A Distraction of Lies

by Charlotte E Hart

  An affair?

  “I don’t know, Sally. I still say it’s impossible, but I suppose you never really know what you think you do. I’m pretty sure Andrew had an affair early on in our marriage. I let it go. What was I going to do? Let him get away with not paying for the life I’d earned while he ran off with a bimbo? Men. Most of them have nothing other than their dicks in their life.”

  “Hmmm.”

  They clatter again, one of them laughing, as I hear hairspray being sprayed around. “That dress looks lovely by the way, where from? Saks?”

  “Yes. We should go shopping next week. It’s been ages since I saw you last.”

  The sound of the main door finally closing makes me sag, my black heels slumping back to the floor. I stare at the patterned decoration of the door, fingers not knowing whether to unlock this cubicle and leave or stay in here until it’s all done and over. An affair? I can’t process that. Why would he? My head shakes, trying to find sense in the senseless. No. I don’t believe it.

  Dead.

  I eventually choose the small bottle of gin in my bag rather than deal with anything. The liquid slides down my throat just as easily as it has done for however long it’s been. It doesn’t even burn now. It glides in as if it fuels my next waking breath, helping me absorb the facts. Alone. No husband. No career. I’m stuck here in New York where I know no one and nothing, and we don’t even own a home for me to go back to.

  An affair?

  After a while the bottle’s empty and the need for more consumes me. I stand and brush my dress into shape, wobbling slightly on my heels. I’ll go out there and find more alcohol, or maybe I’ll go and find Deborah Collier and find out if she was sleeping with my husband. I sway and unlock the door, shakily making my way to the mirror. Make up’s still perfect. I pat my swept up blonde hair into shape again, not that it’s moved, and wonder why my mascara’s not smeared across my face. Other widows cry, I’m sure. They must fall to bits and cry buckets of tears until they shrivel and come out the other end. Not me, though.

  I’m not even sure if I’m mourning other than wondering what the hell comes next. The opera was the only time I felt sorrowful. He was with me there then, sitting beside me and laughing. My mind filters back to the time there, the sound of the voices and the music. Beautiful. And then I was shaking on the stairs like an unfortunate, hiding myself as Grayson Rothburg and his security came passed me like a storm in my torment. No more tears since then. Nothing but a haze of emptiness and indecision and alcohol. I’m in shock. Must be.

  I lift my lipstick, hovering it over the already perfect outline of my lips. Maybe I didn’t love him. Maybe that’s what’s going on. Or I’m heartless. I don’t … I don’t know what to do, where to go. I’m just here listening to other people who say he was fucking someone else.

  “Oh gosh, there you are, Hannah.” I look sideways as Gemma Morris hurries into the room, a sometimes friend who’s flown over from Vancouver with her husband Graham. “I was beginning to wonder where you were and if you were alright.”

  “Fine, Gemma,” I say, putting the lipstick away. “Just touching up and listening to people who think Rick was having an affair. What do you think?”

  She visibly falters, her feet inching away from me. “Why in the world would you think that’s true? He loved you, Hannah.”

  “Still, all those business trips. Must get lonely for a man,” I imply, walking passed her towards the exit. “Do you know who Deborah is?” She doesn’t answer, but she does follow me out and round in front of me before I get to the hordes of people.

  “Hannah Tanner. Stop it. Rick adored you,” she says, reaching for my arm.

  “Hmm.”

  I walk onwards, shrugging my arm from her grip and veering away into the depths of the people. They’re everywhere, but at this moment I can barely see them. I’m searching. I know his type well enough. It’s nothing like me either. It’s dark and sultry, slutty. We used to laugh about it. I don’t know how we even got into discussing it, but we did one night over drinks. One night away from each other, a free pass, who would we choose – what would they look like?

  Mine looked dark and dangerous, olive skin, a smile that made me feel scared. His was the same. Nothing like either of us. If there’s one thing Hannah and Rick never were, it was dark and deadly. We were light and breezy, happy and carefree in our pristine clothes and perfect lives. I’m not sure I am anymore, certainly not after these thoughts now circulating my mind.

