Office manager "Big Red" Lynn Fortier continues her shenanigans at her New Jersey publishing company. This time she gets Paul's wife Janey involved too, but not at the same time for the sex. The "concrete fortress" of course refers to the appearance of the suburban office building. This is happening in the spring of 1989.
*********
It had to happen eventually -- Big Red Lynn Fortier and my wife Janey would wind up in the same place at the same time. There wasn't necessarily a reason that it had to happen. Like a lot of people, I had a feeling that bad luck was just part of the normal workings of the world. I could imagine Captain Edward Smith of the
Titanic
losing his British stiff upper lip. He'd bang his head against the wall and complain, "Why does everything happen to me?"
In the period immediately following our tryst in the back of the building, Lynn became almost careless in the way she behaved. While once she had mostly stayed in her office, now she was often out and about in the rest of the place. Twice more, once in the afternoon and once in the evening, we had trysts in that unrented space at the north end of the structure. On one other occasion, we did it in her own office late in the evening.
The uncomfortable part was that she was now spending a lot of time near me. If she was walking around, she would smile and wink at me if I caught her eye. Sometimes she would sit in the extra chair in my cubicle and chat with me. At one point when this was going on, I got the attention of my supervisor, Denise Behrens, and gave her a look.
Please get me out of this.
Denise just looked back and shook her head.
There is nothing I can do.
There was another incident in which we had a staff meeting and Lynn planted herself in the chair next to me. She smiled warmly at me when she sat down.
I realized that this was my own problem to solve. One day Lynn was in my cubicle, talking softly about how she was going to get an English schoolgirl outfit and we'd play a game with me as the mean, aggrieved headmaster.
The situation was getting out of control, and I felt I now had the authority to tell Lynn what I thought. I made a gesture for her to follow me, and we went to the window at the north end of the first floor, the floor just below ours.
I said, "Lynn, you really have to act more carefully, I mean in interactions with me. You haven't been doing that very well recently."
Her answer was almost irrelevant. "That unrented space we go into, that is not actually part of our company's facilities."
"It doesn't matter. And you have been all over me like . . ."
I couldn't finish the thought, so she did it for me. "Like yellow on bananas." She laughed, "What a stupid cliché that is."
"I think it's actually, 'like white on rice,' but never mind."
Some of her innate arrogance came out, "I'm the boss around here, and it doesn't matter to me who knows about our affair."
"Well Lynn, it matters to me!"
"You worry too much. Nobody is going to get fired over this."
"Probably not, but it would be very awkward if people here start gossiping about us."
"So what do you want me to do about it?"
I glanced down the hallway to make sure no one we knew was around. Then I let her have it. "One thing is, stop coming around and sitting in my cubicle with me. You never sat with anybody else before in all the months I've been here."
She pouted at me, and I knew it was mostly a put-on. "You just don't like me anymore."
I still wasn't sure if I had ever really liked her at all or if I was just in it for a convenient sex ride. I said, "Look, this isn't college. It's a workplace, our livings come from here. There has to be some -- call it professionalism in the way we act in this place."
"Even if we are banging each other."
"Discretion, Lynn, that's what I'm talking about. Discretion. And you seem to have lost that recently."
I thought she'd continue arguing with me, but she didn't. "All right, I admit, I've overdone this behavior. From now on I'll tone it down. I mean, I promise, a lot." Then a second later she was back to sexual topics, "I need to put together that English schoolgirl outfit I mentioned before."
I said, "It can't be that hard. All you need is a plaid skirt and knee socks. And a jacket of some kind."
"How about those schoolgirl hats? Where would I get one of those?"
This was long before one could just go online and order something of that type. "Lynn, I don't know a fucking thing about women's clothing. Probably you could get one if you looked around in Manhattan."
As she pondered this, I broke in again. "Lynn, I have to have your word that you are going to be -- whatever, bringing it down a notch, acting like an adult around here."
She sounded chagrined. "I know Paul, I have to act responsibly. I mean, I do hold an important position in this company." Actually, in the larger scheme of things, she was far down on the personnel chart of the larger corporation. Anyway, then she grinned at me. "Maybe I need a good sound spanking to get the point across.
******
A week later Lynn came up with a concept that I sometimes wonder was actually aimed at me, but maybe I was being a bit paranoid. For some reason, she decided that she would take all five production editors, including me, plus Denise Behrens, to lunch at the Alexus Steakhouse not far from our office. To top it off, all of us could bring along our spouses or significant others along for the festivities.
