. Go ahead."

"I met Eddie in the hospital last August. You remember when my mother had surgery, and I pretty much lived in the waiting room for three days until she was out of danger? Well Eddie's brother was dying the same week, of lung cancer. He and I just began talking—two worried, sad people in the same waiting room. We spent a couple of hours together each day. The third afternoon, the nurse came to tell Eddie that his brother had died. He began to cry, and I was there to comfort him. I just held him in my arms for a while. His parents are dead, so this was his only close relative left, and ... I guess you get the picture."

I only nodded, and she went on. "That's all there was then, Tom—just two strangers, and a bit of comfort. I never thought I'd even see Eddie again, and I hardly thought about him after that. Until November."

She stopped and looked at me, perhaps afraid of another outburst. I silently did the math: November to July is still nine months of fucking my wife! But I said nothing, and let her continue.

"It was when you were on that four-day business trip in Phoenix. On the Friday night I had plans to go out with Susan and Whitney (two of Marianne's unmarried friends from her office), and they dragged me to a disco they liked. It was loud, and packed full of people, and lots of fun. You know Susan and Whitney—they love to flirt, and the three of us got lots of male attention. We had some drinks, danced with a lot of guys, and enjoyed ourselves."

"Around 11 we were sitting at our table when Eddie walked in with some friends of his. He spotted me, and brought his group over. I was genuinely glad to see him! I had felt so bad for him when his brother died; now he looked a lot more cheerful. We all made introductions, and they sat and drank with us, and we did lots of dancing. Since you were away I wasn't worried about the time, and it got kind of hot and I got kind of drunk, and ..."

She broke off. "Oh, Tom, I HATE this! It must seem so tawdry and dishonest and just plain STUPID, listening to me! But I swore to myself I would tell you every bit of the story that you want to hear. I will never lie to you again, and I will never fudge the story a little so I don't look quite so bad."

"All of us had done some fast dancing and some slow dancing, switching partners a lot. Two of Eddie's friends were making real progress with Susan and Whitney, and I guess Eddie was focusing more and more on me. I wasn't aware of that in particular, but when I think about it he managed to get me for several slow dances, and he was holding me very close. I felt his erection, but it just seemed kind of flattering, rather than any sort of dangerous situation."

"I realize you've never even seen Eddie. He's younger than we are—29. It's not that he's all that great-looking. He's shorter than you, medium height, medium build. Not bad, but he's not buff or anything, and wouldn't stand out in a crowd. Just a nice, ordinary guy."

I just listened, waiting for Marianne to get to the part that I knew was coming.

"We all got really hot from dancing. There was an open side door to the alley, and I told the group I was going out there for a minute to cool off. Eddie said he'd come along too. Standing outside in the dark, we were just laughing and joking, enjoying the cooler air; and then all of a sudden Eddie took me in his arms and kissed me."

She stopped. Clearly what she had to say next was difficult for her, and she glanced fearfully at me. "It's all right, Marianne. Go ahead—I have some idea what's coming next, and I've got to know. You might as well give me the whole story, with the nasty details."

"OK, honey. Thank you for listening so patiently. This is just awful for me, and for you it must be ten times worse." She was nearly in tears, but trying hard to stay in control.

"Well he just kissed me, taking me completely by surprise, and before I knew it he had pressed me up against the wall and plastered his body against mine. I was about to cry out, push him away, slap him—and I just didn't. I was drunk, and thinking slowly, and ... and it just felt good. I liked kissing him, liked feeling his body and his hard-on pressing tightly up against me. And instead of pushing him away, I kissed him back. I put my arms around him, kissed him back, and let him stick his tongue in my mouth."

I could tell she was struggling to go on. I waited, quietly. There was nothing I could hear that could possibly be worse than what I had already imagined a thousand times.

"Well, we just ... went at it. Right there in the alley. You remember, Tom, that night before we were married, when we were a little drunk and we ... made love behind the bandshell in the park, while there was a concert going on? And it was outside, and someone could have wandered back there and seen us, and ... it was an incredible turn-on? Well, this was like that. Eddie had his hands all over me, one on my breast and the other up under my skirt, and I just wasn't thinking about anything except what he was doing to me. He was so excited and eager, breathing really hard, and it turned me on. My nipples got hard, and he was pinching them. He kept murmuring about how gorgeous I was, how I was the sexiest woman he had ever seen."

"He got his ... cock out, and I held it. It was so hard, and so hot! I began to stroke it, and he groaned into my ear. And his fingers were inside me, and I was soaking. His touch down there was driving me crazy. And then he pulled my skirt up, pushed my panties to the side, and just ... entered me." Marianne had turned away from me by now, and was looking across the room. She couldn't face me.

"We did it, there in the alley. He fucked me. He kept pushing me back against the wall, and humping at me like mad, grabbing my ass cheeks and pushing his tongue deep into my mouth. The two of us could hardly breathe. It was hot and exciting and nasty, and I came like crazy, and so did he. It was probably all over in about five minutes. And afterwards we clung to each other, and giggled. It just seemed so crazy! He kept whispering to me how hot I was, and how turned on he had been. And then we adjusted our clothes, and without really saying anything, we went back inside and rejoined our friends. They didn't even seem to notice we had been gone."

There was silence. I could tell that it had taken a lot out of Marianne to confess this much. I was angry, and I wanted to throw accusations and harsh words in her face—but I also knew that I had to hear the rest of the story. So I just quietly said, "OK, Marianne, go on. What happened after that?"

"Well, I was absolutely certain that would be the end of it. After another hour Susan and Whitney and I left, with no further kisses or anything from Eddie. They dropped me off here, and I collapsed into bed. When I woke up I felt incredibly guilty, but also somehow not guilty, you know?" 

"It's hard to explain. The whole experience, out there in the alley, had been so ... out of context, separate from all the rest of my life, and our lives together, that it almost didn't seem to count. I knew I had committed adultery, I knew that I had been unfaithful to you, and that that was a terrible thing. Yet at the same time it just seemed kind of unreal, like a dream I had. And I knew you'd never find out, and I knew I'd never do it again, so I just sort of let it slide out of my mind. And I kind of imagined—I'm sure I thought of this so I'd feel less guilty—that the same thing might have happened to you on a business trip sometime, something fast and dirty and meaningless, and that I never would even have known."

"I never did that," I said, quietly but coldly. "Not once. And it's not like I never had chances. Once on a trip there was ... well, never mind. It's not important."

"I know, Tom," Marianne said. She was crying now. "I know how faithful you are, how you never would cheat on me like that. It was just a thought I had, so I could feel better about what I did."

"Then you came home from Phoenix that Sunday, and I was just so glad to see you. And we made love, and you were terrific, so passionate and loving and sweet. And that made my guilt flare up, but it also reassured me that nothing had changed, that you and I were still fine."

It was growing dark outside, and I could no longer see my wife's face. I quietly got up and turned on a couple of table lamps, then returned to my seat. Somehow the slow pace of her narration was keeping me calmer, almost like I was hypnotized. What she was telling me was incredibly painful, but at the same time I felt sort of anesthetized.

"I didn't have the slightest thought of ever seeing Eddie again, let alone ... having an affair with him. I ran into him in the supermarket a couple of weeks later, and didn't feel the slightest thrill. A flush of guilt, actually—but no excitement. We had a casual, five-minute conversation and went our separate ways. But I had happened to mention that you were going away again, and that got Eddie thinking."

"The next week Susan called, and I agreed to go out dancing with her on Saturday. This was in early December. She somehow knew you'd be away, though I hadn't told her. We tried a new club, and lo and behold, Eddie was there, with Jack, the friend of his who had been hitting on Susan. It turns out that Susan and Jack had started dating. Well, I found out later that this whole evening was a set-up. Eddie told Jack, who told Susan that you'd be away, and to invite me out dancing with her at that particular club."

"Tom," Marianne said in a pleading voice, and I looked at her. "This is the hardest part. What I did before that ... it was stupid, incredibly careless and stupid, but ... at least it was ... you, know, spontaneous." Her voice trembled. "A sudden burst of insanity, that I almost imagine you could eventually forgive. But what I did that Saturday night ... I don't have any excuse for. I'm ashamed. I hate myself for what I did, and that's the simple truth."

She seemed to wait for me to answer, but no words came to me. I managed to nod, and she went on.

"We all danced, and drank a bit, and had a good time. And when Susan said she was leaving with Jack, I knew I should let them drop me at home—but I didn't. I stayed with Eddie. I was having fun, and I wanted it to continue."

"Tom, we ... we went back to his apartment, and I spent the night with him. We had sex a lot ... several times. There was something about the wrongness of it, the dirtiness of it, that excited me, knowing that I was cheating on you, that this was ... sex with a man who wasn't my husband. Eddie is a bit younger, he's ... only 29, as I said, and the fact that he was so full of desire for a lady of nearly 40 was flattering. I was more ... more vocal than I usually am with you, and ... well, it was very exciting. I ... I, I came a lot."

Feeling absolutely numb, I spoke up for the first time in a while. "Marianne, at some point I may ask you more questions about that night." She hung her head, but nodded. "But for now, just go ahead with your story."

"When I left his apartment the next day ... oh Tom, I'm so sorry!" She wept into her hands, her shoulders shaking, and I silently waited for her to continue. Finally she regained some of her composure, and began to speak again.

"When I left his apartment, I knew I was going to keep ... seeing him. I knew that I couldn't justify doing it, I knew it was utterly wrong, and selfish. But I LIKED it. It had been the most exciting thing I'd done in years, and I liked it."

She looked at me. "Tom, making love with you is wonderful. You are so gentle, and sometimes so powerful, and you are so attentive to my pleasure. And I feel safe with you. But at the same time, after 16 years it has gotten ... maybe a bit 'familiar', or predictable? I'll bet you feel the same way."

"Anyway, with Eddie it was wild, and new, and very different. Not better, Tom! Never better than what you and I have. But different. And in some insane way I convinced myself that this was just something nice I was doing all for myself—the way some women go to a beauty spa, or treat themselves into a new outfit. I know that's crazy! But that's what I kept telling myself."

"From the very beginning, I told Eddie that I would do whatever it took to keep our ... relationship a secret. I told him I loved you—that this ... affair had nothing to do with that. I wanted my marriage to last, and my seeing him would never interfere with that."

"It was easy to arrange meetings, because my work schedule is so variable. I can be out of the office for hours without anyone thinking anything about it. I got a throw-away cell phone, and I only talked to Eddie on that, never on our other phones. We met at different places—but NEVER here, Tom, never in our house! I just wouldn't do that! It was motels, different ones. We didn't get too regular, because I didn't want our faces to be familiar to anyone."

As Marianne spoke I had gotten up and begun pacing around the room, without even noticing that I was doing it. The first part of her story hurt me, but in some way it soothed me as well. It made a kind of sense. I could imagine Marianne having fun dancing with her friends, and then the crazy spontaneity of sex outside with Eddie. Perhaps I might even have been able to forgive that.

What was still too hard to bear—what made me clench my fists in fury—was what happened afterwards. She had made a calm, cold-blooded decision to keep the relationship going. She knew what she was doing, she knew how it would destroy me if I found out, and she did it anyway.

I turned and faced her. "Is there more, Marianne?" My voice came out rougher, harsher than I had expected. She shrank back from me, her eyes wide.

"N-no, honey," she answered, fearfully. "I'll answer any question you ask, tell you anything you want to know, but not really. We ... kept getting together, sometimes twice or three times a week, sometimes less. It depended on my work, and on your business trips. I never let my ... meetings with Eddie interfere with any plans you and I had."

She looked up at me, suddenly even more worried. "Tom, there is one more thing. When you were away on business trips I ... usually spent the night at Eddie's apartment. That way we didn't have to get a motel room, and ... we had more time together."

This hurt. A lot. In light of everything else, I didn't understand why the thought of Marianne in Eddie's bed all night was so much worse than her in bed with him for a couple of afternoon hours in a motel room, but it was. Maybe it stemmed from the relaxed familiarity I heard on the tape. Somehow it wasn't just the sex—it was hearing them together, being easy and fond with each other. I could almost see them in Eddie's aprartment. Greeting each other excitedly, passionately fucking, then relaxing, sharing dinner or a couple of beers, watching TV together, then more sex ... then sleeping cuddled up, with more sex during the night or the next morning.

It was that picture of happy intimacy—the intimacy that I thought she had shared only with me—that made my anger boil up again.

"Well, Marianne, it's quite a story." I spoke coldly. She sat with her head down, not replying. She could surely tell that angry words were coming. I felt desperate to hurt her, or at least to make sure that she understood how deeply hurt I was feeling.

"Do you love him?" She looked at me in shock. "Of course not! It was never anything like that!"

"OK, then," I replied coldly. "Suppose you tell me just how you do feel about the man you were fucking and sucking for eight months, and spending the night with on a regular basis. Are the two of you 'friends'? Are you 'fond' of him? Is he a 'special person' you 'really care about'? Is there a 'unique bond' between you, a 'special closeness'?"

I spat these phrases at her, and she started to cry again.

"I know I deserve this, Tom. I deserve whatever you want to say to me, whatever you want to do. I don't know if I can say how I felt about him. Like a ... friend, I guess. OK, the truth: I WAS fond of him. I felt close to him—after all we had been sharing ... intimacies for several months."

I wanted to shout at her that I'd heard the fondness on the tape—that that fondness was the single biggest thing that was tearing my guts out. But I wasn't ready to confess that yet. Instead I had one final angry question for her.

"OK, Marianne. You said you told him that the marriage came first, that you would never let your ... 'get-togethers' with Eddie interfere with anything in our married life together. Have I got that right?" She nodded.

"Well, then, perhaps you could explain to me why you fucked him—you cheated on me—the day of our 16th wedding anniversary! Perhaps you could help me understand why he fucked you so thoroughly that day that you had the "honeymoons". Perhaps there's some good reason why you were so sore that night that you wouldn't let me fuck you—on our wedding anniversary!" 




House of Cards Ch. 05



By now I was yelling, I couldn't help it. "Did you think I wouldn't figure out what that special blow-job was all about? Do you take me for that much of an idiot?"

"Wait a minute," I continued, "I guess you do! You've got a husband you've been jerking around for months, you can get away with anything! So get your pussy fucked into soreness by your lover! Come home, take your poor stupid deluded husband's dick in your mouth, and you're all set! Nothing to worry about!"

She was sobbing, looking at me in horror, shaking her head a little and saying "no! no, Tom, please, it wasn't like that!"

"Well then, Marianne, please explain it to me! No, on second thought, don't!"

I headed for the door. "I've heard about all I can stand to hear for tonight. I know we'll have to talk further—but I just can't handle any more. Good night, Marianne."

I said those words more quietly, but still with anger in my voice. As I left I could hear Marianne crying, but she made no attempt to call me back.



House of Cards Ch. 06



My heart was racing so fast as I drove away that I had to force myself to slow down, to breathe deeply, not to drive 80 mph or run through red lights. I had no idea where I was going, no idea what I was going to do next.

It almost made me laugh. "I don't know what to do in the next five minutes; and I don't know what to do with the rest of my life."

At that moment there were only two things I was sure of. The first was that I still loved Marianne. I still wanted, despite everything, to be married to her.

But the second was that I absolutely could not imagine any way of getting past what she had done. I couldn't even begin to see how I could get over this, how I could stop being so angry and hurt that I wanted just to yell at her, to make her cry.

How would I ever be able to make love to her again? Even thinking about kissing her, I heard her in my mind kissing Eddie, or saying "God, it's so big, and so hard, and so beautiful!" I imagined them in the shower together, or lounging around Eddie's apartment after sex, relaxing and looking forward to the next time.

She had taken something she promised to share only with me—her most personal, intimate and vulnerable self—and given it to another man. No matter what else ever happened between us, it could never be just for me again.

It was even clearer to me now than before that it wasn't the fucking itself that mainly mattered. Had she just had that hot quickie outside the dance club, I know I would have been able to get over it. Not without some serious anger and pain, but I'm certain I could have put it behind me. And if I felt it necessitated some revenge, by way of a quickie with someone else on my part, well then Marianne would just have had to deal with it.

But the sustained relationship she had had with Eddie—the familiarity and intimacy that had developed between them over eight months—the depth of that betrayal took my breath away.

And there was an additional element: the sense of humiliation I felt at having been deceived for so long. For eight months my wife had been happily having sex with me, sharing caresses and loving words with me. Then she'd been getting out of my bed and going off to do the same thing with another man. How could she not have been thinking of him, some of the time she was making love with me? How could she not have started to think less of me, knowing that she had this secret, this power over me?

I found myself driving past a bar on Front St. that I had been in a few times before. For lack of anything better to do, I went in, sat at the bar, and had a beer. On the TV the Indians game was in the 4th inning. They were already losing by six runs. "Typical," I said to myself, thinking that my life was going sort of like the Indians game—or their season.

After two beers, I got up and headed back to my apartment. I had considered getting drunk, but it didn't appeal to me. I realized on the drive that I hadn't even looked around the bar to see if there were any women there. It may be that some cuckolded husbands immediately think of revenge, of tearing off a piece with someone else, but that didn't seem to interest me at all.

That night I had another nightmare, worse than the previous one. Marianne and I were in our bedroom, making love. First she was lying back, purring happily, smiling at me, as I sucked on her nipples and caressed her pussy with my fingers. Then, at her urging, I climbed onto her and began to fuck her gently in the missionary position. It was unhurried and relaxed, and we were both enjoying it. But after a couple of minutes I looked around and realized that our bed was now on a stage in an auditorium, and the hall was filled with hundreds of people watching us. I began to feel pressure to please Marianne, and I fucked her more energetically, kissing her and licking her neck. But something had changed—she was no longer enjoying it, and the harder I tried to give her pleasure, the more bored she looked.

Then suddenly a man with a clipboard came up to the bed, shouted "Time!", and a couple of guys pulled me out of the bed and off to the side. Another man walked onto the stage, his erect cock waving in front of him, and jumped into bed with Marianne. She greeted him eagerly, with an excited smile, and in no time they were fucking. From the very beginning Marianne was more enthusiastic and involved with him than she had been with me. He was getting her more and more excited, and her moans were so loud they could be heard throughout the auditorium. She looked only at him, never once even glancing at me. With each of his thrusts she rotated her hips, trying to get him deeper into her. I could hear the audience's rising excitement. Just as the man with the clipboard approached the bed she reached an enormous orgasm, crying out "Oh my God! Oh Eddie! My God! yes, fuck me!" It seemed that Eddie came just as she did.

After the two lovers collapsed in each other's arms, the clipboard man called "Time!" and the audience burst into a sustained ovation. They got up from the bed, naked and sweaty, waved to the audience with big grins on their faces, and walked off-stage arm in arm, leaving me forgotten and alone on the other side of the stage.

When I woke up I was agitated and disoriented. As sometimes happens after nightmares, it took a minute or two before I had any idea where I was, and before I realized that it had just been an awful dream. I dragged myself into the shower and tried to calm down.

When I got to work my friend Steve intercepted me before I even reached my office. "How are you, Tom? Andrea and I have been thinking of you. Have you got a minute?"

He came into my office and shut the door. "Is there anything we can do, Tom?"

I shook my head. "Thanks, Steve. I'm okay. I'm certainly not happy, but I'm surviving."

He said, "I wanted you to know that Andrea spoke to Marianne last night—it must have been after you left the house. They had a long conversation, and Andrea wondered if she could have lunch with you and tell you about it."

I thought for a minute. "I guess that's OK, Steve. Why don't you ask her to meet me here at 12:30. Do you want to join us?"

"I don't think so. I have the feeling that it will be easier for Andrea to talk to you without anyone else there—even me."

I thanked Steve and tried to focus on my work for the rest of the morning.

When Andrea arrived, we went to a luncheonette nearby and ordered, then she sat back and looked at me.

"Tom, you know I am so very sorry about what has happened. And I want to help, but I don't want to do anything that feels intrusive and inappropriate to you. Steve and I care about both you and Marianne, and we are just so sad for you both."

"Thank you, Andrea. I know you care for both of us, and I certainly don't mind your having talked to Marianne. I'm angry at her, but I love her too—I don't want her to lose her friends over this."

Andrea paused for a moment, then spoke. "Would it be all right if I told you some of what Marianne and I discussed last night?" I nodded.

"Well, Tom, as you must know she's absolutely devastated. One of the things you may not realize is that throughout this affair, she was completely convinced that you would never find out about it. Of course she knew the cheating was wrong—it was terrible, Tom! I still don't know what the hell she was thinking!" Her eyes flashed, and I could tell she was furious at Marianne too. I was grateful to Andrea for feeling that way.

"But the way she justified it to herself was by telling herself that you would never ever know about it, and so you would never be hurt. Because of that, she had never thought through what finding out about the affair would do to you. Your wife is a smart woman, but she was spectacularly dumb about this, I'd have to say."

"So what that means now, to put it bluntly, is that she has a lot of catching up to do. She feels terribly guilty and sad, she knows that she has hurt you badly, she is unhappy and frightened that you've left the house, and she's terrified about the future of your marriage. But even now, Tom, I don't think she fully understands how and why this is so painful for you."

