“Whatever happens, never, ever leave your home or he can turn it around on you and say that you abandoned him.”
That’s one of the perks of having a best friend who’s a divorce attorney, even though she can’t handle my divorce should it come to that. She said since she knows both of us, ethics prevent her from representing either of us.
“But you can bet I’ll set you up with the person I’d have represent me.”
Corbin’s laughter carries through the closed door. I pause outside and press my ear against the cold wood. He’s talking in such a low voice I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I can tell by the sexy, flirty intonations and patterns of speech he’s talking to a woman.
My blood boils. Before I think through the consequences, I throw open the door and stand there with my hands on my hips as if I’ve caught him red-handed.
He swirls around in his chair, puts his hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone and says, “For God’s sake, Kate, you scared me to death.” He glares at me as if he’s waiting for me to leave so he can finish his call, but I stand there until he finally says, “Hey listen, good talking to you, but I have to run. Kate just got home. Bye.”
He hangs up and tosses the cell phone on his desk. I’m dying to ask why he’s talking on the cell rather than the regular phone, but I know why. He’s crafty. He’s obviously thought this through so he won’t get caught.
Well, little does he know.
It takes every ounce of strength I possess, but I hold my tongue. Corbin’s a smooth talker. No doubt he’d be able to explain away everything. But I’m beyond wanting whitewashed explanations.
I’ll let Hal Washington provide the proof—one way or the other.
“You’re home. I didn’t hear you come in.”
Of course you didn’t. How could you over all the laughing and cooing?
“Jack made a pretty loud racket. You didn’t hear him?”
“No.” He gives me a peck on the lips and brushes past me. He goes into the bedroom.
“Did you have a good time?”
I look at his cell phone sitting in the middle of the desk.
“Yes. Great time.”
There’ll be a log of placed and received calls inside his cell. If I can get a hold of it for even five minutes, I can get the number and give it to Hal…or call it myself. Yes, from his cell phone in case she has caller ID. Then I’ll hang up.
“What did you do to your ankle?” Corbin brushes past me back into the office. He walks to the desk, picks up the phone and sticks it in his pocket.
Shit.
“I fell off my four-inch heels and twisted it.”
Tonight. Tonight when he’s sleeping I’ll get it and check. That’ll be the best time to call her…in the middle of the night when she thinks the rest of his family is sleeping, and he’s calling for a little midnight phone sex.
She’d be just the type who would do that. I’ve never been able to talk dirty. I’ve never found anything sexy or appealing in it. A few months ago when we made love he started saying Oh, yeah, fuck me, baby and it pulled me totally out of the moment. Zap. Just like that. He’d never said anything like that in the middle of sex. I guess he felt me tense up. Come on, Kate, what’s wrong with you? It’s all in fun. Come on, say it—fuck me, baby.
God damn bastard. Now I know why.
He walks up to me and grabs me by the hips and pulls me into him. “Why did you fall? Were you out doing a little dirty dancing? I know what you girls do when you get away from the family.”
He grinds his hips into me. I stumble backward and wince at the pain of putting full weight on my foot. “What are you talking about? We didn’t go dancing. We don’t do anything different when we’re away than we’d do when we’re at home.”
Other than focusing on ourselves rather than being at your beck and call. But that’s beside the point.
“Why, Corbin? Were you doing a little dirty dancing yourself this weekend? I read that when people feel guilty, they project their own transgressions onto their spouses.”
His face stays blank. His gaze doesn’t waver.
“Sure. Right. Like I could do anything this weekend while I had babysitting duty. Did you have your ankle checked to make sure it’s not broken?”
“No, I didn’t want to go to the emergency room or a walk-in clinic. I’m sure it’s fine.”
“All right. Then what are we doing for dinner? I’m starved.”
I lay awake for hours after Corbin goes to sleep. Around two-thirty I get up and find the pants he was wearing earlier and check the pockets.
No cell phone.
