Plotz

By Marshall Bruney

Sally Redfern and Phae Lewis, poets and partners, are leisurely driving from Murphy to Manteo when their vacation takes an unexpected detour. When the two set up camp next to Emerson Chadwick at Jordan Lake, the chance meeting at first seems fortuitous: Phae wants a baby to complete their family and Emerson, a fellow writer, is an ideal candidate. Emerson achieved fame with his signature novel, but failed to come up with the promised sequel. His inner demons, fueled by alcohol, have cost him his family as well as his career. But, after meeting Phae and being considerably cheered by their affair, Emerson backs off from his original intent to commit suicide. The women devise a scheme whereby Emerson can assume a new identity and go on his way. The plan works--too well. The fake crime scene is accepted at face value by the local police and the search is on for the murderers. Sally and Phae are quickly arrested and their protests that the murder was an elaborate prank are disregarded by all except Norma Rae Smithers, a neophyte reporter with the Glamorgan Gazette. Norma Rae convinces her mentor, veteran crime reporter Evan Parris, that the women’s innocence can be proved if they find the elusive Emerson. Evan agrees, knowing that the scoop of the year – at least to the Gazette’s loyal readership – could save both their jobs on the newspaper’s dwindling staff. They take off for Myrtle Beach, where the women swear they left Emerson alive and well. But Emerson is a chameleon, changing his name and appearance as he sinks deeper into the anonymity of the resort town. Will Norma Rae and Evan find him before the women are condemned? Or will Emerson, reading of the women’s ordeal, reveal himself at the risk of being forced back into his hated former existence?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marshall Bruney
• Release date: May 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458162410

Marshall Bruney

Marshall Bruney is a pen name for Elbert Marshall and Sandy Bruney, co-authors of "Plotz." The two have been writing partners for 20 years, first in the newspaper business and now in writing fiction. Marshall has completed a sequel ot "Plotz" entitled "Nomad," taking the lead character on a chase for a serial killer. He is working on a third novel, "Who Slew Bonnie Blue?"

Book preview

PLOTZ

A Novel by

Marshall Bruney

Published by Elbert Marshall and Sandy Bruney at Smashwords

Copyright by Elbert Marshall and Sandy Bruney.

This book is available in print at most online retailers

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Lovingly dedicated to Carla Marshall and Jim Bruney in grateful acknowledgment of their support throughout the craziness of creating Plotz.

Chapter 1

For Ross Millerton, a moment of truth was at hand: Either he or his alter ego lothario must die.

– "Escape from Realty" by Emerson B. Chadwick

Emerson Chadwick had objected strenuously and futilely when his wife had the white carpet installed in the living room. Now, though, he thought it might have been a good idea – especially from the angle from which he was viewing the individual loops. It was softer than he’d expected. He would feel pretty good about lying on it except for the barrel of the Beretta 84FS 380 Cheetah in his mouth.

Emerson was about to squeeze the trigger when the telephone rang. He momentarily relaxed his finger. He was feeling slightly dreamy and ready to explore dimensions other than those found at 2123 Forestville Drive, Glamorgan, North Carolina, but the ring jolted him into a state of annoyance, jerking all his random thoughts into a knot and spinning them into outer space. He could pull the trigger now, but what if it was something important, like the Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol? He had never believed they just pulled into your driveway and walked casually up to your door like an Avon saleswoman; the winner had to have some notice so he wouldn’t answer the doorbell wearing boxers or, if a woman, nothing underneath the bathrobe.

He waited, hoping whoever it was would give up and call back later, maybe after Roz came home. He felt generous. Let her have the pleasure of winning the million dollars. But whoever was calling was nothing if not persistent. On the fourth ring, he slid the barrel of the Beretta out of his mouth, noting it was wet and slippery. He sat up, grunting at the effort. On the fifth ring, he switched on the safety lever. On the sixth, he rose and made his way across the room. On the seventh ring, he placed the pistol on the lamp table and picked up the telephone.

Hello? His voice sounded raspy, and he tried again. Hello?

Where the devil were you?

Emerson winced, comparing the voice from hell with the photograph of his wife and two daughters that rested next to the tele-phone. In the picture, Roz was a beautiful woman, tall and slender with auburn hair she wore in a loose chignon with artfully arranged tresses caressing her high cheekbones. Her eyes looked dangerously lazy and her wide mouth, just slightly open, seemed ready to blow a kiss.

