Live from the Game Ch. 01

Oh and one last thing about Paul. Holy crap he looked good. He may have got the brains of a donkey, but by god he won the Elder Statesman look. He looked great. We trotted him out as our glorious leader every opportunity we got -- any interview, he was there. Obviously we had to baby sit him a lot or he'd say ridiculous stuff I'd have to dig us out of later, but by god, he got us extra business from the blue rinse brigade.

Right. I'm pretty certain that's all you need to know. Probably way more than you need to know, to be honest. I'll probably never even mention Paul again. I just like to talk about him because he fascinates me. I don't know how he puts the right shoes on in the morning, but he's there at work, regular as clockwork, working to blow up the world, one desk at a time.

So I was in Madison, staying in one of the nice hotels just off the main downtown square. It was May and they were having one of their Concerts in the square, where they have a live orchestra with a guest conductor perform in the grounds of the Capitol building. It was a warm day and the square was thronging with people, all sitting on the grass and listening to the music.

Then Simon's text arrived. It was simple and innocuous. 'Watching the game?'

Now that's a strange thing to ask. I'm not really one for many organized sports. I follow the Blackhawks a bit -- I at least know some of the player's names -- but other sports, not at all. I was known for being rabidly anti-organized sport in fact. Famous for it. I had a whole spiel I did about how professional sports people are, in fact, the ultimate in narcissists. And he'd know that, since he's sat through it more than once. So I texted back 'When have you ever known me to follow games? What game are you talking about?'

I got nothing for a bit, then another text arrived. 'The cubs - sox cross town classic. It's today.'

He was referring to the one game where the Cubby Bears played the White Sox, since both are based in Chicago. The cubs are North Side, based at Wrigley Field, right on the edge of boys town, and the White Sox play at Comiskey Park, which is a pretty new stadium on the south side. Once a year they played each other in an exhibition match. There was supposed to be some 'rivalry' between the teams, but honestly, I don't think fans of either team cared that much about the other. There was more than enough disappointment to go around for both sets of fans, frankly.

I replied, 'No, not watching. Couldn't careless. And you couldn't either.' I knew all the double negatives would have him confused for a while and smiled to myself.

Almost instantly a text came back that said, "Dude, get to a bar and watch it. I don't want to say much more than that.'

Intriguing! Something was going on! I love a mystery -- just ask any of the couples who've come to dinner on Saturday night and then stayed to play one of my many murder mystery games. I've even written a few myself. Our guests are spell bound, not at all 'bored rigid and plotting how to leave without offending', as Deanna puts it.

Given that I didn't actually have anything else to do right then -- I still had one more day measuring at Professor Crap Talkers house the next day before I could leave -- I thought, 'why not?'

On went the TV in my room and down the tubes went my marriage, although I didn't catch it immediately.

The game was 7-3 to the Sox at the bottom of the sixth, and between pitches they had the roving camera's going. One of the things that cameramen do at games like this is rove the crowd, when they aren't actually on a play. Quite often they come across a kissing couple or something, and up it goes on the big screens at the stadium, embarrassing the couple. Sometimes they even get a wedding proposal. Sometimes, after they've caught a couple kissing, they'll come back to them later to see if they can embarrass them some more. I'm sure we've all seen it.

They'd obviously done this earlier, since they came back to a couple who were obviously in love -- they were sitting next to each other in the lower bleachers. Obviously good seats, so probably season tickets. They were sitting there, talking animatedly with each other, touching each other and looking at each other in that easy way that couples who are into each other do. The cameraman settled on them, and it went up on the big board in the stadium, and they didn't notice immediately. Then someone nudged them sitting next to them, gesturing to the board -- you could see it happen. They looked up at the board and on the board flashed the message "Kiss Cam! Make it happen!" The couple looked at each other, shrugged and went in for a lip lock. And it was a smacker too -- open mouthed, tongues, the lot. The kind of kiss that is usually closely followed by a game of Hide the Salami, if you get my drift. There was no doubt that these two would be doing that very soon -- probably off in the toilets, with the heat they were giving off.

