Her smile was gentle but telling. Tina had a way of making bad news seem less dire. Many a company CFO had misjudged her friendly, agreeable demeanor during negotiations over contracts or acquisitions—to their detriment. Her shoulder-length mouse-brown hair might as well have been a lion’s mane anytime she dealt with numbers.
“I appreciate you trying to sugarcoat it, but I’m utterly mortified.”
“Don’t stress, love,” Tina said. “It’s not nearly the worst thing that’s happened in a meeting. Remember Roger Crosby?”
Natalie rolled her eyes.
“That poor man had Tourette’s.”
“Still, the client didn’t know that.”
“Be serious, Tina,” Natalie said. “I think I’m going to puke. Check your email, will you? Is anyone talking about it?”
Tina checked her inbox.
“No. But I do have an email from Steve, and now I have a bad taste in my mouth.”
Steven Zacharius was the company CEO, and someone Natalie did her best to avoid. He was a nice enough boss, but he had a terrible habit of pitting his employees against one another.
“He wants to know why our P&L is all screwed up,” Tina said. “Should I mention to him that he was the one who suggested we eat the Q2 revenue on the Broadcom deal?”
“Maybe not your strongest play,” said Natalie, finally finding something to brighten her mood.
“Forget about Steven. Let’s talk about you. What’s going on?”
“I’m just not sleeping.”
“You know they have pills for that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, and they make me so drowsy during the day I can’t function.”
“Forgive me for stating the obvious, but I wouldn’t say that meeting was a high-functioning moment for you.”
“Very funny,” Natalie said with a slight frown. “But I have to take the pills in the middle of the night because they’ve lost their effectiveness. That’s why I get daytime drowsiness. My shrink is kind of at a loss, he’s shooting in the dark with his damn prescription pad. We’re trying everything, but I’m just not sleeping.”
“Well, no shit. Look at your eyes. Careful a raccoon doesn’t try to follow you home. What were you dreaming about, anyway? I know you said it was a nightmare, but were there any good parts? Anything sexy?”
Tina’s aspect brightened ever so briefly. She liked talking about sex, especially because she complained about getting so little of it at home. She called Viagra a girl’s other best friend. Despite the dwindling spark of her marriage, Tina loved her husband, Theo. She kept a framed picture of him—bald, with a round, ruddy face—and their two children (one in junior high, the other entering high school) on her desk in a glittery silver frame.
“Sexy? God, no,” Natalie said. “It was a falling dream. It was awful.” She recounted what she remembered.
“I think falling dreams and dreams where you can’t scream are an indication of insecurity. Any chance you’re feeling overwhelmed? Out of control? Maybe a sense of failure regarding some circumstance … eh?”
Natalie returned a come-off-it look.
“You know damn well what it’s about.”
“Have you tried confronting him? Tried being direct?”
“Yeah, point-blank.”
“And?”
“And he said if I was sleeping better, I wouldn’t be having those paranoid thoughts about him. He said I’m the only woman for him.”
“And do you believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore. Honestly, you’re the one who got me thinking.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, remember? I think we were on margarita number two and I confessed that Michael and I weren’t having sex anymore and you said—”
“That it’s a sign,” Tina answered glumly. “Different with my marriage.” Tina used her finger as a puppet to demonstrate a flaccid phallus. “Pills work, but it kinda kills the mood.”
“No issues in that department for Michael. But he’s more interested it seems in his phone than me, and he only recently became passionate about the gym and his appearance. You said it was like he was following the cheater’s playbook. And remember the note?”
Natalie never saw who came into her cubicle, opened the drawer where she kept her purse, and slipped that note inside. It wasn’t until she got home and went to put her car keys back in her purse that she saw the flash of white. She removed the paper, unfolded it, smoothed out the creases, and read the typewritten words. A pit opened in her stomach.
We work together. I see your husband at the gym … it’s not my business, but he’s quite flirtatious with the women. One woman in particular. They seem close. I felt compelled to tell you. I’m sorry.
Well before the arrival of the note, Natalie and Michael’s relationship had cooled, and unsurprisingly sex was at the center of the trouble. The kids were hardly an aphrodisiac, one of life’s great ironies Michael would sometimes joke, but he and Natalie still managed to carve out time once a week, or so, for a bout in the bedroom. Then one week became two, then became three, until sometimes a month would go by without intimacy of any kind. Add to that Addie’s asthma inexplicably worsened, badly enough to land her in the hospital overnight, and Bryce was having some behavior difficulties at school.
Natalie was all set to make a grand return to the bedroom, recommit to their sex life, when a big project at Dynamic Media layered on the work and with it the stress. As those work pressures mounted, Natalie’s libido downshifted even more until it stalled like a seized motor. She chalked it up to an extended dry spell, but her prolonged disinterest in sex stirred feelings of frustration and doubt in Michael as the weeks became months.
Around that time, Michael got really into the gym and his phone. All of which fueled Natalie’s suspicions of infidelity that coincided with the start of her sleep difficulties. She found a direct correlation between her escalating sleep issues and her increasing questioning of Michael’s fidelity. More often, she struggled to fall asleep only to wake up an hour later and be wide-awake staring at the ceiling in the wee hours of the night, her mind spinning theories about Michael’s extracurricular activities.
It was an unbreakable circle: he’d make a move in the bedroom, she’d think of him as tainted and pull away, which made Michael more embittered. Marriage counseling wasn’t helping. How many times could she listen to her husband’s denials?
The arrival of that note moved Natalie from the poor sleeper category into full-blown insomnia. For the last four weeks, it felt as if she hadn’t slept at all. Natalie paraphrased the troubling note for Tina.
“Any idea who left it?”
“No,” said Natalie. “But I’m sure Michael’s not just flirting.”
She looked teary-eyed.
“Oh, Nat.” Tina got up from her chair, crossed the room, and motioned for Natalie to get out of her chair and give her a hug. “What an ass,” she said, after the two women broke the embrace. Natalie still had moisture in her eyes, which would at least save her an application of the Visine she’d been using constantly.
“Why are men so stupid?” Tina asked, giving Natalie one more hug. “Just leave him.”
Natalie slumped back into her chair.
“I can’t do that. Not without proof. I need to be certain.”
“Well, how are you going to do that?”
“Do you know a girl named Audrey Adler? Works in your department.”