Imbalance Pt. 01

Doug was over my house more than his own. I wouldn't go as far as to say that he was a permanent fixture, but if I woke up in the morning and saw him going through my refrigerator, I would simply ask him if he made coffee.

Thinking about Doug coming over to my house did put more puzzle pieces together. He started coming over less and less. I couldn't exactly tell you the time frame of when things began to slow down. I wasn't even thinking about it at the time to take notice. If I had to give a guesstimation, I would say that it started a little over 6 months ago. His appearance at my house started to become sparse. He didn't act any differently with me, he just stopped coming by as unexpectedly. Is that somehow connected?

The clock above my desk ticked away the seconds. Those seconds turned into minutes, which seamlessly morphed into hours. Time seemed irrelevant, like it's span was infinite, yet it passed within the blink of an eye. Before I knew it, sunlight was trying to fight its way through the curtains.

I'd literally not slept a wink all night.

I groaned as I contemplated getting up to go to the bathroom. I finally decided that if I didn't go now, the choice could possibly be taken out of my hands. I finally gave into nature and trudged to the bathroom.

When I was done, I went back to my office and thought about calling in sick. I wasn't in any type of mood to work today. I'd just slipped back underneath the blanket when I heard my alarm going off upstairs. It would have awakened me and told me that it was time to start my day had I been sound asleep in the warmth of my own bed. Next to my wife.

I heard it stop suddenly, which let me know that Claire had silenced it. I laid there, not sure what was to come next. Then I heard rustling around upstairs, followed by her footsteps on each stair as she descended them. A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door.

"Frank. Are you awake?"

I choose to ignore her. Immature, I know. But I wanted her to go away. So I feigned sleep, smashing my face into the cushion. I heard the door creak open and listened to her step inside of my office. I mentally kicked myself for leaving it unlocked when I got back from the bathroom.

"Frank. I know you're awake. I've laid next to you for 10 years. I know how you look when you're sleeping."

"Whadya want Claire?" I asked, the pillow obstructing my mouth somewhat. I didn't even turn to face her.

"Just checking on you. I was worried about you."

I snorted at that. She was worried about me. After she ripped my heart out of my chest, she was worried about me.

"I'm fine. Go away."

I didn't hear retreating footsteps, which meant that the bitch was still standing there. Half of me wanted to find something heavy to launch at her. The other half just wanted to ignore her.

"Frank. We need to talk about this. I think things got all messed up last night."

I finally sat up and turned to her. She looked like she hadn't any more luck catching that elusive creature called sleep than I did. I took a strange comfort in that.

"What things got messed up Claire? You've been cheating on me with my best friend, and now you want to leave me. That is the gist of it, isn't it?"

"Frank..."

"Do you want to be married to me Claire? Huh?"

She started to fidget nervously. "It's not that simple Frank."

Forgive me, but I couldn't for the life of me find a simpler question. It didn't even require an explanation. All it needed was a yes or no response.

"What the fuck is complex about it Claire? Either you want to be Mrs. Underwood, or you don't. How much simpler could it be?"

"If you just let me explain..."

The tiny footsteps of Kelly and Stacy were heard coming down the stairs, putting this conversation on hold. A silent message of "we'll finish this later" passed between us as we greeted our girls and began the morning ritual of preparing them for their day.

We didn't speak any more about the fucking humongous elephant in the room. At least not with words. We glanced at each other over our daughter's heads, trying to gauge the other's mindset. But soon the responsibilities of the day put that conversation further on hold as we began to make our preparations to conquer the world. As if on autopilot, our family showered, dressed, and parted ways for the day.

I decided to go to work. I didn't want to be alone with Claire once the girls left for school. Not yet. That conversation could wait. As I drove over to my job, my mind was a whirlwind of questions. Add that to the lack of sleep that I was suffering from, and one could say that today was prepping to be a shitty day.

