It's Not What You Think

I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect to see a building next to a parking garage in a kind of seedy part of town. Didn't fit the Carbunkle image, you know? Where would all the high powered execs go for lunch? Why was it so far from Cyn's love nest at the Century? I pulled into the garage, got my parking ticket, and drove through the multi-story garage to find a likely place for my receiver. I left it on top of an emergency phone box on the third floor. As I was leaving, I thought it strange that so many of the cars were Fords and Chevys. Not an import in the place that I could find. Not a Honda or Toyota or Beemer in the garage. Strange.

I got to brooding on the way home. What was I going to do now? I was pretty sure that my marriage was about done. If it was a marriage at all. I mean... fucking around for one-quarter of the time? It had started before we were married but after we moved into the apartment. Any significance to that? I couldn't believe the passion she showed me this morning was faked. Maybe she was a great actress. But why bother? She could have just broken it off with me and run off to be with Mr. Carbunkle or whoever.

Maybe I'll just call him the asshole. Maybe it was Admiral AssHole. I hear that former bigshots in the service could always get a nice posting with Carbunkle, or some other defense contractor. Maybe Cyn and the Admiral were trying to keep it secret from his wife. Maybe Admiral AssHole was still schtupping the reporter. Or maybe it wasn't him at all.

Fuck! This wasn't heaven at all, that much I was sure of. Chapter 04

I didn't sleep well that night. The more I thought about things, the worse they seemed. Cyn clearly decided that it would be profitable for her to lie to me. It was absolutely true -- she lied. I had no idea in what sense she 'profited,' but she wasn't doing this for just fun. No one would go through all the trouble of setting me up like this for nothing.

Or... she was dumber than shit and doing all this for love and lust. Because it was a hell of a stupid thing to do to me and for her. She didn't seem like the type.

I thought about it a lot. The more I thought about it, the worse it seemed, like I said. It was all a set up. The amazingly quick latching on to a depressed, almost suicidal, seriously wounded Vet. That was the first fish. I didn't even have to cast the lure. It was taken by a beautiful fish and I was mesmerized. She reeled me in here in Dallas. Shit, I don't know if I was the fish or the fisherman, and my metaphor is getting confused ... but my mom always said if it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Why didn't I think about that months ago?

I guess I knew it was, all along. But why do it? Who cared what the reason was? I just wanted out.

Of course, I might be making all this up. I had a fear of losing the best thing in my life, because I thought I wasn't worthy of that best thing. Was it a justified fear, or an unjustified fear? Fuck if I knew.

I wanted to be out of this mess, and, at the same time, I didn't want to end it with Cyn. She lied to me and I hated it ... and I still loved the woman that saved my life, not once but twice. And did so again here in Dallas. She was a wonderful partner. Sexy. Fun and funny. Attuned to me. Sigh. Well, she was attuned to me the 75% of the time she was married to me. So, maybe 75% or maybe not 25%. I'd have to give it one more month -- one more week long meeting -- before I decided what I was going to do.

By then I'd have the tapes of her 'seminar,' or 'team building cruise,' or secret meeting with the boyfriend.

*****

Meantime, I had real work to do. It was late Friday afternoon, and I checked in with some clients. They had no new business for me. I got a call from a new client who needed me to come to Fort Worth immediately. I've done some cold calling in the past few months, but I've never received an incoming cold call. I asked 'Fort Worth Printing, Inc.' how they heard of me. They said he heard of me from North Texas Consulting. I told him I was on another line and would call him right back.

NTC was a legit customer, so I called Marcy, the accountant at NTC who ran the computer system. I asked if she knew Fort Worth Printing. Yes, since this morning, as a matter of fact, she said.

Gee, what a coincidence! Cynthia has a conversation with Mr. Anon, about getting me out of the house so they can bug it, at 7:15 a.m. By 5 p.m., they have a guy with a contact at a client of mine, call me to set up an 'emergency' meeting.

So I called them back and took the meeting. I could be there by 6. I had nothing better to do, what with my wife off in Houston, sucking the dick of Mr. AssHole. Or getting fucked in the ass, or slinking around in her fancy underwear, or some other damn thing.

