“Josh — I assume that you want to live; if you do, nod your head since the pressure I have on your neck right now probably doesn’t allow a coherent verbal response.”
He nodded his head as vigorously as he could.
“I’m going to loosen my grip only enough for you to talk; if you try to escape I’ll choke you out — got it?”
He nodded his head again, and I slightly released my grip and turned on my recorder.
“Did you have an affair with Lisa Montrose?”
“Yes.”
“When did it start and when did it end?”
“It started about a year and a half ago and ended about nine months ago.”
I continued on with how it started and ended, who was the aggressor, where they met, what times, and how many interludes they had. I concluded it with “Now I’m going to choke you unconscious — you’ll be out about twenty seconds and then recover. If you ever have any communications with Lisa again you won’t recover the next time. Got it?”
He nodded his head,
“Also, if you tell anyone about my meeting you your wife will find out what you just told me; if you remain silent she won’t. Got it?”
He nodded again.
I did choke him unconscious, and then I got the hell out of there. As soon as I got home I discarded all of my outerwear into a neighbor’s garbage can and deleted all of the recent texts to and from Martin in a manner whereby they could never be recovered.
The next day another form of justice cropped up. My big boss at my IT job called me and said that my immediate supervisor had decided to retire and he offered me the job, starting up immediately, especially since some of the restaurants and other businesses in other areas of the country (where we also did business) were starting back up. Since most of my work could be done from home as long as I got out of quarantine within the next week or so — which was expected — I was good to go. He actually considered my contact tracing experience — which I was still doing part time from home — a positive.
That evening after the kids were in bed there was another form of “justice.” Karen sat me down in the living room and encouraged me to tell her about Lisa. I sighed heavily and then told her about John Upton (without disclosing that I got the information on a confidential basis from contact tracing, only the information I got from her cellphone), Josh Martin, and a third guy who I suspected but didn’t have good information about. She was very sympathetic.
Then I turned the tables on Karen and asked her about her situation with my father-in-law Winston. She was very willing to relate all of the issues she had with him — which she also disclosed were issues that Crystal had had, and was why Crystal divorced him. Karen couldn’t believe that she was so naïve as to marry Winston, but he caught her at a very vulnerable time in her life when her first husband had just died and she had no self-esteem. Now that she felt better about herself there was no doubt that she was going to divorce Winston.
“So what’s the conclusion about you and Lisa?” Karen asked.
“I don’t see any way that I can stay married to her. I think that I can get physical custody of the kids since she put their lives in danger by having an affair with John Upton — who tested positive with the novel coronavirus — but in any event how can I stay married when she’s had at least two affairs and likely more?”