I had to settle into my new role as Jenna’s “tender” – the man who tended to her needs around the clock. I was essentially an indentured servant. Richard had pointed out I was free to leave, but I had no money and no prospects for working in the only industry I’d ever known, hotels. Richard had gotten me fired from his by framing me. I was accused of having rented rooms off the books to fill my own pockets. I was innocent. But he had the clout to blackmail me into staying around, and blackball me from other employment, forever.
I reluctantly stayed in this out of my concern for Jenna. She, however, didn’t seem to give a shit about me, although I was, if only in name, still her husband. I was not the father of her unborn child. That honor belonged to one of Richard’s employees overseas.
Jenna was totally down with her own status as an expensive whore, helping secure business for Tony Ianelli, who shared control of her with Richard and owned our apartment building. Jenna paid the rent with her legs in the air. They weren’t paying her much – five years of not-extravagant contributions to a 401K, a fraction of what she sought to ensure she’d walk away with something when they tired of her. But she was living the high life and in it as much for the sex as the money or perks. She couldn’t get enough, from them and from Tony’s investors, and stayed like that into her second trimester of pregnancy.
I hated my life. I felt helpless. I had been ejected from the master bedroom. I was dependent upon this unholy trinity for my living. I kept waiting for Jenna to come to her senses, to take me back, but she considered me nothing more than a roommate, and enjoyed humiliating me when it pleased Tony or Richard. It pleased them often. Richard had nearly made me suck him off, and I knew that day was coming.
And I’d seen that she’d nearly married him in Europe, and would have if he hadn’t dumped her for getting pregnant by another man. She even had a wedding dress.
I’d be a Mr. Mom for the baby after it was born, conveniently there to change diapers and babysit while Jenna played. I felt pity for the baby, but it wasn’t my child.
I escaped the apartment whenever I could, when Jenna was out, when no one was there. A big step was starting to go out at night when Richard or Tony were there. They loved leaving the bedroom door open, to openly cuck me and mock me by making me watch while they had sex with my wife, by making me listen as they brought her to orgasm over and over.
I still had a car. I needed wheels to run errands and shop groceries for them, and the company credit card they issued me put gas in the tank. I’d leave the apartment in the evening – no one stopped me, the sport of belittling me was getting old and they hardly noticed I was gone. I’d drive around, listening to the radio, or to music from my phone.
I didn’t really have the money to spend in bars, and in truth I didn’t want to go to one. I knew that if I chanced to meet an attractive woman, I brought nothing to the table. Who would want me? And they’d be right. I’d be embarrassed to tell them about my life. Plus I was still married.
Sometimes I’d buy a six pack, and park on a quiet street and drink and listen to music and get lost in my thoughts.
At the last big party, with a Mardi Gras theme – where Tony had engineered a massive group scene including Jenna and three society matrons including her mother Lynn – most people had been wearing masks. One male guest had a Frank Sinatra mask.
I’d never listened to Sinatra. I mean, he was just some right-wing friend of Ronald Reagan’s, whose mask another male guest wore. That was my grandparents’ music.
But I heard some Sinatra on the radio one night as I drank, and it caught my mood right, so I downloaded some Sinatra songs. The late-night, crying-in-your-beer, my-baby-done-left-me albums fit my mood perfectly, “In the Wee Small Hours” and “Only the Lonely”.
“One for My Baby” became my theme song, and three beers into an evening sitting in my car, I’d punch it up.
It didn’t take much to imagine that Frank was singing to me personally. That was his great gift: he made you believe songs, made you believe he meant them, and made you believe they were his words, each and every one. You forgot they were lyrics put down by a songwriter, maybe just learned by Frank that day before he stepped into the recording studio.
And as he sang to me, that and other songs, he seemed to be telling me this:
‘Mike, you’ve got to say goodbye to her. She isn’t coming back. Move on with your life. You aren’t the only guy to ever have his heart broken. But you can’t keep going on this way. Real men feel sad, real men feel pain, real men suffer. But a real man wouldn’t stay where you are. He’d make a move. Now, be a man. Make one.’
I realized Frank was right. I couldn’t do much, but no man is ever completely powerless. I did have the power to leave. I had to set about making it happen.
