The Third Swing At Bat

The following tale was collecting dust and taking up space in my mind that I really needed for other pursuits so I pushed it out rather quickly.

If you think you paid too much for this small entertainment let me know and I'll send a refund your way post haste. I promise. As for the disgruntlements, by all means flail away. Just keep it clean. If you are one of two people that I just won't have littering my combox, well, you know the drill.

There are a handful of authors here on Lit that I can't even begin comparing to and it's a privilege to hone a craft among them; my many thanks for the web hosts giving us this opportunity.

How many loving wives can a man have until just a good woman will do?

*****

The young deputy stood there waiting on me, hoping for a human response I suppose. I think I grunted out an unintelligible retort when he handed me the clipboard for my signature after he uttered those rather obnoxious words. 'Mr. Nathan Becker, you have been served. Please sign the acknowledgement'. With a few swoops of blue ink and a look into his squinting brown eyes it was complete. He turned and left me standing there with a white envelope in my hand in the threshold of the apartment I now called home.

Boxes were still stacked in the corner of each of the rooms and several bags of goods purchased from a couple of the local box stores sat ready to make an assortment of appearances throughout the apartment, ready to give the place some smidgen of functionality.

That first night had been months in coming; I just didn't realize it until the albatross was upon me. Mrs. Becker had absconded with all the accouterments of decent marriage and commitments before branding me with rejection and dismissal on the journey to my current abode. It was a quick journey, half a mile in the other direction from what used to be home.

When I returned from a business trip in Atlanta to meet with a new client, everything I owned of a personal nature was stacked neatly in the garage with a hand written note on top of one of the boxes.

"Everything else will be decided by the lawyers."

No signature, nothing. When I tried the key in the locks there was no opening. The windows were locked down, the basement entry was locked up and I was clearly on the outs. Nobody was home and if I had been roaming the landscape of Jupiter it would have been just as familiar as what I felt at that moment.

Michelle and I had been fighting more than usual the last couple of months and I had even broached the subject of couples counseling to no avail. I suppose I didn't blame her as neither of us thought much of counselors in general. She was mad at me when I left and stayed mad apparently, enough so that she had decided to administer the marital coup de grace and kick me out.

The first call to her cell went unanswered. The next call to her workplace rolled over to the front receptionist who informed me that Michelle was traveling on business and could not be reached until she returned. Of course she told me that after I identified myself. She offered to take my message and that was it.

Fifteen minutes later I received Michelle's text.

"Consider yourself divorced. I certainly do. Will have you served as soon as I know where you are living. Stay to hell out of my house."

Cold.

It was Wednesday afternoon and I needed a place to live. The house was definitely hers. She had it when we came into the marriage, the spoils of her first divorce. I guess that was a benefit for both of us. My first marriage ended badly and during the hiatus between spouses I learned not to be burned again if I could help it.

So when Michelle offered a prenup to protect her own assets, I did the same for mine. That included my consulting business and ownership interests in other varied businesses. One of those entities included two small condominium corporate rental buildings that were registered under the consulting firm and they happened to have four available vacancies.

I chose one of the vacant furnished units as my temporary home and by evening everything in the garage was inside the new abode. The utilities were already hooked up under the company's name and the first thing I did was to send a text to Michelle letting her know my new address.

The next thing was to lock up and head down to the pub on the corner and commiserate my misfortunes with my favorite bartender. It was a familiar haunt for me as my offices were just a block away from both the apartment building and the corner pub.

"I'd say you look like shit, Nathan but you'd prove me a liar. You're looking good as always."

Jeanette was another casualty of divorce, three years in and trying to make a go of it with her own pub here in the thriving midtown area. So far so good but she didn't make out good in her divorce. Her husband took everything of value and ran off to a new life on the west coast with a cliché, his secretary who just happened to have twenty years his junior and two bra sizes on Jeanette. She ended up taking a stab at purchasing the pub based on her inheritance from her dad when he passed away two years ago.

"You say that every time I come in here, Jeanette but I never tire of hearing it."

She poured an IPA in a tall pint glass and set it in front of me.