I didn't want anything to happen to Bear, so I took him with me, to let them plant their bugs. We went off to Ft. Worth. They'd had only a few hours to set this up -- either that or they already had some company just sitting there doing nothing. This was a whole lot bigger operation than just Cynthia fucking some guy in Houston.

FWP had a baby sized network with a virus in the Outlook server. It took a couple of hours to de-louse the server, and the guy was truly grateful. Wow. They had some serious actors in this outfit. Last week, I would have believed him. I should berate them for letting somebody browse the porn site that had the virus, but I didn't think I could act that well.

When I got back to the house, I tickled the bug detector over to the vibrate setting. One buzz was a non-active voice only bug, two buzzes was for actively transmitting, one long buzz was for an active video bug. In the case of any active bug, there'd be a receiver just like the one I planted this morning in Houston.

I walked in the door and the detector in my pocket started jumping around. I got several 'hits' in every room. Upstairs, the basement, office, bedroom, kitchen, even the bathroom. What a bunch of perverts, looking at a crip beating off in the privacy of his own bathroom. They had video active in my office and in the bedroom. Perverts, like I said: looking at a couple in their own bedroom!

I went back to the van and set Bear loose in the house. I opened the door to the bedroom and the door to the office. Neither was a room where he was normally allowed without me. Naturally, he went in there and moved from room to room. That should keep the videos in almost constant 'send' mode.

I tracked the transmission and found the receiver stuck on the underside of the gas meter outside the garage.

So Bear and I entered the office, where I had my desktop, and I set up my laptop. I 'accidentally' moved some books around on the shelf, covering the video. It would now see the inside front cover of a book on TCP/IP protocol handling. I had to move that out of the way to get to a book on Outlook. I just wanted to make sure the new client got the right fix, you see.

After a little while, I put that book down and opened the browser on my desktop to a porn site. The ooh-ing and ahh-ing and yes-baby would fill the airwaves and keep the audio and blinded video transmissions full. After all, if they wanted to be perverts, I could only help.

While that was going on semi-loudly, I plugged my headphones into the laptop and clicked the apps I'd opened earlier. The GPS devices still hadn't moved. They still showed her luggage in the Century hotel and her pen was still in the funny unnamed building. The cell phone -- the one I officially knew about -- was in the funny unnamed building, too. I couldn't hear what was the pen was recording, of course.

So, if this scenario was to be believed, she checked in to the hotel, immediately left there for the unnamed building -- where, by the way, I didn't see her Mazda Miata at all -- and stayed there all day. Then she left for her room, when the 'seminar' was over, but left her cell and her Cross pen behind. Friday wasn't even supposed to be a seminar day, now that I think of it.

Sure. That was very likely. Not.

I wasn't looking forward to the weekend at all. I packed up Bear and the small mountain of kibble he'd eat and headed off to Waxahachie, to visit my mom. It was okay. We had kind of a heart-to-heart about why Cynthia wasn't around. I told her that she 'had to work' and would be gone all next week, too. I put air quotes around it, so she knew that I didn't think it was true.

Mom really liked Cynthia. That was okay: I really liked her too. Actually, now that I thought on it, I loved Cynthia, but I didn't like her very much. Mom said she probably did have to work and I agreed in a desultory way. In reality, I was sure she was working, but not doing the Carbunkle job that she said she was doing. Or maybe she was 'on the job' for Carbunkle.

We watched an old movie, and on Saturday, I watched the Waxahachie Warriors basketball team take a drubbing from Cardinal Bellore High. The Warriors lost, but I had a pretty good time. I especially had a good time watching the HS cheerleaders on both sides. They say you're really old when you can watch beautiful young cheerleaders and you tell yourself that you're too old for them... or maybe they're too young. Anyway, internally I drooled over them, probably just like every other male in the gym.

Saturday night my cell phone chirped. It was Cynthia.

"Hi," I said in as cheerful a voice as I could manage.

"Hi! I called you at home but there was no answer. Where are you?"

I thought briefly about spinning her a story about meeting an old girlfriend. But decided against it. "In Waxahachie. How are you getting a phone signal out in the Gulf of Mexico? I thought your cell phone wouldn't work out there."

"I'm not on cell, silly. I left that thing in my suitcase. I'm on the ship's phone system."

Well... an easily provable lie. Cell was in the unnamed building. Suitcase was in the hotel. "Oh... having fun?"

