219. Marie's fling
© Bruce Goodman 17 May 2014






Marie had an affair. It wasn’t actually an affair. It was a single fling.

She was married. One day, while her husband was at work, she phoned the plumber because a pipe in the bathroom had burst. The plumber fixed it in five minutes, and Marie offered him a cup of tea. He accepted, and before you knew it, they were both on the lounge carpet having a fling. Neither really knew how it happened. And both were a little embarrassed about it, to tell the truth. In fact, the plumber was so mortified that he never charged Marie for the plumbing (in the bathroom).

For the weeks after, Marie was either too afraid to answer the phone or too quick to answer the phone. She didn’t want the plumber to call, and he never did. The same went for answering the door.

“I can’t imagine why the plumber hasn’t sent his bill,” said Marie to her husband.

Then she found she was pregnant. What an interminable process pregnancy is! She never knew what to expect. Thank goodness the plumber was Caucasian like her husband. But as to who was the father…

She had the baby. It was a boy. He sort of looked like his brothers and sisters. Marie wasn’t sure. Sometimes the boy looked like her husband and sometimes he looked the way she remembered the plumber.

The boy was forty-seven when Marie died. She still didn’t know, and she had never told a soul.


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