Trojan Horse

As he was leaving, he felt a soft gentle hand on his sleeve. "You are maturing so fast, Randall," warbled his grandmother. "I'm glad of it. Young men are impetuous, you know. They decide they should be doing a certain thing, so they find something that fits into that picture, and then backfill in all the details until it seems consistent. They think themselves in love when they are in lust, or when a woman seems picture perfect for their lives. As they mature, they leave these things behind, although sometimes it seems like the other way around. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think I do," said Randall, his voice carrying an uncommon weight.

"You'll do fine," she said. "Follow your heart, even if it leads through dark places. You're a good boy." She kissed him on the cheek.

When they got home, Gwen hopped out of the car and disappeared inside. Randall parked, took out the trash, and then looked up sadly to see what he expected, his wife perched on the sofa in the corner in the den, looking at her phone, wearing sweats, and sipping out of a giant glass of white wine. He went to his office to clear out emails from the day, and when he returned, the lights were out downstairs and he heard the click of the door above. Another night on the sofa, and the most loving he got was from an elderly lady with an open heart, unlike the hard one he seemed to be married to.

He slid the cloned phone out from a stack of papers. He was not terribly suprised to see the name Steve Callahan in the text messages, so he scrolled down to see when the messages began. Her latest phone was only a couple of years old, as was this one, and the messages began at about the time it was purchased. He was dismayed to see that the communications began with a discussion of their previous tryst. How long had she been doing this? The phone was registered as a pay-as-you-go burner cell, which to his mind suggested a serial cheater rather than a sudden affair. Steve used his regular phone, but Gwen had been keeping this secret since the beginning, as if there was a long-term plan he did not want to know about. She had a second Facebook account under her maiden name, WhatsApp, and even Tinder.

Scrolling through Facebook, Randall saw pictures of parties to which he had not been invited, weekend boat trips he had not known about, and lots of workplace pictures featuring handsome but shifty-looking Steve Callahan, who appeared to be some kind of trauma nurse with a Rolex. Randall remembered how many times Gwen had gone up to Dallas to visit her mother when she was sick, or gone back in to work at the last minute on a Saturday, and he cursed his trusting nature. He was busy, why wasn't she so busy? One of the pictures gave him a clue: despite having her medical degree and a fancy title, it seemed that Gwen spent most of her time doing the grunt work. In the background, the other doctors were having a huddle in the hall, while Gwen was sewing up what looked like a minor injury. Perhaps holistic medicine was not turning out as well as she had hoped.

He had just about closed down the account when he saw a final name, Cathy Cudahy, who he remembered from their college days as a slightly flighty girl who never seemed to get too far with her studies but was popular on fraternity row. She and Gwen had been friends, but now he saw exchanges between them going as far back as the phone recorded. These took on a typical tone:

Cathy: So how's it going?

Gwen: I'm having a good time. Just a little nervous.

Cathy: He'll never catch on. He thinks you hung the moon. You have to think of your own needs.

Gwen: He wants children, but he's always busy at work.

Cathy: Just let him raise Steve's kids. They look similar enough.

Gwen: Guess I have a type.

Cathy: You found a good one to be your sugar daddy. Give me his number when you split.

Gwen: I feel so dirty sometimes.

Cathy: Don't. You're doing your part to overthrow the patriarchy. Live a little!

Gwen: What he doesn't know won't hurt him.

On some level, Randall had hoped to find something that made him think he had married someone other than a heartless gold-digging career-oriented opportunist, but now he saw things clearly. Gwen cared about middle class respectability and comfort, but something as ephemeral in her mind as "love" or "trust" was not on the agenda. She was going to cheat until Randall threw her out, then take him for all that he had. Another thread came up:

Gwen: What do I do if he finds out?

Cathy: You get half of the business, alimony, and half of all assets during the marriage. Wait for his grandmother to die, maybe there's money.

Gwen: I don't know if I want a divorce.

Cathy: You won't stay married forever, playing like this, unless you hook up with a swinger.

Gwen: I could live with that.

Cathy: There you go. Ride the Randall train till it crashes, then come out with us to the Polygon Club.

