During the final months with the AW, I wanted out of the relationship but more wanted a free place to crash near my office. I therefore stowed several bullets.
What do you do when you catch your partner in nefarious activities yet, relative to your own interests, you don't care about the betrayal? You keep your mouth closed. You keep your eye on the ball. And thus did I not call the AW out when I discovered she'd hacked into my Hotmail and saved to a file called "roses.txt" my correspondences with a previous love interest. All of them. Not saying something to her was hard. You want to kill. And later, when I discovered the presence of the Next Guy, I said nothing. Eye on the ball, I instead bought her flowers and made romantic plans for the same evening I knew they already had plans. Her visible implosion was priceless. She swallowed her own spleen.
There are professional equivalents, of course. One former friend at work has a felony on his record that about which the company does not know; I really haven't been moved to share that. I know of thieves and bigots and perjurers at all levels of the company, but I seldom take them on, again out of self-interest. Everyone hates a narc. Still, it's good to have the bullets if I need 'em.
The poster child for an unfired bullet is undoubtedly my mom. When as a teen I discovered her porn stash, it was thrilling and self-satisfying—surely, only the troops who discovered Saddam's spider-hole could understand. Mom would be mortified to know I knew. M-o-r-t-i-f-i-e-d. And if I ever needed a nuclear weapon, I realized, this was it. And so I saved it for a rainy day, for when Mom discovered my own porn stash or walked in on me having sex or something. And these things never happened, and she died, and the bullet still rusts in its chamber.
What a waste. What an appalling waste.