I looked at Andrea as I thought about this, and as the waitress brought our sandwiches. An idea occurred to me, and I filed it away to think about later. "That makes sense, Andrea. But it's not clear to me what I'm supposed to do about it."

"Just keep talking with her, Tom. If your marriage is going to survive, the two of you are going to have to discuss every aspect of this, explore all the feelings each of you has, and hope that you can reach some resolution and some reconciliation. I'm no therapist, but I don't see it working any other way. Certainly if feelings of anger or guilt get swept under the rug, they're going to eat away at the two of you until they destroy your relationship."

"You are probably right," I replied. "In fact I've been thinking some of the same things. I guess I'll call Marianne and set up another time for us to talk. Thank you, Andrea. Were there other things that came up in your conversation with her that I should know about?"

"Yes, Tom, two things above all. The first is simply that she loves you desperately. She's beside herself with fear that she's lost you, that your marriage won't survive this. It's not just that she feels guilty, though of course she does. She also is suffering because the man she loves is suffering."

I had to close my eyes for a moment, feeling the pain rush back. I tried to smile at Andrea. "I guess we both know WHY the man she loves is suffering, don't we?" I attempted a light-hearted tone, but I didn't really succeed.

Andrea took my hand. "Yes, we both know, Tom," she said gently.

After a quiet minute, I asked, "what's the second thing?" 

"It's that she's willing to do absolutely anything to save your marriage, but she doesn't have any idea what to do. I tell you, Tom, if cutting off her left arm would do it, she'd probably have the knife out already. But she really doesn't even know where to begin the process of making up for this."

I sighed. "Well, last night was certainly a first step. As she must have mentioned to you, she told me pretty much the whole story of the affair: how it began, when and where they met, etc. Hearing it was every bit as bad as I imagined it would be, but at least I know the facts now."

Andrea asked me another question. "DO you have any idea what you'd like her to do at this point?"

"No, no idea at all. As you said a few minutes ago, she and I are going to have to talk and talk. But beyond that I don't know what to suggest. I'll tell you, Andrea, I've thought of some wild things: I could go on an exotic vacation without her, I could go out and get myself laid, I could fight her for custody of the kids when they come back from camp at the end of the summer, I could even move away and get a new job somewhere else—crazy things like that. But they all feel like pointless attempts to cause her pain, and none of them appeals to me in the least."

"I'd wondered about going out and getting laid, Tom. Certainly no one would think any less of you if you did that."

"I don't know why, Andrea, but I just don't want to. I don't seem to have any interest in sleeping with anybody else right now. And of course, I don't have any interest in sleeping with Marianne, either—I can't even imagine it without my mind filling with images of her with Eddie."

Andrea brushed away a couple of tears. "I guess maybe that must be one of the worst things, Tom. The fact that making love together, which could be such a healing thing for a couple, would just pull the wounds wide-open again."

"Yes," I said, "and I don't have any idea if that will ever stop being true. If we can't get past that problem, there's no way our marriage will survive."

We were quiet for a few moments, each of us thinking our own thoughts. I realized that the two things Andrea had told me about Marianne matched perfectly the two thoughts I had had the previous night. First, she loved me, as I still loved her. And second, neither of us had any idea about how to get past our current problems, though we both wanted to.

I paid the check and we got up to leave. On our walk back from the restaurant I said, "Thank you, Andrea. You are a true friend—I value your support so much, and that of Steve. You guys have been terrific."

"All we want is for you and Marianne to find a way to be happy again. Please let us know if there's anything we can do. Would you like to come over for dinner sometime this weekend?

"Thanks—let me think about what I'll be doing, and I'll give you a call."

After we said our good-byes I went back to my office. Sitting on my desk was a wrapped present, about the size of a small tissue box. When I unwrapped it I found a small jack-in-the box, with childish colorful designs painted on it. I smiled, then turned the crank. With a loud "bang" the lid flew open, and up popped a clown head with a wide smile on its face. Tied around its neck with a little piece of a thread was a note saying "Hang in There!"

I laughed, probably for the first time in three weeks, and I saw Alice's smiling face peeking around the door watching me. "This is great! Was this from you?" I asked.

"Just a little something from a few of us who care about you," she answered.

"Well I love it! I'm going to pop this guy up every little while for the rest of the day!" I said with a smile. "Please give my thanks to everyone for this."

I closed my office door. After popping up my new toy a couple more times, for luck, I dialed Marianne's office number. When she answered I said, "Hi, it's me."

"Hi, Tom." She seemed pleased to hear from me, but also wary. I guess that was not hard to understand, given how I had left her the previous night.

"I had a good talk with Andrea today," I said. "Do you think that you and I could get together tonight and talk some more?"

"Of course," she said, less wary now. "May I cook you dinner this time?"

"No, I think I don't want to come back to the house tonight. How would you feel about coming to my apartment, and I'll make something?"

After a moment she said, "that would be great, Tom!" I gave her the address and we agreed to meet at 6:30. Then, without any further conversation, I told her I needed to get back to work, and we said goodbye.

I left work early to get some groceries and prepare dinner. I realized that I wanted to impress Marianne, to cook her a dinner far better than she would expect I could manage. That interested me. I guessed that I was seeking to find a way to feel more in control. Her affair and her deception had made me a victim—a humiliating position to be in. Inviting her to my apartment, like making the dinner myself, represented steps by me to take charge of the situation. That seemed like a good thing. I continued to think about the plan that had occurred to me during my lunch with Andrea.

When she arrived I showed her directly to the table. I had made spaghetti with a white clam sauce (with fresh clams in it), an elaborate salad with mandarin orange slices, and garlic bread. I had considered a nice bottle of wine as well, and flowers on the table, but then rejected both of those angrily. This wasn't a date, dammit! I settled for two simple place-settings, and water for each of us.

As she sat down Marianne looked around the dreary apartment and said, gamely, "this is nice".

"It's just a basic furnished apartment, Marianne. Not much personality—purely functional, though it is nice and clean. You don't have to try to praise it." I hadn't meant to put her down, but she seemed a bit cowed by my words, maybe feeling that I was being sarcastic, and we ate silently for a few minutes.

Then she spoke again. "Tom, I hope you don't mind my saying so, but this is a marvelous dinner! I haven't been giving you enough credit for your cooking! The clams are just delicious, and I love the salad."

"Thank you Marianne. I certainly haven't been eating like this all the time, but tonight I felt like doing something more ambitious."

She looked at me a bit fearfully. "Do you think you'll be ... staying in this apartment a long time?" I knew what that meant, of course—it meant, When will you be coming home?

"I just don't know, honey." I stopped suddenly, uncomfortable that I had addressed her by a familiar endearment. "Marianne, I don't know what's going to happen next. I know that I love you, and I want our marriage to survive." She broke into a smile, though at the same time I could see tears threatening to flow from her eyes.

"But I don't know what we'll have to do to make that happen. Inviting you here to talk some more seemed like the right next step."

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, and the tears dropped onto her cheeks. Then without a word she took my hand across the table, pulled it to her, and fervently kissed the back of it. The loving gesture was so familiar to me. I remembered that the last time she had done it was while we were driving back from our Lake Forbes picnic, the day after I'd found her panties and first learned of her affair. That seemed like a decade ago.

Marianne held onto my hand; she sat up straight, her cheeks still glistening, and looked straight at me. "Tom, I want you to know something. I will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, to make up for this. I know that the pain you're suffering is all my fault, and I ... and I ..."

Suddenly she couldn't speak any more, and a moment later she was sobbing, her head buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Without thinking I went around the table, pulled her to her feet and took her in my arms. She cried hard for several minutes as I held her tightly, her face nestled into my shoulder. At that moment I didn't feel the pain of my situation—I was only aware of how good it felt to have Marianne in my arms.

When her crying had subsided, she raised her head to look at me. It seemed that she wanted to kiss me, but didn't dare. She said, "Thank you Tom, for holding me. I didn't know I was going to cry, it just ... sneaked up on me."

Without replying I got out a tissue and gently wiped the tears off her face, then helped her back into her chair. I realized that once again I had taken action —without thinking about it I had embraced her and comforted her—and that it had felt good.

"Do you think you can still enjoy the rest of dinner?" I asked. She nodded, and I said, "Good, because I made a blueberry pie for dessert." I enjoyed her look of pleasure and surprise.

After dinner we took our coffee cups and sat on the sofa in my tiny living room. "That was a lovely meal, Tom—thank you so much." Marianne clearly didn't know what would happen next; and of course, neither did I.

"Thank you, Marianne. For some reason I wanted to impress you. One of the things that has been bothering me about our whole situation is the way I feel like the passive victim. Things have been done TO me. I think that by inviting you here, and by showing you that I could do more than cook a hot dog, I'm trying to take an active role in ... resolving, or trying to resolve, our situation."

I went on. "I have a million things I feel the need to talk about with you—to say to you, or to ask. And they're all jumbled in my mind, without any sense of order. So I'm just going to talk about whatever pops up, without worrying too much if it's logical." She nodded her agreement.

"One place to start is how I'm feeling about your cheating, and your lying to me. When I spoke to Andrea today, she felt that you hadn't yet really come to understand all that I've been feeling. And I certainly know that before we can come out the other end of this, you're going to have to know—and acknowledge —everything that is upsetting me."

"So here is one thing. Not necessarily the biggest or most important, but one thing: you made me a sucker. For eight months you've been fucking another man, meeting him regularly, developing an intimate relationship with him; and I've been totally in the dark. While I was thinking that I was the only man you were close to, you've been able to feel the delicious pleasure of your secret. When I kissed you passionately, or whispered affectionate words to you in bed, you knew—but I didn't—that another man also got to do that with you. When we made love, you could be thinking about how someone else did that. You could compare my cock to his, my tongue to his, my energy or gentleness or stamina to his—AND I WOULD NEVER KNOW IT."




House of Cards Ch. 06



Marianne looked at me sadly. "Tom, I never compared you to ... to Eddie. That was never what this was all about."

I responded quickly, and sharply. "Can you tell me that you never once thought about him while you were in bed with me? Can you look me in the eye and say that you never once, while I was stroking your breasts or licking your pussy or fucking you, thought about Eddie doing those things? When we finished making love, and lay together happily in each other's arms, can you swear that you never thought about how it felt to be lying in Eddie's arms after sex?"

She had looked away during these questions—it was obvious what the answer was. "No, Tom. I admit ... sometimes I thought those things."

"Well, how nice for you," I said angrily. "You had a secret—you knew something I didn't know. I opened myself up to you totally, let myself be completely vulnerable to you, thinking that I was your only lover as you were mine. I never dreamed, if I gasped in pleasure or made a strange face as I came inside you, that what I did would become fuel for your comparisons."

She didn't speak for a minute or so. "That was never the point of it for me, Tom. But I see what you are saying. This is just one of many ways I guess my thoughtlessness has hurt you."

"Let me continue," I pressed on in an angry voice, but taking care not to shout at her. "I'm sure that part of the excitement each time you ... fucked that guy was the fact that it was cheating, that he was not your same old husband of many years, whose every move you could predict. I don't like that one bit, but I can understand it. What is far worse for me is the excitement having sex with me must have brought you, knowing that you also had an illicit lover who did the same things with you."

"I keep thinking of the Tuesday I recorded you with Eddie. You fucked him for two hours in a motel room, then came home that night smiling. You looked fantastic —your skin glowed, your eyes sparkled, you were full of joy and full of life. And after dinner you tried to drag me upstairs to bed to make love, knowing all the while that you'd fucked your lover earlier the same day!"

"Don't you see? Whenever you and I made love, there were three people in our bed. You brought your lover there with us, inside your head, AND I NEVER KNEW A DAMN THING ABOUT IT!"

She remained silent, her head lowered. "You played me for a fool, Marianne!" She raised her head suddenly and began to speak, then thought better of it. We both sat in silence for several minutes, and then I went on.

"Maybe we should talk about the lying now. I can certainly understand how carefully you hid your affair, and why. You are a smart lady—that's a big part of why I married you!" I managed a small smile. 

"But when I found those thong panties, and I asked you about them the next day —that was hard to take. I even began by telling you how much I loved you, and how our relationship was the most important thing in our life, except for the children. I assured you that if I had ever done anything to jeopardize our life together, I'd tell you, and try to make it up to you. I went on and on. And then you looked me in the eye, and gave me a bunch of BULLSHIT about how it was my cum in the panties—how we'd had sex the night before I went to Chicago, which was just total crap."

She started to reply but I cut her off. "Let me go on a minute. Then later, when I played you the recording of you talking to Eddie on your cell phone, you still managed an exquisite fairy-tale about how he was your celebrity client, and you had to meet him in secret in motels. You should write fiction, Marianne!" I laughed bitterly.

"So tell me, please," I concluded. "Why did you lie and lie and lie? Why did you lie shamelessly to my face? Was it just so you could continue your affair? Or did you enjoy the thought that I was still a dumb-shit husband, still totally in the dark about what was going on behind my back?"

Marianne waited until she was sure I was finished speaking, then began to reply. There was pain in her face, but she was calm and dry-eyed.

"Sweetheart—one thing I hope you'll be able to believe. I hated lying to you. HATED it. But I couldn't cheat on you without doing it, could I? Especially when you asked me questions like that. Please believe what I'm about to say. The one thing I swore to myself, from the beginning when I realized I was going to keep seeing Eddie, was that you would never know. I didn't let myself think of how much it would hurt you. I should have, of course, but I didn't."

"Instead, I just kept telling myself, 'no matter what happens, Tom will never know about my affair. I won't let him be hurt by what I'm doing.' That was always my plan. I see now what a stupid plan it was..."

"Anyway, Tom, when you confronted me with those panties I just froze. It was a complete surprise, I didn't know they were lying around like that. All I knew is that I couldn't possibly confess the truth, and let you be so badly hurt. So I lied as plausibly as I could, and I was so relieved when you seemed to believe it! I said a little prayer, 'Thank you thank you thank you!' I was just so glad that my secret was safe, because it meant you weren't hurt."

"The very next morning I called Eddie and told him we had to cool it, and be extra careful. I cancelled a ... meeting we had scheduled, and I didn't see him again for more than a week, on the Tuesday when you must have tape-recorded us somehow. I had managed to convince myself that, though you were still suspicious, you had calmed down. I didn't suspect you were checking on me so carefully. I guess I forgot how smart YOU are!"

"Anyway, on the Wednesday when you played the tape of my phone call to Eddie the same thing happened. I froze, in a total panic! Then it occurred to me that I could possibly explain it away—I instantly came up with that crazy story about his being a celebrity client and needing privacy. For just a moment I thought you had believed that too, and I was relieved. And then you played more of your tape, the one of him and me ... together, in the motel ...."

"Then I realized what a total fool I had been. All I wanted then was a chance to explain it all to you, but you walked out on me. Not that I didn't deserve it! I don't know what I expected.... I just had convinced myself all along that you would never, never find out."

"So my lying was for you, Tom—I didn't want you to be hurt. That must sound absolutely pathetic now, self-serving and horrible. But it gave me no pleasure to lie to you—I didn't feel any sense of triumph when I thought you believed me. I just wanted so desperately for you not to know ... I guess so you wouldn't feel the way you're feeling now."

"OK, Marianne. I guess I understand what you're saying. But, please, be honest with me. After I first asked you about an affair, when I found the panties, did you ever think of just ending it with Eddie? Instead of just being more cautious, and hiding your affair more carefully, did you consider breaking it off?"

Her silence, and a sudden burst of tears, gave me my answer. Finally she said, "no, honey," in a tiny voice. "I have been such a total idiot! I was so caught up in my own stupidity that even then, I didn't see the danger I was in! I am so sorry!"

"Is it over now, Marianne?"

"Of course, Tom!" She cried more loudly. "I called him the morning after you ... left the house, and I told him it was over. He argued a little, but I didn't give him any choice about it. I swear, Tom, it's over with Eddie forever!" Because of the last recording I had heard of Marianne in the car, I knew what she was telling me the truth.

I let her cry for a minute or two. Then, quietly, I asked, "Marianne, if I hadn't found out about your affair, how long do you think it would have gone on?"

She looked up at me in surprise. "I don't know," she said. "I know that it wouldn't have been a long long time. After all that time it wasn't as ... it wasn't as exciting and crazy as it had been at the beginning." I grimaced at her words, thinking of the fondness she and Eddie had shown in the motel room, and she cried out, "I'm sorry, Tom!"

"No," I said, "go ahead."

"Well, it was becoming more of a settled thing, and I think it would have just continued cooling off in ... I don't know, a few more months. I think we would finally have just ... looked at each other and said, that's it. We're done."

For no other reason than because I was in pain, I said, "Maybe that's where we are, Marianne. Maybe after 16 years we've cooled off, and it's time to say 'We're done'." I didn't believe my own words. It was pretty clear to me I was trying to hurt her—but I also wanted to see what she would say.

"No Tom!" Marianne nearly jumped up from the sofa. "That's not how I feel at all! My love for you is deeper now than it was when we were married. You are more important to me than you've ever been! The only thing that has been getting me through each day, these past two weeks, is the hope that we'll be able to get past this and be a loving, happy husband and wife again. I will NEVER stop loving you, and I will never be out of your life unless you push me out once and for all."

I wasn't ready to let her off the hook yet. "Well, you've come damn close to doing that already, Marianne.'

She just nodded unhappily. "I know I have."

We sat for another minute or two, and then I said, "There's one more thing I want to bring up tonight. Obviously we'll need to have many more conversations, but tonight's talk has probably been painful enough for both of us already. I want you to tell me about our anniversary, and about the 'honeymoons'."

"Marianne," and I looked right into her eyes, "how could you have ... slept with him on our anniversary? How COULD you?"

She flushed, and looked down at her hands. She must have known I'd bring this up, because I'd mentioned it in one of our earlier conversations.

"I didn't ... see Eddie on our anniversary, Tom. It was the day before. We hadn't been together for nearly two weeks, because he was away on vacation, and ... I guess we were extra horny. Eddie had wanted to meet the next day, which would have been our anniversary, and I told him absolutely not. But I think there was something about ... doing it with me just before our anniversary that was a special turn-on for him. He kept mentioning it while we were together, and ... oh, Tom, I'm so sorry!"

She started to cry again, but I just looked at her quietly. I wasn't about to let her off the hook.

"Well," she finally continued, "he made love to me over and over. He was just wild for it that day. I think we did it four times that afternoon, and a couple of times he was extra forceful and a bit rough. I was sore for the next couple of days. I had been looking forward to you and me making love the night of our anniversary, and at first I didn't know what I was going to do. But I had that lovely new nightie I knew you would like, and I thought that if I just gave you some extra loving with my mouth ... it would still be okay."

I just sat there, thinking. Obviously the turn-on for Eddie had been lording it over me—getting every last ounce of sex out of his lover, my wife, the day before our anniversary. He figured I'd never know what he had over me, but HE would know. I couldn't even be that angry with him about it. I obviously didn't think much of a guy who would screw a married woman, but that competitive feeling was not hard for me to identify with. He wasn't worth my worrying about—if it weren't for Marianne agreeing to it, they never would have had an affair.

My wife was an extremely attractive woman. She wasn't just physically beautiful, she was also full of life, interesting to talk to, intelligent, and lots of fun. What man wouldn't want to have her, given half a chance? It just didn't seem worth the energy to hate Eddie. My anger was for Marianne. She was the one who had stolen something from me—Eddie had pretty much just taken what she had offered him.

"Well, Marianne, I want to make sure you know how I feel about that. It's obvious that Eddie loved the chance to fuck you from here to Borneo the day before our anniversary, to stake his claim on you the day before I would have had the chance to do it. I don't know if he knew that he left you with the 'honeymoons', and I don't want to know."

"But you must see that your actions those two days were another sort of betrayal of me. Eddie came first—pardon the Goddam pun!" I laughed bitterly for a moment. "He got what he wanted, because you let him have it. And the net result is that my wife was unavailable to me, on our anniversary no less. Whatever you may have been thinking as you gave me that blow-job, you can surely see how it feels to me now. That was my cheating wife, doing what she had to do to keep me in the dark. Doing what was necessary to prevent me touching her pussy, and realizing what she had been doing to make it so sore."

Marianne hadn't raised her head in several minutes. Now, without looking at me, she said, "yes, Tom. I understand what you're saying. I am SO sorry. I know I keep saying that, but that doesn't mean it's not true. I was selfish and stupid. I am so very sorry for all of this."

We sat for several minutes without speaking or looking at one another. I had thought about how I wanted to bring the evening to an end, and now I went ahead with my plan.

"I think we should stop for tonight, Marianne. Would that be all right with you?" She smiled at me sadly, her eyes red and swollen, and nodded.

I continued. "But I'd like to suggest that each of us try something. How about if we plan to talk again in two days, on Sunday? I'll come by the house in the afternoon. And between now and then, each of us should try to write down what we think the other one is feeling about this ... whole situation. So I'll try to think like you, Marianne, and write down what your feelings are, and you do the same for me. Then we'll share those when we get together again."