"Nope. It's a drag, but I gotta do it for good ol' Carbunkle. Did you know there's a company song?"

"Really... must be like college. Keep away from the frat parties. I bet you really set 'em on their ear when you showed up in your slinky, sexy dress at dinner."

"Well, I did actually. Got some offers but, of course, I turned them all away. I'm a married woman, after all."

I didn't think I could take much more of this. "Good. Save it for next weekend, and I'll scratch your itch. Gotta go now. Bear is doing the peepee dance. I can't let him out alone here. He doesn't know the neighborhood. Have fun, Cyn. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Okay. See ya soon..."

And I hung up. I don't know if she was going to say 'Love ya' like she always finished phone calls. Probably. I didn't want to hear that particular lie, just then.

On Sunday, Mom and I went to church and then we took Bear for a long romp in the park. I, myself, didn't 'romp' like in the old days, but I let him wander around off leash. The lack of the service handle let him know that he wasn't 'working' and he had a wonderful time. He must have chased a hundred squirrels and just from watching him, I now understood the meaning of 'barking up the wrong tree.'

Sunday night found me back at home in bug central. I fired up the trusty desktop porn channel, and while the 'harder, deeper' crowd kept the voice bug busy in my office, I took the laptop into the living room. There I must have read 150 stories about cheating wives, on the internet. That was really sad, considering that I was sure my wife was off in Houston, doing just that. Everything from Burn the Bitch to the wimpy cuckold stories. I needed to do what was right for me. I was the victim, not the offender. Did I want to live the rest of my life alone? Or did I want to live my life with someone I didn't -- couldn't -- trust? Okay, maybe not the rest of my life, but a big slice of it.

*****

You know how you have a thought while you're sleeping and that thought triggers something and suddenly you've got another thought? Well, that was me, Monday morning.

I decided that maybe Cynthia was working for the Feds. Change 'maybe' to 'probably.' Some sort of three-letter outfit: FBI, CIA, DOD, NSA, XYZ or something. Who else could possibly have set up a black bag bugging operation so quickly or had a 'spare' company they could throw at me?

Maybe she wasn't seeing somebody in Houston after all. That thought kept me occupied while I ate my oatmeal and banana breakfast. She was an Intel officer back in the Navy, and she migrated directly from that job to this.

Then I thought about her luggage. Why did she need to be gone for the weekend and why did she pack her sexy clothes? And the lies about the cruise. Fuck. I was depressed again. So what if it was a three-letter operation -- she was in Houston to fuck some guy.

I had to do something or else I'd go crazy. I decided I needed to learn a skill. I picked making websites so I went out and bought books on XML and Style Sheets and making websites. $137.85 later I had brought several books home and plunked them noisily on the desk in the office. I turned on the GPS tracking windows in the laptop. None of the GPSes had moved from their location on Saturday.

Cynthia must be on one hell of a cruise. Maybe in the oversized bathtub that the Century Hotel probably had. She said she had taken her luggage on the cruise, right? And the GPS said her suitcase hadn't moved. So obviously she cruised around the room.

She probably didn't even need her bed, being on a cruise and all. She'd cruise around Mr. AssHole and stop every once in a while so he could plug one of her portholes. Fucking slut.

My thoughts turned to the time after Cynthia would be coming home. I certainly didn't want to perform in front of the cameras, and I couldn't imagine how to act 'normal' when I was thinking about her and Mr. AssHole in Houston.

Maybe I'd get an attack of PTSD. I'd never had any flashbacks, being busy during rehab, and having an ultra-positive sexy woman next to me almost 24/7. I was depressed enough. Now I was depressed again. I thought about it and figured that I'd better have some night-terrors while she was away. Make the cameras work for me.

I sort of felt bad using PTSD as an excuse when so may Vets really had a problem with it. But I had a problem too, right now -- not the same kind, but... At least this way, I could not fuck her, which would be good for my psyche and not give a cheap thrill to the folks at the CIA or whoever.

Anyway, I wore my watch to bed, which I sometimes did anyway, and set the silent alarm (just an increasing tingle on the wrist) to wake me in the middle of the night so I could 'wake up screaming.'

