Something Forbidden (10 page)

Katie lifted her head. “Not you. Not the bars. The firm. My firm is getting audited.”

A lot of things fell into place. Katie’s stress levels. The somber mood at The James. All the trips back and forth to New York. Still, it didn’t make much sense to me.

“Audited? Don’t you guys do the auditing?”

Turns out, Katie’s accounting and auditing firm was being investigated by the government. Her team was under pressure to produce clean books—something that was apparently harder for a multinational corporation to do than a chain of bars. The auditors were being audited. With billions of dollars being doled out by the American public, everyone was under scrutiny.

Her hours at work mounted. Katie’s work life bled into her home life. She brought papers home, poured over the computer, made calls to international clients on behalf of people I didn’t know.

Here’s where I should have dialed back the fantasy, but I couldn’t stop myself.

Katie had brought some paperwork home, explaining that they were going after her team. She was in the clear, but apparently none of the others were. “So you’re speaking on behalf of John, huh?”

“Max, don’t,” Katie warned as I peered over her shoulder at her notes. The page she was on had all of John’s accounts lined up. “I’m speaking for everyone.”

“I just see John’s name there,” I continued. I even knew I shouldn’t have been going there. I couldn’t stop myself. “Should Nadia and I be concerned?”

“Not tonight, Max! Our jobs are at stake.” Her eyes flashed as she glanced back at me, pulling her glasses off for emphasis.

That’s where I should have ended it. If I were a smarter man, I would have. Instead, I said, “And what are you willing to do to save their jobs?”

“Jesus Christ, Max! What the hell’s wrong with you!?” She pushed out of her chair and spun around to face me. “What do you want me to say? That I’ll get on my knees and blow the auditors? That I’ll sleep with a government regulator so they can look somewhere else?” She slumped a little, looking incredibly tired. “Please... not tonight...”

“Mommy, I can’t sleep,” Mya said sleepily from the doorway. “It’s loud.”

“Great, Max. Now I have to deal with this.” She brushed by me before I could offer to do it for her.

****

Once upon a time, the thought of Katie’s holiday party would have sent chills down my spine. Not only would she look fantastic (she always did, attracting the eyes of every straight male in attendance), but it would have given me more opportunity to observe her and John—something I hadn’t been able to do since New York.

Unfortunately, the investigation had left the company morale in tatters. The government had come down hard on them, forcing many at the top to leave and the rest to restructure. Katie’s team had escaped the worst of it, although it was dissolved and everyone reassigned.

The parties in the past had always been a little over-the-top. They’d rented out the party room at the Ritz, had an open (and very free flowing) bar, had a string quartet, and most people stayed well past midnight.

This year, the party was dry and the mood somber. Katie looked fantastic in a long, red evening gown and her hair done up, and the men still looked, but even I was affected by the funeral-like feel of the night. John, Katie, and the rest of the team spoke quietly in a circle, wishing one another good luck on wherever they were going.

Nadia was there with John, of course, and the two of us ended up spending most of the evening talking to each other, a third-party to the tragedy.

Two of them had already taken offers from rival firms. Another had been “promoted” a management position in one of their smaller offices, managing local businesses. We still didn’t know what was going to happen to Katie yet, but when I learned of John’s fate from Nadia, I suddenly grew very afraid.

“He’s going to New York?” I said. My mind was already making the obvious conclusions. I was about to lose my best employee—an employee that I’d begun to count on when I thought about opening my next bar.

“Yeah. We weighed the options together, but the New York position is a really good one. And the pay’s unreal.”

Nadia looked stunning, as ever. Her dress was black, short, and tight. Katie should have been overwhelmed by jealousy because of it; instead, Nadia’s presence barely registered.

“When?”

“First week of the new year,” she said.

“Fuuuck…” I ran my hand through my hair. “Were you going to give me notice?”

“What? Why would I…” She realized what conclusion I’d jumped to and shook her head. “Oh, no, I’m not moving with him. I’m staying here.”

“You two are splitting up?” That was even worse.

“Wrong again. We talked at length about it. We both agreed that this was temporary, and that I shouldn’t sacrifice my career for it. I’m going to need more weekends off, by the way.”

“Long-distance? You?” I didn’t mean to sound so skeptical, but the last person in the world I imagined could sustain a long-distance relationship was Nadia.

“Crazy, right? What can I say, I love the guy. This way, he’ll be able to get his things in order, reach out to a few of the people he knows, and make a lot of money doing it. He’s talking about starting his own business, even, so he may ask you for some tips.”

“Wow. Change is in the air, isn’t it?”

Nadia nodded. “You know what’s not? Fun. Celebration. Drunken laughter.”

I looked around at the mopey faces. “Some holiday party.”

“I have an idea…”

At Nadia’s suggestion, we moved the party to Callahan’s, just down the street, and opened up the bar. We weren’t able to salvage everything—the underlying sense of doom was never going to go away—but we did our best to get everyone stupid drunk.

I remember being slouched in a booth, somewhere around two in the morning, drunk off my ass and chatting with some guy I vaguely new from other such situations. He was slurring, I was close to it, and I wasn’t sure I’d remember any of the conversations in the morning, but I’d already decided I was fine with that.

“I know we don’t really know each other.” The guy stabbed his index finger shakily at me. “But you’re an okay guy.”

“Thanks—”

“With an above okay wife, I might add.
And
an even more above okay bar!”

“Oh-kay.” I broke out into laughter, soon joined by the other guy.

“I don’t know why I never came here more often. You’re proud of it, I can tell.” I nodded. It was my first—a symbol of all the risk I’d taken when stepping into this arena, and the faith that Katie had in me. “I like you. You’re not afraid to share the things you love.”