The girls, unfortunately, looked like Emerson. Although he was considered a handsome man, his craggy features looked all wrong on their faces.

I was in the shower, he lied. She should be so lucky. When she came home, she’d wish he had been in the shower. Easier to clean up spattered blood and brains. He gazed mournfully at the white carpet, so soon to be dyed a bright and unforgiving crimson.

Okay, Roz said shortly. Look, I have an unexpected double house showing this evening …

What else is new, Emerson wondered.

… One is at seven o’clock and the other is at eight-thirty, Roz continued, her contralto segueing into a singsong routine. So I won’t be home in time for supper. You’ll have to eat without me.

I’ll survive. Emerson thought he had managed to put just the right amount of pathos in his voice by thinking of a Roz-cooked roast with boiled red potatoes and green string beans. Instead, his inner self chided him, It doesn't matter … once you pull the trigger.

Of course you will, Roz said as sharply, ignoring his plea for sympathy. See you around elevenish, then.

Click. The phone went dead and Emerson replaced the receiver on its docket.

Who does she think she’s kidding? he said aloud to Self. All these showings and she’s never sold a house. Not one since she got her Realtor’s license. Either she’s an unbelievably bad saleswoman or she’s lying.

Emerson chose to believe that the diminishing royalties from Escape from Reality were still supporting the household, becoming conveniently deaf whenever Roz told him of a sale. After a while, she had stopped telling him although she was earning enough from her real estate sales percentage to manage the household budget, keep her husband on his medications and have spending money for her wardrobe.

Emerson retrieved the revolver from the ruffled white doily on the table and asked Self, Now, where were we?

Still irate with Roz, Emerson knelt in the plush carpet, sucked in his last breath, closed his eyes, crammed the barrel between his teeth with his left hand, turned it up slightly so the bullet would emerge from the top of his cranium and splatter his brains everywhere, and jerked the trigger.

Click!

Disappointed, he removed the barrel, mumbling to Self, Next time, remind me to put some damn cartridges in the cylinder, dumbass. Emerson cracked a thin smile as he dropped the revolver on the chair and watched it bounce a couple of times on the soft, blue-green fabric before coming to rest against the missing cartridge that was about to slip into the deep crevice where pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters once were a bountiful find for the children. He slowly, rhythmically shook his head in utter disgust with himself. You are such a frigging coward. A freaking milquetoast of astronomical magni-tude! A craven asshole! A recreant who has no spine! A … a … a –.

He had run out of adjectives to describe his cowardice. His face all red and ballooned from his angry rage at Self, Emerson headed to the kitchen to see what there was for supper, pausing briefly as his eye caught the smile from a younger Emerson with an auburn-haired woman in the framed photograph on the bookshelf. Roz wore a skimpy off-white bikini that showed off her natural attributes as well as her long, browned legs and wind-tousled tresses. He, Emerson, had a flat stomach, hairy chest and legs, a trimmed moustache and coal-black hair, neither showing the slightest trace of gray.

A lovely couple – back in ninety-three, he mused. The photo had been taken by their oldest daughter, Beth, sixteen at the time, as they were standing in the surf behind the Pavilion and Boardwalk in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Ah, Myrtle Beach. He and Roz had honeymooned there in March 1976, after a shotgun wedding in Bennettsville, South Carolina, that had been attended by his irate father and understanding mother and Roz’s equally irate father and not-so-understanding mother. Six months later he was an eighteen-year-old father with a wife and baby to care for, no prospect of a well-paying job under the Carter Administration in the White House and his dream of becoming a published author derailed. The parents did the math to figure out when he and Roz had made the baby – the day after Christmas at her house while her parents were having Christmas with friends in Charlotte.

Now, some thirty years later, he wanted to exit a life that had become unbearable. End his stay on Earth before he turned fifty in two months. He didn’t think he was facing a mid-life crisis, unlike his long-time boss who had sold out the insurance business from underneath Emerson and five other devoted employees late in ought-two, took the net from the sale and deserted his wife, heading to the Gulf Coast of Florida for a life of leisure as a beachcomber, fisherman, sea captain … Then a glimmer of hope, not at escaping his depression and self-loathing but at completing the cowardly act of suicide, popped into his head. Why not do it in Myrtle Beach, where he and Roz had spent so many fun-filled summer vacations with the kids, and sexually active, and kidless, three-day weekends. That would fix her sorry ass! he told Self. Ruin any tete-a-tete love-making on the Grand Strand!