But I wasn't hot for them. Mainly because the woman in the couple was my wife, Deanna. Oh I was sure. It was her, alright. She was wearing a jacket I'd bought her in a boutique in New York three years earlier. The boutique was owned by the 80's movie star Phoebe Cates, and she was often to be found in there, serving. I have a sort of thing for Phoebe Cates and had persuaded Deanna to go there while we were in town, and once she realized my ulterior motive, she found the most expensive jacket she could find and presented it to me for purchase with the kind of expression on her face that brooked no argument. It was worth it, just because then I could say that Phoebe Cates asked for my address and phone number.

I just sat there, watching, open mouthed, with my world crashing around me, my heart breaking. It's funny, but in situations like that, my mind reacts in strange ways. It jumps to six steps on from where I am now, and makes me worry about things that not only haven't happened, but will only happen in a very convoluted set of conditions, and which isn't important anyway.

My first thought was, "Who is going to take Saffron to her Karate lessons on Wednesday afternoon if we are divorced?" It's stupid I know, but I think it's some kind of self-protection mechanism I have.

The next thing I did was call Simon. He answered on the third ring.

"Hey," he said, obviously unwilling to say anything else.

"I'm watching," I said.

There was a few seconds of silence as Simon considered what to say.

"I'm sorry dude. I thought you needed to know."

"Yeah... I guess... oh I dunno. They sure look like they are into each other, don't they?"

"Yeah," was his simple response.

Then a few more seconds of us listening to each other breath. I could hear the game on his TV in the background echoing mine on the TV in front of me. It's weird, his was a fraction of a second behind mine, so it really did sound like an echo. I remember wondering how, if he was closer to the actual game, how his TV was behind mine. Surely it should be the other way around. Like I said, defense mechanism. Decent into trivia.

"They were on earlier. That's why I texted you. The kiss cam caught them making out. He even had one hand under her jacket. That's why the cameraman went back to them," Simon said, after a while.

"Jesus." I said. Then, "You think this is the first time?"

"It doesn't look like it, does it? Looks like early days but there's an intimacy there..."

"Yeah, I thought so too."

The kiss cam had moved on and play had resumed.

"Surely she knows I'm going to see this? I mean... surely?"

"I think she's a bit preoccupied. Also, quite a lot of what they show on the jumbotron is only shown in the stadium. Given you and your circle of friends, I'm sure she feels safe in that regard."

He had a point there. Like me, most of my friends are decidedly of the cerebral bent, rather than sweaty jock wannabe's. Ok, maybe I'm over stating it a bit. I think most of my friends just don't care. No one talks about sports much, now I come to think of it. I don't know why. Bit strange now I contemplate it.

"I mean, I think they are caught up in the moment, and she's probably now shitting herself hoping you don't see it and that no one she knows does."

That rang more true.

"Probably. Lucky you were watching really."

"I'm over at Tommy's house."

That explained that. Tommy was Simon's brother in law. He was baseball mad. He and I didn't get on, since he'd made some crack about Deanna's tits at a barbeque we were at and I had to be restrained from decking him. It was considered all round better if we just weren't around them, so we just weren't.

There was more silence as we both watched the White Sox get a third strike and the batter trudge back to the dug out.

"What are you going to do?"

"Do? Nothing. Yet. Need more data."

"Yeah."

There was more silence as the game cut to commercial. Interestingly, the commercials were different on his game than on mine. Different state, different channel.

"So. Um. Not entirely sure what else to say. You gonna be ok?"

"No, but there's fuck all you can do from there, Simon. I'm gonna go get drunk, vomit it up, sleep badly and then work out a plan. In that order."

"Sounds like the best course. Don't do anything stupid, ok? I don't want to have to come get you out of jail and you don't need to be hurting yourself or anyone else. Just be careful dude."

"Yeah. Well, I'm 300 miles away. She'll be home by the time I get home. Like I said, I need more data."

"OK, well, you be safe. Come find me when you get home."

"Will do Simon. And thanks."

All in all, it was a pretty anticlimactic conversation given the subject we were discussing. It sounds...disjointed. Like I was just over it all, when I recount it now. Asking for data instead of reacting. But I think I was partially just on shock and partially that's my personality. I try and learn about everything before I react visibly. At college I'd gotten a reputation for it -- I still reacted internally, but I'd learned to suppress that and not be visual in my reactions until I'd gotten all the information. I'd learned early on that when someone hands you shocking news, the first question is always 'What else do we not know in this situation?' -- because there is always more to know and understand.