"So, what's new?"

"Michelle is divorcing me."

"Are you kidding me? When did that happen?"

"I came back from Atlanta this afternoon and she had all my stuff boxed up in the garage and she left town on business."

"What the hell! She was in here last night. She came in with some of that crew she works with downtown and one of the guys in the group was buying drinks for all of them like they were celebrating something. I thought they looked a bit cozy."

Now I was curious. The Pub was never a Michelle kind of place if she wasn't with me. She was more into the wine bar scene as were most of her peers. One of the exceptions would be Dan Mosey, her boss. He had expressed a bit of interest to buy this place before Jeanette bought it and fancied himself a beer connoisseur of sorts. If they all came here it would have been due to Dan's suggestion.

"The guy with Michelle doing the buying; red hair, tall, blue eyed arrogant dickweed type of fellow?"

"Darn, you described him to a tee. He was a lousy tipper." She laughed.

I'd eyeballed him before at one of the company functions and always took him for a pussy hound. There was that something about him that put me off but Michelle thought and acted like he was God's gift to company and women. Nonetheless there was no evidence or outward sign that there was anything between them and practically speaking I trusted Michelle. I didn't have any reason not to...then.

I picked up my phone and dialed Michelle's office building and when I got the automated directory listing I typed in Mosey and got two choices, Caroline Mosey and Daniel Mosey. Caroline was his wife and worked in HR. I pushed 2 for Dan's office phone.

"Hello, this is Dan Mosey at Hawthorne Financials. I will be out of the office until Monday morning. Please leave a message at the tone and I will return your call as soon as possible."

I sent an email to Michelle's work account. The reply was expected.

"I will be out of the office until Monday morning. Please contact Sheryl Griggs for anything needing immediate attention."

"Nathan, what in the world are you doing?" Jeanette asked with a grin.

"Watch and see."

I then opened the cell phone mapping app and pulled up Michelle's number and did a search. Ten seconds later it showed her at the Pierpoint Dunes Hotel an hour south along the beaches.

"Let me borrow your cell phone, Jeanette."

She handed it to me and I dialed the hotel number.

"Dan Mosey's room please."

"Who is calling?"

"Hawthorne Financials, they are expecting the call."

The operator put me straight through to his room. Good guess. It was picked up on the third ring.

"Hello?"

I thought for a moment about replying but looked up at Jeanette and ended the call. Michelle had answered Dan Mosey' hotel room phone at 11:05PM. That left little doubt in my mind. The next call was easier. I called information to get the number and had it put through.

"Hello?"

"Mrs. Caroline Mosey?" She replied with a yes. "I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour but my name is Nathan Becker. I believe we have met a couple of times at company functions."

"Yes, Mr. Becker, I know your wife Michelle from work. What can I do for you?"

"Well, I hate to be the one to tell you this but I think you have a right to know. My wife informed me that she is divorcing me and I suppose that's whatever it is but this evening I also discovered that Michelle and your husband Dan are having an affair and at this hour they are both staying together at the Pierpoint Dunes Hotel on the beaches. I believe we had a company outing there a couple years ago."

"Are you sure, Mr. Becker? Dan told me he was hosting a client meeting this week."

"Mrs. Mosey, I know that my wife answered the room phone just a few minutes ago when I was put through to his room. I haven't called yet but I am guessing if I asked for Michelle Becker's room there wouldn't be one."

"That son of a bitch! I'm sorry, Mr. Becker. It seems that Mrs. Mosey is going to take a drive at this wee hour of the night and see what Mr. Mosey is up to."

I offered to drive her there myself but she declined and we politely ended the call with promises to stay in touch and keep the other informed.

"Jeanette, with that, I'm going to call it a night."

"When are you going to invite me over to see your new place?" She grinned. I told her soon as I have it presentable.

I walked the short ways to my apartment thinking more about Jeanette than my soon to be ex-wife. She was quite attractive in a feisty kind of way as opposed to the always on business chic of Michelle. I walked in and turned on the lamp to survey the digs. It could be worse is all I remember thinking as I crashed on the unmade bed.