However, once I pulled into my parking space at my job, all other things ceased. Claire faded into the background. I felt nothing from my sleep deprivation. Suddenly, my mind burst into formulas about our current engine problems. My company was on the verge of creating a new kind of engine. It would have significantly more productivity than its predecessors. The horsepower would be increased drastically, but it would be able to do so at greater fuel efficiency. Our company stood to make a lot of money on this project. The only problem was we were on the verge of getting it perfect, but not close enough. In the end, the engine failed every test.

I mentally made a note of the calibrations that would have to be made. Thomas (my intern) met me by the door with a fresh cup of coffee like he did every morning, just waiting to kiss my ass and show me why he was smarter than the rest of the interns. I like Thomas because he reminds me of myself when I was an intern.

"Mr. Underwood, glad you're here. I have some thoughts on why the engine is failing. I tried to call you last night but your wife said that you couldn't be disturbed. I left a message for you with her but you never returned my call. Did you get it?"

The last thing I needed was to think about Claire right now. I needed to stay focused. Even the mention of her name set off ripples in my pond.

"Doesn't matter Thomas. I'm here now. What's the situation?"

"Well, I was trying to explain to your wife..." Stop throwing rocks in my pond Thomas. "...that the new engine keeps failing because there are things that we didn't account for. We keep trying to compensate, but nothing is working. Increasing the output works for a while, but it keeps failing because we can't keep it cool enough. I think we need to focus less on raising the horsepower and more on finding another way to cool it.

He beamed proudly, like he just solved the mystery for us. Fucking interns. I had to fight the urge to laugh at him. He was smart; hell, he was practically a genius. But we all were. Top of his class, 4.0 average, blah, blah, blah. That basically describes everyone here. You couldn't get in the door unless you had that AT A MINIMUM. There was nothing he could figure out that we hadn't already thought of.

Still, you have to keep the interns motivated. We worked the dogshit out of them for practically nothing, so you have to give them a cookie every once in a while.

"Good work Thomas. We'll look into that theory."

We're already looking into that. Had been for weeks. But no need to burst his bubble.

Thomas once again smiled broadly, practically panting with his tongue out and wagging his tail. He enjoyed his doggy treat. I almost patted him on the head.

"Here are the new projected specs for today's trial runs."

He handed me the paper with the latest readout. The numbers looked impressive. Of course, they always look impressive on paper.

"Okay Thomas. Tell the others I'll be down to the lab in a second."

He started to scurry down the hallway, but then he stopped and turned around.

"Boss, is everything okay at home? Mrs. Underwood sounded a little..."

"Everything's fine." I cut him off abruptly. He looked at me with concern, but saw no room for discussion on my face. With the last rock removed from his hands, he silently accepted that any mention of the wife was off limits. He nodded his head and continued to head to the lab.

I stopped by assistant's desk to see if I had any meetings scheduled. Sarah gave me a brief rundown of what I had to do.

Everything was part of a standard day except for a meeting that I had with The Heads. That's what we called the big wigs. The ones who made all of the decisions for the company. The Department Heads needed constant reassurance of their importance to the company. So we provided it to them by giving them occasional progress reports on our projects.

I always dreaded these meetings. Every one of them was an interrogation by the higher ups asking stupid questions that they really didn't want the answer to. They only wanted to hear that everything was perfect. If there wasn't any progress, they wanted to know why. But I couldn't tell them why without going into an explanation of the problems that we were trying to overcome. That explanation was a technical one, full of big words that they didn't care about. The only words that they knew about were words like "profit margin" and "bottom line".

Each time we had to go into development of a new product, this was the dance. We all knew it. We all hated it.

After I had my day outlined for me, I thanked Sarah. She looked at me worriedly for a moment.

"Mr. Underwood, you okay?"

Dammit! I wished everyone would stop asking me that!

"I'm fine Sarah. Just going through some things at home. I'll be fine."

"You wanna talk about it?" she asked, looking genuinely concerned. I didn't want to be a dick- especially not to her- but I absolutely did not want to talk about it.

"No." I said simply. It was abrupt, but it sent my message clearly. She read my tone, nodded her head briefly and left it at that.

I went about my day. I had the meeting with The Heads, which went about as well as I thought it would. After that, I was back in the lab for the remainder of the day. And I mean that literally. It was dark outside when I finally punched in the code to unlock my car and pushed the start button.

