A Well-Laid Trap: The Story Of A Professional Hotwife (11 page)

A
THICKER PLOT

I was going to lose my job. That much was easy to see, and in spite of the mad rage that had taken over my body and mind, there was still a little bit of me thinking about my career.

Doug could no longer cover for me, and his interest in doing so was waning. He knew I wasn't sick. He knew I had personal problems. But he was getting tired. He never said anything, but his face said it all.
Sort your shit,
it said.

It's the face he had given me when I hung up the phone with Ricky. The face he had given me when I had sat, like a zombie, in court, leaving him to wing it on a plea in a case that wasn't even his. 

It was the face he had given me when I left to meet Ricky.

The face he had given me when I told him I was cutting out early because I felt sick.

Sort your shit, or you're gonna get fired.

But I didn't give a shit about any of this as I got into my car and drove out of the parking structure.

Did I know where I was going? Did I know what I had planned? I have no idea what I was thinking at that moment.

I still had no idea what I really felt about what I now knew to be true: Jordan was having an affair.

Was I happy, happy to be proven right and not crazy? Was I sad for our marriage? Was I excited because it turned me on? Was I angry because my life was going up in smoke?

I had no idea.

I've heard people talk about blind rage. Blanking out, Doing things, like smashing someone's head in, and not realizing it.

Needless to say, as a prosecutor in a strongly Republican county, I am compelled by a variety of pressures to not believe that sort of thing. I never really did, personally.

But when I turned off the engine of my car, in front of Jordan's office, with no recollection whatsoever of having driven there, I could see how it could happen.

I had no idea what thinking had led me here. Was I going to burst into her office? I'd probably get shot. Arest Greene did some of the most underhanded PI work in the city and he probably hedged his bets with a sawed-off shotgun under his desk.

Was I going to stop her from going out on another “date?”

Or was I, as I strongly suspected, here with the hopes of seeing something that, in the darkest corners of my mind, I really wanted to see?

Jordan exited the building, hours later, one long sexy leg at a time.

My pulse, slow and reptilian, fluttered to life.

She was not dressed for work. She had on a very sexy, very expensive-looking red dress. It was tight at the bodice, and then mushroomed out in a very short, very runway-style little dress. The effect made her look improbably young. Her hair, for added effect, was bunched up in a very youthful style, tendrils curling around her face.

She twirled a little purse.

What the fuck?

And then Arest came out after her. He extended his hand, and gave her a jean jacket.

A jean jacket.

I watched my wife laugh, and put it on. Now she looked about fifteen.

They stood in front of the building, talking. Arest brought out a pack of cigarettes and offered it in her direction. She shook her head. They spoke for a while, with Jordan twirling her purse.

Then she reached forward and took the cigarette out of Arest's mouth, brought it to her own lips, and took a drag.

Casually. Like they did it all the time.

They laughed.

I mopped the sweat from my eyes. It was dripping from my forehead, gathering underneath my eyelids. I realized I had the heater on, and the temperature in the car had risen to tropical heat while I sat there, staring into the wet streets. I slammed the heater off.

For a moment the whole scene seemed utterly surreal.

This woman, with her mahogany hair, her huge tits, her pretty legs, and the face of my wife, couldn't be my wife. This woman
looked
like my wife, but she acted nothing like my wife.

But this was Jordan's office. This was Jordan's boss. That was Jordan's car, there, and this was Jordan's hair, Jordan's body...

Jordan exchanged something with Arest – was it him? Was she fucking him, too? - and then they parted.

I stared while Jordan headed to a silver Lexus. The same one from the night before? It
was
him, then. Him, and this good-looking schmuck, and that fat man. Jesus fucking Christ, Jordan.

Was my wife actually a huge slut?

I looked at Arest, who had crossed the street and was climbing into...

Jordan's car?

The brake lights glowed. I looked at the license plate.

Jordan's car.

My chest felt cold, and I was perplexed. Race as I might through all the possibilities, I couldn't find an explanation for this. What the hell were they doing? The only thing that loomed as an explanation was the fact that it appeared, from all the evidence, that Jordan was in fact having not one, but many affairs.

Jordan's car was on one side of the narrow street, and what I assumed was Arest's car was on the other. They pulled into the one-way street and began to drive, Arest ahead and Jordan behind.

I followed. I followed without caring if either one of them might look back.

We wound through the city, in the maze of one-way streets at the core. When we reached Martin Luther King, though, Arest turned right and Jordan waited, her left blinker on.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

First of all, why the fuck was my wife loaning her car to Arest? Why were they going to different places? Why was this all happening at five in the evening?

I followed Jordan, very nearly getting clipped by a Mac truck on my way through the intersection. I wasn't going to lose her again.

She didn't go far. Almost immediately, she slowed.

I drove past her and looked in the mirror. I half-hoped she would look up and see me, and realize she was caught. I almost felt the horror snake through her, the same cold, awful feeling I had when I saw her at the bar.

Instead, she was looking at a valet, who had run out to open the door for her.

I almost ran into a car in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and made a hard right. I veered into a $30 all-day parking lot, and threw two twenties at the attendant and drove off without my change. Then I practically ran around the corner and was running to the front doors of the hotel the valet had appeared in front of. My heart was pounding. I didn't want to lose her.

But what was I going to do?

