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second club, alone, I
found myself thinking about her, and missing her a little. And on
the drive home I decided to stop by her house, the one on Gretna
Green, to see if she was still awake. I parked on the street and
approached the front door, and as I drew close I noticed lights in
the window and went to have a closer look. Nicole was inside, on
the couch, with a friend of hers, Keith Zlomsowitch, one of the
partners at Mezzaluna, a Brentwood restaurant. It was pretty hot
and heavy. I took a deep breath and turned to go, but paused to
knock on the front door—I rapped on it twice, hard—just to let
them know that they'd been seen.
I went home and got into bed, alone, and I must tell you—I
was pretty steamed. I think maybe it was just beginning to dawn on
me that the marriage was over, and I wasn't real happy about it.
The next morning, I went off to play golf, and I forgot all my
woes, but on my way home I called her and told her that we needed
to talk. I stopped by the house and she invited me in, and right
away I let her know that it was me who'd rapped on her front door
the previous night. ”What you do is your business, but the kids
were in the house,“ I said. ”I don't think it would be too cool for
them to walk in on that shit.“
Nicole was very apologetic. She said that she'd been drinking,
and that she had never meant for anything to happen with Keith,
and that nothing like it had ever happened before.
I didn't know what to say, so I reminded her of our little agree-
ment. ”We both decided that if we were going to get involved with
somebody else we would tell each other. From where I was stand-
ing, that looked pretty involved.“
”No,“ she said. ”He's just a friend. It's never been like that
with him and that wasn't supposed to happen.“
”Well, it happened,“ I said. ”And before it happens again, at
least think about the kids."
I left, feeling lousy. In my opinion, shit like that doesn't
happen unless you let it happen. You always hear stories about
guys crying to their wives about some woman they screwed while
they were away on a business trip or something, and how it didn't
mean anything— at they'd been drinking and they were just
missing them and that it just sort of happened. Well, that's bull-
shit. You've got to be in a place in your relationship for some-
thing like that to happen, and I was beginning to see that Nicole
was already in that place. As for me, I wasn't there yet. I was still
acting like a married man. And guess what? I hadn't been laid in
months.
A couple of weeks later, late that May, my suspicions were
confirmed. Nicole went down to Cabo San Lucas with some friends
of ours, including Bruce and Chrystie Jenner, and one of them
called to let me know that she'd met a guy there. I felt like I'd been
kicked in the nuts, but I handled it. I life throws some shit at you,

If I Did It
    and you deal with it. I went in and looked in on my kids. They were
both fast asleep. They looked like angels.
A couple of days after that, with Mother's Day looming,
Nicole called and told me she was flying back from Cabo, and won-
dered if I could drive the kids down to Dana Point so we could all
spend the day with her family. I took the kids and met her there,
taking flowers for both Nicole and Juditha, and the whole family
went to church together. Nicole and I stayed for dinner, and drove
back late that night. The kids fell asleep in the car.
“That was nice,” Nicole said. “Thanks for coming.”
“It was fun,” I said. But it wasn't fun. All along, I'd been
expecting her to tell me about the guy she'd met in Cabo, per our
agreement, but it didn't look like that was going to happen.
We got back to my place and put the kids to bed, and that's
when Nicole broke the news. “I met someone,” she said. “A guy I'm
pretty crazy about.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
“What do you mean you know?”
“Some of my friends were in Cabo, too, remember?”
I didn't say it angry, and I