Peace in the Home

I've always loved peace in the home, the houseplant (google it, it's cute) as well as the real thing. My home office has two small pots with the plant, also known as baby's-breath, as a reminder to anyone entering that peace in the home is of high value to me. At work, my office desk has one on the credenza, to remind me that business is not just about making money. I owned a modest-sized network security business, serving the local business community and a few high-end individuals.

For the twelve years we've lived in our four-bedroom house, it worked--we did indeed have peace. However, in the past year I learned something: the opposite of peace isn't always strife. It can also be coldness, apathy. Yeah, it's a cliché. To be expected, of course, because if it didn't happen so damn often it wouldn't be a cliché, now, would it? A year ago, my wife, Brenda, finally got the promotion she'd been angling and kissing ass for, and became executive assistant to the head partner of the law firm she worked for. I'd dreaded this promotion for some time, because said chief was another cliché, Ross Chisholm, the arrogant, narcissistic, jerk boss. You'd think Brenda, working in the firm for so long, and seeing him up close, would see through his god's-gift-to-women act, but you'd be wrong. Sadly.

Again, since we're riding the cliché thing, she also started working late after the promotion. Got to keep up with the boss's hours, don't you know? And of course it wasn't long before the final snake in the goodbye garden reared it's devious head: trips out of town. Just the notion of Chisdick needing to go out of town was a red flag. Their law firm only did local work, with local clients on local issues. When I asked the first time why the asshole had to go out of town, the reply I got amounted to little more than hissing, bluster and insults. When I had the temerity to ask why she had to accompany him, it escalated to a full-blown fight. Who the hell did I think I was to question the mighty and wise head partner's judgment? And that, as they say, is where the fecal matter inched closer to the rotating air circulation promoter for our marriage.

Yes, I love peace in the home and I'll go to great lengths to maintain it, but I'm not devoid of brain cells. Like a few million other guys, I have access to the internet and the odd story about cheating spouses.

Once I got over my disappointment, hurt and anger, I figured I had to do something, because a cuckold I most certainly am not. I was too late to do anything about the first trip to Aspen, but by the time they planned the second trip, I had a few ducks lined up. My loving wife and her Chasshole boss seemed to like upscale locales, the upcoming one being some ritzy beach place in the Hamptons on Long Island.

In my younger days I'd fallen for the oxymoronic idiocy of 'fighting for peace,' and I buried a few misspent years after high school in the military. Other than an IT degree, I gained from those years a few friends, some still in, but most spread across the country in peaceful occupations. One of them, Paul Halsbury, happened to reside on Long Island, doing home security work for the millionaires who own expensive homes they almost never use, and therefore need to protect. It was a logic which escaped both of us. I mean, if you're only going to use a house out there for a couple weeks a year, because you're spending the rest of the time making money for its payments, why not just rent one for those two or three weeks? Oh no, in that crowd it wasn't the use of the house that counted, it was the owning of the house. Every village, they say, has an idiot, but the Hamptons seem to their breeding ground.

I had to grudgingly concede that ole Ross Chissass was not one of those idiots--he simply rented a house to rub shoulders with the celebrities. However, he was not smart enough to make his law practice computer network impenetrable. In all likelihood, he was too self-absorbed to realize the woman he was bonking had a network professional for a husband. Granted, it took a week or so of evening poke-around, but I eventually broke my way into his firm's email server.

Being the bossman, and having Brenda under him in the firm (pun intended), it apparently was a no-brainer for him to use his work email to set up their plans for the July 'conference' in New York to prep for some large lawsuit. His other emails showed the 'conference' consisted of a half-hour meeting when they landed, to hammer out the details of a settlement between one of his local clients and a company in the Big Apple, and another half-hour the day they were leaving to wrap it up. In between it was Weekend at Bernie's, baby, party, party, party.

Karma is not always a bitch. At times she can be a sweet and loving babe, and for some reason her heart bled for me this time. The house Brenda secured for their fling--err, conference--happened to belong to a customer of my good friend Paul. Which meant it was already wired for video and sound, and all action would be streaming into his servers and recorded. All we had to do was sit back. Well, sit back and do some things to take care of the home front.

