Entrapment

I realized suddenly that it said a lot more about me than it did them. They seemed to be really happy. Even my two best friends somehow hadn't noticed that I was in the room yet. I guess they probably expected me to show up dressed to the nines and making a glamorous entrance. But without Dennis to support me, I didn't have nearly enough money for frivolous things like that.

I continued watching the table. I guess I was more interested in whether or not Dennis showed up for the reunion than I was in Penny and Della.

Something funny happened then. I'd assumed that the redhead was with Dennis' other friend, the slim stupid one who never seemed to have a girlfriend. But when he sat down and started laughing, a short woman with a big butt came over and sat down on his lap. So if the redhead that was stealing all of my attention wasn't with either one of those two, who the hell was she with?

I was distracted by Penny's arrival.

"I didn't even know you were here," she gushed hugging me.

"Yeah," I said. "They made me pay at the door."

"Oh that must have been an oversight," she said nervously.

"What's with the redhead?" I asked.

"Oh you remember Stephanie, don't you," she said. "Remember she was a freshman when we were seniors. Remember how cute it was when she had that crush on Dennis?"

"I didn't think it was cute," I said. "Uhm, Penny, is Dennis coming?"

"Honey, Dennis is already here," she said. "He's in the running for Reunion King. He had to go back to his hotel and get a back pad for..."

Even as she spoke, I was looking past her. I saw Dennis come back into the room and he looked like a million dollars. He had on a nice suit. His hair had been freshly cut, he was smiling and he just looked lit up. I was sure that he was over the pain I'd caused him. Perhaps he was even here hoping to see me, the same way I'd been hoping to see him.

I moved to intercept him and she grabbed my arm.

"Belinda, don't go over there," she warned.

"Why not?" I asked. "He's happy again. I can tell. Maybe we can talk now."

"Belinda, as your friend you need to know that he is happy but..." she began. I waved my hand in her face dismissing her. Fuck her. I'd been through hell the past five months. It was time for me to have a bit of good luck.

As I cut across the floor I heard snatches of conversation. "....can't believe she's not running for queen."

"...who cares...she's still hot." My confidence grew with every conversation I heard. All the way until I got near the table and saw Dennis walk up and place the back pillow he'd fetched behind that red headed tramp. My mouth dropped open and I went into shock. I just stood there, flummoxed. Everyone in the room could see my tonsils.

Della came over and stood beside me. "Are you as pissed off as I am?" she asked. I came here hoping your ex would be here. And he is but he showed up with Stephanie. How the hell does that even happen. It hasn't even been six months since your divorce."

"Are you sure they're together, together?" I asked. "Remember back in college, Dennis always did pick up strays. Remember how he tutored her? Maybe he's just trying to show her a good time."

"I wish he'd show me a good time," she said. "I think he looks even better since you broke his heart. Can you believe they asked her to run for Queen and she turned them down? She said that no one wanted to see her fat pregnant body up there on that stage. Her tummy is smaller than mine and she's pregnant. I'm going on a diet tomorrow."

I went and sat down at the bar and started drinking. Out of the corner of my eye I watched my husband shower all of his attention on that red headed slut. I also began to feel like I'd been fooled. Sometime later Della came over. She warned me against drinking too much. She had the chunky guy's wife with her.

I noticed that Della was asking about the redhead. "So how far along is she?" asked Della.

"She's about five months," said the other woman.

"Is she going to marry the father?" asked Della.

"Wouldn't you?" laughed the other woman.

"It's funny, I've known him for all of that time and I never thought that Dennis wanted kids that badly. I know that Belinda wanted to wait and..."

"Della," I said jumping off of the bar stool. "You aren't telling me that redhead is carrying my husband's baby are you?"

"Honey, you and Dennis are pretty much divorced," she said. "He can do whatever the hell he wants with whomever he wants. I tried to warn you that he's moved on. Even if he hadn't, you broke his heart Belinda. You pretty much screwed up any chance you had of keeping him when you ended up in that hotel room with Hank. You should be happy he's found someone. You should see the two of them together, they're so cute. They have their own little names for things. Like when they sneak off to have sex, they call it playing golf because..."

My head exploded. All of those times that Dennis had told me he was playing golf...He couldn't have been...could he? Another thing came into focus then. The red headed whore was almost to the day as far along in her pregnancy as my divorce. I really don't believe in coincidences. Dennis had to have been fucking her before we even filed for the divorce. The golf thing came back with a vengeance. The thing that really pissed me off was that Dennis had given me a measly ten grand. We had hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings and investments and I'd been bamboozled into gratefully and stupidly settling for chicken feed.

I realized then that my life was ruined and I realized then whose fault it was. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't Dennis' fault. All marriages have rough patches. Dennis had loved me, I'm sure of that. We would have gotten over our rough patch if it hadn't been for that fucking Hank seducing me while I was vulnerable. Hank had to pay.

I asked Della if she'd heard anything about Hank. She told me that Hank and his wife were almost done with their divorce. That wasn't news because the bitch was trying to sue me, too. Her lawyer had called me and told me that the case would start as soon as the divorce proceedings were over. I'd just laughed at him because I made next to nothing and because it had been Hank who seduced me. They weren't going to get anything out of me.