Gwen: Steve and I could just go as a couple.

Cathy: He doesn't have a wedding ring. That's part of the thrill, and they don't like cheaters (STDs).

He felt himself folding inward. At first, the rage suffused through his veins, but he turned it off when it felt good, because at some point anger becomes self-pity. Then he felt frustration at the futility of it all. He wanted to scream obscenities at her and tell her that she ruined his life. Then he wondered: did he care what she thought? She had ripped out his heart, stabbed him in the back, and played him for a fool.

Randall used the Vipassana breathing techniques he had learned once at an anger management seminar, and when he came out of that trance, he had no emotion. He was pure emptiness, and with that, he achieved cold crystal logic. Then his creativity came back and he had a plan. As he remembers it now, this was the first time he heard the metallic sound, as if his mind were scrolling ahead to what became inevitable at the moment that his rage calmed and his determination took over.

On Wednesday night Gwen came home early to find him wearing a full suit. "Did someone die?" she asked, and he laughed inside at her completely tone-deaf approach to other people. The glittering little sociopath had no regard for any feelings or futures except her own.

"No, I just got back from the lawyer," said Randall. "I've got a few things for you to sign."

"What kind of... things?" asked Gwen.

"The first one is a new life insurance policy. It pays out double if either one of us dies by accident, but nothing if we die by criminal acts, our own or those of others. This way, if I have a workplace accident, you have something to live on forever. It's at a million five."

Her eyes lit up there, so he passed her the second. "This one I need to secure a second loan for the business. It's a post-nup, basically saying that the business is off-limits, and it limits the amount either spouse gets if the divorce is caused by their action, like abandonment or cheating. Basically, this secures your income from me if I do something stupid, and lets me get a new line of credit for the business."

"Why do you need that?" she asked.

"I'm buying a house. A second house. I'm going to fix it up right and sell it. Since I'm buying it personally, this agreement doesn't cover it, but if something were to happen to me, you'd keep all of your income and then thirty percent of our shared assets less the business."

She looked at him quizzically, searching his eyes for awareness of any of her subterfuge. Randall had shotgunned a couple IPAs for a reason. Half-drunk, he could only appear honest.

"Take your time, have a lawyer or friend read them. We could end up very rich if this house deal. I'm kind of psyched."

He handed her the papers and staggered off to his office. Since he was a carpenter, it had been no effort to wall off the windowless corner of the laundry room, about twenty square feet, where he did all his business. He now had a locking door "for insurance purposes," as he told her apologetically, and could make the rest of his plans invisibly. He remembered what Langsal told him: the law punished obvious fraud, but almost never cracked down on stupidity, incompetence, and everyday greed. Everything he did had to happen before he officially knew of her infidelity.

That Friday, Randall went early to visit his wife at work. "Oh hey, Cathy, I didn't know you worked here," he said to the girl behind the desk. She seemed shocked that he remembered her, refusing to believe that he could have seen Gwen's second social media life. Despite all of her bravada, Cathy was an insecure girl. He could see the faint traces of acne scars on her face, and was willing to bet that under her scrubs there were stretch marks from her battle with weight gain. He always wondered why Gwen hung out with such an obvious loser, but now he knew. With Cathy, Gwen could embrace her dark and inept side. With Randall, she had to keep it under wraps, and it was killing her to keep up the pretense.

"Oh... uh... Randall," she said, and then her eyes flicked up and over his left shoulder, going wide. "She's not here right now," she dissembled.

"No problem, I'll wait," said Randall. He walked down the hall to his left, skipping any door with a number, and then leaned up against the door labeled SUPPLY. He could see Cathy reaching for her phone, so he whipped out his own burner phone and dialed his wife's secret phone. Seconds later, he was rewarded with a ringtone in the closet and scuffling, hurried sounds. Cathy moved her fingers rapidly over her own phone, her face suddenly very pale. The sounds inside stopped. He waited for another ten or fifteen minutes until he heard Gwen being paged on the overhead. Then he dialed Marc on his regular phone and began a long and detailed conversation about a future project. Finally, a doctor came out gesturing wildly to Cathy, who shrugged hurriedly, and Randall peeled off and headed out the nearest door. He thought he could hear the supply cabinet open up as the outside door swung shut behind him.

