46 comments/ 36680 views/ 27 favorites The Furniture Store By: justthejanitor It was a cold and gray November day and I was standing in a vacant lot in Chicago, the damp wind chilling me to the bone as I took in my surroundings. Small chunks of burnt wood and soot-stained dry wall combined with bits of broken glass to litter the ground while little bits of lightweight trash skipped through the lot, pushed by the incessant wind. It struck me that the scene was an appropriate metaphor for what my life had become, a burnt out empty shell of what it had been, cold and desolate, a monument to loneliness and bitterness and failure. I kicked at a hunk of concrete and continued to perseverate on what, if anything, I could do with what I had left. ---()--- I met Olivia at charity fundraiser a few weeks after my twenty-ninth birthday. At the time, I was essentially second in command of the family retail business, and my Great Uncle Seth, the main shareholder and CEO, ordered me to attend to fly the flag, try and make friends and maybe drum up some business. The event was beyond boring, loaded with overly dramatic, self important people who thought that raising a few thousand dollars to help build a local library put them on a similar plane as Mother Theresa. I was trying to be nice, nodding, smiling absentmindedly, occasionally biting my tongue until it nearly bled and desperately hoping, somehow, for a chance to make an early exit when she quietly slipped into the seat next to me, flashed a thousand watt smile and started talking like we were old friends. Olivia was lithe and graceful, a thin, brown-haired, bronze skinned beauty that oozed confidence and made conversation easy and, suddenly, I didn't mind the fundraiser at all. I've always been a fairly hard driving, competitive guy in school, at work or playing sports, but had never been particularly comfortable in social situations. I'd been more or less married to my job since business school and that, in combination with my inherent social awkwardness, made it doubly tough to develop any kind of experience with women. My resultant shyness meant I almost never approached a woman for a date unless I'd known her for a long time, but I found Olivia irresistible and, by the end of the evening, I'd asked her out to dinner. We ended up having a great time and, contrary to my fears, we had a number of mutual interests and had plenty to talk about. I quickly became infatuated with her and the feeling appeared to be mutual and by the time I'd taken her home, it was very clear that we'd be seeing a lot of each other. We dated off and on for a couple of months as the romance built up momentum and it wasn't long before we were seeing each other a couple of times a week and had started spending a fair amount of time on each date necking. Now, I obviously liked her and was more than a little interested in taking her to bed, but I wasn't sure at all how to take the next step forward without risking a painful rejection or even spooking her permanently. One night, though, Olivia made it clear that she thought I was dragging my feet way too much when, in lieu of a good night kiss just outside her front door, she literally took things into her own hands by unzipping my pants and pulling me into the house by the one appendage I was sure to follow. I was no virgin, but I also didn't have a lot of experience with women, and I'd always thought that lustful passion was a male thing. Olivia disabused me of that notion with great alacrity. She gave me a ride that would make a mechanical bull look tame and by the time we were done, I was completely and utterly wrung out. It was, up to that point in time, the single most enjoyable thing I'd ever done in my life. From that point forward, intimacy became frequent and easy as our relationship deepened. Within a few months we were living together and a little more than a year after we met, we were married. We moved into a 4 bedroom house in a nice, tree lined neighborhood, did a little landscaping and got ourselves a dog, and life was very, very good. Nearly everything about being married agreed with me, the end of a loneliness that I'd been reluctant to recognize, the unconditional emotional support, the physical satisfaction of meaningful sex, having someone to love and to be loved. It was everything that I wanted and more. There were, of course, some issues. I was always stretched a little thin at work, so Olivia was somewhat frustrated with my availability and I guess there were a few other habits that she found a little annoying. Naturally, there were some things that bugged me too. Maybe the biggest issue was that we had to socialize with her family a lot more than I would have liked. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike her family, they were fine, upstanding people who were generally polite and didn't seem to have any particularly objectionable personality traits, but I just didn't want to spend lots and lots of time with them. Her parents were an outgoing, welcoming couple and they seemed to like me, but they had a tendency to lecture about how we should live our lives, and were putting some pressure on us to have kids. But we were never around long enough for me to get particularly annoyed, so there wasn't too much of an issue there. Her younger sister Mindy and her husband were a little more problematic for me. Mindy was a shorter, slightly rounder version of Olivia. She dressed like Olivia and talked like Olivia and when Olivia was around, was never away from her side for more than a few minutes. They were like virtual Siamese twins, whispering conspiratorially, laughing at inside jokes and gossiping about friends and family shamelessly and since she and her husband lived within 15 minutes of us, we spent quite a lot of time together. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, I suppose, and I guess it might have been a bit of jealously, but when she was with Mindy, she wasn't really with me, and that was more than a little frustrating. Mindy's husband didn't make things better either. He was a tall, blonde, good looking guy named Bruce who was friendly, easy going and, in my view, not particularly bright. He had taken over his family's furniture store in Joliet and that was his favorite- and sometimes only- topic of conversation. He talked about that store like it was Microsoft and he was Bill Gates, bragging on how well run it was and how nobody else in the furniture business knew what they were doing. The issue with that outlook was that the store was struggling and I was pretty sure that anyone with a hint of business knowledge knew that part of the problem was Bruce himself. But, I wanted peace and I wanted Olivia to be happy, which meant not making waves with her family, so I spent more than a few evenings nodding my head numbly as I listened to Bruce drone on. ---()--- We'd been married nearly two years when Olivia first asked me to help out Mindy and Bruce. She'd made a fancy dinner with candles and mood music and dressed in a way that promised a satisfying night in bed, so, like a typical rookie husband, I thought she was just interested in having a great roll in the hay with me. But, as the evening went on, it became clear she had an agenda. She kept talking about how lucky we were to have such a great income and how she felt like we were in a great position to help others. Then, with a look of practiced distress, she went on to confess how worried she was about Mindy and Bruce who were just getting by. It turned out that Bruce owed some money and was having trouble making the payments and, without help, he wouldn't be able to fill out his floor inventory. I could see pretty quickly were this was going, and so I cut to the chase. "How much do they want Liv?" She paused and raised her eyebrows in a way that told me I'd short circuited her planned presentation. She chewed her lip, thinking for a minute and then looked shyly into my eyes. "He needs 50 or 60 thousand. That would make them free and clear." I nearly choked. Yes we were doing well, but most of my money was tied up in a family trust and that amount would put a very, very large dent in our ready cash. Now I knew I could get money out of the trust if I really needed it, but I didn't look forward to explaining that to Bernie Blackman, our main business attorney who also handled the trust. He'd do what I'd ask, but I knew he'd be all over me for the foreseeable future to get the money back. He wasn't a hard-ass, he just took his job of protecting the money in the trust, as well as the business, very seriously. Thinking on this, for one of the only times in our marriage, I tried to demur on a serious request by Olivia. "I don't know, Liv, that's a lot of cash." She frowned. "Mindy says he's got some great ideas and that they will pay it back right away. They're good for the money, if that's what you're worried about, I'm sure of that." Well, I wasn't sure about