What to Do about Edie: My Sequel

I had heard the shower running for quite a while, and then silence. Finally, Edie's footsteps sounded as she slowly came down the stairs and into the kitchen. She avoided my eyes as she circled the table, finally sitting down in the chair across from me.

I watched her, saying nothing, keeping my face neutral—I think.

Without raising her eyes from the table she said, "I'm so sorry, baby."

I waited, figuring there would be more, but she kept silent for a long long time. Then, finally, "aren't you going to say anything?"

"What do you want me to say, Edie? 'Guess the surprise didn't work out all that well'?"

She started to cry. "Why don't you shout at me? Why don't you curse, and throw things, and tell me what a cheating cunt I am and how badly I've hurt you? Why don't you throw me on the table and spank my cheating ass until it's bright red?"

"What would be the point?" I asked. "Would that make it hurt any less? Would that take away the sight of you on the bed, our marital bed, with two cocks shoved up you? Would it make me less of a cuckold, or you less of a whore?"

She shook her head, and just cried harder. I wanted to make sure this was the one and only time we went through this, so I just waited.

It took nearly twenty minutes before her weeping dried up; by then I had finished my beer and begun another.

"This wasn't the first time," she finally said.

"I could see that."

"I don't know why I started. I've never been as happy with anyone, or as in love with anyone, as I am with you. You're the only man who has ever made me feel totally understood, totally loved and totally safe.

"And it certainly wasn't because our sex-life isn't good enough. I love the way you make love to me, and it's just gotten better and better over the years.

"It's just...I don't know. I went out to a club with Bonnie once, when you were away..."

"Stop, Edie. Just stop. I don't want to hear how it began, or when, or with whom. It doesn't matter.

"But I would like to know why you kept doing it—why you felt it was all right, to fuck other men behind our back, to do gang-bangs with two guys at once, to screw them in the bed where you and I sleep together..."

"STOP, Jerry," she cried at me. "I don't know, I don't know! I never thought it was all right! I knew it was terrible, it was disgusting, and half the time I loathed myself. But I loved doing it.

"The sex was never as good as what you and I had. But the secrecy and the cheating—and the dirtiness of doing it with strangers—made me incredibly hot.

"I could lie to you, and tell you that I thought it would be okay as long as you never found out, that what you didn't know would never hurt you. But I knew that was bullshit. I knew that it was wrong—and I knew that I would have felt totally destroyed if I found out you had cheated on me.

"I just couldn't stop, OK?" By now she was sobbing again. "I hated doing it, but I loved doing it too, and I couldn't stop."

She cried for a while again, while I finished the second beer. I was hurting too, but it felt cold and empty now. Distant. I was ready to be gone.

When there was silence in the room I said, "I'm going to divorce you, Edie. I'm keeping the house—I want you out by tomorrow."

She looked at me imploringly. "Baby, is there...is there any chance you...."

"None. None, none, none. Not any. Zero."

I stood up. "I'm going to spend a couple of days in a hotel. I'd like you and all your stuff out of here by Friday."

I walked out of the room without looking back.

***************

That night in the hotel room I wrote Edie a letter, telling her how long I'd known about her whoring around, how I'd gotten revenge on Marvin, Joe, and Harry, and how I'd set her up. I figured I'd send it to her after the divorce, so she'd know that I played her for a fool just like she played me for one.

In the end, though, I never sent it. The divorce took five months, and I didn't see her or speak to her again, though she called several times asking me to get together.

Once the divorce was done I thought, what's the point? She lost the man she most loved in the world, and she did it through her own stupidity. She's in plenty of pain.

And by then I was dating Shelley, and I was a lot happier. It just didn't seem to matter so much anymore.