Trial Separation

"I don't want a divorce," I said.

"Then what the hell do you want?" asked Buck.

"I guess...I want him back," I said slowly. "I want to go wherever he is and start over. I want him to forgive me for what I did and I'll forgive him for running out on me. It's time for us to get back together."

"So basically you, who have no right to arrest anybody, coerced a law enforcement official to try to unlawfully detain an innocent man, right?" asked Buck.

"Buck he isn't doing what he's supposed to do. We were supposed to get back together after six weeks. It's been three years. I live in a one room basement apartment. I work part time at a 7-11. You wouldn't believe what I have to do to make my rent money. Most of what I eat is throwaways from the store. It isn't fair," I said.

"Linda, what did Sam do to you to make you cheat on him?" asked Buck.

"He didn't do anything," I said. "It was just something...Sam was the only man I'd ever had sex with. I just wanted to see...what it would be like...he did it with other women before we got together and..."

I looked around the room. Not one person in the room looked sympathetic. "Mom, did dad ever sleep with anyone else after you were married?"

"Do you think he isn't screwing that woman he brought to your wedding?" I spat.

"Mom, don't change the subject. I mean before you cheated on him," she said.

"I guess not," I said. My daughter grabbed Tommy's hand and started to leave.

"Candy, where are you going?" I asked.

She turned and glared at me. "Do you know how much time I lost with my dad for your selfishness?" she asked. I couldn't face her.

"But it worked for Sue and Glenn," I said. "It actually made their marriage better."

"Mom your friend Sue's marriage was shitty to begin with. She and her husband had a history of cheating on each other. Daddy had never done anything wrong and you betrayed him. Your friend Sue turned you into a whore. Everyone still talks about you screwing guys at the 7-11. You forced Daddy to leave. You left him no choice."

"But I didn't want a divorce. I just wanted a separation," I said. Buck took me to the court house. He booked me and put me in a cell. I sat there thinking about all of the things that had happened in my life. I had taken a great marriage that was full of love and respect and ruined it. I cried for much of that night and spent the next day Sunday thinking even more. Monday morning the judge came in and set my bail at twenty thousand dollars. Ralph was fired and might even do six months of probation. That was a stiff penalty for bad judgment. The worst part was that Ralph was also going to end up divorced. From what I heard from a couple of the deputies, the manager of the 7-11 had hired a cute teenager to take my shifts.

My court appointed lawyer told me that I'd probably get off with probation so if I could post ten percent of the bond I could probably get out. If I couldn't I'd have to stay in the lock up until the trial which was a month away.

I asked my lawyer if he could talk to the judge to get the bond reduced or cancelled because there was no way I could pay it. He came back a few moments later and told me that my bond had already been paid. I looked around the courtroom just in time to see Sam walking away.

I screamed at him and ran after him. I caught him just as he got to the parking lot where his all black Mustang waited for him.

"Sam, can we please talk?" I asked. He spun around on his heel and looked at me. He'd shave off the bushy beard and looked every bit as good as he ever did.

"Sam, I'm so sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have sent Ralph after you, but you left me no choice. Do you know what it's like to have the man you love walk out on you without saying a word?"

"Try having the woman you love and want to spend the rest of your life with, tell you that she needs to find herself," he spat. "For the first few weeks I thought that I'd done something wrong or not done something or forgotten our anniversary or just fucked up. Do you have any idea what it's like to walk into a house carrying a bunch of God damned flowers for your wife who needed to "Find Herself" and see her being fucked by three guys one after another and she's enjoying herself so much that she doesn't even noticed you're in the room? Probably not. Well I guess you found yourself while you were jumping up and down on someone else's dick. That was probably the whole point of your trial separation, right?" his voice broke.

He was still choked up with emotion. And then she was there, beside him. She had her arm wrapped around his waist and she was glaring at me. This was not the cool and calm expression she'd had on her ace at the wedding. The look on her face warned me that she would hurt me, if I hurt him or tried to.

"It's Okay Car," he said. I remembered from hearing Tommy that her name was Caroline, like the Neil Diamon song. My husband called her Car, pronouncing it like "CARE."

"None of that shit even matters anymore," she hissed. "Her voice was surprising. From her fashion sense and her clothes, I was expecting her to sound sophisticated. I might've expected an accent, or at least for her to sound snooty. But her voice and her accent were from the deep-south.

The magnolia in her voice stretched small words into multi syllable ones. Hence shit became sheeeyit etc.

"We may as well get this over with once and for all so we can move on," he told her softly. She glared at me again. Her blazing eyes dared me to say anything. Then those same eyes moved to him and instantly softened.

"I'm gonna go back inside the courtroom and say goodbye ta Tommy and Candy," she said. Her arm slowly uncurled from his waist. She was a bit smaller up close than she appeared from a distance. I guess her legs were so long proportionately, that they made her seem taller.