I find it in his desk drawer. After locking the office door, I sit in his chair. The smooth cool leather creaks underneath me. I hold the phone under the soft glow of the desk lamp and scroll to the call log. My heart beats so furiously it hurts.
I wonder what her name is.
This is new territory for me. I’ve never felt the need to snoop and spy on my husband. I’m just not built that way. Not to mention, I’ve never had reason to dig for dirt.
This is different. Thinking about it shatters me. A tight knot of fear and dread intertwines in my stomach as I bring up the log of dialed calls.
It’s empty?
Maybe she called him.
The received call register is empty, too.
I grit my teeth.
Corbin erased them.
It’s like a scene from a movie.
I’m meeting Hal Washington, the private investigator, at nine-thirty on the park bench by the pagoda at Lake Eola in downtown Orlando.
After ten days on the job, he says he has a little somethin’ for me. He won’t go into detail on the phone. Just asks me to meet him in this very public but easy to escape place for the handoff.
He doesn’t say it that way, of course, but why else would he ask me to meet him by the lake in the midst of all the joggers, businesspeople and mothers with toddlers feeding the swans and ducks?
I’ve seen how it works in the cheesy movies. He’ll give me the envelope. I’ll review the evidence—I hope I don’t fall apart—I wonder if he’ll hand me a handkerchief? Then he’ll give necessary explanations and make his getaway, leaving me alone with my sorrow.
Just like in the movies.
Imagine if they met at a coffee shop—the P.I. would have to sit and finish his bagel while the client blubbered in her grande skinny latte.
Not fun. Hal’s obviously done this a time or two.
I get to the bench about fifteen minutes early and sit down. Icy fear twists around my heart, and I can’t feel my feet. It has nothing to do with my freshly healed sprain.
Corbin insisted I go into his office for X-rays just to make sure it wasn’t broken. Then he gave me crutches and made sure I did what I needed to do to mend it.
He’s a good doctor. The jerk. How can he be such a bastard and then turn around and do something like this that makes me want to forget all that’s happened and retreat into the safe shell of our twenty-year marriage?
Too much has happened for me to forget now. If I think about sliding back into the way things used to be, all I have to do is anticipate the little somethin’ Hal has in store for me.
I’ve been a wreck since he called me at eight-thirty this morning. He wouldn’t have asked me to come if there was no news.
No news translates to good news.
A little somethin’ means he’s found something. In a matter of minutes the curtains will lift, and I will learn the naked truth.
Dear God,
I’ve never been a religious woman, but please make a miracle that turns this around. Please…keep my family together. If Hal brings evidence that Corbin’s having an affair, my marriage is over.
I really wanted to believe in till death do us part.
A young couple strolls by, arms entwined. They’re talking and laughing and making plans. I want to tell them to enjoy the fresh blush of love because it’s not going to last. But a strong, cool gust of
February wind blows away my words, and Hal slides in next to me on the bench.
CHAPTER 6
I always thought P.I.s gave their clients black-and-white photos. You know, delivering the evidence in black and white.
The pictures Hal Washington gave me were in vivid, living color and left very little to the imagination. If what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words is true, then there was nothing more to say after viewing these goodies of Corbin and a buxom blonde who Hal says is named Melody Wentworth. She’s nineteen years old. Student by day, Orlando Magic dancer by night.
On the nights when she’s not in bed with my husband.
It’s all here—photos of Corbin and Melody Wentworth kissing in his car; holding hands outside the TD Waterhouse Centre where the basketball team plays; out on the town at dinner and nightclubs; pictures showing my Corbin’s hands and mouth and body all over this woman who is young enough to be his daughter.
Corbin—or at least this man in the photos who looks like Corbin—is shameless. Did he not care that someone we know might see him? That word might get back to me that he is brazenly gallivanting around town with this bimbo?
Just as I predict, after Hal Washington, private investigator, drops the bomb in the neat little nine-by-thirteen manila envelope, he gives me the lowdown and excuses himself. I’m left to sit on the park bench in front of the red pagoda by Lake Eola and sift through the remnants of my life.
