At ten that morning Marge stopped by my cubicle.
"You are keeping tomorrow open for me, right?"
"Indeed I am" I said and as she walked away I wondered why a married woman was so eager to have something to do with me. That afternoon at four the boss called me into his office and asked me if I had any plans for the coming weekend and when I said no he told me that he wanted to send me with a team to a company we were designing a system for.
"You will leave Thursday morning and be gone until a week from Friday. There will be you, Kevin, Pam and Brenda. You need to sit down with John Ambers in Design to get the background and technical information you will need. I'll set it up for tomorrow at ten."
I left the meeting with mixed emotions. It would be my first trip to a job site as a team leader which meant that the company thought I had possibilities and that could lead to a promotion and a raise, but on the other hand I wondered if I was ready to take the step. Some body in the company thought I could do the job; I just hoped that I could meet their expectations.
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The red light was blinking on the answering machine and I deleted everything with out listening to any of it and then I turned the machine off and unplugged the phone. I made myself something to eat and then curled up on the couch to try and finish a book that I had started. At ten my eyes grew heavy and so I called it a night and went to bed.
Wednesday started out bad. I was coming down 16th Street approaching the entrance to the company's parking lot when I saw Gail's Honda pull onto the lot. I knew it was Gail's because of the damage to the right rear quarter panel that she had never gotten around to having fixed. Apparently she decided to ambush me in the parking lot since I wouldn't answer her phone calls.
I drove by the entrance and drove around the block and parked on the street behind the building and went in through the loading dock door. As I walked to my office I wondered just what the hell Gail wanted. She was pretty damned clear about things when she packed up and walked out on me. Whatever! Sooner or later I suppose I would need to talk with her and find out what she wanted, but it would be later rather than sooner. It would have to wait at least until I came home from my trip. I was not going to go on my first site visit as a team leader carrying any of the emotional baggage that talking with Gail Sue might give me.
I was maybe twenty minutes at my desk when Jack, the guard that manned the reception desk in the lobby, called me to tell me that my wife was there to see me. I told him to tell her that I was tied up in meetings and was unavailable.
"She insists that she has to see you."
"She walked out on me Jack and we are in the middle of a divorce. I do not want to see her or talk to her. If she won't leave do what you do with anyone else who causes a disturbance and call the police to remove her from the building.
"You got it!"
"Thanks Jack."
"No problem Mr. D. Been there and done that."
I'd just hung up the phone when Pam walked up to my desk and asked me if I had a minute. I told her I did and pointed to a chair. She sat down and said:
"I've been told that we are going to the Montrose site for a week and I need a favor - a big favor."
"What is it?"
"Kevin is also going with us and I am tired of him hitting on me all the time and having to listen to all of his crude remarks. Not tired enough to file sexual harassment charges against him, but I don't want an entire week of his attentions which is what I'm looking at during this site visit."
"So what is it you want from me?"
"I want you to pretend that we have something going on between us. That should keep him away from me. I wouldn't ask you to do this if you were still married, but since you and your wife have recently split up I thought I'd give it a try."
"Define the "something going on" for me."
"You know, have dinner with me, hold hands when he is around, maybe hug or put our arms around each other - things like that."
"That's all? Pretend to have the hots for each other so Kevin will stay away from you?"
"That's all. Here I can get away from him, but while at the site we will be pretty much thrown together the entire time we are there."
"If I do what you want that will mean that Kevin will pretty much concentrate on Brenda. You dislike her that much that you would set her up for that?"
"He won't bother Brenda. The last time he tried she spit in his face and kneed him in his crotch."
"You could do that."
"No I couldn't. I'm not the violent type."
"How do I know that this isn't some subtle plan of yours to seduce me?"
She looked at me for a moment and then smiled. "Would that necessarily be a bad thing?"
I told her I would help her and then I buried myself in the work that was piled up on my desk. At ten I went to my meeting with John Ambers and at eleven forty-five I went to lunch. The first person I saw when I got off the elevator after lunch was Marge and as she walked by she smiled at me and said, "Don't forget."
"As if I could" I thought as I watched her ass wiggle as she walked away.
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I was late getting away from the office that evening and the tables were full when I got to the bar. In addition to the ones who were there the previous week Nancy from Accounting and Sharon from the secretarial pool were also there. Veronica and Pam started pushing people around to make room and another table was pulled up to the three already there.
I tossed my five into the middle of the table and gave the waitress my drink order, but before it got back to me Marge pulled me out of my seat and led me out to the dance floor. She moved into my arms and said:
"The way we do it is this sweetie. I don't want the girls I work with to know what I do so at seven-thirty I'll tell everyone good night and leave. Give me fifteen minutes and then you leave and meet me in the library parking lot. Okay?"
"Got it."
"I don't need to be home until eleven. We going to your place or a motel?"
"You have a preference?"
"As long as there is a strong bed there it doesn't matter to me."