  An affair.

  I look across to the bar, scanning for a single female in the crowd. There’s a few. A blonde first. No, too like me. Pretty. Coy looking. And then a dark haired women, mid fifties – no. A dress off to the right catches my eye, long tan legs underneath it. That’s more like it, until I see a man come stand beside her and they kiss. Wedding rings. I shake my head and keep moving through the crowd, rubbing my own wedding band and on a mission now to find whoever this damn woman is.

  A low, sultry laugh rings out to the side of me somewhere. I turn instantly, following the sound. It’s her, I know it is. It keeps going, leading me to the person it belongs to, and eventually I find her in the middle of a group of guys. Beautiful. Mixed race maybe. Bright red lips and not a damn thing subtle about her. She’s even tried for sexy at a funeral. My husband’s.

  “Deborah,” I say, loudly. She looks straight at me, eyes blinking and then looking away. “How long were you fucking him?” The group around her goes quiet, some of them making room for me to keep moving forward.

  A hand lands on my arm, a woman trying to pull me back. I shirk her off and keep going, intent on making some sense of her being here. “I don’t get it. Why would you come here?” I snap. “He was my husband. You didn’t even have the decency to think turning up here was a little out of the fucking necessary?”

  She flusters and tries to step backwards. Thankfully, another woman I don’t know blocks her path, a sneer on her face. “Hannah, perhaps this isn’t the right time to …”

  “NOT THE RIGHT FUKING TIME!” bellows out of me. She thinks this isn’t the right time? “I think it’s exactly the right time, Deborah. Let’s discuss fucking anatomy, shall we?” I move quicker, swinging my hand back ready to launch an attack. A hand catches my wrist, stopping me from actually doing what I want to. I try shirking it off again, barging around to push the person off, but I’m confronted with Gemma’s husband.

  “Hannah, have some respect.”

  “RESPECT?” I laugh and fall back from him, my feet tumbling over themselves. Respect died the second I saw her face. I right my feet, pulling some semblance of myself back together. “HE WAS FUCKING HER, GRAHAM!”

  “This isn’t the time or place to talk about anything of the sort.”

  My mouth opens, ready to launch a verbal attack on him if nothing else, and then utter rage takes over. I turn and propel myself back at her instead, nails ready and my hands grabbing at anything I can get to. She goes straight to the floor, her own hands trying to defend herself as I keep reigning down slaps and hits. “BITCH!” I scream, still hitting and now yanking at her dark brown hair. Anything. I don’t care. This is the first real feeling I’ve had since he went, the only thing that makes any sense at the moment.

  Hands suddenly manhandle me, dragging me away from her and through the crowd. I struggle and bitch the entire time, desperate to escape the strong grip around me, but it won’t let go. I can’t even see anything as I’m hauled. I’m fogged over with rage and a mist I’ve never felt before, all of my weight still struggling to get back to that bitch.

  I’m finally dumped in a side room off the main wake, the door slammed and a shove sending me reeling into the empty room. My heels trip in the commotion, one of them tumbling away from me. I kick the other off and jump up from my scattered positon, turning to glare at whoever it was. Grayson Rothburg stands there, his back leaning on the doorframe and his leg casually kicked over the other. I half stop, unsure who the he thinks he is and not givin
g a damn for his interference.

  “I suggest you stop making a show of yourself,” he says, quietly.

  I take a split second to re-orientate myself, and then let the anger take over again to propel me at the door he’s barricading. My hands try to push him out of the way, body using as much effort I’ve got against his size to get to the door handle, but he slings me backwards, enough so that I tumble to the floor. “You’re behaving like a mad woman. I assume you’re not. Behave accordingly.”

  Am I? I look at the floor, searching it for something to make all this anger and pain and hatred go away. It won’t, though. And I don’t even damn well want it to. I’m in the middle of a crisis, my head waging war with itself. First his death, and now an affair. Rick was sleeping with someone else. Deborah. He was fucking her behind my back.