She looked at me, thinking about it. It wasn't an unreasonable request, and I knew that she would agree, especially after having said she would do absolutely anything to make the situation better.

"OK, Tom. I don't immediately see the point, but I will try. And I guess I've spent a lot of time thinking about my own feelings—perhaps I owe it to you to try to consider yours as fully as I can."

"Thank you, Marianne. I'm hoping this will be a helpful step."

I walked her downstairs and held the door as she got into her car. Just before she started the engine I said, "oh, Marianne, one more thing. We're trying to be completely honest with each other, so there's something I need to tell you about."

She looked up at me, waiting. "I've been seeing someone else. Well, sleeping with her, actually. It's a woman at one of the firms we do business with. We had a drink a couple of weeks ago after work—it was two nights after I left the house—and wound up in bed together. And I've seen her a few times since then. I thought you should know."

Marianne's lip quivered, and she looked absolutely shocked. I'm sure she was wondering if I was telling the truth.

"Is this for real, Tom? Or are you just trying to get even a little by telling me this story? Not that I would have the right to blame you .... Are you really ... sleeping with someone else?"

"Yes, but I don't think I should say anymore about it right now, Marianne. We'll talk again in a couple of days."

And without giving her a chance to say anything else, I walked several steps back to the doorway of my apartment building, ready to wave to her as she left. She obviously didn't want to leave without asking more questions, but after a minute she realized I was finished talking to her, and she drove away.

Smiling a little to myself, I hurried back up to my apartment. I wanted to phone Steve and Andrea before Marianne could reach them.

When I called, Steve answered. "Hi, Tom, I'm so glad you called! How are things going? Can you come have a barbecue with the two of us tomorrow, about 5pm?"

"I'd love to, Steve—thanks. But I could I speak to both you and Andrea on the phone tonight for just a moment?" He called to his wife, and after a minute she picked up on another extension.

"I'm going to ask your help on something," I said to both of them. "I've just told Marianne a white lie, and I want you to back me up. I told her that I've started seeing, and sleeping with, someone I met through work. I said that it began a couple of nights after I left the house."

"So you're not actually seeing someone, Tom?" Andrea asked.

"No—I still don't feel the least bit interested in any other women at the moment," I replied. "But I was thinking about what you said to me today at lunch: that Marianne doesn't really understand how it feels to be in my shoes right now. I thought this might be a way for her to experience it for herself. And I will confess that it also feels like a tiny bit of revenge—ultimately harmless revenge—for what she has done."

"It makes sense to me, Tom," Steve said. "What can we do to help?"

"Well, I'm guessing that Marianne will call to speak to you, perhaps even tonight. She can't really tell if my story is true, or whether I made it up just to hurt her. So I'd like you to string her along a little. You can act reluctant, hem and haw a little, and finally admit that you got the impression from me that I was seeing someone, but you don't know any of the details."

They both laughed, and Andrea said, "no problem! We'll take care of it, Tom. When she's done speaking to us, she'll be more worried than ever!"

"Thanks to both of you. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon, and if Marianne has called you can tell me all about it."

As I went to bed that night I felt a bit more hopeful than I had since the beginning of this painful business. In a small way I'd taken a few forward steps: I had taken the initiative and been more active, rather than simply letting my pain paralyze me.

I had no idea what the result of my tale to Marianne would be. But if nothing else, it would give her some uncomfortable hours of thought. I still loved my wife, after all that had happened. But I was also still deeply hurt and absolutely furious at her, and I didn't mind the idea that I wouldn't be the only one in the marriage who was suffering.



House of Cards Ch. 07



The next day was Saturday. For the first time in a while, I woke up without remembering a nightmare. I was feeling a little lazy, having missed my regular morning jogs with Marianne, so I took a three-mile run, did some sit-ups and push-ups, then showered. I felt pretty good, at least when I didn't think about Marianne and Eddie together.

After running a few errands, I joined Andrea and Steve at their house at 5pm, as agreed. They relaxed in the back yard, enjoying the warm weather and a few cold beers.

Andrea was eager to tell me her story. "Just as you guessed, Tom, Marianne called us last night! She couldn't talk about anything but your 'affair'. She didn't wait even a moment, just blurted out, 'I think Tom is having an affair with someone—do you know anything about it?' "

I laughed. "What did you tell her?"

"Pretty much what you suggested. I acted embarrassed at first, and I said that you could hardly blame him. Then I confessed that you had mentioned something about a woman, but had hardly told us anything. She seemed really upset about it. I asked her how the rest of the evening had gone, and she hardly said anything. She told me you made her a fabulous dinner, but didn't say much about your conversation."

"I have you to thank for this, Andrea," I said. "Yesterday you helped me see that Marianne hadn't really been working very hard to understand how much I've been suffering, and why. So I did two things. First, she and I are each going to imagine being in the other one's shoes, and write down what we think the other one is feeling. And second, I've begun this nonsense about my seeing someone else. I have the feeling that that will really help her understand what I've been going through!"

We all laughed, but then Steve looked a little more serious. "How is this going to play out, Tom? Do you intend to tell her the truth, or are you going to keep up this story about your affair? And are you thinking about actually seeing someone else?"

"Steve, I'm just taking it one step at a time. I'm still not interested in sex at the moment—not with Marianne, not with anyone else. I was in a bar the other night, and I realized on the way home that I hadn't even looked around to see if there were any women in the place. I think ... the pain I'm feeling about Marianne's cheating has gotten in the way of my libido, at least for right now."

"As for keeping the story going—I'm going to stay with it, at least for a few days. If I get a chance, I may even tell Marianne some of the details about my sex life with this imaginary lady. She's hardly in a position to tell me I have no right to be screwing somebody. I can even tell her that she's better off than I was about Eddie, because she knows what's going on!"

I concluded, "in the long run I don't know whether I'll tell her the truth. I just know that I'm still hurting so much. The idea of making love to her again still fills me with rage. And I've realized that letting myself be the passive victim is the worst thing I can do. Making up a fake affair to torment my wife with seems like a weird strategy—but at the moment it's making me feel a bit better. At least I'm taking some action."

Andrea and Steve both nodded. "That makes a lot of sense to me, Tom," Steve said. "Andrea and I will keep the story going. Any time Marianne asks, we'll continue to be vague, but give her the impression that you have mentioned your new woman once or twice."

With that settled, we turned to other topics, and enjoyed a long and relaxed evening together. It was wonderful to have a few hours without feeling so much pain, without my mind filling with images of Marianne and Eddie together.

** ** ** **

When I got to the house on Sunday Marianne was waiting anxiously for me. She'd made some iced tea and sandwiches, and set it all up on our deck in the back yard. She was wearing a pair of green shorts she knew I liked, and a salmon tank top that showed off her figure beautifully. She'd done her hair and her make-up carefully—the effect was wonderful, and it was clear that she had put in a lot of effort. She looked absolutely beautiful.

I was in no hurry to get to our lists. I wanted to see how she was feeling, and was going to let her begin the conversation. I just said, "Hi Marianne, how are you? You look lovely today! Thanks for this nice spread."

"Thank you, Tom." She was obviously agitated. We had some iced tea, and she fidgeted nervously with her glass, played with her wedding ring, and just couldn't really sit still. I waited calmly, and when she couldn't stand the silence any more she burst out.

"Tom, are you really ... seeing someone? Are you having an affair, or did you just say that to upset me?"

"Do you think I shouldn't be seeing anyone, Marianne? Don't you think it's the least I've got coming, after you and Eddie all these months?"

She squirmed, and looked miserable. "Well, yes, Tom. I can't very well complain about anything you do at this point! I know what I did was awful .... It's just ... well, thinking about you and another woman is really upsetting me, and I want to know if it's true."

"It's true, Marianne," I lied calmly. "We've been together about six or seven times over the last couple of weeks. I'm not going to do this behind your back—you did that to me, and I know how much it hurt me when I found out. So I'm being open with you about it."

"But WHY?" she cried out, bursting into tears. I just looked at her in surprise.

"Okay," she said after a moment, still crying. "I know that was a stupid question. It's pretty obvious why, isn't it? I hurt you, and you wanted to hurt me back. But what's going to happen now? What's going to happen to us?"

The part of me that wanted Marianne to suffer a little was really enjoying this. "Actually, Marianne, I didn't do it to hurt you, and I'm not doing it now to hurt you. I've known Carrie through our work for several years, and we've always been friendly. The night we went out for a drink, after finishing up a project, we talked for a long time, and she made it clear she was interested in me. She's single, and under the circumstances there didn't seem to be any reason for me not to go to bed with her. We had a terrific time, and I've kept seeing her. Why shouldn't I?"

I had carefully chosen the name "Carrie" because there was no one I knew with that name. If Marianne tried tracking down my imaginary paramour, she wouldn't have much luck.

"But Tom ... what about our marriage?"

"I have two answers to that, Marianne. The first one is, you didn't worry about that a whole hell of a lot while you were climbing in and out of bed with Eddie, did you?" She just shook her head, looking miserable.

"And second, I haven't any idea. I couldn't possibly have sex with YOU at the moment. I can't even think of kissing you without seeing you and Eddie together, and when I imagine making love to you, it just gets worse. Given that I'm not having any sex with you, why not have sex with Carrie? I don't know where it will lead."

"Do you think you're falling in love with her, Tom?" Marianne spoke the question almost in a whisper.

"No, I don't think so. If I were cruel, Marianne, I could say that I was 'fond' of her, like you with Eddie, but I won't go that far. I like her. She's very attractive, and sex with her is terrific—she's wonderfully eager and enthusiastic. For now that's all it is. She knows about my situation, and I've made her absolutely no promises."

She only nodded, without looking up.

I looked at her. "We can keep talking about me and Carrie if you like, Marianne, but I get the feeling it will only upset you more. Do you think it would make more sense if we went on to our lists, the ones I suggested we make the other day?"

"I don't know what to do, Tom." Marianne looked thoroughly miserable. "I don't even want to think about you with someone else, but at the same time I'm just torn up inside! I keep seeing images of you ... with her, you know ... in bed. And it makes me crazy!"

"Believe me, Marianne, I know exactly what you're talking about. And there's one more thing. When you were screwing Eddie, you were getting out of his bed, coming home and climbing in bed with me. You must have had sex with me the same day you had sex with him, probably lots of times, and of course I never knew a thing. At least I'm not doing that to you. I'm not putting you in the position you put me in."

She nodded. "I know that, Tom. And I know ... I know that I'm the cause of all of this. I will try not to complain."

After a minute she rose and went into the house, returning with a sheet of paper. "Here's my list," she said. "I spent most of yesterday thinking about it, and read it over again this morning. I have to tell you, Tom—thinking about you and ... Carrie ... together made it a lot easier to imagine how you must be feeling about me and Eddie."

I smiled to myself, but said nothing. That had been the point, after all! 

"Okay, Marianne. How about if I start by reading you my list, the one I wrote pretending to be you? I want you to tell me at the end how I did, and what I left out." 

She agreed, and I read the list, in which the "I" was Marianne. There were five items on it.

--I am so angry at myself for being stupid and selfish. I thought I could do what I did without hurting you or jeopardizing our marriage. I was an idiot! Now I have caused you great pain, and I recognize that it is totally my fault.

--I am afraid for our marriage. I want you back, I want you to forgive me and come home to me—but I don't know what to do to make that happen. What if you decide to divorce me?

--I don't know how to make you love me again.

--I'm worried that you'll make some conditions for our marriage continuing that I won't be able to fulfill. (Like letting you have all the affairs you want.)

--I'm terrified about your affair with that woman. Will you fall in love with her? Does she please you, sexually or in other ways, more than I do? Between her attractiveness and your anger at me, will you leave me for her?

Marianne listened carefully as I read. When I was finished, she said, "that's an awfully good list, Tom. I am certainly feeling all those things—especially the first two, and the last one! I am angry at myself, and I am terrified. But there's one more I would put on there." She thought for a moment, and then said:

--I'm so furious that I can't tell you to stop seeing Carrie! Obviously I have no right to say that, given what I've done. But I want to stamp my foot and say, You can't see her any more!

I smiled at her, trying to look sympathetic rather than triumphant. "Believe me, I understand that feeling, Marianne. But you're right—right now you can't just tell me to stop. I have to figure out, in my own time, what's right for me."

"Tom," she cried, genuinely frightened, "please don't give up on me! I mean, on us—don't give up on our marriage!"

I went over to her chair and took her hand, holding it gently. "I'm not doing that, sweetheart," I said. "All these painful conversations, all these lists—all this is about trying to work it out. If I had wanted just to walk away, I would have done that three weeks ago."

She pulled my hand to her face and stroked it along her cheek. "Thank you for saying that, Tom! I so much needed to hear it. And I see your point—we have to keep having these awful conversations, don't we?"

I nodded, and after a minute said, "do you want to read me your list, Marianne?"

Her list was actually disappointing. It had only a few items, and I didn't think that she really had managed to feel all that I was going through. Like me, she wrote the list in my voice, so that this time the "I" was me.

--I am very angry that you broke our marital vows and had sex with Eddie.

--I don't know how I am ever going to be able to trust you now.

--I am worried that maybe he was a better lover than I am.

--I am angry that you were unavailable to me on our anniversary, because Eddie had given you the "honeymoons".

--I am upset that you lied to me, that you kept me in the dark about your affair for so many months.

--I don't know how to get over being angry with you.

When she was finished, she looked over at me. When I didn't speak, she asked, "How did I do, Tom?"

I sighed. "Well, it's a start. That certainly was the short version, not the elaborate one."

She looked a little annoyed. "What do you mean?"

"Well," I replied, "you've mentioned a few of the main points, but I don't think you have really walked in my moccasins yet, Marianne. Just for the heck of it, I made my own list of how I'm feeling. How about if I share it with you? The things you've mentioned are all there, so there's some duplication—but so are some other ones that are really important to me."

She nodded, and I went on to read her the list I had made.

--I am angry that you put yourself first. You chose to do something for your own pleasure and satisfaction, even though you knew it put our happy marriage, and my happiness, greatly at risk. If we still had toddlers, you would never have left one of our children alone in the bathtub just so you could finish watching your favorite TV show—you would have put their safety ahead of your pleasure. Yet with this affair you did just the opposite.

--I feel furious that my trust in your faithfulness has been completely betrayed. Part of what made our love-making so precious is that we shared it only with one another, and you broke that agreement behind my back.

--I am humiliated that you played me for a fool. You kept an incredibly important secret from me for months. When I questioned you about it, you lied to my face. You didn't confess the truth, or stop your affair, until I had absolute proof.

--I am angry that you have destroyed our sex life, along with the rest of our marital happiness. Right now the thought of sex with you makes me physically ill, because it is unavoidably linked to my thoughts of you and Eddie together. You have deprived me of the joy of our sex life together, without ever consulting me.

--My ego has been badly hurt. Eddie is younger than I am, and obviously full of energy and enthusiasm for sex. Is he a better lover than I am? Is his cock bigger, is his tongue more talented, does he have more stamina? In short, does he satisfy you in ways that I don't? When we were faithful to one another, I never had these worries—now I have them all the time.

--I am jealous of Eddie. Jealous of all the sexual pleasure you gave him, that was supposed to be reserved only for me. But even more jealous of the intimate time you spent together, the relaxed nights in his apartment, the fondness and closeness that obviously developed over the months you were together. I'm incredibly jealous and angry that you shared your most intimate, completely open side with him.

--I hate it that you took pleasure at my expense. In bed with Eddie, part of your excitement was knowing you were cheating on me. In bed with me, part of your excitement was the secret that you were also screwing Eddie. That undoubtedly made sex hotter for you, but only at the price of my pain.

--I am angry with you for breaking something I don't know how to fix: our marriage. I want it back the way it was, and I know it can never be that way again. Even if we stay together, how can I ever have the wonderful complete trust in you that I used to have? That trust is destroyed, and I don't know how to get it back. 

--I'm afraid of my own anger and sense of grievance, afraid that it will destroy our relationship. I don't know how, even if we get back together, we can get to a point where I won't be constantly angry at you, and throwing your affair in your face all the time. What will happen when you finally say, "that's enough, stop hassling me about me and Eddie, it's time to get over it and forget it", and I still can't forget it? For a while you're going to be loving and apologetic—but what happens when you want to get back to normal, and I still can't do it? What will happen when you want to make love with me, and I still can't bear to touch you?

When I finished reading my list to Marianne, there was silence. I was glad I had written it out, and taken the time to formulate my thoughts carefully. I'm sure there were other things I could have mentioned, but the list communicated a lot of what I was feeling.

"Jesus, Tom," Marianne finally said, with a tremor in her voice. "I thought I was a sensitive person, and I thought I'd been thinking hard about this—but there are things there that never entered my mind."

She looked at me. "This has been just awful for you, hasn't it?"

I simply replied, "Yes it has."

And after a minute I continued, "and you are a sensitive person, Marianne. Sensitive, caring, and usually very observant. But somehow, with this affair, it seems you put all that stuff on hold."

She nodded her agreement. "Yes, I did—because I knew subconsciously that if I paid attention to your feelings, it would get in the way of my own selfish plans. So I guess I just turned off my sensitivity." She grimaced in disgust. "Jesus, what an idiot!"

After another minute or two of silence, I rose and wordlessly took her hand. I helped her to her feet, and we strolled hand-in-hand off the deck and around our green back yard, enjoying the shade of the walnut trees towards the back of the property. We didn't speak for a little while, just enjoyed the breeze and the noise of the birds. 

I liked holding Marianne's hand. It reassured me that at least I could have this degree of physical closeness to her without my rage and hurt boiling up inside me. Obviously, this was a long way from making love! But it seemed like a good first step.

After awhile we returned to the deck, had some more iced tea, and spent a few minutes talking about other things. I had missed a couple of our weekly Monday night phone calls to the kids, so Marianne filled me in on how they were doing. She had told them I'd been away on business trips, so they had no reason to know I had moved out. I appreciated her having handled it that way.

Of course, the problem would come at the end of August when they returned home. If I were still living in an apartment, Marianne and I would have to talk seriously about how to explain the situation to them. But we still had a few weeks before having to face that.

Then I said, "Marianne, it's been a nice afternoon, but I should go." I considered adding that I had a date planned with Carrie, but it seemed cruel so I restrained myself.

But it didn't matter—she immediately asked, "are you seeing ... Carrie tonight?" I nodded, and saw tears come back into her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Marianne," was all I said. I wasn't going to promise I would stop seeing my imaginary lover.

"Tom, can we ... talk again soon?" "Of course," I answered. "How about Tuesday, the day after tomorrow? Why don't you come back to the apartment for dinner?"

"Okay," she sniffled. "I think I need to talk to you about Carrie. I've been trying not to think about it, but my imagination is making my life miserable. Maybe if you actually tell me ... about her, and about your ... time together, I'll be a little less unhappy and frightened."

"That's fine with me, Marianne." We agreed that this time we'd share making the dinner: Marianne would bring a salad and dessert, and I'd do the rest.

"Tom, would you leave me your list? I think I should probably read it over, and think about it some more." I was pleased by her request, and naturally agreed.

I kissed her on the cheek as I was leaving, and she gave me a sad, brave smile. I didn't know quite how to feel about it, but it was clear that at that moment Marianne was more miserable than I was. I couldn't help thinking that this was progress.

**********

By Tuesday I had started to be more hopeful about my marriage. For a variety of reasons, I felt less devastated than before. I had taken action, that was one good thing. Second, Marianne had had to confront much more directly all the pain she had caused me, and she seemed to be facing up to it. And finally, the imaginary Carrie was making Marianne miserable!




House of Cards Ch. 07



It certainly hadn't been a well thought-out plan on my part, just an idea that seemed worth trying. But now instead of there being a triangle of Tom/Marianne/Eddie inside both our heads, there was a Tom/Marianne/Carrie triangle (at least for Marianne), and Eddie just seemed less and less important, even to me.

I could even begin to think that—not yet, but at some time in the future—I could make love to Marianne without my rage about Eddie totally ruining it for me. My guess was that Marianne's fears about Carrie would focus on sex, and that she'd be so worried about my affair that anything sexual having to do with Eddie would be far from her mind.

As I straightened the apartment and checked on the dinner I was cooking, I found myself looking forward to sharing with Marianne my sexual exploits with the imaginary Carrie—she had made it clear she wanted to know about them. The advantage of a fictitious affair is that it can go just the way you want it to go! I intended to make my sex with Carrie sound as hot as possible.

When Marianne arrived she once again looked terrific. My wife was always beautiful, but when she set out to look her best she was totally stunning. She had on low heels that added to her height, and a pastel blue skirt that swirled around her when she walked. Her sleeveless blouse was white and a little bit see-through, so that I got the impression of a lacy bra beneath it. Without even thinking about it I took her in my arms as I let her into the apartment, and gave her a big kiss.

I think it surprised both of us! She looked at me and said, "wow, Tom, that was nice! I think I'd like another one, but let me put down this food first!" She had brought a big salad in a wooden bowl, and some ice cream for dessert.

