In life I have suffered the slings and arrows of a thousand misfortunes… but combined, they paled, compared to this.
I have been lied to; deceived; conned; betrayed.
And no one that really lives life to the fullest and inhales it deeply will tell you otherwise.
It comes with the territory.
But even a battle-hardened warrior of life like me… was left gasping for air. I was deeply wounded.
I was incensed. Outraged.
I started yelling and screaming at my wife about the soap dish.
She thought I lost my mind. It was early in the morning, and we were in our bedroom.
“What is wrong with you?” asked my wife May. “Did you have a nightmare?”
I still had my toothbrush in my mouth. I was so mad that I was biting on it.
“Where’s the soap dish?” I roared.
I bought her that soap dish as a fifteen-year wedding anniversary gift. It wasn’t a regular soap dish. It was made of silver, with real gold trimming. Her name was engraved on it. It cost me almost a thousand dollars. That was ten years ago.
“Where’s the soap dish? If you don’t get me that soap dish in five minutes I’m walking out of here and never coming back.”
She looked at me like I was crazy.
She said, “You know it got lost eight years ago. We looked all over and couldn’t find it.”
I took the toothbrush out of my mouth and spit my saliva and toothpaste on the floor.
I roared again, “Where’s that soap dish? You have two minutes left to find it.”
“What is wrong with you?” asked May, with a fearful expression in her eyes and a confused look on her face.
I yelled, “How could it get lost? Things just don’t disappear into thin air. Where’s that soap dish?”
“We looked all over for it,” said a shaken May. “I don’t know what happened to it.”
“You’re running out of time,” I shouted, my eyes ablaze with hatred for my wife.
Whenever I took my wife on a business trip with me or we went on vacation, she would always complain about the soap. The soap in these hotels was terrible. At home she used a special soap called Fragrance. It was enriched with vitamin C and had organic shea butter… that was not only good for her skin, but the soap had a nice pleasant fragrant smell. It smelled like green tea.
It looked and smelled so good that I felt like eating it.
May told me that the soap “creates a rich, creamy lather that gently moisturizes and softens my skin.”
She told me to try it, but I never did. It seemed too girly.
And one bar of soap was five bucks. That’s right… five bucks.
And May was the type of woman that loved to take showers and even baths. Sometimes, in the summer, three times a day.
She was costing me a fortune in soap bars. But it was worth it. She was soft to the touch. And smelled exotic. Like Green tea.
And that’s why I bought her the soap dish. She could now carry her precious, expensive soap with her, in a nice fancy soap dish.
May grabbed a hold of my arm and I pulled it away. I continued packing as fast as I could.
May started crying. She knew that I was a man of my words. I said… only what I meant.
I am not the type of man that there is any subtlety in my words. My words don’t have a double or triple meaning. They are not nuanced. I say what I mean… and then do it.
I was packing my bags. No soap dish… I’m gone.
“What are you doing?” asked May through hard sobs. “We’ve been married for twenty-five years and you’re leaving me over a soap dish.”
I ignored what she said, took the bag that I packed, went downstairs and slammed the door behind me.
I’m gone.
I decided to spend the day in a hotel. I didn’t bother to go to work. I had many things to think about and wanted to be left alone. I called to let them know that I wasn’t coming in. It was no big deal. I’m the boss.
I’m the boss. I’ve always been the boss. I don’t like working for other people. When you’re the boss, or self-employed, your success or failure depends on you. When you work for other people… there’s too much favoritism. Hard work is not rewarded… who the boss likes is.
As I was driving to the hotel, I started thinking about last evening.
My wife May and I were dining with my best friend Jeffrey and his girlfriend Diane. We were dining in Jeffrey’s home.
Amidst the tranquility and fun of a peaceful evening… That’s when the storm arrived.
Little did I know, but I was already engulfed in a fog that I was not even aware of.
The truth came in the form of lightning and thunder. Shattering my ignorant bliss into a million pieces.
That’s when the cloak of darkness and secrecy that surrounded my life began to unravel. And that’s when I was able to peek behind the curtain.
That’s when this nightmare began.
The Story will be continued in The Soap Dish 2
Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash
Fictional stories by John Saccone 
Leave a comment