that. In fact, I was pretty confident that I'd be flushing a sizable amount of cash down the toilet if I sent it Bruce's way, but I wanted Olivia to be happy, so I bit the bullet and wrote a check for 60 grand, firmly telling Olivia that it meant we'd have to economize some until the money came back. Now, I'd heard some advice once that if you loan money to family, you should figure you're never going to see it again. That sets you up emotionally so that relations don't deteriorate if and when they don't pay it back. So, in my mind, this was a gift. A 60 thousand dollar gift to Olivia's sister and her relatively incompetent brother that I didn't think would actually solve their problem because I knew he wasn't a good enough businessman to turn his store around even with the cash. I wasn't happy, but I wanted to be the good guy to her and her family. I wanted them to like me and I was willing to kiss away 60 grand to make it so. ---()--- Three or four months after I'd loaned Bruce the money, I was home, rummaging through the house for a thumb drive that had some important data on it. I had a bad habit of absentmindedly putting important things in unusual places, so I was pretty much looking through the whole house. After checking all the usual places, I wandered into the guest room and checked around the desk and even looked under the bed. As I stood up, I noticed that it was unusually lumpy, at least by Olivia's household standards, and was definitely in greater disarray than I might have caused with my little search. It seemed clear that someone had slept in it and had hurriedly pulled the sheets and covers up without making it properly. It didn't register as anything particularly important at the time, but later that evening I mentioned it casually to Olivia. "Hey, was someone sleeping in the guest bed? I went in there earlier and it was pretty rumpled." Olivia started stuttering out a reply and looked flushed and nervous. "Uh...uh, well, I, uh, took a nap in there earlier. Sorry...I was doing some cleaning and got so exhausted I just jumped into the bed and didn't have a chance to clean it up any." At that point in our marriage, I trusted Olivia so much that the idea her explanation was anything other than the God's honest truth never crossed my mind. In fact, I remember thinking how funny it was that she would be nervous or embarrassed about her need to take a nap in the middle of the day. But the bedspread wasn't the only clue I missed. Over the next year or so, several other, odd little inexplicable things happened that, if I hadn't had my head so far up my ass, would have signaled that Olivia wasn't exactly a paragon of virtue. I took it as Gospel, for example, that her normally low key job as an assistant manager at a small, independent bookstore, suddenly required her to attend a five or six hour uninterruptable meeting that was held every Tuesday. A meeting that was so important that I shouldn't try to contact her at all during that time. I also accepted every single explanation for the little bruises that cropped up on her body, some in relatively intimate places, or the lingerie in the wash that I hadn't remembered her wearing. And then there was the thing about the orange juice. Olivia had started shopping at some new upscale grocery store, which in and of itself, wasn't a big deal except that she couldn't get a lot of the stuff I liked, including my favorite brand of orange juice. I complained about it and asked her to switch back, but she insisted the new store was better and far more convenient for her since it was right on the way home after her Tuesday meetings. Now, her choice of grocery stores would hardly seem like a particularly powerful indicator that she was cheating, but, it became the piece of information that finally caused me to pause and think, ultimately leading to the epiphany that broke my heart. ---()--- Less than 18 months after the first loan, Olivia started hinting around that Bruce and Mindy might need some more money. Now, he hadn't even paid back a fraction of the original 60 thousand and I was more than a little reluctant to give away additional cash, especially in support of an enterprise that I deemed to be unsustainable. So I blew off Olivia's suggestion, hoping she'd get the hint and stop asking. But she kept it up and suggested that Mindy and Bruce might lose the business if they couldn't upgrade and get more inventory. Still trying to be Mr. Popular, I felt that I couldn't refuse outright, so I eventually agreed to look at Bruce's business plan and tour his store to see what he wanted to do. My hope was that Olivia would let it go if I at least verified that it was a bad investment. I met Bruce in his store on a Monday morning and with typical unbridled enthusiasm, he took me around and showed me the floor plan, introducing me to the employees, smiling and slapping me on the back like we were greatest of friends anytime we stopped to talk with anyone. He talked about his business plan and with great confidence and earnestness spoke of how he was certain a little more money to improve the stock and a few upgrades would have the store turning a significant profit in no time. Bruce and I sat down in his office for half an hour and I shared my reservations. As diplomatically as possible, I let him know that I thought the business had some pretty deep problems. I hinted around that, unless he could streamline and cut costs and prices, he was unlikely to really increase customer interest and revenue even with the changes he wanted to make. I even, very gently, suggested that he might want to consider selling the business and take up some other work, but he really bristled at that and reiterated the idea that he felt certain a face-lift would be all that it took to turn the corner. I didn't have it in me to say 'no' outright to his request for cash, so I explained that I didn't have enough personal money to give him a sizable loan and that it would have to come out of the trust. I told him I'd go back and talk to Bernie and see if he could clear the way for a loan but I couldn't guarantee anything. My plan was to avoid conflict and at least make it seem that I was making a legitimate effort to secure the money for him before breaking the bad news and essentially blame Bernie when we turned him down. Cowardly I know, but I wanted to keep peace in the family and I wasn't in the mood to lose quite that much cash. The truth was, Bernie would pretty much do whatever I asked him to do, but I'd always given an impression to everyone I knew that he was duty bound to keep a tight rein on the trust and I couldn't supersede his decisions. That might seem unfair to make Bernie out to be the bad guy, but, honestly, I think he actually liked the role and he never complained about it to me. At the end of the conversation Bruce nodded his head and flashed a big, confident smile, giving me the impression that he felt like he'd be getting the loan. He gave me a vigorous hand shake and another big pat on the back, making me feel even guiltier, as I left. I pulled out of the parking lot and started for the freeway, thinking about my meeting with Bruce and trying to mentally absolve myself of the sins of cowardice and borderline dishonesty that I'd just committed in his store. I was, more or less, driving without paying much attention to my surroundings when I saw something that at first struck me as an odd coincidence but then grew into a vaguely disturbing thought. It was a grocery store, smaller in size than most of the big chains, painted green with a large sign out front that said 'Salvadore's'. It was so unusual looking that I was sure I'd never seen one before anywhere, but somehow the name rung a bell that I couldn't quite place immediately. I mused on it for a few minutes before it finally hit me. 