That wasn't Daniel's wife that I met.
She was some kind of poser. Or decoy. Possibly a real robot!
And that house! It was fake. I mean, not a fake house, like with cardboard walls that fell down when you leaned on them. But I mean, not really Daniel Austin's house. It was probably just some furnished rental. No wonder it looked like no one lived there. Nobody did!
But then if that wasn't Sarah Austin... Who was it?
I looked back up at the TV, searching for more clues. And then suddenly I remembered something that Daniel had said only a few seconds ago.
"I am neither ashamed nor embarrassed by the news that was brought forth by my political opponents."
"Brought forth by my political opponents"? I repeated aloud, and then gasped.
Oh my God! I'd been used as a political spy! Daniel Austin's enemies must have rented that house, hired that woman, and then paid her to pose as his wife, contact me, and then pay me (in cash!) to prove his unfaithfulness. So my first impression had actually been right on the money. She was hired to play the part of a self-important prim and proper wife of a well-known politician. He just wasn't well-known to me.
Whoever his enemies were, they had obviously been trying to catch him in a cheating scandal. No wonder she insisted I go back out there and try again. No wonder she appeared disappointed with my first round of results. And! No wonder she looked oddly amused when I came back with the news that Daniel was gay.
They must have had a field day with that!
A Republican politician with a dark and dirty gay secret in the closet. Um, hello... can anyone say "jackpot"?
I had heard about stuff like this going on in our "honest" system of government, but I had never thought I would be involved in any way. And although I felt like maybe I should have been outraged, thinking, How dare they use me like that? How dare they involve me unknowingly in their petty little sex scandal?
But there was just no way I could possibly be mad. It was way too cool!
And I couldn't wait to get home and tell John. He would be even more excited. Hell, he'd probably already seen the news and told everyone that he had personally outed a right-wing Republican politician.
In fact, the news had probably already spread across Los Angeles's entire gay network, and half of San Diego's. I watched the screen as the segment came to an end. "...Democratic candidate, Paulson, is still refusing to comment on his sources."
AFTER FOUR standby flights, two middle seats, and three layovers in London, Chicago, and Denver, I finally landed on an LAX runway early Tuesday morning.
And I'd never been more happy to do so in my entire life.
I had called Sophie from the Chicago airport the night before, and after hearing about the series of events, she had insisted on picking me up and taking me home.
"Let's just look on the bright side," Sophie suggested cheerfully after ten minutes of silence in the car on the way home from the airport.
I picked my head up from the headrest and looked at her. "What bright side? I'll give you a million dollars if you can tell me what the bright side is."
Sophie pursed her lips and stared at the road. "Well, there's... um..."
I plopped my head back again. "Exactly."
"There's always a bright side," she insisted. "You just have to look hard enough until you find it."
"You mean you just have to delude yourself long enough until you start to believe it?"
Sophie glanced at me from the corner of her eye. "Haven't we gotten cynical in the last twenty-four hours?"
I closed my eyes. "I've always been cynical. I just hid it well."
Even from myself, I thought.
"So what do you think you'll do now? Are you going to go back to doing the fidelity inspector thing?"
"Don't know," I said vaguely.
And the truth was, I didn't. I had certainly thought about it during my nearly twenty hours of travel time. But I had yet to come up with any solid conclusions. I hadn't quit entirely because of Jamie. Sure, he had been a big part of it. But it was more about what he had made me realize.
That there was more to life than just cheaters.
But now I wasn't so sure.
Sophie pulled up to my curb and put her car in park. She turned and looked at me, almost as if she could read my mind. And right at that moment, I would have bet money that she could.
"Eric's coming into town this weekend. We have our first meeting with the wedding planner."
I offered her a weak smile. "Fun."
"I'd love for us to all have brunch together on Sunday. If you're feeling up to it."
"You, me, and the wedding planner?" I attempted my first bit of humor.
Sophie rewarded my efforts with a genuine laugh. "No, silly. You, me, and Eric. I want you to meet him... for real this time."
I turned and gazed out the window. "Okay."
Sophie struggled to come up with something to say. "I just thought that...you know, maybe it would cheer you up to be around someone who's not a cheater for a change."
And after that I was convinced she was able to read my mind. But also thankful that she most likely wouldn't be able to read all of it. Because all my cynical mind could come up with at that very moment was I wouldn't be so sure.
"I'm sure it will," I said blankly as I reached down and unbuckled my seat belt.
"Sorry," she quickly added. "Maybe that was too harsh. I'm not usually the one doling out these kinds of pep talks. That's always been your department."
I flashed a feeble yet affectionate smile and reached over to touch her shoulder. "You're doing fine."
We both stepped out of the car, and Sophie helped me unload my bags. "Do you want me to come up? I can sit with you for a while. Maybe make you some tea?"
"Sophie, I'm not going to slit my wrists. I'm going to go to sleep. I've just flown back and forth to Europe in less than seventy-two hours." I pulled up on the handle of my suitcase.
"I know! I didn't think you were going to—"
"I'll call you when I wake up."
"He didn't actually cheat," Sophie reminded me.
