CLICHE #2 – FIVE STAR RESTAURANT

Written by Vandemonium1

Edited by CreativityTakesCourage

Another story where most of the words and concepts are entirely well-used-to-the-point-of-being-tiresome. Maybe the ending will break the mold; maybe it won’t.  

If you notice some similarity between this story and Papatoad’s ‘Sarah’s Project’, that is no coincidence. It’s one of my favourites, frustrating though it is, and definitely inspired me here.

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I’d never been to a five-star restaurant before and I gotta say it felt like alien territory to a panel beater tradie like me. Give me a small family diner every day of the week. I was damned lucky to get a table, but, apparently, the five-star hotel hosting the five-star restaurant reserved tables for house guest walk-ins. The fact it was a Monday night in mid-winter helped as well, of course.

The snooty waiter sneered at my jeans and polo shirt but nothing, not even his rudeness, dampened my mood.

So, you’ve got to be asking yourself, what the hell was a scruffy tradesman doing miles away from home in such a swanky place? Why, meeting my wife, of course. The problem for one of us, though, was that she didn’t know that yet. I strongly suspect she wasn’t going to like the evening’s entertainment anywhere near as much as I was.

Sarah and I were both forty-five and married long enough that both our kids had flown the coop, the second one earlier in the year. I hadn’t married above my station, but over time it evolved that way. I earned my trade while Sarah worked as a paralegal. As a marriage gift to her I paid for her to go back to school and get a law degree. She finished just in time to have our first kid, an accidental pregnancy, then stayed at home until our youngest turned ten before beginning to ply her trade as the most junior lawyer at Peter Walker and Partners. Since then she’d remained a good and attentive mother and wife while slowly rising up the ranks and was now the go to girl for corporate law at the same firm.

Good and attentive wife and mother, that is, until the kids left home.

As soon as our youngest flew the nest, Sarah, much to my dismay, threw herself into her career, just at the same time as I thought we should be taking it easier and getting reacquainted. I’m talking about her averaging four late nights at the office per week and bringing work home not only on weekdays but on the weekends as well. That led to quite a few arguments as you can imagine. Arguments that I lost… badly.

Turns out, Sarah had her heart set on making partner before her forty-seventh birthday and my wishes and desires seemed to count for nought. She even apologised for the amount of work she brought home most nights, assuring me that this was only a phase and she still loved me as much as she always had. Now, I’m no genius mind reader, but I believed her.

At first, I believed her when she’d say, “I’ll be finished with all this by eight, Dave, then we can watch something or have an early night”, but after the tenth or so time my expectations were reduced to, ‘she’ll come to bed long after I’m asleep’.

I told her more than once we were drifting apart. Each time I said that she’d deny it like hell, be more attentive for a few days, then lapse back into her new normal. To belabour my point, I started stopping at the pub on the way home two or three nights a week with some of my workmates, even eating there as well. I came home to a distracted, “Hi, Honey”, and evidence she’d grabbed herself a sandwich. She then re-focussed on her work.

Next, I started going out on the weekend when she was working from home. After a couple of weeks with not much response I started just leaving the house without a word to her. She actually had the gall to tell me off for being out at dinner time and missing the meal she’d made. That was the first time I suggested we should consider counselling. That made her really angry and at some volume she told me we were as tight as ever; she’d have plenty of time once she’d landed the partnership and how much of a bastard I was for not supporting her career ambitions. Clearly, she’d forgotten who it was who paid for her to get her law degree in the first place.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the following week was her company Christmas party. After years of me trying to wriggle out of attending and her begging me to go, this year showcased a complete reversal of attitude from both of us. Me, wanting to re-bond with my wife, wanted to go. She suggested I didn’t go. That was enough to make me suspicious about her motives and so, obviously, I insisted on going. She reluctantly acquiesced. As usual she laid out my best, well, only suit, then adjusted my collar and tie while giving me a final out if I’d changed my mind.