She followed me into the kitchen as I put the ice cream in the freezer, and without hesitation said, "OK, what about that other kiss now?"

Looking at her seriously, I embraced her, drawing her to me slowly, and brought our faces together. This kiss was a long one—gentle at first, then gradually more passionate, as we held each other close. It probably lasted two minutes or more—somewhere in that time we had begun swapping tongues—and we both were short of breath when we broke apart. I had an erection that she surely must have felt pressing against her.

For me it had really been a test—could I kiss and hold Marianne without my mind reeling from thoughts of her kissing and embracing Eddie? And to my relief, I found that it was all right. I didn't forget about him, but the pleasure of Marianne being in my arms made my other thoughts unimportant.

Marianne smiled radiantly at me, still in my arms and holding me a foot or so away from her. "Tom, you've made me happier than I've been in weeks, since ... since this whole thing started. Being back in your arms like that is all I want!"

I grinned back at her. "Well you could probably tell that I was enjoying it too! How about some dinner, and we can think about some more of that later on?" This too was totally unexpected. I had no notion that we'd do anything more than talk tonight, and now it appeared the evening might go in a very different direction.

She tossed the salad while I brought out the dinner I'd cooked—chicken sauteed with artichoke hearts, and wild rice. Again she was impressed with my cooking, and I was pleased about that. Over the years of our marriage I had more and more left the cooking to Marianne, though I had been a pretty good cook in college. I guess that both of us forgot about my abilities—it was nice to be reminded.

After dinner we sat on the couch, and at once Marianne asked me about Carrie.

"Tom, it seems crazy, but I think I want you to tell me about your relationship with Carrie—how it started, and what's going on now. I know that you needed to hear all about my affair with Eddie, even though it was obvious how painful it was for you to listen to it."

"I think I'm feeling what you must have felt—that it's better to know the truth, even if it's awful, then to be at the mercy of my imagination."

"OK, honey," I said. "I'll tell you about it. Unless you don't want me to, or unless you stop me, I'll give it to you with all the details. As you say, then you'll know the whole situation."

She looked very worried, even though our kisses and the friendly dinner that had followed must have reassured her somewhat.

"Carrie works for a company that does a lot of business with mine. I've known her casually for two or three years, because we are in on a number of business meetings with other people. Once or twice a group of us has gone out for a drink after work and we've both been there, but always with 6-8 other people. We'd never spent time alone until about three weeks ago."

"Carrie is 27. She doesn't look much like you. She's only about 5' 2", and very curvy. Not heavy, but pretty voluptuous, with wide hips and really nice breasts."

Marianne grimaced a little, but didn't tell me to stop. I went on.

"She's got light brown hair, and dark eyes. What makes her particularly attractive is that she's lively and funny—sort of perky, except that I hate that word. She laughs a lot, and even in business meetings I've noticed she never seems to take things all that seriously—she doesn't think engineering or building construction are the most important things in the world."

"Two nights after I ... confronted you about Eddie, I had a business meeting with Carrie and some other people that went nearly until 6pm. Four or five of us went out for a drink, but after a little while everyone but Carrie and me had to leave. We were having a nice time, so I asked if she wanted to have dinner with me."

"She knows I'm married, so she asked right away, 'what about your wife? Aren't you going home to her?' And I told her the truth: that I'd caught you having an affair, and I'd moved out of the house."

"I was completely honest. I said that I still loved you, but I was unbelievably angry and hurt, and I had no idea about whether my marriage would ever be the same, or even whether there would be a marriage. I said, 'I guess in the shape I'm in, I'm the last person you'd ever want to have dinner with.' "

"But she told me, 'on the contrary, Tom, I've always liked you. You think the way I do, you're not so serious and solemn about the work we do. You have a sense of fun, and that appeals to me. I would love to have dinner with you!' "

"We had dinner at a seafood place on Thomaston Ave., and it was very pleasant. Carrie is easy to be with, and we had a good time chatting, not talking about anything serious. I learned a little about her background. She grew up in Miami, and at one time was an expert water-skier. She even did those fancy tricks—like skiing backwards, or holding onto the rope with just one foot—and she taught water-skiing for a while. She's lived in Cleveland ever since she finished college."

When the check came I paid it and offered to drop her at home, and she said, 'Where are you staying since you moved out, Tom?' I told her I had a room at the Holiday Inn. She just looked directly at me and said, 'I hear the rooms there are very nice. May I come and take look at yours?' "

"I was pretty surprised. I said, 'Carrie, are you sure about this? Given my situation?' And she just said, 'Tom, for a long time you have been on my "Damn, too bad he's married" list. At the moment you're not on that list, at least not all the way. I'm a big girl, and this is exactly what I want to do.' "

"I was incredibly flattered, and I told her so. We drove over to the hotel, went up to my room, and I made us a couple of drinks. We just sat on the sofa for a bit, talking some more. She asked me right out if I'd ever been with another woman since I got married, and I told her no. I was feeling a bit nervous! But she just smiled, and said she had a feeling we were going to be very good together."

"I put my arm around her and pulled her gently to me for a kiss, which she was more than ready for. We just necked for a long time, maybe half an hour. Eventually I began touching her breasts, which are large and firm. We both were very excited. She was breathing hard just from our kissing, and she groaned with pleasure when I first touched her breasts."

"She pulled away from me for a minute and said, 'can I tell you something, Tom? I love oral, both giving and receiving; and I really love having my breasts touched.' It was a big turn-on for me that she was being so open and direct with me."

"I picked her right up without a word, carried her over to the bed, took off her top and her bra, and began caressing her breasts."

I stopped myself to look over at Marianne, who was hunched up tensely in the far corner of the couch. She looked like a cornered animal. "Are you sure you want me to go on with this, Marianne? I could give you the short version."

"No, go ahead, Tom," she answered quietly. "I know that you had to listen to me and Eddie together. I don't see why I should be spared. And I need to know—having to imagine it myself is even worse."

I resumed my story. "Carrie really does adore having her breasts touched. I stroked them, at first avoiding her nipples but coming closer and closer; then I lightly brushed over them with my palms. She had her eyes closed, and was moaning quietly. She liked having the nipples pinched, but only gently, so I did that for a while. Then I kept my hand on one breast and lightly licked and kissed the other. It was very exciting for me too—being with a new woman after so long, and her being so responsive. And her breasts are just very beautiful."

"After a while I slid down lower and took off her skirt, then her panties, which were very wet. Since she said she loved oral, I kept my hands on her breasts while sliding my tongue right up her thighs into her pussy. I worked on her nice and slow—sometimes concentrating on her breasts while I very lightly licked her lips, then sometimes focusing on her clitoris with my tongue while lightly stroking across her nipples. I went back and forth, back and forth, until her hips were jerking back and forth at me and her moans were pretty continuous."

"I could tell she was getting close, so I moved back up to her breasts, latched on to one with my mouth, and used both hands down below. With one hand I stroked her clitoris, and with the other I slid two fingers inside her and moved them in and out. About a minute of that treatment was all she could take—she gasped, then cried out and had a wonderful orgasm, shaking up and down. I just took my fingers out of her, slid up next to her, and held her in my arms while she quivered, and then rocked her while she relaxed, sighing, her eyes closed the whole time."

"I felt great. I had been very nervous about being with another woman, unsure of whether I could please her. But I had obviously made Carrie feel very good—so no matter what else happened that night, I wouldn't feel like a failure."

"After a couple of minutes she looked up at me and said, 'Jesus, Tom. If I had known you could do that to me, I would have jumped you right on the table at the restaurant!' I just smiled and said, 'you are such an exciting and beautiful woman, Carrie. I loved touching you and pleasing you that way.' "

"She said, 'I hope you're going to love me touching and pleasing you too!' She pushed me down flat on my back, then got my clothes off, and immediately started caressing and stroking my cock. It took all of about 45 seconds before it was as hard as it's ever been. She teased me pretty much the way I had teased her—she used her hands or licked up and down it with her tongue until I was frantic, then backed off a little until I calmed down. She has a way of letting her mouth relax and open very wide, so that she could take my balls into her mouth very comfortably and I didn't feel afraid she'd bite down on them by accident. After a lot of teasing, she started giving me a serious blowjob, clearly aiming to finish me off."

"But I stopped her, and said, 'Carrie, I'd really like to finish inside you, if I could.' She smiled and climbed up on top of me. As she held my cock and slid down on it, she said, 'I'm on the pill, Tom—please go ahead and cum in me when you're ready.' Then she rode me, slowly and steadily, gradually getting faster in her up-and-down strokes, smiling into my eyes the whole time, until I was completely out of control. I was bucking my hips wildly, groaning at her, clutching her around the waist to keep her planted on me, and I exploded like crazy. I held her down on me as I came and came and came."

"I don't know if it was because this was someone new, Marianne, or whether it was because Carrie is very sexy and very enthusiastic, or because I hadn't had sex in more than a week—or all of those things. But it was one of the strongest, most complete orgasms I've ever had. I just lay there, exhausted, and finally said, 'Well, Carrie, you've just made an old man very very happy!' "

"She lay down next to me, her face shining with her own pleasure, and said, 'from the way I feel right now, you're just the right age for me!' Then she asked me if she could stay the night. I was surprised, but flattered and delighted. I said, 'of course, but if you stay in this bed I can't promise you an uninterrupted night of sleep.' And she just winked at me."

"We dozed for a while. To tell the truth I might have fallen asleep for the whole night, but after about an hour Carrie woke up. She began rubbing her breasts against me, drawing them back and forth across my chest. It felt really good, and I could tell it was getting her very aroused again. I started to stroke her back and sides with my hands, sometimes touching her breasts, while she continued to rub them on me. Then I pulled her up so her breasts were rubbing across my face, and I raised my hips and teased her pussy with my cock, rubbing it back and forth across her lips without letting it enter. I kept grabbing at her nipples with my lips as they went by, and sucking on them gently."

"We got more and more excited, teasing each other in this way. She started to moan, little 'oh, oh, oh!' sounds. I really wanted to be inside her, so I rolled her over beneath me and slid right into her in the missionary position. She had her eyes closed tight, and I just began stroking in and out steadily, easily."

As I narrated this scene, I was carefully watching Marianne. She looked more unhappy than ever, tightly pulled into herself in the corner of the sofa. I felt momentarily sorry for her—then I remembered the tape of her and Eddie in the motel that I had had to listen to, and my feelings hardened. Her pleasure and intimacy with him continued to fill me with rage! So if my made-up story gave Marianne a taste of the same kind of pain, I had no intention of stopping. I continued my narration.

"I gradually worked up to a faster and faster pace, nice and steadily. It was great that I had already come once earlier in the evening with Carrie, so I knew I could last for a while. By the time I was ready to let go, she had already had one really big, shuddering orgasm. Her second one came just as I was about to reach my peak, trying hard to keep my strokes long and smooth. But when her pussy clenched around me, I just went crazy for a few seconds, my hips jerking like mad, and the two of us convulsed pretty much at the same time. God, that felt good!"

"This time we both were exhausted. We just smiled at each other, lay together drowsily kissing for a few minutes, then fell soundly asleep."

"Thank God the next day was Saturday. We slept kind of late, and when I suggested we go downstairs for breakfast, Carrie wanted a shower first. Showering with her was amazingly erotic. We took our time washing one another. She did me first, doing my whole body but avoiding my penis until the end, though it was aching for her attention. She just soaped up my cock and balls, stroking them gently, smiling teasingly up at me while I groaned with how good it felt."

"I then teased her the same way, doing her arms, legs and torso but avoiding her breasts. At last I touched them, holding her from behind with my arms around her, and she just sighed and relaxed back into me. I slowly moved my soapy hands all over them, and she just totally melted. I could feel her breathing get faster and faster, and I wondered if we'd make it back to the bed or have sex right there in the shower. I began to reach ... "

I was interrupted by the sight of Marianne leaping to her feet, her face covered with tears. "Tom, stop! I just can't ... I thought I needed to hear this, but I ... I can't ... I don't know what ..."

She stopped, shuddered, and said, "I think I have to go now." And before I could say a word, she was out the door and headed downstairs.

I quickly went after her, not to stop her but to make sure she got to her car safely. From a short distance away I saw her run to her car, get in, put on her seat belt, and drive away.

Walking back upstairs to my apartment I was aware of a fascinating mixture of feelings. My own story had turned me on—the imaginary Carrie was one sexy lady! For the very first time since confronting Marianne about her cheating, more than three weeks earlier, I felt horny and interested in sex. It was nice to know that my libido had just been sleeping, not dead.

Next, I felt sympathy for Marianne. She had asked to hear about me and Carrie, and I'd certainly given her her money's worth! I'd made it as hot as possible, without getting totally unrealistic, and it was clearly driving my wife crazy. I loved Marianne enough to feel sorry that she was hurting.

But of course at the same time I could still hear her voice saying to Eddie, "I'm so hot for it, let me just get my clothes off and you inside me!" I could play the whole tape of that horrible episode in my mind. I heard her sighs and groans of pleasure, and the intimate joking with her lover of eight months. It was her with Eddie unfiltered and uncensored—unquestionably far worse for me to hear than my stories of me and Carrie had been for Marianne.

I realized, not for the first time, that the process of getting over my rage would not be a straight line. For the most part I was considerably less angry with Marianne, and less devastated, than I had been three weeks earlier. I had started taking the initiative on my own behalf, and I felt more in control. It seemed much more likely now than it had before that she and I could eventually reconcile.

But the rage still boiled up from time to time, every bit as hot and furious as the first time. Getting over it was not going to be a slow-and-steady process, much more a slow-and-unsteady process. I would have to think hard about my next steps.



House of Cards Ch. 08



On the day after Marianne ran out of my apartment, I called and left her a brief message at home, reminding her that I would be away for the next four days, through the weekend, at a conference in Atlanta. I was friendly, but I didn't offer any sympathy for the night before.

Actually, I was looking forward to getting away for a couple of days. While at some moments I felt more optimistic that my marriage had a future, my love for Marianne was mixed with a ton of anger. There probably wasn't any ten-minute period in my day when I didn't hear in my mind the sounds of her with Eddie in the motel, and my rage just boiled up in me each time. She had fucked him behind my back for eight months! She had lied to my face about it, when she had the chance to tell me the truth! The fact that I loved her and that I cared about our children mattered a lot—but did they outweigh what she had done to me?

At work I told Steve all about what was going on with Marianne and me, and asked him to share the news with Andrea. He smiled when I told him that my stories about Carrie were making Marianne so crazy, and I reminded him again to be sure not to let Marianne know that Carrie was my fictional invention.

I expected the conference to be pretty routine, but it turned out to be anything but. Most of my time was spent in paper sessions, where engineers give presentations on the latest in load-bearing measurement technology or advances in thermal window design. After each presentation there is time for questions from the audience, and occasionally the questions get quite contentious.

At the Friday afternoon session, a young and clearly inexperienced engineer gave a somewhat shaky paper, clearly his first talk in public. An older man in the audience started in with a series of aggressive, almost nasty questions. He challenged not only some of the speaker's conclusions but, by implication, his fitness to be an engineer.

This really pissed me off—it was a more experienced man picking on someone more vulnerable than he was. Fortunately, the paper concerned issues I knew a lot about, so I rose to ask my own question. I carefully formulated it so that it would be a friendly one, and would give the speaker a chance to regain his composure and sound more sure of himself. It also shut his attacker down, and he never got to ask any more questions. I was glad to see the young speaker make it to the end of the question session feeling better about himself.

The dinner that evening was a buffet, and after I went through the line I didn't see anyone I knew to sit with. I joined a group at a partially filled table, a group that included a striking young blonde woman I had noticed at the afternoon session. Her nametag said that her name was Kristin, and that she was from Norway. 

Dinner conversation was mostly relaxed shop-talk, as it tends to be at conferences. Kristin seemed bright but shy—she mostly listened, only occasionally contributing her own thoughts. But as the group was breaking up, she surprised me by putting her hand on my arm and asking if I would stay a minute.

When we were alone, she said, "I noticed what you did in the session this afternoon. That was a very generous and kind act, to give the speaker a friendly question and let him recover his composure." She spoke excellent English, but with a little bit of an accent that I found charming.

"Thank you, Kristin," I replied. "I thought the guy asking all the hard questions was being a jerk, and I hate to see a younger engineer put on the spot so unfairly. It made me a little angry."

"I have seen a lot of that in our field," she said. "But it's much rarer when someone steps in, especially as discreetly and gently as you did. I'm not even sure he knew he was being rescued!"

We chatted for another couple of minutes, and I asked her if she felt like getting out of the hotel and taking a walk around Atlanta for a bit, and maybe getting a beer. She looked pointedly at my left hand, which still had my wedding ring, and I just laughed.

"Yes, married!" I said cheerfully. "Look, I didn't mean to make a pass at you—I just thought a walk would be pleasant, and I'd be delighted if you would join me." In fact I was very attracted to Kristin, but I hadn't planned to do anything about it. She was slim and lovely, with high Nordic cheekbones and a fabulous complexion. She wore her blonde hair short around her head, and her figure was very youthful, almost boyish, with slim hips and small breasts.

She smiled back at me, and said, "in that case I'd love to! But I'm not very impressed with American beers. Maybe we can find a place that serves some good Scandinavian ones."

It was a terrific evening. We walked around in the warm evening for a couple of hours, then settled at a place that specialized in beers from around the world, and we each tried a couple of unfamiliar ones. I learned that she had just finished her graduate degree in engineering at the University of Washington, and was looking for a job somewhere on the West Coast. Before that she had lived her entire life in Norway—she owed her English largely to a very good school system there.

Somewhere during the second beer for each of us, the conversation turned more serious. I found myself telling her about my marriage, and Marianne's cheating. Just the short version—I spared her what I'd heard on the tape, just told Kristin that I had taped them making love in a motel. She grimaced, and said only, "that must have been awful. I am so sorry."

It may be that my honesty inspired her, but after a few minutes she told me about her one and only serious love affair, with Ben, a fellow graduate student at Washington, that had ended very badly. He had courted her gallantly and patiently for months, with flowers and candy, etc., until she had been willing to go to bed with him. (She had had only had one lover before him, a brief romance during college.) But once they started having sex, he turned out to be controlling and violent. He liked it rough, and it excited him whenever she refused or hesitated. 

After two months of increasingly frightening sexual encounters, and a beating that nearly sent her to the emergency room, she tried to break up with him. Ben told her he'd kill her if she ever left him. Terrified, she dropped out of school and flew home to Norway, abandoning her work in mid-semester. She didn't return to the university until 10 months later, after making sure that he had graduated and taken a job in the Midwest.

The whole experience had clearly been horrifying for Kristin. As she told me the story her voice became quieter and more hesitant, and she looked down at the table, not meeting my eyes. At the end she said, looking back up into my face, "I haven't ... been with anyone since then—that was two years ago."

The story appalled me, and I was full of sympathy for Kristin, who was still obviously suffering from the effects of what he had done to her. I gently took her hand, and said, "that's a terrible story, Kristin. It was very brave of you to have gone back to school and finished your degree. That must have been very difficult."

She smiled, and said, "it was awful at first! Even though I had made very sure that he was in Nebraska somewhere, for the first two months I looked for him everywhere. I was sure he would jump out from behind some tree and stab me! I was afraid of the dark, afraid to go anywhere alone. I had two roommates, and they were amazingly kind and patient with me. After a few months, it was much better."

"But you ... didn't start dating again," I said gently.

"No ... For a long time I didn't want even to be near a man. Then, after that feeling eased a bit, I guess I just didn't meet anyone I was interested in. And I'll admit that it just felt safer to concentrate on my work, and not take the risk of getting involved again."

I was able to cheer Kristin up a little by turning to lighter topics—we talked about the conference, and laughed together about some of the less successful presentations (the worst ones are almost always comically boring). By the time we strolled back to the hotel, around 11pm, she seemed to be feeling much better.

When we were still about a block from the front door she took my arm and pulled me gently to a stop, saying, "would you mind if we sat on a bench out here for a moment, before we go back in?"

I naturally agreed, and we sat quietly for a minute, me wondering what was on her mind.

She looked gravely into my face for a moment. She was just beautiful! "Tom, you are a very attractive man. What you did this afternoon, rescuing that poor fellow after his paper, showed me your kindness. And our conversation tonight made me even more sure that you are a very special person. Not just handsome, and funny and intelligent, but gentle, and sensitive to other people's feelings."

I started to thank her, but she raised her hand to stop me, and went on. "It's been a very long time since I've been with a man I was attracted to, AND a man I felt safe with. I know that you're married, but I also know that you're hurting too. I would like to spend the night with you."

My jaw dropped—I was utterly shocked. But before she got the wrong idea, that I wasn't interested, I quickly said, "Kristin, I'm honored! And flattered. You are about the most lovely woman I have ever met, and I would absolutely love to be with you tonight."

She smiled at me, and said, "good!" Then she hugged my arm, and we both laughed.