Anyway, Della told me that Hank and his wife were still living in a hotel on the other side of town. I was half drunk but in just the right mind to go over and curse that bastard out for ruining my fucking life. I got into my car and had trouble starting it.

The parking attendant was trying to give me shit about being too tipsy to drive. I just closed the door and drove off. Okay, I jumped the curb and almost hit a fire hydrant, but that was because he'd made me nervous.

I pulled into the parking lot of the flea bag hotel without further incident. I had no idea how I'd find Hank's room, but I got lucky. I saw one of his kids playing and followed him. I watched as the kid went back inside the hotel room. The door wasn't even locked. I looked through the window and didn't see either of the adults in the room. I changed my mind and decided to head back to my car. But before I could move someone hit me across the back of my head. Everything went black after that. I woke up a short time later with a cop shining a light into my eyes and telling me not to move. I tried to sit up and noticed there was a gun in my hand.

From behind me I heard the shrill sound of a woman screaming. It was somehow familiar.

"That's her. That's the crazy bitch right there." It was Hank's wife and she was pointing at me.

I dropped off again. As I was coming out of it I heard people talking. "...Drunk as a fucking skunk and ranting. I told her that she was too drunk to drive. She drove over the grass and down the curb. She almost hit two people on her way out of the lot."

"Well I heard her while she was at the bar. She was already drunk and talking about how some guy had ruined her life and he had to pay."

A detective came and in just looked at me. "Why'd you kill him?" he asked. "I know that you and he had an affair. Did it start and keep going since you were in college or did it just recently start up again?"

"I...I..." I managed to stutter.

"I know that you ended up divorced over it," he said. "Is that what got you so pissed that you killed him?"

Another cop came into the room and spoke to him. "You've got a visitor," he said. "I'm going to let her in here. You're chained to the desk so you're not going anywhere."

I expected my mother or Della or Penny. She was the last person I expected to see.

She had tears running down her small ugly face. As she sat down and looked up at me, she smiled.

"I saw my husband at the reunion," I said. "I was drunk and angry, but I didn't plan on killing Hank. I wanted to curse him out for ruining my life, but once I got there I changed my mind. I was going to just drive home and try to forget about it. I planned on getting back at Hank a different way. I swear to you, I've never fired a gun in my life. I've never planned to murder anyone."

"I know that stupid," she said. "But sometimes shit just doesn't go the way you planned. I'm guessing someone smacked you in the head and when you woke up the bastard was dead. The forensic evidence will eventually prove that you're innocent, but if I was you, I wouldn't say too much until then. Ask for a lawyer. Refuse to say anything until they get you a lawyer. You brought this on yourself."

She got up and walked out of the room. She paused in the doorway and said. "I want you to know that I forgive you. You weren't yourself and after all that's happened, anyone could crack under the stress."

Three days later the police cleared me of the murder charges. I was still held for the things I did do. They included drunken driving, nearly running over two pedestrians, tearing up the grass in front of the parking lot at the school. I was given a very stiff fine and time served. My license was suspended for six months, but they knew by then that I'd been framed.

During the first three days while they waited for my gunpowder residue test to come back and examined the trajectory of the bullet wounds, Hank's wife was doing all kinds of interviews for magazines and newspapers and the radio and TV. Everyone wanted to interview the grieving widow while the case was hot. That bitch cleaned up. We estimate that she took in over a million dollars in cash and then she disappeared. At least I don't have to worry about the law suit anymore.

An interesting note was that the fingerprints found on the gun, beside mine, were hers and they found out that Hank could only have been shot by a person who was less than five feet tall. I hear that she's in South America now, in a country where there's no extradition.

While I sat there in jail, waiting to be released, my thoughts went back to the way my marriage had ended. I couldn't get over how smoothly Dennis had picked up the pieces of his shattered life and moved on without me. It was almost as if it had been planned.

"I was set-up," screamed the whore I shared a cell with. "That shit was entrapment. They tricked me into taking the money for that blow job."

All of a sudden I realized that that what she was screaming about was exactly what had happened to me. I'd treated Dennis like shit and he'd gotten tired of it. So he'd gotten rid of me by letting me incriminate myself. It was...what did the screaming prositute call it? Entrapment. Unfortunately for me, entrapment was only illegal when the police did it.

* * * * * *

Epilog

Dennis

I came out of my thoughts in time to see Steff smiling at me. "I'll just go back to the furniture store and get the exact same crib in the exact same shade," I said. "We'll be fine. What are we going to name them?"

"One after my mom and one after yours," she said smiling. She stretched out her arms and reached for me. "My doctor says no golf for about a month or so. But after that we can start on the boys."

"What will we do when they're all grown up and moved out?" I asked.

"Sit out on our porch in front of a lake, naked and see what happens," she smirked.

"I don't think I ever imagined that I'd be as crazy about anyone as I am about you," I said. "I just never saw that in my plans at all."

"Dennis," she said kissing me. "Sometimes, shit just doesn't go the way you planned it."

The End