First and foremost, I needed some money. They gave me a small allowance, but I was primarily dependent upon a company credit card.
I started going to a gym. Jenna belonged to one and this didn’t attract too much attention. I lifted weights and took boxing lessons. Boxing in exercise gyms, as opposed to a boxing gym, is more for the timing, toning and endurance. They’re not really training you to fight. But I worked on both the light and heavy bags. As I built muscle I learned how to throw a punch and deliver it with force, how to set my feet, how to follow through.
Really, I don’t think the unholy trinity minded my being gone. Would you want the ex-husband – and that’s essentially what I was – hanging around all the time? They saw me making the best of my terrible life. They figured I’d accepted my lot. My being a happy camper was to their benefit. I kept up the act.
As my muscles hardened and shoulders widened, my old clothes didn’t fit right. So when I bought new ones, I upgraded. I positioned it with them like this: Going places as Jenna’s aide, I needed to fit in and look good in the types of places rich people went. Nice restaurants, fancy hotels and apartments, luxury shopping centers, expensive homes. Nothing flashy, but good clothes, well tailored, in dark colors, appropriate for ‘the help’ to wear. I tested the waters, put a few of those on credit cards, and didn’t hear about it.
Richard liked expensive wines. I studied up on them and learned how to match the right one to the right dish. That pleased him. I got familiar with wines costing from $100 to $200 a bottle – expensive for most people, but just good mid-range stuff to a billionaire like Richard, nothing that would make him wonder whether his cuck was developing champagne tastes. It was what he expected to be served. There was a French Paulliac and an Italian Brunello di Montalcino he really enjoyed.
I’d buy a few cases at a time from a big liquor store with a good selection, part of a national chain. Those hit my company credit card, and I didn’t hear about them either.
I kept buying but also started returning both clothes and wines – and getting the refunds in cash. That was now mine. When I had $3000 I opened a bank account, using a small bank in another town, someplace the unholy trinity was unlikely to hear about it. I kept the ATM card stashed in my car, buried in a cubby with some clutter, where no one would find it. I thought about keeping it all in cash but it was too risky.
I refined my Richard-swindling rackets. I’d buy a case of the Paulliac and a couple of bottles of $35 Argentinian Malbec. Ten of the good bottles and the two Malbecs would end up on our wine rack. I’d sell two of the Paulliacs on EBay. The proceeds were deposited to my new bank account. Richard even liked the Malbec.
I bought baby gear, but it never made it to the apartment and Jenna never saw it. I returned that too.
I could pocket $1500 to $2000 every time I returned a suit. $1000 or more if I returned a case of fine wine. I was careful and didn’t rush things, and no one noticed. Richard’s accountants, charged with supervising his vast interests on multiple continents, didn’t think fine wines and expensive clothes were out of the ordinary in his sphere, and he wasn’t bothering to audit me himself. If he looked the accounts over, I was sporting nice suits and our big wine closet which he enjoyed regularly was full of good wine. The baby gear wouldn’t look particularly suspicious, although the high-end crib I returned cost almost a thousand dollars.
So the money was accounted for – more or less.
When I had $15,000 it was enough for the next step. I had been told I’d never work in the hotel industry again but figured I could get a job at a cheap motel someplace. They wouldn’t check references, I knew the business, and someone was always hiring. I would find something, get a place to live, and start thinking about my next move.
I didn’t tell anyone. One morning when everyone was out, I packed a few bags – with my good new clothes, of course, but no mementos of my past life with Jenna – and hit the road, after taking care of a few things.
I drove about a hundred miles and checked into a cheap hotel on the outskirts of a smallish city, one big enough to have some hotels. I chatted up the desk clerk – maybe I could end up working there – and went out in the evening. There was a not-too-expensive bar-restaurant nearby, and I both ate there and sat at the bar afterwards, chatting with people, and introducing myself. Plenty of people heard my name.
I didn’t hear from Jenna or anyone else, until a couple of mornings later, when I got a call from Lynn, Jenna’s mom.
“Mike? Have you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Richard’s dead!”
“What??!!”
“Oh my God! They think it was an accident! Jenna’s hysterical! Where ARE you?”
“I left her. I’m not coming back. I had enough.” I told her what town I was in, expressed the minimum amount of dismay civility required, but said little more. What could I say? The man had, along with Tony, wrecked my life and taken my wife.