After calling into work the next morning, my admin brought me up to date on the activity since I had left. There was only one call I was interested in on my messages and it was not one of the four calls from Michelle; it was the one from Caroline Mosey. She had made the drive to the Hotel arriving around 2AM and let herself in with a swipe card from the desk. The Hotel offered no resistance when she showed them her ID as Dan's wife.

I would have loved to have been the proverbial fly on the wall when she flicked the light on the naked, sleeping couple on the king size bed. Dan and Michelle had obviously been drinking and fucking and in their drunken haze they just sat there as Caroline took a rapid flurry of pictures on her cell phone. When she was done she booked a separate room for herself and drove back later in the morning.

I ignored Michelle's calls and that evening the deputy showed up. I hadn't shed a single tear over any of this. Instead I felt anger at the prospect of wasting five years of marriage to somebody who would callously throw it all away. I guess I still loved the miserable bitch in spite of her cuckoldry and the snit manner that she went about the whole sordid mess. Of course that wouldn't be much of a balm to soothe the affront.

Michelle is a smart woman but with plenty of stupid to bring her down to gut level. She has her house and her 401K and her own bank account but she has never understood what I have built over the years, before our marriage and after. Oh, the prenups laid out everything for each of us to see at a surface level but she never looked for or understood the details.

Becker Consulting earned its 'cred stripes' when I was still wearing nothing but ratty jeans and tee shirts. My Dad started the company after twenty years in the upstream oil and exploration industries, particularly in engineering. We are a low visibility company. If you were not in the engineering consulting field you would never have heard of us. That didn't mean we didn't have clout.

I took over the company twelve years ago and three years after that the company was caught up in the economic maelstrom of 2007-2008 and we damn near went belly up. We were able to hang on to about a third of the business and keep several loyal employees on the payroll but it was a sign that the model needed to change.

At that same time, I ended up going through a really nasty divorce. I lost both the house and the mountain cabin we vacationed in during the summer months. My first wife Janet received custody of our thirteen year old daughter along with alimony, child support and the acrimony of most of our friends directed at me.

The reason was simple enough. I got shit faced at a company function and ended up passed out in the hotel room of one of the company's clients, a 42 year old Spanish woman who had been making passes at me since we first started doing business. Somebody informed Janet of my whereabouts and at 3AM she stood over the bed looking at a snoring, naked man with a black haired Spanish beauty draped across his belly.

I have no idea if I fucked her, if she fucked me or we both just passed out in a tangle of flesh but it led to a firestorm without forgiveness. Janet filed for divorce the next day and I ended up living in a construction project trailer for the next six months. She stopped talking to me, even when we had to sit a few seats apart at our daughter's high school graduation. I tried to talk to her but her second husband ran interference.

"Nathan, she absolutely refuses to even acknowledge you at all. I don't understand it, man, but that's her call. I'm just passing on the message."

Carl wasn't a bad guy in any of this. He was just caught up in whatever hatred Janet still had for me even four years after the divorce. I just thanked him, shook his hand and turned my attention to whatever time my daughter still had left for me that evening.

Three weeks later Carl was killed in an industrial accident at the plant he worked at. I honestly felt really bad about it and still do at times. He really wasn't a bad guy. He just fell in love with the woman I once loved and he was a good step dad to my daughter. I sent a personal floral arrangement for the services and through my daughter offered whatever help I could. I never heard a thing...

Looking back I think it was late 2009 or so when the sun started shining again on my life and for the company. We stated picking up contracts for new business and I was able to start hiring up new staff. The first thing I did was sit down with my sister, the CFO, and start planning for investments and diversification.

"Daddy always put everything back into the company, Nathan. Why would you change that up now that we are starting to get back on our feet?"

"Sis, you should know the answer to that already. If we had been of a mind to give us some breadth with regard to invested resources, we might have come out of it better than where we are now. I want to move profits into a more diversified portfolio. Let's pick up some real estate, maybe undeveloped land and perhaps even housing."