'Salvadore's was the name of the store that Olivia had started shopping at, the store that didn't carry my favorite orange juice and that was 'so much easier to get to'. Only this wasn't anywhere near her work or our home or any other place she might reasonably need to be during the week, so it simply didn't make any sense that this store was convenient to whatever she was doing on Tuesdays, unless, of course, whatever she was doing was at the furniture store. Thinking about it, some worrisome possibilities began to present themselves. I took a 'U' turn and drove past Salvadore's and then back to Bruce's furniture store and sat in his parking lot for a few minutes. I took out my cell phone and verified that this was the only Salvadore's in Chicago and then mused, for 15 or 20 minutes about all the possible reason's she'd be shopping there. I considered the possibility that Olivia's work had another office in this area, that she might be meeting Mindy for lunch, that maybe she was attending a health club or something in the area. But, my mind kept dragging me back to the conclusion I didn't want to face. Suddenly I wanted more information and I wanted it now and I decided to take the bull by the horns and confront Bruce. I jumped out of my car and walked briskly to the front door of the furniture store, where, I noted the hours painted on the glass indicated the store was open until 8 on weekdays, except Tuesday's when they closed at noon. The cancerous suspicion that had been born minutes before continued to grow. Slamming the door open, I marched into the store and made a beeline for the first employee that I saw, a rather shiftless middle aged man who was stirring a cup of coffee. "Excuse me, but...." "Sorry, I'm on break right now", he interrupted testily. "Look, I don't want to take up your time, but I need to speak with Bruce McCoy right away. I've been discussing some important financial matters with him and I need some more information." I looked at him expectantly, but he continued to stir his coffee and even took a sip without even really acknowledging my request. One of the reasons they couldn't move merchandise was becoming obvious and I waited a moment in flabbergasted silence before speaking again, this time with a more insistent tone. "Uh, seriously, this is kind of important, so can you get him for me?" He eyed me warily, but eventually a look of recognition came over his face. "You're the guy who was in here earlier with Bruce, right? Hey, yeah, come on in. Bruce is meeting with a supplier right now, but you can wait in the break room for him if you want. I don't think he'll be too long. Maybe a half hour at most." He led me back to the room at a leisurely pace and left me with a cup of coffee and the remote for the TV. I had a hastily devised plan in place in which I would confront Bruce forcefully and make a few bluffs about having solid evidence that he and Olivia were cheating. I'd threaten that if he didn't come clean right away, the evidence was going right to Mindy and the rest of the family. I figured if Bruce was cheating with her, he'd break right away and if he wasn't I'd just have to live with the embarrassment. Maybe I'd make it out to be a joke or something. The Furniture Store I walked around the room going over the speech in my head, how I'd suggest that I had pictures or tape or even go so far as to say that Olivia had confessed. As I mused about the coming confrontation, I began to absentmindedly look around the room. I rummaged through the magazines a little and clicked through some of the TV channels before I decided to poke around a little for clues. It gradually occurred to me that if they were using the store to cheat there was a very good chance that it would be in this break room and if they were doing it here, then they were almost certainly using the beaten down couch that I found myself staring at. For a minute or two, I contemplated the couch with a kind of anger and trepidation. It was a faded and pea green in color with a couple of coffee stains and a tear in the fabric on one of the arms; it had clearly seen better days and would probably be more at home in a junk yard or some sort of second hand store. I pulled up a cushion and my heart rate jumped a little when I saw that it had a fold out bed and that there were sheets on it. I checked quickly to verify that Bruce was still in his office and then yanked open the bed. The sheets were a jumbled mess, full of wrinkles with a couple of slightly darker, yellowed areas right where you'd expect a 'wet spot' from sex. There appeared to be a lipstick stain or two and the bed smelled faintly of perfume. With the bed open, I could see some debris on the floor under the couch, so, I stuck my right arm into the space at the top of the bed and stretched and strained to reach the uncleaned carpet below, pulling items up one at a time. Eventually, I recovered a pen, 37 cents in change, a crushed coffee cup, an empty tube of KY jelly and a receipt from a restaurant. The receipt was from a Mexican place that Olivia liked to eat at for lunch, and there, at the bottom was her signature, flowing and elegant and incriminating. Even looking back, I recognize that the receipt was just a flimsy bit of circumstantial evidence, something that might have been explained away very easily with any number of stories or excuses. But somehow finding it lifted the final fog from my mind and the nasty little oddities about her Tuesday meeting schedules and her bruises and lingerie use and the messed up bed all coalesced to form a clear picture about a cheating wife and a shit-head brother. Suddenly my plan to intimidate Bruce into confessing seemed like a bad idea. I wanted clear cut evidence about the affair and recognized a confrontation might throw that off, maybe make it impossible to prove. But now, knowing the probable time and the place of their likely infidelity meant that I would almost certainly be able to gather the information-the evidence-that I needed to be sure. I folded up the bed and sat on the couch, fuming, my heart racing and my teeth clenched. I'd been screwed a couple of times in some business deals and I remember being cheated at cards once, but I had never felt anything remotely resembling this kind of betrayal in my life. I was on the verge of shouting and crying and screaming and putting my fist through the wall simultaneously. But gradually, out of this emotional maelstrom one burning desire began to emerge. The need to get even. I calmed down a little and started considering my situation, trying to think in as much of a detached, unemotional manner as I could. I thought about the vulnerabilities of Bruce and of my wife and of how I could exploit those weaknesses to provide some modicum of satisfaction for my bruised ego once I had irrefutable proof. My first fantasy was to beat the shit out of Bruce, but I only saw jail time there. My second thought was to refuse the loan and insist on getting all my outstanding money back immediately. But, I remembered something Bernie had told me once when I considered getting financing from a bank that was particularly aggressive. He'd advised against it saying that If you owe someone money, especially someone who didn't have your interests at heart, he had you by the balls. I wanted Bruce by the balls. I glanced to Bruce's office again and saw that he was standing and shaking hands with the supplier. I waved to him and smiled and he waved back, walked the supplier to the door and then hurried back to the break room. "Hey, Mike, did you forget something? Do you need some more info?" I shook my head and smiled. "Listen, Bruce, I've thought this over and I want to say that maybe I gave the wrong impression earlier today. I really hope you understand that I think you're a great businessman and I think you've got a real winner here with this store. But, as I was driving away, I realized that maybe I got across the wrong message when I asked about....well.... about your contingency plans if things didn't go the way you wanted." He smiled back. "Oh, no, Mike, I get it. Any good businessman would ask the hard questions." "Great, great. I just want to be sure that you know that I really like what you're doing here. Plus, you're family and I have to feel like this wouldn't just be a safe investment, it's just the right thing to do for you as a friend and a member of the family as well as a good businessman. So, I didn't want you to go home without knowing for sure that I plan to push really hard to get this money for you and I can't imagine we won't get it. Now, like I said earlier, I don't have that kind of coin in my personal accounts, so I'm going to have request a withdrawal from the trust fund, but frankly, I'm virtually certain I'll be able to make Bernie bend on this and we'll get the money for you." Bruce was listening with an expectant grin on his face that grew bigger as I talked. "Oh, man, that sounds great. I'm telling you, this business is right on the edge of taking off, so that loan is as safe with me as it is in the bank. You don't have to worry a bit." "I'm not worried at all Bruce. Bernie will have to draw up some sort of an agreement, of course, since he'll insist on protecting the trust with collateral and what not. I should be able to get things back for your signature within a few days. Unless you have a problem with it, I'll guess you'll have the cash within a week." ---()--- The next morning I wandered into Bernie's office, shut the door and flopped into a chair. Bernie was talking on the phone, making some notes and held up a single finger to indicate that he'd be able to talk shortly. I fidgeted conspicuously while he finished the conversation and he evidently noticed because he looked at me quizzically when he hung up and asked: "So, Mike, what's got you so nervous this morning?" I cleared my throat and leaned forward a little to talk. "Bernie, I think I'm going to need to access the trust for a fairly large loan." "Yeah, well that shouldn't be a problem I guess. What...uh....what