I hoped I’d faked shock convincingly. I wasn’t actually surprised to get the call.
The previous night, I’d socialized until midnight at the bar, drinking only ginger ale. I had a long drive ahead of me. This had to happen tonight. Without explanation of my departure, Richard, Tony and Jenna would delay acting for a few days, in case I came back. But once they believed I was gone for good, they’d change the locks. I needed to get this done first.
Leaving the bar-restaurant, I checked back into the hotel, after parking my car in a strip center lot a few hundred yards away.
I slipped out of my room shortly thereafter, avoiding the elevator and the front lobby by using the stairs and a little-used exit I’d ascertained didn’t have a security camera. I left my cell phone behind.
I went to my car and made it back to our hometown in just under an hour. It was a hundred miles but both towns were on the interstate. Both my hotel and my old apartment building were near exits, it was late at night, I drove through the middle of nowhere and no one was clocking speeders. And speed I did. My car was nothing special but a decent late-model sedan can easily do over a hundred miles an hour.
I parked away from the apartment building where I knew my slut wife lay sleeping with Richard. He and Tony had a schedule for who spent which nights with Jenna. Tonight was Richard’s turn.
I let myself in through a back door – my pass key still worked – and climbed up the back stairs to the eighth-floor penthouse I used to share with my tormentors. I knew the outdoor security camera wouldn’t capture me because I’d disabled it a couple of days before and doubted it had been fixed yet. And the staircase had a light switch. I killed the lights and climbed up in the dark, feeling my way along. I knew how many steps were on each flight – sixteen.
The security camera outside the penthouse door also just happened to be malfunctioning. There would be no trace of my letting myself in with my key.
I slipped silently into the apartment. I was wearing dark clothes, a ski mask and latex gloves. I wouldn’t be identified should my image be captured by a camera, but really, I needed Richard’s impending death to look like an accident.
I knew Richard was a light sleeper, Jenna a legendarily heavy one, the more so now that she was pregnant. I opened the sliding glass doors from the living room to the balcony, then took one of Richard’s expensive wines out of its rack. In the kitchen, I quietly uncorked it and set a glass next to it. I rustled around outside the bedroom door, then retreated toward the kitchen.
“Who’s there?” Richard said as he stepped out of the bedroom in his black Speedo underwear. He deserved to die just for those, if not for wrecking my life. He shut the door behind him as I assumed he would, so as not to disturb Jenna. He flicked on a light and came out toward the kitchen.
He never saw my one-two coming. I stepped out from behind the wall after he’d passed me. I hit him with a left hook to his temple to stun him, whirled him around and then poured all my anger, frustration and hate into a single right jab to the chin. I’m no Mike Tyson but that punch was on the money and he went out like a light. I caught him and let him down gently so Jenna wouldn’t wake.
I took the wine glass in my gloved hands and rolled it across his outstretched hand to get his fingerprints on it, then set it back on the counter. I poured some wine in it, about half a glass.
I took the bottle and tipped it to his lips. Still unconscious he gurgled and almost choked but swallowed a mouthful or two. Enough, I thought, in case there’s an autopsy. He started to come to. I had to hurry. I sprinkled some of the rest of it on him. I had spilled a little on the floor, so I took a paper towel, cleaned it up and put the towel in my pocket.
I’d been dead-lifting 300 pounds and Richard, taller than me though he was, weighed around 200. I hoisted him up and carried his comatose body past the sliding glass doors onto the balcony. I heaved Richard over the railing and one torment was gone from my life. I didn’t bother to look. I knew it was straight down, eight stories, to the poolside patio. It would be a few moments before someone hearing it turned on lights to investigate, but I wanted to be well away from the balcony when that happened.
I heard the thud; it wasn’t loud enough to wake Jenna. I gave a last look around to think how I wanted the scene to look, and decided to leave the kitchen light on. Richard would have turned it on to get the wine, and never have turned it off.
I thought about peeking in on Jenna, one last glimpse, one last memory, but the door was closed and better sense prevailed. Why risk opening it and waking her? I turned away from her, forever.
