The Perfect Marriage(30)

Were they kissing again? Was that why she couldn’t hear anything?

“Shall we?” James said.

It seemed an odd way for him to suggest that they should have sex, but maybe that’s what James considered gallant these days. She imagined him extending his arm over the bed, like a game show model showing off a new car.

“Yes,” the woman said.

Haley checked to make sure the camera side of her phone didn’t emit any light. Once satisfied she would go undetected, she pressed the record button and pointed it at James’s back.

James moved a step forward. Haley waited for them to fall onto the bed. It would be any moment now.

Then, everything changed. James stepped aside so that the camera captured the woman. In a flash, however, she moved out of the frame too.

They weren’t heading to the bed, after all. They had returned to the main room and were there only briefly. A few seconds later, Haley heard the front door open, then shut behind them.



Jessica had a strict no-phones-at-the-dinner-table policy. But the moment she heard the ring, she jumped up to answer it.

“It might be James,” she said to Owen by way of explanation.

Once the phone was in her hand, however, she knew that was not true. The caller ID was from a number outside of her contacts.

Jessica thought for a second about letting it go to voice mail, then changed her mind.

“Is this Jessica Sommers?” said a man’s voice.

“It is.”

“Ask your husband how he enjoyed fucking that short-haired, skinny bitch,” he said.

“What?”

“You heard me. Just ask him.”

“Who is this?”

The connection went dead.

Jessica assumed it was Haley. Not the voice, obviously, but that she was behind the call. There had been other calls like this in the past. Just want to tell you that your husband fucked me so good last night kind of things.

More often than not, James had been home when the supposed fucking had occurred, and so there was no reason for Jessica to be concerned that it might be true. But there hadn’t been a call like this in a few weeks, maybe a few months. It was the specificity with which the caller described the other woman—short-haired and skinny—that Jessica found most alarming. If Haley were going to make some woman up, why call her short-haired and skinny? Wouldn’t a twisted mind like Haley’s conjure up a more threatening image—big breasts and wild hair?

“Who was that?” Owen asked.

“No one.”

“You don’t look like it was no one.”

“It was no one for you to concern yourself about,” she said.

Jessica hated to admit it, but Haley had achieved her purpose. All through dinner, she couldn’t get the mental image of James with a short-haired, skinny woman out of her head.

As the hours passed without James coming home, Jessica’s imagination began to get away from her, and as it did, her anger bubbled closer to the surface. At ten, she went upstairs and got into bed. She knew she wouldn’t go to sleep until James arrived home, but she might as well not be sitting up in the living room with her arms folded when he did.

A half hour later, he was standing in the bedroom. Even though the room was illuminated by only her bedside lamp, she could tell that his cheeks were flushed. His hair even seemed slightly tousled.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” James said. “The traffic was ridiculous tonight. The president’s in town, and for some reason that means that they have to close off the entire FDR or something.”

He began to undress. As he unbuttoned his shirt, Jessica wondered if he was trying to get out of his clothes quickly so she wouldn’t see some telltale sign of his infidelity. Lipstick on his collar or the scent of her perfume.

“How was your dinner?” she asked.

“Good.”

Jessica had been hoping for a more informative response. She remembered how, back when she was living a double life, she’d adhered to the mantra that “less is more” when parceling out info to Wayne.

“Where’d you go?”

“Eleven Madison.”

Eleven Madison Park was among the most expensive, to say nothing of romantic, restaurants in the city. Dinner for two would clock in at about $1,000.

“That must have cost you a pretty penny. Is your client buying the entire Museum of Modern Art?”

“Actually, it didn’t cost me even a penny. She paid.”

“Oh, she did, did she?”

“And she’s not a client. Not really. She’s more of a broker. Remember I told you that I sold her the Pollock today? Well, I sold it to her client. Then, after you left this afternoon, she called and said that if I could get more, she had other buyers. So it’s possible that I can raise enough for Owen’s entire treatment with just her clients.”

The righteous indignation that had gripped Jessica since she’d answered the phone at dinner immediately dissipated. She was being foolish. James’s dinner was a business meeting. The purpose of which was to raise money for Owen. Even if it was with a woman at a romantic restaurant and ran late, that didn’t mean he’d slept with her. Besides, James had seemed plenty sated when she’d left him that afternoon.

She watched her husband continue to disrobe. When he was wearing only his boxer shorts, he rolled back the comforter and slid into bed beside her.