Although she technically didn't have to. It was the same mental Rubik's Cube that I had been twisting and turning around in my head for two days. And no matter how many combinations of left, right, up, down, backward, and forward I tried, none of the colors seemed to be lining up. There were no concrete conclusions drawn.
Where was the solid wall of red that meant he was a cheater just for being in Paris with me? Or the nine solid green squares, forming an impenetrable argument for his innocence?
But no matter how many times I rotated those cubes around, nothing matched up. Every side remained an ambiguous mélange of colorfully incomplete rationalizations.
"Didn't he?" I asked her skeptically.
I could see Sophie's mind start to drift away into the endless sea of possible answers as well. It was a dangerous sea to drift on. If you weren't careful, you might never come back. "Did he?" she finally asked back.
To which I simply chuckled hopelessly and said, "Welcome to my world."
And then, with suitcase in tow, I walked into my building and said a bittersweet good-bye to the sunlight. I had no intention of seeing it for the next two years.
I entered my condo to find it just as clean and white as it always was. Marta had apparently stopped by either during the time that I was flying to Paris, breaking up in Paris, or trying to get the hell out of Paris. I dropped my bags by the front door and stumbled into the bedroom, like a drunk person stumbles home after a night of boozing.
Although, I had to admit, flying for twenty hours in coach class wasn't far from it.
I collapsed onto my bed and turned my head to see the blinking red light on my answering machine. As much as I wanted to reach over and toss the entire thing into the garbage, instead I got it into my head that whatever was on that message might distract me from my utter agony. Maybe it was good news.
I flung my hand over the nightstand, kn
ocking off a few books and a bottle of lotion in the process, and pressed the Play button.
Hannah's young, carefree voice came through the speaker. "Hey, Jen! It's me," the message began. "So, next week is Halloween and I just wanted to let you know that this will officially be my last year of trick-or-treating because, you know, next year I'll be thirteen, and Olivia said that thirteen is way too old to be going door-to-door asking for free candy."
See, I reassured myself, it's your adorable little niece, whose untainted innocence and trivial little concerns about trick-or-treating always manage to make you feel better when you're down.
"Oh," Hannah's voice continued, "and I also called to tell you that I got another letter from that person. You know, the one who thinks your name is Ashlyn, and—"
I quickly reached over and shut off the answering machine. So much for that idea. I should have known. When did anyone I know ever call with good news? Oh, no. I was like a bad news magnet. And not just one of those wimpy little refrigerator magnets in the shape of a hot dog or a teapot. I'm talking one of those high-power, superconducting, propulsion magnets that NASA is developing as a way to launch objects into outer space.
I wanted to forget all of it. I wanted to make it all disappear. And the only way I knew how to do that was to sleep.
When I woke up I looked at the clock. It read 2:45. And I seriously wasn't sure if it was 2:45 in the morning or 2:45 in the afternoon. My body clock was completely out of whack. But to be honest, I didn't really care. What did I have to be late for? Another assignment? Nope, no more of those. A date with Jamie? Nope... definitely no more of those.
Time was an illusion, anyway. Pacific Time, Eastern Time, Central Time, Daylight Savings Time. Those were all just man-made words used to keep us all in line. And, of course, on time.
Because without time, how would we be able to set appointments? Make dates? Measure driving distances in Southern California?
Well, screw that. All of it. I reached down and violently yanked the clock plug from the socket.
I would be the first person to live entirely without time. I would revolt against the very institution of time. I would rage against the machine. Defy the system.
According to Einstein, time didn't even exist.
So why should I change my whole life around just to adhere to something that doesn't even exist?
I would sleep when I felt tired, eat when I felt hungry, and watch whatever TiVo had recorded when I felt bored. It was the Zen routine of the twenty-first century.
Although at this point all I felt like doing was the sleeping part.
The thought of fishing my cell phones out of my bag and listening to all the messages from people trying to get ahold of me with more bad news made me feel tired.
The thought of getting up and getting some food out of the refrigerator made me want to close my eyes and go to sleep again.
So I did.
But I woke up to the sound of my home line ringing.
"Hello?" I said groggily into the phone.
"Good morning, Jenny." My mom's cheerful voice vibrated into my ear.
"Hi, Mom."
"Were you still sleeping?"
I looked at the clock on my nightstand. It was blank. Then I remembered unplugging it after my whole time-doesn't-exist phase a few hours ago. Or was that days ago? I fell onto my back and rested my palm on my forehead. "What time is it?"
"It's eleven-thirty," my mom replied.
"Oh."
"Have you called your father yet?"
I pulled the pillow over my face. "No. And I'm not going to."
"I thought you said you would!"
I threw the pillow to the floor. "Well, I changed my mind. I'm allowed to do that, Mom."
There was a long, meaningful pause on the other end, and I could almost hear my mother's disappointment come through the phone. "Honestly, Jenny, I think it's about time you grew up and started acting like an adult."
Her words stung me. "I've been acting like an adult for the past sixteen years, Mother. If anyone should be allowed to act like a child and wallow in her misery, it's me!"