Not fifteen minutes into the party I decided my wife was trying to elevate her social station in life and being seen with a gorilla in a suit, AKA me, might not be helping her cause. Upon entry, she beelined for the bar and quickly acquired me a glass of white wine, which I just as quickly returned and exchanged for a beer. No one else was drinking beer.

Being a good spouse, I mingled. There’d been a good turnover of staff since the last of these dos I’d attended. I gotta say I quickly learned who the important ones were by the speed with which Sarah interrupted us as soon as I started talking to them. I got the distinct impression she thought they would think less of her if I revealed she was married to an uncouth bum. Did this piss me off? Fuck, yeah. My lowly job had put her through bloody law school, after all. In the end, I asked her if it would bother her if I took a cab home. No surprise, she readily agreed.

Obviously, looked down upon, and increasingly ignored at home, I started emotionally checking out of the marriage, just for self-preservation reasons, I think. Adding to my trips with mates to bars, I joined a gym, a badminton club, a golf club, and a bushwalking club. Now, some nights Sarah beat me home and I assumed she still did work at home on the weekends. I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there most of the time.

Then came two major changes in Sarah’s behaviour. The trigger for which seemed to be the announcement that one of the partners was retiring and she was being considered to fill the role.

Firstly, came the requests for me to stay home more. She missed me and loved me dearly, apparently. Those were the words anyway. It only took five episodes of me coming home early to spend time with her to find nothing had changed. She was still working late or had critical homework to do. Strangely, I fully believed she did love me but her drive to make partner trumped that love.

The second strange behavioural change was her resurgent sex drive. She did make it to bed before I fell asleep many times, and even more, woke me up with oral sex if she didn’t on a dozen occasions. Whenever I asked her about these changes, she assured me that it was to reinforce our relationship. She knew it was damaged and wanted to pump some concrete into it.

Then came the announcement that she had to attend a week-long contract negotiation at a city three-hours’ drive away. She was leaving on a Sunday morning, to set up all the materials she needed in a hotel conference room, staying all week and returning the following Friday night. It was the culmination of months of work for Sarah and those above her at firm were letting her present it to the client. If she pulled off the deal then the partnership was as good as hers, according to Sarah. Then she attempted to fuck me to death the week before she attended said meeting.

That brings me to the night before she left. I was feeling like our marriage was being jacked back onto the rails, and being the loving husband I was, I wanted to thank her for the previous week. Leaving my golf game after only nine holes – I was playing like a bastard and not enjoying it anyway – I stopped at a news agency and spent some time selecting the most romantic card I could find. Not knowing if I’d have the time and privacy at home to think of appropriate words of love, I spent twenty-minutes in the car getting it right. I intended putting the card in her suitcase before she sealed it. Even with my detour and struggle with romantic words, I still arrived home an hour or more before my usual time.

Sarah was unpacking some shopping bags when I walked in the door, and stammered a, “Dave, you’re early”, and generally looked a little flustered. The shopping bag she was holding almost disappearing behind her back. When I walked to the opposite end of the kitchen to unpack my lunch container, she furtively removed one more item from the bag onto the counter, then, saying she needed to use the bathroom, sped upstairs. All notably strange behaviour.

Five minutes later she was back, put the reusable shopping bag on the stack near the front door, ready to put back in one of our cars. Entering the kitchen, she put her foot on the pedal of the flip top bin before casually tossing a scrunched up piece of paper in. Smiling now, she came over and kissed me full on the lips before announcing she was making something special for dinner, then dashed back out to her car for something. I used her absence to retrieve the paper from the bin, pocketed it and told her I was going upstairs to shower and change.

The paper bag, for that’s what it turned out to be, contained the straw that broke the back of a once wholly satisfying marriage.