That's what we did. The real estate led us to financial services and that's how Becker Consulting came to own 55% of Hawthorne Financials. It was acquired through an incorporated holding company called Carolina Capital when they were valued at a third what they are worth today. 2009-2010 were excellent years for picking up anything in real estate and financials. Carolina Capital was in turn separated from Becker with an additional LLC layer.

Now I should probably admit to a bit of guilt by omission. I started dating Michelle a couple years after I came out of the funk of my divorce and had turned myself back into the company. I'm surprised I was able to even have a social life. However the two of us hit it off from the start. It might have been our common divorce experiences although I was upfront at the beginning about why Janet divorced me, even if it was under cloudy circumstances.

What I didn't tell her was that she was working for a company that was in turn subject to a controlling interest held by my family company. I was going to but I honestly never got around to it. Once I passed on the opportunity to tell her, too much time went by and it just plain felt too awkward to mention it. Besides I really never thought it would be an issue. I wasn't directly involved in any of it; until now...

I sat at my cluttered kitchen table with Michelle's petition for divorce in my hand and thought about her laying in that man's bed, wondering how many times before this week she had cuckolded me like a fool. The petition was simple enough; we had community property in household goods but she owned her house and I owned my recently acquired cottage up in the mountains. Clean and simple; All it took now was a phone call.

"Don, Nathan here. Since she had me served last night is anything stopping us from doing what we discussed?"

Don was my attorney handling personal legal matters and I had talked with him earlier in the day.

"Well, let's be clear again. What have your W2 earnings been for the last five years?"

"$52,000 a year before taxes, not a penny more."

"What does Michelle make?"

"She gross' around $120-140K or so not counting performance bonuses."

"If we pull the trigger, Nathan, she's going to shit grapes for a week."

"I don't care at this point."

So the next day the triggers on the escalation of my divorce war were pulled. Friday morning, Michelle Becker and Dan Mosey were terminated for violation of the company's morals and fraternization clauses. Michelle was given a severance in accord with policy. Dan was terminated and walked out the door by security.

That afternoon, Caroline Mosey had Dan served with a legal separation action and thrown out of the house. It was going to be an expensive trip to the beaches for both of them. I didn't need to do any of the hocus pocus shifting of money in various accounts or cancel credit cards and such. We each had our own.

I sat in my attorney's office at the end of the day sipping cognac, probably at a rate of $300 an hour, and signed all the papers agreeing to Michelle's terms. One of his admins ran a set of the papers to the courthouse to file before it closed for the day.

"Here's to sacking a bitch, make that a couple of bitches, getting divorced, finding a new home and losing $15K to a divorce lawyer all in one week!" I said to my attorney and friend.

"Go out and get laid." was his reply.

It didn't happen. I went back to my empty apartment and actually cried for the first time since my first divorce. Six months later I picked up a copy of the final decree and stuffed it in a safe deposit box.

********************

"Jesus, baby, tap it just like that... Oh - My - God ..."

Jeanette was an animal; a purring, nibbling, licking, sensuous feline of a woman who pushed the boundaries of what I was capable of. Ten years difference in our ages might have had something to do with that but I like to think it was her unbridled passion.

"Fuck me, you bastard." She yelled out when I bottomed out next to her cervix.

Most might think I was the beneficiary of her mercy but in this instance it was the other way around although truthfully there was no mercy involved at all. We were two lovers, unattached and solitary and both wanting what the other offered.

"Don't you dare pull out of me ... finish like this..." she whispered with her arms wrapped around my neck when I neared my climax.

We lay there together glistening with sweat upon the crumpled sheets on the bed. When I bent over and gently sucked an aroused nipple into my mouth she lightly ran her fingers across my cheek.

"Nathan, it had been a long time for me, over a year."

It had been a couple months on my part and mostly by choice. Since the 'Burning of Michelle' as I care to refer to it nearly a year before I had been laid four times excluding this evening. Somebody once said a man thinks about sex every 20 seconds or some such silly number. I had gotten to the point I only thought about it every time I saw an attractive woman but I infrequently acted on it as per the four times.