kind of a loan? And how much?" He woke his computer up with his mouse and clicked a couple of icons to reveal a spread sheet that summarized the trust holdings. I cleared my throat and leaned even closer. "Look, Bernie, before we start doing the paperwork, the first thing I want from you is absolute confidentiality." "Of course, I'm always...." "No, look, I want you to understand that this is...unusual... and there may be a temptation to talk to Seth or someone else here at work or in the family. I don't want anybody other than you and me to understand what, exactly, I'm trying to do here." He squirmed in his chair and wrinkled his brow and, with some hesitation, began a response. "Uh, Mike if this is illegal...." "It's not illegal. Not at all. In fact, I want you to create a document that is the pinnacle of foolproof legality." He cocked his head and I continued on. "I want to loan some money. I want you to draw up the loan papers. I want the conditions of the loan to be very clear. I want the loan to be appropriately collateralized by the very business I'm planning on loaning it to and I want the penalties for non-payment to be very, very clearly delineated." "Sounds like you expect a default. Like you want to trap the guy...." "More or less." "So, who are you trying to trap and why?" I hesitated a minute before responding and then looked him directly in the eye. "I want to trap my brother Bruce. The why is Olivia." He raised his eyebrows in surprise and opened his mouth a couple of times to reply without actually producing any words. Finally he took a drink from a glass of water on his desk and choked out: "Are you, uh, sure about this?" "Very." I replied. "Very." ---()--- Within a week the document was drawn up and I personally brought it to Bruce for him to review and sign. He had his lawyer, a small, mousy guy named Tim Sowers, who also happened to be his cousin, sit down with us to go over the document. "Ok." Sowers started out. "I looked this over last night and it's pretty much what I'd expect for a business to business loan. But, there are a couple of things I want to point out, here, Bruce, before you sign on, ok?" Bruce, as always, was flashing his insipid smile, agreeable and clueless as ever. "Sure, let me have the info Tim." Sowers cleared his throat and looked carefully at Bruce, I thought I detected a hint of contempt from him, almost as if he knew how little Bruce understood of how to run a business. "OK, first. This loan is for $425,000 to be paid back over 7 years. You've got a fairly standard rate here. The payback will begin immediately at a little over 6 grand a month." Bruce was nodding. "Now, the actual amount of money you'll get is only $365,000, since we are consolidating this with your loan from a couple of years ago. Mike is going to get his $60,000 back and you'll be getting the rest. OK?" "Capisce," replied Bruce smugly, with a slight Italian accent. Tim looked at him again and sighed quietly. "OK, then. The loan is collateralized. It's tied to your business as well as a property over by Keokuk. Is that the duck hunt?" "Uh, yeah." Bruce motioned to Bernie as he spoke to Sowers. "They...uh...want to make sure that Mike's trust is, uh, protected in case the business really tanked." He grimaced briefly and then added quickly "But that's not going to happen. The business is in great shape. I think so, Bernie Black seems to think so." He nodded to me and smiled, "and Mike definitely thinks so. Right Mike?" "Oh, yeah." I answered as enthusiastically as possible. "Bruce showed me the books and I think he's got a winner here. " I smiled. "But, well, I don't know if you're familiar with Bernie or not, but he's very, very conservative and always considers the worst case scenario. He wants to be absolutely sure that the trust is protected, so it's important to him that if, for some impossible reason, the business collapses there will be something else to reimburse that trust with." Sowers frowned and then looked intently at Bruce. "You understand that if you default, you could very well lose the business to the trust? Maybe even the duck hunting land? That's been in the family for a while." "Sure." Bruce was speaking earnestly, maybe trying to convey to Sowers that he understood the warning and was taking it very seriously. "I understand the, uh, ramifications. You bet. But, honestly, I'm very confident in the business and I think it's a lot safer to take this loan than to try and run the business without it." "You understand that in as little as 3 months of insufficient payment the penalties start to kick in? Right?" "Sure, I understand." He smiled at me like we had some sort of secret together, like he figured that I'd never really allow Bernie to enforce the penalties for anything but the most egregious violation. I just smiled back. ---()--- At home, Olivia was overjoyed. She kept going on and on about how well Bruce's business was going to do now that he had enough money to fix the main problems. Somehow I managed to avoid blurting out what I was dying to say, namely that the main problem was Bruce himself and no amount of money would fix that. But, for the next couple of weeks, keeping my mouth shut concerning Bruce's business acumen was about the easiest thing I had to do when I was around Olivia. I needed more information before I'd be able to end my marriage the way I wanted and that would take a little time, so I knew I'd have to have to control my emotions, which ranged, on a daily basis, from melancholy to rage to disgust when I considered her affair. Eating dinner with her without blowing up became a challenge and having sex had become something to avoid altogether, if possible, and when I had no 'out' I was forced to rely on the memory of a rather sordid sexual encounter years before. When I was 18, my friends and I took a road trip to San Diego for spring break. One night, we ended up in Tijuana, blowing off some steam. We drank and watched some pretty explicit and frankly gut turning, sex shows and, ultimately ended up with some whores. Somehow I got paired off with a gal in her early 30s, who had evidently been through a fairly hard life. She wasn't particularly attractive, and probably worse than I remember given my judgment for aesthetic beauty had undoubtedly been compromised by a fairly high blood alcohol level. Even 3 sheets to the wind, though, I had some pretty serious misgivings about taking her to bed and I started making some excuses to try and get out of it. But, my buddies gave me a very hard time, questioning my manhood, my sexual orientation, the whole nine yards. Feeling like I had no choice, I plastered on a fake smile, took a couple of more drinks in rapid succession, grit my teeth and followed her into a dank, unkempt private room above the bar to get down to business. Now, to get the deed done, so to speak, I found I had to pretend she wasn't even there, like she was just some sort of a sex device. I ended up using her like a piece of meat, and fucked her and got off, right through the noise from the bar and the claustrophobic room, the filthy sheets and the funky smell she gave off. So for the next couple of weeks, the few times I had sex with Olivia, she became that whore in my mind again. I closed my eyes and held my emotional nose and pounded her like I'd pounded that poor Mexican woman so many years before. Nothing gentle, no attachments, just a biological function no more profound than taking a shit. Once I got started, it became almost too easy to fuck her as hard and fast as I could. I was borderline brutal in my technique and I'd guess it might have even seemed a little like a rape if Olivia hadn't been humping back. Not surprisingly, Olivia noticed the change and ended up mentioning it, complaining that she wanted to have at least some gentle romantic sex when we went to bed; but on the whole it seemed like she didn't mind getting pounded and considered it a general upgrade over the sex we'd been having to that point. I guess in another life, she'd have made a good living off of American tourists in Tijuana. ---()--- Getting incontrovertible evidence of the affair turned out to be about as easy as I thought it would. Bruce was using some of the money to do a little remodeling of the store itself and there were quite a few workers wandering around during the day, fixing things up. I guessed, correctly, that no one would notice an electrician who had $500 of my cash in his back pocket slip a camera and recording device in one of the can lights over the break room couch on a Monday morning, a month or so after Bruce got the money, and remove it again two days later. Now I had a pretty good idea of what Bruce and Olivia were doing, so I assumed I was prepared for what I'd be seeing from the camera. I figured I'd sit in my office at work with a drink and some chips and take it in as dispassionately as possible, like watching a movie. Well, it turns out that seeing your