On the paper bag was printed the name and logo of a discount chemist chain. Inside was a receipt from the same store. It was what was written on the receipt that killed me. ‘Trojan, regular, 24 pack’. Fuck. My wife had bought a pack of twenty-four condoms… and I’d had a vasectomy years ago. My eyes hardly registered the ‘Pharmacy item’, just below the Trojans.

Suddenly, I felt completely numb. I looked at the card peeking out from the envelope that I’d intended to put in Sarah’s suitcase and felt sick at the loving words I’d taken such care in stringing together such a short time before.

Shaking my head to clear it, I looked at Sarah’s pre-packed suitcase on the bed. The top was closed but not zippered. Screw privacy. I took out all the items in the suitcase, one by one. Carefully. Normal underwear, warm jacket, business attire, four casual dresses, reasonable length, not inappropriate to wear when away from a husband. The usual stuff, entirely consistent with a business trip. But no condoms. Not in the zippered rear compartment of any of the pockets. Not in the make-up case, not yet fully packed, in the bathroom.

But they were in the inner pocket of the jacket, neatly folded, halfway down the stack. Taken out of their bulky box and undetectable to someone not looking for them. In the same pocket was a slim packet of Prevenar, which, according to the fine print on the packet, was a one-step morning after pill. With shaky hands, I spread them on the bed and took a quick photo before packing them back where I found them.

Then, still more than a little stunned, I packed everything back in the suitcase before actually jumping in the shower, mind going ten to the dozen.

Twenty-four fucking condoms! What sort of week was my wife planning? Was she planning to pick up a different football team every night? No, Sarah wasn’t and never would be a wanton slut. But why the hell did she have twenty-one fucking morning after pills? Yes, condoms weren’t 100% effective and, yes, accidents did happen. But surely if one condom did split, she’d need one pill to save herself. Or, if in the unlikely event she ended up pregnant, she could slip away and have a quiet termination, she wasn’t philosophically opposed to them. No, there was something else going on here.

Then, somehow, maybe aided by the steady flow of the water raining down on my head, all the facts aligned, and I knew with certainty what was going on.

She intended sleeping with someone, pretty much all week by the look of it. She wasn’t at all convinced she could force them to wear the condoms, therefore she had a back-up plan, the morning after pills. That meant whoever she intended to be sleeping with was in a superior position to her. Someone with good bargaining power to be in a position to make demands. I knew she was intending to travel with a couple of juniors on her team and Peter Walker, the senior partner. I briefly thought she might use sex on someone senior in the customers negotiating team but discounted that very quickly. As I said, Sarah isn’t a slut.

But what would she do if Peter Walker, senior partner, dangled a carrot? Told her that if she pulled off this deal AND gifted him her twenty-year younger body for the week, the partnership was hers? I wasn’t so sure our marriage would win that one. I knew the deal wasn’t just for one night of her virtue. That would have been a six-pack at the most.

What would Sarah do? I knew what choice she’d made by what I found in the suitcase. If I was a betting man, I would say she’d made the decision about a month ago and our resurgent sex life was to stop me questioning her behaviour and as a sop to her conscience. That is, I was benefitting from her decision too.

Fuck that.

Hopping out of the shower and drying myself off, I carted my sleeping stuff and laptop to the spare room. I sent a text to Sarah, ‘Just threw up in the shower and feeling really sick. Don’t want to infect you before your big trip, I’ll stay in the spare room tonight’. She came back with, ‘I’m so sorry, darling, but thanks’.

Safely shut away from her, I pondered what to do. I was certain she hadn’t cheated yet but was sure planning for the possibility. Once she did, we were finished. No, once she prioritised her career over our marriage we were finished. The sleeping around bit was just the point of no return. She hadn’t reached that point yet. I could go down and confront her now and she’d no doubt call the whole thing off. But that would answer nothing. Solve nothing. I had to let her go to see if she terminated the marriage or not.

I did some research, booked a hotel, then bizarrely, I slept.

