Copyright © 2018
- This is an original work by Michal Fitzgerald and is protected under copyright by U.S. copyright law. It is only submitted at Literotica.Com. Submission to any other site in whatever format has not been authorized by the Author and is an infringement of copyright. Such other site is requested to remove this story. All persons depicted in this work are at least 18 years of age.
Musical Credits
: "Merry Christmas, Baby,"
Copyright © 1947 b
y Lou Baxter and Johnny Moore (1947);
Performance Copyright ©
1987 by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (appearance on "A Very Special Christmas")
*
Friday, December 21, 2018
From across the boardroom, someone looking at Gordon MacStevens would think him to be the very picture of masculine self-assurance and calm. Tall and dark with rugged leonine features, at age 45 he sat casually looking out at the skyline from the offices of his solicitors at 30 St. Mary Axe, London, the building locals call the "Gherkin." Geordy arrived a week before to broker the merger of two rival global logistics companies that, if all things went well, would make him independently wealthy. Not bad for a 14-year old orphan boy from Asbury Park, who went to live with a Scottish aunt after Mexicana Flight 940 from Mexico City to Los Angeles flew into the side of a mountain fifteen minutes after takeoff on March 31, 1986, killing 167 passengers and crew including his parents Richard and Elizabeth MacStevens.
Richard had been a senior vice president for the Royal Bank of Scotland with personal relationships throughout the oil industry. A frequent traveler, he was often accompanied by Elizabeth, whose Spanish and French were fluent. Their unlikely marriage was a surprise, a success and above all a great love story. As a recent Oxford graduate in petroleum engineering, Richard was staying at the Camino Real in Mexico City while he interviewed with several oil companies. Not speaking Spanish and his English accented by Scots, he had settled into the lobby's piano bar to be alone but not lonely. Elizabeth was a graduate student from New Jersey, there for the summer to work on her fluency. She was a dark-haired beauty, sweet-smiled, square-shouldered, tall and finely hipped. He was blonde over red, ruggedly built, big, funny, easy to be with, gracious, generous, quick to love, quick to anger. It would have ended there but Richard was recruited by a North Shore drilling company, who seconded him to RBS New York as a technical advisor. The job came with a lead for an apartment in Hoboken. Elizabeth moved in and soon after, they married. Geordy only made good things better.
Of the many things he had learned during his life about being a man, Geordy learned the big things from his father as a teenager in New Jersey. What it means to keep a promise. How to make friends and keep them. What you owe a friend and what you don't. Why your father is not your friend because he must be so much more. How to give an order and take one. How to lead and follow. When to step into a fight and what was worth fighting for.
The rest, he learned from his mother. How to trust and love without letting himself become less. How women and men are different. How the unspoken bargain between men and women works and who owes who what, and when, and why. What promises men and women make to each other and why they that must be kept.
Being a teenager in New Jersey did the rest. Geordy learned who his friends were, how girls expected to be treated, and the amazing discovery that girls liked sex in their way as much as boys did. Best of all, Geordy had a band. They weren't very good, but they loved to practice. Mostly they covered Springsteen, Tom Petty and Bon Jovi. Years later, Geordy's wife, Ann, would tell Geordy that he had never really grown up. At heart, he was still a teenager on the Asbury Park boardwalk trying to pick up girls. They were fighting when she said it but Geordy wasn't offended. He thought it the nicest thing she had said to him in years.
When his parents died, his father's sister, Audrey MacStevens, was the financial manager to the private school in Scotland that his father and grandfather had attended. Geordy was a terrible fit but he was legacy and the school had to try. It wasn't that Geordy brought New Jersey with, which he did. Nor was it that Geordy was always in a fight because he was. Nor was it that he felt perfectly free to get in fights with the odds against him because he seemed to enjoy that most of all. The problem the headmaster faced was simply this: Geordy never lost. He never fought dirtier than he had to, but he always fought to win. If dirty got it done, so be it.
This time, half the football team was unable to play because they made the mistake of taking Geordy on. How could he call Geordy a bully when the odds were eight to one against? And did he want to advertise how badly his best athletes had their asses kicked? Not really. A deal had been struck as is the way most wars seem to end. Young Geordy was at war with the world. It had taken away his parents and his life in American and he was going to give the world a thumping until the world or he broke. On his solemn word, if he stopped his wholesale attack on the student body, Geordy would choose his roommates rather than be tossed into whatever dormitory room was handy. He could pick his instructors so long as his grades justified it. And he could have a car for his use on weekends. As would later become the hallmark of his life, Geordy had taken on the Scottish private school system and the Scots blinked.
From then on, Geordy was as a god to his schoolmates. He routinely won top marks and instructors secretly fought to get him in their classes. Boys crowded to be his friend and worthy of a Friday trip out to meet girls. Over time, a steady group emerged, not just of boys in his year but some older and younger. Geordy was wise enough to add faculty to the list and in his last year was introduced to the some of the better-connected alumni. By the end of Oxford, Geordy came out of the British private education system a very polished young man with excellent credentials and a bright future. Men took to him immediately. Women saw him as an adventure, a challenge that they might risk - divorce be damned - if they thought he might say yes. If he would, they certainly would. After he wed his beloved Ann, the word went out that Geordy was hopelessly faithful. Any attempt at a liaison would only leave the woman looking foolish.
