The basic plot is stolen from Huedogg's Second Chances. Negotiation is the tool to get what we want. Leverage is what we need to move the negotiation our way. Speaking literally of leverage, Archimedes said "Give me a place to stand and I will move the world." The narrator, found a place to stand.
Chilley
I've been married for 15 years, three kids, Michael, Jason and Marcy, nice house, two newish cars, and a wife that can afford to work for a non profit because we really don't need the money. I have a job that interests me, and the work load has dropped in the last four years, reasonable hours, occasional travel for work and pleasure. I thought I had it made, wife, family, two car garage in a good school district, what more could you want? Until I came in from work, and my wife Andria was sitting in the kitchen looking nervous.
"Hey, what's up with you? What's wrong, are the kids all right?"
Her face contorted.
"They're fine Jeffery, but I've got some really really bad news to deliver. I'm leaving you to marry James Buchanan. It's nothing you did, there's nothing you can do to change my mind, I've emptied my closet and bureau, everything else is yours."
I felt my gut roll.
"Who the hell is James Buchanan? What's he got that I haven't? You love him?"
"I do love him, we've been seeing each other for about a year. He's the Governor's cousin, from the side of the family that inherited most of the family fortune. The children and I will move in with him in Greenville Delaware."
"That Buchanan! I can hardly believe it. You've been fucking him for a year and I never had a clue." I was stunned. The world as I know it is gone.
"It's true then, the husband is the last to know. Well, I guess I made it easy for you, me trusting you implicitly. Are the children mine?"
"Of course they are! How could you think that of me?---Oh! Yes they are yours."
She was nice looking, but not a stunner. And nothing out of the ordinary in bed, unless she must have worked a lot harder to please him than she ever did with me, but what's the fucking point. The pain was turning to a bitter anger, but I was able to keep control of myself. Ha, I guess I've been fucking a million dollar cunt. I glared at her, jumped to my feet and gestured towards the door:
"Well get the fuck out of my house, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. You god damn cheating bitch. Enjoy the good life, until he dumps you for someone younger. I have nothing more to say to you."
She tossed an envelope on the table and moved quickly out the door. And I sat and cried. I went up stairs to lie down, and saw that the children's rooms have been emptied out including the pictures they had hung on the walls. It felt like I was living in a tomb. In the weeks to follow, she and James Buchanan refused to let me talk with my kids. It was Macy who snuck out and knocked on my door. We worked out a clandestine meeting arrangement.
I got six burner phones, and gave the kids one of the numbers. Every couple of weeks I gave them a new number so if anyone checked their phones, my numbers were only called occasionally. We were careful about e mails which could only be sent from the library computers or a friend's computer. I used the name Lennie Elmore, after Elmore Leonard, the wonderful author as my email name, again to hide from my ex. So I kept up with their lives, not as often as I would like, well Macy called every other day (usually on a friend's phone), and the boys about once or twice a week.
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In the months that followed, it didn't get better. Words cannot describe the fury, hurt, depression that washed over me, that was drowning me. Andria had traded up in marriage, so far up that she didn't bother to ask for any of our assets, alimony or child support, there was no point. I guess, to her credit, she asked for nothing of any commercial value, but what she did take was priceless, my three children.
We sometimes read stories where a woman is offered a million dollars to fuck some guy. Usually its women we wonder about, the assumption being that most guys would do it for free. The goofy part of that question is: who would pay a million bucks for sex...especially for sex with an average person? I guess that Buchanan has tens of millions of dollars, so I can see her bailing for that. Who knows, maybe it was love. I can say for sure I wouldn't have run off with a Mrs. Buchanan, but I suppose you don't know until someone offers.
And the kids too, hiding contact with me. I guess it's the money too, the promise of a free Ivy League educations, along with the more immediate pleasures of the lifestyle big money can bring, cars, clothes, skiing in Aspen, summer in France, doesn't compare with surf fishing at the Jersey shore with Pop, but neither does it excuse my children for not insisting on having a foot in each camp. I thought I brought them up better than that, but then they are kids.
The biggest thing was still what the hell did Buchanan see in her? She really didn't stand out in any crowd I could imagine. She was middling in about everything...she was really good with people, but so are a lot of people. As to our friends, most stayed cordial, but now being single, occasionally I was asked to a party, and I did have a couple of buddies to fish with, but I was really lonely without my best friend, and I felt like damaged goods...which I was.
I thought of suing them, but my lawyer told me to forget it, that I really didn't have a chance, and for what? I make good money, $130,000 a year, which is a nice living, but against Buchanan? So I caved, and tried to get on with my life.