It was about 2:30 in the a.m. when I woke. I screamed, gave myself the shakes and sat upright. Then I put my head in my hands and tried to act panicked. Hell, I didn't know what a flash back/night terror/panic attack looked like. But I figured, this would be my PTSD attack.

I got up, made myself some warm chocolate -- I hated drinking hot chocolate, you know, where you burn the roof of your mouth when you take a sip? -- stumbled around a bit and then went back to bed. Maybe when Cyn got here, I should take a shot of whiskey instead.

Slept through the rest of the night.

I alternated for the rest of the week, studying XML and websites for part of the time, and reading about cheating wives for the other part. One was just boring and ... come to think of it, they were both pretty boring. After a couple of hundred cheating wife stories, there wasn't much variation in the theme, you know? Some poor schmuck discovers the cheat, agonizes for a while (usually several pages) and then either wimps out and takes her back or there's some kind of scorched earth. Sigh.

And I watched the GPS indicators not move.

Cynthia didn't call at all the rest of the week. Busy, I guess. Maybe she was 'tied up' on Mr. AssHole's bed, and couldn't get away.

Finally on Friday morning, they moved. The suitcase moved first. It became a dot moving toward the phone and the pen. They were all together for about an hour, then about 11 a.m. they started moving back toward home.

'Home.' What a laugh. The indicators moved toward 'our pretend home.' Filled with bugs from her government friends, the house would be a good location for the lying bitch with the just fucked pussy to spend time before she went off again.

I didn't think they (whoever 'they' were) would come and collect the recordings while I was home. Probably they'd wait till I was out of the way and then send a 'meter reader' out to change the electronics.

I'd have to do the same. I had no idea what was recorded from my little pen transmitter. I seriously doubted that the pen was anywhere near Cynthia, however, most of the week. I figured she was in the Century Hotel, using all that passion that she so cleverly could call up on demand. Or maybe she really got off on this guy.

Thursday night was a particularly 'bad' night in terms of fake-PTSD attacks. I'd manufactured two of them.

Come morning, I mixed up a dilute solution of soap and water, diluted it again in more water, then put a drop in each eye. It burned like a S.O.B. for a few seconds, but my eyes were convincingly red by the time Cynthia got home at 4 p.m.

I met her at the door, unenthusiastically. "Hi," I said in the middle of our hug. "I'm glad you're home. Been having a hell of a time."

"What's wrong?" She was all solicitude and concern.

"Some bad dreams. Some flash backs to Abu and the explosion -- during the day, too. I've already made an appointment with the VA shrink -- next Tuesday. I'm afraid I know what it is."

"Oh no. Well, we've got to change your mind set and get you thinking about the good times. How about we go to Armando's for dinner. I'll just get changed and we go out and get some nice Italian food. It'll be an early meal, and then I can feast on you afterwards."

So... Armando's equals time for the 'gas man' to change the recording device. And there ain't going to be any play time later, in front of the camera or fucking my just-fucked wife. If I ever had a real wife.

I looked at her. "I don't think I'll be ready for any play time later. I just feel crummy."

She looked disappointed. I thought about it. A real cheater would have looked worried about the change in my behavior -- at least a flash on her face. But she was a good actress, I had to admit. Just 'disappointed' with a fair amount of 'concern for my condition.'

I let Bear out in the back yard, while Cyn changed. She put on a dynamite dress. It was just below the knee but had a slit up each side to about mid-thigh, high neckline in front but dipped way down to nearly her ass in back. It was sea foam green. It was one of my favorites. I was horny just looking at it.

Maybe I could get something in the car. We piled into the van, me on my legs but with a wheelchair in back just in case, and her flashing a little panty shot at me as she got in.

I got a couple of hundred yards down the road and pulled over. I had a (faked) breakdown. "Oh Cyn," and I reached for her. "I've missed you so much. I was all alone and having these attacks and..." She came to me across the open space between the two seats. I buried my head on her shoulder.

Pretty good acting, huh? I'd see her 'disappointed and concerned' look and raise her a 'PTSD induced breakdown.'

She was down on her knees hugging me, as I swiveled the driver's chair to the middle.

"I need you so much," I groaned. After a few minutes, my hands started roaming on her naked back. Then they wandered to the back of her neck where the high collar buttoned. The buttons came apart and there was nothing holding up the dress except our clinch.