Circles of Gold Never End

No realities were predictable that day, not the day I learned that my ever loving wife was a whore.

Praise whatever gods you idolize when your life moves onward effectively though haphazardly. Forget reality. Take it from me, you don't want to experience reality or an orderly process of fate.

If only I could turn the clock back to a time before I demanded reality and ended the day in blood bath. I would still have my happy home, and Bill and Marcie would be on their way to our house for steak and our Friday night card game.

I know! We require that life be rational. But we know it isn't and never can be reduced to philosophic satisfactions through double-entry bookkeeping.

That's the natural state of affairs, everything screwed up but functioning beautifully. We always bitch and bellow demanding that just once God should permit everything to make sense.

It was Friday. I needed to leave my office early to pick up the take-out steaks at Outback. Our Friday night gathering of friends would begin at 7 o'lock.

But Parker "Bruno" Saudi walked into my office at five minutes to five demanding that I review the legal aspects of another bar he wanted to buy. He owned seven bars, truck stop cafes and two strip clubs.

You simply cannot afford to like the surly, swaggering piece of personified obscenity. Oh! He always exudes the fragrance of some cologne that I couldn't afford to sniff. Of curse, his wardrobe is directly from a Fortune magazine picture depicting the fashionable ease sleaze of 21st Century movers and shakers.

After I scanned his brief outline of the proposed purchase, he packed his briefcase and strode to the door. Then he turned and dropped the first piece in my wished for orderly philosophic procedure.

Fate was about to give me my first installment of unfabled reality in the staging of life's rich pageant. Bruno had previewed my Saturday night. Revelations come with reality.

Revelations are essential to logic and order, you know.

"I got my letter of acceptance from the country club," He said. "Thanks for sponsoring me. I just knew someone would black ball me."

What!

I had not and never under any circumstances would have recommended this bundle of pure garbage for anything in my civilized world. Then he added insult to injury, to use the only applicable cliche.

"I really enjoy dancing with your wife and her friend," he said seriously, as if exchanging a sacred confidence. "Did your wife tell you that I danced professionally as a stripper to work my way through college?"

Bruno assured me that he would be at the country club's Saturday night charity casino. He was "no piker" when it came to opening his wallet for charity, he boasted.

"Tell your girls to get their dancing shoes greased," Bruno said, laughing in a gross display of self awareness.

It was 6:45 by the time the waitress had packaged my steaks, and I was on the way home. As I waited for the steaks, I found that I could not dismiss Bruno's strange dialogue about my sponsoring his country club application.

Of course, the burgeoning concern beginning to take root in my unconscious and bleed into my conscious was the beasts' comments about dancing with our wives.

What the hell and when and where? Implications of Bruno's strange remarks and obvious confidence could quickly explode into damaging questions.

Cell phones save many marriages, making it possible to assure wives that you are 15 minutes away. No one will miss a beat in taking the first bite of succulent Outback prime cut.

Everyone stood on the patio cheering for me as I got out of the car with the steaks at precisely 7:00 p.m. Our night's well practiced routine proceeded to it's usual happy conclusion with coffee in the living room.

Marcie's rings were not on her fidelity finger.

As she served the after dinner coffee in the living room and handed me my cup, I spontaneously looked up at her with an idle question in my unconscious expression. It was a novelty.

Our wives made a big thing of never removing their rings.

It still wouldn't have given credence to the disturbing overtones if Marcie had not reacted with a flash of fear. When she realized that I was looking at her barren ring finger, she stiffened and mouthed a plea for me not to say anything.

Our standard of measuring success was found in the equation that gave happy sums of family plus friends plus respectfully gained fortune. For our four families, that creed had worked phenomenally.

Agreed! It sounds too idealistic to be true. Well! The ideal continues to flow in the river of life's continuum, but my little slice of life turned sour for a time, so bitterly humiliating that my anger threatened my sanity.

This customary Friday night get together was always a pleasing end to a busy if not hectic work week. All of the usual suspects were at our house for good food, rational drink and mutually refreshing conversation.