I deliberately remained in my room until Sarah left to drive to the hotel. Once I emerged, I found a lovely note wishing me a speedy recovery and assuring me of her undying love. Yeah, right. I grabbed some stuff out of the hall closet, stuff from the kids’ childhoods that we’d never thrown away, then followed Sarah’s route an hour-and-a-half behind her. I stopped mid-way to buy a couple of new shirts.

Putting on one of the shirts in the hotel carpark, I used the rear-view mirror to put on one of the fake moustaches from the kids old dressing up box and a baseball cap I hadn’t worn for years.

After checking in, I asked if Mrs. Sarah Brown had checked in, only to be told they had no booking under than name, but after a little further investigation they confirmed a Mr. Peter Walker had checked in. Don’t you just hate it when you’re right?

I was walking toward the lifts when one of them opened and Sarah, accompanied by Peter Walker himself, exited the lift. I bowed my head and followed them at a discreet distance to what turned out to be a meeting room on the ground floor. Sarah was carrying her laptop bag, Shithead Walker a box of what I assumed was presentation material. Walker opened the door with a key and they both went inside. Passing the door, I noticed he’d left the key in the lock, I pocketed it then retraced my steps and took up position in a comfy chair in the lobby and waited.

Sure enough, an hour-and-a-half later they approached reception and were given another key before disappearing into the lift again. I gave them a five-minute head start then took my bag to my room. While there, Sarah rang me, asked how I was, expressed disappointment when I was still sick, then rang off assuring me she loved me. Not really consistent with her walking past me in the lobby forty-seven minutes later on the arm of her boss, heading toward the flashier of the two hotel restaurants, wearing a dress far sexier than the four I’d seen in her suitcase.

I just sat there, hoping against hope Sarah wouldn’t go through with her plan and trash our marriage. My hopes were dashed an hour and thirty-seven minutes later when they came out again. Sarah was leaning into him and walking a little unsteadily; she always was a cheap drunk. They stepped in a lift and just before the doors closed, she leaned up and kissed him on the lips, all caught surreptitiously with the zoom lens on my phone. Either he’d requested the girlfriend experience when he made his offer, or she was trying to pretend to herself that it wasn’t the sordid little business arrangement it was. I went to the hotel bar and toasted the death of my marriage by myself.

I spent half the night reminiscing about happy times and events in my marriage. So many of them. The other half was spent planning what to do. We’re all encouraged to think outside the square. I lived there, going into the square for my holidays. I knew how most men would react and I knew how I was expected to react, but I was going to turn the other way.

I spent three hours the next day in the hotel’s business centre, printing out some images, then attaching them to some magazines I’d bought in the lobby. I also made a little PowerPoint self-advancing slide show. I may be a lowly tradie but never assume that makes me ignorant about computers. I was comfortable around computers. More than comfortable. I was aware that Sarah and Shithead, along with a dozen people they were presenting to, were in their meeting room. When they left for the day, I snuck in using the key I’d stolen. Sarah’s laptop was plugged into the overhead projector. I shook my head when I discovered it wasn’t password protected—how many times had I told her? I found out where she was up to on her presentation, then inserted my show after the next slide. On the way out, I locked the door then dripped some Superglue in the mechanism.

Then I went back to my room, gathered my props, put on my best clothes, refreshed my disguise and wandered back down to the lobby to wait.

Sure enough, at 7.05 p.m. they paraded through the lobby again. Sarah was wearing a black, low-cut cocktail dress that I for one had never seen before, complemented by a string of pearls I’d bought her for our last anniversary. The thought that she was using a gift of mine, something given in love, as a means to enhance her appearance for her sleazy boss, offended me. It made me, my generosity, feel used. Still, she looked good, and her escort looked like he was appreciating it. They were arm in arm walking into the flash restaurant. This time I’d positioned myself so I could see where the waiter placed them, which was in a cosy little booth tucked into a corner. Very romantic.