We agreed that we'd meet in a half hour in my room, since I had splurged for a room with a king-size bed. I made a discreet visit to a pharmacy for some condoms—an item I never dreamed I'd have any need for—and waited for her upstairs in my room.

When I answered her knock, she came in shyly, holding a plastic bag that must have contained her nightclothes, and asked if she could change in the bathroom. After a few minutes she came out in a robe, looking even more shy. I had turned off all but a single light, undressed to my boxers, and was waiting for her in the bed, with a couple of beers on the night-table. (There hadn't been time to do anything about champagne!)

Kristin came straight over to the bed, but I could tell she was very nervous. As I smiled at her she took off the robe, revealing a pink nightie that was pretty but not very revealing. She said, "I'm really not very experienced, except for those awful things that happened with Ben. I hope I won't disappoint you."

I said, "Kristin, I am already enjoying this evening with you so much. You are absolutely gorgeous, and a wonderful person. Even if all we do is snuggle together and fall quietly asleep, it will have been a great night for me."

Then I added, "but I am very excited—so I hope we'll do a little more than that!" She laughed, and climbed right in next to me, nestling close beside me. We just lay quietly for a minute or two, and then she turned her face towards mine and I kissed her.

That night with Kristin was one of the most memorable nights of my life. Even though we had just met, we had already shared some rather intimate stories—we felt close to one another, and safe with each other. I can't say that I didn't think of Marianne that night, because I did, many times. But the thoughts didn't bother me. Being with Kristin was tender and joyful. It was intensely exciting, but it never got fierce—I was determined that I would do nothing to frighten her, even by accident. And my patience was more than rewarded; as the night progressed she grew more relaxed, and she was eager and responsive.

We kissed for a long time, just enjoying the closeness. I did not go further until Kristin's hands began to explore, stroking my chest and my back. Then I began to slide my own hands up and down her arms, around the back of her neck, and finally onto her nightie, over her small breasts. She murmured into my mouth as I touched them. I was very gentle, and after a few moments I felt her nipples harden against my touch. "May I take the nightie off you?" I asked her quietly, and she nodded.

I reached down and carefully slid the nightie up over her head, then turned and quickly shed my boxers. I was about to pull the covers back up over both of us, but she stopped me. "No, I want to see you."

I smiled, and lay back next to her on my back. She leaned over me, examining my chest with her eyes and her hands, and I just let her take the lead. She stroked all over me: up and down my arms, feeling their muscles, then across my belly and down to my thighs. At first she avoided my cock, just stroking and touching my flesh and looking me over as though she'd never seen a man's body before.

I enjoyed it immensely, especially because I could look at her at the same time. Her breasts were small and firm, like those of a teenager, with beautiful pink nipples about the size of a quarter. After a minute I started to run my hands over them, and she smiled and arched her back, pressing them into my hands.

We continued to stroke one another gently, almost lazily. It wasn't hotly sexual yet, more like a sensual massage—there were so many parts of our bodies to enjoy beyond the sexual ones. I found to my delight that her underarms were not shaven, and stroked and licked her beautiful blonde armpits, which made her giggle. Her pubic hair matched, being blonde and sparse, allowing the pink lips of her pussy to show through.

We touched one another, looked at one another, and kissed luxuriously from time to time. I was very erect, and she was certainly aroused, but neither of us felt in a hurry. Partly I think we were both being careful—both of us had painful memories we had to skirt around, though they were very different—but also we were just enjoying the pleasure of going slowly. We each felt safe, and we were each trying to make sure that the other felt safe as well. It was wonderful!

It must have been at least thirty minutes after she joined me in bed when I finally slid my hand between her thighs, and felt her warm pussy for the first time. I made repeated gentle stroking motions up her legs, starting from midthigh and sliding up to her lips, which I rubbed briefly before starting over on her thighs. She laid her head on my shoulder and whispered into my ear, "I was hoping you'd do that!"

When she was very wet, and her hips rolled towards me each time I stroked her, I turned myself around so that I could reach between her legs with my mouth. My hips and cock were within reach of her hands, but nowhere near her face. I didn't want to make her feel I expected to take me in her mouth, and she didn't. As I licked her, poked gently inside her with my tongue, and used a finger on her clitoris, she caressed my balls with one hand and stroked my penis with the other. I adored her taste and smell. It was lighter, not so tangy as Marianne's. It seemed somehow appropriate to a younger woman.

As before, we let this pleasure build slowly, taking our time. When she got close to an orgasm I eased back a little, letting her arousal level off, then built her up again. The third time she murmured, "don't stop this time, Tom! make me ... let me cum!" So I kept my stroking and licking steady and rhythmic, enjoying the twists and jerks of her hips as she forced my mouth harder onto her. I rode her steadily into and through her orgasm. She didn't scream, but gasped loudly, then said, "oh! oh! oh!" several times, and finally sighed deeply and relaxed into the bed.

As her orgasm approached she had let go of my cock, which was fine with me—I didn't want to waste my first orgasm in her hands! I came back up to the top of the bed and held her in my arms, and she just sighed happily, smiling broadly but with her eyes still closed. She said, "later on I'll teach you how to say 'fabelaktig'—it's the Norwegian word for 'fabulous'!"

Then after another minute she roused herself a little, saying, "Tom, please make love to me now." I could see a bit of anxiety return to her face, so I said, "only if you want to, Kristin."

"I want to—I want you inside me. But ..."

She hesitated, and, guessing what was in her mind, I said, "what position would feel the most comfortable to you?"

She smiled at me gratefully. "Thank you for understanding, Tom! Ben used to ... well ... let's not talk about that. But could I be on top of you?"

"Of course," I smiled back at her. I reached for a condom on the nightstand, and she sweetly rolled it onto me. She crouched over me, facing me with her pussy above my cock, and stroked it over her lips several times, making me groan with pleasure.

Then she very slowly and carefully began to lower herself onto me. I did everything I could not to thrust up into her, giving her all the time she needed. I could see that she was fighting some bad memories, so I was utterly patient as she lowered herself, stopped, adjusted her hips, then went on. It was probably two full minutes before I was entirely inside her, and she relaxed completely, sitting down on me with a sigh and a big smile.

At about the same time we spoke: I started to say, "that feels incredible!", just as she said, "oh that's marvelous, Tom." Then we both laughed!

When she began to move on me it was a natural continuation of our love-making so far. She went slowly, easily, sometimes moving up and down on me, sometimes resting on me and moving her hips so my pubic bone pressed against her clitoris. It was all wonderful! I was in no hurry, and I avoided thrusting up at her. Instead I took pleasure in holding and stroking her breasts, lightly pinching her beautiful nipples. She kept her hands on my shoulders and her arms straight, using them for leverage.

We moved together for a long time, then I saw her face start to change. She got a look of serious concentration, and moved up and down on me more purposefully. She bit her lip and arched her back, groaning. I could tell she was getting close, and I tentatively began thrusting just a little, meeting her as she came down on me. About a minute after that I could tell I was about to lose control, and I whispered "Kristin?"

She just said, "yes, Tom, right now!" We continued to thrust into one another, staying in rhythm. Just as I was sure I'd lose control and start jerking my hips, she came, falling forward on me and groaning. I felt her pussy spasm and I totally lost it, bucking up into her several times and cumming so hard I thought I'd shoot my sperm right through the condom and up into her. God it felt good!

When it was over we just lay there, holding each other lightly, feeling one another's breathing gradually subside. Thoughts of Marianne had flitted in and out of my mind during our lovemaking—how her breasts felt different from Kristin's, or what her face looked like when she rode me as Kristin was doing—but they hadn't bothered me. Now, as Kristin and I lay in each other's arms, I remembered Marianne and Eddie, but the pain seemed distant and vague, like a bad toothache after the Novocaine had begun to take effect. It would be wrong to say I had forgotten about her cheating, or that it didn't matter. More accurate to say that I'd found a respite from the pain of it—a wonderful respite with a beautiful and loving young woman.

I shifted slightly to see Kristin's face, slightly worried about how her own memories of Ben might be in her mind. She kept her eyes closed, but had a happy, sleepy smile on her face. She looked like a little girl, ready for sleep after a long tiring and fun day at the amusement park. Without another word, I kissed her on the forehead, and reached to turn off the bedside lamp. We drifted off to sleep in one another's arms.

I awoke in a way I recommend to all of you to experience just once before you die. It must have been about 8am, because the sun was streaming in through the gauzy curtains and the room was full of light. I was on my side, and as I opened my eyes I saw Kristin on her knees by the side of the bed, naked and totally lovely, smiling at me as she took the head of my cock gently into her mouth. I was only partially erect, but that changed quickly!




House of Cards Ch. 08



She teased me deliciously with her lips, using her hands to hold and gently stroke my balls and the base of my shaft. At times she dipped down and took about 4 inches of me into her mouth, then slid back and caressed just the head with her tongue. After five minutes she had me incredibly aroused—I was straining towards her mouth, groaning, wordlessly begging for release.

Without warning she let me go, stood up, smiled broadly at me and said, "good morning, Tom. How about a shower?" Then without another word she strolled into the bathroom and shut the door. In a moment I heard the water splashing in the shower stall.

I just laughed, feeling the exquisite pleasure and frustration of having been left so close to a terrific orgasm. I jumped out of bed, stretched, and wasted no time following her into the bathroom. When I climbed into the shower behind her she laughed happily at me, and embraced me tightly.

We soaped one another, enjoying the feeling not only of cock and pussy but of toes, armpits, ears, necks—everything! The washing started slow, but after a few minutes we were both very eager to get out of the shower and back into the bedroom. We raced out, ignoring our wet hair, hurriedly drying each other and throwing the towels aside. She got to the condoms first, and in no time she had rolled one onto me.

"Tom," she said with a smile, "how shall we do it this time? I want you to choose." I actually loved rear-entry, but I was afraid to put her in any position where she might feel vulnerable, or bring up unwelcome memories of Ben.

"Good old-fashioned missionary would be great for me," I replied. "I just love looking at you!" She arranged herself comfortably on her back, with a pillow under her head, and reached out to take me in her arms. "I am really looking forward to this," she said with a smile.

We were both too excited to be as leisurely as we had been the night before. Almost as soon as I was all the way inside her I felt the need to move. I tried to take a few deep breaths, longing to savor the feeling of my cock within her, then began thrusting slowly in and out. At first I stayed up on my arms, holding my chest above her and enjoying her beautiful smiling face as we coupled.

Then, within a few minutes, the feelings in my cock got so intense I had to increase the pace, and she put her hands on my back and pulled me down tightly to her. With my face against her shoulder I moved more rapidly inside her, feeling her hips roll up to meet each stroke. She began to groan lightly each time our bodies pushed together, and I got more and more aroused.

I began to whimper as my pleasure overcame me, and my rapid strokes grew more forceful. I was vaguely aware that I didn't want to be too rough, so I tried to hold back a little even as my orgasm roared through me. It felt like a tidal wave in my bloodstream, beginning at my cock and exploding in all directions through my body. I heard a loud animal groan, and wondered if it had been me. A moment later, I was drained of strength, and I collapsed onto Kristin, trying with my arms to keep my full weight off her.

I lazily kissed her ear and whispered sweet words into it, making her giggle. Then I realized that she probably hadn't come, and I raised up to look at her, the question in my eyes.

"It was wonderful, Tom," she said with a broad smile. "No, I didn't finish, but I loved it. You were so excited! It was thrilling. I don't always come from intercourse—but I feel SO good. Just rest with me." And she gently pulled me down on top of her again, where we lay comfortably together.

It was a half hour before we roused ourselves, and laughed as we realized we needed to shower again! This time we managed it without any sexy horseplay, and both of us dressed for the day.

I started to talk to Kristin about the day. "Maybe we shouldn't have breakfast together, Kristin, just for the sake of discretion. But how about we go somewhere nice in Atlanta for dinner tonight—somewhere with good beer?"

She took my hand, smiling a bit sadly at me, and led me over to the bed, where we both sat down. "Tom, let me say something. Last night was ... last night was so much more than I could have imagined. I hoped we could be ... good for each other, you know? Healing. Give each other a bit of comfort, and reassurance."

"And we did, of course. But it was so much more than that for me. Exciting, and sexy, and fun and relaxed. It was the most wonderful night I've ever spent with a man!"

I broke in, kissing her lightly, and told her that it had been just as wonderful for me. But she stopped me and went on.

"I don't think we should see each other again tonight. First, because nothing could possibly top last night! And I'd hate to feel that our second night together was a disappointment. But second, because it wouldn't be hard at all for me to start falling in love with you, and I don't want to take that chance."

Startled, I just looked at her. "Kristin, NOTHING that ever happened with you could disappoint me. We could sit side by side tonight and read the Yellow Pages and I'd have a good time!" She laughed.

"But I understand your point about maybe getting too attached. You're headed back to the West Coast, and me to Cleveland, where I'm hoping I will still be married after ... everything settles down. You are the most amazing, most lovely and special young woman I've ever met. The thought of not having more time together makes me sad—but I respect what you're saying."

She stood up, and I stood up too, and hugged her. "Promise me if you change your mind you'll come find me, OK?" I asked. She just smiled, and shook her head. "I'll see you in the sessions, Tom. And I'll smile at you across the room, and we'll both know what the smile means. All right?"

I nodded, and walked her to the door. After another gentle kiss and hug, and another smile from both of us, she went out into the hallway.

Saturday was a long, dull day for me. I did see Kristin in an afternoon session, and we did share a nice smile at a distance of 60 feet, but the rest of the papers didn't hold much interest.

I had dinner all by myself in a steakhouse in downtown Atlanta, thinking about Kristin, about Marianne, and about where my life was going. Then I headed back to the hotel and turned in, sitting up in bed with a mystery novel for a while before going to sleep.

I was astonished to hear a light knock on the door at 11:45, just as I was thinking of turning the light out. I peered through the eyehole to see Kristin, wearing a hotel terrycloth robe.

When I opened the door, a delighted smile on my face, she came right into my arms, and we hugged as I closed the door behind her. "I guess I ... spoke a bit too soon this morning," she said. "I really couldn't sleep tonight ... would it be all right if we just snuggled and went to sleep together?"

"What a wonderful surprise you are!" I replied. "Absolutely. This is the nicest thing that could have happened to me tonight!"

We were quickly naked together and curled up in the darkness, her nestled in front of me spoon-fashion. Kristin fell asleep within minutes, but I remained awake awhile, glorying in her wonderful smell and the feel of her slim body in my arms. Then I slept too.

********** My first conscious thought on awakening was that my arms were empty. Kristin must have gotten up early and gone back to her room. I sighed to myself, but as I prepared to throw back the covers I heard a slight noise, and the bathroom door swung quietly open.

For some reason I kept my eyes nearly shut, feigning sleep, while watching to see what Kristin would do. If she wanted to leave without waking me I would pretend to be asleep, so that she didn't feel obliged to give me an explanation.

Still naked, she looked at me, seemingly concluded I was asleep, then padded back to bed and snuggled in behind me, so that this time she was the bottom spoon, her chest and thighs pressed against my back.

What happened next filled me with joy. Very lightly and slowly, she began to move against me, stroking my arms and shoulders, gently moving her breasts against my back and her thighs against the back of mine. She reached her hands around me and let them glide across my chest, all the while caressing me with her own body. I felt her nipples harden, and after a few minutes she began to kiss the side of my neck, at the same time she slid one hand down and took my cock in her hand.

I endured this loving assault with utter pleasure, pretending that I was gradually awakening from her caresses. When I began to turn around to face her she gently stopped me, murmuring "shh", and rolled me back away from her.

Without knowing it Kristin was fulfilling one of my favorite—not quite "fantasies", but "preferences" in love-making. I am almost always ready and eager to make love with Marianne—or at least I was in the pre-affair days! So I was normally the one to take the initiative, and while Marianne usually seemed happy to make love, I never felt completely sure that she was as interested as I was. On the relatively rare occasions when she took the lead, it gave me pleasure to know that sex was something she really wanted, rather than it being something she was doing mainly to please me.

In bed with Kristin that Sunday morning, I was thrilled that she was choosing to pleasure and arouse me. She could have gone back to her room, or just returned to bed and dozed, but sex was HER choice. I reveled in the feeling of her breasts against my back, her breath in my ear, and her hands caressing my cock. She stroked me up and down until I was rock-hard, and began to murmur teasingly in my ear.

"Wow, this is a big one, Tom! What are you going to do with it? Are you ready to fuck me with this beautiful thing? Are you ready for me? are you?"

I suddenly rolled over and grabbed her into my arms, growling "what do you think?" as she giggled against me.

Then she said, more seriously, "Tom, doing it ... from behind used to be one of my favorite positions, before ... well, before Ben. Could we do that this time, but ... a little gently?"

That sounded like a great idea to me! I grabbed a condom, and arranged her comfortably with a couple of pillows under her middle, so that she didn't have to hold all her weight up on all fours. I got behind her, but instead of moving to enter her right away I caressed her beautiful pussy with my tongue, again enjoying her wonderful smell and taste. I licked all around her upper thighs, the edge where her thighs met her abdomen, her vaginal lips, and her clitoris. I didn't try to make her come, just gave her teasing pleasure as she had done to me.

Then I kneeled behind her and, using my hand to guide me, entered her very slowly and carefully. When I was all the way inside, I just rested there, sighing with the pleasure of her heat and tightness, stroking her back with my hands. I loved this position, and I adored being inside Kristin. Did being inside Marianne from behind feel this good? I couldn't remember, and at that moment I didn't give a damn.

Going slowly and gently was fine with me—I wanted the sex to last a long time. So we took our time, changing our pace and our rhythm from time to time, pausing while I held her breasts and tickled her nipples. It must have been 20 minutes before we built up to a climax. When I could tell she was very close, I reached beneath her and stroked her clitoris, all the while thrusting in and out, going faster but not too hard. Her orgasm made her shudder and clench her vagina around me, and I came into her only moments later, gasping with the pleasure of it.

Each time we made love, it had been a delight. I was filled with joy and gratitude to my generous, loving, and beautiful partner. I climbed off her and took her in my arms, and we lay together resting sweetly for a long time.

**********

At the airport that afternoon I was two hours early, with plenty of time to think. My farewell to Kristin had been bittersweet. We had exchanged addresses and many warm embraces, knowing that we would not see one another any time soon, if ever. Neither she nor I had seen the other as a potential long-term partner, just a port in a storm. But the connection we had made was very real—not just sexual, but a wonderful warmth and mutual understanding. I felt very lucky to have spent a short time with her.

Of course, my tryst with Kristin also affected how I felt about Marianne at that moment. This brief affair fit into the pattern that I had begun 2-3 weeks earlier, of being active in figuring out what I needed and then doing it, rather than just suffering as a passive victim of my wife's betrayal. Though I hadn't been aiming to do it, I had found out that I was still an attractive man to a woman, and still very much capable of being a satisfying and exciting lover. It wasn't that I seriously doubted those things—yet the pain of Marianne's cheating certainly had poked serious holes in my confidence.

She had said that her affair had nothing to do with me or with my love-making. She had said that she loved me completely, and that our sex-life together was exciting and satisfying for her. Very nice to hear—and very difficult to believe, when the words come from your wife who has just confessed to eight months of fucking someone else!

But Kristin had met me, liked me, wanted to be with me, and had been very excited and satisfied sexually with me. I didn't have to question that—I knew it was true, and it felt wonderful. In a small way, my time with her had restored to me some of what the revelation of Marianne's cheating had stolen from me.

I used my cell phone to check in with Andrea and Steve back in Cleveland. Andrea answered my call, and told me that the two of them had had lunch with Marianne on Saturday. According to Andrea, my wife was in a pretty serious, depressed mood, though they'd had some success cheering her up.

"I think your 'affair' with Carrie is really eating at her, Tom," Andrea continued. "In a good way, actually. One aspect of it is simply that she's very jealous; and frightened that you'll fall in love with Carrie, or just that having a new lover will make it easier for you to leave her."

"But beyond that, her feelings about you and Carrie have helped her understand much better how incredibly hurt and betrayed you feel. She can see that you must be agonizing about her and Eddie together just as she does about you and Carrie. It's obvious that you must suffer the pain of doubting her love, just as your involvement with Carrie makes her worry about your love for her. And she can see that it was much worse for you, because you were utterly deceived."

"So I don't know what you're thinking, Tom, but I'd advise you to keep 'Carrie' in the picture a while longer. But that's just me, the amateur shrink!" she laughed. "How are you, anyway?"

"I'm actually pretty good," I replied. "I've had an unexpectedly good time at this Atlanta meeting, and things seem to be looking up a bit. What you've told me about Marianne is encouraging news as well. Thank you for continuing to be friends to both of us—and thank you as well for keeping my secret."

"You're welcome, Tom," Andrea replied. "It would make Steve and me very happy if you and Marianne were able to work things out. We both remember what a great marriage ... I'm sorry Tom, maybe I shouldn't finish that sentence."

"It's okay, Andrea. I know: 'what a great marriage we used to have'. I don't think we'll ever have that marriage again—I don't see how we possibly can, or at least not for years. But perhaps we'll be able to put enough of the pieces back together that staying married will seem to make sense."

