Caught In The Act

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Caught in the Act Five days before Christmas the meeting in San Francisco was over three days ahead of time because all the business matters were successfully concluded. Knell Turnquist, a senior vice president of a huge New York City investment firm, decided to surprise his wife Celeste by showing up unexpectedly at their gorgeous Garden City home. But before he left San Francisco he stopped in at the lounge in his hotel where the business conference was held. The place was not terribly crowded; he sat at the bar, next to two men who obviously had been drinking pretty heavily, for though well dressed, they had given their neckties freedom to hang loose and for the first button of their shirts to be unbuttoned, making them appear to be men careless of the way they dressed. The men appeared to be around the same age as Knell, in their early thirties. One, sandy-haired, was wearing an expensive looking white Panama hat; his companion was hatless. Both had on blue and white, puckered seersucker suits. Ninety-nine percent of the words of the conversation

came from the mouth of the sandy-haired man who had on the Panama hat. He spoke in the characteristic manner of one somewhat besotted: “Can you believe it? Eileen knew that I had the keys to her apartment — her apartment, mind you, which was four floors above mine. I lived on the fourth floor and she lived on the eighth. After I was there in her apartment for a coupla hours, looking at some dumb program on the television, I decided to go home, but I had to go the toilet first. After I finish peeing, I walked out of the toilet, which was right next to a linen closet. I opened the closet door — I don’t know why I opened it, because I wasn’t lookin’ for anything — it was just there and I opened it. You know what I’m saying?” His companion, whom the speaker thought might not be listening attentively, nodded affirmatively. “Yeah, I’m listening.” “Anyway, I saw the round metal container that she keeps her diaphragm in. That’s the contraception she was using at the time. After we have had sex she always kept it inside her; uh, oh, I don’t know, I think for about eight hours. Anyway, I had never seen one of the goddamned things, so I opened the box, but the diaphragm was missing. That got me thinking; why was it missing? She and I hadn’t had sex since a day or two before she finished her period. You understand what I’m saying?” “Yep,” the hatless man said, nodding corroboratively.

“Well, not seeing the diaphragm, hell, that got me really nosey, got me thinking; the thought that she was sleeping with another man shot through me like a lightning bolt. It made me nervous. I mean really nervous. I actually shook. And what clinched the whole damned thing was when I looked under the bed, down on the floor next to the wall, I saw a towel between the bed and the wall. I became so nervous, I started to shake, literally. I sometimes found myself trembling. Instead of going to my own apartment, I decided to wait until she came home from work, which would be around midnight because she got off work at eleven.” The talkative hat-wearing speaker paused, took a swig from his drink, was quiet for a moment as he stared reflectively into his highball, then resumed his story. “I decided to wait for her to come home. I had a strong feeling that she was going to bring him home with her that night. And I wanted to be there. Hell, I wanted to question her about the whole damned thing, the missing diaphragm, the towel under the bed. I wanted to hear what she had to say. And you know what?” “What?” “She was bold enough to bring the man in on me, knowing that sometimes I waited in her apartment for her to bring her behind home from work —

knowing that I might be there.

Can you imagine? Anyway, he was young, tall, taller and bigger than me. You know what? I think that if he had been a small man, I would have challenged him, maybe even thrown

him out of the apartment, or scared him away, unless he had a gun. Anyway, I asked Eileen to come into another room with me so we could be alone and talk. I wanted to be with her without her lover’s presence. She complied. I asked her to send him away, she refused. And that was the end of my affair with her — not because I wanted it to end, but because she wouldn’t have anything to do with me after that. I tried hard a number of times to get her back. I didn’t care if she had cheated on me. I really, truly was in love with that woman, madly so, the first time that I’ve ever really loved a woman. And Eileen Rogers was her name. And it still is, I guess.” The jilted man suddenly looked at his audience of one with a mischievous smile. “You like Shakespeare?” “Yeah, I guess so,” his buddy said with a strong uncertainty. “Well here is some vintage Shakespeare for your ears. “Eileen had nipples on her titties big as plums, and somethin’ between her legs that could make a dead man come.” The narrator’s companion, thinking he would be exposed to some genuine Shakespeare, was caught off guard. “Ha, ha, hell, although I ain’t no Shakespearean scholar, I be damned if that’s Shakespeare.” “No, you’re right; it’s just an artistic creative spinoff. “Did you ever get over her? Ever start to drink