I realized the corkscrew might not have had Richard’s fingerprints on it, so I put it away, set the cork by the bottle, and hoped the wine bottle would be written off as “previously opened”. Jenna probably wouldn’t remember otherwise. She wasn’t drinking nowadays because she was pregnant.
I slipped out the door, down the stairs and out the back the way I came in. I got into my car and hit the road. When I pulled onto the Interstate I rolled down the window and tossed out the paper towel with Richard’s wine stains and the latex gloves with his DNA on them.
An hour later, having burned rubber all the way, I was back at my hotel, my car again parked by the strip center. I entered the way I left – I’d propped open the back door with a rock and no one had discovered it – and was back in my room 2 hours and 23 minutes after I’d left. I picked up my cell phone and clicked around enough to leave an electronic trail placing me here, a hundred miles from the apartment building, an hour after Richard’s untimely death.
Driving back, I realized I’d changed. Yes, I was now a killer. (And a litterbug.) But it went beyond that. As I thought of Jenna, of the life I was leaving behind, I no longer found arousing the idea of her cuckolding me, of watching her with other men. I’d killed Richard, and in so doing I’d also killed my pathetic kink. And what feelings I’d ever had for my wife were vanishing.
I had an alibi. The hotel lobby cameras had seen me enter, never leave and reemerge in the morning. The parking lot cameras wouldn’t show my car’s late-night comings or goings. I had numerous acquaintances at the bar who could place me there the previous evening. I’d drunk ginger ale instead of club soda because it would stick out more in the bartender’s memory; not that many people order ginger ale. My cell phone, should any investigation get that far, would suggest I’d been in my hotel room all night. And Lynn’s call reached me there in the morning. No cameras or other electronic signature placed me at the apartment.
I worried. I could see the holes in my own story. As an estranged spouse I was certainly a suspect. I had money in a bank account while not having a job. And my alibi wasn’t the strongest, having been supposedly alone in the hotel room when Richard fell to his death. Would some security camera somewhere show me?
I never heard from the police. Richard’s death seemed accidental, a drunken fall. Any marks from my punches were subsumed by the damage done when he hit the pavement. The drunken-fall story held. I’d worried about that too, but remembered Richard typically drank a fair amount before he went to bed with Jenna. That must have raised his blood alcohol level enough to support an accidental death finding.
What really happened, I figured, was Lynn used her influence to quash the investigation. There were too many important people – her, her husband Jeff, the governor, the governor’s wife, numerous legislators, and even a pro football player – who I’d seen debauching themselves in that very apartment at the wild and masked Mardi Gras party. They couldn’t afford the scandal an investigation into Richard and Jenna’s – and then Tony’s – lifestyle might bring.
Richard’s death was officially declared accidental just two days later. News coverage was terse and quickly subsided. He was a billionaire, but an English one far from home. Other than his pregnant girlfriend there weren’t too many local connections to build on.
I had told Lynn, when she called me, that I was done with Jenna. I had had a crush on Lynn herself for years, but now that she too was one of Tony’s sexual creatures, lent out to other men like her daughter, my ardor had cooled. She’d been kinder to me than Jenna of late, but I was moving on. My heart felt strangely lighter.
I never heard from Jenna or Tony. A business story I found online weeks later said Richard’s death had put a major crimp in Tony’s business, and he had had to drop his plans, which Richard had backed, to become a major global developer.
I would have loved to have gotten even with Tony as well, but knew I couldn’t pull this off twice, and I just let it be. Tony and Jenna would have to work out their weird story themselves.
I reflected upon my having singled out Richard for revenge. Tony had been more instrumental in my downfall, in stealing and corrupting Jenna, in holding me financially a prisoner. But Richard thought his money could buy anything. He’d tried to steal Jenna from everyone who loved her, then kept her penned up like a harem creature once he had. He wanted to marry her when she was already married to me. He seemed to take even more pleasure in humiliating me than Tony did.
And in some ways I took less of a risk. Richard was far wealthier and more powerful than Tony, but Tony was powerful here, in this town. He owned the building, had powerful local investors, and got them laid. In some ways he was a more dangerous enemy on this turf than Richard, who was far from home.
