It's easy not to worry overmuch about the unsuspecting spouse of someone you're secretly fucking.
Especially if, as in my case, you hardly know the person you're helping to betray. I had interacted with Monique only a couple of times, briefly, before Scott and I became lovers.
Oh, I experienced little twinges of conscience, but they were easily silenced. I told myself that Monique must know what we were up to, at least on some level, because she was aware of how much time Scott and I spent together (the fact that we were best friends was never a secret). On one occasion, in fact, she had even encouraged him to go on a camping trip with me, alone, just the two of us, telling him that school was stressing us both out and we ought to get away together and just relax.
Or at least, that's the story Scott told me. And it was on that “camping trip” that I first had sex with him.
By the time Scott and Monique got married, though, it was finally clear to me 1) that Monique didn't know the truth about the nature of Scott's relationship with me, and 2) that if she ever found out, it wouldn't be pretty. By then, however, it was too late: I could not extricate myself.
Parker and I attended the wedding. Some months later, Scott showed me the wedding video, and I'll never forget how strange it felt to watch everyone go through the motions, as if it were an ordinary marriage, two people with eyes only for each other, plighting their simple troth.
During the exchange of vows, the videographer had been standing behind the wedding party. What I saw on the television screen, then, was this tableau: the black-robed back of the judge, slightly off to one side; Scott and Monique, facing each other; and one member of the audience, directly behind the couple – literally coming between the two of them. It's a woman wearing sunglasses and a slinky black dress, the requisite costume of the Evil Other Woman. Me. I was the only member of the audience whose face the camera fully captured, and my expression was unreadable.
The wedding took place in July of 1999. That November, Parker, Denali and I shared Thanksgiving dinner with Scott and Monique. Some time between then and Christmas, Monique discovered a suspicious motel room charge on a credit card statement, and I backed up Scott's implausible cover-up story, although I had previously sworn to myself that I would never outright lie to Monique about anything, were she to ask me point-blank. We saw them again at Christmastime, and Monique was cool toward me – as she had every right to be. For some reason, I ended up straightening her hair during that visit. So there I was, running my fingers through her loose curls, marveling at the texture: she had baby-fine hair, but it looked so full that I'd never realized, until I touched it, how soft it was. Something in that intimacy of touch both relieved and unnerved me: I was coming into contact with her essential humanity, which made me feel simultaneously better about her and worse about myself.
Then, in February, I took Scott out to dinner for his birthday, with Monique's express permission. Two days later, she announced that she wanted a divorce. That time, they managed to work through it, deciding to seek marriage counseling. In April or May, I spent several days at their house because I was attending a conference in San Francisco, near where they lived. One evening, the three of us decided to have dinner together in the city. Monique and I arrived at the restaurant at about the same time, only to learn that Scott had been delayed in rush-hour traffic. She and I ordered martinis and sat down at the bar to wait. As I remember it, the conversation between us was relaxed and friendly. One particular interchange, however, stands out in my memory: I said something offhand like, “Oh, well, you know how things have been for Scott this week at work, what with yada yada and blah blah blah going on,” and Monique fixed me with a stare. “No,” she said deliberately, “I don't know.” Then she added, in an almost wistful tone, “Scott doesn't talk to me the way he talks to you.” She might as well have slapped me across the face. I think, in fact, I would have preferred that superficial sensation of pain to having to feel, if only for a moment, how she felt inside.
That was the last time I had any real interaction with Monique. She and Scott were pretty much on the rocks all summer, and the breakup was for real, the divorce pending, by August of 2000. He moved out, and I helped him find a new apartment.
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