Decisions, Decisions

"No, I didn't."

"See, did you hear him, he said no, Sara. I'm telling you it wasn't him."

I was tired of keeping secrets and decided on the spot to confront the whole situation. "If she wants to know who tipped Arnie off, tell her to look in the mirror." I got a cold stare from Les.

"Hold on a minute, Sara," she covered the mouthpiece with her hand. "What do you mean she should look in the mirror?"

"She left a trail of clues a blind man could follow. Arnie found a lacy set of panties and a bra in the laundry basket that he never saw her wear. There were other clues as well."

She was still staring at me with a look that would kill an elephant as she brought the phone back up to her cheek. "Sara, I'm sorry, Honey, but I'm going to have to call you back... Yeah, okay, I promise, bye," and with that, she disconnected then looked back up at me with that same stern expression. "How do you know she left clues?"

"I had lunch with Arnie last month. He mentioned the underwear when he told me he thought Sara was having an affair."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't trust you not to warn Sara."

"You're damn right I would have warned her. Brian, both Arnie and Tony are in jail. They were..."

"TONY! You mean all this time they've still been going at it? Fuck, I thought she'd moved on to someone else, and here they've been lying to us all this time?"

"I guess so."

"You guess so? Did you know?"

"No... I, ah, I did kind of suspect that she was seeing somebody again; a couple of times she backed out of shopping trips we had planned, and that's not like her, but I had no idea she was still seeing Tony."

"So why are they both in jail?"

"They were in a hotel room this afternoon. When they were done and went back down to the lobby, Arnie was there when the elevator doors opened. He charged in and hit Tony several times before he could even react. Sara was hysterical; she said she tried to pull Arnie off but he was like a wild man. Somebody saw it and called the cops, but by the time they got there, hotel security had them both in cuffs. Sara's been crying her eyes out ever since. I could hardly understand her when she first called."

"That son of a bitch. He better stay away from me or I just might finish what Arnie started."

"So, if you didn't tell Arnie that Sara was having an affair what did you say when he talked about the underwear and stuff?"

"I told him how to track her every move..."

"Oh, Brian, you didn't."

"He asked for my advice and I gave it to him," I stated emphatically.

"You must have known she was fooling around again. They have two kids; did you ever think of them?"

"Yes, I did, and so did Arnie. He told me he'd rather be a part-time dad and have his kids respect than be a full-time dad without it.

"What about Julie, have you heard anything from her?"

Leslie had her head in her hands and was slowly shaking it back and forth like she couldn't believe what was happening. "No, nothing."

"So... your best friend betrayed her husband and her kids, she betrayed you, her best friend, not to mention her other friends and continually lied to us for almost six months, do you still think she deserves your support?"

"I don't know," she almost cried. "Just leave me alone for a while, will you? Go out to eat, I don't feel like cooking anything tonight."

"What about you, you want me to bring you something back?"

"No, I'm not hungry. I... I just need some time alone, please."

Again, I was having trouble keeping my mind on my driving, so I made it as far as the Denny's a couple miles from our house. I picked an empty booth in the corner and ordered a chopped steak.

Over and over in my head, I just kept thinking, 'what a mess.' We six had been good friends for over a decade, and a lot longer than that in the case of Tony and I. Now it was all shot to hell, and on top of it, Les and I were back to being angry with each other.

As I ate, I made up my mind that there would be no more promises, no more secrets, or holding back information. From now on, everything would be upfront and in full disclosure mode, at least as far as I was concerned, I didn't know what Les was thinking.

I didn't feel like going home right after dinner, so I wound up at Plato's Place where I sipped on one beer for more than an hour while doing more thinking. When I got home, Les was sitting on the couch in her flannel nightgown with one leg propped up. She looked up at me when I walked in and I could see she'd been crying.

"Julie called, she knows all about it, the affair, everything."

"That was fast. How'd she find out so quickly?"

"Tony called her and said he got into a fight and she needed to go down and bail him out. While she was waiting for him to get released, Arnie had already been bailed out by this brother. He ran into her on his way out of the station and told her the whole story.

