To Discover

“And so I opened the door, only to discover that she was there with-”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“You opened the door to discover her?”

“Yes?”

“So you already knew what was going to be there?”

“What?”

“Well if you opened the door to discover something, you must have known there was something to discover, otherwise you wouldn’t have been there trying to discover it.”

“I wasn’t trying to discover anything.”

“You said you opened the door to discover it.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“What did you mean?”

“So I opened the door, AND discovered her there with Martin.”

“Where?”

“In the library. In our fucking bed, of course.”

“Right, right, I’m with you. What then?”

What then should really have been kept as a secret. What then was that he’d grabbed the baseball bat he kept beside the bed to ward off possible burglars and raised it high above his head, pointing behind him then but somehow still pointing very much at Martin. Martin had seen this and panicked and ran, as naked as the day he was born, to the window and climbed out of it. From there, he didn’t really have anywhere to go and that he would slip and fall in his bare feet was perhaps as inevitable as the fact that he’d been sleeping with his wife. There was a scream that can’t be described as anything other than “pathetic” as he disappeared from view and his wife probably screamed then louder than Martin had. He told her to shut up and went over to the window to see Martin slightly the worse for the one-storey fall, but not with anything that looking like it’d be lasting damage. He was limping away from the house in no specific direction, and at a speed that suggested he could be easily caught.

He decided to g and catch him. “Stay here,” he said to his wife.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Something I should have done a long time ago,” he said, and he left the room.

He heard her shout “what does that even mean?” from the bedroom but he didn’t have time to worry about what it meant. It had sounded good, and that’s what was important.

He opened the front door and Martin turned to look at him and tried to increase his pace but his left ankle was clearly broken and he couldn’t move quickly. He decided not to pursue him quickly either. He’d always heard about the thrill of the chase but never really understood what it meant until now. What it meant was that what Martin was going through now, the fear, the not knowing what was going to happen to him was actually more fun and more long-lasting than what would happen when he caught him.

He didn’t even know what he was going to do when he caught him. In the end it was the police that caught him, and in a way that was even better. All the thrill of the chase and none of the worry about what to do next, just the knowledge that the chase for Martin was still just beginning.