The point of all this was to honor the "fine work" that the production staff had been doing in -- well, in recent weeks; the timeline was rather vague. I hadn't seen that we all had accomplished anything of any unusual importance in that period. It had been the same old grind as always. I did have to decide whether I'd tell my wife Janey about it and then invite her to attend the event.
Some instinct told me that Lynn had cooked up this plan mostly so that she could meet and assess my wife. It somehow seemed important that I follow through on Lynn's plan and make sure that Janey attended this lunch date. I couldn't say why that would matter. It seemed below the level of my conscious thought.
Janey, at thirty-two, was an attractive woman with long dark hair. Like Lynn, she wore glasses, but also like Lynn she was a bit vain about needing them. Thus they often wound up at the top of her head rather than over her eyes where they might have done her some good.
The aspect of Janey that wasn't so attractive was her personality, which could best be described as "moody." At that point in early May, she was just coming out of one of her sulky periods. In fact, she had cut me off from any sexual contact for over two weeks. I don't know why, but that was about to end with a bang. By later in the day, Janey was down-to-fuck, and she was ready to do a lot of it too.
I still wonder if there was some kind of force-field emanating from Lynn that set this in motion. I admit I don't understand everything that happens when women interact with each other. Lynn had a smoldering sexual presence going, and who's to say that Janey didn't pick up on that and then copy it for herself? My wife was attractive enough, but she was much more low-key compared to our executive director.
On the appointed day we all met in the office for a meet and greet, and Lynn, being divorced, was the only one of us without a companion. She was nicely dressed in a purple, short-sleeved blouse, a black skirt, dark nylon stockings, and black high-heels. I was sure that she had a garter and straps to hold up her nylons.
Janey looked good too, but her outfit was more restrained, which fit in with her more modest outlook on life. She had a long-sleeved black blouse, a gray skirt, no stockings, and dark shoes with straps.
The two of them didn't see each other up close until we were at the restaurant. Lynn arranged it so that she was sitting directly opposite us at the table. Janey knew that she was the executive director, of course, but they had never met before. For the first couple of minutes, Janey seemed a bit suspicious of her, perhaps, but that didn't last long.
Lynn knew how to turn on her charm when needed, and she did that during the initial round of drinks. Her method was to praise me, which struck me as odd at the beginning. She was saying nice things about my diligence and the care I took when handling author requests -- many of which were completely unreasonable when trying to get a book out on time.
It all seemed like complete bullshit, and yet Janey bought it all. Later I speculated that my wife basically considered me a loser, but hearing my boss's boss compliment me pleased her. Maybe it even reassured her that I had some worthy qualities that perhaps she hadn't noticed before.
There was one seemingly perilous moment when Lynn referred to the late hours I usually worked. She said, "I know he has to be here often at nights, but we need to make sure that we keep to our schedules. I'm sorry, I know that has a deleterious impact on your marriage, but it can't be helped."
I expected Janey's suspicious side to emerge, and she would ask something like,
really? And where are you when all of these late nights are going on?
But she didn't ask that. Instead, she went into her suck-up mode and said, "That's okay, I understand that it is necessary for the good of the company."
It was odd to sit there and ponder that I had screwed both of these ladies, although only Lynn knew the whole truth of the matter. It was also true that only Lynn had gotten a thorough punishment from me on her wide backside. That was never going to happen with Janey, although my better half could definitely benefit from some firm beatings on her rear-end.
When the time came to leave, Janey and I got into our Horizon and Lynn drove off in her Audi. Back at the office, Janey wanted to hang around for a while and sit in my cubicle's extra chair. That was the same chair that Lynn had used during her various chats with me.
I was surprised when Janey took my hands and kissed me warmly. Then she said, "Paul, I really need -- I mean, to have you physically, I mean right now."
"And where would we do that?"
"You know." She pointed towards the steel doors at the north end of the room. "I know there is plenty of room in there where we could fool around to our heart's content."
I tried to remember when I had ever told her about that unused space. The main purpose of me going in there was to give Lynn a fucking when she wanted one. Surely I must have had some other reason for describing that area to Janey, but I couldn't remember what it was.
Janey didn't seem to care; she wanted to fuck, and the sooner the better. Anyway, we went in there and into that one room with the desk and chair. After some make-out preliminaries, she removed her gray skirt and little black panties and bent over the desk. In fact, she got one knee up on the tabletop so I could get a good angle on her.
