Would you rent a car for this man?

Just before dinner this evening, Wife got a phone call. She took it in the other room, and I could hear muffled snatches of conversation: "... don't trust .... turn it in tomorrow .... what does he mean?" And then finally I heard one full, clear sentence: "I can't talk now; Hosea is home."

I didn't know what to make of this, but I assumed it couldn't be anything good. But dinner was ready right then, so Son 2 came in from his computer game (Doesn't he have any homework this year?) and we sat down to eat. Afterwards, though, I followed Wife into the bedroom and asked her about it.

"Who's turning what in tomorrow? Are you turning in the forms to file for divorce? Or signing a restraining order?" [All right, maybe in retrospect I was awfullizing. But I didn't know what to think.]

"No, nothing like that. It has nothing to do with you."

"The hell it doesn't. If it had nothing to do with me, you wouldn't say, 'I can't talk because Hosea is home.' Last weekend you gave me a big speech about how you are being completely honest with me these days. So what is this about?"

"All right. I'll tell you."

It seems that some time recently, maybe a day or two ago I guess, Wife authorized someone that she called "a friend" to hold a rental car on her credit card. (I assume that the word "friend" in this context has to mean one of the men she has met on her dating site. I'll call him "Pop" which isn't too far wrong.) Obviously this was nuts, although Wife has done this kind of thing before. Anyway, he didn't turn the car in today when he told her he would. She texted him and called him and texted him some more, and he never answered. Wife seems to have been beside herself. (And honestly, I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to think anyone could behave so irresponsibly with somebody else's money.) When he finally answered her texts this evening, it was to say, "It seems that you don't trust me. I'll make you right. Call them in the morning." Wife is trying to understand how to take that. Did he mean, "I will make everything all right by returning the car in the morning"? Or did he mean, "I will prove that you were right not to trust me by vanishing into thin air if you just give me another twelve hours"?

She doesn't know which it is, but she'll definitely call the car rental agency. She says she'll also tell them that she won't authorize any expenses past 1:00 pm, which is apparently the exact time the car is due. Now, that won't bring the car back, if indeed it's not already back by then. So in that case she plans to call the police and report it stolen. She says she knows Pop's full name (first, middle, last); also, she doesn't know his street address but can find her way to his house because she has been there "several times" already. She tells me that she assumes this is enough for the police to find him. And this is the story that she was talking about on the phone. She didn't want to discuss it with me home for fear that I would blow a gasket and yell at her.

I didn't yell. I just told her, flatly and a little stiffly, "Thank you for clearing up that it wasn't any of the things I was worried about." But of course the whole story is crazy -- letting him charge her credit card in the first place, and then planning to report the car stolen. It's sounds like bad fiction ... I don't know, maybe a poorly-written soap opera or something. Surely real people wouldn't do anything like this! Except, ... oh yeah ... this is Wife we are talking about ....

And really, she should be glad that I insisted we split our money a couple years ago. The only reason I was able to stay so calm is that she hadn't put me on the hook for this scoundrel's good behavior. As long as it's just her, I can try to be reasonably objective. If it were my credit at risk, I would probably have boiled her in oil.

Not literally, of course. But I would have been tempted ....