wife fuck another guy is far worse than just understanding that it's happening. Much, much worse. By the end of the tape, I'd downed enough scotch that I there was no way I could drive home, had trashed my desk, thrown up twice and hurled a paperweight through my office door. The details are pretty much what you'd expect. I skipped to early afternoon on Tuesday and started watching there at a fast speed until I saw the figure of a woman in a blue dress with a large tote bag, abruptly enter the room, take fresh sheets out of the bag and unfold the couch. I immediately slowed the recording to normal speed and saw, with a sense of grim confirmation that the woman was, indeed, Olivia. After she changed the sheets, she opened the bag up again and pulled out a bottle of wine and two glasses. She pulled off her blue dress, folded it neatly and placed it on the bag and then waited, in high thigh stockings, French cut panties and a very sheer bra, reading a novel while seated on the side of the bed. It seemed strangely surreal, reminding me a little of an odd exhibition of performance art I'd once seen in New York, in which a barely dressed young woman read strange, new age poetry to an audience that cared more about her boobs than her poems. When Bruce finally entered the room, Olivia put her book down, smiled and stood up to give him a hug. She then pushed him away slightly, chastising him for making her wait for him to come. He retorted that her problem was that she could never wait to come and they both giggled at what seemed to be an old joke between the two of them. They kissed for a few minutes and then Olivia reached for his belt, undid his pants and pulled them down around his ankles along with his underwear. He stepped out and she stroked him a couple of times, looking up and smiling at him for a minute before she took it into her mouth. She went at it with a fair amount of enthusiasm for a few minutes while he slowly rocked into her, holding the back of her head with his hands. Suddenly he stopped humping and pushed her head away and she smiled at him, pulled her panties off and lay back on the bed with her legs opened invitingly and obscenely. He knelt down and returned the favor for a few minutes before he stood, pulled his shirt off and mounted her. I was a little surprised that neither of them finished the other orally because, when I was with Olivia, that was a must. But I got the feeling this was their routine, as they'd gone about the changes wordlessly, each anticipating what the next step would be. The fucking wasn't any more interesting than the oral sex. He pounded her hard, using a steady, metronomic rhythm that I'd have considered boring if I wasn't feeling outrage. Somewhere around the 10 minute mark, Bruce had an orgasm and I got the sense that Olivia came at the same time by the way she suddenly extended her legs and rolled back her head. They lay, quietly, with Bruce still inside her for a few moments until he rolled off onto his side and they began to kiss for a while. By the time they finally finished, I was so hurt and enraged that I was breathing harder than they were. I knew the images I'd seen had been burned into my consciousness as an indelible scar that could never be erased and as such, never afford any sort of forgiveness for either of the two cheaters. I was glad I had a plan to end, rather than to save, my marriage. I leaned forward to turn off the video when I noticed that they began some pillow talk. Olivia was laying on her side, with her head up, supported by her right hand over her crooked right elbow, while she traced lazy patterns on Bruce's chest as he lay supine. They were looking at each other, murmuring softly, smiling contentedly. Olivia started to complain lightly about having to use the furniture store as a love nest. Bruce rolled to his side and responded. The Furniture Store "Come on Liv, if we use a hotel we'd definitely leave a trail and we nearly got caught using either of our houses. There really isn't any option." Olivia shrugged. "I know, I know, but really, I wish we had another place to play. I just don't like this room and changing last week's dirty sheets before making love isn't particularly inspiring." Bruce reached and stoked her cheek, smiling. "Well, we could always just run off together." Olivia laughed in response and Bruce's expression became contemplative, his smile fading some. "Seriously, though, Liv, do you ever regret marrying Mike? I mean, I love Mindy, and she's a good wife. But sometimes....I don't know....do you think it would have been better if, maybe, you and I had gotten married instead?" Olivia scooted up in the bed until she was essentially sitting up, her back leaning against the couch, her arms wrapped around her knees which were drawn up to her breasts. She looked thoughtfully at Bruce for a moment before answering. "Come on Bruce. How many times do we have to go over this? What we have is special. Very special. But, no, I don't think it would have been better if we'd gotten married instead. We'd have been very happy together, of course, but I also love Mike and you love Mindy. If you and I were together it would just be us. Mike is a very monogamous guy and he would never develop a relationship with me if I was married and I don't think Mindy would like it that way all that much either." She leaned over and kissed Bruce on the cheek, rubbing his chest with her right hand. "The truth is, Bruce that people like you and I have a greater gift for love. We can love more than one person at a time and we.....we should love more than one person. It's right for us to do that. But, Mindy and Mike aren't like that. Their inclination to limit themselves means that they'd never be able to do what you and I do. They'd never be able to keep their emotions straight and keep everyone satisfied." Hearing that, my outrage peaked and it was then that I sent my paperweight through the office door. Because I loved her, and maybe because she was the only woman that had ever loved me, I guess I never realized how arrogant, delusional and self serving my wife was. In her mind, somehow, she'd turned her cheating ways into some sort of a virtue. To her, evidently, it wasn't an act that represented a stab in the back of her lawfully wedded husband, but rather, something that increased the love in the world. Something that she not only had the right to do, but had some sort of a moral imperative to do. I slept on a couch in my office that night and finalized all the paperwork I needed the next morning. ---()--- When I got home the next evening, Olivia greeted me with her hands on her hips and a sour look on her face. "Where the hell were you last night? I was worried sick. You didn't call, you didn't text, you gave me no clue whatsoever what the hell...." I stopped her short with an upraised hand. "I was at work last night. I got drunk and couldn't drive home, so I stayed there...." She gave me a look of complete puzzlement. "Wait...what? You got drunk? At work?" I smiled and nodded back to her and she continued. "Well, at a minimum you could have let me know what was going on. I nearly called the police. And....what the hell were you doing drinking at work?" She was still glaring at me, but she continued to carry a look of extreme puzzlement with her question. Without answering, I brushed passed her into the living room and flopped on the coach, perched my feet on the coffee table, pulled my briefcase into my lap and opened it up. Olivia, gave an exasperated sigh and followed me into the living room to sit, angrily, in a chair opposite the couch. "Hey, how about some answers Mike?" "Hmm? "What were you doing drinking so much at work? What happened last night? What's going on?" I continued rummaging through my brief case and pulled a couple of folders out, laying them, one by one on the couch beside me. "Just a second Liv, I want to get things arranged here a little." I sorted the papers a little more, pulled my feet off the table and leaned forward as I replaced them with the paperwork. I rubbed my hands together, as if anticipating a sumptuous meal, looked to Olivia and smiled. "OK then, let's get started." "What? Get started...." "Yes, well, after last night's experience...." "Last night? What....what happened last night?" Olivia's aggressive attitude when I'd come home was being rapidly replaced by something more passive. I was starting to sense a little fear. "Can you at least tell me what you were doing last night?" "Oh....yeah. I was watching a video." "Huh?" "Yeah, I was watching a feed I had of you and Bruce fucking on that couch in his break room, and I found it a little disturbing, so I guess I had a little too much to drink. You understand..." I gave a thin, emotionless little smile back to Olivia whose face had gone from puzzlement to distress and then shock, fear and bewilderment. Her mouth was open half way, making little spasmodic movements, barely opening