Irony to the Ninth Degree
By Charles Shea LeMone
Karen Maloney was fuming as she composed an angry e-mail to her husband and noticed a Facebook message notification pop up on her office computer's monitor.
“How’s it going today, girlfriend?”
“Mad as hell!!!”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Yesterday morning Tim left the apartment without his cell phone. When it rang, for some reason I was curious who might be calling at such an early hour because it was only 7:30, and he was on his way to the airport to attend a business conference in Denver. Turns out it was a hang-up from an unfamiliar area code. That’s when I decided to check his recent text messages. Boy was that a major wake up call for me! They were all from the same phone number.”
“From who?”
“Some woman named Nina. According to the messages sent over a two-day period, they have known each other for about three years.”
“I take it that they have more than a friendly relationship, eh?”
“I’m not sure if they have ever met face-to-face. But she did write she LOVED him too.”
“Where does she live?”
“In Wisconsin. I doubt if he has ever been up there that I can recall. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean she has never come here to New York to be with him. Or maybe they met somewhere during one or more of his business trips.”
“What does Tim have to say about all of this?”
“His story has changed three or four times since we talked on the phone. At first he denied he was doing any more than having a little fun, playing around and fantasizing with her. Then later he admitted he would like to meet her. That’s what bothers me so much, him changing his story from one conversation to the next. And that makes me wonder what else he may have lied to me about over the years… or if I can ever trust another word that comes out of his mouth. Also, he has been treating me so good lately, which has me thinking it’s out of guilt on his part and not because our marriage means a damn thing to him.”
“You two have been together, if my memory serves me correctly, for about 20 years?”
“Come June, it will be 21 years. But this could be the beginning of the end for me. I’m so pissed I can’t even begin to concentrate on a proposal due by the end of the day. I swear I feel as though my insides are rotting away from disgust and my skin is crawling. Just when I was thinking things were going so well in my life, too, with the promotion to sales manager and my wrists and elbow feeling so much better since I started acupuncture.”
“Remember the conversation we had last week about objectivity and how sometimes we can let our emotions cloud our reasoning powers and cause us to make faulty decisions we later regret?”
“I hear you. But what really upsets me so much is that Tim said he got involved with this woman out of boredom. I bit my tongue and didn’t respond to that remark. But I was thinking that no one could possibly be more boring than he is. He never wants to do anything new. We’re stuck in a routine, especially true when it comes to sex. It doesn’t take anything to get him excited, and it’s usually all over before I get warmed up right.”
“I have made suggestions to you in that regard. How about the books I suggested or video support?”
“Like I said, Frank, he is not into anything new. If he had his way we’d be eating pot roast and mashed potatoes with gravy every night of the week, watching an occasional movie and the same old TV shows until the late night news is over.”
“I still think you should ask yourself a series of questions before you make any hasty decisions. As a sex therapist, I will write some off the top of my head, maybe ten or more, and e-mail them to you. Okay?”
“OK. I just hope I’m in the mood to follow through with the rendezvous plans we made for the start of weekend. That is, if you can still get away from home.”
“I told Margie I’d be staying over in town late Friday, so she has made plans to take the kids and a couple of their friends to see How to Train Your Dragon. And not realizing you would be facing a crisis situation, I already made reservations for our favorite room in our favorite hotel. So please let me know if I should cancel.”
“Maybe what I need more than anything is what you provide me with so well, the way you make me feel so hot and shivering and trembling all over for so doggone long.”
“I’ll leave that up to you, dear. But merely reading your last words back has me stimulated in a most taboo, loving and sensual way.”
“In that case, I’m sold. Two hours with you would be far too good an opportunity to pass up just because of Tim being such a stupid jerk.”
“You do think he might have learned something from the Tiger Woods fiasco, huh, girlfriend?”
“Exactly! Oh, by the way, I will be bringing a new toy with me Friday night that just arrived in the mail, batteries not included, of course.”
“As Al Pacino said in the movie Scarface. ‘Now you’re talking to me, baby. That I like!’”
