Getting to Happy Read Free Page B

places.
    I don’t know why we stopped being social creatures, but it’s why Gloria came up with the idea of having Blockbuster Night. Once a month we kick up our heels at one of our houses. It’s something to do. Bernadine cooks, since she’s our black Julia Child. We make our husbands and children disappear. We don’t care where they go, as long as they’re gone for at least four hours.

    I finally get out of my pajamas and take a cool shower. I put on a pair of purple running pants and a pink sweatshirt and grab a bottle of cold water from the fridge. I go back to my laptop and start looking at some of the sites I’d bookmarked. I hit ENTER. The screen turns cobalt blue, then goes completely black. I lean back in the chair thinking the battery must be dead, but I always plug the laptop in when I’m at home, and when I look under the counter, it is. I power off and wait for it to reboot. I don’t hear that low blender sound. I don’t hear anything. I hit the power button again, this time praying I’m not a victim of one of those apocalyptic viruses. I’ve got tons of irreplaceable information inside the soul of this computer. Nothing I do resuscitates it. I’m glad I have a backup disc at work.
    I walk down the hall to Isaac’s office. The tiles are cold on my bare feet. It amazes me how neat he keeps it in here. There’s a picture on one wall of giant redwood trees in Muir Woods in northern California. On another, a bulletin board with photos of his recent projects. I sit at his desk, a beautiful maple-colored door turned tabletop. I click on the browser and type in the last site I visited and hit ENTER. My site isn’t what comes up. My heart is pounding as I see before my eyes a screen full of color photographs and video clips of women giving men blowjobs and three and four of them piled on top of one man and some pleasing each other. I know this is a porn site, but I didn’t make a mistake when I typed. I close it and retype the same address. I don’t believe it when I see these same nasty people again! I do this a few more times, get the same results.
    I call my godson, who also happens to be my pretend nephew, John Jr., who also happens to be Bernadine’s son who goes to MIT. He’s a computer geek. I explain to him what just happened to my laptop and now this. “Sounds like Uncle’s browser’s been hijacked. Porn sites are notorious for doing this.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “It’s kinda the norm.”
    “But what could’ve caused it?”
    “Well, it could be a virus, although I doubt that. I think Uncle’s been very busy checking out these sites.”
    “How would I know that?”
    Over the next fifteen or twenty minutes he talks me through a process that gives me access to temporary files which make it quite clear my husband has been having cybersex with hundreds if not thousands of women and the son-of-a-bitch has two names. He’s Isaac Hathaway to me. But EbonyKing to all these nasty bitches he’s been jerking off with and having virtual sex with via the little webcam attachment I gave him last Christmas. I’ve watched porn with Isaac and before I met him, but what I’m looking at takes it to a whole new level.
    My teeth feel cold. My fists ball up on their own. I yank open a file drawer and start rummaging through his credit card statements only to discover he’s a fucking Gold Card member. Not just on one site, but on quite a few others. To the tune of a few grand a month. I sit here for the longest, more pissed off than hurt, more disgusted than anything, trying to figure out how long he’s been doing this shit. It’s cheating, any way you look at it, except this feels much worse. It’s sneaky as hell. I wonder how Isaac would feel if he saw me masturbating in front of a webcam for men, or hell, how about other women? So this is what he’s been doing in here while I was sitting up in bed engrossed in a good book.
    I print out the home pages of twenty or thirty of these sites