"When they got home, she told Tony to get out of the house but he won't go so she asked if she could stay with us for a couple of weeks until she can find a place to live."

"What'd you tell her?"

"I said I needed to talk to you first."

"You know my answer; you should have just told her to come on over."

"That's it, we're not even going to discuss it, we're just going to take sides?"

"Les, I told you when this thing first started that she and Arnie would be the ones I'd support. What about you? Who are you going to support?"

"I don't want to support anybody. I don't want to take sides at all," she said.

I couldn't blame her for that, but it was a little unrealistic. In my mind, not taking sides at all would be like punishing Arnie and Julie for being victims. No way was I going to do that. "Les, Julie is your friend, too, are you really going to turn down a friend in need?"

"No, of course not. I just wish this whole thing would just go away."

"You and me both, but it's not going to happen. Call her back and tell her she's welcome to stay as long as she needs to." Leslie gave me that look again, but reluctantly, called Julie and told her she could stay with us.

Les stayed in the living room while I went into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, I figured it was going to be a long night. About an hour later our doorbell rang. Les looked at me, so I got up and answered it. It almost broke my heart to see Julie standing there with a suitcase in one hand and her make-up kit in the other. She looked a mess.

"Here," I said, as I reached for the suitcase, "let me help you."

By the time she stepped inside, Les was there. I think Julie's appearance affected her as much if not more than it did me. I wasn't sure what kind of greeting she would get from Les, so I was relieved when she opened her arms which prompted our guest to rush in for a sympathetic embrace, complete with flowing tears from both women. "I'm so sorry," I heard Les tell her a couple of times.

I took Julie's things up to the spare bedroom while Les escorted her to the couch. By the time I came back down, my wife had her arms wrapped around our border and they were both rocking back and forth in anguish. I gave them a minute before asking if anyone wanted coffee.

For almost three hours, we all sat around the kitchen table sipping coffee and talking... well, mostly listening to Julie talk. Her rhetoric followed her emotions as she covered everything from reconciliation to killing Tony with a dull butcher knife and burying his body in the woods. Finally talked out, we all decided to get some sleep. I was just drifting off...

"Are you sleepy?"

"Huh?"

"Are you sleepy? I don't know how you can even think of sleep at a time like this."

"I wasn't really thinking about it, Honey, I was planning on doing it."

"I was just thinking about Sara."

"What about her?"

"I just wonder how she's doing. I also wonder how she's going to react when she finds out Julie is staying here."

"Who cares."

"I do, Brian; she's still my friend."

"You have to be kidding me, after you've seen what her actions have done to Julie, you still consider her a friend?"

"Of course I do. Brian, I told you I wasn't going to take sides and I'm not going to abandon Sara."

"Well, both she and Tony can rot in hell for all I care."

"Brian Lundewal, I'm ashamed of you. How can you be so cold?"

God, that ticked me off. I would have most likely been screaming if it wasn't for Julie in the other room, but even though I kept my voice low, I made sure Les knew that she had just pissed me off, royally.

"You're ashamed of me, but not your whore girlfriend who willfully destroyed two marriages? You say I'm cold? You just spent three hours listening to the devastation that bitch created for one of our friends and you're worried about how she's doing... fuck her! Now, I don't want to hear another word about that bitch tonight. I'm going to sleep, good night."

I turned my back on Les and closed my eyes but I could hear her quietly crying on her side of the bed and felt like shit. I had never talked to her like that before. "I'm sorry," I mumbled, "but you really pissed me off when you said you were ashamed of me."

"I'm sorry," she whimpered back, "you know I didn't mean it."

"Okay, let's just try and get some sleep." She didn't stir for a few minutes, then cuddled up to my back. That's the last I remember before drifting off.

The next morning, I was alone when I woke up. Normally, the first thing I'd do in the morning is throw on my robe and go down for a cup of coffee but I didn't know if I'd embarrass Julie so I took a shower and dressed for work.

Les' eyes widened when I walked into the kitchen. "Do you have to go in early?" Both women were sitting at the table in their robes.

"No, I just didn't want to embarrass our guest."