I barely heard the engine whir to life. It purred softly as my car beeped to let me know that I had to buckle my seatbelt. This is the way an engine is supposed to sound. Or not sound.

I know that the manly man will tell you that loud, powerful muscle engines are what it's all about. Massive machines that bark and growl when they are stopped at a red light, causing all of the lesser cars to shrivel in their monstrous presence. One step of the gas pedal causes a screeching commotion as it is propelled forward, roaring loudly and leaving smoke and burnt rubber in its wake.

But for me, that's not what it is about. I like luxury engines. The strong, silent type. The ones that can reach 100 mph in seconds with barely a whisper. These cars don't need to announce their presence to the world. They just show up. Shiny and sleek. Women get wet just sitting on the passenger side as the soft seats massage their buttocks.

Muscle cars will get a guy's attention. Luxury cars will get a woman's attention. Have you ever seen an advertisement for an Ashton Martin or a Tesla? Probably not. You don't need to know the price or what its stats are. If you do, then you are in the wrong place. Just being able to sit in one increases your status.

A man's car is an extension of himself. Muscle cars are all about the show. Showing the world how masculine you are. Luxury cars are all about the wealth. A person can buy a Mustang or a Challenger and park it right outside of his apartment. People who buy brand new BMW's, Porches, etc. park them in their driveway. Most of the time, right next to their spouse's luxury car.

That is what it is about.

I know I sound superficial, but you have to understand. I didn't have money growing up. My dad was a mechanic. My mom worked at Walmart. We weren't broke by normal standards. But the high school that I went to was located in an area that was wealthy. These kids weren't quite private school rich, but most of them had at least one parent with a name accompanied by a brief description of their education (Dr., Attorney at Law, PHD, etc.).

These kids had material things that they took for granted. Their wardrobe consisted of expensive clothes made by gay men whose names were dropped with awe. Most of them were given cars on their 16^th birthday. I'm not talking about a beater. I'm talking about cars that grown men with full time jobs will probably never own. Any problem they ran into was fixed with a phone call to mommy and daddy.

Me, I didn't have it like that. My clothes were ordinary. My first car was a Neon, and I worked at Best Buy for that. So while I wasn't poor, I might as well have been on welfare in comparison.

My saving grace was that I was smarter than 95% of the school. The other 5% were paid to be there. I studied hard. I never made lower than a B, and even that was in gym. I worked my ass off because I swore that I would have the life that I was denied. My kids would be one of the envied.

My kids. Just thinking about them made me remember what was waiting for me at home. My family. My...wife. My unhappy wife.

I drove home in morbid silence. No longer able to hide out behind work, I was forced to replay the conversation of last night.

I didn't make Claire feel sexy, but someone else did. Doug did.

I can't describe what I felt thinking about that. Last night I was full of anger and hurt. Now, a part of me was numb. I was feeling a bit detached. I'd spent all day at work avoiding it. I was no longer able to do that. The silence of my drive home forced me to dwell on it. Everything seemed sort of abstruse.

I dreading the confrontation that awaited me, yet I needed it to happen. I didn't know what to expect when I walked through my front door. Would my wife be packed and ready to leave with her new lover? Would she be waiting with divorce papers? Would they be butt naked and fucking on my living room couch? Or would she simply pretend like nothing happened?

When finally walked through the front door of my house, it was sort of anticlimactic. The girls were eating cookies in the living room. Stacy was doing her homework, and Kelly was coloring in a book. My wife was sitting on the couch on her laptop. In front of them, our 65 inch TV idly showed an episode of SpongeBob.

"Hi daddy." Stacy said as she briefly looked up from her homework. Kelly continued to concentrate on her coloring, like she was solving a complex calculus problem.

Claire looked up from her laptop with a look of trepidation. She seemed to be trying to gauge my mood.

"Hi honey. How was work?" She asked in an attempt to sound normal. I'm guessing it was for the girls' sake, which was why I let the "honey" go for the moment.

"It was work." I replied with no inflection. I was going to play along for now, but I wasn't going to pretend like nothing happened. She nodded slightly, as if she were accepting the terms of our cease fire.

