Secret Beach

There was a long silence.

"Gail," I said, "I hope you don't think I'm asking you as your manager. I'm asking you as a friend. And if you don't want to, no problem, I'll just...."

"Of course I'll do it for you Michael," she interrupted me. "Send me the address."

I know it was a risk involving my employee, but I trusted Gail.

The following day, somehow I was able to focus through the executive meeting. By nine AM I was back in my office. Fifteen minutes later I got a text photo from Gail.

From the picture I could tell the gate to Vasquez's place was still closed and through the bars I saw the unmistakable bright red of Ali's car. She'd been there all night. Suddenly all my sadness was replaced with anger. I was pretty sure our marriage was done. But I was owed at a minimum some kind of explanation. I texted Ali.

'I know you're at Adrian's. We need to talk. I'll be there at six o'clock tonight.'

Throughout the day I had no reply from Ali. I probably checked my phone fifty times. But as the day drug on my resolve increased. If she had some type of plausible explanation for her staying at Vasguez's house, and it better be quite plausible, then we can start the process of repair and trust.

If I sensed any relationship between the two of them it is definitely over. I had even started the process of finding a divorce attorney, something even a few days ago would've seemed ridiculous. These were the thoughts I had as I traveled west out towards Vasguez's sprawling luxury home in Sylvania.

Just as I made the turnoff from highway 26 I had a thought. What if the gates were closed? I wasn't sure what I would then do but I did promise myself I would not yell or beg. I was not going to make a spectacle of myself.

Just then I made the turn and saw the brick pillars. The gates were open.

A sudden nervousness passed through me but that was quickly replaced by other emotions, anger and curiosity. I had a few thoughts as I got closer to the sprawling home and grounds. This was the type of home Allison was attracted to. She'd point out this style when we drove past something similar or if she saw something like it in a magazine she would show me.

An attractive suave man, wealth, and her dream home. Could I compete with that I wondered? Would our love and relationship be able to overcome these attractions? I'd soon find out I thought as I noted the red BMW parked out front.

Just as I was about to knock the door was whisked open and there, in all his glory, stood Adrian Vasguez.

"Michael, please, come in," he said, his arms spread wide as if he wanted to hug me.

I walked past him wordlessly.

"Michael," he addressed me again, "I am so sorry about the problems that have arisen between you and Allison. You are both good friends and I'm hoping we can all work toward a solution that is acceptable to everyone." He pontificated.

"Where is she?" I replied neutrally.

"Yes, yes," he began, "Allison is freshening up, she will be out shortly. In the meantime as I host I am remiss in not offering you refreshments. What Michael may I get you, a drink, a glass of wine? Whatever you wish, my friend." He was really turning it on.

"What I wish," I began with an edge in my voice, "is to have a serious discussion with the woman who currently is my wife. Also, what I wish is to do it privately without you around."

"Of course my friend, you and your bride have a lot to talk about. I completely understand. I shall not intrude on your discussion."

Just then Allison came down the hall. Arms crossed she looked like she'd just gotten out of the shower, her hair still damp. She was not fully meeting my eyes as she entered the living room.

"Hello Michael." She said, glancing at me with brief eye contact.

Vasguez had made no motion to exit and leave us alone..

"Get lost!" I barked at Vasguez.

"Yes, yes, of course. You two need your privacy," he said as he hustled away.

Allison sat in a single chair while I stood in Vasquez's living room. The view out the back showcased the beautiful blue swimming pool and the manicured grounds. I saw the lounge chairs and a table between then with partially filled beverage glasses still sitting on the table.

I glanced at Ali and she was staring off in a different way not meeting my eyes.

"So what's the deal?" I asked.

Silently she sat her, her palms clasped, not looking at me, a blank look on her face.

"And why, of all places, did you come to this guy's house?" I asked, my anger seeping into my words.

After a moment she replied.

"After you kicked me out I called Adrian. He said I could stay while I sorted things out." She quietly told me.

"You're that close to him, he's the first person you call?" I asked. More anger.