A person who knew Geordy well would know something was seriously wrong. The big hitch to closing the merger had been the integration of 40 years of legacy computing systems into a single platform. The preparation went on for months. The migration was supposed to take 56 hours. It was done in half a day. Everything worked, and the principals spent the remainder of the day ticking off last items. Geordy was champing at the bit to get home, chewing on the ice in his glass, a clear sign that he was losing his temper.
The problem was all of Ann's making and Geordy knew what she had done. After 20 years with each other, they had few secrets, if any. He was aware of Ann's willingness to manipulate to get her way as well as her desire to push their relationship past the boundaries that Geordy found comfortable. Recently, Ann had been on a campaign to try out in private a variety of kinky games - chastity play, exhibition and display, tease and denial, role play. Some of it was fun and all of it was harmless even if Geordy made clear he was not interested in a repeat.
It all changed when, just before he left for London, Ann said that she wanted to introduce new people to their sex life. Geordy made clear that, while he was willing to risk his comfort and to a lesser extent his dignity in sex play, he would never risk his marriage. Bringing a new person into the mix risked that they would be pulled apart with no promise they would be able to get back what they had. So, No, and Hell No, and do not bring this up again. Geordy, angry, his stomach in-a-knot mad, got on a plane and flew off, suddenly a very worried man.
Sitting in London alone with his thoughts, Geordy could see the pieces carefully arranged so that Ann could cheat in a way so public that Geordy wouldn't be able to do a thing. He had become used to her tricks, but Ann had never put their marriage in jeopardy before. If she cheated, she knew Geordy would leave unless she made it so impossible for him to go that he had to stay. If he walked out anyway (always a risk if he got angry enough), Geordy's loss of face would be crushing.
A young man working at Concierge reported that Virgin Atlantic had two flights that might work. The 4:15 got into JFK at 7:35 p.m. The 8:05 got in at 11:20 p.m. Timing is of course everything. People miss out because they hesitate. Things were breaking up, Geordy saw a chance to go and, making no excuses, took it. It was hard to admit to himself how badly he wanted to get home.
Saturday, December 22, 2018
The plane was late to the gate at 1:20 a.m. It was raining and Geordy opted for a chain hotel by the airport. The town car picked him at 6:45 a.m. and his regular driver, retired NYPD mid-town detective Jimmy Kelly, had him close to home by nine. The day was sunny; the weekend promised to be perfect and warm. He called ahead to say he would be home soon only to learn that Ann had already left for the club.
The Mannington Club is located on the water near just below Sandy Hook. The year before, Ann succeeded in her effort to be named the Chair of the Club's Christmas Holiday Party. As such, she was responsible for the Club's biggest social event and all its planning. Geordy's PA kept Ann up to date on his schedule, sometimes as far ahead as a year. Geordy knew that when she set December 22nd as the date for the big blast, Ann didn't want her husband to attend. Sick at heart, Geordy was racing home to learn why.
"Hey, Jimmy, let's hit the club and I'll catch up with my wife." Jimmy Kelly, retired NYPD detective, was changing course even as his boss spoke. It always amused the former detective that Geordy's clipped Scots accent faded into the Jersey sounds of his youth as soon as he got home.
"And Jimmy, do me a favor. Nose around and find out what's going on. I've got a bad feeling about tonight. Get me more eyes and ears on it."
"Sure thing, Boss, I've got it covered."
Ann was in the ballroom, putting the staff through their paces. Apparently, there was a mix-up as to how Santa would enter the gala. In past years, the husband of the Party Chair, dressed in black tie plus a red Santa's cap and full (but fake) white beard, enters with his wife on his arm, made a pass through the crowd and retreated to the bar.
Backstage, Geordy found a place between hanging curtains and watched. This year, Santa would be arriving in a two-sided, lightweight mock-up of a sleigh that rolled. Ann would be the reindeer and pull the sleigh. Santa would walk after her, between the "sleigh" panels and wave greetings.
Part of it, Geordy got. Ann wanted a show-stopper entrance that made her the center of attention. No one would ever forget her Christmas party or its star attraction. Of course, the big question was who would play Santa. What he was seeing was bullshit and Geordy was beginning to get seriously pissed off. Wanting to hear what Jimmy found out, Geordy ducked out the stage door unseen.
"Boss, it's not good. The wait staff have been hearing things all day. Your wife has some sexy costume she's gonna to wear. She's hired some young guy. He's like a model or something. About your height and weight, same color hair. That guy is gonna be Santa. I gotta tell you, Boss, it feels like you're getting set up. There's something coming you wouldn't like if you knew about it in advance."
Jimmy looked back at the ballroom and shook his head. "Boss, you know I'll do whatever you say but you gotta stop fucking around with this. You gotta get a hold of this or it's gonna bite you in the ass. If you want me to have a private talk with this guy, okay. Say so and it's done but you're running out of time."
"I think you're right, Jimmy, I think you're right." Geordy got in the car and signaled it was time to move.
"What do we know about Santa?"