heavily?” “No, I kept on drinking the way I was drinking before; And yeah, I got over it.” “How long did it take.” “Six whole months, a half year. But lo and behold, one day I woke up and I realized that the thrill was gone. You know, it’s like when you go to work with a hangover from too much drinking, but after a few hours on the job your hangover is gone —

hell, you didn’t even know when it left.

All you know is that it is gone, and you know it’s gone because you no longer have a throbbing headache. No headache at all. After that she made a whore out of herself.” “A whore? Why you say that?” “Because she started going with two guys who shared an apartment in the same building. I think they lived on the third floor. They were friends but not after she came in between them. One of them confided in me and told me how much Eileen enjoyed oral sex. This I knew for myself to be a fact; he also criticized her for having a big vagina. ‘And for me to say that is saying something because I know I am well hung,’ he said to me. I just looked at him. It didn’t matter to me what he said about her.” “Well,” the hatless man said, “it just shows you how a woman can get a man in trouble. Now after you discovered she had been cheating on you, you had plenty of time to get your gun and be ready. Because you said that you had a strong feeling she was going to bring him home with her that night,

after you discovered the missing diaphragm and the towel under the bed, right?” “Right? But you know what, Lloyd? I learned from that; i t h e l p e d m e t o b e m o r e

m a t u r e . . . n o w , I w o u l d r

a t h e r k i l l a m a n o v e r a d e a

d d o g t h a n k i l l a m a n o v e r

a w o m a n . Y o u s e e , I r e a l l y

d o n ’ t w a n t t o b e a k i l l e r ,

a n d I d o n ’ t w a n t m y f r e e d o m

t o b e t a k e n a w a y a n d m e b e

s l a m m e d i n t o p r i s o n f o r t e

n , f i f t e e n , o r t w e n t y y e a r s

— o r m a y b e f o r t h e r e s t o f

m y l i f e . T o r o t . I h e a r t h

a t i n p r i s o n y o u m i g h t b e c o

m e a p i e c e o f s e x u a l p r o p e r

t y . N o w t h a t i n i t s e l f , a m

a n s e x u a l l y f o r c i n g h i m s e l f

o n m e , o r a l l y o r r a m m i n g h

i s p e n i s i n t o m y r e c t u m , i s

e n o u g h f o r m e t o k e e p a g r

i p o n m y s e n s e s . S u r e I c o u

l d h a v e g o n e t o m y a p a r t m e n

t a n d g o t m y g u n , b e c a u s e ,

y o u k n o w , I d o h a v e a g u n ,

a b l u e s t e e l 9 m i l l i m e t e r . ”

The hatless man looked searchingly into the eyes of his friend. He saw in them the depth of his companion’s conviction. “To say that you’d rather kill a man over a dead dog rather than over a woman, that’s a pretty strong statement, Roy, but I believe you.” “Well, then maybe I should say over a no-good woman. A no-good bitch.” “Now when you say over a no-good bitch, that’s altogether different.” Without intending to, without trying to, Knell Turnquist heard every word said by the two men. Though uninfluential, the overheard dramatic commentary was absorbed into his psyche and sealed in his soul, especially certain sentences such as the one setting forth the speaker’s killing preference. Knell took the last sip of the high ball and then returned to his room and finished packing his suitcase for the return trip back to New York City. High up in the sun-dominated blue sky on the way back home, Roy’s last sentences asserted their prominence in Knell’s mind, causing him to review the anecdote in its entirety; he found it interesting. “What he said could serve as a good object lesson for men who have a hard time trying to keep from going crazy

