The phone rang.
"Christine, could you put my wife on," he demanded, not wasting words.
"She's not here," I said, not wasting any either.
"She said she was."
"She's not here. I don't know where she is."
We hung up. He had misunderstood. So I thought.
They were boy and girl next door and married young.
I wasn't the last to know. He was. She wanted out. She was having an affair.
Immature. Badly Raised. Gossip. Trouble Maker. Missing Something. User.
These were terms used to explain Doreen to me by others.
I don't know what I would've said if she'd asked me to cover for her. She hadn't.
She was drinking after work and with the other man. Coming home to her clean living LDS husband late and with boozey breath, claiming she was out with me while I was at home alone, eating my chili and grilled cheese and reading a book.
Shit.
She bought her new man gifts on their charge cards. She said they were for me. Was she kidding? Macy's men's wallets?
She took the flowers he brought her home from work and said they were part of a display struck on Friday.
She wanted to get caught. Trouble was exciting.
Her never married lover asked her to marry him. She had her out. If only he could get a better job, she said. So he got one, risking the loss of tried but true. He was heartbroken when she broke with him and kept the little diamond - his life savings. He went back to another state from where he'd been raised, nothing left for him in California.
How shocked she must have been when her quick acting husband sold their house sans profit, paid off her charges, gave her the car and a couple thousand cash, removed her name from his life and medical insurance, dropped her possessions off at her mother's, signed the divorce, moved to Orange, started his own business, and married someone he just met - in mere months. Wasn't he supposed to beg her back, buy her presents, prove he loved her?
She was terrified of living alone in an apartment she could afford.
Of course she remarried. Was he the man who won the fist fight over her that she managed to produce at a party in the Hollywood Hills?
ASAP.
C 2021