I took my now familiar chair again and gave them a fifteen-minute head start until I entered the same restaurant, steering the waiter toward a small table not far from the cheater’s booth. I selected the chair facing their table. Both occupants glanced my way but, in my disguise, didn’t recognise me, going back to giving each other all their attention. I’d never seen Sarah so attentive to another man before. She was holding his hand, above the table, with both of hers and seemed to be hanging on his every word. He had a proud grin on his face like, ‘Look at me guys, I can still attract a beautiful woman, twenty-years younger than me’. I looked forward to wiping that grin off his face.

I was in the middle of putting my props on the table when the waiter who’d seated me delivered my drink. At the same time Shithead’s phone buzzed with an incoming text and he removed Sarah’s hands from his to answer it. With a deft movement I removed my wig, glasses, and false moustache and waited. I surrendered my slouch so my shoulders regained their normal width and my back straightened.

Sure enough, Sarah’s eyes roamed the room while Shithead was distracted. Knowing her as I did, she was checking to see if she was the prettiest in the room. I was looking directly at her when her eyes drifted my way. It was fucking funny the way her lower jaw almost hit the table. The blood completely left her face, and a look of terror replaced it. I could see her reflex to tell her dinner companion about me, but she reined it in. She knew that I knew that Peter was married. If this all blew up on them her chances of making partner were zero squared. To add to her confusion, I gave her a smile and a little wave. I could sense what was going through her mind. ‘Dave has seen me holding hands with my boss, wearing a dress he hasn’t seen before. Damaging but not unjustifiable with a little fancy footwork.’

I lowered my gaze to the table in front of me and picked up the first of my props. It was a magazine, don’t ask me what, one of the ones that I’d glued a printout over the front cover. I picked it up as if reading it, which, of course, faced the cover towards Sarah. The front cover was the glossy advert from another magazine spruiking Prevenar, the same morning after pill that Sarah had twenty-one – or was it now twenty? – of. It told her unequivocally that I knew about the premeditation of her actions. Passing this all off as explainable now wasn’t an option. I ensured a smile still inhabited my face.

Sarah once again turned toward Shithead but once again quickly changed her mind. I could see her thinking about coming over but that would cause Peter to become aware, and the situation spiral out of her control. It already was but she didn’t know that yet. I could imagine all the excuses and justifications going through her head.

Putting the first magazine down, I picked up the second one. With this one I’d had to fabricate a picture from scratch. I’d never seen such a picture; I doubted one existed until today. It graphically illustrated a concept familiar to everyone who’d ever read stories of cheating, which included both Sarah and I.

Her eyes flicked to the title of my butchered magazine. Not that I thought of it as butchered. Sure, it took ten magazines and looked a heck of a lot like a ransom note but to me it was a work of art I was proud of. ‘The Cheater’s Handbook’. She looked at it, at my artwork, then at what she’d just been thinking about, and, unbelievably, her skin took on an even greener pallor. She now knew none of her excuses would work. She looked very panicky all of a sudden.

Knowing she now knew I realised that she’d begun a premeditated affair with her boss, and I wasn’t going to listen to her excuses, it was time to make her realise I knew exactly what her motivation was. That was the third magazine, again with a completely fabricated cover. ‘Looking At The Glass Ceiling While Lying On Your Back’, was soon facing its avid audience of one petrified person.  

This was followed by a legitimate copied sheet, ‘Divorce In 10 Easy Steps’, which told Sarah exactly what the consequences of her actions were going to be.

So, in four simple pictures, Sarah knew there was no point denying she was having an affair, why she was doing it, that we were headed for divorce and none of the standard excuses was going to affect the outcome one iota.

I could see when I glanced her way that the recognition of her doomed marriage was sinking in. But she was a fighter if nothing else and it just wasn’t in her nature to give up without the knowledge she’d expended 110% of her effort. I saw her tap on Peter’s arm, trying to attract his attention from his phone. That’s when the fifth and final magazine appeared, “How Likely Is A Murder Conviction When No Body Has Been Found’.