"Adrian has become a good friend," she said with more emphasis, "he and I share a lot of the same thoughts and values. He understands me." She added.

"Are you saying," I asked my voice rising, "that I don't understand you, after all this time?"

"Michael," she said, now for the first time turning toward me, "I do love you, but you and I have grown apart."

She took a deep breath.

"I think what I want out of life and what you want have become two different things."

Suddenly I realized our marriage was in a far more fragile state than I had thought. At this moment I realized, I didn't want that.

"Allison," I began, my voice softer, "tell me what is it that you want that is so different from what we have?" I asked.

"Michael," she began, with a particular look on her face, "you are a solid, honest, steady, practical man. Those are some of the things I've always admired about you, but I guess I've changed. I want more." She told me.

"More what!?" I asked, getting angry again.

"This!" She said her arms gesturing throughout the house and grounds, "this is the lifestyle I want. A nice house, travel, trips, the nicer thing, a different lifestyle. I want excitement."

I stood there staring at her, realizing that I probably never knew her as much as I thought. Her words rang through my ears. My interpretation was me, my steady job, our practical house, all bored her. Finally my brain absorbed the message, or at least my interpretation of the message.

"So are you fucking this guy?" I asked my head nodding to the direction Vasguez had gone.

After a brief pause she answered..

"What kind of question is that?" She asked, mustering up some degree of indignation. "Adrian is a friend."

"So are you?" I asked again.

And as I watched Allison I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. Vasguez, who must have been lurking within earshot, walked back into the room.

"Michael," he began, "it is true that Allison and my friendship has blossomed in recent weeks. But you Michael, are a friend too. I think the three of us, all intelligent adults, can talk through any of our differences." He said putting on his most charming confident salesman's pitch.

For the moment I was paralyzed with anger, 'talk through our differences'!

Vasguez continued.

"I have an idea. With Novacim, we are starting our third fundraising round. This time the valuation will be at two hundred million. When Allison invested the valuation was fifty million. Her shares now are valued at nearly two million dollars."

The same selling tactics I'd seen in the meeting rooms talking to venture capitalists was emerging. Silently I was angry but also curious how we went from my marriage to his company.

"Michael, as a sign of our friendship I could offer you the second round valuation, you would instantly quadruple your money," he exclaimed his smiling face searching mine for affirmation.

When my blank silence stared back at him he must have felt the need to fill the dead air space.

"Personally, my shares are worth over thirty million dollars and when the IPO is launched later this year, all our shares will at least double again." He explained.

I noticed the small smile on Ali's face as she watched Vasguez. Mentally she was calculating her own wealth.

"Let me understand this," I asked. Vasquez's head nodded with affirmation, a big anticipatory smile on his face.

"If I invest, one hundred thousand dollars, that would immediately be worth, say, four hundred thousand, do I have it right so far?" I asked.

"Yes, yes," he feverishly nodded as if the slow pupil in class finally understood the lecture.

"And then, when the IPO is launched I would then be worth eight hundred thousand?" I asked.

"Precisely!" exclaimed Vasguez, literally clapping his hands.

I now turned to look at Allison as I spoke to Vasguez.

"I'm a little slow, but let me repeat all this," I stated calmly, "if I give you one hundred thousand dollars, I'll eventually get eight hundred thousand back, but in the meantime you get to fuck my wife. Is that correct? Do I have the valuation correct?" asked.

"Michael!" Ali reacted.

At that moment I began walking away, I now knew what was going on. As I turned to leave, my anger simmering slightly below the surface, Vasguez grabbed my arm.

"Now Michael," he began.

I had no thought, I barely remember doing it, but at that moment I pivoted and blasted an anger laden punch square to his jaw. It dropped him.

Allison screamed, and quickly went to Vasguez, yelling at me, asking why I hurt Adrian. I continued toward the door.

"Mike," Vasguez said to me now propped on one elbow, still on the floor and bleeding, "I will let this go, just this one time. However, next time you don't get off quite so easily." Gone was the confident good natured salesman. A darker true persona emanated from him. With a final glance at Allison, I left.

