A Husband's Affair

Do not think for one minute that these cool waters don't hurl a familiar ripple of dismay through this gentrifying river village. It had been his second affair in less than two years, before the emotional pain began to chip away at his ability to contain his secret any longer. Laminating the fabric of emotion that had long since held them together in thick sheets of cloudy plastic. The laminating, which had now turned, parched by the sunlight, discolored and yellow. 

He just as easily could have begun his affair in a big city, but he choose this small river village, where weekend tourists kept him covered under their camouflage, but midweek always saw him taking to rustic side roads, bleak and overshadowed by overgrown trees. He rapidly walked with his head down, conscious never to make eye contact with passersby. The way he came and went without anyone ever heeding notice to the sleekness of his parked sports car, a parking meter that had run out of time hours ago.

The key slipped in, as it always had, and there she stood, with nothing in hand, but the rose she had picked for him from her garden, wearing nothing but the lace camisole, and the smile he knew he could always count on. 

She had become a toxic poison that floated through his bloodstream; the kind he had often heard stories of junkies selling their souls for. She was, in fact, his drug of choice. She had become the needle he slipped into his veins, the addiction he could not walk away from. She had become the juice that filled the void of everything empty when the pace of his life simply could not keep up with his dreams.

He could have chosen a big city, where lovers stood under streetlamps, and no one ever seemed to care, or take notice, but he chose this river town. It was a village, where scandal was the drug of choice that ran through neighborhood veins. It was the drug of choice, which ousted him, the thorn that pricked his hand, that night of final rose.

What once was was now over. All he wanted to do was to add more quarters to his over due parking meter. The ticket sitting beneath his windshield wiper, his license plate now scribbled across the lines on the blue piece of paper for the entire world to take notice of.

The key had slipped so easily in, his feet now, not so easily out.  He had not planned on ever getting caught...he could have picked a big city, a less fertile entry, a less toxic exit, but he hadn't, he had picked this small river village...where now everyone knows his name. 

His wife sits in her lawyer's office, just opposite the courthouse where her husband just paid his parking ticket. He should have picked a big city, a less toxic exit...he should have had more brains than balls! Yes, another one bites the dust...