When the phone call was done, I tossed my iPhone down on the bed, then had a thought and brought up the Find My iPhone app. Deanna and I shared the same apple ID, so if she bought an app, I got it and vice versa. We shared the ID across all our iPads and iPhones, so if the kids bought something, it was there on all the other devices too. One of the side effects was that all our devices could be located from the others, since they were all on the same id. I hunted out the app, started it up, and looked up her phone. Yep, there she was, at Wrigley Field. I took a screen shot of the app, just in case.

Then I sat down and thought about what I was going to do next. The shock was starting to hit me. I was cold and hot at the same time. I didn't know where to look or what I was looking at. I sat down heavily, and bounced off the edge of the bed and landed on the floor.

As the reaction started to hit, I remember that I couldn't understand what was happening to me. I wasn't the first man to have his wife cheat on him. Others got through this. What was happening?

I woke up an hour later, completely confused as to where I was. I came to and remembered everything and just about made it to the bathroom before lunch came up.

Questions kept hitting me, from all sides. Does she love him? It sure looked like it from what I could see. Who was he? What did he have that I did not? How long had this been going on? Who else knows? Does Crystal? She HAS to know, she's covering for her. Where are they meeting? Is he married? Does he have a big cock? Is it bigger than mine? Is he a better lover than I am? Is she going to leave me? Am I going to leave her? What about the kids? Where will they end up? How did this start?

But mostly, 'What do I do next?' It's all very well to make blasé statements about 'needing more data', and quite another thing to look this full in the face.

I was shaking and I made it back to bed and fell into a fitful sleep, punctuated by dreams of Deanna fucking herself with a dildo attached to a man, and her screaming with laughter. Turns out I didn't need alcohol to have a bad night, I could do it all by myself.

I woke up in the morning sweating and shaking. I started to wonder if there really was some kind of flu in me, but I wasn't cold any more and a hot shower took care of the shakes. I knew I needed food so I hunted out one of the local German bars that did a good breakfast. I don't remember what I ate, but I do remember I didn't taste it at all.

Somehow I managed to get to the client and get the job done, although it's a good thing I can take those kinds of measurements on auto pilot now, because I don't even remember doing it, yet all the numbers are written down in my note book, exactly as they should be. I'm good at my job, apparently even under duress.

Then I was sitting in my car, on i-90, driving back down to Crystal Lake and wondering what I should do. Should I just leave? Go stay in some shitty hotel? Do I confront Deanna? Where would the kids be? Would she have already gone perhaps? She had to know there was a fair to middling chance I had seen the footage -- perhaps she'd cut her losses and just gone. What if she hadn't? Would she try and bluff it out? More questions I didn't have any answers to.

During the two-hour drive, I did make a few decisions. The first was to not be hasty. I was damn sure it was Deanna but there were still too many questions I needed answered. What I had said to Simon was right -- I did need more data. I needed to know how long it had been going on, how serious it was, where I stood.

Of course that line of questioning assumed that I would stand for some degree of this -- that if it had only been going on two or three times, I could get over that, - I wouldn't like it and for sure Deanna would be paying forever - otherwise what was the point of needing to know in the first place? If I there wasn't a position where we could work it out, then I really didn't need to know any more. Once I had the evidence though, the decision was already made. Or was it?

That was the biggest question for me. I didn't know how I felt. I wasn't in a "Kill her right now" mode, although I was angry beyond belief. I knew I still loved her -- I'd not seen any decrease in her affection towards me or the kids, so either she was the best actress in the world, or she really did love us. But how can you reconcile that with a full on affair, that obviously had affection and caring in it?

I decided that I didn't really know how I felt until I knew more about it. I knew what I felt right now, but it was a topsy turvy mishmash of emotions and I may not know much, but I know that making big, life changing decisions in that emotional state was a Bad Move ™. Given that, I had to find out more, and I wasn't going to be able to do that if Deanna knew that I knew, or I confronted her about it. Better to be sneaky than confrontational.