  “Your husband had two affairs. One with the woman out there, and one a few years back with another woman. Don’t let it tear you down,” he says. “You did nothing wrong. He was just a prick. Most of us are.”

  My eyes slowly crawl up from looking at the floor, this time taking my time to evaluate the man in front of me rather than cowering like a fool again. He’s taller than I remember. Just as harsh in his features, though. Cruel. I glare, unable to let anything penetrate me other than the thought of an affair. Low, cold eyes stare back at me. No flicker in them. No sway in their marginally callous outlook, regardless of my situation. He even seems slightly amused by my situation, as if the positon I’ve found myself in is entertaining him.

  “How do you know about Rick’s affairs?” snaps out of me.

  “I know everything about my employees, Mrs Tanner. Especially if they’re fucking each other. It usually makes them less effective, but in this case, your husband was more effective because he was fucking her. They were a good team.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. There’s honesty, and then there’s blatant hurtful engagement. For the first time since the opera, a real sense of sadness sweeps over me, eradicating the fog I’ve been in since that night. No alcohol is going to fix it. No holding back the tears. Two affairs. And not only that, but he was better because of one of them. I don’t even know what to do with that thought, let alone find retaliation to it.

  I sag and let my gaze drop to the floor again, trembling and finally giving into the thought I’ve been trying to ignore. “He wasn’t happy,” mumbles out of me. “Never was.”

  That’s all there is now. He wasn’t happy with me. Never was. It was all a lie, and now I’m left alone with nothing, not even the memory of the happiness I thought we had. It was all just a fiction, a story I must have made up in my own head. I slump further down on the floor at the thought of it, the weight of it all suddenly catching up with me and rendering me as broken as his body was under the truck.

  “Put your shoes back on, Mrs Tanner,” he says, less than no emotion in his voice. “You have a wake to finish, and then a life to get back to.”

  There is no life. Nothing.

  It’s all done and finished.

  Chapter 8

  Gray

  I don’t know why I’m here at this wake. It isn’t usual for me to turn up at these events, but Richard Tanner had just been promoted to the senior team. It seemed appropriate for me to show some sense of interest in his death. I’m not. I’m not interested in much other than research. Maybe I was interested in the macabre atmosphere here. The sadness and wallowing. Or maybe it was Mrs Tanner and her reddened eyes the other night that brought me out of my normally obscure residency.

  I look at her cowering on the floor, and then wonder why her family or friends haven’t come running in yet. Someone must give a damn about her. Or maybe not. Her husband clearly didn’t, and this pathetic attempt at self-pity is probably what sent him elsewhere in the first place. It’s a shame, because that energy she showed out there was enough for me to cut in before she killed Deborah. Not that I would have minded that much. Ms Collier will probably go back to being nothing but a cocktease now she hasn’t got Richard’s brain to help her make me more money.

  “Mrs Tanner, I don’t have all day. Get up.” She doesn’t move. No care for trying. She continues trembling instead, the occasional sniff conveying the tears she’s trying to dampen. “You should think of some self-esteem rather than floundering in apathy. As I said, you have done nothing wrong.”

  Another sniff and she pulls her legs up to her chest, curling herself into a ball. I turn back to the door and lock it, walking over to her the moment I’m sure no one else is coming in. I don’t know why I’m bothering, but the sight of her is making me feel the need to intervene like I did out there. Perhaps it’s the sense of nothing she portrays, the inevitability of her life being over. It isn’t, not unless she chooses that option. There are far more portrayals of death than this for her to contend with.

  I lift her and walk her over to a couch on the far side of the room, returning to pick her shoes up. “Hannah, isn’t it?” I ask, watching her sweep a curl of blonde hair out of the way. No answer.

  I pull her legs straight and drape the dress back to where it should be, covering her knees. “Your apartment is secure for the year, if that’s what’s bothering you.” I crouch and pick up her feet to slip the heels on, fingers making sure they’re secure. Sadly she just hangs like a rag doll rather than finding some resilience. “And Richards’s life insurance will cover you for life. He was on our top tier level. Finance will be dealing with it for you.”