Including nurturing my little peace in the home plants.

Time to take a breath and describe the players, I guess. Brenda was 34 and a classic Brazilian beauty, tall and tan and young and lovely like in the song. In case you were wondering, yes, she did have a permanent Brazilian, courtesy of laser surgery. The edginess of her youth had mellowed into soft curves and, to my mind at least, she was tanned perfection. No kids to spoil her body--two busy professionals, what can I say? Apparently ole Ross the boss also thought she was perfection. On heels, she looked all six one of me (Brent Maher, 35) straight in the eye. With Ross, though, she had to stay with flats so as to not embarrass the man. Both of us believed in using the gym our gated community clubhouse had, so we were fit. My eyes were green, hers brown.

Here's the thing I didn't understand. Ross was hardly Mr. Universe or Einstein, but he had managed to land a real-life beauty queen for a wife, Miss Central Ohio or something like that. Central casting couldn't have done any better: blond, blue-eyed, Barbie in every way. She wasn't an airhead, either--she had a framed MBA from one of the top Ivy League schools, and when you talked to her, you knew: somebody was home and taking care of business. Why in the hell would he pork somebody who, though pretty and sexy, definitely wasn't in Barbie's league? (Nobody is perfect, as they say, and Barbara, to her chagrin, got tagged with the Barbie name in high school. To her face everyone called her Barbara, but everywhere else she was Barbie.)

Don't ask me why, but apparently I was one of the few men in Barbie's (so sue me) orbit who happened to not be intimidated by her, which meant when we met at company gatherings, we always had good conversations. To use another cliché, we clicked. In time, we acquired a mutual respect, oh, and each other's phone numbers as well.

And so it came about that Brenda informed me late June that she and her brilliant boss 'had to' take a weeklong trip to New York for the abovementioned 'conference,' which would span the Fourth of July. My forays into their email system had already delivered up the sickening details. I merely nodded and said okay.

As I mentioned earlier, I'd read a few Lit LW stories, and in most the about-to-be betrayed hubby would plead with the wife to stay. Not me. If she was too stupid to realize that cheating spelled the end of our marriage, she'd be too stupid to see reason. Fidelity was not something I felt a husband (or wife, for that matter) should need to lobby for. It's in the contract. If you don't believe in fidelity, don't marry. Zero rocket science needed.

So, while she spent her time and energy setting up plans for their weeklong honeymoon, I spent the time taking care of number one. From the first time I realized that my loving wife was spreading her legs for the bossman she now adored, I'd started moving money places. My business, from its inception, was set up as being owned by a foreign trust outside of our common assets and I'd been an employee and not an owner. So I simply 'invested' more of our money into the business, a little at a time, until our private joint savings account was down to barely an emergency fund level, as opposed to the retirement level it had been before.

--

The big day arrived and off the two love birds went to nest in New York.

My company, with the infusion of capital from our savings account, had decided to invest in a new line of business, marine security I called it. With technology, you never know where the next opportunity will open up, do you? This, of course, required the company to acquire a decent-sized boat, one that could easily reach places like the Cayman Islands, and included decent-sized accommodations. Being owned by the company, for company purposes, it would not form part of our community assets. In fact, Brenda never knew about the boat. I meant to tell her, of course, but she was working late all the time, so when was I supposed to?

So... I spent my time tending my peace in the home plants which, quietly, had been moved from my home office to said boat in the marina.

While my loving wife and her boss worked their busy asses off in the Hamptons on their 'big deal,' I got busy. The first morning of their 'conference,' Paul, my security buddy, sent me links to videos his system had recorded. It didn't take more than five minutes to verify serious adultery was taking place, so I stopped watching, downloaded the files to my home laptop and stored a copy in the cloud.

After taking a deep breath, I called the asshole's wife. "Hi Barbara, Can we meet for lunch today?"

"What? Why?" While not hostile, her tone sounded a trifle cool, like she suspected I just waited till our spouses were out of town before hitting on her.

"Something happened last night I need to show you in person."

If anything, her hostility escalated. "What happened?"

Pressing my lips, I escalated my hostility right back. "That's what I want to show you. It affects you directly. But if you're not interested, let's forget it. Just don't complain afterward that I didn't tell you."