With that in mind, I made my immediate decision and plans. The first thing would be to go and see Paul in the morning. Because Paul had a brother, and he could be very helpful.

I got home in just under two hours and parked my boring Chrysler 300c in its usual parking spot, in the side garage of our house. One thing about Crystal Lake is that it's considerably cheaper to buy property than downtown Chicago, or even Schaumburg or Naperville, so for our money, we actually have a three car garage. We only use two, but one of them is a separate room from the larger two car, and round the corner of the house from the main garage.

I sat in the car, listening to the bodywork ping as it cooled down, and gathered myself together. I've read stories on Literotica about situations like this, where guys have come home knowing their wife has been unfaithful and they then act all lovey, while trying to keep their distance while they gather info for their lawyers, or devise diabolical schemes to get revenge. I just knew that I wasn't that good of an actor. I needed some way to just avoid Deanna -- and by extension the kids, because if I spent time with them, I'd be all over them, because of my fear that she'd get them in the divorce -- see there I went again, swinging from "How much of this can I accept?" to "Who gets the kids in the divorce?"

I just had no idea where my head was at, and as such, I needed to be away from family for a bit to get to it screwed on straight again.

In I went, stumbling and straight to the toilet, even though Deanna was in the kitchen making something. She yelled hello as I went past and I made it to the bathroom making retching sounds. Deanna came and stood outside asking if I was ok. I just made more noises and mumbled, "Sick. Feel like shit. Keep the kids away, don't want to infect them. Dying. Blergh."

To which, my darling wife of so many years, said, "Yeah, right. You thought you were dying when you had indigestion last month. I had to give you an enema and all you needed was a diet coke to make you burp it up. You are fine. I'm making dinner. Come out when you are ready."

Such caring. The thing is though, before now I would have acted the wounded hero and swanned in on my death bed and she'd have stood there, arms folded with a mock stern expression on her face while the kids performed gastric surgery on me. Well, some kind of surgery -- I don't think even the kids knew what it was, but it always involved a saw and pliers. It usually ended in me getting 'medicine' which were usually tic-tacs and that was kinda good.

Now though, knowing what I did, I wondered if she really didn't give a shit rather than the hamming up I assumed it was. Once you know something like infidelity that has been hidden from you, every act of the spouse becomes suspect. In every action you look for hidden meaning. It's just rotten and it eats you from the core, not only because you are doing it, but because you know you'll never actually know the answers. Even if she tells you, you don't trust her any more, so how do you know anything said is real? It makes you paranoid, question everything and never have peace.

I went to bed directly that night, after her. I hid in my den till I knew she'd gone to sleep -- she gets the kids up in the morning and so she goes to bed earlier than I do.

The kids. They'd been in to see me -- I couldn't stop them -- and I just couldn't stop hugging them and kissing them and listening to their stories of the day. I love those kids. I extracted a promise that we could all go to the movies the next day, when I was feeling better. I'd pick a movie that Deanna wouldn't want to see and she'd be pleased of the time to herself at home. She often complained that she never got the house to herself, since when I was at work, she was too.

I slept in the guest room. I have a hazy memory of Deanna putting her head round the door before taking the kids to school and saying good morning, but I really don't remember much. I had slept, but the kind of sleep that when you wake up, you don't feel like you slept at all.

I dragged myself out of bed, took a shower, dressed, grabbed some toast and made it work. I know I looked like shit. I know because everyone told me. From the receptionist, to my group PA, Adriana. Ah, Adriana.

Yeah, I haven't mentioned her, have I? She's... nice, I guess. Well, I think she must be. To someone at least. She's very private. I don't know a thing about her beyond the fact she is hellaciously efficient, gets the job done, shuts down any conversation that is not work related and is totally un-interested in work beyond the time we pay her for. She's personable alright, very polite, nice to the new people. Just completely unavailable in a personal way. No idea why, and to be honest, I think it's a good thing. She's a pretty woman and I could see some of my guys hitting on her, but she radiates Fuck Off in that area, and I think that's a good thing for an office environment. She wasn't anyone's friend, she didn't do the small things that build a relationship, yet the company would just end if she quit.