"Oh Tom, now you're starting to sound unhappy. I'm sorry I said the wrong thing!"

"No, Andrea, it's not your fault. Every once in a while I maybe get a bit too optimistic. Then all it takes is a little serious thinking to realize how big a problem this will be to solve. I'm better off being realistic about it."

We ended our call, and after another minute I called Marianne at home.

"Hello, honey, it's me calling from Atlanta."

"Hi Tom!" Marianne seemed glad to hear from me. "How are you, and how was the meeting?"

"The meeting was not bad. I'm a little tired, but that's the usual. Listen: how would you feel about our getting together tomorrow night, at the house? I would like to be there so we could call the kids together, since I've missed the last two Monday night phone calls. And we could talk some more. I know that our talks don't seem to leave either of us feeling all that happy, but I think we need to keep having them."

"That would be fine, Tom. Would ... would it be all right if I made dinner for us?" 

I thought about this. I had previously refused to have her cook for me, but I had made dinner for her twice at the apartment. "All right, that would be nice. How about if I come around 7?"

"Perfect. You know ..." She hesitated, then started again. "You know I really miss you, Tom." She went on in a quieter voice. "I really want you to come home."

I waited a moment, trying to breathe deeply. Her saying that brought my rage flooding back—I would be at home if you hadn't been fucking Eddie behind my back, dammit!

"I know that, Marianne," I finally said. "I would like to get to the point where my coming home feels like the right thing to do. But we're not there yet."

"OK, honey," she said meekly. Then: "I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow."

"Me too," I said. "Goodbye Marianne."



House of Cards Ch. 09



NOTE TO READERS: This is the next-to-last installment of the story. Ch. 10, which I will post in a day or so, will be the end. Many thanks to those of you who posted responses and suggestions for the story. I am honored by your interest and your comments, even the negative ones. – Ohio

** ** ** ** **

When I arrived at the house on Monday, I was not surprised to see that Marianne had gone all out. She greeted me warmly at the door, wearing an outfit she knew I liked. I could see that she'd set the table in the dining room, not the kitchen, and I saw candlesticks with fresh candles, as well as a bottle of wine we liked.

Gently but firmly I said, "Marianne, I'm not comfortable with what you have in mind. Sorry, but no candlelit dinner with wine tonight." I carried the wine and the candlesticks back into the kitchen.

She looked hurt, but said nothing. I continued, "actually, I brought a six-pack of Ringnes. It's a Norwegian beer I tried in Atlanta, and it's great. I hope you'll like it too." This was a little private joke, for me alone. Ringnes had been the beer Kristin introduced me to.

The kids had been on my mind a lot, especially because I hadn't spoken to them in weeks. I had taken the time to send them each a cheery postcard from Atlanta. Over the delicious dinner Marianne had made, I asked about their letters home, and Marianne filled me in on what they'd been doing at camp. Both were having a great time, and it was a safe bet they didn't spend much time worrying about what their parents were up to.

I said, "Marianne, we still have a few weeks, but obviously we'll have to figure out what we'll tell the children when they come home from camp if I'm not living here."

She looked stricken. "Tom, I really thought ... well, I certainly hoped you'd be back before then."

"Marianne," I said firmly, "you cheated on me for EIGHT MONTHS. Do you really expect me just to get over that within a few weeks?"

She was silent, and I said, "we have until August 30—that's about three weeks. If I'm still in the apartment, obviously we need to explain the situation to them somehow. If I'm back home but sleeping in the guest-room, perhaps we can simply say that one of us is having trouble sleeping. I don't know, Dad has a cough at night that's keeping Mom awake, something like that."

Marianne continued to look very unhappy. Finally she said, "well, I know we have the same goal in mind, which is not to upset the kids if we can avoid it."

I nodded, and said, "yes, I'm confident that we can decide together on the best thing when the time comes."

After dinner we each picked up an extension and we called the kids, who were glad to talk to us but not unduly excited. Clearly they were happy and busy at camp, had lots of friends, didn't mind talking to us for a few minutes, but then were eager to get back to their activities. Given how stormy the situation was for me and Marianne, that was a relief.

When we got off the phone I came back to the table and helped Marianne clear the dishes, then we cleaned up together. I made sure to thank her for the nice dinner, and then I said, "Marianne, can I ask you something about ... well, how did you arrange things for the kids when you spent the night at Eddie's?"

She could tell from my changing tone of voice that the serious questions were coming, so she wasn't startled. She readily replied, "I realized that I should have explained that earlier. Once or twice they had sleepovers at friends' houses, and once there was that school trip to the wilderness camp, when they were both gone for 3 days. All the other times they spent with my parents, who you know love to have them come visit. I always had my cell phone with me, but there was never any problem. It wasn't that often, Tom, maybe six times altogether. "

I just nodded. Then I said, very quietly—"Marianne, how could you let him call you 'Anni'?"

She just shook her head. "I don't know the answer to that, Tom. I know that it is terrible, and inexcusable—but so is everything that I did." She wasn't looking at me. "Eddie once asked me about ... you and me ... in bed. What we did, and so forth. I wouldn't tell him anything, wouldn't talk about it, so he let it go. Then another time he asked me what you called me, and without thinking I said, 'sometimes he calls me Anni'. Eddie didn't start using the name with me right away, but maybe about a week later he began calling me that."

I was cold with anger. "And you let him?"

"I told him at first to stop it, but he didn't. And I ... there's no excuse, Tom, I ... just gave up fighting him about it. It didn't seem worth it. Maybe it was all part of my deluded thinking, that you'd never know about the affair, about any of it, so what difference did it make?"

I had to press my lips together for a moment. This was really one of the worst parts of the betrayal. My pet name for her, coming out of that bastard's mouth!

I waited, then went on, thinking that my next question might catch her by surprise. "Marianne, are you still seeing Eddie?"

"No!" she immediately responded, and went on with some heat, "Tom, I already told you that!" Then she sat back a little, with a sigh. "Sorry—you're probably wondering why you should believe anything I tell you. But no, Tom. All I can say is the truth. I'm done with Eddie, and I'm done with cheating on you. Forever."

I pressed on. "Have you had any contact with him, since I played you that tape of the two of you together?"

"As I told you before, I called him the next day, and told him in no uncertain terms that our affair was finished. Since then, yes, I've had contact with him once. I threw away that cheap cell phone, so he couldn't reach me that way. Towards the end of last week he called me here at home, hoping we could get together. I told him once again, plain and simple, to stop calling me. If he calls any more I'm just going to hang up on him."

What I knew but Marianne didn't—at least I'd never revealed it to her—is that there were listening devices still recording throughout the house. I intended to check them the next day.

She looked up at me. "Tom, may I tell you something right away, before you ask another question? I started seeing a therapist. I went once last week, and my next appointment is tomorrow. I'm probably going to see her twice a week for awhile."

"Do you want to tell me about it?" I asked.

"Yes, I do, if that's all right. I've been re-reading the list you left for me, the one in which you listed the things you're feeling about my ... adultery. And it began to dawn on me that ..." She stopped for a moment, then went on. "... that a woman who acts in a way that gives so much pain to a man she says she adores ... well, that something must be wrong with a person like that."

She looked at me with tears in her eyes. "I mean, what kind of a woman, married to a man as wonderful and loving as you—what kind of selfish monster do I have to be to have done what I did?"

"I told you before that the affair had nothing to do with you, with our relationship. But I see that that is totally false—look at what I did! I let my ... let Eddie call me by your pet name for me. I had hours of sex with him the day before our wedding anniversary! I didn't break it off with him, even when I knew you suspected me."

"So I realized that there must be ... things about myself that I just don't understand, and that I need help to figure out. This is ... really hard for me to say. I realized that, whether or not we stay together, and ... even if you leave me ..." She was crying now.

"Even if you leave me, I have to understand what I've done to you, and to myself. Because either way, I'm going to have to live for the rest of my life with what I've done."

She put her head in her hands and cried quietly. She seemed to have finished what she wanted to say, so after a minute I spoke.

"Marianne, that sounds like a good decision. I hope it's helpful, and I hope you'll tell me about what you learn, whenever you're ready to."

She nodded, still crying, but didn't look up at me. I said quietly, "do you want me to go?"

She shook her head. "No, I have more I'd like to say to you. Just give me a minute." After a bit she looked up, smiled through her tears, and got up. "I'm just going to wash my face—I'll be right back."

I thought about what Marianne had just told me. It clicked with feelings I had had, namely that what she had done to me, or to our marriage, just seemed inexplicable. I thought we had a strong and loving marriage, and she said she thought so too. But how then could she have done what she did? It just made no sense to me—and now it had started to make no sense to Marianne either. So she was seeking help. That had to be a good thing. I didn't know if what she learned in therapy would help me to forgive her. But at least it might get easier to understand what she had done.

When Marianne returned she seemed once again in control. "Tom, I need to speak to you about you and Carrie. I'm sorry I ran out of your apartment last week, but listening to your story about ... you and her just got too overwhelming for me."

"What I'm feeling about it, first, is frightened. I'm terrified in any case that you will decide to leave me, to divorce me. God knows nobody would blame you! And the fact that you have this ... loving, sexy, eager, beautiful younger woman in your life ... well, having her might make it easier for you to decide to walk out permanently."

"But I also understand that there's nothing I can do about that. Even after just one therapy session, I recognize that the only one who gets to decide if you leave me is you."

"In a way—and maybe it's a sick, twisted way—your affair with Carrie might even be good for me. The thought of you being intimate with someone else just tears me up, Tom. In my mind I can see you touching, caressing, making love to her just as you used to do to me, or whispering love words in her ear the way you did in mine, and I can hardly even stand up. I feel as though someone has slugged me in the stomach."

"But whenever I have those feelings I know—truly KNOW—what my cheating has put you through. My nose gets rubbed in the pain I have caused you. Some of it, anyway—I'm being spared the agony of your cheating on me behind my back." She smiled ruefully at me. "Maybe I'm still getting off too easy, huh?"

"But I'm going through all the wondering about her and me. Is she more beautiful, a better lover, does she satisfy you more than I do? Last week when you told me about your first night with her, it sounded so exciting that I was completely in despair. How could I ever compete with that, at 39, after 16 years of marriage?"

"And then I saw that you had to deal with all those feelings too. Plus the fact that you did nothing to deserve them. At least I have the consolation of knowing that I deserve what you're doing!"

She paused for a moment. "I don't know if I'm making any sense tonight, Tom. There's such an enormous gap between us, and I'm the one that put it there. A couple of weeks ago you said that we had to keep talking, even though our conversations left us both pretty unhappy. I didn't understand that then, but I do now. I hope that ... I hope that you'll hang in there, and keep talking to me."

"I don't know how to make up for what I've done. Actually, I see that I simply can't make up for it—not completely. Probably not even close. But I am going to do whatever I can to try. I told you this two weeks ago, Tom: I will do ANYTHING if it will help make things better. And I mean that."

Marianne sat back in her chair—she looked exhausted. And worried. Well, she certainly had reason to be! My own mood swings when I was with her, from sympathetic to full of ice-cold rage, bewildered me, and I'm sure she could sense them by just watching my face. One minute I wanted to put a comforting arm around her, the next I imagined slapping her around, with her cowering in terror under my blows.

The people who say that dealing with a cheating wife is simple—"just throw her ass out!"—are full of shit. They have probably never been there, and they don't know what it is like from the inside. Sixteen years of love, happiness and trust, two kids we both adore—those are not nothing. Pure rage can feel great, the adrenalin rush of it, and I certainly knew that. But maybe two months later you're living in a small furnished apartment, staring at the walls, lonely and depressed and wondering why you're so far from the people who matter most to you.

On the other hand—and there's always another hand—you can't just walk back into the nest your wife has shit in. You can clean it, and you can air it out, and buy new rugs and new furniture, but it will be a long long time until the smell is gone. And there's no sense trying to rush it, or minimize how painful it is.

I looked up from my thoughts and realized Marianne was watching me. "What is it, Tom? Can you tell me what you're thinking?"

I sighed. "A couple of things, Marianne. I'm very glad you've started therapy, and I'm glad for what you just said about me and Carrie. I don't know what will happen to us, but I'm certain that I would have had to leave if I felt you weren't trying to understand what I'm going through."

"On the other hand, some of what you said about me and Carrie is also true. Having her in my life reminds me that I'm still attractive, that I could leave you and not have to be alone for the rest of my days. Being with her sexually eases a little of the pain of thinking about you and Eddie together." 

"And the connection I feel with her does inevitably affect the connection I feel with you." (I was thinking of Kristin at that moment, though I didn't say that to Marianne.) "It would be a lie to say it didn't make any difference—just as I pressed you to admit that your connection with Eddie affected your relationship with me."

"I relax with Carrie. We don't just go to bed together; we also talk, and cook dinner, and snuggle. A big part of my need for closeness to another person is being satisfied there. So of course that means that my need for you is less."

"Right now I think that's a good thing, a necessary thing—because I'm still so hurt and angry at you. There's no way you could fill that need for me, no way I could let you. But let's face it, Marianne—you had that emotional closeness with Eddie, for MONTHS, and it meant you weren't as close with me. A piece of your heart wasn't mine, it was his."

Not surprisingly, Marianne was crying again, softly. "I never loved him, Tom. I swear to you. It was never like that."

"You may think I'm an even worse monster when I say this—but I would come home from ... seeing him, and I would be loving you and looking forward to seeing you, to making love with you."

"I didn't feel, 'wow, this is fun, I'm fooling my husband, look what I'm getting away with'. It was more like 'wow, that felt good'—like it was a massage or something, a good workout at the gym!—'and now I can hardly wait to be back with my loving husband'. Is that utterly sick? I don't know."

"In some way I don't understand, I separated the affair into a completely different category. I stepped into it out of my life, then stepped out of it back into my life. Maybe that makes me sound more like a typical man, who supposedly can separate sex from love. Maybe it means I'm totally screwed-up, Tom, I don't know." She was speaking quickly, almost desperately.

"But whatever it means about me, what I'm telling you is the truth."

We sat in silence for a few minutes.

"Do you love me, Tom?" Marianne asked the question quietly, without looking at me.

"Yes I do, Marianne. That's what makes this tough. If I didn't love you, and if not for the kids, it would have been easy to walk away. Very painful, but easy."

"But I do love you, and I want our happy marriage back. The one that was full of love and trust, where we shared everything."

"Of course, the trouble is that every time I think that, I realize that I can NEVER have that marriage back—the best I can possibly hope for is some half-way version of that. And then I'm filled with anger at you, for taking that happy marriage away from me."

"I know that, Tom," she said. "And even I don't see how you can ever forgive me. I can't imagine how I could ever forgive you, if it were the other way around."

We were silent for another few minutes. Then I said, "I'm going to go, Marianne. Thank you for dinner. I'll talk to you soon."

I reached over to squeeze her hand, and she gave me a sad, brave smile.

**********

The next day at lunch time I went to the house and checked the recorders that were still hidden in the attic. I brought the recordings back to my apartment and went through them that evening, wondering if I would find anything awful. I recalled what the arms-control negotiators used to say, "Trust but Verify". It made me laugh—I didn't trust at all, so I really had to verify!

To my relief, the recordings were all routine. I heard Marianne making phone calls related to her work, or talking to her parents or Andrea on the phone. There were a couple of calls to her therapist, Dr. Brenner, about scheduling appointments. There didn't seem to have been any visitors to the house.

On the bedroom recorder I found the phone call from Eddie that Marianne had mentioned to me. It was brief, and just as she had described it.

"Hello? ... Eddie—why are you calling? ... No, listen to me. We're finished, and I don't want to talk to you again. ... No, stop! I'm sorry you called me, and I have no intention of seeing you or talking to you again. Is that clear? ... No! If you call me again, I'm simply going to hang up on you. Goodbye, Eddie!"

I heard the phone put down firmly, and then after a moment Marianne's voice talking to herself. "Damn!" she said. "Damn, damn, damn." And then after another moment, "what the HELL was I thinking?"

Two days later Marianne called to tell me there had been two more calls from Eddie. "I hung up on him, Tom, but I don't like him bothering me," she said. She sounded upset. I said I'd be over right after work.

When I got there, I said immediately, "Marianne, it's time for me to know a few things about Eddie. I thought that he was the least of our problems, but I was wrong."

"I'll tell you whatever you want to know, Tom," she said right away.

"Okay: what's his full name, where does he live, where does he work?"

"His name is Eddie Carlson. He has an apartment in the building on 14th and Haven—it's an six-story building, and his apartment is on the fourth floor. He works as the manager of a One-Hour Photo Shop called Collier's, in the mall downtown."

"How was he able to get away to meet you in the middle of the day so easily?" I asked her.

"He always has at least one other person in the store—an assistant manager or a clerk who can handle things."

"All right, Marianne. Please leave him a message tomorrow at home, during the day. Tell him you want him to stop calling the house, and you'll meet him the next day at 12 noon at Bisconte's. It's a bar at 9th and Stevenson."

She looked troubled. "Why do you want me to do this, Tom? I don't want to see him again, ever!"

"Trust me—after that we won't have any problem with Eddie. I'm going to be there too." And I explained what I had in mind.

Two days later, we were both at Bisconte's at 12. Marianne sat in a booth, while I was about 30 feet away, sitting at the bar. When Eddie came in he went straight to Marianne and tried to kiss her—but she rebuffed the kiss, and he sat down across from her in the booth. I got up and strolled over to them. As I approached I heard him say, "Anni, it's so terrific to see you again! I've been..." Then he looked up and saw me.

Marianne got up from the booth, and I smoothly slid into the seat where she had been, across from Eddie. "Eddie, this is my husband Tom. He has a few things to say to you." Without another word, Marianne went and sat at the bar. 




House of Cards Ch. 09



Eddie's face showed a mixture of annoyance and alarm. He looked young for 29, and not at all prepossessing. He was handsome, I suppose, in a brooding kind of way, but he was quite a bit smaller and slighter than I.

His hand had been stretched across the table towards Marianne, and I quickly grabbed his forearm with my right hand and held it tightly. He attempted to pull it back, but I steadily squeezed harder and harder, until he was in pain. "Just leave your hand there, Eddie. That's a good boy." I spoke calmly, keeping my face expressionless.

He didn't know whether to try defiance or deference, so he went for the first, though he couldn't quite bring it off. "So it's the 'loving husband', huh?" he sneered, though I could see fear in his eyes. "Come along to join the party?"

I didn't reply, just looked directly into his eyes without moving. He tried to stare back, but after a minute he couldn't face me and he moved his eyes nervously to look around the bar. I was still holding his arm, still administering a bit of pain. Then I spoke, always keeping my voice calm.

"Eddie, in the past Marianne wanted to spend time with you. That was her decision. But now she doesn't, and you haven't gotten the message. So now it's my business."

"You know what I do for a living, right, Eddie? I'm an engineer. In my work I have a lot of contact with fellows in the construction business. Gentlemen with names like Dino and Vinnie. Are you following me?"

"I had a conversation with a couple of these gentlemen. I asked them how they would handle the problem of a loverboy who was bothering one of their wives, and who wasn't getting the message that he wasn't wanted any more."

Eddie was listening now, not moving a muscle. Keeping my right hand on his arm, I reached into my pocket with my left hand and pulled out a 9-inch serrated knife, which I placed on the table between us.

"My friends agreed right away on how they'd handle the loverboy—they'd cut his cock and balls off, then stuff them in his mouth. Maybe sew up the mouth, too. The only thing they disagreed on was the kind of knife to use. But three out of four of them said that this serrated knife would do a nice job. Messy, but effective."

Eddie wasn't even pretending not to listen. He had gone quite pale, and there was a bit of sweat on his upper lip.

"My friends also told me that they'd be glad to help with my 'situation', if I decided any help was needed. I told them I'd let them know."

I waited another minute, still looking at Eddie, then I finished. "Eddie, you're done calling Marianne. You're done seeing Marianne, talking to Marianne, thinking about Marianne. You're done being within 100 yards of Marianne. If you and she are ever in the same place, you're going to be turning and walking rapidly in the opposite direction."

"You got that, right Eddie?" He nodded, not taking his eyes off me.

"I'd like to hear you say it, Eddie." Without hesitation he said, "Yeah. Yes. I got it."

I didn't speak again, just let go of his arm. Rubbing it with his other hand, he quickly got to his feet, not looking at me or the knife, and headed out of the bar. He passed Marianne where she sat without looking at her either.

I put the knife in my pocket and walked back over to Marianne. "Shall we get some lunch?" I asked. She looked at me and nodded, smiling. Her face wore a strange expression—some kind of mixture of embarrassment, relief, pleasure, and pride.

Lunch was relaxed and pleasant. I had one more bit of business to discuss, and I brought it up right away. "Marianne, we need to talk about Susan. And Jack."

"I was thinking about that, Tom, and I wanted to tell you as well. Susan and Jack left Cleveland together in the spring; I think they're living in Tennessee now. I wasn't really friends with her after that night ... they set me up to see Eddie again. I mean, I'm to blame for what I did, but ... let's just say I don't think she had my best interests at heart. In any case, she's gone—they're both gone." 