I don’t cry. The numbness, formerly contained in my lower limbs, has now spread throughout my entire body. I sit there thumbing through the fifteen or so eight-by-ten glossy prints while the edges of my consciousness turn red and misty.
Oh wait, no—it’s not Misty. It’s Melody. Why does the other woman always have a name like Melody?
Melody. Say it—Mel-o-dy. The name rolls right off the tongue. Just like Melody rolled right into my husband’s bed? Or should I say he rolled into her bed. I’d better not find out Mel-o-dy Wentworth has been anywhere close to my bed or—let’s just say, the more I learn about this whole seamy affair, the more I can see how Lorena Bobbitt was perfectly justified.
I have Corbin’s Jag today, his baby. The Lexus was making a noise, so he drove it to work to see if he could figure out the problem. If need be, he was going to have one of his assistants take it to the mechanic.
When I get in the car, I stare at the passenger seat. She’s been in this car. Pictures don’t lie. I want to take a knife to the fine leather upholstery and cut out the place where she sat.
Maybe I’ll do that when I get home. Rip it to shreds and tape Melody’s photo to the ruins with a note that says,
I found out what my lying bastard of a husband has been doing all those nights he said he was at the hospital.
I’ll bet she wrote the letter. Only thing I can’t figure out is if she’s stupid for doing something so brazen or exceptionally conniving.
I ponder that conundrum for a while as I drive around, not really cognizant of where I’m going.
I say Melody’s name aloud like a catty woman’s mantra. When I say it, my upper lip curls back reflexively and my head does this side-to-side bob with each syllable. I can’t help it.
“Mel-o-dy.”
“Mel-o-dy.”
I pound the steering wheel. Oh, how could Corbin be so unoriginal? So pathetically clichéd? Mel-o-dy Wentworth, the typical midlife crisis package: the same age as our oldest son; bleached blond hair; a cheerleader or dancer or whatever you call the bimbos who dance around center court wearing next to nothing—can you get any cheesier than that? She’s packing the “nice set of D cups” that Dave Sanders is always trying to get me to submit to—
Oh my God. Dave knew. He knew all along and that’s why he’s been leering at me—well, he’s been leering at me since day one, but Mac McCracken probably knows, too, and God knows who else.
Everyone but the wife.
I must look pretty pitiful blindly hanging in the balance of Corbin’s dismal midlife crisis, with Mel-o-dy and her big boobs standing right there between us.
I’ll bet everyone’s been whispering Kate has to know. She’s blind if she doesn’t.
The Jag drives itself to the TD Waterhouse Centre. I stop in the street between the parking garage and the box office of the huge building. This is where Corbin enters for the games. He told me how cool it was to go behind the scenes.
Melody probably uses the same doors.
I don’t know why I’m here, what I’m looking for. I pull out the photo of them outside the building and wonder exactly where it was taken. Given the nondescript background, I can’t really tell.
So, instead, I sit and wonder whether he met her before or after he took the job as the Magic’s team physician. And why, out of the smorgasbord of Magic dancers, did he choose her? According to photos she’s cute, but not gorgeous. She has a perfect nineteen-year-old body—well, that’ll go with age. She wears way too much makeup—probably justifies it because she wants to look good on camera during the televised games. Well, if she wants to look good, she needs to do something about that hair—frizzy overprocessed hair. She’s obviously what we used to call a suicide blonde—died by her own hands. If she’s not, her hairdresser deserves to be shot.
I pull out the ensemble publicity photo of the entire Hoosier dance team. Hal was good enough to include it in my goody bag. What was it about Mel-o-dy Wentworth that caught my Corbin’s eye?
A sharp rap on the driver’s side window makes me jump. I hit the photo on the steering wheel and it bends in half as I try to shove it out of sight from the security guard who’s peering in at me.
I roll down the window.
“Everything all right, ma’am?”
