A Hostile Engagement -And The Aftermath We Know As Marriage by F. Scott Weitz + Estella Fernandez

A HOSTILE ENGAGEMENT - and the aftermath we know as marriage
by F. Scott Weitz (w/ Estella Fernandez)
(copyright) Francis Scott Weitz + Estella Fernandez-Weitz

Chapt. 1 ‘Initial Exchange of Hostilities’ by F. Scott Weitz
*OK, I’m in the shower, and my wife, Mulu, on the other side of the opaque curtain (that now seems an apt metaphor for my inability to see, clearly, the motivations of the people near and/or dear to me) tells me, in an emotionally distressed tone which starts as pure hostility and ends as pitiful sobbing, that a woman just called our home phone, and, as near as I can make out, said something about calling because she missed the sound of my voice. OK, obviously the woman, Estella, who I’ve been seriously engaged in an extramarital relationship with, disapproves of my months-long timetable for getting a divorce from my current wife so that I can marry her - she who has actually begun to show me that a relationship between a man and a woman can involve more than going through the motions of what constitutes love.
*Obviously, she (Estella) has decided to speed up the process of divorce, and remarriage, by forcing my hand, right? After all, I’ve got an unlisted home phone number. Estella knows it because, from my home phone, I was silly enough to call her cell phone one day in the interest of saving minutes on the cell phone I’d been allocated from my place of work. And, she has actually told me a couple of times that she misses the sound of my voice when we’re apart.
*It’s an open and shut case. There’s no one else it could have been because, although I was unfulfilled enough, and enough of an #sshole, to get involved with ‘the other woman’ when this other woman responded to my low-key flirting by coming on to me in a manner that got me high, and, although I was stupid enough to actually fall in love with this unbelievable woman, I’m not Don-f#cking-Juan. She’s the only woman, besides my wife, I’ve been spending time with, the only one period I’ve been sleeping with, and – without a doubt – the only woman for whom I’ve ever planned to dismantle my life.
*OK, screw it then. I’ll burn both relationships to the ground with one phone call. So, I cut short my shower, towel off as I drip water onto the bedroom carpet, throw a pair of pants on (eschewing, in the interest of time, first pulling on underpants), and tell my wife not to run off to work yet. I want her to hear this call.
*In an attempt to find out how to call back the phone from which my phone was just called, I first call (on my cell phone) information (411), then the cell-phone customer service number, then my home phone customer service number. I’m trying to navigate my way through the menu options of AT+T customer service to an actual human being, when a woman comes on the line, and tells me to dial *69 (Isn’t that an appropriately ironic number?) if I wish to call back the phone that just called my number.
*OK, sharp as a tack, and bold as brass, I dial *69 (on my home phone) to catch my treacherous lover in full frontal view of my soon-to-be ex-wife. When the menu of options from the golf cart dealership, with which I do business, unexpectedly comes on the line in answer to the *69 call, I, despite this unexpected turn of events, hand the receiver over to my wife.
*When my wife begins to interrogate the unsuspecting woman from the golf cart dealership who, after several of the aforementioned menu options, comes on the line - a woman, with whom, I am definitely not having passionate sex - the thought crosses my mind that there are plenty of golf cart dealerships besides this one, and that I’ll likely find one at which the office personnel don’t consider me an abject fool, or an utter lowlife scumbag. My wife, thoroughly confused after her conversation with the woman from the dealership, and almost entirely abashed, actually apologizes to the dink she’s married to as she dries her eyes and heads off to work. I, much preferring violent confrontation to emotional unrest, long for the battle which has been tragically averted by this pitiful and unexpected stalemate. I keep my mouth shut though. I wish to neither harass, nor harangue this wounded adversary, my wife of fifteen years.
*Oh, give me a hard-headed man to soften up with my fists. That type of battle I could sincerely enjoy. - To assail a man with teardrops, is so unfair. How can I respond with equanimity - or with outrage - to such an attack?
*OK, Mulu was easily dissuaded from thinking ill of her sick husband. Not being nearly as gullible as my wife though, and being entirely ready to think the worst of any woman (in this case, Estella) who holds me in such apparent high esteem, I know that, when dialed from my home phone, *69 – in error – caused to be called back the penultimate (the next-to-last) caller as opposed to the last caller. - I know Estella was the last caller. I know Estella is the guilty party!
*I once lived with a woman (who shall, here, remain nameless) who apparently held me in high esteem. During our relationship, it became apparent that she held quite a few other men – including a couple of my friends – in high esteem. She proved that by her willingness to exchange sexual favors for cocaine anytime one wished to make the offer. She lied about this – and many other subjects - pathologically. [Hey, didn’t I read somewhere that *69 can be rendered ineffectual by dialing a certain sequence of numbers after one ends a call?]
*Estella, being well versed in the ways of telephonic subterfuge after having caught her cheating spouse by perusing the records of his calls, and then reconstructing his electronic path toward an ignoble estrangement, is merely adept at covering her own tracks. Why would anyone from the golf cart dealership miss the sound of my voice? I don’t spend enough money at their dealership to make that a possibility.