House of Cards Ch. 10



FINAL CHAPTER—Scenes from a Troubled Marriage

The next two weeks of August went by quickly, uneventfully. Marianne and I spoke at least every other day. Sometimes we had brief, routine phone calls; at other times I went home for dinner, or she came to my apartment, and we continued our painful conversations. We also resumed our habit of running together in the mornings. I would drive over two or three times a week, we'd run together, then shower (one at time) and have breakfast together. It was pleasant, and we found we were able to talk about routine things—mostly the kids, and our work—without stirring up unhappy emotions.

She mentioned in passing that her therapy was helping her a lot, but she didn't seem ready to tell me the details, so I didn't press her. Without much discussion of it, she assumed that I was still seeing Carrie regularly, and I let her continue to believe that. In fact, I thought often of Kristin. Once in a great while I imagined a long-term relationship with her. More often, realizing that that was simply a fantasy, I just allowed myself to relive and enjoy our time together. She had done so much to start me healing, and I hoped I had helped her even half as much.

Without a word to Marianne, I continued to check the recorders in the house every couple of days. There was never anything that worried me, just routine calls about work or to family members. Someday I hoped I could take the recorders out, but I wasn't ready to do that yet.

On the last Wednesday in August, I asked Marianne if we could have a talk after our morning run the next day—did she need to rush into work? She said no, and we both left the morning open.

When we'd both showered and were sitting over our eggs and coffee, I said, "Marianne, we've got to pick up the kids on Sunday, so I'd like to talk about living arrangements." She nodded at me to continue, looking serious.

"Here's what I'm thinking," I went on. "I'd like to move back home, for several reasons. But I want to make clear to you what that step means for me, and what it doesn't. And I want to give you a chance to tell me your feelings too."

She gave me a cautious but excited smile. "Tom, I'll be ... I'll be so very glad when you're back home."

I went ahead. "I don't want to be away from the kids, sitting alone in an apartment and wondering why I'm not with them. Also, I don't want to scare them unnecessarily. If you and I end up divorcing, they'll have to face that—but in the meantime I'd like to act as if things are okay between us."

"But my moving back in doesn't mean that things are all fine now, as you must know too. We haven't made love since ... I found out, and I'm not ready to sleep with you in our bedroom." She looked stricken, but just nodded.

"So I thought I'd move their Nintendo stuff to the living room and put my computer and work things into the guestroom. There's already the single bed in there. I can tell them that my work schedule has changed, that I have a lot of projects I need to work on late at night, and that I would be sleeping in the guest room a lot so I won't bother you."

She nodded again. "That seems OK, Tom. I think they'll believe that without thinking about it too much."

"All right. I'll move my things back in over the next couple of days, so the house will be all set before Sunday." I enjoyed seeing that Marianne continued to smile at me. Then her smile suddenly faltered. "Tom, what does this ... what does your moving back home mean about ... you and Carrie?"

"I'm still seeing her, Marianne. But I would never bring her here. She and I will just arrange to see one another during the day from time to time." Again, I wondered about the wisdom of extending my fictional affair, and whether it was time to tell Marianne the truth. 

There's no blueprint for how to be a husband whose wife has cheated—just like there's no blueprint for how to be a good husband, or a good father. You just have to try your best, each moment, to do what seems like the best thing to do. And for now it seemed like the best thing to continue my "affair" with Carrie. I would find the right time to tell Marianne the whole story.

**********

Our trip up to camp to get the kids was pleasant, and our reunion with them was very emotional. We had both missed them like crazy—probably more than they had missed us—and the threat that our marriage was under surely made us even more glad just to see them both, hug them, and hear their stories about sailing and new friends and overnight camping trips.

After we got back home and unloaded their stuff, they raced into the guest room, looking for their video games. I followed, and very casually explained about my new work schedule, and that the Nintendo was now in the living room. Without the slightest hesitation, they headed back down the hall. This new arrangement wasn't going to bother them any!

Our first few weeks of the new school year were sweet. Marianne and I reveled in the pleasure of being a family again. Not only had we missed the kids, but our roles as father and mother were much less affected by her affair than those of husband and wife. It was easy and natural to be parents together much as we had before, without constantly tripping over gaping emotional wounds.

But our life as a couple was still hard. Though routine activities were often very pleasant, anything that had to do with emotional or sexual intimacy felt like a mine-field. The slightest false step would bring the pain right to the surface. Even if Marianne cooked a specially nice meal, or dressed in an outfit I loved, or seemed extra-considerate, I wondered if her actions were about pleasing and loving me, or just about trying to make up for her guilt.

One day Marianne grabbed my hand and brought it to her mouth to kiss the back of it, as she had done so many times in the past. All I could do was wince, recalling how she had done that the day of our trip to Forbes Lake—the day I'd confronted her about the thong panties and she'd lied to my face.

It seemed that there were dozens of those painful moments, and that time wasn't doing much to make them fewer or easier to take. I decided to have a conversation with Marianne that I'd been thinking about for quite a while.

**********

I picked a Sunday when both the kids would be gone for the day with friends, and I asked Marianne if we could take a picnic up to Forbes Lake for the afternoon. She looked at me in surprise—we hadn't been there all summer, since the first day I knew of her affair. She must have realized right away I had something serious in mind.

"OK, Tom," she said hesitantly. She saw me smile, and I said, "I thought it would be a good place for a talk." This made her even more nervous, but she agreed to go.

When we got to the lake we spread out our blanket and had our lunch, talking about nothing much. Marianne was waiting for some kind of bomb to drop, and she was clearly uneasy. Finally she said, "I know something big is coming, Tom. Can you just tell me? This is too hard, the waiting."

"Okay," I said. "Here it is. Ever since I found out about your affair, I've been angry that our marriage as I knew and loved it was gone forever. I wanted it back—the easy trust we had with one another, the intimacy of being one another's only lovers—but I knew I could never have it back."

"Well, I'm not done grieving, but I have accepted the fact that that marriage is dead. The marriage that you and I used to have is dead. Our only choices now are to have a different marriage, or to have no marriage at all."

She looked at me very seriously. She could tell this wasn't a "goodbye, I'm leaving" speech, but she didn't know yet where I was headed.

"It's almost like it was when my mother died, Marianne, back when I was in college. I cried, I grieved, I wanted her back. I wanted my life to be what it was before she got sick. But of course that couldn't happen. And eventually I found ways to have a life that was still full of happiness—but a life without her."

"Our old marriage is dead in just the same way. I cannot look at you and see the faithful wife I had for sixteen years, the woman who has never lied to me about anything. And you cannot look at me and see a man who has been faithful to you, either." I thought of Kristin, knowing at the same time that Marianne was thinking about Carrie.

"I want us to be together. I want to be married to you. I want to make love with you again. But it's going to be different, and probably painful at first. When we make love, we won't have the joy of sharing an intimacy that has only been for each other. The other people we've been close to, and had sex with, are going to be there in the room with us."

"When I kiss you or touch you, when I'm inside you, I'm going to hear the words and sounds you made with Eddie, and see in my mind the things I know you did with him. That's no fun, but that's the reality. And I know you will face some of that too." I looked away from her, gazing out over the lake.

"But the only way forward that I can see is to make love anyway—and to be married anyway. We'll either succeed in our new marriage or we won't. But our old marriage is gone. It's as dead as my mother."

There was silence. Marianne had tears on her face. I imagine part of what she was feeling was "yes, our old marriage is dead, and I'm the one who killed it". I hadn't said that, but it was clear to both of us.

"Tom, I know that you're right. Dr. Brenner and I have talked about this same issue, though not in the same words. It feels desperately hard to let go of that 'old marriage', as you put it—especially knowing that I'm the cause of our losing it." She mopped her tears.

"I guess I've still been clinging to hopes—fantasies really—that somehow or someday we could get that trust back. But I see that you're right. What do you want me to do?"

I looked at her, with a little smile. "Three things for us both to do, I think. The first is that we should stop pretending. I think we both dance around all the sensitive subjects, all the painful moments, in the hope that if we don't notice them they'll disappear, but it doesn't work. When you grabbed my hand and kissed the back of it the other day, as you sometimes used to do, it reminded me that you did it our last time here at the lake—the day I knew about your affair. And it hurt like crazy!"

I saw her look of surprise and sorrow, then she nodded her head. I went on. "But we're just going to have to deal with that. I suppose I'll have to simply say, 'I remember the last time you did that—it was at Forbes Lake, in July.' And then we'll both know. And something will change—maybe you'll give up that gesture and find a different one. Or you'll do that same old gesture with a particular look towards me that says, 'yes, we both know why this gesture hurts, but it also conveys my love to you, and we both understand why I'm doing it anyway'."

Marianne nodded, and then asked, "what are the other two things, Tom?" 

"One of them is that I want us to make love again. I'm afraid it will be weird, even awful perhaps at first, though I hope not. But I want us to start."

She smiled at me almost shyly, and said "I really want that too. I miss being with you that way—very much!"

"And the last thing is that I want us to go away for a week—maybe in October? We can ask your parents to stay in the house and be with the kids. They always love to do that. I'd like us to go somewhere nice, warm, with a beach, and somewhere we've never been before."

"And I want you to buy some new clothes. New clothes to wear during the day and for the evening, some new swimsuits, and especially new nighties and lingerie. I don't want to be reminded of previous vacations. Let's try to make some nice new memories." 

"I love the idea, Tom!" Marianne's wet eyes were shining, now with happiness. "I feel like you're offering me more than I deserve—a lot more, and I'm not going to turn it down! Let me check at the office about everyone's schedule, and we can pick the week right away. I certainly won't refuse the chance for some shopping, either!"

Then she looked at me more seriously, and said, "but you haven't said anything in all this about your anger, honey. We both know you're still angry—there are moments when it almost rolls off you, like a wave. It's frightening."

"Yes, you're right. I still have those moments, and I probably will for a long time—though I think they're getting less frequent. There is actually one more small thing I need to say, Marianne."

I looked right at her. "You may feel this is totally unnecessary, but I need to say it for ME, if not for you. I'm struggling to learn to trust you again. In the best set of circumstances, it will take awhile. But if you ever betray my trust again, even once—if you ever cheat on me again, or lie to me—we are done." I began to tremble a little, feeling my rage surge inside me. "I'll be out the door without a word, and I won't be back to give you a chance to explain things to me."

"People say 'once a cheater, always a cheater'. I don't know if that's true. I hope it's not true of you. But if it is ... well, I hope I've made clear how I feel about that."

I sat still a moment, letting the anger recede again, and I sighed. Then I said, "I just needed to say that to you. Sorry."

Marianne slid over to me, slowly, and took my hand, watching my face to make sure that was all right with me. Then she said, "I owe you complete honesty and faithfulness. And I failed you once—big time. But I will NOT make that mistake again, if you stay with me. And I will do whatever I can, whatever you ask, to earn back your trust in me."

"You don't have to say 'sorry' to me, Tom. All you are really asking for is what you should have had from me all along."

We sat there for another few minutes, quietly, Marianne holding my hand. Then I said to her, "I was thinking about swimming across the lake and back. But if we got in the car and went home now, we'd have a couple of hours of privacy before the kids got home."

Marianne smiled and said, "I vote for the privacy!"

**********

Making love with Marianne, that Sunday afternoon in September in our bedroom, was both wonderful and strange. We did everything very slowly, very consciously, as if saying to each other, "yes, we remember what has happened, the infidelity, the specter of other lovers in the room, but we're going to enjoy this anyway".

We both seemed to feel that we shouldn't rush, so our foreplay lasted a long time. There were many painful moments for me—images of Marianne and Eddie were there in my mind, and I had to see past them, not ignore them. The worst for me was when she lay open for me, smiling and aroused, on her back, and I was poised above her to enter her. She had been like this with him, open, excited, smiling, eager for him to fuck her.

It took my breath away, and I hesitated for a moment. Marianne's smile slipped, as she saw my unhappiness. But I had no choice but to go on—this is my new marriage, I said to myself. I tried to smile back, and then we both sighed with the pleasure as I slid inside her hot wetness. She was very ready, and it felt good.

Our coupling was as slow as our foreplay. I wanted to be conscious of every moment and every feeling. I kept changing my pace and depth, moving my hips in different ways, speeding up and slowing down. All the time we looked at each other, trying I think to reassure each other: "yes, this is YOU I'm here with, this is YOU I want to be doing this with!".

Finally I let more of my weight down on Marianne, burying my face in her neck, and stroked more rapidly and forcefully, allowing the pleasure and the mounting need for a release to take me over. I felt her hands clutching my shoulders, heard her rhythmic gasps with each stroke, and I came into her with a shudder.

After a minute I slid off her, to one side, and we lay on our sides, holding one another and looking at each other. No smiling now—the moment felt very serious. This had been about as far from our playful, carefree love-making of the old days as anything could possibly be. It felt much more like a ritual, some rite of passage that contained its share of pain. If that sounds mystical, so be it—that's how it felt.

Not smiling, Marianne put one hand on my cheek and said, "thank you, Tom. I love you very much." "I love you too," I said. Then we held one another, and we both cried.

**********

The weekend after we first made love again, we had Steve and Andrea over for a Saturday cookout. It was the first time the four of us had been together since I found out about Marianne's affair. I'd seen Steve and Andrea several times, and Marianne once or twice; but I think she had felt too ashamed to relish the idea of us all socializing again.

And it was tense, for the first few minutes. I think we all understood that the ground rules were "no talking about Tom and Marianne's marriage". So we talked about trivial things at first, until our sense of pleasure in one another's company took over. These were two of our favorite people. They'd known us a long time, and cared for both of us. They were funny and smart. We laughed a lot and had a good time. I even noticed that Steve was developing a fondness for Ringnes, my new favorite beer!

At one point the women went inside to see to dessert and Steve said to me quietly, "things seem better, Tom." I nodded. "A long way to go, but we're making progress. Let me thank you and Andrea again, Steve, for the umpteenth time. You guys have been terrific. You've been there for me, true friends, but without cutting Marianne out of the picture. Thank you so much."

He looked a little embarrassed at my sentiment, and joking said, "like they say, 'What are Friends For'?"

**********

Over the next few weeks we gradually returned to regular sex. It wasn't that great, to tell the truth. We were still both very serious, careful, as self-conscious as two people doing a love-making instructional video. We gave each other pleasure, we had orgasms, we enjoyed it—but we didn't come close to finding the uninhibited joy we had once taken in each other.

Partly there must have been images of Carrie in Marianne's mind, but most of all I think Marianne and I were both afraid of the same thing: my anger. It was in bed that my rage about her affair was most acute; and though I never acted on those feelings they were often present. If she took my cock in her mouth, I heard her saying to Eddie "God, it's so big, and so hard, and so beautiful! Let me suck on it", and my fists clenched.

If I was going down on her, enjoying her groans and her hip motions as she urged me onward, I heard her saying "Oh, Eddie, nobody does me like you do!" 

If I slid into her, in the missionary position or from behind, my favorite, I could hear her eagerly say to him "I want your beautiful dick inside me." And I had to endure it, I had to carry on. Because the alternative was to yank my own dick out of her and stalk out of the room.

One night after we had made love I was lying on my back, propped up against the pillows, staring out at nothing. Marianne looked at me and said, "Tom. I am so very sorry for the things you heard me say to Eddie. I can apologize for the rest of my life, and I know it will never be enough. But YOU are the best lover I have ever had. It's YOUR arms I want around me, your body I want next to mine, and your beautiful penis I want inside me. I am just so, so sorry...."

She stopped talking, and snuggled up against me. I held her, stroking her back. Some things just can't be dealt with in words.

**********

In mid-October Marianne and I took our weeklong trip, to St. Thomas in the Caribbean. She had bought a lot of new clothes. I hoped that the new things included some new lingerie, because I loved the sight of her in slinky or transparent or just too-short nightwear; but she kept her new purchases safely hidden until we got to the island.




House of Cards Ch. 10



I had kept up the routine of checking the recording devices in the house at least twice a week. They were mostly filled now with the sounds of the kids, but there were occasional calls to or from Marianne, and I listened to these carefully, with perfect attention. At first I almost held my breath, not knowing what I might hear. But as the weeks went by it was easier and easier to relax, and I never did hear anything that worried me.

I also checked her purse and her car a couple of times when she wasn't around, to see if a throwaway cell phone had reappeared, but in vain. And the calls on her regular cell phone, which I could check in the monthly bill, were all routine.

Did these things mean that Marianne wasn't cheating on me again? No. But a lack of evidence was certainly better than the opposite! And she knew very well what was at stake. If, despite all that had happened, she was unwilling or unable to be faithful to me, our marriage would be over. 

On the plane down to St. Thomas we were feeling close and romantic, and I decided to give her a "gift" when we got there, something I'd been thinking about for awhile. We checked in, changed and immediately went to dinner, at a gorgeous restaurant on an open-air balcony overlooking the Caribbean. Marianne looked stunning, in a new silk pants outfit that had not only me but every other man in the place directing his attention at her.

During dinner I took great pleasure in just looking at her. Her beautiful eyes, full of sparkle, the shine of her hair, her lovely arms, the graceful way she moved. All of it felt like a miracle to me. Being away from home was obviously making it easier for me to appreciate her.

As we waited for dessert to be cleared and the check to come, I said, "there's something I'd like to tell you. I think you'll think it's good news."

She smiled broadly and said, "I always like good news! What is it?"

Smiling back at her I said, "I've stopped seeing Carrie."

Her face went through a marvelous series of expressions, all lasting just a moment. Surprise, pleasure, concern, wary optimism. "I think that's great news, Tom! Can you ... can you tell me a little more?"

"I realized it was time to stop. You and I are trying to have a 'new marriage', and you have every right to expect my total commitment to it, just as I expect yours. And, of course, there's the other thing. You know that Eddie is still in my mind, when we're in bed. And Carrie is surely in your mind. At least now that can be in the past tense."

Marianne didn't yet look completely convinced. "And how is ... how does she feel about it?"

"Carrie knew all along what my situation was, and I've been honest with her. To tell the truth, she may feel relieved. There's a guy she's very interested in who she thinks is going to ask her out, but she didn't know quite how to handle that while she was seeing me. This will make things simpler for her."

"And one more thing, Marianne. Just so you know: when I say it's over with her, I mean completely over. Permanently. I'm not going to see her again, and you can trust me on that."

This time the smile stayed firmly on her face, growing broader as she regarded me.

"Thank you for telling me that, Tom. Listen—are you put off by crude behavior in an elegant place?"

I could tell from her tone that she was kidding, so I just said, "not at all. What do you have in mind?"

"Well, this restaurant and the setting are so lovely. I hope you wouldn't mind if I just leaned over the table and –"

She leaned over, putting her face inches from mine, and said softly, "I'd like to take you back to the room and fuck your brains out!"

I sat back, laughing. "That WAS crude! But I believe that I'm prepared to let you off with a warning this time—as long as you follow through..."

We quickly paid the check and hurried out.

**********

The week in St. Thomas was great, and the sex was mostly great too. The end of my 'affair' with Carrie surely helped, but I think the main things were just being away, and being alone.

Kids take a lot of energy out of married couples—not that there aren't rewards! But all day in St. Thomas we had only one another to think about. And we were far from any place that reminded us of the troubled recent past. It was still with us, but much less present and much less important.

We made love nearly every day, and a couple of times twice. That seemed pretty good for a couple both about 40. It was always pleasurable, and twice we got really wild with each other (I'm sure the tropical weather and the alcohol consumption helped a bit too). Even more than enjoying those two unrestrained sex sessions for themselves, I was happy and relieved that we'd been able to achieve that level of freedom with one another again. 

I also loved it that Marianne took the initiative in sex a few times, like that first evening after dinner, when she was all over me. Knowing that some of the time we were having sex because SHE really wanted to (though of course I did too) was a turn-on for me.

When we flew home we were more tan, more relaxed, more happy, and certainly more optimistic about our marriage. Marianne held my hand the whole flight, and when we were nearly there she asked quietly, "Tom? Do you think you're ready to move back into our bedroom? I would be so happy if you would!"

I nodded at her, smiling, and she kissed me excitedly, tears standing out on her cheeks.

**********

About two weeks after we got back I had another nightmare. I had had them occasionally ever since learning of Marianne's affair, sometimes twice a week, sometimes much less often. They were always about Marianne, and some were bad, some not so bad. This one was a killer.

In the dream I was lying behind Marianne in bed, caressing her breasts, kissing her neck, murmuring to her. She lay there happy and languid, her eyes closed, getting gradually more aroused, moaning quietly. My hands moved to her pussy, and as I stroked her clitoris she began moving her hips back against me. She lifted her top leg and my hard cock poked between her legs. Then she closed her leg against it, and I rubbed my cock back and forth across her pussy lips. My hands returned to her breasts, and I pinched her nipples. She got more and more excited, breathing more heavily, sliding her hips back and forth. Then she turned her head, her eyes still closed, and said, "now, Eddie! Put that beautiful thing inside me!"