"I made you a plate. It's in the microwave. It probably tasted better when it was warm, but you weren't here when we ate."

I caught the tone in her voice when she said the last part. I wasn't here. Is that what she wanted to lead with? Was that her excuse for doing...whatever she did with my best friend?

"Well, I had a long day at work. Have to make the money for my family." I returned. The look on her face was one of someone biting their tongue. She had a lot more to say. So did I. But we couldn't; not without alerting the girls. For now, our cease fire prevented us from getting on with the war. But it was coming.

***

"So are we finally going to talk about this?" Claire asked when the girls were in bed. I was sitting in my office going over things on my laptop. Her voice came from behind me. I swiveled my chair around until I was facing her standing in my doorway.

"Okay, fine." I said as I let out a breath. She entered and closed the door behind her. Then she found her way to the couch that was my temporary bed.

"I just want to start out by saying that I'm sorry. The last thing I want is to hurt you. It's just that, things have been crazy for a while now. I just...I don't know what to say."

"Why don't you start with telling me about you and Doug." I said with surprising calmness.

"Frank..."

"I don't want to hear how fucking sorry you are, or about how you didn't want to hurt me. That does NOTHING for me. If you want to help me, you need to start by talking. Now, tell me about your goddamn relationship with my ex-best friend."

The anger was starting to rise. Strangely enough, I was a little relieved to feel it. For a minute, I felt like some emotionless robot. I was beginning to get worried.

"It started a year ago." She said, on the verge of tears. I leaned back in my seat, allowing her room to continue. "I mean, Doug has always been there for me. So I guess it started more than a year ago. But I didn't start looking at him like that until about a year ago. You were gone so much, especially after you got that promotion. I started to feel overwhelmed with having to do EVERYTHING by myself. All of the nights you were gone, and the days that you just weren't available."

She shot me an accusatory glance, but then looked away. Then she continued. "Doug started helping me around the house. Listening to me. He would come over just to talk. He was...sweet."

The bitch had the nerve to turn her lips up in a nostalgic smile. Like the memories that she was reliving were sweet. The simmering anger in me started to heat up at that.

Her voice switched back from sweet and wistful to hard and bitter. "He even took me out a couple of times. Like the time you were supposed to take me out on my birthday, but forgot."

Her eyes looked like steel at that point. Before that sentence, she looked sort of remorseful. But when she said that, she took on a defiant look.

Now I was pissed. "Oh, okay. I'm sorry. You're right Claire. I forgot your birthday. Well! You sure showed me! I forget your birthday; you fuck my best friend. I guess that makes us even, right?"

"We didn't fuck that night! For your information, THAT night was spent with me crying about how my husband never wants to be around me. He just listened. Do you hear that? HE LISTENED TO ME!"

"So tell me, when did LISTENING turn into FUCKING? If you want to use the you-forgot-my-birthday defense as an excuse, then you have a long way to go to make that fly."

She laughed incredulously as she stood up. "You think this started because you forgot ONE birthday? How about anniversaries, date nights, get-togethers with friends, vacations that had to get cancelled, or whatever else that got tossed to the side because it didn't have anything to do with a FUCKING ENGINE? How about all of the nights you were here, but not really here?

She was practically looming over me, pointing at me as she spoke. Now the gloves were off. We were getting into our trenches and setting our attacks.

"You never answered the question. WHEN DID THE FUCKING START?"

"I don't know Frank! Around April I think."

Six months ago. Around the time Doug stopped coming by. There's that mystery solved.

"Where?"

"Huh?"

"WHERE DID THE FUCKING HAPPEN? In my bed? On the couch? In a hotel room?"

"Yes." She responded simply. I didn't get the answer at first, but then I did. The fucking happened in all three places. Probably happened in many more.

"Do you love him?" My voice cracked as I asked that. The feelings of hurt began to flow. The anger at her betrayal was nothing compared to the pain I was starting to feel once again. I was able to mask it for a while, hiding behind work and justified anger. But now, asking that question and needing to know the answer left me open. Tears began water my eyes.