Foraging in the wilderness of the refrigerator, Emerson found the turkey sandwich that Roz had placed in a baggie – apparently his dinner. So much for her 'unexpected' clients, Self whispered over his shoulder. Emerson shrugged, knowing Self was right.He sat at the breakfast table, eating the sandwich, which he had topped with yellow mustard and a mushy tomato he had found in the fridge’s crisper drawer, and began plotting his next move on his end-of-life chessboard.

Roz slid her Verizon cell phone cover closed, the deadened click resounding in her ear. She smiled a seductive smile her husband hadn’t been gifted with in years and turned to Lyle Couick, the hunk of a man she had met two weeks earlier at a chamber of commerce new business ribbon-cutting and grand opening. They had struck up a light conversation over a Styrofoam cup of coffee and a freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie. The conversation had led to an impromptu sexual encounter in the store’s freshly-painted men’s room. Lyle was an athletic young man in his early-thirties, with short, well-groomed blond locks that curled atop his head like miniature Slinkies. After their sordid plummet into carnality, it did not take long for Lyle to further seduce Roz into his ritzy fourth floor apartment in the revitalized uptown historic district.

We’re all set, she said, slipping her phone into a side pocket of her purse. We can eat lasagna at Luigi’s, then go up to your loft and play for an hour or two. Roz eyed her young lover as he grinned that sly grin that meant sensual pleasure for her later.

He was nattily dressed in a Carolina blue golf shirt and khaki pants. He was well-tanned, thanks to his afternoons on the golf course at Eagle Pines Country Club where he wooed his clients into lucrative contracts to purchase his company’s paper products, ranging from bathroom tissue to copy paper.

Lyle repeatedly professed his obsession with her mature beauty and sexual experience in the boudoir. This evening’s bedroom romp would be their second planned escapade atop his waterbed, where she felt like she was on an inner tube, floating gently and then wildly, on an ocean wave … up and down … up and down.

Roz’s face became flushed with her pre-dinner reverie.

What’s the matter, sweetie Lyle cooed in her ear. Thinking about Luigi’s special garlic bread or a ride on the HMS Lyle’s Loveboat? His sultry voice tantalized Roz to the point of her becoming slightly weak-kneed. Lyle took her arm and guided her across the street to the Italian restaurant.

Emerson scooted his highback chair away from the table, the screech on the kitchen linoleum reverberating off the egg-white, hand-crafted cabinets that lined the wall behind him. He cleaned up his mess, wiping away the droplets of mustard and tomato juice and seeds that had escaped his mouth and walked slowly to the trash can, placing his left foot on the silver lever to open the lid. As he looked back at his distorted image on the inside of the lid, he dropped the soiled paper towel atop the rest of the garbage he had accumulated during the day and eased his foot off the lever to allow the lid to thud closed. He imagined that his image had dropped on the garbage, too, a melancholy statement on how his life had become trash for the city workers to pick up on a Wednesday morning and haul off to the landfill.

He considered turning off all the lights and sitting in his easy chair in the living room to wait for Roz to come home from her alleged showings. As an afterthought, he wondered how much their brick, ranch-style home would sell for – perhaps as much as two hundred grand. One hundred thousand dollars for himself and a hundred thou for Roz – if they would divorce first. Of course, he knew she would never divorce him for fear that he would seek monthly palimony checks. A good divorce attorney would see to it that she would pay through the nose – or ass, since he felt that was what she was giving away to some lucky guy while he wrestled with his sanity in a quiet, lonely house in suburbia.

He shuffled into the living room, turning off the kitchen and hall lights on his route. He plopped his overweight frame into the easy chair, pulling on the side handle to flip out the footrest. He kept the lamp's light on the stand burning while he relaxed the back of his neck on the soft fabric and permitted his troubled mind to wander.

How did I wind up in this mess? he asked Self.

Chapter 2

The painted womanchild placed her lips upon his ear lobe and whispered, Are you my father?