when confronted by their wives’ infidelity.” It was nearing midnight when Knell drove from the JFK airport to his luxurious home in Garden City. There were minor accidents on the expressway, caused by the huge flakes of snow. The inclement weather made homecoming all the more attractive; he looked forward to surprising his wife by his unannounced arrival and the pleasing presentation of the expensive pearl necklace he had bought for her — he always brought back a piece of high-end jewelry for her whenever he returned from a prolonged business trip — and having a vigorous, exciting round of sex. His wife’s unswerving faithfulness was one of the many things he liked about her along with the unrestricted access to her body. He could wake her up from a deep sleep in the middle of the night and she would sexually accommodate him without uttering a complaint or showing a bad attitude. “And boy am I ready . . . glad I don’t have to worry about her being ready, she’s a good gal in that way.” Knell pulled up behind the car parked in his driveway. “Wonder whose car that is? Never saw it before.” His focus on the unidentifiable strange vehicle was interrupted when he saw the light in the master bedroom go on. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was way past the time his wife hit the hay. He gave an interpretation to the bedroom light. “Maybe she’s getting up to go to the toilet or something, or going into the kitchen to get something to munch on. But she’s so conscious of her weight that she

never eats anything after going to bed, so she must be getting up to go to the toilet.” Conclusion became untrustworthy and therefore invalid when he remembered that, even if either of them had to go to the toilet in the middle of the light, the bedroom light was never turned on. Instead, the dim low-wattage light installed just above the baseboard was always on and the light from it furnished enough illumination to walk without fear of bumping into something. “Maybe the bulb burned out.” His musing about the light didn’t have any effect on his plan to surprise his wife. Briefly forgetting about the strange car, he quietly slipped the various keys into the right locks and was soon in the vestibule, where he shed his overcoat, brushing off some of the dampness caused by being exposed to the falling snow, and then quietly hung it on the coatrack. As soon as he entered the interior of the house, he set his briefcase on the floor, which was uncarpeted and well kept; its dark-brown varnish glistened. Deeply curious why the bedroom light was turned on, and

the mysterious car staging a comeback in his mind,

Knell began to tip up the stairs with the stealth of a starving cat in the process of sneaking up on a dinner of fresh, live mouse. Voices, even a quiet one, could be heard by a person standing halfway up the stairs. And this is what Knell heard now, his wife’s voice, sometimes giggling like a little girl — and the voice of a man. “Godammit, who in the hell could that be?,” he

whispered inaudibly, dreadfully curious and almost rigidly taut. “The car must be his.” He brought a halt to his ascent. He stood still. His heart was beating abnormally fast. Nervous and listening acutely, he tried to put a face to the voice, thinking that maybe it was someone from his and Celeste’s circle of friends who had hit on his wife while he was away in San Francisco. Was this the first time? That it was a friend was not the case because the voice was that of a stranger and it defied identification. “Whoever in the hell it is, I wonder how long this been going on?” Grabbing hold of himself, Knell tipped all the way up to the stairs’ top landing; he could see that the wall light was working just fine. He was only a few short feet from the bedroom’s door, which was open, allowing him to stand to the side and hide himself from view while getting a panoramic view of his wife and her lover. Knell could see that his wife was sitting up in bed, her knees drawn up to her breasts, forming a position which allowed him to clearly see that she didn’t have on any panties. As she and her lover talked, Celeste was leisurely massaging her lover’s generously sized ultra-stiff erection; he was distinctly younger than either Knell or his wife. At the foot of the bed Knell saw a crumpled-up towel. On a nearby night stand there were ample signs of festive leftover drinking and eating, specifically evinced by two glasses, a liter of Scotch, a bottle of ginger ale, an ice bucket containing

