Charlie Opera

Chapter 5

The note his wife left him was simple and to the point:

Charlie, I’m so sorry to do this to you. But I have to do this. I have to do it now. John is with me. I will call you tomorrow. None of this was planned. Please believe me.

And try to forgive me. I’ll call you tomorrow to work something out.

Take care of yourself.

The note was signed: Lisa.

“It wasn’t planned my ass,” Charlie said aloud. “I should smack him in the back with that god-damned hairbrush.”

He removed his wedding ring and picked up the telephone. He pressed the room service button, ordered a large pot of coffee, and made his way to the bathroom, where he found the Advil bottle. He dropped four capsules into his right hand, examined them a second, and tossed them into his mouth. He sipped water from a plastic cup to swallow the pills. He turned the shower on to let the steam build. He examined himself in the mirror before stepping under the hot water.

He had black eyes from his fractured nose. He frowned at the sight of himself. It would be another couple of days before the skin around his eyes turned green and yellow. It would be a full week at least before his skin bruises healed completely.

The bandage behind his right ear wasn’t too bad. The contusions on both his hands had turned blue-black. The tape job on his bruised fingers annoyed Charlie. He removed the tape that restrained his fingers from bending. He had broken a finger in the past. He would live with the pain.

He examined his shape in the mirror for the second time in as many days. He knew he needed to work out more aerobically. His big upper body and skinny legs distorted his symmetry. The extra weight around his hips and waist didn’t help either.

He wondered if that’s what had finally triggered his wife’s leaving him. Lisa was five years younger than Charlie. Her lover was a year younger than she was. Charlie couldn’t help but wonder if it had always been just a matter of time for him and Lisa once she was intimate with John Denton two years earlier. The man his wife referred to in her good-bye note was an athletic attorney in near-perfect shape.

Was it his shape or his age?

As he walked the length of Las Vegas Boulevard to avoid the phone call Lisa had mentioned in her note, Charlie contnued to wonder about his wife and her lover. If there were signs of his wife having an affair again, he had missed them a second time. Except for a few telephone hang-ups at the house, Charlie hadn’t noticed anything peculiar.

They had grown distant the past few months. There were long periods of inactivity between their sexual relations. There were frequent gaps in their communication. They had stopped being friends to each other and had started doing things alone instead of together.

Charlie thought back to the night of the fight at the New York nightclub. It was a week before they had left for vacation. He had tried to buy tickets for an opera the same night Lisa was supposed to go dancing with a friend. When the opera was sold out, Charlie decided to join his wife instead. She became furious with him. It was as if she suddenly hated him.

The tension was thick between them at the club, and they decided to leave early. As Lisa wove her way through a group of men around the bar, one of them grabbed her ass. She slapped the man in the face and was immediately slapped back. She landed on the floor at Charlie’s feet, and he reacted without thinking. He ran behind the punch and knocked the man unconscious.

Now Charlie wondered if Lisa had made plans with her lover that night. He wondered if John Denton was there at the nightclub during the fight.

It seemed obvious to him now. Charlie had ruined his wife’s plans by going dancing with her. It was why she was so angry with him.

Of course John Denton was there. He was the “friend” Lisa was supposed to have met.

When he finished his walk, Charlie realized there was something else bothering him about his fight at the New York nightclub, something about one of the men who had threatened him after the altercation. One of them had made his way up close to Charlie before the bouncers were able to pull him away. He had said something. Maybe it was a name. Charlie couldn’t recall.

He let it go. He promised himself he wouldn’t wonder about his wife again. She was history. His marriage was over. The sooner he accepted it, the better.