I happened to be looking across the room at my wife, who was chatting with one of the more senior members left present. His face was red from all the drinking, and his eyes couldn’t stay out of the front of her dress. Katie seemed oblivious.

Not afraid to share the things you love.

It was true, and his statement hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t remember anything else from that evening. If you asked me who I’d been talking to, I couldn’t have told you. But that statement? That statement would stay with me for a very long time.

Chapter
6

Katie had made such a good impression when she’d defended her team that she was offered the newly created position of Director of Quality Assurance. It paid triple what she’d been making, came with a set of benefits that neither of us could believe, and was a huge promotion. Based on this promotion and John’s, it seemed like her company believed that in order to save money, it needed to spend it.

The downside was that it involved a lot more travel than Katie’s last position. She’d be visiting offices across the globe, including ones in London and Hong Kong.

“I don’t know if it would be worth it,” Katie fretted over dinner. “I’d be traveling… a
lot.
I don’t want to miss these moments.” Just five minutes ago, Mya had been chattering away excitedly as she gobbled down her food. Now, she was sound asleep, face down in her spaghetti and meatballs. It was adorable.

“True, but for everyone of these, there’s The Supermarket Incident.” A month ago, Mya had decided that she wanted this stuffed animal more than anything else in the world. When we told her she couldn’t have it, the scene was not pretty. We literally had to drag her out the door, kicking and screaming. The experience had been mortifying.

“That’s an excellent point! I’ll call and accept right now!” Katie laughed. “Oh, Max, I don’t know what to do.”

“Try it,” I offered, reaching out to touch her hand. “If it’s a mistake, you can always quit.”

It was the exact same advice she’d given me six years ago, when I decided to open my own bar. Without her push, I never would have tried it, and I wouldn’t be in the process of opening my fifth.

Her face brightened. “I see what you did there.” She laughed. “There might be times when I’m gone for a couple weeks at a time. What would we do about Mya?”

“I was thinking about moving my office here. And I guess it’s time to look for a new nanny. Or at least a reliable babysitter.”

“So you get all the cuteness time?” Katie looked lovingly at Mya. My wife got up and began gathering the sleeping girl for bed.

“And the supermarket time,” I reminded.

“I love you, Max. Thanks.”

“Hey, if this doesn’t work, then at least you can say you tried it. No regrets.”

“No regrets.”

****

I had an uncle with a terrible drug habit. He died before he reached 50, bankrupt and strung out on heroin. He lost his job. His home. His wife and kids left him. And when he died in the hospital, he was alone.

The thing is, my uncle was a smart guy. He knew what he was doing, and what his addiction was doing to his life. On one of the few times I’d caught up with him sober, we’d had a long conversation about it. Drugs were bad, any idiot knew that. But they made him feel so good, and when the whole world was falling apart around him, at least he had that. He just couldn’t stop. He had to have his next fix.

I used to wonder how a guy could ever get that low. I used to wonder how such an intelligent and successful man could lack any kind of self-control. But if I let myself reflect on my life up until now, I had to admit: I kind of did understand.

I consciously stayed away from any mention of my fantasy—at least with Katie. After her last outburst before the holiday party, when I’d teased her about John, I stayed mum on that subject. Instead, I fed the fantasy with a steady amount of Internet research. I learned that there was a whole subculture out there on the subject. I learned of terms like
cuckold
and
hotwife
. I lurked, not participating, but fascinated by what I found.

And that wasn’t to say that our sex life suffered at all. If anything, it benefited from all the travel. It was a textbook case of absence making the heart grow fonder, and while it wasn’t particularly imaginative sex, with a woman that looked like Katie riding you, who really cared?

I bonded with Mya a lot more now that I’d become her primary caregiver. I made sure that Katie wasn’t too envious of her lost mommy time, making that she heard about every tantrum and blow up; how hard it was to put her to sleep at night; how she’d decided that she was never going to take her Shrek slippers off, even when going outside in the snow. Katie knew I was holding back, but appreciated it.

I compartmentalized the two visions of my wife: the good Katie—arguably the
real
Katie—and the one who kissed some stranger in New York and was turned on by my fantasy. It worked. For a good long time, it was fine. And then Katie dropped a temptation in my lap that I just couldn’t resist.

“Hey, hon? Who’s that real estate agent you use?” she asked as she bathed Mya before her bed time.

“What’s that?” I asked. Katie was kneeling outside the tub, bent over enough that her jeans pulled tight across her ass and her turquoise thong was prominently displayed.

“Your realtor that you use for the bars. Who is it again?”

“Lee Heyman. Why, what’s up?”

“Well, we need to relocate our office now that we’ve cut so much staff.” She sloshed water across our daughter as she giggled away. “I got put in charge of the search committee for a new site. I thought of you and the speakeasy.”

I still hadn’t come up with a name, but even with a site picked out, we were a good six months out from opening.

“Well, Lee only handles food and beverage locations…”This was a light bulb moment, and once turned on, there was no way to turn it off. “If you’re looking for office space, I have a few names.”

Well, one name: Chloe Reynolds.

“Great!” Katie said, tossing me a smile over her shoulder. “Could you email me their contact info? I’ll look into it tomorrow.”

I emailed right after, before I lost my nerve.

I had a hard time sleeping after that. If I could have taken it back, I probably would have. I replayed the conversation again and again. Why hadn’t I just said I didn’t know anyone else? How was it that Chloe was still haunting me, nearly a year since I’d witnessed that game?