– "Escape from Reality (The Maidenhead" Chapter) by Emerson B. Chadwick

Five years earlier, Emerson Chadwick was on top of the literary world, having written his novel, Escape from Reality, that had become a number-one bestseller. Roz had allowed him to retire from his job as an insurance adjuster with the stipulation that if he did not complete and sell his manuscript in six months then it was back to the rat race.

Much to her chagrin, he finished the manuscript in three months, had it sold to a Chapel Hill publisher within the next two months and by just three months past his wife's six-month deadline he was fast becoming a bestselling North Carolina author. He made the local television and radio talk show rounds, held book signings in Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Asheville, Wilmington and, even, Glamorgan. His publisher was tickled green, ordering a second reprint, then a third to meet the reading public's demand for his novel; and had signed him to a contract that included a two hundred thousand dollar upfront fee for his follow-up novel, tentatively entitled Exile from Reality. No author had commanded such a following since J.D. Salinger wrote A Catcher in the Rye.

Escape from Reality was a fantasy novel that appealed to Mr. Joe Worker and Ms. Josephine Worker. His main character, Ross Millerton, had a nine-to-five job as a loan officer for a bank. However, when Ross left his job for the day and went home he entered into his fantasy world. Instead of being the mundane banker home from work, Ross became a derring-do, handsome lothario who partied the evenings away at nightclubs and spent the nights with lovely young women he seduced with his charm and marched off to bed at his bachelor's pad. The sex scenes in Ross's fantasy world were eye-openers. Even Roz, who would not read the manuscript before Emerson sent it to a slew of publishers read the hardbound book from cover to cover, starting after dinner and ending in the wee hours of the morning. At first, Emerson sat across from her in the living room and eyed her facial expressions, especially when she came upon a steamy passage that vividly described sex between two consenting adults. Later, she would ask him, How did you come up with all those sexual encounters? We never did any of that in all our years of marriage.

I just have a graphic imagination, he had told her. For the next year or so, the sex between Roz and Emerson matched the intensity he had written about in Escape from Reality. They took frequent weekend trips to Myrtle Beach and had started a romantic lifestyle anew. Even their children, who had read the novel, too, were pleasantly surprised that their parents, who were getting up in years by their standards, could still party down.

Then came the plummet.

In an Escape from Reality chapter entitled Maidenhead, Emerson developed a dream sequence in which his alter ego, Ross, played the role of a Chosen One in a futuristic society ruled by women. A Chosen One was a male love slave to the matriarchal hierarchy – a sexual servant from the Sovereign Mother's male harem offered to a favored courtesan who had pleased the royal matriarch.

On the eve of the lunar new year, however, the Chosen Ones took on a more significant societal role when, according to their religious beliefs, each female in the kingdom who had reached their thirteenth birth date would be deflowered. The event was a cause for celebration across the kingdom – replete with courtyard feasts, indoor banquets, music, dancing and a keen competition among the children's mothers, who jockeyed to select the most virile Chosen One for their daughter – as their mothers had done for them.

Each womanchild wore a full-length, silky scarlet robe left unbuttoned at the neck to ardently display her painted skin – a thick alabastrine coat that was so smooth it appeared to be her normal complexion. Her lips were colored coral, her eyelids powdered a deep shade of velvety blue and her blonde hair arranged in a coiffure decorated with rose petals.

At the appointed time, each womanchild was ceremoniously escorted to her sacrosanct compartment underneath the pavilion, where she removed her robe and lay upon the bed of gossamer fabrics and soft pillows.

Ross, in his role as a Chosen One, came to the womanchild's bedside, where he joined her. As he leaned in to sniff the red jasmine sprinkled upon her neck and became exhilarated, almost inebriated, with her fragrant emanations, the womanchild placed her lips upon his ear lobe and whispered, Are you my father?

A cacophony of whispers reverberated throughout the pavilion as each child followed in the footsteps of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother to learn her true heritage – her sire.

Emerson had written the segment purely for the fantasy aspects; but, the Maidenhead segment in Escape from Reality created a maelstrom of controversy as puritanical entities emerged to demonstrate on courtyard lawns and city squares, calling Escape from Reality pure pornography. Emerson was accused of promulgating incestuous behavior between fathers and daughters; and intimating that having sex at the age of thirteen was socially acceptable.