and closing, unable to produce any meaningful sound. Her eyes, wet and getting wetter, were darting back and forth from the papers on the table to the door and to me, as if she expected someone or something to come through the door, sweep up the papers and make everything ok. Finally she spoke. "I...I don't understand, Mike. What....what are you talking about?" "Come on Olivia. You can't be that dense. I'm talking about you and about Bruce and about what the two of you did yesterday and every other fucking Tuesday for at least a year." I gestured to the paperwork in front of me. "I'm talking about the end of our marriage." Olivia let out a sudden gasp and covered her mouth with her hand for a moment. I waited for her to respond. "Mike.....we can work this out. I think I can get you to understand...." "Oh, I think I understand Liv." I pulled a DVD out of the briefcase, held it up briefly and then slid it across the table toward her. "I got all kinds of information last night to help me understand. Really, a veritable gold mine of new facts about my loving wife and my friendly brother." She looked at the DVD like it was a poisonous snake, physically recoiling slightly, making no effort at all to pick it up. "Go ahead Liv, that's your copy. I won't tell you how I got it, but I have my own for future reference and to further my education about your philosophy on love and devotion." She leaned forward and started to stand and, for a moment, looked like she was going to come to me, but I raised my hand and stopped her, and she sat down. She bit her lip for a second and then, looking directly at me, began speaking again, slowly and deliberately, with a sort of false confidence that I suspect was intended to hide the wavering quality to her voice. "Mike, look, you have to open your mind and think about this. It doesn't make any sense for you to ruin your life, our lives, because we have different values and.....and talents. I love you and...and have always been prepared to make accommodations for our differences and I hope that....." I interrupted with a derisive snort. Different values and talents? Really? You think cheating on your husband is some sort of a talent? Because, honestly Liv, I'm pretty sure everyone is up to that, seriously...." "Talent is the wrong word." She took a deep breath and looked to the ceiling for a moment before looking back to me. "Capacity. I think the right word is capacity. I have a great capacity for love and, I can, and have successfully, loved more than one person romantically at a time. Other than outdated conventions about love and relationships, there is no reason that I can't, or shouldn't exercise my....capacity...." "Please, just stop. Honestly, you're just making me sick with your excuses. I get it....I got it from the tape, that somehow you think you have some sort of special ability that gives you license to cheat and lie and sleep around when you're supposed to be faithful. But, really, it's just a bullshit excuse Liv. Anyone can have a romantic involvement with a couple of people simultaneously. That doesn't make them lovers with a 'greater capacity'. It just makes them cheaters." With a flash, the apologetic, conciliatory Olivia was gone, replaced by an angry, aggressive, supremely self-confident shrew. "You call me a cheater?" She spat at me. "Well, fair enough from your point of view, I guess I am. But, again, I've never lost or suppressed my love for you or my love for Bruce, so I've never cheated on my emotions, never compromised my feelings or my actions because of some medieval code that says I have to confine my relationships to one and only one person. So, yeah, maybe I look like a cheater to you, but when I look in the mirror I have no problem with what I see, no qualms about what I've done, none." She was breathing hard and with passion, her face and chest flushed, fire in her eyes, a look that was daring me to challenge her. So, I did. "You want to live like that? Some sort of an open relationship with lots of different guys, loving one guy one day and another the next? Be my guest; to each his own. But it's pure unadulterated bullshit to pretend you haven't cheated, haven't been dishonest, because you never once let on to me that you were out fucking Bruce and you know, very well, that I wouldn't have gone along with that. You know it. " She was feeling my fire and she turned her head slightly from me, avoiding my gaze, but I twisted and turned so that my eyes locked on hers and then continued. "So you chose to lie by omission. By the greatest fucking omission of truth that I've ever personally experienced. You made me, and practically everyone else, think we were a pair, a bonded pair exclusive to each other. But you went out and started....or continued.....fucking Bruce, hiding your cheap little furniture store trysts as best you could. You told a lie....lived a lie... and no matter what the hell kind of oddball marital philosophy you have, that makes you a cheater." By now angry tears were running down her cheeks and her mouth was clenched tight, more angry than sad, slowly shaking her head in disagreement with what I'd said, but apparently without the words to back up her feelings. I continued to stare at her, waiting for a response, but when nothing came, I broke the standoff by sliding the paperwork closer to her. "Read it. Get a lawyer. It's fair." Finally she spoke. "And if I don't want a divorce?" "Then you're out of luck Liv, because you're getting one." I paused a moment and, with a poorly concealed smirk, added, "But, hey, it's not like you're going to be alone." I moved out that night, leaving for an apartment closer to work and all too quickly reverted to what I'd been before Olivia. A worker, a business man, a loner without the time or inclination to engage in social activities. The hours I spent at work became hellacious, and more than a few people commented on it. But I knew if I sat at home I would simply obsess about Olivia, endlessly playing her affair through my mind, wondering if she was thinking of me or if she was fucking Bruce at any given moment. I really had no choice but to throw myself into work as hard as I possibly could and try get past my marriage as quickly as possible. My normal inclination in any sort of a contest is to do anything necessary to win and I suppose most people who knew me in the business world would have expected a long, drawn out, aggressive negotiation to reach a settlement. But that would mean delay and interaction and pain and I was willing to pay to get out quickly and cleanly. I offered Olivia a large lump sum in lieu of ongoing support with a threat to withdraw the offer if she didn't acquiesce to a quick divorce. Deep down, I guess I wanted her to object, to insist that we could work out the marriage somehow, decline the offer and fight for the marriage. I wanted whatever slim chance she thought our marriage had of survival to be more important to her than the money. It turns out it wasn't. With some half-hearted objections, she agreed to the terms and, 60 days later, my marriage was over. ---()--- A couple of months after the divorce was finalized Bruce, predictably, started coming up short on his payments. He'd gotten the appropriate warnings and a nasty letter from Bernie letting him know we'd start taking the money any way we could get it. He called and emailed with excuses and promises, virtually begging for more time to pay. I instructed Bernie to play hardball, though, and we made it clear that we would exercise our rights and begin to extract collateral as soon as legally practical. On the eve of a 'workout' session Bruce begged to meet with me personally and I agreed. At that point, I knew he was as desperate as he was going to get and that he'd do anything or take money from anyone in order to stave off the wolves. I wanted the money to come from Olivia. I looked forward to the meeting. We met at my office, after hours. Almost all the secretaries had gone home, but my personal assistant, Sherry, lingered on in the outer office, ready to prepare paperwork if necessary. Bruce was nervous, more nervous than I'd ever seen him, giving me a sweat slicked hand to shake as he tentatively entered my office. Lurking behind him, almost shyly, was Olivia and I had a little trouble catching my breath when I saw her. Olivia sat nearer to me than to Bruce and was wearing one of my favorite outfits, full makeup and flashing her incandescent smile, and there was little question in my mind that she was there to try and bolster Bruce's chances by appealing to my former emotional ties. I suddenly felt a nearly overwhelming impulse to rush over to her, take her in my arms and kiss her but, understanding the danger of what I was feeling, suppressed the urge ruthlessly, painting my face with a scowl and grunting out some greeting in a reluctant recognition of her presence. Truthfully, I was more than a little surprised that she had