The Choice

“Your wife.”
“at bitch is cheating on me!” ere. e truth was out. It was a
beginning.
“Tell me more,” I said.
His wife was having an affair, he told me. His best friend had
tipped him off. He couldn’t believe he had missed the signs.
“Oh God,” he said. “Oh God, oh God.”
He stood. He paced. He kicked at the couch. He had broken
through his rigidity and was now becoming manic, aggressive. He
pounded the wall until he winced in pain. It was as though a switch
had been hit, the full strength of his emotion surging on like
Ęoodlights. He was no longer sealed off and contained. He was
explosive. Volcanic. And now that he was thrashing around
unprotected in all that hurt, my role had changed. I had guided him
back into his feelings. Now I had to help him experience them without
drowning in them, without totally losing himself in the intensity.
Before I could say a word, he stiffened in the middle of the room and
yelled, “I can’t take it! I’m going to kill her. I’ll kill both of them.”
“You’re so mad you could kill her.”
“Yes! I’m going to kill that bitch. I’m going to do it right now. Look
what I’ve got.” He wasn’t speaking hyperbolically. He meant it quite
literally. From under his belt he pulled a handgun. “I’m going to kill
her right now.”
I should have called the police. e warning sirens I had felt in my
gut when Jason ĕrst walked through the door had not rung false. And
now it might be too late. I didn’t know if Jason and his wife had
children, but what I pictured as Jason brandished the gun was the
children crying at their mother’s funeral, Jason behind bars, the
children losing both of their parents in the heat of one moment’s
impulse for revenge.
But I didn’t call the police. I didn’t even call my assistant to let her