Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 50561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 253(@200wpm)___ 202(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 253(@200wpm)___ 202(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
I’m not a young man and five years ago I was in a very bad place. I’d just lost my wife of almost forty years. I guess you can say I was vulnerable.” He looked at me then as if expecting me to judge him. I didn’t change my facial expression, because truth be told, I was as much a patsy as he’d been.
“She came along, a bright young woman, fresh out of college…so sweet, so poised. She showered me with admiration and praise, stroked my ego a bit; told me all the things I wanted to hear. But I think the thing I can’t forgive her for most of all, is the way she used my grief against me.
She played it as if she cared so much for my suffering. That was her reason for not going to bed with me straight off, out of respect for my dead wife. She spoke of my wife as if she too had suffered the loss, as if she too was feeling that emptiness. I admired her for that. For the way she let me grieve, the way she’d listen to me go on and on about my wife, not knowing that she was using it all against me.” He folded his fist and pounded it against his thigh.
“I should’ve seen it, should’ve known. A man in my position can’t afford to be that stupid. I was on the bench for twenty years before I stepped down and took over the family business. But I’d never come across anything like her. At the end it almost seemed as if she’d picked me for some reason, and to this day I still don’t know why. I did a search after the fact and our paths had never crossed…”
“May I have a drink? I find that I can’t talk about her anymore unless I’ve had something to fortify myself.” I got up and went to the little sidebar to pour him a whiskey neat. His words rang true now that I think of it it was the same with me. After the whole sordid mess had been brought to light, I did get the impression that she’d targeted me, but why?
“Thank you son, I see you’ve done your homework there as well.” He indicated the drink and smiled a whimsical smile as he accepted it and settled back in his chair. He was a lot more relaxed now than he had been when he first entered and it showed.
“Here’s to escaping that venom.” I raised my water glass to his toast. “She really is something isn’t she?” What a waste.” He shook his head and looked down at the floor. “It was the best shakedown job I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen my fair share from here to Texas. She’s about as coldhearted a being as I’ve ever seen.”
“Our last day together which happened to be our wedding day, she laid it all out for me. There was to be no real marriage. I was to pay her what she asked for her to go away quietly and not share certain things with the world. Things I’d stupidly told her when I thought she was in love with me. How stupid could you be?”
“There was no prenuptial agreement, so she had me over a barrel. She had taped conversations of very compromising statements made in the heat of the moment. Statements that if taken in the wrong light could cause lots of trouble for me with certain factions of the city. She played it well from beginning to end.”
“I had no choice but to give her what she wanted and to save face I never told a soul the truth behind our hasty wedding and annulment. Those closest to me chose to believe that it was because of my late wife that I’d come to my senses, and I let them. Yet another way she used my wife.”
“Three months after that, she was on Henry’s arm the old fool. I tried warning him but someone sent me a very nasty letter spelling out just what would happen if I didn’t keep my mouth shut, so I backed off. Now when we see each other in public we study one another as if trying to decipher how she’d played us individually.”
I listened to his story taking it all in, looking for the whys and how’s of this thing. The one thing that kept hanging me up was the differences in me and the other two men. I was younger, didn’t have anything to hide and wasn’t easily led. It wasn’t like she was looking for the real thing because she’d ran back to her boy toy as soon as things went south between us. So what had been her game with me? I could almost believe that the other two had been a test run for me, but why? What did she want from me for fuck sake? I didn’t even know her before the day we met.