*Not being one to allow the enemy’s transparent attempts at clouding the issue to dissuade me from blind aggression, I – of course – call up the woman, Estella, I formerly (about 15 minutes ago) loved in order to verbally batter her into confessing the wicked way of her wiles. But, the crafty thing – after I’ve very clearly expressed my abiding faith in her (That’s sarcasm.), demonstrated my belief in the true nature of romance (That’s sarcasm.), and sincerely threatened not to pick up the phone if she called back for the fourth time (That’s factual.) – refuses to crack, refuses to abandon the ridiculous notion that she’s entirely innocent.
*She’d like me, I suspect, to believe that I’m out of my mind. But, we know better – don’t we reader? Don’t we!! Don’t we?? ‘Yea right’ I think, the notion that ‘out of my mind’ I am, is what the woman from that long-ago relationship (the one who used to treat my friends so well) so often professed.
*The woman whom I’ve recently hung up on, and whom I just hung up on again, is simply as evil as, and even more clever than, the friendly one used to be. This new one (Estella) even demanded to know how I dared to accuse her of doing me dirty – just as that woman, who years before very clearly taught me the foolishness of giving one’s trust and devotion to another, so often demanded. Damn, couldn’t Estella simply admit she’s a manipulative, depraved and self-serving lunatic? To this, I could better relate.
*Well, bills must be paid regardless of the extracurricular, extramarital, and/or extra-ludicrous happenings in one’s life. So, I’ll just head off to work. I’ll do my damnedest to forget the damned world, and get back to not giving a damn. Quixotic notions should remain in the realm of those individuals silly enough to believe that the TV news and the Lifetime Channel accurately depict the reality in which we exist. - I can’t believe I actually cried several days ago to think that love - outside of that which a parent feels for his children - might be, in reality, possible, and that I might not go the rest of my life without occasionally experiencing the effects of such a phenomenon.
*Damn, I need to severely injure a large, capable, and narrow-minded man in the near future in order to work out a few of my manly issues. I hope he’s a better fighter than that wide guy on the Fat Boy (a type of Harley-Davidson cycle - for those unaware of such things) I stomped a couple years back. That worthless bully didn’t even draw, from me, any blood, and was, thus, hardly worth my effort to rearrange his facial features into a visage more reflective of the empathy one should demonstrate for a fellow traveler on the more twisted roads of life’s peculiar journey.
*But, wait a minute; a thought has, in the parking lot of the warehouse out of which I work, just hit me. My wife – English her second language – often misunderstands people, and she’s quite prone to jump to the conclusion to which she’s predisposed. [Sound like anyone whose book you’ve started to read?] I guess I should at least turn my cell phone on so I can call the message service to hear Estella, the woman who had begun to so charmingly wrap me around her delicate finger, very clearly tell me that she no longer considers me an acceptable candidate to father the child we’ve discussed having – or, if you prefer sarcasm, that I’m really swell, and she’d be happy to breed with such an astute practitioner of mature and rational intercourse.
*My God, the treacherous woman just called, and has flatly refused to bestow upon me the anger and hatred I so richly deserve. She will not allow me to self-destruct and destroy our relationship along with myself. She wants me to pick her up on my way, from Fort Worth, to deliver groceries in Denver. - I agree to this on the phone. But agreeing, and actually stopping my vehicle in her vicinity, are two distinctly different actions.
*People, I went - earlier, on my home phone - off on this woman in a most unseemly manner. And, although I warned her that I don’t fight fair, I believe she thought she’d more likely witness me using a sturdy object to, from behind, break the collar bone of some steroid-ridden violence junky, rather than personally subject her to a double dose of my wicked tongue (in a setting other than that which requires the use of a bed of course).
*This woman scares the hell out of me! She’s either the most devoted angel I’ve ever attempted to dislodge from my strange, personal cloud, or she’s a demon whose mental machinations are far beyond my puny human ken. Either way, I don’t really want to stop and pick this creature up. I could handle, once again, placing myself in a position from which I may, if things went just right, wish to cry. But, on the other hand, if she cries, I’ll likely be too confused to understand, and quite possibly too weak to simply ignore her. - Damn it! Love stinks! I should have run at the first horrible whiff of the damned stuff.
*Oh my God! The woman can read my mind! She’s called me twice to check my location – and to make it that much harder for me to slip the noose, and just keep on truckin’. When I do pick her up, she sits in the passenger seat and ignores me. And yes, she even tears up as I attempt to explain how much better off she’d be without me. - What the hell else can I do but pull over and comfort her?
*I’m sure you can figure out how quickly things went straight downhill from there – without this humble truck driver having to paint a pornographic picture for you. “I was so close to irrevocably f#cking this relationship up - and being free,” I, to Estella, complained ….after I had very sincerely (and without words) tried to compensate her for remaining apparently committed to a man who is apparently riddled with doubt, and who is willing to torture suspects in the pursuit of truth. The wicked gleam in her eye made me believe that I would be, for this woman, on my knees again – and again.
*Well, I thought - from within the funk of post-coital bliss, and as I jumped back on the highway to fulfill my obligation to the company for which I work - if I can’t drive her away with suspicion and insanity, maybe I can smother her with love and affection, maybe I can get seriously devious on her rational, and well formed, little #ss. Yes, two can play this nasty game Estella, you mind altering drug, you little woman of medicine big, you practitioner of passive aggression nonpareil. Yes, I’ll win for losin’ ….or I’ll know why. [I’ll beat you with an olive branch. That’s for sure - ‘cause all is fair in love and war!!]