by Dave Conifer
~~~
At four o’clock, well before he usually left for the day, Steve grabbed his briefcase and walked out of his office. Instead of heading to the elevators he veered to the back stairs, walked down two floors and weaved through millions of dollars worth of computer equipment until he found the closet-sized room that Nick and the other interns shared. “We need some privacy,” he told the unshaven kid who was poring over printouts with Nick. He got up and left without a word.
“Why’d you do this to me?” Steve demanded when they were alone. “Why did you send that email to Cindy Cary? I thought we had something going between us! What happened to all that ‘I owe you one’ bullshit? I almost got fired a couple hours ago because of what you did!” It only took five minutes for Nick to convince Steve that he’d forwarded nothing, no emails or phone messages, to Cindy or anybody else. The clincher was when he called up his own personal email account and let Steve poke around. Steve left feeling more confused than ever.
~~~
“If you think I’m getting up there,” Tom told the others at the table, “You better keep the beers coming. And beer might not be enough.” Jane and Kristie had talked their husbands into spending Friday night at the karaoke bar at Caesars in Atlantic City. It had been Kristie’s idea, actually. Jane had mixed feelings about any kind of date with her husband, especially one that happened to be a few casinos up the boardwalk from the Tropicana, where the pictures had been taken. In fact, she felt funny being in Atlantic City at all.
At least they didn’t have to worry about Allie for the night. She’d been left with Ann and Wendell Morehead, a fifty-something couple down the street. The next morning either Steve or Jane would walk down and pick her up, making sure to allow time for the customary chocolate chip waffles that Ann always served.
“Did you ever notice that they always sing ‘Bad Bad Leroy Brown’ at karaoke bars on TV?” Steve asked. “And it’s always a Japanese guy.”
“They can have it,” Tom said.
“I need alcohol fast,” Steve said to Tom. “All hell broke loose at work today. It was ugly.”
“Yeah, I heard things weren’t so hot there. Kristie told me about it yesterday. That sucks, sorry you didn’t get that job.”
“That’s just the beginning,” Steve said. “A lot happened today. Everybody found out that I was investigating that woman on the sly. The woman that got the job. They even had all my emails. I broke a few rules but I was so careful! I don’t know what went wrong. My boss hauled my ass into his office and tore me a new one. I’m on internal probation right now. I think the asshole just made that up, but the point is that I’m on thin ice.” Jane was shocked as she listened from across the table. She knew he hadn’t gotten the job, and she was worried about his arrangement with the intern, but this was the first she’d heard about what had happened with Cindy and Mr. Ramos earlier that day.
When the karaoke stage opened up and two women shared the microphone to sing a Beyonce tune the club was noisy enough that Jane felt like she could tell Kristie what Rob had done on the expressway the night before. When she finished explaining what had happened Kristie was surprisingly nonplussed. “We already knew he was nutty,” she said. “The craziest part of the story isn’t him. It’s you. Why in the world were you following him?”
The song ended and the club erupted in applause. Jane looked nervously across the table at Tom and Steve. She decided that she didn’t care if they went up on stage and made fools of themselves, but she didn’t want any part of it. She relaxed when it appeared that another group of drunken men was taking the microphone.
“Don’t you see what’s going on with him? He was about to go completely out of control. What if I hadn’t shown up?”
“What difference would it make?” Kristie asked. “You’d find somebody else to finish the painting. That’s all. Didn’t you say he didn’t show up today anyway? He’s bat shit crazy. So is anybody whose blood is loaded with steroids. We already talked about this, remember?”
“I think he’s sick.”
“Of course he is,” laughed Kristie. “Anybody would be.”
“He’s really far along, though,” Jane said. “No hair on his head but everywhere else he looks like an ape. I saw his back. He hides it but I saw it once. Covered with acne. And his eyes, that’s the worst. It looks like he has hepatitis. They’re so yellow.”
“I’m sure his liver is shot. That’s why. As you well know. But now that you’ve seen his temper are you having second thoughts about letting Allie around him? Because you should be. He could flip out at anything she does that pisses him off. That’s what people who are hopped up on steroids do.”
“I saw it firsthand on the expressway. Now that was road rage. Or ‘roid rage, as Steve would say,” Jane said before taking a sip of her daiquiri. “But it just doesn’t worry me when Allie is with him. If you saw them together you’d see.”
“I feel like I should tell Steve about this. For Allie’s sake,” Kristie said.
“Don’t. I’m telling you. Just don’t.”
“Jane?” Kristie said, placing her hand on top of Jane’s. “What is it?”
“There’s something you don’t know about,” Jane said.
“Yeah!” Steve yelled as a man belted out ‘Welcome to The Jungle.’ “Guns and Roses! That’s what I’m talking about!” Jane had been watching out of the corner of her eye and knew he had just been served his fourth beer. It wouldn’t be long before he was up on stage, especially now that he knew they did his kind of music. If she wasn’t the designated driver she’d have started throwing back daiquiris because she knew he’d try to drag her up there with him.