That did it, and she backed down. "Sorry. Okay, let's meet. When and where?"

Deciding to rub her nose in it a little, I said, "I was going to give you the option to pick a time and place, but if you're pressed for time, let's do noon at the McDonald's on Bridge and Seventh. That'll be fast."

As I suspected, the location did matter to her. After drawing in her breath in a bit of a huff, she said, "No, let's do Chipotle in the Lodent Mall. Noon is fine." Apparently, that was as low, and as fast, as she was going to go.

While waiting for noon to arrive, I moved most of my belongings, including my desk, to a small storage space. I didn't have family anywhere close, nor friends I wanted to move in with, so I took residence in the boat, and fired up the internet to look for an apartment. Time marched on and I decided to do the banking stuff after lunch. No rush--it's not like Brenda was going to interrupt her sexual marathon to check on bank balances. In her mind, Mr. Peace in the Home was happily twiddling his thumbs and watering his plants, waiting for the beauty queen to return, bearing her charms of allure.

--

I beat Barbie to Chipotle, got my food and found us a table as far back as I could. Waiting for her, I fired up my laptop and burned her a copy of her husband's porn scene onto a thumb drive.

When she dropped her food on the table, her greeting was, shall we say, brusque. The husband of her husband's subordinate had, after all, interrupted her day chockful of beauty treatments, book clubs, clothes shopping, and whatnot. Not feeling motivated to soften the blow, I simply turned the laptop to her and hit Play.

Iced tea blew out of her mouth and nostrils as the (muted for public viewing, of course) nasty sex scene filled the screen. Brenda rode Barbie's scummy hubby cowgirl-style while he squeezed her tits and tweaked her nipples. Pretty soon they shifted to doggie style.

Barbie slammed the lid of the laptop shut with a hard slap, dropped her head to her hands and sobbed. "Sonofabitch," she blurted out between the snot and tears. "He told me this was an important deal, and he did not tell me he was taking his floozy." She patted my hands. "No offense."

"None taken," I said, waiting for her to get over her shock. Admittedly, the way I sprang it on her was a bit mean, but in my view she'd asked for it. The least she could have done is realize I wouldn't call her without good reason, and keep an open mind until she heard what it was. On the other hand, ripping the bandaid off was probably going to result in a quicker and more decisive reaction from her. So I waited and finished my massive burrito elephant-style (one bite at a time).

"How long have you known?" she asked after using a handful of napkins to clear the tears and snot.

"A few hours. All I had was a suspicion, but I couldn't prove anything until this morning. Don't ask how I got it, but it was legal, in case you were wondering. What are you going to do?"

"Divorce the bastard and take the scumbucket for every penny I can. Do you think we can have them served in New York?"

"I'm almost sure," I said. "Do you want to do that? Do you know of a good lawyer?"

"Oh yeah, I wanna serve him as soon as I can, see if I can spoil their cheaters' party while they're still among their rich and famous friends. Ha, we'll be doing them a favor--now they can join those people all on their second or third spouses. And yes, I'm personal friends with Elena Shovitz, the meanest divorce lawyer around here. Never thought I'd be a customer. Wanna join me and see if we can get a multiparty discount?"

When I nodded, she picked up her phone. "Lenie? Can you make time for me this afternoon? No, girl, business." A big sigh. "Yeah, the sonofabitch is fucking his floozy in the Hamptons as we speak. The slut's husband is with me, and he wants you to do his, too. Four is fine. I'll text you his number.

We complete lunch with silence and small talk, hostility replaced with sadness at such a needless loss.

On my way to the bank, I called the lawyer and answered the myriad of questions. The biggest monetary issues were the house and my business. The former was joint property, and we'd have to split that. The business, though, was separate and had absorbed most of our savings.

--

I don't know how Ms. Shovitz managed it, but the two lovebirds were served just before they went out to dinner the following day. The aforementioned fecal matter hit the rotating air circulation device full force, and brown spots spread everywhere. My phone exploded, as I expected.

For the occasion, Barbie and I sat in an isolated spot in a park, with our phones at the ready.

My wife called first, at full scream. "Brent, what the fuck?"

