Spellbound
April, 1998
Two nights ago, after I sealed the deal with Leo, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna walk into when I arrived home. It had been at least seven hours since I left the house to have dinner with my friends. I had no idea if Kurt had left me several panicked messages, or if he had called the police, my friends, or my parents, because once I arrived at Leo’s apartment, I turned my cell phone off. I wanted to hide from my life, my obligation. When I was with Leo, I didn’t care about search parties or missing person reports. All I wanted was to concentrate on the magnitude of what I was giving him. But when I pulled into my driveway and saw the lights on inside of my house, the magnitude of what I just took away from Kurt hit me like a brick of cocaine. I became paralyzed with what I gather are the most common emotions that plague adulterers: fear and shame.
I opened the garage door, inched my car inside, and waited nervously for Kurt to come barreling out demanding to know where the hell I had been. But he didn’t. I unlocked the door to the house and tiptoed inside. All I wanted to do was make it to the shower before he saw me, and it looked like I was gonna get my wish because miraculously, the dog was the only one to greet me, and discernibly, my crotch. But instead of high tailing it to the bathroom, I became paranoid of my luck. Just like the stupid curious chick in a horror movie who decides to leave her bedroom after having been chased into it by a mask-wearing, knife-wielding lunatic, I called out Kurt’s name. No answer. I ran to the window to look for his car, it wasn’t there. I assumed he had gone out to search for me, so I hurried to the shower and scrubbed off the proof of where I had been.
The story that I decided to tell Kurt was that I stopped by my office after dinner with my friends to catch up on some work and fell asleep at my desk. I know, it’s a totally lame excuse, but it was all I could come up with. But he never came home for me to try it out and, as the clock ticked away, I became very worried about him being very worried. And despite enjoying the various forms of worship Leo and I shared earlier, with every minute that passed, I became very sorry for my conduct unbecoming of a married woman. During the hour of waiting and pacing, I became re-committed to therapy and to figuring out why I’m making such a mess of things. At three o’clock in the morning, I finally decided to call Kurt and tell him to come home. That’s when I remembered my cell phone was still turned off. I ran to it, turned it on, and fretfully waited to confront the plethora of anxious and angry messages, but there was only one.
“Hey babe, Geoff from work wants to go on a last minute fishing trip up to Hat Creek, so I’m on my way to pick him up. Gonna stay for the weekend. The dog’s been fed. Probably won’t have cell phone reception where we’re going, so don’t expect to hear from me. See ya Sunday.”
Not that I deserved it, but there was no “I love you,” no “call me when you get home so I know you’re okay.” NADA! Just a “see ya” and a click. My God, I could’ve been car jacked, dead in a ditch somewhere, or worse, having sex with another man who I was falling in love with. But thoughts like that don’t cross Kurt’s mind. Nope, everything’s always great. That’s how it’s always been, and it’ll never change.
Since Kurt didn’t care where I was, what I was doing or who I was doing it with from Friday until Sunday, I decided to finally put love for my recreational activities ahead of my love for him and spend every single minute of my free time with Leo. On Friday morning, I called in sick to work, asked my neighbor to babysit my dog, and surprised Leo at his apartment with bagels and coffee. He blew off his classes, told the rock yard to f*ck off, and we hopped into his jeep and headed west to Mill Valley, where I was certain nobody would recognize me.
Once we got to Mill Valley, we held hands while we window-shopped. We ducked into every alcove and alley-way and made out like sex-starved maniacs. We looked at real estate fliers while sharing our thoughts of living together one day. We drank a bottle of wine and ate a late lunch at Piatti’s while we ripped on every single person who walked by, except our waiter of course, because doing that would be service suicide. Then, after lunch, we hit up all the stores. While I was looking at rings at Banana Republic, Leo slipped one on my finger and made a comment about the huge rock he planned on buying me one day. He said he wanted the diamond to “shine from a mile away to keep guys from even trying to make a move.” I thought about the huge one I had on the night I met him and how size doesn’t matter if you hide the damn thing. Leo bought the little metal ring for me and told me not to take it off until he can replace it with the real thing.
After lunch, we walked to the famous Sweetwater Saloon where musicians like Bonnie Raitt, Santana, and Boz Scaggs have been known for their impromptu performances. We found a cozy table in the corner and sat there for hours drinking Corona’s, eating popcorn, and overtly adoring each other.
Too tipsy to make the drive home, we checked into the Mill Valley Inn where we made love, lots and lots of love, until we fell asleep in each other’s arms. Well, Leo fell asleep, and I dozed in and out of consciousness. Sometimes I woke feeling blessed, and sometimes I woke feeling cursed, always wondering which I would end up feeling for life and overwhelmed with the responsibility of the looming choice. The next day I returned home to pack a fresh bag of clothes, pat the dog on the head and check the answering machine. It was empty.
Two hours after leaving Leo, I arrived back at his apartment where he had dinner waiting for me. He spent whatever amount of money he had on a couple of chicken breasts, some prosciutto, fontina cheese, red wine, and candles, and we ate our meal on a blanket on the floor. I’ve eaten in the finest restaurants in Tokyo and Hong Kong, the best steak houses in New York and Chicago, and watched Kurt incessantly curse at the stove, at me, and at the world to make a perfect meal, but the simple, no spice, no utensil, no nothing meal Leo made for me was the best I’ve ever had. After dinner, just as we were getting cozy on the couch for some bwamp chicka bwamp bwamp, the phone rang.
“Aren’t you gonna get that?”
“You’re the only one I want to hear from and you’re here.”
I thought that was sweet, but I really wanted to know if a girl was calling him. Granted he’s done nothing to make me think he’s fooling around behind my back, but he thinks I’m genuine and LOOK AT WHAT I’M DOING TO HIM!
“Answer it.”
“Why?”
“Just answer it. I wanna know who it is.”
“No! Come here.”
Just as he was about to put his arm around me, I jumped up from the couch, picked up the receiver, and handed it to him. If I wasn’t his dream girl, I’d be scared shitless of the glare he gave me as I placed the phone in his hand.
“Hello? Yeah, I was meaning to call you. No, not about that. Did you run into Chrissy a while back?”
Holy shit! It’s Megan!
“Uh-huh. Interesting, that’s not what she told me.”
Oh boy.
“And I believe her, so that means you’re lying to me. I don’t like liars…”
Uh oh.
“Look, I really don’t care, and don’t call me anymore. Stay out of Chrissy’s life, too. I mean it.” And then he hung up on her. I sat there astonished at Leo’s ruthless ability to cut someone out of his life.
“Are you really never gonna talk to her again?”
“That’s what I said.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“I’d do anything for you, but I did that mostly for myself. I might’ve cut her some slack if she told me the truth, but she lied, and I don’t want that in my life.”
His words repeated over and over again in my mind after I left his apartment. What in THEEEEEE hell is the guy gonna do to me when he finds out the lies I’ve told?
Three nights ago I thought going home to Kurt after having sex with Leo was the most despicable thing I had ever done, but I’m not so sure anymore. Let me see…I just spent the last three days talking about a future with a guy who’s falling in love with me, and oh yeah, he doesn’t know I’m married. I’m four days away from attending a marriage-saving therapy session with a husband who’s only going with me to pacify what he thinks is a bump in the road of our relationship. My therapist believes me when I tell her I love Kurt and that I haven’t spoken to Leo since the day after I met him four months ago. I’m fairly certain that every day, with every lie, my life gets more and more despicable.