“Let’s go next! All four of us!” Steve said. “What song do we all know?” He and Tom put their heads together to work it out. Kristie leaned in. It was too much for Jane. Trying not to make a scene but knowing there was no way not to, she got up and left the club.
Kristie tracked her down next to a fountain near the hotel’s front desk. “What happened?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just needed some air, I guess.”
“Yeah, right. The air’s worse out here then in there. What happened?”
“I didn’t want to go on stage. I just don’t feel like it. Steve would’ve hassled me if I stayed.”
“So you got stage fright,” Kristie giggled. “You just didn’t drink enough.”
“He’s cheating on me, Kristie,” Jane said.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I’m not going up there and smile and sing with him. Not when he’s cheating on me,” Jane said.
“Are you sure? My God! When did all this happen?”
“I have pictures,” Jane told her. “I’m so confused. I’m crushed. I haven’t slept in our bed since I saw the pictures.”
“Who took the pictures? Does Steve know that you know?”
“No. I haven’t said anything about it.”
“He must know something’s up if you’re not sleeping with him,” Kristie pointed out.
“I just say it’s too hot in the bedroom and I need some air. Then I go sleep on the couch,” Jane explained. “It’s only been a few nights. He’s been so upset about work that he hardly notices. I didn’t know what else to do. But I’m not going up and singing with him like we’re the Osmonds or something.”
The husbands showed up before she could answer, which was a relief to Jane. When Kristie eventually got around to asking, it wasn’t going to sound good that she got the pictures from an anonymous Facebook poster. “Are you all right, Jane?” Tom asked. “We thought maybe you were sick.”
“Yeah I’m good,” Jane answered.
“Don’t tell me,” Steve said sarcastically. “You needed some air, right?”
“It’s time to go home, anyway,” Kristie said. “It’s just as well.”
“What? We were the next act!” Steve protested. Kristie whispered something to Tom, who caught Steve’s eye before jerking his head t
oward the exit. Each sulking and brooding for their own reason, the four wound through Caesars and into the parking garage without a word. They were halfway home before anybody spoke, and that was about the next day’s weather.
~~~
“That was really selfish of you, what you did there tonight,” Steve said to Jane after they’d dropped Kristie and Tom off and gone home. “I really needed to get out. I really needed a night to forget about all the shit that’s happening to me. Just when I was starting to relax you put on your fucking drama queen act and fuck it all up.”
Jane stared at him, wondering how in the world she’d ever thought he was the one. There was no point in talking with him right now. That he was slurring his words showed her that he wouldn’t be rational about anything. He’d just be nasty. She wasn’t ready to talk about what was bothering her the most, anyway. “You’ll get over it,” she said simply, before leaving the room and heading for the stairs. She heard him stumbling at the bottom step just as she reached the top.
“No way!” he yelled. “You don’t walk out on me when we’re talking! No way!”
“Hold on a minute,” she answered as he labored up the stairs. “Who walked out on who again?” What’s gotten into me? I’ve never done this before. What’s he going to do?
By then he’d reached the top of the stairs but Jane had escaped to the bedroom. “You walked out on me twice!” he bellowed. “At the club and just now! What’s going on with you?”
“Drop it. Just drop it.”
He grabbed her by the arm as she was turning to go into the bathroom. “Don’t you ever tell me what to do. What’s your problem? Why are you acting like this?”
She yanked her arm away, thankful that he was too drunk to do anything about it. “Don’t do that again. I’m not kidding.” After entering the bathroom she locked the door and sat on the toilet with her head in her hands.
The rattle of the doorknob and then two fist pounds on the door came shortly after. “Goddamn you, bitch!” When did he drink so much? I hardly saw him with a glass in his hand. She didn’t think he’d even remember it in the morning. He might even be unconscious by the time she finished up in the bathroom.
But he wasn’t.
“Don’t tell me you’re sleeping downstairs again tonight,” he said from where he sat on the edge of the bed.
“I think I am,” she said, bracing herself for his reaction.
“Why? And I don’t want to hear any crap about how hot it is. It was never too hot before. Not until this week. What the hell’s going on with you?”
She walked over and pulled a clean nightgown from a drawer, a convenient excuse for turning her back on him. “Well, if I was going to sleep with you tonight, I’m not now. I don’t appreciate you punching the door and cussing me out.”
He punched his palm with his fist. “Damn! What’s going on? What did I do?”
As if you didn’t know, she thought. But she wasn’t ready to reveal what she’d found out. Not until she knew what she was going to do about it. “I’m tired,” she said as she walked toward the door with the nightgown in her hand. “I’m going to bed.”
He got up and stood in the doorway. Is he going to stop me from leaving? Who’s the caveman now? Is he going to rape me?
“Just wait a minute,” he said. “Slow down a little, will you? Come on, Jane. Let’s not do this.”
“Do what?” she asked, stopping halfway.
“You have to admit you’ve been a real bitch this week. Right? It’s not like you’re on the rag or anything.”
Her lips clamped together as she glared at him. “Forget it,” she said. “I’m going to bed.” She moved to the door, trying to hide her fear of what he might do. At the last minute he turned sideways, enough to let her pass. She heard the door slam when she was halfway down the stairs. It could have been worse, she reminded herself.