"Brian, please don't change anything because of me. I'm so thankful to have a place to stay for a while. You'll make me feel guilty if you think you have to act differently in your own house."

"Okay, Julie, I'll keep that in mind."

I was half expecting to get the silent treatment or at least some nasty looks from my wife, but she seemed just fine. "Julie, Brian, and I usually have sausage and eggs for breakfast, is that okay for you?"

"Yeah, but let me help." Both Julie and Les jumped up and started pulling things from the fridge. I watched my wife in awe as she and Julie worked together like the best of friends. It appeared that she had a human trait that I didn't. How, I wondered, could someone not take sides in a situation like this? There she was, working side by side with one friend while worrying about that friend's archrival.

Once I got to the office, I tried to forget about our social problems and concentrate on my job but it wasn't easy. Every time there was a lull in the workload, my mind would wander.

What really got to me was Tony's betrayal. In the wake of new revelations, I knew he never intended to keep his word even while he was promising me he'd end things with Sara. It pretty much confirmed my idea that if he'd betray one friend, he'd betray another as well. Any idea of eventually becoming good friends again was totally shot to hell.

Over the next couple of weeks, the situation was becoming normalized. I was getting used to seeing Julie at the breakfast table every morning and felt comfortable enough to go downstairs with my robe wrapped tightly over my jockeys.

Julie, however, had used the time to start getting her act together. Any talk of reconciling with Tony had long been discarded, and she had settled on a family law attorney after a brief internet search and a few recommendations. She was also looking for an apartment and talking about taking some courses in general management at the community college.

Arnie was also taking steps to end his marriage. We kept in touch and even had lunch together on a day he took off for an appointment with his lawyer. He said Sara had refused to tell the kids anything and left it to him to explain that Mommy and Daddy wouldn't be living together anymore. He said it broke his heart to hear their crying; however, he was thoroughly convinced he was doing the right thing and setting the right precedent for his kids as they grew up.

It seemed to me that both wronged parties in the whole mess were taking control of their lives and would survive; as far as the two paramours were concerned, I had no idea how they were doing and couldn't care less.

I appreciated the fact that Leslie hadn't mentioned Sara once since our pillow talk. I didn't know if they were still in contact or not, and I preferred to keep it that way.

Other than a couple of grumps, I worked with a group of pretty nice people. One in particular, Carl, was my number one work buddy. He had a long commute every day, so aside from an occasional round of golf, we didn't get together on weekends a lot but in the office, we were practically inseparable. On several occasions, we'd team up for a major sale and share the commission.

It had been a while since we'd gone out for a drink together, so when Leslie called to tell me she was going apartment hunting with Julie after work, I asked Carl if he wanted to stop at Plato's for a quick one on the way home.

We'd been there about twenty minutes when I heard a familiar but unwelcome voice coming from behind me. "Well, if it isn't the backstabbing, double-crossing Judas who used to be my best friend."

Jerry was in the back room but Kyle, another long-time bartender there, immediately came over and asked me in a quiet voice if there was going to be trouble. I told him it wouldn't be from me if there was. Carl was concerned as well, "What's going on?" he asked.

By that time Tony was standing next to me. "You couldn't just let it alone, could you. You had to stick your nose in where it didn't belong. Maybe I should break it to remind you to keep it out of other people's business."

I could sense Carl starting to stand up but I reached over and grabbed his forearm to keep him seated. I'd been in enough fights with Tony through the years to know he'd never take the first swing.

"It isn't enough you ratted me out, you made it easy for my wife to leave me by giving her a place to live... and after everything we've been through together. What an asshole."

I was curious, "How do you know Julie is living with us?"

"Your wife told Sara, how do you think?"

Well, that answered that question. Even though I had suspected Les was still talking to Sara, I really had hoped I was wrong. Her attitude about this whole mess was making me question if I truly knew my wife as well as I thought I did. She certainly wasn't taking the whole infidelity thing as seriously as I was. That, of course, was bringing up other questions. I was starting to wonder about things I'd always taken for granted... namely, what would my wife do if given the opportunity to cheat?

