“I know you’re frightened, my love,” I say in a soothing voice while checking my rearview mirror. I pass a semitruck, but no one else is on the road. No one is following me, I’m certain. “It was reprehensible of Buck to involve you in his ridiculous vendetta. He’s a sick man, he needs help. How about this, love? I’ll bring over breakfast in the morning, we’ll talk all of this through. You’ve been dreaming about going to the beach together and now we can. Sound good?”
“I need to think,” she says quietly. “I need some space. I’ll call you in a few days. Don’t call me, Paul. Okay?” She is crying. I hear a big sob as she hangs up on me.
My mistress just hung up on me. How is this happening? Somehow, in the space of one day, my wife leaves me for another man and my mistress tells me not to call her. This is all Buck’s fault. I should have shoved the pen in his neck or stomped on his trachea in the garden. I want to scream or throw something at someone but I’m driving and that would be ridiculous. I need to calm down and focus. I’m sweating and I crank up the air-conditioning. I tip my neck from side to side until it cracks satisfyingly. I am still in charge of the situation, or I will be as soon as I am home with the boys. Maybe we’ll leave for Disneyland tomorrow? If Gretchen changes her mind, she can join us.
I forgot to tell her about Disneyland, I realize. I push the button for Gretchen’s number. Her contact information is disguised as a restaurant named Savory. Clever, I know. The Bluetooth kicks in and the phone rings. One. Two. Three. Four.
“This is Gretchen,” her voice mail announces. “Leave a message.”
I cannot believe she is ignoring me, ignoring my call. How dare she. This is not acceptable. Rage overtakes me as I hurl my phone at the passenger window and hear the thud as it falls into the crevice between the door and the seat. The only sound in the car now is my ragged breath. I squeeze the steering wheel as my jaw clenches and I stomp on the gas pedal. I’ll listen to my playlist. I push the button and my favorite song, Bobby Darin’s rendition of “Mack the Knife,” blasts through my sound system as I sing along.
I glance in the rearview mirror and see the flashing lights of a police car. I am out of control. I will make a mistake. My heart is thudding as I slow down to sixty-five miles per hour. This is not the time to be pulled over. The lights are behind me now, and I can hear the sirens. The cop car speeds past me. It’s a sign. My shoulders relax, I loosen my hold on the steering wheel, and I turn up my song. Smooth jazz: calm and structured and in control. Just like me.
2:45 a.m.
30
The bright lights of downtown Columbus are a welcome beacon in my agitated state. I am making great time; there are hardly any other cars on the road, just long-haul truckers and me. I check my watch obsessively. I am anxious to get home but I realize I may have a couple of other things to attend to before I am reunited with my boys. I mean, they’re asleep, so they’re happy, but I am not. There are still at least three hours of darkness left tonight, giving me enough time to tie up some loose ends.
Ironically, the freeway exit I take isn’t just the way home; it’s the exit for my office, too. It was convenient, driving from my stately suburban home to my gleaming office building in under ten minutes. The two worlds, home and work, close in proximity but so very different. The office building is a square of glass and steel, situated on a hill with direct views of the downtown skyline. It was a convenient location and the partners were hailed for building here when they did. It made sense, of course; a quick turn onto the freeway got you downtown or to the airport in minutes, while a few minutes in the opposite direction led to home. Very convenient if you forgot something or wanted to check to be sure your wife really was taking a nap with the kids. For the record, she always was doing exactly what she told me, my sweet Mia. After a few years, I didn’t even need to check in on her so often. Funny, how one becomes complacent, accepting things at face value. When did she stop asking if I’d be home for lunch? Possibly work got in the way, or perhaps it was Caroline’s fault.
Caroline is no Mia.
Mia never lied to me. Well, not until now. Caroline did from the very moment I met her. She flirted right back. She felt the heat between us in that elevator, and she knew what we could be together. I wanted to be what she needed. We had that potential. But all along, she had Chadwick.
Chadwick. What kind of name is that? I guess it’s better than Paul, as far as Caroline’s concerned.
And here we are, my old stomping grounds. I park in one of the two Thompson Payne partner-only spots—pompous jerks—and scan the rest of the lot. Empty. I reach across to the passenger seat floor to retrieve my phone, relieved the screen didn’t break when I threw it across the car. I need to make sure to keep myself under control. This is a time for calculation and calm. The fire can come out later.
Of course, I know there are security cameras trained on this parking lot, on the building entrances. But the partners are both pompous and cheap. I also know they reset every morning at 6:00 a.m., recording over the past evening’s tapes if the alarm wasn’t triggered.