cubes of ice and tongs, a small bowl of maraschino cherries, and also half-eaten sandwiches. “You sure your husband will be away for four more days?” Knell heard his wife’s lover say —

in fact, he was

able to overhear whatever they said even if it was said only a little above a whisper. “Yeah, I’m sure,” his wife said, giggling. “Relax, Dewey, Knell always calls and lets me know when he’s coming home. And I know he’s going to bring me a piece of expensive jewelry. He always does, you can bet on it. And I’m looking forward to it.” “Okay, you oughta know,” the lover said. Knell heard far less words come from his wife, but a lot of pigeon-like cooing because her lover was smothering her with his wet open-mouth kisses. Knell saw Dewey remove his wife’s diaphanous half-slip and then caress her vagina. He saw his wife pull her lover down on her as she opened her legs to receive him, he who greedily began to execute highenergy thrusts atop her. “You are even better in bed than my husband, and much bigger too, and you really know how to do it,“ Knell heard Celeste say as she was being carried away by the enjoyment of sex. She was making low, sustained ecstatic utterances. Knell heard them both encourage each other to a greater output of sexual energy. “I’ve got to stop, otherwise I’m going to have an orgasm,” Knell heard Dewey say.

“No, no, please don’t stop. Keep going until I reach my climax,“ his wife pleaded. “If I don’t stop I’m going to come — “ ”No, please don’t stop. Don’t come,” Celeste entreated Dewey. Knell could see the tortuous frowns on Dewey’s face as he tried to hold back the dawn. But he could not unless he withdrew, which he did for a short while, incurring Celeste’s displeasure. “Dammit!” she said angrily.“ Why did you stop? I asked you not to stop. Now you’ve messed it all up for me. I guess that’s the curse of being young, you can’t hold back. My husband is able to hold back until I’m ready for my climax.” “I’m sorry, Celeste, but it felt so good that I couldn’t help myself except by stopping.” “Yeah, right, but I’ve lost my momentum,” Celeste said. “Don’t worry, I will revive it, I promise,” Dewey said. “At least an honorable mention of me has come out of this,”

Knell whispered to himself in reference to his

wife’s claim that he could hold back his orgasm until she was ready to have hers. Gripped by anger, trembling from nervousness, and emotionally upset, Knell still fought hard to stomp out the thought of violence that turbulently raged within him, even as he tip-toed back down the stairs so he could go into the livingroom, where he kept a second handgun; he also had one in the bedroom. Gripping the gun with far more strength than

needed, he stealthily made his way back upstairs, carrying with him a feeling of absolute invulnerability, now that he had the gun in his hand. He took his time ascending the stairs. He stopped about midway on the staircase, as if halted by a categorical imperative; the voice of the man who didn’t want to be an imprisoned killer, his words vividly entered into Knell’s head. He envisioned being behind bars, being sexual property, being made to succumb to other inmates homosexual desire, a male prostitute. These offensive thoughts loomed proleptically right before his eyes with a reality that was devastating. “But I’ve still got to make them pay, both of them — after all, they should be made to pay, made to pay dearly,” Knell said, contesting the rationality that had not gone from his head. Celeste’s lover had emerged from the brief respite brought on because he didn’t want — or rather Celeste didn’t want — to have a premature orgasm. So now he was vigorously at

work again when Knell quietly stepped up close to the bed, at first undetected by the lovers because of their sexual ferocity, their dervish abandonment. “Hi, there,” Knell said with exaggerated casualness, sounding as if he were speaking in an atmosphere of the utmost congeniality. He even managed to form an affected smile, which if it had not been for the unfriendly presence of the gun would have made him look silly and harmless. But a gun, as silent and inarticulate as it is, has a way of demanding acute attention from whomever it is pointed at. Celeste shrieked. As if she possessed advanced skills in the martial arts, she catapulted her lover off her as though he was no more than a lightweight rag doll, causing Dewey to land hard on the floor. The unexpectedness — the licentiousness, the lover’s ignorance of the cause of Celeste’s sudden anti-loving behavior — and the gun represented a unified quartet of spiritual undoing for his wife and her lover.