At that point I decided I’d had my fun, finished my drink and began to pack up my props. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Sarah had finally been successful in gaining Peter Shithead Walker’s attention, he glanced over and suddenly looked as sick as her. I stood, put a final card, end up, on the table and walked out. The card would read, from their direction, ‘Mrs. Walker, we need to talk”.

As I strode toward the exit, I saw him hurrying after me via the fancy mirror by the restaurant door. Sarah stayed at their table. As he rushed into the lobby, I was just turning into the corridor that led to the meeting rooms. I turned the first corner then spun and waited. I had no idea as to his fighting abilities, shit, he might have a black belt in karate for all I knew, so as soon as he came round the corner, at speed, I planted my gnarled fist straight in his face. He went to ground, curled into a ball and moaned, blood pumping between his fingers. I stepped over him and headed to the elevators and my room.

Ten minutes later I saw an ambulance turn up, but no police car. Thirty minutes after that I saw Sarah check out before dragging her suitcase toward the hotel parking station. If I knew these people as well as I thought their plan was predictable. Sarah was to follow me home, beg, plead or threaten me with not going public and telling Shithead’s wife, while he stayed here and tried to salvage the deal.

Me, I opened the bottle of bourbon I’d bought, turned my phone off and had as pleasant an evening as possible in the circumstances.

EPILOGUE

I wandered down to the ground floor for lunch the next day. The door of the meeting room was open, all personal gear was gone, and the cleaning staff were doing a deep clean. I hoped that meant my plan had worked. In her hurry to leave Sarah had either decided to leave her laptop behind or had been unable to get in the door with the doctored lock. Shithead had taken over the presentation after gaining access to the room. Two slides after re-starting the presentation, the bunch of slides I’d inserted cut in on rapid auto play.

The first was a photograph of Sarah and Peter kissing in the lift two nights before, with the caption ‘Sarah and Peter’.

The second was of twenty-four condoms and a packet of Prevenar on a bedspread. The caption of this one read, ‘Sarah came prepared for a week with her boss’.

The third was a double, a photo of me on the left and a photo of Peter’s wife, from her Facebook page, on the right. They were of course labelled, ‘Sarah’s husband and Peter’s wife’.

The fourth and last slide said, ‘Do you really want to do business with people like this?’ I’d timed the presentation at a mere eight seconds, hopefully too short a time for Peter to turn everything off.

If the vacant room was any indication, the deal was off. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

I posted a copy of the presentation to Peter’s wife from the lobby of the hotel before spending a couple of days seeing the sights.

Sarah didn’t expend too much effort trying to avoid divorce. I even got good terms by promising not to reveal to our kids, extended family, and friends Sarah’s behaviour. Alimony was a non-starter as she made more than I did. She didn’t get fired but I heard a couple of years later that she still hadn’t made partner. I did get a pretty heart-felt apology from her, and she was obviously chastising herself for wrecking a good marriage for career reasons.

I’d decided within minutes of finding out about Sarah’s intentions that forgiveness wasn’t on the table. Sure, I could have stopped her by simply telling her I knew what she was planning but what was the point of that? She either had to decide our marriage was more important than the partnership or we were finished.

And if that decision didn’t come out in my favour, taking into account Sarah’s negligent behaviour in the last year, and refusal to participate in any actions to reinvigorate it, then that was fine. I’d pursue a relationship with Gayle from the badminton club…, or Mikaela from the golf club… or Joyce or Jane from the bushwalking club or even the new admin girl at work, or….

THE END

Now lighten up…

Your thanks should go to Jim for this one.

Sad news. After seven years of medical training, my good friend has been struck off after one minor indiscretion. He slept with one of his patients and now can no longer work in the job he loves. What a waste of time, training, and money. A genuinely nice guy and a brilliant vet.