I should drive over there and grab the son-of-a-bitch by the throat and throttle him. The gall the guy has to stand there and lie and tell me nothing is happening when I can read it in every twitch on his face. He’s looking at me with innocent saccharine smiles and it’s plain he screwed my wife.

So I have to leave our house now because I’m thinking way too much and she can’t be worth it. I’m in our bedroom rummaging through our closet throwing my clothes, her clothes on the floor. It’s like I’m watching someone else with a mixture of horrified amusement, an interloper, rifling through our things to find the jewels. Put something in a bag and go. But I can’t put what, where, and I’m having trouble concentrating. I just sit staring at the picture and silver frame that cost fifty bucks that I had made for our second anniversary until I get nauseated when I realize they probably did it right here on our bed and she grabbed the bedpost and gritted her teeth and rolled her eyes in the back of her head.

Thank God Amanda left already. I’m afraid of what I would do to her.

I sit there catatonic, trying not to think and I can’t stop thinking. There is a fuzzy dark spot in the center of my mind. I am trying to focus on it, but every time I get near, it slips further away like a mote of dust in my field of view. The room is in disarray, clothing and glass picture frames strewn across the floor, the leavings of a broken life. They have moved on and I am a ghost haunting this place.

I can just see his face again, pleading with me to listen. Behind that face he’s laughing at me, the cuckhold. So next thing I grab the car keys from our dresser and I’m heading out the door. But the key chain is digging into my hand so much a cut opens up and warmblood is spilling onto our tan carpet, the one she picked out. I hear the voice that sounds like mine curse and throw the keys down and head for the kitchen sink. The faucet is turned on and blood-water pours down the drain as I’m remembering how I defended him in front of everyone. How what they said wasn’t true and he should be given a second chance and I’m not just saying this because he’s my best friend. My word alone saved his job. And while I’m shaking his hand, he’s betrayed me.

And I stand there trying not to think of anything. Just stand there in the haze of fuzzy dark nothing. Then I feel a clammy cold creeping up my hand and I see the sink plug was in and the sink’s been filling up with blood-water the whole time. I rage against the nothingness, wanting to punch a hole through it. I just want to ask him why. What do I feel?

Nothing. Nothing.

Then the doorbell rings and before knowing the shotgun is in my hand, I open the door and he is there in my doorsill for probably the millionth time and another million times I don’t know about and he’s wearing this imploring look: there were extenuating circumstances. And I think of nothing and everything at the same time.

I am repelled by the shotgun blast that produces a hollow explosion and he is slumped over riddled with buckshot and there’s a trail of blood etching its mark in rapid concentric circles over our nice stone lattice walkway. People are running and screaming and pointing at our house.

Nothing. Something. How did this happen?

Damn. It took me a whole weekend to put that walkway in.

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"The room is in disarray, clothing and glass picture frames strewn across the floor, the leavings of a broken life. They have moved on and I am a ghost haunting this place."