Forensics

My boss once listened to me question a vendor about some printing error, at length, and in detail. After I hung up the phone, she looked at me and said, "What are you? The district attorney?"

I'm the nicest pit bull you'll ever meet in the printing business. Maybe I'm the grinning scary junkyard dog behind the fence, the one with the slowly wagging tail. You're not sure if I'm going to lick your hand or eat your face off.

Anyway, it comes down to a need to solve a riddle, doesn't it? A need to get to the bottom of something so that It Never Happens Again.

One of the things that has been rattling around in my peabrain is how Mr. MWBMH(tm) came to me believing that his marriage was over.

Now.

A man who has been married for decades does not reach this conclusion whimsically, in a moment of "Oh, she was awful to me this morning while I was having my coffee, I am so outta here!"

One would assume that sort of decision is reached gradually, carefully, over much time, and a guy would have to spend many, many hours watching his unsatisfying spouse with the cold remorseless eyes of a shark, or Tony Soprano.

So that being the thing we know, why would a person who has decided his marriage was over suddenly say, "oops, I was wrong! I actually DO still love my wife! She really IS still the person who has my heart despite the fact that it's been you, you, YOU for all this time! So too bad! Sucks to be you, haha!"

This is one of the mysteries I am pondering on this hot summer night and trying to examine with flat dead shark eyes of my own.

And it is a huge mystery to me.

It makes me feel icky and stupid and hopelessly naïve, like that girl who believed the quarterback when he said he would respect her in the morning, only to find that he and all his friends were whispering and pointing the next day, and she realized that she was totally played and had been a sucker. She wishes that she hadn't had that third wine cooler, and that he hadn't been so eloquent in his persuasion, and that she had tightened her thighs against him while he was whispering, "please, please," with moist hot breath against her neck. She wishes that she could go backwards in time and shake that tipsy, weak-willed girl by the shoulders and say, "Stop! Stop! Stop now!"

But too late! All she's left with is an ache between her legs, a pair of bloodstained panties, and a sense of tooth-grinding humiliation.

From there, she will build the rest of her life.

And listen, folks, I think I'm going to have to put Mambo down this week and I'm really scared to do it, so any words of advice anyone can offer would be really welcome right about now. I've lived with this fucking cat longer than I lived with my parents, and frankly, I don't know how to do this. Be a murderer, that is