Driving home I thought about the entire encounter. She never once did admit she was screwing the guy, I thought for a minute. But given ample chance she never denied it either. I couldn't help but think back to that encounter on Secret Beach.

Had that been the trigger for all this?

I then, with sadness, thought about my future and during the drive home that night I finally lost it. I had to pull to the side of the road as I mourned my now imminently failed marriage. After a few moments of emotion, I took a deep breath, And told myself to pull it all together and start making a plan.

Step one: find an attorney. When I first looked into divorce attorneys this afternoon it seemed like such a long shot that I would really need one. I now knew that it was no longer a long shot.

I arrived home and the house suddenly felt different. As if the things I thought of as Ali's looked odd. Out of place. The burden of my failed marriage felt like a weight on my shoulders dragging me down both physically and mentally.

Fatigue overwhelmed me. I analyzed over and over what I had done wrong to get to this point. Knowing she'd been sexually intimate with Vasguez, was there a circumstance where I'd forgive her? I searched long and hard trying to figure out if that was possible. Ultimately I concluded that I could never forgive the betrayal.

It was a long miserable night of jumbled thoughts, sadness and anger. The following day I called into the office and took a sick day. I received several phone calls throughout the day, including one from Gail.

I wallowed in my own self pity till the early afternoon. I finally told myself to quit whining and accept the fact that my marriage was over. I needed to continue making a plan for moving forward. I began making notes. I made a few calls and set up a meeting early next week with a divorce attorney.

I went through my emails for the day Friday evening, finally I played Gail's voice mail.

'Hey Michael it's Gail. Nothing urgent, just checking in with you to see how you're doing.'

And that was that. Obviously she knew something was going on in my marriage. She was the one that had given me the information about Ali's car being at Vasquez's overnight. I appreciated her concern, but I also had to maintain our professional relationship. I didn't call her back.

Saturday morning I retrieved my long unused running shoes and took off on a run. Actually it was more of a slow jog with some stints of walking mixed in, but it was a start. I would rededicate myself to a healthier lifestyle.

The balance of the weekend I worked in the yard and despite some sad thoughts of Allison and our plans for the house that periodically slowed me down, I stuck with it. I was accomplishing something, I felt slightly better.

All weekend long I kept expecting some type of communication from Ali. There was none.

Throughout the following weeks I compartmentalized my personal issues and continued to work hard at Pinkus Labs. I found that at night, at home, my house was lonely. I worked normally most nights until seven o'clock or so. One of the positives of the entire situation was our business. My region had the highest sales growth in North America. I even got a phone call complimenting me from Helen Fletcher, the Vice President of Sales North America.

"Michael," Helen Fletcher began, "your team is doing an outstanding job. You are over forecast by nearly twenty per cent."

I thanked her and complimented my group.

"I was wondering if you could speak about your success at the sales conference. I know we have some months before the event but we are already planning the format. I'm thinking that a success story like yours could motivate others."

I agreed, excited by the attention from the Vice President.

Despite the negativity of my failed marriage my professional success helped my spirits. My spirits were brought down to earth by a call from my divorce attorney Leland Wells.

"Son," he began, Leland was in the latter stages of his career, "I heard from your wife's attorney. Her name is Tina Battalini, and she's a tough one. She's going to ask for a lot. First thing is that your wife wants her possessions that are still in the marital home."

He went on to tell me they are demanding access this week. I explained she had a key, the locks are the same, she can come over whenever she wants. I told him that I want to be there to observe. I want to make sure my possessions are not confused with hers. Eventually there was a plan for her to come over this coming Wednesday afternoon. I told Leland I would make that work.

I was curious to see what interaction Ali and I would have when she came for her stuff. I had not seen or heard from her directly in the weeks since I had confronted her at Vasguezs' house. More than once I'd been tempted to drive by to see if her car was there, but I refrained.

Finally a black suburban with tinted windows pulled up that Wednesday followed by a U Haul. Two Hispanic guys got out of the U Haul and then Ali and another woman emerged from the Suburban.

Allison was dressed spectacularly in designer clothes and expensive sunglasses. Her expression was blank, her eyes masked by the dark glasses. I sensed this interaction would not be good natured.