Emerson and his book publisher weathered the outcry. His publisher was jubilant because the sale of his novel nearly doubled during the protests. However, Emerson didn't fare as well. He took the protests to heart, avoided inquiring reporters at public book signings and refused to address the small crowds sporting placards who gathered outside the mall bookstores and challenged him to an open debate.

Three months later, when the furor had died down, Emerson first experienced a serious bout of writer's block. Emerson's publisher wanted the first draft of Exile from Reality, which Emerson planned as a sequel involving his character in more sexual adventures in a fantasy world filled with intrigue and grandeur.

But it did not happen. Emerson would sit down in front of his computer screen and stare at the blank monitor for hours, never making a single keystroke, never writing a single word. On occasion, he would type in the title and author's name, which he immediately would erase by pounding the backspace key with his index finger. His anger at himself soon manifested into permanent writer's block.

He tried listening to music. Roz had purchased a headphone and CD player so that Emerson could play Tangerine Dream CDs, such as Rubycon or Green Desert, while in search of some thread of inspiration in the musical interludes; or Pink Floyd CDs – Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here or, Emerson's favorite, Animals. The Pink Floyd CDs took him back in time to the seventies when he aspired to be a published writer. He made lots of notes in his Collections Notebook or in his Collections File in Microsoft Word. Instead of his fingers flying across the keyboard and the monitor lighting up with hundreds and hundreds of words that became sentences that became paragraphs, he would sit and stare straight ahead, mouthing the words to a Pink Floyd favorite. The desperately essential inspiration never materialized.

Roz, as the ever-loving and supportive wife of a world-famous author, would console him, offer him suggestions, hand him literary classics – Jack Kerouac's On the Road or William Burrough's Naked Lunch – to browse through in search of inspiration. Roz even went so far as to hint at performing his fantasized sex act if he would just write the first chapter. Emerson, get that first chapter written and the rest of the story will flow like honey dripping from the bee's hive, she would coax, only to be thwarted in her effort by Emerson cursing her, using the F word loudly and often while storming away from her to hide in the bathroom, the bedroom, the walk-in closet, anywhere he could find where he could conceal himself from her and the real world. He had evolved into an embittered man caught between his real world and the fantasy world he so desired to write about.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. Emerson's writer's block prevailed, conquering his mental resources and imprisoning his thoughts in some walled recess in the deepest, most remote corner of his brain. His publisher, tired of waiting patiently for a draft manuscript, turned impatient, voided his contract and demanded that Emerson return the advance he had received. Telephone conversations with his editor ceased abruptly with Emerson slamming the phone receiver onto the cradle or, as the situation escalated, sending him into absolute fits of untamed rage during which Emerson wound up like a John Smoltz and pitched the cell phone against the nearest wall. After the third time, Roz refused to purchase another cell phone for Emerson and kept her own cell phone with her at all times, denying his requests to use it.

Emerson found solace in a bottle of gin, drinking himself into submission day in and day out. Roz stood by helplessly and watched her husband slowly disintegrate into a useless human being fraught with health issues and a diminishing sense of survival. His alcoholic consumption dominated his everyday activities. By ten o'clock in the morning, he would pour his first glass of gin, drop in two cubes of ice from the freezer, add a little Schweppes tonic water and begin his drinking binge. By mid-afternoon, he was passed out in his easy chair or sprawled across the unmade bed, his once brilliant mind obliterated by the alcohol.

His first attempt at suicide came three years into his alcoholism. Roz, who had been working full-time as a real estate agent with Rhodes Realty in Glamorgan for the past two years, was on the job. Emerson had begged her not to leave him that morning, but she told him she had to work to pay the bills, especially since they had returned the advance fee to the publisher and the royalties from his once bestselling novel came at six-month intervals at best.

Emerson located Roz's prescription sleeping pills cached under her stack of neatly folded panties in a bureau drawer in the bedroom. He swallowed the remainder of the little yellow pills with his gin, stretched his six-foot frame out on the bed and crossed his arms upon his chest as if he already occupied a casket during visitation at the local funeral home. If Roz had not spontaneously decided to stop by the house for a sandwich and glass of tea on her lunch break, Emerson Chadwick would have died from an overdose. Roz found the empty pill bottle on the nightstand, called 9-1-1 and the paramedics rushed him to Glamorgan General Hospital where the emergency room crew pumped his stomach in time to save his miserable life.