There were Bill and Marcie, Francis and Claude, Jerry and Gilda and my wife, Margie, and of course me. I'm Craig McGee Stone. Laugh if you will, but my mom had a reason for giving me that conversation stopper of a name. You guessed! They call me Mcgee.

No need for background. Just remember that Marcie and my wife, Margie, had pledged their friendship as long ago as when they were in the third grade. Their bond had endured through adolescent years and matured as roommates in college. All of us had been acquainted during the college years; but it was only happenstance that we had found jobs or established ourselves professionally in the same town and bought homes in the same neighborhood.

For 18 years our four families, all neighbors or business partners, had marched to the same drummer. We supported our church and advocated its core values. Of course, the key to our pleasure and success as a close knit unit was the word "fidelity."

Though a bit pretentious, perhaps, it was the shared creed of our circle of four families. Just last year all four couples had participated in "ceremony of renewal" in which we stood at the altar and before God and held up our left hands to display our rings.

"Eternal love is embodied in the ring of gold," we said in unison. "Gold is the purest material element representing beauty and the ring is a circle and in physics we have learned that circles have continuity that never ends."

No pretensions of being richer, smarter, sexier or funnier were expected. And come to think about it, we all had tacitly agreed over time not to indulge the more obnoxious aspects of close friendships.

Until the time I began this story, I had considered that eventuality to be a good thing.

As the party ended, and Margie and I had accompanied our friends to the parking apron beside the house, I grasped Marcie's hand while saying goodnight. One again I discovered an anomaly.

When I quickly met her eyes in response to my surprise, her mouth moved as if to speak but no sound came. Then she turned abruptly, slid into the car and averted her eyes from my questioning gaze.

Fate was not finished with me that night.

As we prepared for bed, Margie walked into the bedroom from the bath working lotion into her hands. I asked her to rub some of the residual on a rough spot on my arm.

My blood pressure spiked as she placed her left hand on my arm and rubbed the oil into the tissue. Her rings were missing.

"Where are your rings?" I asked suppressing the tension.

"Oh! I left them at the jeweler's to be cleaned," she said casually.

Firsts in all things matter and have significance. This was the first lie in what would become an avalanche of deceptions. Incredibly all of the lies would flow logically.

Holding my peace in the face of a bald faced lie required all the reserve I possessed. I stared at her in silence until I almost lost my advantage.

Well! This particular Friday things did develop by the numbers.

Rationally, three things fell into place before midnight; and I will regret forever seeing my wish granted for logic and revealed truth by the numbers. Oh, God, I pray that you will never again stop my merry-go-round and grant me leave to get off.

You can bet that I did not leave the witch's brew simmering. I was out of the house an hour earlier than normal, having stealthily called Bill Mason after Margie slept soundly.

We met at the pancake house where Bill devoured a stack, two eggs and a rack of bacon. I Could drink only black coffee. To say the least, I was not well; and the thought of food rattled my digestive system.

During the night, my rabid brain had forced the issue and butchered rather than refined the facts. I awoke with a settled though sickening conviction that my wife and Marcie were anything but what they seemed.

Of course this manifested as a destructive force. I had loved Margie as one of God's most exemplary achievements. For more than 20 years, she could do no wrong in my view.

Now! What the hell! Reluctantly, though with determination, I told him what I knew as fact and did not hesitate to adduce what my instincts were producing as dire probabilities.

Bill Mason's face became wooden and paled before flushing with a feverish red tint. He was a big man in all senses. I admired his brilliant engineer's genius that at time functioned incredibly in discussing Aristotle or the theology of Abraham, Moses and Paul.

Rest assured that neither Bill Mason nor I failed to remember the good times and all that had come before. I will presume that all witnesses would expect and understand our painfully passing through stages of riotous emotion.

To be sure, I agreed with Bill that our enjoyment of sport shooting at the gun range might suddenly become a fundamental exercise in redressing merciless reality's galvanizing grievances. Where to start was the only question.

We agreed that spending $20,000 for PI's was not required. Apparently, the country club event that night would suffice as a crucible.

No. We wouldn't kill Margie and Marcie. But Bruno the Moose was dead meat.

We had fashioned a preliminary plan before we left the Pancake House. Sadly. Bill left the table for a few minutes, and I'm certain he lost his breakfast.