"Sam, you were my first," I said. "Until then, you were my only. I never had a chance to sample anyone else. I was overwhelmed with curiosity. It's like being stuck in one room for your entire life and then suddenly you notice that the door is unlocked."

"Well now you're free to check out every room in the God damned house," he said. "You can even check out the backyard, the neighbor's yard, the city and the whole world. You have what you want. I just don't understand why you needed to put me through such hell."

"Because Sam using that same analogy, I went out and checked out some other rooms. But I found out that the room I'd started out in was the best and most comfortable room there was. The problem was that somehow when I left, the door got locked and I couldn't get back in," I told him. "Sam I wanted you back. I missed you the whole time. The first couple of guys I tried were exciting. But they were exciting because it was someone different. It took me slowing down and thinking about it to realize that what was different was that they were just pounding on me. Then I got really smart and realized why. They just fucked me because they didn't give anywhere near a damn about me. They didn't care if I had a good time or not. Yep, when you saw me pulling a train that was the end of it. Do you know why I did that? It was another of Sue's ideas. She told me that if one guy couldn't get me off, I should have another one there to take over when he ran out of steam.

It took me a little while to realize that it was all of the little things you always did that got me off. Sometimes it was just the things you said while we were doing it that made me super hot. But it was too late. And you also need to know that every night was not like the one when you walked in. That was the only time I ever had more than one guy at a time and I told you why I tried it then. Sam, I had only screwed a couple of guys before the night you saw me. Surely in all of the years before me met you had sex more than that. I just wanted to see what I'd been missing.

But now I know that I wasn't missing anything."

"Well, that's good. Even the blind squirrel finds a nut sooner or later," she said from behind us. "So take that knowledge into your next relationship and be happy. But while we're talking about you, and you're lying about how many guys you fucked, shouldn't you tell him about how many there've been in the three years that he's been gone? Aren't you like the town whore now?"

"But I had to do that in order to survive," I said. "It's not my fault."

She stepped next to him and had me wondering how the hell she walked so effortlessly in those heels.

"You've had your chance to talk. You've said what you wanted to say. So we're heading out of here. If you really want to do something for him, you could give him the divorce," she spat.

"Then you'll marry him," I said, angrily.

"You're damned skippy," she said.

"Sam I made one mistake. You didn't react to it the way you were supposed to. You were supposed to..."

"Oh Lord Jesus, save us from stupid bitches," she hissed. She closed the distance between us and got right up in my face. She had to go up onto her tiptoes to get to eye level with me but I felt anger coming off of her in waves.

"What makes you an expert on how a person is supposed to react to getting their heart broken?" she asked. "I've heard this story, lots of times but I always miss the part where you got your degree in psychology. Or maybe your doctorate is in games. Your trial separation was a game. The way you handled the divorce was more of your fucking games and in the end your marriage was a game. When you and your stupid friend were plotting out all of your moves in the game, did either one of you ever think that Sam wasn't playing? Sam is a pretty straight shooter, Linda. The way you deal with a man like that is to be honest with him. For the life of me I don't understand why but Sam took your marriage seriously. It was not a game to him. It was only a game to you. And so you played the game, you bet your marriage and you lost. Game over."

I could see that she wanted me to react. She wanted me to make a flip comment or a snide remark so she could beat the shit out of me. I have never been so terrified of a woman in my life. She was three years older than me, much smaller than me and about forty pounds lighter but I was sure that she would mop up the floor with me and wanted the chance to do it.

Sam pulled her away from me and said the words that I'd waited three years to hear.

"I forgive you Linda," he said. Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "I can understand your point of view on things now," he said. "Curiosity can be a powerful thing. In fact maybe that's something that we have in common even though we've been apart for all of this time."

"You mean like the way we experimented, when we first got married?" I asked trying to drum up some of those old memories in him. She turned back towards me then and I could see the effort that Sam was putting into keeping her off of me.

"Kind of," he said. "But it's just a little different. You got curious about what sex with someone else would be like. You wanted to find out and then we'd get back together right?"

"Exactly!" I said. "That's what I meant by TRIAL SEPARATION. It was never meant to be permanent."

"Well I'm curious about something too," he said. "I'm curious about living the rest of my life without you." I heard her sharp high pitched laughter as she and Sam got into his Black Mustang and drove away from me. They never looked back.

I was out of jail, thanks to Sam, until my hearing. But I was unemployed. I turned to Sue and Glenn for help and they turned me down. It surprised me that the woman who had started me down this road looked at me as if I was some kind of whore.

In the end though whoring was what I ended up doing. I went from town whore, to real whore until I got caught. With the added charges of prostitution on my list, I didn't get probation. I ended up in jail. It really isn't so bad here. I get three meals a day and not much to do. I've decided to write my life story as a cautionary tale for others out there who might fall into the trap that I made for myself. Maybe I'll make the best sellers list or failing that one of those Internet sex story sites.

The end.