  “Don’t care about the money,” she mutters.

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I cared about fidelity.”

  I sit back and look at her, perhaps trying to find a reason why he would have fucked other women, so she can process. “Did you ever say no? Argue? Tell him to go fuck himself occasionally. I doubt it.” She suddenly finds some self-worth and sits herself more upright, her eyes coming back to focus on me rather than nothing. “The shame of it is that had you have shown him some of that out there, he probably would never have screwed around. Dutiful is not intriguing or intimidating.”

  The slap that rings off the side of my face comes out of nowhere, and I watch as she stands and shakes herself down. The glare she gives me, as I stand up, matches the venom she threw at Deborah. “Fuck you, Mr Rothburg.” Better.

  I half smile and rub the side of my cheek, wondering when the last time a slap was landed.

  “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but I need a fucking drink and I don’t have time for whatever this is,” she snarls. Much better.

  I shake a handkerchief out of my pocket and offer it up to her. “Your eyes, Mrs Tanner.”

  She snatches it and dabs gently, wiping away the slightly smeared mascara until she’s perfected herself again. What was a crumbling wreck is suddenly a mask of poise and grace again, as if she’s flicked a switch and changed herself. I look on as she walks purposefully to the door, intrigued again.

  “Thank you,” she says, reaching for the lock and unlatching it. “I have a feeling I needed your intervention.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She doesn’t look back or acknowledge my comment. She walks out of the door with her head held higher than it was before, some inbuilt mechanism grounding her into a woman of substance again. I follow, titillated by her attributes, and listen to the footsteps of Jackson now flanking me again as she folds through the crowds in front of us. She doesn’t acknowledge any of the whispers or sense of hushed silence around her as she goes. No interest at all. A glass of champagne gets grabbed as she passes a waitress, her mouth swallowing it on one gulp, and then she takes another off the next tray being held aloft. Two more after that, as she keeps searching the rooms, and then she eventually finds her quarry shivering in a corner with some men – Deborah Collier.

  The last glass was clearly being kept for revenge, because she launches the contents of it at the woman’s face, calmly turns around, and then heads back through the rooms towards the exit. I look around the room, wa
tching the smirking faces and nods of agreement to her actions, and laugh. A laugh? I chuckle through it, trying to remember the last time that happened. The thought makes me grab a passing glass of champagne and follow her again, part beguiled into the move for reasons unknown.

  I eventually find her waiting on the concourse outside the main doors, her body perfectly still. It’s the first time I get a chance to look her over in her quietly poised stance. Small. Everything about her. Petite. I tilt my head, letting my gaze roam over her from heels to head. Slight ankles, firm, tight calves. Probably works out. Invariably trying to keep herself fit for Richard the adulterer.

  I chuckle again and wander up behind her, interested in the distraction she’s providing me with. “Would you like to go for a drink?” I ask, walking around in front of her.

  It’s only when I get there that I notice the tears welling up in her eyes again, as she stares blankly into the distance. Her bag’s clutched in her hands, as if she might well rip it in half any minute. I dip slightly to get my face in front of her. “Mrs Tanner?” Still no sign of life other than her physicality standing. “Shall I take you home?”

  “Hannah Tanner,” a man calls.

  I look up to see Graham Morris, my head of marketing in Canada, walking over to us with his hand already reaching for her. He takes her arm and pulls, trying to turn her towards him. She barely moves other than limply letting him tug her. “Hannah. Come on now. I’ll get you home and then we can talk about Rick.” Her eyes flare to life, body stiffening.

  “I’m going for a drink with Mr Rothburg,” she murmurs, aggressively shirking his hold. Her eyes come to mine. “Shall we? I don’t know Manhattan very well. You lead. I’ll follow.”

  “Hannah, you are not going anywhere in this state.” His eyes slip towards me, deference in them because of my position over him.