I glanced at the exquisite timepiece strapped on my wrist. Four o'clock in the morning. What was I doing at Cassanova's Diner again? Granted, I have been here many times before. You might even call the place my home away from home.

I had absolutely no business being here and certainly not at this time. None at all. And I definitely should not have been there with the young lady who accompanied me. Not another living soul in the place but me, her, and Tony Amata, the cafe's overnight staff. Oh, and Michael Overton, the bartender.

On my table sat an empty bottle of wine that had made the wee hours of the morning possible. Food was a long forgotten past time.

My desires were for the vivacious, slender and tall, blue-eyed blonde bombshell seated across from me. I barely even remembered her name. Lola, I seemed to recall. Or was it Maria? Hell, after so many of them I never could keep them straight.

I knew she was a looker when we met there earlier that night. And, now, the motel key was seriously burning a hole in my pocket. Very shortly I would remove it and she would become the Blue Ribbon catch I expected her to be.

Sweeping the floor in the far corner of the little cafe Tony just shook his head. He knew my game, and how I played it, much too well. One night stands were nothing new for me. But why? Why couldn't I break this vicious thing that kept a stranglehold on me?

I didn't really want to cheat. At least a small part of me, somewhere deep inside me, didn't want to do that. But, at least once a week it seemed this was my routine.

My wife, the one I kept waiting at home, knew all about my unfaithful ways. Man, was she ever an angel and I really did love her. Honestly and truly I did. More than I had ever loved anybody else before. But somehow she just did not satisfy the loving side of me. Or did I simply crave more than what I had right there in the palm of my hand?

And, most importantly, I had promised her the last time I did this I would never play around on her again. It seems to me I had told her that very same lie at least a hundred times before.

I swallowed the last sip of wine in my glass and stood up. Lola, or Maria, or whatever the Hell her name was, stood up with me in unison. The heat of passion written all over her as we made our way to the Templeton Motel, Room 123, right across the street from the cafe. You know what happened once we got there. I don't have to paint that picture for you.

At six-thirty, the chance encounter over, I steered my truck for home not having a Chinaman's clue what I was going to tell the Mrs. Not that any of my alibis would have worked on her. She must have already known I had stepped out on her one more time. How could she not know?

Walking in the front door of my palatial manor I caught my first surprise. The aroma of my favorite breakfast, complete with eggs over easy, crisp bacon, orange juice in a tall glass, and a piping hot cup of coffee sweetened with just one packet of sugar, awaited me.

My wife, adorned in her bathrobe and house slippers, greeted me with a welcoming kiss. Wearing curlers in her raven black hair she led me to the table where she placed the morning paper. This was unbelievable to me. Not one single word about my activities of the night.

I took a very enjoyable bite of the eggs and looked down at the front page of the newspaper. Only it wasn't the paper's print I immediately saw and right away I knew.

BANG! An explosion from the .45 held in my wife's right hand rang out. Fired from directly across the table from where I was seated the bullet rapidly found its mark. My last meal and a goodbye kiss. The whole scene I had walked into was a mere ruse neatly carried out by my adoring wife.

However, the final sight I would ever see was my wife picking up the Will she had taped to the front page of the newspaper before I arrived home. Oh, and the biggest shock of all was Lola, or Maria, or whatever the Hell her name was, who I had dropped off at her apartment across town before I went home, passionately wrapped in my executioner's arms.

Closing my eyes in death I knew the truth.