When I pulled back from her in shock, she opened her eyes and looked at me. Startled to see it was me, she cried, "where's Eddie?" And Eddie suddenly appeared in the room, naked. He climbed onto the bed and entered her with a single thrust, making her cry out in pleasure. Soon they were fucking one another wildly, ignoring me as completely as if I weren't there.

For some reason I couldn't move. I just sat, frozen, two feet from them on the bed, unable to intervene. When I could finally move my arms I started to grab Eddie to pull him off her, but Marianne looked at me and said, "no, Tom, stop! I need Eddie to make me come!" Then she closed her eyes and went back to fucking him like crazy.

I heard a terrible groaning sound, like the roar of a wounded animal, and then I was being shaken. Marianne was shaking me awake, and I tried to come up out of the dream and look at her.

"Tom, are you all right? Was it a nightmare? I just looked at her, bewildered, covered in sweat, my fury and horror very slowly ebbing away. The clock said 3:25. I shook my head, trying to clear it. Finally I could speak, and I said, "sorry Marianne. That was a bad one. Give me a minute."

She went to the bathroom and returned with a wet washcloth, which she used to gently wipe my face and the back of my neck. Then she fluffed up the pillows and had me lie back. I guess I was still breathing hard, and must have looked pretty out of it.

"Sorry," I said again. "Shh," replied Marianne. "It was just a dream. It's gone now, I'm here with you." I didn't want to tell her about it, and I figured she probably could guess the general theme in any case—I had told her about some of my previous nightmares. She lay with her arms on me, her head on my chest. After a few minutes I began to feel calmer, and we eventually drifted back to sleep.

**********

In mid-December we went to a big Christmas party given each year by our friends Alec and Diana. Alec was a former colleague of mine at work, and our kids were about the same ages as theirs, so we'd known them for years. It was a big party, 60-80 people. We saw Steve and Andrea, and chatted with them and with many other friends that we knew.

The party was formal—black tie for the men and evening gowns for the women. Marianne wore a black sheath dress with spaghetti straps, with a single aquamarine pendant and matching aquamarine earrings. Her hair was up in back, showing off her lovely neck. She looked fabulous. Obviously I'm not objective, but there wasn't a woman at the party who looked half as desirable.

For some of the evening we stayed together, talking and laughing with friends. But as the evening wore on we naturally split up, as conversations pulled us in different directions. There was a lot of drinking, and things got much looser. Several strategically hung pieces of mistletoe were being used by some of the men as a convenient excuse to kiss other people's wives, amidst general laughter. I saw a guy named Marty, whom Marianne and I knew casually, corner her beneath some mistletoe and give her a kiss and a full-body hug, his hands roaming over her, after which she pushed him away, laughing.

In previous years this party had sometimes gotten quite rowdy, with wild dancing and even couples pairing off (not with their own spouses) and making use of one of the many distant bedrooms in the large house. With this in mind, I had been trying to keep Marianne in sight as much as I could. But I got caught up in a political argument for a few minutes and lost sight of her.

I was just thinking I should look around for her when I heard a commotion in the living room, some raised voices, and then Marianne came running out of the living room and straight over to me, white-faced and shaken. "Tom, please, can we just go now?" she said in an urgent voice. I asked what was wrong, but she pulled me towards the front door without replying. Quickly I grabbed our host's hand, thanked him for the party, and we got our coats and left.

In the car I asked again what was wrong, but she just clung tightly to my arm and said, "it's all right now, Tom. Just take me home and I'll explain everything." She really did look upset.

When we got home and I had paid the baby sitter, I took her into the living room, got us both a small brandy, and sat close beside her on the sofa, holding her hand and stroking it gently. She swallowed some of the brandy, shivered, and then seemed to calm down a bit. Finally she began to speak.

"I was having a nice time, like we always do at Alec and Diana's. You know it starts to get pretty flirty after everyone has had a few, but it was no worse than usual. Then this guy I didn't know before, his name is Malcolm—I think he works with Diana—started really coming on to me. He had been talking and flirting with me earlier, but it was harmless, the usual lines about my dress, or the aquamarine sets off my eyes. You know—no big deal, and not hard to handle."

"But later he managed to separate me from the group we were talking with, and maneuver me into a corner of the living room. The flirting got way too serious. He was telling me I was the loveliest woman he'd ever seen, and my husband couldn't possibly appreciate me as much as he would. If I'd only give him a chance, he could show me pleasures I'd never dreamed of before. And he was stroking my shoulder, and standing way too close, talking into my ear. Then he had me by the arm, and was starting to steer me down the hall towards the bedrooms."

"I was terrified you'd come into the room, Tom, and get the wrong idea! I was frantic to get away from him. I couldn't get loose at first, and no one else noticed what was going on. So I yelled at him, "let me go! I am NOT going with you!" And then a bunch of people turned and stared at us, and he let go and I ran out of the room, with people trying to follow me or help me."

She sighed, calmer now, and I just hugged her tightly, stroking her hair. Finally I said, "I'm sorry honey. I wish I had been closer—I just got caught in the middle of an argument between Bill and Leonard, and you know what they're like once they get started."

Then I said, "were you afraid that he'd really ... drag you into a room and rape you? Or was it that you were afraid I'd see you two and misunderstand what was going on?"

"I don't think he would have raped me, Tom. He was definitely coming on strong—but I've been in situations like that before, and a few firm "No"s would have done the job. With, if necessary, a spike heel firmly planted on top of his shoe."

"But I was very afraid of what you might see, and what you might think. I don't want you to have the slightest doubts about me—EVER—and I hated being in a position where you, or someone else, could have jumped to the wrong conclusion. Before I let that happen, I'll stop going to parties."

I smiled at her, and held her close, and planted soft kisses in her fragrant hair, humming into it—some stupid Christmas carol probably, I wasn't too original about music. Her story had made me happy, God knows why.

"I love you," I said, "and I'm sorry for what happened. You are a very beautiful woman, and tonight you look so incredible that the mystery to me is why any man at the party DIDN'T flirt with you."

"I don't think we need to stop going to parties. We are a long way from where we were last summer, and as long as you can handle the flirters I will be content to let you handle them. I'm not going to fly off the handle because some jerk gets a little excited—but I'm glad that you're thinking about my feelings."

She sighed and relaxed against me, obviously calmer now.

"Now," I said, getting up and pulling her gently to her feet, "would you consider letting me have an early Christmas present? I would like to take you upstairs and undress you, beginning with the earrings, and ending with whatever I might find under that beautiful dress!"

She laughed and kissed me, and said, "Merry Christmas, Tom!"

**********

Some time early in the New Year I realized that Marianne had changed noticeably, if gradually, in her behavior and attitude around me.

She had always been sensitive and generous—before the affair as well as after—but in the months since I learned about Eddie I was often aware of her tentativeness around me. She seemed very watchful, presumably concerned about my angry outbursts, but that wasn't all of it. I think that she was also full of guilt and self-reproach. 

Many times when we were together she seemed to be looking for a way to make it up to me, to atone for what she had done. As silly as this will sound, it was like being served by an over-eager waiter. You just want to tell the guy to relax, bring my dinner, and then leave me alone—don't ask me every two minutes if everything is fine!

But now this was happening less and less. She seemed to have more faith that I wasn't about to head out the door if we had some small disagreement. Her smiles were just as warm as ever, but her eyes looked less worried, and she seemed less tense.

I was happy about this, of course. I didn't want to be married to "Mrs. I'm-so-sorry", and I couldn't have lived with her for long. The whole idea of our "new marriage" meant getting past apologies and atonement—in time—to a different version of married happiness. Maybe Marianne's new attitude meant that we were getting there.

**********

On a morning in late January Marianne came into the bedroom where I was putting on my running clothes. "Tom, how would you feel about our just taking a walk this morning, instead of running? I'd like to talk to you about some things."

Her demeanor was serious, and I said, "of course, Marianne. Let's both get bundled up, and we can go."

When we were outside walking, our breath steaming in the cold air, she said, "I've been learning a lot of things in my therapy with Dr. Brenner, and it just started to feel like time to tell you about some of it."

"I want you to know, Tom, that none of this is about my making excuses. Cheating on you was wrong, and I did it, and I hate that I did it. But I'm beginning to understand better why I did it."

"Okay, Marianne," was all I said—I didn't want to interrupt her.

"Well," she said, "I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear that a lot of it has to do with my parents." She rolled her eyes. "Such a cliché, right? It's always about the parents. But it really seems to be true in my case."

Of course, I already knew a fair amount about Marianne's parents. For years they'd had a terrible marriage. Her father was a big-time philanderer, almost never without a mistress or a series of one-night stands. At one point he even moved out of the house and into an apartment with a girlfriend. When that relationship ended after a few months, he moved back home, without apology.

Marianne's mother, and Marianne herself, were both badly hurt by his infidelities and his lack of concern for their feelings. I never understood how or why her mother put up with it, rather than throwing the bastard out on his ear.

Interestingly, in later years the relationship changed. As he grew older her father settled down, stopped chasing skirts, and became a more loving and reliable husband. That was all after Marianne was out of their house, but in the years since then the marriage had gotten much stronger, and now the two of them were wonderful grandparents to our children.

"I've been talking a lot with Dr. Brenner about my parent's marriage, and about my dad's screwing around. As with every kid, the one marriage I knew a lot about was my parent's marriage, so for better or worse it was my idea of what a marriage was."

"I can see now that, as much as I adored and trusted you, Tom, at some level I expected to be hurt and cheated on just as my mother had been. I was afraid of giving our life together my total, absolute commitment—because it would have hurt so deeply if you had betrayed that in any way."

"Of course you never did! You have never been anything like the jerk my father was when I was growing up. But that fear was always in my mind."

"Again, this is not an excuse! But it seems that my cheating was an expression of my own fear about totally committing myself to our relationship, and trusting you completely. Maybe the fact that it didn't happen sooner is just because I love you so much, and because you always made me feel that I could trust you. But my conviction that you would betray me, pull the rug out from under me in some way, was something I was always struggling with, though I wasn't really aware of it."

"There's one more crazy aspect to this I want to mention. Paradoxically, and though I never would have wanted it consciously, my behavior led to you also being unfaithful to me. So the thing that I feared most turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. In my fear that you would betray my trust in you, I did something so horrible that in the end you did—even if it was in an aboveboard way, and even if it was totally my behavior that drove you to it."

She was serious, intent, striding fast as she told me all this. She and the therapist must have talked over these ideas many times, because they were quite clear in Marianne's mind, and she explained them so I understood right away.

But I didn't know how she would want me to respond, so we walked on in silence for a short time. Then she spoke again.

"You don't need to do anything in particular, Tom, or even say anything. My coming to understand these things has really helped me. I've been calmer, less unhappy. Maybe a little less racked by guilt all the time."




House of Cards Ch. 10



"I had actually noticed some of that," I said. "I don't know when it started, maybe a few weeks ago, but you have seemed more relaxed when we're together—it's been great." I smiled at her. "I'm glad that the therapy is helping, Marianne. What you say about your parent's marriage certainly makes sense to me. It makes me wish I had known about your feelings, so I could have looked into your eyes and said, 'You can trust me Marianne—I'm not your dad'. But I know it doesn't work that way."

She squeezed my arm. "No—I wish it did. Instead we had to go through all this ... all this SHIT for me to start to understand it."

Suddenly she stopped walking, and looked intently into my eyes. "I am so very sorry, Tom," she said seriously.

"I know, Marianne," I replied, with equal seriousness. After a long moment I smiled at her, and we continued our walk in the cold.

**********

Sometime in March, as the dreary winter weather dragged on, I began to feel uneasy. I still don't know what set me off, whether something actually happened or I caught the suspicion virus out of the air—but I began to worry about Marianne's fidelity.

We had been doing well, I thought. I certainly had been feeling better about our marriage, and she seemed very happy at our greater closeness. Her therapy was continuing to help her. So what vague instinct was it that started me worrying?

I'd been checking the hidden recorders in the house twice a week, more or less. Now I checked them every other day. I put a recording device back into the spare-tire compartment of Marianne's car, with a listening device hidden under the front seat and another one in her purse. I checked those every day.

I began listening more carefully when she described her activities at work each day, trying to pick out inconsistencies. I called her at the office occasionally, and if she wasn't in I made sure to ask casually at dinner that night what she'd been out doing when I called.

On two days, when she'd told me ahead of time she had various business errands outside the office to do, I'd actually parked down the street from her office parking lot and trailed her car around town for several hours.

The result of all this renewed suspicion, worry, and investigation was exactly zero. There was not a hint of any inappropriate behavior on my wife's part. However, as a professor of mine in college liked to say, "Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence". 

I knew, after all, that Marianne had cheated on me with Eddie for eight months without my catching on. I was much more suspicious now—but that didn't mean she wasn't being much more careful!

After about three weeks of this I felt depressed and frustrated. I'd found just what I'd hoped to find—nothing—but it seemed to be making me feel worse rather than better. I didn't want to talk to Marianne about this, so I dragged Steve out for a long lunch one day and told him what I'd been up to.

Bless his heart, Steve didn't laugh at me. He listened carefully, looking serious, and he didn't make light of my fears.

"I know this can't be any fun, Tom, but it is good news that you haven't found anything. Andrea just saw Marianne the other day, and she told me that Marianne just went on and on about how well the two of you are doing. She said Marianne seemed happier than she's been for a long time."

"I know this is somewhat irrational, Steve. I haven't got a single shred of anything to base my worries on. But I keep remembering what a fool I was the first time. Marianne is smart as hell!"

"Tom, I'm your friend, and I honestly don't know what to tell you. I guess it makes sense to continue being watchful, but I'm sorry that your suspicions are making you so crazy. Is there anything I can do?"

I sighed. "I guess just listen to me rant every once in a while. I'm going to have to live through this phase one way or another."

My hypervigilance lasted another week or so, then it gradually receded, like a low-grade fever returning to normal. I went back to checking the recorders less frequently, I stopped asking Marianne leading questions—in short I relaxed. My worries didn't ever disappear, but they became bearable again.

**********

As the summer approached, Marianne began talking about what we might do once the kids went off to camp again. "Tom, how would you feel about a vacation we've never done before? Hiking in the Rockies, or up in Canada somewhere? Maybe staying in a national park?"

I liked the idea, among other reasons because I was still eager for us to do new things, things that had no possible sting of memories from the pre-adultery days of our marriage.

We went ahead and booked a cabin on Ross Lake in the North Cascades National Park, in Washington, and spent some happy hours reading guide books and looking on-line to learn more about what we'd be seeing.

The day after we dropped the kids off at camp, we were flying out to Seattle, where we rented a car and headed for the park. We found a rustic two-room cabin with an indescribable view, nestled in the woods overlooking the lake with brilliantly white snow-capped mountains in the distance beyond.

Every day of that week we found something new to delight us. Making love didn't get neglected, but there were so many outdoor activities beckoning to us that some days we came home too exhausted (but happy) to do more than snuggle together in the past-its-prime queen-size bed. We hiked, we rented a canoe and explored the lake, we sunbathed, we hiked some more, we cooked steaks over a campsite fire we made ourselves—and we relaxed, reading together for hours or just lying in the sun.

One day I got adventurous, and I talked Marianne into letting me screw her partway up a tree, deep in the empty woods. The tree stood in a tiny glade, with branches arranged up its trunk almost like the steps of a ladder. I persuaded Marianne, giggling like mad, to strip off her shorts and perch on a sturdy branch about 10 feet off the ground. Then I stood in front of her, naked from the waist down, on a branch about three feet lower, bringing my excited cock to just the right height.

We had to hold each other tightly around the shoulders to keep from tumbling to the ground, and it wasn't all that comfortable, but it was a lot of fun. The position was too awkward for wild orgasms, but we took our time and enjoyed the "outdoorsness" of it, feeling the breeze cooling our naked parts as we went at it. Towards the end our fucking made the branches we were on sway unnervingly, adding to the danger level of the adventure.

"Well, that will be a story to tell when we get back," I said with a smile after we were finished, and were clinging to each other tiredly.

"To whom?" she replied, "the children?" We both laughed. "Who are we going to tell about this?"

"Well, at least Steve and Andrea," I said. "Didn't they make it once in a Sunfish in the middle of a lake in New Hampshire? This is at least as good a story as that one. Wait, Marianne! Don't climb down yet—I want a picture of you, bare-ass up in that tree."

She laughed, and quickly yanked up her shorts before I could snap the photo. What I got instead was a shot of a lovely woman, more-or-less dressed, standing on a tree branch, smiling broadly at the camera and extending the middle finger of her right hand.

**********

On the morning of our next-to-last day, I slipped out of bed very early, pulled on some sweats, and went outside to enjoy the cool air and the subdued light just after dawn. I sat on the porch, looked at the lake, and thought about what I wanted to say to Marianne.

I had planned for weeks that this trip would be the time to tell her the truth about Carrie—that there was no Carrie, and no lengthy affair, just a brief two-night stand with a young woman at a conference the previous summer.

I had thought over and over about how to raise this ticklish subject, how to tell Marianne that I had deceived her by NOT having an affair. "Honey," I thought I'd begin, "I have something important to tell you. It's actually good news, but it may not sound that way right at first. In fact you may be angry with me—you may feel I've betrayed you—but when you think about it I hope you'll agree with me that it's a good thing."

I imagined her face when I told her—utter shock, confusion, and then perhaps rising anger. Maybe she'd tell me off, then stomp away to be by herself for awhile. After an hour or two, she'd return, ready to complain good-naturedly to me for deceiving her and thank me for not having avenged her affair with one of my own.

But what if it didn't go quite that way? As I sat there in the early morning light, my plan to confess the truth seemed less and less like a good idea. I could also imagine a much more furious reaction: "you mean you made me suffer for weeks—for MONTHS—with images of you and that voluptuous woman, snuggling together in your apartment, having wild acrobatic sex that I could never compete with—and it was all made-up bullshit? You bastard! What kind of fucking sadistic thing is that to do to someone you say you love?"

"All those months," I could hear Marianne continuing, "when I was suffering about you and Carrie, and reminding myself that it was my own fault, I'd brought it on myself, you were probably just chuckling to yourself about how easy it was to turn the tables on me! You insensitive, vengeful PRICK! And after all that, you still have the nerve not to trust ME? Well, fuck you, husband! All you've told me today is that I can't trust YOU!"

And then she'd stomp off into the woods; but when she came back there might be hours, or even days, of angry silence.

No one wants to be played for a fool. I had learned that, in spades, when I was first shattered by the knowledge of Marianne's adultery. Since that time we had made our way back from the brink, from the possible end of our marriage. We had done it slowly, painfully, with a lot of hard work. Why would I want to jeopardize that now by confessing to a lie that had undoubtedly done more good than harm?

Life was messy, and unpredictable. The symmetry of Marianne's long-term affair and my fictitious long-term affair had not been planned. On the contrary, I invented Carrie as a way to get Marianne to understand the pain I was in, in the wake of learning about her and Eddie. It had served its purpose. It had hurt Marianne a lot, I knew, but it had also helped restore some degree of balance to our relationship. I even think that my 'affair' helped Marianne begin to forgive herself for what she had done, faster than would have been possible otherwise.

I could no longer see any reason for not letting my secret lie buried.

As I sat musing, the screen door squeaked, and a moment later I felt Marianne's arms encircling my neck, as she kissed the top of my head and murmured "good morning, sweetie!" into my hair.

I reached back and pulled her around and onto my lap, where she snuggled her head into my neck. We rocked back and forth for a few minutes, enjoying the quiet and the feel of one another.

"Is today the day?" she asked me.

I looked at her in surprise. "For what?"

Looking directly at me, she said, "for whatever it is you're planning to talk to me about." Amused by my look of total shock—my mouth must have actually fallen open—she continued, "I know you pretty well, Tom. You've been more and more thoughtful, even abstracted, the last couple of days. You're working something out in your mind, and I figure that either today or tomorrow you'll be ready to tell me about it."

I just laughed, shaking my head at the sensitivity and intuitiveness of my wife, things I had appreciated for years but that had disappeared for a while at the end of her affair.

"You are something, you know that? And yes, I do have something to say, and this is the moment. Let's go down and stand by the lake."

Arm in arm, smiling together, we ambled down the path to the water's edge.

I turned her to face me, and we stood a foot apart, holding one another's hands, looking into one another's eyes.

"This is what I have to say, Marianne. This past year has been the hardest one of our marriage. But here we are—still standing. Next year is going to be much better, and the year after that, better still."

"We've gone through a hell of a lot together—and I want to be married to you for the rest of my life."

I stopped talking. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she couldn't speak. Instead, we embraced. She gave her body completely to me, stretching her arms up over my shoulders and letting her hands dangle behind me, the embrace that meant "I am utterly open to you, I am totally yours". It was a gesture from our past together, one that I treasured.

My own eyes were suddenly full of tears, and she saw them after a minute when she pulled back a little and gazed at me.

"I love you, Thomas Card," she said.

"And I love you, Mrs. Card," I replied.

THE END