come at all. I'd anticipated this meeting for a long, long time and had carefully scripted in my mind how it would go, but I didn't figure Olivia would be there and worried that her attendance would somehow interfere with my plan to bind her to her lover's failures. I thought about objecting, maybe insisting that she wait outside, but finally decided her presence might actually make the outcome more satisfying. Bruce started in by trying to charm me. After shaking my hand he smiled as much as possible and started with some small talk about how he wanted to try and make things right, wanted me to be happy and how he hoped I knew how much he respected me and that he was so sorry about how things had worked out. I was incredulous that he apparently wanted to resume a friendship of sorts, that he seemed to think we could all be buddy-buddy again. I wasn't buying. Without cracking a hint of a smile, I stared him down and with as little emotion as possible stopped his little speech. "Bruce, please, cut the shit. Your apologies are meaningless to me, ok?" He rocked back in his chair, taking on an expression as though I had struck him and then he pressed his lips together, took a deep, worried breath through his nose and nodded his head in acquiescence before beginning again. "OK, sorry Mike. Let's get to business." He looked at me as though it was my meeting, like he thought I should proceed, but I just spread my hands out in an expectant gesture, and waited for him to state his case. He licked his lips nervously and ran a trembling hand through his hair before starting to ramble about how he had every intention to pay the money back but the he was a little short 'at the moment'. He described how Bernie was playing hardball and expressed his doubts that I knew how much pressure he was putting on him to pay. Then he went on to talk about how the business was on the verge of recovery and that with just 'a little time' he'd be able to get his head fully above water. Finally, he finished by trying to make the case that I'd be better off financially if I gave him more time. I leaned back in my chair, slowly, carefully studying Bruce's nervous smile, the thin film of sweat that was appearing on his forehead and the poorly controlled tremor that his right hand was exhibiting as it rested on the table between us. "Bruce, if you were anything other than a blatant bull-shitter, I think I might consider giving you an extension." His eyes opened wide in surprise and distress and he leaned forward, getting ready to protest when I stopped him with an upraised hand. "Come on Bruce, you must know it's nearly impossible to trust a man who didn't think anything of fucking his married sister. You must know that asking for a financial favor from the husband of that same woman is laughably ridiculous." Bruce fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair while Olivia cleared her throat nervously and interjected with a plaintive voice. "Mike, please, you can't punish Bruce because..." "I can do whatever the hell I want, Olivia." I snapped, giving her a look of unmitigated hostility. "And, just why are you here anyway?" "I thought that I might be able to prevail on you for....old times' sake. I still care for you and I thought that..." I interrupted her abruptly and loudly. "You thought wrong. Frankly, your presence is just serving to remind me how Bruce here figuratively screwed me by literally screwing you. So, do yourself and Bruce a favor and sit back and try and look pretty and keep the comments to an absolute minimum." Tears were appearing in her eyes and her chin started to wrinkle, but she did as I'd insisted and leaned back in her chair quietly. I turned back to Bruce. "OK Bruce, so this is the way it's going to be. You're going to pay back on time, on a strict schedule or I'll start going through a 'workout process' to get what I can out of the collateral assets." Bruce was shaking his head aggressively. "Come on Mike. You can't take my business from me. You can't..." "I can and I will if you don't pay, Bruce. My advice is to get the money. Look to your family. Find a bank. Sell something. I don't care. Just get the money or I'll take what I can." "But....but....you know the banks aren't loaning to me or I would have gone to them in the first place. And my family....they can't help. They don't have that kind of dough..." I looked Bruce squarely in the eye. "Don't give me any shit about your family not having any money, I know they do." "No....no, they don't. They would help if they could, but they just can't." "What about her?" I jerked my thumb over to Olivia. "Have you asked her for money?" Bruce sat back. "Liv? Liv doesn't have..." I laughed. "Sure she does. I cut her a check for a hundred and fifty grand. She's got plenty of money. Don't you Olivia?" I looked to Olivia with a smirk and Bruce looked to her with a question on his face. As I suspected, he wasn't aware of the lump sum payout. She suddenly looked nervous, maybe a little nauseous. "Well, yes, I do but....but I need that money...." I laughed again. "Whoa there Liv. I remember how 'safe' you thought it was to give money to Bruce when you talked me into helping in the first place. Why hesitate now? I mean, come on, don't you have confidence in Bruce here to turn his business around? Aren't you here to help convince me he's good for the money? If you think it's a good investment for me, why not for you?" I was giving her an expectant, malevolent grin. The Furniture Store She swallowed hard, looked to Bruce for a second and then back to me. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and, with a vaguely defiant tone, announced that she could certainly make up the difference for a while. Bruce smiled at her and she smiled weakly back and they left with Bruce walking with a little more confidence and Olivia with her shoulders sagging in disappointment. As I held the door open for them I left them with one last admonition. "Remember, Bruce, I don't care how. I just want the money." "You'll get your money." He spat back at me. Olivia looked worried. ---()--- Over the next few months I kept on trying to find solace in my work. Businesslike and efficient with everyone, I continued to avoid any kind of personal conversation at all cost, completely eschewing any social opportunity, preferring, instead, to work or to be alone. I was desperate to keep the betrayal and treachery of my wife off my mind, but everything seemed to remind me of her, even, of course, the monthly check from Bruce came across my desk. The check brought a kind of bitter satisfaction, a sense that, to some degree, I'd been able to drag the authors of my unhappiness down into misery with me. Things got a little worse when Mindy contacted me. She e-mailed me a couple of times and even called me on the phone. I was rather surprised to find out that Bruce and Olivia had come clean to her, no doubt with a watered down version of their affair, and that she'd taken it fairly hard at first, but eventually forgave them both. To my disappointment and horror, she vaguely implied that she'd had some idea that they had been lovers, and that they'd come to some sort of an arrangement in which Bruce and Olivia continued to see each other. She even made a half-hearted attempt to get me to consider taking back Olivia. My answers to her were bitter and abrupt and I was fairly sure I'd left her in tears by the end of the second call, after which I didn't hear from her again. Mindy's apparent tolerance made it clear that the emotional price that Bruce and Olivia were paying was far less than I hoped. My great fear now became that somehow, someway the store would become solvent, that Bruce would pay off his debt, repay Olivia and that they'd all be satisfied with the outcome financially as well as emotionally. That they'd leave me behind, shaking their heads collectively at the poor wretch who simply couldn't understand what modern love was all about. I needn't have worried. ---()--- The furniture stored burned to the ground nine months after my meeting with Bruce and Olivia. The fire was a spectacular two alarm job that threatened some adjoining structures and headed up the nightly news. I hadn't seen the story, but Bernie had and he called me immediately to discuss the ramifications. He was livid with me for taking on the risk because he was certain that the trust had flushed a fairly large amount of cash down the toilet. I mollified him by promising to buy out the liability of the loan personally if default were to occur assuring him also that the properties themselves were worth something simply because of location. The obvious questions about the fire were asked and, when accelerants were detected, the insurance company immediately balked at payments. With no income from the store, Bruce completely defaulted on the loan and I acquired a smoking ruin of a lot and 35 acres of duck hunting land on the Mississippi. The criminal