“Get out of the

bed — now — stand up — both of you!,” Knell said with unnerving calmness, waving the gun accordingly, his quiet voice surprisingly not rising to parallel the seriousness of the moment.

Celeste nervously moved to obey her husband’s orders but clumsily tried to cover her nakedness with the sheet, while at the same time Dewey, cowering on the floor beside the bed, was trying to grab a portion of the sheet to conceal his nudity. “I said stand up, not cover up. You two weren’t covered up before I walked in here, why cover up now? Leave the damned sheet alone, throw it back on the bed and stay as you are — naked as a jaybird.” Apparently seized with a sudden surge of impatience because his wife and her lover did not move fast enough, Knell reached down and furiously grabbed the sheet and flung it on the floor, well out of reach of Celeste and Dewey. “You bastard you,” he said, lookin’ squarely at Dewey and then at his wife. “And you, you bitch,” Knell said as he focused his menacing eyes and pointed the gun at the floorcringing lover.

Knell instructed his wife and her lover to stand side by side while still in the nude. “What you intend to do to us, Knell? Kill us?” Knell’s wife said, her voice suffused with fear and her face hideously fraught with fear. “You going to kill us?” Dewey dared to ask. “Shut up,” Knell said in unnerving, affected gentleness. “Now wouldn’t that be a real disservice to me, to kill you both and then be caught by the police and slammed into jail for the rest of my life, or maybe executed? Because it’s not like it used to be in the good old days when a man who caught his wife in bed with another man and killed her — and her lover but still got off scotfree. And you know, I just might have killed you both if it had not been for what a barroom philosopher sitting on a stool at the bar in a lounge said. You want to know what he said, though he wasn’t talking to me? He was talking to his friend, but my stool was close enough to theirs so I could clearly hear every word they said. So I ask you, do you want to hear what the barstool philosopher said?” There was no response from his wife and her lover, causing Knell to affect

a curious expression. “No? Well I’m

gon’ tell you anyway . . . the barroom philosopher said he would rather kill a man over a dead dog than over a woman. Yep, that’s what he said. Besides, I heartily disrelish being cooped up behind bars. “ ”So what are you doing to do to us, Knell?” Celeste

said. “This is what I am going to do, I’m going to make both of you walk outside dressed up in nothing but your designer birthday suits — not right now, but at sunrise so the world can behold you — absolutely nude.” “Knell, please don’t make us go into the street with nothing on,” Celeste pleaded. “It’s cold outside.” She was unaware of the heavy snowfall. Her plea was in vain; thus It was in this position, nude, that Knell forced his wife and Dewey her lover to remain inside the house while waiting for the sunrise. In the meantime, a thought came to mind. “Celeste, darling, I want you to get pen and paper from that draw over there and pen a confession. Make sure you date it, make you sure you time it.” After Knell’s wife had dutifully complied and forced to make certain refinements that Knell ordered her to make, emendations that included her lover’s full name, address, social security number, his marital status — he was married — and where he was employed, Knell then instructed her to read what she wrote. Then he wrote the following character

dialogue for his two-minute, one-act play on a piece of paper and made each “actor” record it on his voice recorder as a measure of single indignity. CELESTE TURNQUIST: I, Celeste Turnquist, on this day and date, December 21st, was caught by my husband, Mr. Knell Turnquist, having adulterous sex in our home with my lover, Dewey Murray. DEWEY MURRAY: I, Dewey Murray, on this day and date, December 21st, was caught in the home of Celeste and Knell Turnquist, while Mr. Turnquist was not at home, having adulterous sex with one Celeste Turnquist, Mr. Turnquist’s wife. “What are you going to do with that recording?” Celeste said. “You might say that I am going to cherish it, or you might say that I am going to put it on my computer.” Knell paused. “And who knows whatever else I might do with it? You see, this is a way of protecting myself. Hmm, I wonder why it’s taking the sun so long to rise?” He walked to the window, peeped through the blinds; he did not say anything about the condition of the weather. About the heavily falling snow with its huge flakes. And this is what all three were waiting for, for the sun to rise. The wait seemed too long for Knell, too short for his wife and her lover. Much later, when a second trip to the window Knell saw that the snow had stopped falling, though he still did not

