The wager was made after several rounds of whiskey. It was a serious bet made after our protagonist asked for an up or down vote on the "fuckability" of various women colleagues. Thumbs up, thumbs down. There was no office slut as such, but there were the flirty ones, the busty ones, the long-legged short-skirted ones. There were a few disagreements, voices raised in alcoholic dispute. On one question though there was consensus. Young Susan, the new girl in production was "totally fuckable" but no one present could imagine her betraying her husband. The ring on her finger, the gold cross at her throat, the dumpy clothing, acted as a wall, blocking the male gaze, intercepting the male approach.
Our protagonist was a well-known Romeo among his friends. Women found him "interesting." His companions found his exploits exciting in the retelling and yet also annoying. It was too easy for him. The Monday morning description of the weekend bar pick-up contrasted to their own nuptial boredom or, worse, their failures and rejections. While they eagerly crowded around his computer to view the Facebook page of his latest conquest, asking after the size of her tits, the wetness and tightness of her pussy, they also felt the bile of their resentment.
The challenge was thrown out by Darren, the most married, most resentful of the drinkers. "I bet you can't fuck Susan."
"What do you bet?" our protagonist riposted.
"What do you want?"
"An evening alone with your wife."
We should note here that our protagonist was not especially attracted to Darren's wife. But he suspected Darren suffered certain illusions about how married he really was. It would satisfy him to cuckold his colleague.
Darren, we should also note, was angered by the arrogance of our interesting man. However, Darren was a man who prided himself on his calculating mind. The probability that Susan, the prudish Christian office waif, would succumb to a sordid affair was remote. And even if she did, he was confident his wife, having only a passing interest in sex, was very unlikely to allow herself to be bedded. Two remotes combined and multiplied made for a sure bet, at least in Darren's mind.
They agreed that emails and photographs would be the standard of evidence. They solemnly shook hands and invited their companions to be their witnesses. The whiskey had dislodged the usually hidden and ancient need to stand taller than the next man. And so a wager was made, a die cast, a future plotted.
At this time Susan was seated alone on a couch in her tidy home, a Netflix series streaming while she played a game on her ipad. Her husband was a bookkeeper, although he always introduced himself as an accountant. He was engaged with a spreadsheet in the tiny office space at the back of the house. This room he kept neatly arranged, each stapler, pen, and file assigned a place. The only suggestion of disorder was the locked bottom drawer in which he kept his grandfather's World War Two pistol, and a few sentimental items commemorating a life only partially lived.
A wife is a curious being, but Susan's husband, like most men of his type, lacked curiosity. Our protagonist though is a curious man and he knew that below the surface of every wife there lies a woman, that most unpredictable of God's many creatures. A woman marries to settle a question. Susan's question was "Will I always be alone?" Marriage answered that question in the negative - she had found someone who could not, would not, reject her. And she was correct - the bookkeeper was as dogged in his commitments as he was in balancing ledgers. The problem though, as many a wife has discovered, is that once a question has been answered it leaves room for a new question. To succeed in his quest our protagonist has to find the woman hidden beneath the wife and be the answer to her new question.
The next Monday morning Susan sat at her desk in the noisy production room intent on her computer screen while her fingers raced across the keyboard, editing the clunky prose of her colleagues. Our protagonist noticed her indifference to his presence in the room, she barely offered a glance in his direction. He was wise enough to know that his usual initial ploy of sitting on the edge of a desk, offering the distraction of silly banter, would not work with Susan. He knew that in her eyes he was man without substance, a flirt, someone who is looking to fuck. His reputation, although often an advantage, was now a distinct liability. He needed a new strategy.
The following afternoon he sent an email to Susan asking for a favor. He used a business tone but indicated the matter concerned something requiring discretion. Susan's reply was brief, equally business-like, but betrayed her curiosity. (The fly is in the water.) They met in the corridor outside the elevators.
Our protagonist explained that he was writing a proposal for a charity project and he needed help editing it. He explained that his charity work was a private matter, unknown to his colleagues, and he wanted to keep it that way.
"Of course," said Susan, relieved that his request was so innocent, given his reputation for hitting on women.
"It's just that I've heard such good things about your work and I guessed that you would keep my secret."
Susan tucked the manila folder under her arm and returned to her desk. That evening she spread the sheets of paper across her kitchen table and begun editing the pages our protagonist had randomly downloaded earlier in the day, checking only that it was poorly, but not too poorly, written. Her mind wandered from her task, trying to reconcile the man with the reputation for womanizing and the man who proposed charity projects to help needy children in remotest Africa. She concluded that office gossip was poisonous and that people are too quick to judge. She shared her newly acquired wisdom with her husband who grunted his assent before returning to his own longwinded story. But something sat uneasily with her, something she was unable to fully bring into view. The fact was that he had the reputation of a womanizer and, well, she was a woman, and yet she detected no interest from him towards her, apart from her editing skills. She was suddenly thrown back to a time when she looked with envy at the pretty girls, the desired girls, the girls who got fucked. She recalled her teenage nighttime sobbing that racked her flat-chested torso - but this soon enough gave way to a more romantic quest - to find love, a less sordid solution to the problem of her self-esteem. If she was not a girl who got fucked, she would be a girl who found love. This is how love became the answer to her question - Will I be alone? But now that this fear of being cast into solitude had been addressed, her teenage fear, the fear of not being desired, reemerged. Perhaps, after all, she thought, I am unfuckable, unranked in the league table of available pussy. Whereas before, her nerdy, bespectacled, flat-chested self was invisible to the boys who fucked, now her dowdy, bespectacled, wifely self was invisible, even to the office womanizer.
All she wanted was to be noticed by him, seen as a woman. Nothing more. Besides, as she told herself, as she adjusted the tighter-than-usual sweater over her above-the-knee skirt, he is a good person really.