After his release from the hospital, Roz made an appointment with a noted Charlotte psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Westfield. Each Tuesday and Thursday, Roz would rush Emerson to get dressed, drive to Charlotte for a one-hour appointment with Dr. Westfield and sit patiently in the visitor's room thumbing through Life or Time magazines while waiting for the session to end. After the first four sessions with Dr. Westfield, Roz felt comforted by the fact that Emerson seemed to be doing better, much better. He had stopped drinking cold turkey, but had taken up another nasty habit – cigars. He would smoke the foul-smelling candelas at the breakfast table while waiting for Roz to fry his two eggs over easy, butter his bread and toast it, and fry three sausage links; smoke while watching television in the TV room; and smoke while resting in his easy chair.

Two months later, Roz put her foot down. No more cigar-smoking within the walls of the house. Emerson, you can smoke out on the deck, in the yard or on the roof, but not in my house, she had demanded. Surprisingly, Emerson had complied with her request without a fuss. He just told her to go eff herself.

Although he appeared to be getting better, Emerson descended into a deep state of depression. He began drinking again, adding a gin and tonic to his daily candela routine. Each time he stepped outside the house for a smoke, he had a glass, a tall one, of gin in his right hand. Dr. Westfield was livid upon learning of Emerson's lapse and suggested he begin attending AA meetings on a regular basis. He spoke to Roz, cautioning her that it was imperative that she enroll her husband in an Alcoholics Anonymous program in Glamorgan. Roz complied, making telephone inquiries, learning when the AA group met and enrolling Emerson in the program. However, he never attended a single meeting.

Roz just let him be, determined to continue her work and not worry about her good-for-nothing husband sitting at home drunk.

Between bouts of depression, Emerson waged a mental war between himself and his alter egos, Self and his main character, Ross Millerton. Millerton soon emerged as the stronger phantasm. As Ross, he became the lead character in the bacchanal jocundity between the sheets of his pages. Unlike Robert Louis Stevenson, who unveiled the good and evil characters that dwell inside each person, Emerson wasn’t Doctor Jekyll nor was Ross a Mister Hyde; instead, Emerson explored Puritan versus Satyr. He played the role of moralistic husband who truly believed in intercourse within the marriage while Ross suffered from satyriasis and insatiably delved into the venereal acts that not only pleased the novel’s readers, but satisfied the author, too.

Self became an intermediary who stood like a pure white pillar and served as Emerson’s conscience – and imaginary friend with whom he could converse without having to air his woes to Roz or anyone else. Emerson could initiate a discussion with Self without saying one word out loud. He relished the mental chatter that revitalized his brain’s prowess to easily swing open doorways into a fantasy world where he not only encountered his alter ego, but various other characters who willingly provided further intellectual stimulation that soared far beyond any physical abilities he may have possessed. Unfortunately, none of these imaginings translated to the written page.

Self was the helmsman aboard his ark sailing in an oftentimes turbulent ocean of thoughts and actions – an inner id who could guide him through treacherous waters, as well as times. In a time of panic, Self was in the vanguard to ward off disaster; in a moment of weakness, Self was his will to survive; and, most of all, when Emerson needed to distinguish between reality and fantasy, Self was his faithful guide back to the brink of sanity.

On the other hand, Ross had become an albatross around his creator's neck. Even faithful Self couldn't keep him at bay; and Emerson tolerated Ross to the edge of reality, where he faced an acceptance of Ross' lifestyle that bordered on pure evil en route to satisfaction or his own self-destruction. To erase Ross forever from his mind, Emerson chose the latter.

Thusly, Emerson's second attempted suicide occurred exactly eight months after his first try. This time, he was focused on ridding himself of Ross Millerton. He stripped off his clothing and sat naked in a half-filled bathtub, took the razor blade from his shaver and slit jagged lines across both wrists. He leaned back against the floral-patterned cushion he had brought with him from the living room, closed his eyes and drifted into his netherworld while his bathtub water slowly turned crimson.