make an informative comment to this effect, and the first rays of sunlight appeared, he motioned with his gun for his wife and her lover to walk downstairs. When they were at the door leading into the big house, with a menacing gesture of the gun, Knell motioned for them to step outside, for the lover to forget about getting into his car. “Just walk along on the sidewalk, don’t bother getting into your car, lover boy,” Knell said with a degree of satisfaction resonating from his voice. “I‘m quite sure that when some of our good neighbors see you out there on this wild, cold December day, they will provide you with some cover. You will be safe from me so long as you don’t come back into this house or try to get into your lover’s car — hey, wait!” he said, implying that a new thought had come into his head. “Since there is snow out there — “ ”Snow?” Celeste said, surprised upon hearing this information. “Yes, there is snow outside, my darling wife.” “Y-you’re going to make us go out in the cold, out in the snow, and without anything on?” Celeste said.“ I hope you get a lot of satisfaction from what you’re doing.” “Oh, I will get some satisfaction all right, but I’m sure it won’t be as intense and as much as you got when your lover boy here was banging you. When he — with his bigger banger — caused you to have an orgasm. But you know what? I’ve just been seized by a magnanimous spirit, which means that I will let you and your lover put on some shoes and

have access to one — only one — sheet as you two wade out into the cold and snow. I’m positive that when one of our neighbors sees the two of you huddling under a white sheet — ha, a white sheet, well now, you two might make people think you are a ghost — anyway, when your neighbors see you two cowering and shivering underneath a white sheet, they might provide you with some cover, unless the white sheet makes them think they are really seeing a ghost. Go! The fresh air will do both of you good” But Celeste didn’t wait for her and her lover to be discovered by a Good Samaritan. Instead, dramatically propelled by the cold, by the snow, and by the loathsome, botchy manner in which she and Dewey were wrapped, she hurriedly dashed to ring the doorbell of the first house she came to, which was nicely spaced from her own home. Once inside, the Good Samaritan, a tall elegant, richly voiced woman, did provide the shriveling couple with some cover and warmth, though she was wild eyed, almost speechless, and nearly stunned out of her elegance by a striking early morning visitation from unexpected visitors strangely attired in a single sheet. At first the Good Samaritan had a barrage of questions to ask, questions spawned by the time and the weirdness of their emergency arrival. But after one or two of the questions were clumsily answered by a greatly embarrassed Celeste, the Good Samaritan hushed up. “Should I call the police?” she said to Celeste. “No, that won’t be necessary,” Celeste said in a

consuming spirit of dejection and humiliation. “I thank you, barstool philosopher,” Knell said as he sat in front of his well-lit fireplace in a comfortable cloth recli ner chair and peere d tranc elike into the flame s while he sippe d from a cup of hot choco

late with marsh mallo ws. ”Bars tool philo sophe r, you have kept two peopl e from dying and you’v e kept me out of jail. Now I

don’t have to be fugit ive from justi ce, and alway s on the run . . . yep, alway s on the run . . . a sure way to never have peace

and tranq uilit y of the soul. Hmm, this is a prett y good drink , hot choco late . . . too bad, barst ool philo sophe r, you’r e not here

to enjoy this hot choco late and marsh mallo ws with me. Reall y too bad. Just think , you’l l never know that you were the catal

yst for preve ntion of murde r.”