~~~
The next day was a quiet one in the Havelock household, but only because Jane and Steve didn’t speak a word to each other. Occasionally a message was relayed subtly through Allie, but for the most part there was no communication between the adults. The first words weren’t exchanged directly until about eight-thirty that evening.
“I’m firing the caveman,” Steve said out loud when he knew Jane was in the room. “Today was his last chance. I’ll finish the painting tomorrow. I already called Eddie. He’s coming over to help.”
Jane bristled, enough that she broke her silence. “This is his job. It’s only been one day.”
“It’s been two, and we don’t know if he’s coming back at all. I can’t do it during the week so it’s got to be tomorrow.”
“That’s not fair to him! It’s his job. You don’t know what he’s been through!”
“And you do? Let’s hear it!”
She’d already said more than she meant to. Instead of saying anymore she turned and walked out of the room. When that wasn’t enough, she walked out of the house and sat on the front steps, trying to decide what to do. Three hours later, after learning that there was no way for a tired body to get comfortable on a set of concrete steps, she slipped back into the dark house and passed out on the couch.
Chapter 10
“Oh, sorry, Jane,” Eddie said as he passed through the living room. “I didn’t see you there.” Even though she was fully clothed in the jeans and blouse she’d worn the night before, Jane pulled the tattered quilt over her body as she came out of a deep sleep. Eddie was carrying two steaming cups of coffee in a cardboard tray. Somehow that told Jane that it was early. She rolled into the back of the couch without answering just in time to avoid eye contact with her husband, who was calling out to Eddie without any apparent concern about waking her.
So he hadn’t just been trying to irritate her by talking about firing Manteo. He really was planning to finish the paint job. Since Eddie was already there this must have been planned even before the fight the night before. That surprised her. So did the fact that Steve was up and about at all. This was the only time she could remember in a long while that he’d been up this early on a weekend for anything but an early tee time with his golfing buddies.
Eddie tried to keep his voice down but Jane could hear him probing, trying to understand why Jane was on the couch. She didn’t even try to listen in on what Steve told him because she knew it would be nonsense. It was unlikely that Steve himself knew why she was so upset with him. As far as he knew, the affair was still a secret. Even if he did know, there was no way he would confess that to Eddie. That wasn’t his style.
“Hey Steve,” Eddie yelled from the extra bedroom, forgetting momentarily that there were two people in the house still trying to sleep, “Where’s the paint for this room? It’s not in here, that’s for sure.”
“Shit,” Steve shouted back. “Don’t tell me the caveman still has it. It’s got to be around here somewhere.” Jane knew it wasn’t without even looking. She’d watched Manteo long enough to know he only brought inside what he would need on a given day. The rest of the paint was either in his truck or in the little shed at the brick mansion.
What about that brick mansion? Is that where he’s been? He was in danger of losing his gig at the Havelocks now that he’d disappeared for a few days. Maybe he didn’t care, now that he had something new going. It was probably a nicer place for him to hang out, although he didn’t seem the type to care about such things. There was something strange about what he was doing at that house, though. She was sure she didn’t fully understand what she’d seen that night.
Eddie came back through with some painting equipment that he’d brought from home. After making sure he was out of sight Jane gathered herself and went upstairs to take a shower. Since the laptop was still in the bedroom she took it into the bathroom with her for another secret Facebook session. There was another note from Mike Albemarle. This one was even more brief than the others but it invited her to check the updated photo albums. Why not, she asked herself. It couldn’t really get any worse.
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The new pictures hardly seemed new. They, of course, showed her husband with the same woman. In the first batch they were together in a hotel corridor, about to open the door to a room. In the next group they were wearing different clothes and were eating breakfast, most likely the next morning. It had been a few months but she could remember a few times when her husband could have pulled it off, under the cover of one of the occasional weekend jaunts he loved to take with his friends. She wondered what she’d been doing at that exact moment in time. Probably sitting half awake in the living room with Allie preparing for a new day without her husband around.
It hadn’t been very long since she’d started looking at pictures like these so she was shocked at how analytical she’d become. The first time she was angry and upset. Now she studied them like a doctor checking x-rays at the hospital. She thought it odd that anybody who knew her, and thus likely to be familiar to Steve, was able to get close enough to take these pictures. Wouldn’t Steve have objected? Maybe the photographer used a zoom lens, or maybe he took them from a concealed location. Then again, it didn’t matter how he did it, she reminded herself. It only mattered what the pictures showed.
She typed a quick message back to Mike Albemarle.
Mike,
Can you send me everything you have? Do I know you? Can we meet? If you are really trying to help me that would be the best way.
J
~~~
“What do you want for breakfast?” Jane asked a sleepy-faced Allie, who came out of her room at just about the same time Jane came out of her own. She wanted waffles. Jane felt guilty for talking her into cold cereal, but she’d made some plans during her shower that didn’t leave time for making waffles. After setting Allie up she took a deep breath, composed herself and went into the den.
