So, he was gone, and I was left with an empty apartment, a huge wet bar full of booze, a dangerously depressed former boyfriend, and no idea what to do next.  I tried to have the marriage annulled, but I didn't have grounds in that state.  Going the path of economy, I filed for divorce in my home state of Mississippi, being able to do that kind of thing in the Army, and began the one year waiting period.
    A day to get married, a year to get divorced.  That's kind of funny.
    I got word that he was back in the country, and he left a phone number where he could be reached on the other coast.  When January came, and W-2s were being handed out, I, then the good little taxpayer, being eager to tidy things up, called the number from a pay phone in the barracks to find out if we were filing jointly or separately, seeing as how we were still married until the springtime.
    A woman answered the phone, and I knew the voice.  He had gone back to her.  He had moved back in with her.  Ah well, if she were willing to put up with his shit...
    So I asked if he were home and she said no, and so I asked her the pertinent question.  Did he happen to mention how the taxes were to be filed this year?  She begged my pardon.  I fleshed out my question.  Did he mention whether he and I would file jointly or separately?  She begged my pardon again and I began to see something.  I asked her if he had told her we had gotten married.  She asked me if he had told me they'd never been divorced.
    Oh God.  Oh my God.  We both were saying it.  I don't remember much more after that, except that she was upset and crying, and so was I, and she asked me over and over, how could you?  And he came in the door sometime about then, and she yelled at him for a time and then he picked up the phone, and I yelled at him too.  And I wanted him dead.
    Well.  I should have known.  If he were so willing to deceive her, wouldn't he also be willing to deceive me?
    Unhappy circumstance, now that I had grounds for annulment, it was too late, because I had the divorce procedure underway in another state, and it could not be unfiled.  Too late.

    That was damaging for a very long time.  That was the source of many nightmares and mistaken identities in crowds and a general urge to kill.  It took several years to get over it.  Now it seems I have to get over what went before.  The long deception.  The long unclean, cruel, disrespectful, and ugly deception.  Two years of deception, and the worst kind - the face of a friend.  For she counted me a friend, and I her.  She was a linguist, as I longed to be, and she seemed happy, though underpaid, and we liked to do things together.  And I babysat their children, dreaming of them as my stepchildren.  I loved them very much, innocent ones.  I made justifications, excuses.  It's amazing how you can talk yourself into almost anything.  He told me she had a boyfriend, and I believed it.  He told me he never slept in the bed with her anymore, and I believed it.  The sofa was always made up as for sleeping.  I cooked in her kitchen, we made love on her living room floor.  I am ashamed that we made love in her bed.  I look back now and I hate that version of me.  It's ugly.  It's so ugly.
    And I suppose that is what haunts me now.  I don't think I ever atoned for that.  I don't think I repaid the cosmos for the pain I unleashed, and the ugliness that I created.  I don't see any way to repay her for the pain I made for her.
    I still carry guilt.

    Oh the job, in Peru - it was a lie.  He'd been there with her all along.  She told me this on the phone.
    I loved him very much, in what in hindsight looks to be a sick and twisted way.