I smoothed my clothing. I pushed through the revolving doors, trying to breathe slowly and lower my pulse. I was excited as though I were about to get a present, and I couldn't understand myself. A wave of nausea came over me and then a wave of titillation. God, what the fuck was I doing?

The hotel was the Brown, I realized, as I stepped inside. The all-marble columns of the lobby rose up to a domes glass ceiling, and oriental rugs lay beneath smug leather couches. The hotel was famous for its historic value, and the high profile of its clientele. Also, as we all knew down at the courthouse, it was famous for its
discretion
.

Jordan, however, was nowhere to be found. My eyes swept over the check-in counter, and an attractive blonde smiled at me beneath its carved walnut alcove.

I strode across the lobby, not quite sure what I was going to say. My hands fidgeted in my pockets and closed around...what? What did I have in here? Only my own wallet. Fuck.

I was at the desk. The blonde was talking to me, smiling, asking how she could help me.

Tell me where my fucking wife is.

I slipped my money out of the money clip the kids had purchased for me for Christmas. In a way – a strange way – it might pass for a barrette.

I waved it loosely in the air. “Hi...a woman just came in here, a red-haired woman, very pretty, red dress...she dropped this. Could I leave it with you, perhaps if she's a guest you can send it to her room?”

The girl looked perplexed. She was shaking her head. She was still smiling.

“She
just
came in, red hair?”

A porter touched me on the shoulder, and gestured toward the dark entryway of what had to be the bar.

“Thank you,” I said.

I stuffed the clip in my pocket.

Now what?

As I crossed the lobby, I remember talking to myself. It seemed to be a long way. A long journey. I had time to think about a lot of things, somehow. All of my thoughts were condensed into little packets, because I had already done so much thinking and re-thinking up to this point.

And now, I decided, it was time to stop thinking, and to act.

I cross-examined myself.

Did I love Jordan?

I did. I loved Jordan and I didn't want to lose her.

Did I enjoy the idea of Jordan with other men, as a sexual fantasy?

I did.

And did I want this sexual fantasy more than I wanted a good marriage?

Ah. Every man's ultimate question.

Because no, of course not. Of course not.

But there's a way, isn't there, to have one's cake and eat it too? We all believe that.

I told myself to shut up.

I argued with myself.

And then, just inches from the heavy walnut door, and the brass handle that would open it, I decided: I was going to open the door, find my wife, and take her home. I was going to forgive her, I was going to take the blame, I was going to work on my marriage instead of my career. I was going to talk to Jordan, ask her what I wasn't satisfying, listen to her answer, find a way to work through whatever this was, together. But most importantly, I was going to talk to her. No more lies.

I threw open the door with brave conviction.

And my heart sank, right through my feet.

No Jordan. My eyes swept the room again and again, the hostess looked at me, alarmed. No Jordan. No Jordan. She wasn't missable, not in that dress.

She just...wasn't there.

“Sir?”

I waved at a booth in the back of the bar, numb from head to toe, anesthetized in my mind. The hostess followed me, still on guard. I must have looked mad as a hatter. 

I sat down, perplexed.

I needed a drink.

A high window allowed me to see the tops of heads as they passed outside. Jesus, what the fuck was I doing here? I was going to get fired, my wife was having some sort of mysterious affair, and I was going to get drunk and run up a huge cab bill home, and back, not to mention my parking fee.

But then.

The red of the dress caught my eye. It was unmistakable. Unmistakably the woman who was posing as my wife. Like an idiot from a cartoon spy movie, I held up the big menu the waitress had given me in front of my face, and peered out from behind it.

Jordan walked with certainty, and as she did she sent a ripple through the room. The bar was a small and trendy place for after-work cocktails, and it was beginning to fill up. Men and women alike turned heads as she strode, utterly confident, up to the bar, where she climbed into a bar stool next to a man in a suit.

This guy, he had already checked her out. Now he returned studiously to his drink. Jordan placed a hand on her neck and twirled a loose lock of hair while she leaned over the bar and spoke to the bartender, presumably to give her order. As she did, the short skirt lifted and I – along with most of the bar – was treated to a nice view of almost all of her thigh, nearly up to where her underwear would be. If she was even wearing any. Who knew about this woman?

And what the fuck was she doing here? She didn't know this man, they hadn't spoken? If she was waiting for Arest she was being a bit of a twat...she had chosen a seat from three that were unoccupied, planting her self next to this man, not in the middle, and not next to the couple on her right side who were deeply engrossed in each other's faces.

And where was Arest? Why was he in her car? What the
fuck
was my wife doing?

Fuck, she was hot. This getup she was wearing had really subtracted years from her appearance. I watched as the bartender carded her.

The man to her left watched the whole thing out of the corner of his eye. He was there alone. Whiskey on the rocks. He was waiting for the right moment, I knew it.

The bartender brought Jordan a martini. He had only just set it down when she dove into her purse for something, and pulling it – the white phone – from her purse, she knocked the martini over.

But I have to tell you, it was the most fake-looking “spill” I had ever seen.

I heard her laugh, the unmistakable laugh, from across the room. She covered her mouth, and she reached for napkins across the bar, revealing her long thigh again.

And now, the man had an opening. He helped her with the napkins. She covered her mouth in vapid embarrassment. The bartender mopped it up. The man offered to buy her a drink, I could see. She shook her head, and made gestures like she was just too embarrassed.