Having turned up the pressure, as Langsal suggested, Randall went home to meet the home inspector. Frantically waving a radon detector, he claimed that he had picked up traces of the radioactive gas in the garage and master bedroom. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, the inspector "confirmed" the results, and found a few cracks in the floor that suggested the foundation was breaking up as well. Randall had picked a known scam artist who made his money finding problems with homes, then signing up homeowners with his brother's remediation company. Randall paid for the report that would knock half of the value off the house, but begged off on signing any contracts. His goal was to do as Langsal suggested: burn it all down.

"Right now, she's comfortable, since she can have both husband and lover," he had said. "You have taken care of everything for her, so she can have her cake and eat it too. But what if things get unpleasant at home? With one hand, you want to increase the pressure on her so that she panics and makes a hasty decision, and with the other hand, you want to make her home life less comfortable than being with her lover in his condominium downtown. When you make your home life unprofitable for her, she will go where the money is. She can't refuse to sign the post-nup unless she wants to admit cheating, but she will get over the loss of all that money quickly since she will have her lover, and start immediately doing the same thing to him. Mosquitoes, leeches, raccoons, and liver flukes never change their ways, and neither will she."

Then he visited Marc. First he explained what he had seen that day at the hospital, and then he outlined his strategy. Marc was game, and immediately registered another DBA under which he could do restoration work. Randall would be an employee of that concern, and it would pay him less than the wage that he would get at McDonald's. Architectural Necromancy, which had a good reputation, would quietly pass along business referrals to the new business, allowing Marc to have a solid income while Randall barely made it by. To an outsider, it simply looked like a bad business deal for the less competent employee, who now had to work cheaply for his boss because he wasn't able to charge the rates he had at the previous company.

Systematically Randall walked through the house, appraising items. Other than her three-year-old Lexus, they had nothing of much value. He dropped off his stamp collection to his grandmother, since he would be forced to sell it or buy it again to give his wife half of its value, but this was a minor item worth only a few thousand dollars. He opened up the Keurig and disconnected a wire to render it inoperable, dropping its value to near-zero, then slid a magnet wrapped in tape into the television over the ribbon connecting its circuit board to the screen. He was rewarded with a fuzzy, erratic picture. This left her car.

Stopping by the business, which was little more than a corrugated aluminum garage on a large unfinished lot, he drove a rented truck through the mud at the edge of the lot until he was sure that both license plates were covered. Stuffing cotton into his cheeks, he pasted on a moustache and slid a pair of oversized sunglasses over his eyes, then drove to the hospital. Employee parking was in the same parking garage as customer parking, so he drove until he spotted her car, then pulled into a spot opposite and slammed the car in reverse. Remembering to relax his muscles instead of bracing himself, he backed up just a little too quickly, slamming into her bumper. He had to do it twice before he heard the comforting BAP which meant her airbags had fired. Then he drove the truck back, hosed it off, and used steel wool to remove any traces of plastic and paint from the bumper.

At this point, his trap set, the prey-turned-predator waited.

Gwen blew in the door, her hair astray, tension on her eyes. "Hi honey, how are you?" said Randall warmly.

"Terrible," she wailed. "Some idiot hit my car today, and when I called the insurance, they said it had lapsed."

"Lapsed?" Randall said incredulously. "Oh no, let's check... damn, they emailed us a month ago, and it went into the spam folder," he said, scrolling. "I sold my truck to the business, so I just wasn't watching out. I'm sorry. How bad's the damage?"

"The bumper is toast," she said. "All the airbags have blown. We need a body shop."

"Uh, not right now," said Randall. "I just put all of our cash into the business so we can get that new loan and take it to the next level. I've got several clients lined up, mostly from California. You'll have to put it on a card, but mine are all maxed out."

"Crap!" she wailed, and for the first time he saw both the little girl and the enraged crone in her. He did not mention that he had been steadily spending like mad on equipment, insurance, and advertising for the business. If she looked, she would find nothing in his 401(k), nothing in his regular bank account, and only a few hundred in their shared account.

