PROLOGUE
Lisa took a lot of pleasure in making Roger’s life miserable. When you first get married, a person has these little idiosyncrasies that you find adorable. Soon they become annoyances. It’s not long before those annoyances become your reason for working late at the office. She could not deny telling the maid to run the dishwasher while he was taking a shower. And she was certainly guilty of canceling his credit cards just before a client lunch. Lisa wasn’t sure why driving him insane made her happy, but it did.
Lisa knew her husband thought she was cold. She’s heard him mocking her. He thinks she’s a control freak. That she manipulates him. He thinks she uses him.
He’s not wrong.
Several years after getting married, Lisa woke up and saw this man in her bed that she couldn’t stand to look at anymore. And it’s too late. They’re married. She didn’t want to admit to the failure of a divorce. She relished the control she had over her life and was perfectly content to go on in the farce that they’re marriage had become.
That is, until she received the photos.
Someone anonymously sent Lisa photos of Roger, having sex with another woman. Sure it is hypocritical for her to be furious with Roger for having an affair, when Lisa too had been having many of her own over the years. That didn’t matter. Lisa felt betrayed. And this time it was over.
Roger wished that there was a way that you could press a button and relive your honeymoon over and over for the rest of your life. Like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day. Then you would have great sex with a woman you love for the rest of your life.
Of course, that’s impossible. The reality, of course, is that sooner or later the honeymoon ends. Your wife has things called periods that begin shortly after a few days of psychosis benevolently called PMS. And she has this every month. When he dated Lisa, she protected him from most of those bad moments. She shielded him from the truth. Roger thought it was cute that she had these chocolate cravings once a month. Now when he sees her eating a bar of Hershey’s he runs. Perhaps God created Hershey’s to warn men that their wives are about to turn into lunatics. And if they can’t run, they better learn to say “yes dear,” and “it doesn’t make you look fat” in as convincing a manner as possible.
When Roger first met Lisa, he thought she was the perfect woman. She was beautiful, smart, sexy and rich. While he didn’t marry her for her money, it certainly was nice to have! Of course, since she made Roger sign a pre-nup, he only gets to spend it as long as they’re married. If they divorce, Roger gets nothing other than his law degree, which isn’t worth much. And Lisa knows it. She flaunts her wealth, knowing that Roger wants more than what he can acquire on his own. She uses it to control and manipulate him. She thinks he’s so shallow that he’ll fall for it. And he does. Every time.