I wondered how Jenna’s pregnancy went, and was curious whether she was still able to or even wanted to play the expensive whore for Tony once she was a mom – and without free permanent childcare from yours truly. But I didn’t wonder too hard. It wasn’t my baby. And Jenna’s parents were rich. That baby would lack for nothing.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
I cut up the company credit card. I needed them to forget about me.
I filed for divorce from Jenna and a few months later it was final. I wrote a thoughtful card to Lynn and Jeff saying goodbye and thanking them for various kindnesses they’d shown me. I figured I would send them the occasional Christmas card.
I was a free man and felt better than I had in eons.
Meanwhile, I found a job at another hotel – not the one i stayed at initially. I now wanted them to forget about me too.
The virus lockdown that had put Jenna and I in financial straits, leading us into Tony’s clutches, now worked to my benefit. The hotel was short-handed, desperate for good employees, and didn’t look too hard at my lack of references once I’d impressed them with my knowledge of the business.
I think my interviewer, a woman, was impressed by my candor when I told her I’d been framed in a theft because the owner was sleeping with my wife, who I was now divorcing. She knew that wasn’t the kind of thing a guy would make up.
Within six months I was the night manager. I started studying days toward a hotel administration degree.
I had found a place to live, a tidy little apartment in a quiet neighborhood.
I still listen to Sinatra, but less to the late-night sad stuff. I listen to more upbeat songs now. Come fly with me! Still, once in a while, after a few beers, I’ll hear “Willow Weep for Me” and think wistful thoughts.
I continued to hang out at that bar-restaurant, and started dating a nice gal, a second-grade teacher I’d met there one night when she was out with a couple of co-workers after a PTA meeting.
We’re good together, including in bed. She comes hard, particularly when I go down on her or she’s on top, and I love the way she looks at me in wonder when she does. She tells me I’m her big strong man. I still go to the gym. She’ll be a great mom. We’re engaged now and plan to start making babies soon.
Lisa knows I was divorced after an unhappy marriage to a wealthy girl who cheated on me. Although not a looker like Jenna, she’s pretty, and I’m happy to have her on my arm.
She really loves me. And I really love her back. When I proposed to her, I told her how much she sent me and how I’d do anything to keep her. I’ve let her know that after my previous experience, I’m on the jealous side, and she’s said that’s fine. She wants a man who loves her enough to be jealous.
I never show her anger, which I’d learned to bottle up while submitting to the unholy trinity. And I treat her gently. But if another man ever touches her, I’ll kill him. And make it look like an accident. She doesn’t need to know about that part. Actually, it would probably be enough, and far less risk, just to deck him. I still box. He’d get the message.
I am a changed man. People’s sexual kinks are very private. If some man is turned on watching his wife with another man, I won’t judge him. I’ve been there and don’t want to be judged myself. But it went way too far. A couple arranging some kink to their mutual satisfaction is one thing. A man’s being endlessly humiliated by a woman who no longer loves him, and by the men pimping her out, who keep him in indentured servitude, is another entirely. And it doesn’t matter how gorgeous she is.
I realize Jenna was way over my head, and she realized it too once she saw how wealthy and powerful men craved her. I’d gotten lucky with her originally but couldn’t hold her. It just wasn’t meant to be. It’s the way of the world. I am better off now.
I stayed in the situation, as it got worse and worse, because I was too weak to leave. Finding the strength to do what I had to do – to lie, steal, and cheat – to free myself gave me a different outlook on life. I’m more confident. I’m more positive. I respect people who make their way in life, and now count myself among them.
Did I have to kill to free myself? I certainly needed to for my self-respect, but beyond that Richard had the power to track me down, keep me unemployed and ultimately force me back into indentured servitude. I didn’t fear Tony’s reach or desire to do so nearly as much. Killing Richard was what really set me free. The industry blackball died with him.
I had waited too long for Richard and Tony to show some compassion, but they never did, just pushing my nose further into the dirt. And of course Jenna didn’t love me anymore. Why would she? What kind of man was I?
I realized my fate is my own problem. It’s not someone else’s, and their fate likewise isn’t mine. We’re responsible to each other but only to a point. Most of life is necessarily about getting through life and no one else does that for you.
Oh, and I quit reading the New York Times. I get the Wall Street Journal now.
Life looks better. And I did it my way. Frank would have understood.
Celebrating Dirty Books 