Roz found him two hours later. She had been on her way to appraise a house the owners wanted to place on the market and experienced a gut feeling that something was wrong at her own home. She placed two fingers against his exposed neck and felt a slight pulse. She dialed 9-1-1 and, again, the paramedics arrived, stopped the blood flow from Emerson's wrists and transported him to the emergency room. Fortunately, he had missed the arteries, but ironically Emerson had achieved his goal: Ross Millerton was gone from his life – for now – and Self remained his faithful friend.

Dr. Westfield prescribed Roquist, an anti-depressant, promising Roz that if Emerson took his meds as directed that he would be able to cope with his bouts of depression. He strongly advised Emerson to try AA again. Deciding he had nothing more to lose, and with the support of Roz and the two girls, he agreed to attend.

My name is Emerson Chadwick … and I am an alcoholic, became an opening phrase at the AA meeting each Thursday night at the YMCA. At the initial meeting, however, it had been Roz who stood up and said, Hi. My name is Rosalind Chadwick … and my husband, Emerson, is an alcoholic.

This time, Emerson approached the twelve-step AA program with enthusiasm. He stopped smoking, quit drinking gin, started walking two miles every morning, and stayed on schedule with his anti-depression medication. His twice-a-week visits with Dr. Westfield progressed to the point that the psychiatrist felt that once-a-week meetings would suffice. Roz thanked God. Emerson was just happy to have to get fully clothed and make the hour and a half drive through traffic to Charlotte only once a week.

Emerson was applauded at his one-year anniversary of being alcohol free. Roz smiled broadly as the applause subsided and, for the first time in four years, thought her husband was on the road to a full recovery.

Because Emerson was the sick one in the family, Roz had shouldered the weight of maintaining the household. She worked long hours but was rewarded with a hefty paycheck for each successful real estate transaction. Her home life consisted of caring for Emerson. He had become dysfunctional in the sexual relations arena and had been so bold on one occasion to suggest that she go online and purchase a couple of toys to satisfy her sexual appetite. She had declined. Twice actually – the second time when Emerson had volunteered to use her MasterCard to order special toys for her.

Roz's first extramarital affair came quite unexpectedly when all five agents with Rhodes Realty attended a weekend conference in Wilmington. Paul Rhodes, the owner and broker, rented a beachfront house at Wrightsville Beach and all six climbed into a van for a spouseless three-day holiday away from the Glamorgan grind. Roz convinced a reluctant Emerson that it was important for her to be a part of the realty retinue and that she deserved a weekend away from him and the house. Their oldest daughter, Beth, and ten-year-old granddaughter, Marnie, drove in Thursday night from Charleston, South Carolina, to babysit Emerson while Roz was away.

Paul Rhodes proved to his sales staff that he was a big spender and not the tightwad everyone suspected him of being by renting a small sideroom at Clifford's Fine Dining Restaurant that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean and picking up the tab for a five-course sit-down meal. Afterward, they all attended a hometown production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Wellingford Theater in the heart of downtown Wilmington.

Back at the beach house by one o'clock in the morning, only Roz and Paul were not ready to go to their assigned rooms. Of the group, there were only two men – one married and one unmarried. Paul was recently divorced from his wife of twenty-five years and had ogled Roz on several occasions, but kept their relationship strictly professional – until now.

Paul kept refilling her glass with red wine until a giddy Roz succumbed to his advances with no hesitancy. After all, she was horny and had not experienced a sexual encounter with Emerson for over three years. With minimum chitchat, the two were in each other's embrace in Paul's bedroom. He slowly undressed her, leaving her evening outfit, strapless bra, slip and panties in a heap around her heels. He stepped back to admire her nakedness. Roz sensed an electrified tingle flooding her entire body as she stood motionless to allow Paul to appreciate her proud breasts and flat stomach. Then, amazed at her own aggressiveness, she stepped toward him and began unbuttoning his shirt while their lips locked in an exploratory kiss, tongues and all. Paul thought she was too slow and commenced assisting her efforts to take off his undershirt, pants and briefs. Naked, they floated on a cloud of ardor to freefall together onto the bed. With little foreplay, they merged like two ideological souls uniting for a common cause.

The alluring aroma of percolating coffee awoke Roz. The door leading to the veranda was open and the ocean breeze gently caressed her face. She was wrapped in the wrinkled bed sheet, still nude from her night of blissful pleasure with Paul. His side of the bed was empty and