Not perceiving a specific question in there, I waited and put the phone on speaker so Barbie could hear, too.

"Are you there?" she asked when she got no response.

"I'm here, waiting for a specific question to answer. The documents you have should tell you everything. All you need to do is sign them."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Is that a rhetorical question, or specific? I'm astonished that you think you can fuck your boss and I'd be happy with it."

"What are you talking about? We're here trying to wrap up the Sycamore Energy deal."

"Which you did the afternoon you arrived. Since then all you've done is fuck, sleep and eat. In fact, an hour ago you rode your boyfriend cowgirl and told him how much better he is than me."

Brenda gasped. "You're making that up. Typical exaggeration and overreacting. We're--"

"Oh, put a sock in it, slut. You're heading out to dinner with the Sainzes at Sunset Beach Grill. Stop lying, it's bad enough you're a cheating slut. I'm listing the house tomorrow and we'll split the proceeds. Enjoy the rest of your fuckfest week." I ended the call.

Barbie and I sat waiting for her husband to call. He didn't--must have realized from Brenda's conversation that his goose was cooked, well done and dry.

After twenty minutes or so, I tapped Barbie's hand. "Dinner?"

She turned her teary blue eyes to me. "I'm not hungry, but we should, I suppose."

"Any preference?" We rose.

"Anywhere but Chipotle."

We ended up at a quiet Indian restaurant. Picking at our food, we spent more than two hours on a verbal smorgasbord: reminiscing, venting, questioning and planning.

As the dinner wound down, I took a chance. "Barbara, I don't know about you, but tonight I don't want to stay alone in my house. Can I interest you in a chaste sleepover at the Marriott?"

Her eyes lit up. "Excellent idea. Let's go home and each pick up an overnight bag. Then come pick me up."

Ninety minutes later we checked into a suite. Barbara opened her bag and hung up her clothes for tomorrow. Turning to me, she said, "No offense, but tonight I'm not in the mood for sex."

"No offense taken, because sex is the furthest thing from my mind, too."

"What's the closest thing?" she asked with an impish smile.

"Oh, that's easy. Revenge."

The first big smile of the day lit up her face. "Now that's a thought I can get behind. What did you have in mind?"

I took a seat at the generously-sized table. "Let's first get something from room service to fuel our planning."

We ordered a bottle of riesling for her, three Blue Moons for me and a bucket of ice to keep the lot cold.

She had access to all Bossman's credit and debit cards, and reported them all missing, and I did the same for my honey. We cleared out all accounts they had access to, transferring the funds to new ones. Then we canceled their plane tickets back and reported their cellphones stolen (so they couldn't call the phone company from their phones, or anyone else).

Next, Barbara called Chisholm's partners, one by one, and explained how their head partner was partying it up in New York, on their nickel, with his executive assistant. None of them were surprised, because they could see the signs every day. However, the fact that he was picking their pockets to fund his illicit fun produced righteous indignation. Numerous messages found their way to his phone and email accounts, none of which he could access, of course.

While Barbie babbled to his partners, I called my buddy Paul, who ran the security service in the Hamptons. To my question, he admitted knowing an unsavory type or two, who for a fee could rain down some misfortune of the physical kind on Ross Cheaterholm. The premium to dump him in the East River or Long Island Sound was surprisingly small, but Barbie shook her head firmly at that suggestion.

We didn't have any record of what passed between the lovers while they were out, but by the time they got back to their rental house, their mutual recriminations helped our riesling and beer go down even more smoothly. Apparently, when Bossman's credit cards all got declined, and dear Brenda's, too, they realized their gig was up. Ross tried calling a partner, only to discover his phone had stopped working. The cashier at the expensive restaurant was far less amused than the two of us on the hotel suite's sofa with our feet on the coffee table.

In desperation, Bossman apparently pointed out the restaurant would lose far less on a phone call than being stiffed a few hundred dollars for an entire meal, including champagne and dessert. So, apparently he got through on the restaurant's phone to Paul Pearce, the partner he beat out to become head. Pearce, primed by Barbie of course, showed Ross no sympathy. Screwing the help? At our expense? Cold day in hell, buddy. Don't ask tonight if you even still have a job.