Like I said, in that wrenched first year I really had a hard time. My home was now just a house, functionally I was on the very edge of my children's lives, I wasn't fit to date women either. Really, it was my daughter that got me through that horrible year. I kept it together by immersing myself in work; I mean what else could I do? I felt sorry for myself, buried in self pity, rolled in misery like a dog in shit for almost a year. After six months of that, I sold the damn house and got an apartment in town, cut way back on overtime and began to flesh out ideas I had come up with over the years, but were ignored by the elderly guys in management.
I realized I was a better businessman that the fools running the company. Ever see clearly the way for the business to grow and prosper, but the management couldn't let go of the old business model they developed years ago which successfully built the business, but was wrong for today's world and was taking it down? It was like I was sailing on the Titanic with me the only one who could see the iceberg. What could you do besides dress warmly and stand near the life boats, reading the launch instructions.
My job search was producing nothing, until out of the blue; I got a job interview from a company that bought one of our smaller competitors. The wanted me to implement my employer's old business model so they could grow their company! In a series of interviews, I pointed out the problems with that, and outlined my own ideas. They were actually willing to pay a premium to lure me away from Titanic Inc. and more besides because their business was in Chestertown MD. I was able to negotiate a big vacation package by agreeing to take most of it one day a week, and a contract tied to business growth and profits. Apparently they had had trouble getting people to relocate to a backwater, charming or not, Chestertown is as chaotic in the summer as it is dead in the winter. I jumped at the chance to make a clean break of it, changed my email address, got a new phone number, of course my children knew, but not their mother.
Of course in this age of the internet, if you live your life, you cannot really disappear, but I thought of it as a way to reinvent myself as neither my former employer nor my former wife valued me, and it helped to put them in the fuzzy light of the past.
Now I didn't get big time rich like Buchanan, but I did real well by my standards, and as the business took off, I was able to hire talented young people to implement the business plan, after a few years, I found myself with a nice equity position, and began "working from home a lot and let others do the day to day stuff.
I rented a place for a while until I found a big three bedroom craftsman style bungalow on a lot with a view, but within walking distance of Chesterton. The big demand here is for old historic homes, but houses from the 1920, 1930 are 'modern' houses and pretty reasonably priced. As a bonus it had $20,000 of woodworking tools in a heated garage that the old guy bought new when he retired, but never got around to learning how to use! I joined the local Historical Society, volunteered for this and that... put myself out there, as they say, but unfortunately, the selection of suitable mates was thin. I was 45 years old, relatively few single women in the 35-40 age group, and of the few of a suitable age, well I'll get shot for saying this, but the education level of the year round residents was... mixed, and the summer people were generally too high end for my taste.
One of the members of the Historical society asked me if I could fix an electrical problem on his boat. I liked the old guy, so he and I spent Saturday on the boat, and I fixed a plethora of assorted problems. We took it out for a short cruse, and I found I liked sailing, and he liked company so he taught me sailing. We worked out a trade, I'd keep all the mechanical/electrical stuff running, he's pay someone to the endless cosmetic restoration, and cleaning and I could take it out more or less at will, I just had to call in advance. If it was a day sail, often as not we would go out together. I should tell you that I could have bought the damn boat, but I'm cheap, and who wants the expense of owning and maintaining a boat?
I was at the marina changing the oil in the auxiliary engine, and heard hoots and shrieks as a boat was ineptly wallowing up to the dock. I grabbed a boat hook and trotted over. Seeing the run of the tide I called for the stern rope, they threw it short, but I could just hook it and pulled the stern to the dock, where upon and the tide pushed the bow in so I could catch that rope which was dragging in the water, and tied them fast. The idiot at the wheel was drunkenly insisting I join their party for dinner at one of the expense account restaurants nearby.
I had no interest in spending the evening with a bunch of honking drunks and politely demurred, when a really good looking woman came up beside Captain Rum,
"Don't be put off by Wallace, I would like you to come to dinner with us, after all, you rescued us."
So much you can infer from a sentience. She was sober, no rings on her left hand, nice looking, educated, faint British accent, with a body "built for comfort".
"Now would you be sitting alongside me at dinner?" Hoots of teasing laughter from the boat,
"He hooked the boat, and you hooked him! Way to go Heather!"
We were smitten with each other. Heather was seven years younger than me, worked in a law office in Washington DC writing laws and regulations for lobbyists. She was a gorgeous thing, not Hollywood gorgeous, but somebody I certainly would pick out of a crowd. As we talked, I found she shared my politics, love of old things, the water, and reading. She couldn't have children which bothered her years ago when she got the news, but over the years became reconciled with it. Me, after the experience I had with mine, that didn't bother me at all.
"Heather, I don't want this night to end. No strings here, would you stay at my house, I've a guest bedroom with a locking door, not that you need to..."
"Got your driver's license with you? Give it to me?"
I handed it over, she took a picture of it with her phone, e mailed it.
"There, if I don't come back in one piece, my mother will come after you. Can you drive me to Waldorf Sunday night?"
"Sure, where's Waldorf?"
