There were a few moments of silence.

“Christ!” said Bo. “This is bad, really bad. Let's do it!”

“I cannot allow this to happen!” I said forcefully. And then I said, “The only problem is that it's out of my control. It's already been decided. So what can I do?”

“Nothing,” answered Bo. “We've passed the point of no return.”

“Great,” said Debbie. “I'll go buy the onion!”

The man-haters club met once a week, on Wednesdays, and the meeting lasted for an hour, ending at eight p.m. Right now it was close to eleven, and I still hadn't heard from Bo. So I was pacing back and forth in my living room, trying to remain calm and doing my final calculations as to how much good karma I had left in my karma tank.

In a way, though, the Duchess had brought this upon herself, hadn't she? I mean, what man wouldn'twant to know his estranged wife's secret thoughts? I was no worse than any other obsessed husband! The only difference was that I had the resources to take things a bit further than most men. Besides, if she were willing to share her secret thoughts with the first stranger who came along… well, that made her secret thoughts fair game for public consumption.

In truth, I was pretty confident that I would be getting good news tonight. After all, I had gone through everything Debbie had said last week and, all in all, I had distilled the Duchess's inner thoughts down to two simple truths. Truth one: She still loved me, but she was confused. Truth two: In time, she would miss making love to me somuch that she would have no choice but to come back. Yes, even that day on the beach she had specifically raised the issue of sex two times: once referring to us as plain old sex maniacs (which was certainly a good thing), and also commenting on how we never came up for air (which was an even better thing!). Of course, I had heard the past disturbing rumblings about Michael Bolton and her dirt-bag personal trainer, Alex the Douche, but in the end they were probably just that: rumblings.

Emboldened by those truths, I had called Magnum last week and told him what was going on with the Duchess. “Would the Bastard object to me selling my Old Brookville house and buying a much cheaper house in the Hamptons?” Magnum had responded with cautious optimism. He was knee-deep in negotiations with the Bastard, he said, and the Bastard was being his usual difficult self. However, he thought he would look positively on anything I did to cut my expenses. Either way, he hoped to have a deal hammered out by the beginning of May, at which point I would go before Judge Gleeson and enter my guilty plea.

Just then I heard the phone ringing. It was Bo!I made a beeline for the kitchen. When I reached the phone, I froze dead in my tracks. It wasn't the phone; it was the intercom system that interfacedwith the phone. Someone was at the front gate! Who the hell? Cautiously, I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Yo—Bo!” said Bo. “It's me, Bo!”

“Bo!” I said to Bo. “What are you doing here?”

“Let me in. I'm making a personal delivery, Bo.”

I took a deep breath, trying to remain calm and trying to keep track of all the Bo-Bos. It could only be good news, I thought. Why else would Bo drive all the way out to Southampton? If it was bad news he would've just called me on the phone—unless, of course, he was one of those people who took joy in seeing another's misery up close and personal. No, Bo was not like that! How could I even think such a thing? He was a true friend, Bo, and he'd proved his loyalty to me a thousand times over. He just wanted to bring me the good news in person.

“Yo—Bo!” snapped Bo. “Are you gonna open the gate-atationor what?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I'm sorry, Bo.” I punched in the gate code and headed for the door.

A few minutes later we were sitting at my dining-room table, beneath a wrought-iron chandelier that cost a bloody fortune. Resting on the bleached-wood table was a small tape recorder. Bo was yet to reveal the contents of the tape; he was still in the process of explaining how former actress Debbie Starling had given an Academy Award-winning performance, quickly worming her way into the Duchess's confidence.

“….and the onionatationtrick worked like a fucking charm,” Bo was saying. “So, Debbie's sneezing and wheezing her little head off, and the tears are streaming down her face-atation,as she's telling your wife about how her husband called her this and that and everything else. And, of course, the uh… the Duchesswas very sympathetic to that, because that's how she is with everything.” Bo shrugged. “So the two of them bonded before the meeting even got started.”

I nodded and scratched my chin thoughtfully. “Huh,” I muttered. “That sounds pretty good so far. So what did she say during the meeting?”

Bo shook his head slowly. “It's not what she said duringthe meeting; it's what she said afterthe meeting.”

I perked up. “Oh, really? They went for dinner?”

Bo began rubbing his beard. “Drinks,” he answered. “You know, like in vino veritas.”

“Interesting,” I said. “So what truthsdid the vinodraw out?”

Bo twisted his lips and nodded in resignation. “Well, I think you could stop your house-hunting, Bo. It's not recommended given the, uh, current circumstances.”

All at once I felt my heart drop to my stomach. The Duchess had been deceiving me!Such underhandedness! Was there no level she wouldn't stoop to? To play me for a house showed a complete lack of ethics on her part.

Bo continued: “You know, I came out here tonight because I look at you as more of a friend than a client, Bo.” With that he paused and looked down at the tape recorder, which was no bigger than a deck of playing cards, and then he looked back up. “So I'll make you a deal, Bo: This whole bugatationexercise has run about five Gs so far, but if you let me destroy the tape before you listen to it, we'll call it even. I'll pay Debbie out of my own pocket. But if you make me press the play button, then you gotta pay me. It's your call.”

With a sinking heart, I looked down at the tape recorder. Christ, it was an evil little instrument! So small it was, so tiny… so very fucking deceptive! It was the bearer of bad news, the bringer of bad karma. “It can't be that bad, Bo, can it?”

Bo shrugged. “Like I said, Bo: in vino veritas.”

I shook my head slowly, the saddest of smiles on my face. Then I let out a short chuckle that so much as said, “It serves me right!” And a chuckle that also said, “So this is it: the end of the line, the end of a marriage, the end of all my false hope.” My marriage is a coffin, I thought, and this is the final nail in it. I looked Bo in the eye and said, “Play the fucking tape!”

Bo nodded and hit the play button.

All I could hear at first was a low hum and some background noise, then a mumbled exchange with a waiter. Bo said, “I cued it up to the good part. They're in Buckram Stables, about to make a toast. Listen….”

I nodded and put my elbows on the edge of the dining-room table and crossed my arms, one atop the other. Then I rested my troubled brow on them, staring at the evil tape recorder from a side angle. It was all so terrible. I had bugged my own wife— the mother of my children!And what had Bo said? A woman's secret thoughts…

Just then I heard the Duchess's all-too-happy voice: “Here's to breaking the cycle!” And now the actress's surprisingly believable response: “Yes! To breaking the cycle of codependency!” Then the unmistakable clink of wineglasses.

“Can you believe this shit?” muttered Bo. “I never even heard of this codependency shit before. It's fucking mind-boggling.”

I nodded in agreement without lifting my head. Now the Duchess started talking again. She was bitching about me, saying that I had slept with hookers while we were married. Well, what had she expected? She had been my mistress, for Chrissake! She knew what I was up to wellbefore she married me—and now she was holding it against me.