"Yeah, we're going to be a little broke for a few years," he said. "Well, maybe five years. Not too long. This is a long-shot gamble but baby, it's going to pay off big!"

She looked at him with incredulity, and for the first time, she believed all of the nasty things she had been saying to Cathy. "We're broke?" she asked.

"Well, except for your paycheck," he said. "I put it all into the business. Go big or go home!"

And so it went for the next several weeks. She drove a rental, denting her paycheck substantially, since she did not want to spend the many thousands to get the Lexus fixed. He drove the truck, now owned by the business, so he could not loan it to her, since as a non-employee she was not covered on his policy. The television was on the fritz and he kept the air conditioning at a high temperature, making their house almost unlivable. When she complained about anything, he started talking about their glorious future with the business, when he was home at all, which was rare. In fact, Randall had absconded with the den sofa and taken it to the business, where he could sleep in air-conditioned comfort. She never noticed he was gone.

Nor did she notice, the following Wednesday, when he came in and asked Cathy about her, using his status as her husband to get into the inner areas of the hospital. Figuring that a cat does not change its stripes, he waited by the supply closet until an employee stepped inside to grab a box, then slid his foot into the door. He stuck his phone on a shelf in the supply closet with the motion-activated video on, then taped over the door bolt so that the door would not lock. Scanning the coast, he then went down to the cafeteria and ordered up a bottomless pot of coffee. Keeping his head down, he read a recent novel that he had bought at full price in hardback, then went upstairs and retrieved his phone. He was not disappointed.

The video captured one other nurse grabbing a box of gloves, then pulling the door shut hard despite the tape. Then, twenty minutes later, the video resumed when Steve Callahan entered. He sprayed something scented in his mouth, then cleared the table at the back of the small space. Minutes later Gwen entered, pulling him close for a deep kiss. "We don't have long," she said, unzipping him and vacuuming his penis into her mouth.

"Oh, God," he said. "Sooo good. Waow. Amazing, babe." When he was uncomfortably rigid, he flipped her onto her back on the table, and without preamble, ploughed his mushroom-headed purple love hammer into her waiting feminine cavern. Now it was her turn for superlatives: you fill me so much, that's the spot, unbelievable, and so on. Finally they reached a crescendo, their grunts and moans interwining as he unloaded in her and her legs did that little twitch that Randall knew from experience meant an actual orgasm. Steve slid heavily down next to her, and she took off a sock to clean up.

"You really are the best ever," she said. "Hey."

"Yeah?" he said, conditioned much as Randall now knew he once was, to cater to her needs.

"The hubby's being a bit irritating. You mind if I spend the weekend?"

"Mind? That'd be great! Don't bring any panties," said Callahan, before he slid from the room.

Randall drove home and made a call. That Thursday evening, he finally got Gwen to come with him to the bank to sign and notarize the post-nup. She had realized by now that the great money fountain would not be forthcoming in the short term. He spotted a text message thread where Steve assured her that a post-nup had none of the power of a pre-nup. "A good attorney will get it annulled," he said.

On Friday, Cathy called him at work. "Hey Cath, what's up," he said breathlessly, as if he had been lifting objects. In fact, he was in the lounge area he made at the back of the workspace, deeply immersed in a game of Call of Duty with Marc.

"Um, Gwen's staying over this weekend," she began.

"Oh right, she told me," said Randall. "Does she need a ride?"

"No, but, uh, she needs some clothing," said Cathy. "Do you mind if I stop by?"

"I'm not at the house right now --"

"That's OK, she gave me her key."

Randall signed off but remained thoughtful. Cathy was calling to make sure he was not there, which meant she was at the house. This meant that she was snooping for something, or at least trying to spy somehow. He waited until that evening, and then walked in the door as if he were drunk, staggering to the study. He unplugged the router from the cable at the wall, meaning that any device connected to it would register an interruption in internet service. Going into each room, he checked the devices plugged into outlets and came up with two additional plugs. Tracing the wires, he found two wireless cameras.