The other woman was petite with a mass of black curly hair. She had a serious confrontational expression on her face. She marched up to me aggressively.

"Mr Ballantine," she began, Ali was several paces behind her, "I'm Tina Battalini, Ms St Clair's attorney." She gave me the briefest of hand shakes.

She presented me a list of Allison's possessions and informed me any communication should be through her and I was to not talk directly to her client.

Throughout the process, barely a word was said to me. One of the movers wanted to use the bathroom and I showed him where it was. That was the longest conversation I had with anyone. Allison ignored me and avoided being near me as much as possible. The faintest flickers of any reconciliation were thoroughly doused.

The entire process ultimately was uneventful. Ninety minutes after they arrived, they left. The net upshot for me was that my house just seemed all the more empty with the last remaining glimpses of Allison now gone.

A few days later I got a call from Leland.

"Sounds like your soon to be ex is going after the house." Leland told me.

Earlier when we had talked he believed that since I had acquired the house before we were married and that my name only was on the title that the house would be exempt from community property status.

"Turns out the court may view this a little differently," he said.

In Oregon, the court will presume that the spouses contributed equally to the acquisition of most property during marriage, regardless of what the title says.

"Don't worry too much about all this yet," Leland said, "I'll look into it. I have a few ideas."

I found myself, normally when I was home alone, scanning the news for recent information on Novacim and Adrian Vasguez. It was like probing a toothache, painful but I kept doing it. I'd even got a few more pieces of mail addressed to Allison as an officer of Novacim. I unethically opened them, read them, then threw them away.

It sounded like based on some earlier trials the product had proved effective. There was still no approval from the FDA. They were waiting for some type of testing in Maryland. Meanwhile an IPO for Novacim was scheduled to launch concurrently with the FDA's approval.

Certainly Adrian Vasguez was front and center on any new development on Novacim. Occasionally there was a quote or a sound bite from Dr Gupta but it was mostly Vasguez. He was without question the face of the product.

He was leading the charge talking about Novacim as the new wonder drug and how it was going to change lives. Unsaid by Vasguez in these interviews but certainly noted by the financial analysts was the potential money to be made once the FDA approved the product. It sounded like Vasguez's dreams of wealth and power would come true.

Despite the fact that reading about all this put me in a bad mood I continued to do it. Fortunately I had other things in my life to relieve my obsession

And one of those things was the approaching sales conference. I needed to make sure I was prepared. I had been given a twenty minute time slot on the second to the last day. My plan was to outline my sales strategy, and make sure I recognized my team. I'd then go through a specific sales scenario and what we were doing to achieve success.

I was so caught up in this and other tasks as we approached the sales conference I forgot an important detail of the Hawaii trip.

I was signed up and prepaid for another week on Kauai after the meetings. I recalled booking the hotel on our way back from Kauai last year. That suddenly seemed like a long time ago. A far happier time. But, I realized, I had bypassed my window for cancellation. I needed to call the Koloa Landing and look at all my options. The thought of going there alone had a mixed appeal.

That Wednesday I got a call from Leland, my attorney.

"I may have some positive news for us Michael." He stated.

"Good," I replied, "I need some."

Leland explained to me that normally, inheritances are not subject to equitable distribution because inheritances are not considered marital property. Instead, inheritances are treated as separate property belonging to the person who received the inheritance and can not be divided between the parties in a divorce.

"But because Allison co-mingled her inheritance with joint marital monies and then took the inheritance and an amount of joint monies to invest with Mr Vasguez, I'm making a claim on the entire investment."

I was confused, I told Leland, I didn't want anything to do with her shady Novacim investment.

"I understand that my boy," Leland replied patiently, "but, my plan is to negotiate for Allison to keep 100% of the investment and you to keep 100% of the house."

Suddenly, I realized this was good news. I asked him if it would work.

"So far her attorney is playing hardball," Leland told me, "but I see a softening, I think if you send me an email this afternoon agreeing to this I believe we can get the whole thing done in a few days, maybe a week."