My mom sighed. "I don't know what you're talking about, but you're going to have to learn how to forgive your father or else..."
"Or else what?" I shot up in bed. "What, Mom? This I would love to hear. What if I don't forgive him? Ever? What if I stay mad at him for the rest of my life? Would that be so terrible? I'll tell you one thing, it certainly wouldn't be as terrible as what he did to us. To our family. And he kept it a secret for over a decade... maybe longer. Who knows? As far as I'm concerned, I have at least eight more years of feeling bitter and angry before my dad and I are even. The only thing I've ever learned from my father is that men can't be trusted. And if they can't be trusted, then they certainly don't deserve our forgiveness!"
My mom was silent, and I immediately worried that I had gone too far, said too much. I was about to open my mouth to apologize when she replied, "You're obviously not ready yet, honey. But don't worry, you'll be ready someday."
I wasn't quite sure what to make of that response. It was as if overnight my mom had transformed into a Buddhist monk. Had she been taking meditation lessons at the local community center or something? Where was the sudden need to forgive and the "you're not ready" speech coming from? It was like something straight out of the Spiritual Guide to Raising Children book.
"You're right, Mom. I'm not ready to forgive yet. And I'm not sure I'll ever be."
I hung up the phone feeling worse than I had when I picked it up. I'm sure my mom was just trying to help. That was, after all, what moms did. But I wasn't used to getting help from her. Sure, she was always around to help me with homework, or raise hell when a teacher gave me an unfair grade, or help me pick out decorations for my first college dorm room. But I never went to her with the big stuff.
In fact, I never went to anyone.
I had always felt alone when it came to dealing with my personal problems. And so I had always managed to solve them myself. Or at least I thought so.
But given the state I was in now, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that maybe you can't do everything alone.
I eventually pulled myself out of bed long enough to walk to the living room and plop myself right back down on the couch.
I turned on the TV and started an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. That always used to cheer me up. But it was slowly becoming obvious that my old tactics weren't going to cut it anymore. All my problems weren't going to just vanish into thin air, no matter how many episodes of Extreme Makeover I had stored up on my TiVo and no matter how many sets of white satin sheets I had folded up in my linen closet. And this time, no amount of staring into a wooden box with a list of names inside was going to change anything that had happened in the past few weeks.
I suddenly longed for the days when everything in my life fell nicely and neatly into two independent categories: Ashlyn and Jen. The cheating, the infidelity, the sinful touch of a married man could always be successfully tucked away inside an alias that I could turn on and off with the touch of a button.
And it was worlds away from Jen's world.
It wasn't even real.
But now the line, once as stable and sturdy as the Berlin Wall, had officially crumbled.
And it was real.
And it was personal.
And it was all happening right in front of me.
The doorbell rang a few hours later. But I must have fallen into some kind of trance because it felt like only a few minutes had passed.
"Get out of bed," Zoë said as soon as I opened the door.
I looked down at my feet. "I am."
"Physically yes, but mentally, you're still in bed."
I considered this. She was probably right. "Sophie told you what happened, huh?"
"Every painstaking detail. Sophie doesn't miss a word, does she?" She stepped by me and plopped down on my couch. "What are we watching?"
I clo
sed the door and sat down next to her. "I don't remember," I said with a despondent sigh.
"Oh, no," Zoë groaned. "You're not turning into one of those girls, are you? Please don't turn into one of those girls. Once you're gone, I'll be the only normal one left!"
"Which girls?" I mumbled.
"You know exactly what girls I'm talking about. The kind that bury themselves in their bedroom for two weeks because of some stupid guy."
"Clearly, I'm not buried in my bedroom."
"But you would be if your TiVo was in there."
Damn, she knew me too well. And all along I thought I was so unpredictable. "I knew I should have bought a second TiVo for the bedroom."
Zoë grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and clicked on the "Now Playing" list. She started scrolling through my recorded programs. "Some brilliant lunatic with a wannabe license almost killed me on the way over here. So I literally risked my life to come here. Which means I'm eventually getting you out of this house."
I curled up into the fetal position in the corner of the couch and pulled the white cotton throw around my legs. "Leave me alone," I whimpered. "You know my problems run much deeper than just a stupid guy."
"I don't care if your problems run all the way to the freaking center of the earth! They're not just going to magically disappear while you're lying in bed all day. You need to get up and deal with them!" She continued browsing with the remote.
I knew she was right.
Raymond Jacobs wasn't going to just all of a sudden, for no good reason, decide to stop sending obnoxious letters to my niece. The server that held all the information for www.dontfallforthetrap.com wasn't going to just spontaneously combust. Jamie Richards's wife wasn't going to just evaporate into thin air so I didn't have to face her with an answer. And Sophie's fiancé wasn't going to just test himself and then send me the results via FedEx.
Yes, I knew all that. But it's not like I knew what to do about any of it. Or else I'd be out there doing it!
"Um, why do you have an episode of Desperate Housewives in Spanish?" Zoë said, stopping at the most recent recording on the list.
Still curled up in my ball, I turned my chin toward the screen. "I don't know, when was it recorded?"