investigation proceeded for nearly six months. The detectives put together a fairly good circumstantial case against Bruce and Olivia. They could show that the store was hemorrhaging money and that Olivia was forking out larger and larger monthly sums to keep it afloat. Bruce had made several desperate attempts to get loans from other sources but failed and then, as quietly as possible, made a last ditch attempt to sell the business. But, there were no buyers, even for a steeply discounted price. The investigators couldn't produce any evidence that Olivia or Bruce were near the store the night of the fire or that they'd acquired anything to start or accelerate it, but their case was built on the theory they'd hired a pro to torch the store. They found numerous searches containing the term 'arson' on Olivia's home computer, phone records that showed communication with at least two men with arson convictions and noted that she'd withdrawn fifteen grand in cash one week before the fire occurred. Olivia and Bruce had fairly good representation, undoubtedly bought with whatever money she had left, and the DA knew he'd be in for a fight, so he started to deal. I guess they started with first degree arson and fraud charges and started dealing down from there. The defense wasn't budging for anything less than fourth degree arson, and so a game of chicken started with a court date set. I was on the witness list, waiting in the outside foyer on what was to be the first day of the trial. I was sitting on a hard wooden bench, reading the paper and absentmindedly tapping my foot on the tile floor when a court official came out and announced that the trial was off, that they'd finally cut a deal and that we could all go home. As I was gathering up my stuff to go, Olivia and Bruce came through the room, accompanied by some officers and their attorney. A couple of reporters jumped up and shoved microphones under their noses, but they declined to comment and the reporters turned to their lawyer instead. Bruce met up with Mindy and left the room with some officers, but Olivia looked in my direction and without hesitation, she approached me to talk. I have to admit, I admired her courage to face me under the circumstances. "Well, Mike, is this your happy day? Is this what you wanted, for me to be punished for my sins?" I gave a bitter laugh and shook my head derisively. "I wanted a faithful wife and a successful marriage. I was never going to get what I wanted from you. Absent that, I just wanted my money. " She sniffed at me. "Well, you aren't getting any of that now, are you?" "Oh, I got some of it back and I've got the store." She laughed. "And what will you do with that? Has it stopped smoking yet?" "You'd be surprised what a competent business man can do with a good piece of property, even a smoking one." Her nostrils flared and her face hardened a little. She took in a deep breath and paused for a moment before talking again. "And you're happier now? Alone? Without anyone? Married to your work for the foreseeable future?" She gave me a knowing smirk. "Don't deny it, I know you. I know how terribly distasteful it is for you to go out and meet new people." "I'm working on that, Liv. I loved you, but you aren't the only woman in the world you know." She smiled confidently. "No, I'm not. But I don't think you are going to be able to find a...what do you business types call it? An equivalent replacement? Whether you like it or not, you are going to miss me." I leaned close to her and whispered into her ear. "I might be a little lonely, but you won't be, will you? I mean, the good news is that you'll be holed up in close quarters with a bunch of fairly androgynous women that you can share all this abundant love you have with. It will be a win-win for you and the dykes." Olivia surprised me by suddenly losing her cool at my last comment, recoiling from me as though I was radioactive, her face a mask of contempt and her eyes flashing with anger. She breathed in deeply, her chest heaving aggressively a couple of times, and then she exploded. "You fucking, prudish, self-centered, emotionally dwarfed asshole." She screamed as the officers pulled her away from me to the door. "You're going to be in a shithole just like I am. Alone, without anyone. Married to your fucking job......" Watching her scream at me, recognizing how the love she'd had for me had evaporated completely, leaving only a kind of contemptuous hatred, I was struck with a sudden wave of melancholy. I fought the urge to react in a way that would betray my pain, smiled thinly, and mumbled out some kind of crack about her public use of rather offensive language. But, she simply continued her diatribe as though I'd said nothing. "...but it won't be long before I'll be out of my prison and moving on, but you'll still be alone, wishing you could be with me. And then....and then, years from now, when you're married to some boring little ex-secretary, you'll still wish that you'd just accepted..." The door closed on her, abruptly snuffing out the rest of her rant. I turned and walked out of the courtroom. ---()--- My afternoon had been cleared for the trial, so now, without any appointments or meetings and fighting a growing sense of gloom and loneliness, I went to the burned out lot and thought about my life. The temperature dropped and the wind continued to whip my jacket and burn my face as I looked around, still considering what I could do with the wreckage. I wasn't sure if I could salvage the situation at all, and my main inclination was to sell it off, forget about the loss and concentrate on what I'd always done. That was the safe thing to do, maybe even the smart thing to do. But I knew there was another option. I could take a risk and rebuild, maybe even put up another furniture store. I mused about the possibility of successfully selling furniture from the same place where Bruce had failed. I thought about making a big deal of it with lots of advertising, billboards, maybe even some TV commercials; things that Bruce and my ex couldn't possibly miss. Just to rub it in, I might even name it 'Olivia's' and have lots of 'fire sales'. It struck me that the decisions I'd be making about the lot were similar to those that I'd been unconsciously making about my life in general. Olivia had been right about me. My natural tendency, really my only social inclination before I met her, was to withdraw, to avoid the risk of intimate relationships and concentrate on work. I could see that I was drifting inexorably to a lifetime as a loner, a financially safe but relatively joyless existence. I was becoming, again, what I was comfortable with, doing the safe thing. I sat down on a block of concrete and took another look around, still weighing my options, still considering my future. I was stuck between my fears and my wants, the ingrained habits that had served and defined me and the desire to change, to be different. I was about to leave and return to work, to let things ride on and put off the decision for another day, when a few rays from the late afternoon sun filtered through some clouds and between some buildings to illuminate a wall painted with graffiti on the other side of the street. The lighted glinted off the wall with a burnt orange glow, giving an incandescent quality to the concrete and the writing. The words were written in bold, white letters, clear and easy to read. "Go for It." I'd always been dismissive of superstitious people and the way that they let inconsequential, objectively irrelevant things rule their lives as signs or habits. But here, sitting on a slab of concrete in the November cold, the words struck me as fate, like a message from God. I pulled out my cell and made a call to the office, getting my assistant. "Hey, Sherry, who was the architecture firm that designed the new mall that got all the press? The one with all the glass and the fountains." "Uh....Hammer-something I think....." She hummed lightly to herself for a couple of moments while she checked. "Yeah, Hammerstone. They're based here in Chicago it looks like." "OK, look, could you set me up with a meeting as soon as possible?" She hesitated a second. "Are we...uh....building something?" I looked around the lot, seeing the new store in my mind's eye and suddenly felt a surge of confidence. "Yes, yes I think we...I think I am." "Uh...ok. Sure boss, anything else?" I chewed my lip for a second as my eyes came to rest once more on the graffiti across the street, reading again the imperative to 'Go for It'. "Yeah, Sherry, there is one more thing. You know that rep for the knock off jeans, the tall blonde girl, Brenda? Brenda White I think..." "Yes...." Sherry's voice was becoming more incredulous and I had to wonder if she thought I was having some sort of a breakdown. "Can you get her number for me?" "Sure, sure boss. Uh....do you want me to get her on the line?" "No. No, I'll make the call myself. Thanks."