Good guys just can't win.

Our plan was simple.

"We'll strive for normalcy and go to the CC tonight," I said, summarizing our conclusions. "We should learn enough tonight to verify and crystallize our circumstantial evidence."

"Then we borrow Joshua's horn and blow down the walls of Jericho," Bill said. I didn't agree with his metaphors; but, if Bruno's whore dens called "Strip Clubs" were in any sense related to Bruno's knowing our wives, I could forecast "fire and damnation" that Texans would enshrine in lore and talk about for centuries.

It doesn't matter that Margie came home from shopping and initiated a strange interlude of satisfying sex. If I witnessed the spectacle I expected with Bruno that evening, her taste of

the forbidden fruit would have sounded a horn of finality for our marriage and above all our legendary friendship. Her coming home with a new little black mini dress, purchased especially for the "Casino Night" party, added fuel to the portending marital pyre.

Before the severance knell began that night, I called Bill Mason to ask if he had received any information from Marcie that would preclude our launching our war of retribution.

Bill was even more depressed though determined to execute our plan and sound the Doom Drum. Marcie also had bought an ass flapping little black dress that day.

"And she's so damned excited that I'm certain she orgasms every time she answers her damn cell," Bill said forlornly, though his anger was evident.

No. It didn't look too good for our marriages at 6:00 p.m., our wive's selected time for arriving at the country club. As I stepped out of the car and tipped the kid in the red vest, I paused to survey the front of the place of planned pleasures. This, too, would be on the "dump list."

Inside, the club had been transformed into a casino that Vegas Dons would appreciate. We joined Bill and Marcie and our other friends in the ornate lobby.

As the wives banded and moved as a troupe toward the toilet, I approached the manager who was making a gaudy display of welcoming Parker "Bruno" Saudi. Learning as much as possible about Bruno was essential.

"Well, counselor, just the man I wanted see tonight," Bruno boomed, clapping my shoulder, basking in the light of assumed camaraderie. "I have requested that the major domo here seat us at your table."

I said nothing. Club personnel appeared on cue and led Bruno and his luxury tinted brunette escort. Though she had recently trod the boards at the strip club, she had class; and her ass flapping little black dress rivaled Margie's and Marcie's for teasing the eye. With the advent of the thong, the viewer could never be certain the naked butt meant no panties or the string in the crack.

I stood aside in the shadows of the dimly lighted ballroom with Bill Mason. We watched the hostess seat Bruno Saudi and his Latin beauty as our wives returned from the toilet. It was worth the price of admission but deeply depressing, decidedly frightening.

Bruno kicked his chair back and strode to our wives, hugging, kissing and grabbing ass as he bellowed his wicked aughter to the chagrin of many.

Margie pushed away from his embrace after he scored a direct hit on her mouth and vigorously ground groin with her.

Frantically her eyes darter about the ballroom tormented by the density of the crowd. When she didn't see me, her breath rushed from her body in a sigh of relief.

After a tense moment of determined anger deflation, Bill and I approached our table to find my nervous wife seated snugly beside Bruno and Marcie almost cuddling with a huge black athlete type I had never seen at the CC.

"What the hell?" Bill whispered. "Have our wives gone crazy?"

So flagrant was this disrespect that their actions begged the question Bill had voiced. Incredibly, there were no chairs for Bill and me. I turned to scan the crowd for a club staffer but the crush of humanity was too great.

Margie sensed that I was standing behind her observing. She wiggled in an attempt to dislodge her chair, but she was wedged in too securely.

"Don't strain," I whispered in her ear, "Bill and I were on our way to play blackjack, anyway, so we'll see you later, and you have fun."

Margie twisted her head until she could partially see me over her shoulder and grinned uncertainly before brightening suddenly and mouthing "Okay." She gulped a clear liquid drink as she turned back to the conversation at the table.

We didn't talk as we made our way to the foyer that led to the parking lot. I was fuming. Bill's anger had become systematic, leaving him depressed and ready for war.

Incredibly, it was now what it looked like. Our wives apparently were comfortable with the situational revelation. I had no doubt that Margie realized that she was inviting trouble.