No it’s not. I’m sitting here contemplating a double homicide.
“Yes.”
“This is a no-parking zone. I’m going to have to ask you to move your car.”
I roll up the window without answering him and drive to Orange Avenue, the main street that runs through the downtown district. I pass the nightclub, Swingers, where Hal Washington said he shot one of the photos of Corbin and Mel-o-dy.
Swingers?
Oh, this is getting worse by the minute.
The traffic is too heavy to stop in front of the club, but I don’t want to. I’ve seen enough.
Orange Avenue is a one-way street, and I follow it until I come to Anderson and go left.
“What am I going to do?” I drum my fingers on the steering wheel and pick up my cell phone to call my mother to ask her to take Caitlin for the evening. But I hang up before she answers. She’ll think Corbin and I have a date or a function or some other happy reason to need alone time together. I don’t have it in me to pretend. I also don’t have it in me to lay the facts on the table. Not yet. My mother and father come from a long line of happily marrieds. They pride themselves on the fact that there’s never been a divorce in the family.
It’s going to kill them for their daughter to be the one to break the record.
My numb anger veers sharply into despondency as I turn left onto Bumby Avenue and stop for another red light.
I lay my forehead on the steering wheel and bawl.
“Damn him for doing this to me—to us. After all these years to throw it all away for a cheap dancer who’s less than half his age.” I lift my head up. “Good God, she’s barely above the age of consent.”
My temper flares again, and I’m breathless with rage.
A white convertible BMW pulls in behind me. A rap song blares so loudly from the open car I can hear it through my windows even though they’re rolled up tight. The bass thumps through me like a hand keeping time on my breastbone.
I glance in the rearview mirror and catch a glimpse of my tearstained face as I watch the young blonde in the car behind me shimmy and sing along with the song. She’s exactly the Mel-o-dy type. Young, tan, and pretty; not a care in the world. I’ll bet Mel-o-dy drives a car like tha—
The blonde beeps her horn in time
to the music. I realize the light’s green, but before I can pull away she lays on the horn for a full five seconds. As I accelerate, she tailgates me, singing and dancing as the wind blows through her sun-streaked hair.
No one else is around. It’s just the two of us on the straightaway. It’s unbelievable how rude she’s being. Damn it, why doesn’t she just pass me? I tap my brakes, then speed up until the speedometer registers forty miles per hour. Still riding my bumper, she honks and gives me the middle finger.
And I don’t know why I do it—but I gun the Jag then slam on the brakes.
“If my client says she stopped fast to avoid hitting a squirrel then that’s what happened.” Alex is talking to the police officer on my behalf. I called her instead of Corbin because I wasn’t ready to face him.
I’m sitting on the curb, holding a tissue to my bloody nose—compliments of the air bag—while the paramedics check me to make sure I’m as okay as I claim I am. Thank goodness my nose isn’t broken. Just a little mashed.
Corbin will freak when he sees the back end of his precious Jag, crushed like the tin cans he and his frat boy friends used to smash against their foreheads.
“That girl hit her from behind,” says Alex. “There are no other witnesses. It’s cut and dried.”
I glance at the BMW. Its front end is compacted like an accordion. Guilt assails me. It was a stupid, stupid stunt. I was upset and I shouldn’t have been driving. What if I had killed somebody?
Two paramedics are tending to BMW Girl.
“I’m not disputing she hit her from behind, ma’am,” says the officer. He’s probably about thirty-five. At that age, I wonder whose side he’ll be more sympathetic to. The young thing or me? “What I’m asking is why she was traveling forty miles per hour in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour zone?”
I’m amazed that his demeanor is as calm as it is with Alex’s rabid Perry Mason routine.
A paramedic packs my right nostril with cottony-gauzy stuffing. I wave away his suggestion to go to the hospital to be checked. This is the first I’ve heard of the squirrel who narrowly escaped with his life. I figure I’d better listen to what Alex is saying so our stories match.
Out with the Old, In with the New Page 6