It won’t be. I slip my key into the door and, as predicted, it opens. Yes, Rebecca made me hand over my key. Yes, I’m savvy enough to have made a duplicate years ago. I hurry to the security code keypad, type in the same four numbers the company has used since it was founded—a combination of Thompson and Payne’s birth dates—and the beeping stops as the little button turns green. I’m a go. I knew they wouldn’t change the code, or rekey the whole building. I was a token fire, a take-one-for-the-team-because-we-take-sexual-harassment-seriously dismissal. I’m not a threat, not really. I’m just a sad footnote in the otherwise spotless equality history of the firm. Right.
It’s nice to be back home, I realize, stepping inside the stainless steel elevator, pushing the button for the top floor. My floor. Also on this floor: the partners, HR and, yes, precious Caroline. I hurry down the luxuriously carpeted hallway, past the numerous framed awards lining the walls, many of them for campaigns I worked on, campaigns I created. I stop for a moment and stare at my office, now filled with someone else’s possessions. I know Rick Jacobs got the promotion, took my job. He was the only guy who wrote to me after I left, the only one who said he missed me. I move on.
Rebecca’s office door is locked. Of course. She is the only person in this entire company who would actually lock her door. But that’s fine, because my position came with many privileges, not the least of which was a master key. Her door swings open and I recoil from the smell of manure. Good God, who allows this woman to create a jungle in her office? It is against common courtesy, I mean, the poor folks on either side of her. What is she subjecting them to with all of this pesticide use, this damp musty air caused by her incessant watering? I’m probably saving someone’s life, I realize, as I yank the first plant out of its pot, tossing it on her desk.
She considers these plants to be her kids. I’d heard that somewhere, not long after our first meeting. She’s worse than Mia with her strawberry daughters, a sick woman.
I quickly eliminate all of her children, making a leafy green pile of debris on her white office chair, her desk. I squish a particularly large, mushy green plant into her area rug—from her trip to India, I hear—the stain adding a touch of forest green to the otherwise tan and brown carpet. I’m an artist.
Finished gardening, I pull on the file drawer, and it’s locked. This I don’t have a key for, this is not part of the master plan. Rebecca is such a mistrustful, nasty woman. I don’t need her files anyway.
I’m out in the hall and inside Caroline’s office. The small space smells like cinnamon and jasmine, the scent of the candle she always had lit on her desk, and I take a moment to breathe her in. I sit down in her chair and close my eyes, resting both hands on her desk, feeling her energy. Such a missed opportunity, such a stupid girl. We could have been so great together.
I open my eyes and stare at the framed photo next to the candle. It’s Caroline with her arms wrapped around the waist of a jock. He’s blond, at least six-four and an idiot, I can tell. He’s wearing his football jersey from their college team.College sweethearts, how lovely.But she told me she was single, didn’t she? Yes, I’m sure she did. And when I was still here, there was no Chad on her desk. That I would have noticed, of course. I am the first one to respect a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. So here we are, Chad, Caroline and me. What could I possibly gift to the happy couple that they don’t already have? A potted plant perhaps? Well, unfortunately, we’re fresh out of those at Thompson Payne. I do need to leave her with something, some way for her to know I was here, and that she picked the wrong guy.
I grab the frame and pop the photo out. On the back, in Caroline’s writing: “C&C forever.” I fight the urge to rip up the ridiculous photo but instead I pull out my new pen, scribble out the C&C nonsense and replace it with P&C forever, adding a little heart. I smile as I place the photo back in its frame and position it perfectly next to the candle.
All she had to do was tell me she had a boyfriend, the slut.
I swivel around to her computer and it is on. I click on a file on her desktop, CC, and voilà, it’s all Chad and Caroline all the time: hundreds of photos of the happy couple. I open her email and search my name. At least fifty emails load. I scan through them. Some are account-related, to me or from me. Some are not. I refine the search to Paul and Chad.
“There’s a guy here, older, named Paul. He scares me. He’s always watching me, pretending to bump into me. Creepy.” Caroline typed this to Chad. I scare her? I wanted to make love to her. Bitch.
I exit out of her email and open her web browser. She must be lonely without Chad. He lives in Virginia, and although they’ve discussed marriage, he wants to finish law school before he proposes. How sweet. This should keep her busy in the meantime. I watch as my chosen site loads, and as I keep clicking, like a nasty virus porn explodes across her screen.
And I open more sites, and the debauchery keeps loading. I don’t know how much her computer can take but I’ll keep giving it to her until she can’t handle any more. I smile as I hear the computer running hard. I want to be sure she shares her secret sex perversion with everyone. I create an email, you know, between her and Chad. I attach some of the most interesting photos to her love note. And then for fun, I blind copy everyone in the office. Oops, Caroline.