Momentarily, this senseless behavior left me nonplussed. So completely in one shopping day my wife had removed herself from my orbit.

"This must have been the moment of truth for the," I said, nodding absently toward Bill. "They had no idea that we were onto their hooking up with Bruno."

Their excluding us from the table, though sophomoric and disingenuous in the extreme, had been plotted. It was something that Bruno would enjoy and appreciate in his goon's brain as exquisitely creative cuckolding.

Without discussion, I strode back into the lobby and demanded that the security officer summon the manager. I showed him my ID as a member of the CC's board, and his bravado crumbled. It was revived immediately, however, as he talked to Homer Crater, the manager.

"Mr. Crater says if you're going to insist on making trouble, he will have you removed by the police," the security troll said."He suggests that you leave quietly."

"As a vested member of the board of directors," I said, almost casually, "I have the prerogative to find two other board members who agree with me and call an emergency meeting at which we can close down this party and suspend the manager and his staff for gross improprieties."

Bulging eyes either meant the security troll was choking to death or dying of terminal fright. He was spared, however, as the manager and two assistants strode into view.

"Who forged my name as a sponsor for Parker Saudi?" I demanded, catching him off guard. "Someone is going to jail and it won't be me!

Now the Country Club manager was worried. He stepped away a few paces and conferred with his assistants.

"You need to talk to your wife, sir," the manager said. "She brought Mr Saudi's completed application, including your sponsoring affidavit, to my assistant's office."

"Who paid his fees and bought the required stock?" I asked, now resorting to my most threatening courtroom growl. Once more he conferred with an assistant.

"Your wife gave us a cashier's check in the amount of $24,000," the manager said. "That purchased the required 100 shares.

"Get back to your party, asshole!" I sneered. "Even if I'm in jail, you're going to be out on your ass, and an audit will land you in jail alongside me."

"Don't jump to conclusions, Mr. Stone," the manager said placatingly. "I'm always with the winner, so what do you want me to do?"

"Tell my wife and Bruno nothing," I commanded. "Not that we talked, not that you know about her felony forgery, not even that we left the party."

Satisfied that we could accomplish nothing more at the CC party, we left the dithering CC manager and drove to my house. Our plan was still in force. We would take all of them down or go down with our cause.

My favorite was the Beretta. But this mission could get down and dirty. Very likely I would want my adversaries on their butts never to wiggle again. Only my 1911 Colt .45 would make that happen absolutely.

Bill Mason had served his country and done well. He preferred a Glock, though I had my doubts about the finality of its action.

Dressed in blue business suits with white shirts and blue ties, we pulled onto the parking lot at Bruno's flagship enterprise, Gentlemen Anonymous, White Tails and Tits For All.

Bill dialed the number of the stripper bar on his cell. He asked if he could talk to Bruno. His boss would in the club in about an hour, the bartender said.

"Just what we had hoped," I mused. "Ready?"

"Think they have a weapons screener?" Bill asked.

"If they do, we just thank them and leave," I said, becoming very comfortable with the philosophical detachment inherent in a commitment to kill "We'll catch Bruno with his whore harem on the parking lot."

"Damn! McGee!" Bill muttered, exhaling to maintain his composure. "I don't know if I can kill her."

"We won't kill the whores until we make them tell us all about it," I said, realizing that Bill's civilized mind was making a come back. "I'm going to make them tell me how this happened as we watched."

"Are you really going to kill her?" Bill asked, his voice quivering.

Shaking my head with resignation, I climbed out of the car, straightened my coat and tie and led Bill to the entrance. Just inside door we were met by a smiling show girl type wearing the signatory little black dress and a behemoth black man in a tuxedo.

"Swinger or strip club?" the woman asked. "It's $500 each for swinger and $50 for the Strip Club."

"We're just on town for the night," I said. "What is the difference and what do you recommend?"

Smiling with the magnetism of a super merchandiser, she asked for our driver's licenses. Recording our names and license numbers implied a systematic approach to security.

Our greeter held an expensive recorder between her face and ours. She read our names and license numbers into the recorder. Practiced in the process, our greeter asked us to confirm who we were and that we agreed to being recorded.