I shifted my attention back to my former friend. "In the first place, Tony, I didn't rat you out, you did that all by yourself."

"Bullshit," he stated emphatically, "then how did Arnie find out, he was absolutely clueless."

"No, he wasn't. He suspected Sara was seeing somebody, he just didn't know who. He asked me if I had any suggestions and I simply told him how to keep track of her movements during the day. If you had cut things off when you promised me you would, Arnie would have come up empty and none of this would have happened. You and Sara have only yourselves to blame. Now, you want to hate somebody, go home and look in the mirror, asshole."

Kyle had been listening from behind the bar and stepped in. "I don't want any trouble here, Tony, I think you should go."

Tony looked at me and I couldn't decide if it was hate or regret that I saw in his eyes, maybe some of both. "Fuck you, Brian, fuck you," he said before walking out.

Both Kyle and Carl wanted to know what our little showdown was all about. Just from the brief conversation I had with Tony, they knew it involved infidelity so I gave them a really short Reader's Digest version as we finished our beers.

On the way home, I kept thinking about my wife and her whore friend. I'd heard of friendships like that and knew there was no win-win. Les already said she was going to continue their friendship no matter what I said or felt. Did that mean we didn't see eye to eye on the root problem... cheating?

It wasn't until I saw the Kentucky Fried Chicken sign ahead of me that I even thought about dinner. I pulled into the parking lot and texted my wife that I was getting a family bucket to bring home. I received a thumbs-up as I was standing in line to order.

I set the table and had a bottle of white wine open when Les and Julie walked in. My wife gave me a big smile, "Oh, Honey, you are so sweet, thank you," she said with a peck on the lips. "Honey, we'll be losing our tenant in a few days."

"Oh," I looked over at Julie, "did you find a place?"

"Yeah, I signed a lease for a one-bedroom at Kennedy Park Apartments on Mannheim. I move in on the first. It's not luxurious, but it'll do for now. My lawyer says Tony and I will have to sell the house and split the profits. If that happens, I figure to net about sixty thousand, so I'll be able to find something nicer next year.

"Well, congratulations, and just when I was getting used to you," I joked.

I was pleasantly surprised when the time came for Julie to move; Tony very amenably agreed to let her have what furniture she wanted and the master bedroom set. He said he'd use the set from the guest room.

Julie didn't have a lot, so I rented a small truck for her and got a couple of guys from work to help me move her stuff. Les helped as well, of course, and we had her in her new digs in no time. I gave the guys from work fifty apiece, then stayed to help Les and Julie get situated.

After putting everything away, Julie made us a cup of coffee. That's when I could see the emotions coming to the top. Poor Julie, the move brought everything up front and personal for her. There was no going back; the apartment would be her new home for at least the next year.

Les and I saw the tears welling in her eyes just before she broke out in sobs. "Why," she cried, "what made him do it? I thought we were so happy together. I... I just don't understand it."

Leslie put her arm around her shoulders and tried to comfort her. As she did that, I realized I couldn't answer her question any better than Les. If I hadn't seen them with my own eyes that day in the restaurant, there was no way I would have believed Tony to be capable of cheating.

They say the psychology of cheating is on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to gender. Supposedly, women cheat for a variety of reasons usually stemming from something lacking in their marriage; men supposedly cheat because they're given the opportunity. I don't believe it's that simple.

In a moment of weakness, I started to consider Les' theory about supporting a friend even though they cheated. Maybe through that support, a person could learn and understand the reasons behind the infidelity. Then I heard Julie's crying and was ashamed of my brief relapse. My anger with the whole situation took over again. I didn't care why Tony or Sara cheated; they thought of no one but themselves and destroyed two marriages and the lives of two young children.

I glanced up at Les, who was doing her best to comfort our friend. I sure hoped the situation was having the profound effect on her as it was on me.

"Julie, why don't I spend the night with you?" My wife volunteered. Then looked at me, "You don't mind, do you, sweetheart?"

"No, not at all," I replied.

"No, no, thank you for offering but you guys have already done so much. No, I've got to get used to living alone."

I could still see the concern on Les' face. "Have you ever lived alone before?"