I knew it for what it was: upgraded cheating. Serious cheating. Don’t-want-to-be-caught cheating.
I had always been vigilant, but now I had to become even more so. Quietly, I tracked his whereabouts and schedule, his times, his computers and calendars, and most of all, I watched and listened for careful lies of omission, overly detailed explanations of absences, all the careful “proofs” of where he was and when.
It wasn’t easy. He was hiding this one, because with this one, he didn’t want me to cry foul and end his fun. He wanted to keep on playing with her for keeps — which would mean I’d be retired from the game.
What he wasn’t remembering was that I’d vowed to be with him until death — not Lili Beth Warsaw — did part us.
His sudden interest in real estate clinched it. We’d lived in the house that guilt bought for only two years. I’d shopped for it solo — George wasn’t interested in houses then. He’d said, “Just tell me the new address so I’ll drive to the right house after work.”
It wasn’t like George to be so obvious and so stupid, but of course, the man wasn’t thinking with his brain, so one Sunday, he looked up from the papers. “This house is going to be too big for us when the kids go to college,” he said.
“That isn’t for years,” I answered.
“No harm thinking ahead, is there? I heard about a good-sounding house, smaller, pretty, and it’s open today. I think I’ll take a look. Get a feel for what’s ahead.”
Pathetic, isn’t it? A grown man acting like a junior-high-school kid who needs to see the love-object, and needs to announce it with an unnecessary cover story. I almost felt sorry for him.
“You’re right,” I said. “Good idea. Hold on and I’ll get my coat.”
He looked surprised, then he looked pained. “No,” he said. “I changed my mind. You’re right. It won’t be for years. Silly to—”
“Fine,” I said. “You stay here. I’m going. I want to see what you think is perfect.” That last part was true, but it had nothing to do with a house.
He decided that he’d go with me, after all.
She was there, housesitting or whatever they call it when the realtor hangs around while people troop through. She was covered with shiny makeup and smiling so much and for so long, she must have had cramps all around her mouth by day’s end.
It was a nice house. A perfect place to start all over with a new wife and a new life. Not too large and, as the realtor, Lili Beth Warsaw, said with a big wink at my husband, very sexy, and she would know.
George paid so little attention to her I knew it was for real. Never before had George not stared at something that pretty and fresh. He was either dead or this one mattered to him. This one was making plans with him.
I had no choice but to take action, although I didn’t rush into anything. I played along, even about the house we’d seen, talking seriously about whether it would be a good idea, maybe as an investment for the future, because both of us acknowledged that it was too soon to downsize.
“It’s always a good idea to see what’s out there,” he said.
I controlled the urge to say that I knew what was out there — and it was named Lili Beth Warsaw.
If I say that the real-estate woman haunted my every thought from then on, it is no exaggeration. Life went on, and my act was as good as George’s. I worried over the kids and the house, as always, and I followed my routine and monitored George’s, but all the time, she was in my mind about as much as she must have been in George’s, and, perhaps like George as well, I was making plans that involved her.
In early spring, George had to go out of town on business. This was real, not monkey business, but as usual, it didn’t get written down in his appointment book. George was never eager to leave a record of having contacted some of the types who were a part of his negotiations.
It wasn’t difficult getting Lili Beth where I wanted her. I knew a lot about her already: knew she’d had one brief marriage — a Las Vegas elopement kind of thing — and she’d been single for a while and didn’t like it. How would I know such things? Easy. Realtors these days, at least where we live, act like they’re celebrities. Not enough to just list a house and say how many bedrooms it has. Now, the real-estate personality has emerged, and so I had the opportunity to read about who Ms. Warsaw was in cutesy-pie notices in the paper. I also, of course, had the opportunity to find out about dozens of other “friends and neighbors” with my best interests at heart.
The single-for-too-long thing was part of a Valentine’s Day “profile” that ran mock personals for the entire staff of her company.
Then, of course, I had looked her up every other way I could without attracting attention, through rosters of the kind of civic booster groups realtors join, through small news items about charity events she’d attended or hosted. God bless the Internet for collecting trivia like an electronic janitor jabbing scraps with one of those sticks. You get a scrap here, a tidbit there, until you wind up knowing a whole lot.
Not that I needed much. It quickly became obvious that Lili Beth was a determined woman who wanted two things: lots of home sales and my husband.
Which is why it was easy to get her precisely when I wanted her. As my good luck and even better planning had it, while George was away, the kids were both on overnights, too. That left me and the cat, and a cat knows when to hold its tongue.
It took one phone call, which I placed while she was sitting at an open house. I wanted the call to be to her cell, not her office. I used a throw-away cell, myself. I said I was thinking of selling the house and was interested in a professional’s view of what it was worth. I offered my first name. She didn’t ask for more, but said she’d be over as soon as the inspection tour was over.
I didn’t think she’d have been in the house before — even George couldn’t have been that careless. All the same, there was no way in hell she wouldn’t recognize the address. A woman like her would have long ago found out where her man lived, if only to judge his probable net worth.
She arrived promptly wearing a burgundy pants suit and that smile that was so wide, it looked as if it could cut her head in two. I knew she recognized me — that she had scoped me out that day of the Open House, months earlier. Her lover’s wife — who wouldn’t memorize every feature? So she knew who I was and I knew who she was, but we were both good at pretending we didn’t, and I toured the house with her, letting her ooh and aah at each detail. For all I knew, she was planning on moving into this place herself, and George was going to dump me somewhere else.
After we’d seen every inch of the house and she’d written dimensions and realtor-talk in a tiny soft notebook, I took her out to the patio. It was a gorgeous early spring day and I was justly proud of my garden. We had a lot of land, and the garden was a work in progress. At the moment, the daffodils were up, the flowering plum was doing its thing in pink and mahogany, and the azaleas were on the verge of full bloom. I allowed her to do more oohing and aahing. I deserved it, whether or not she was sincere. This land was my canvas now, my masterpiece.
“Gorgeous,” she said. “Such privacy, and such a lovely garden. Lilacs, my! And what’s going here?”
As if she actually cared. “I used it for annuals the past two years,” I said, “but I’m turning it over to perennials, and going to put the annuals in containers and…” Her eyes had glazed over. “Do you garden?” I asked.
“Oh no,” she said with a little laugh. “Wish I could!” Everything she said had exclamation points all around it. “I’m in a condo with a tiny balcony. Room for one pot of geraniums if I’m lucky!”