There is a certain anxiety that comes with being an accountant, a sense of excitement – or impending doom, if you suck – that comes with every turn of the calendar page. Our professional lives are filled and regulated by deadlines. April 15th was a big one, of course – my professional equivalent to Christmas – but there is always the end of the next quarter, the end of the fiscal year, the deadline for filing . . . something, somewhere. For some people this kind of constant, unrelenting pressure is too much to bear. They see deadlines like tidal waves lining up to crash down over them, and eventually break under the pressure.
For some of us, though, the prospect of an impending deadline not only provides a vital sense of stability in our lives, it adds a level of excitement as we continuously strive to accomplish the task-at-hand before the clock ticks away. I won't put it on par with the thrill a NASCAR driver gets by bumping bumpers on the last lap of Daytona, but in the bean counters world, deadlines can be exciting things.
No, really.
Compound that with the difficulties of breaking in both a huge new client and a new staff, and you have a level of excitement and anxiety that builds tension like a political campaign. Late hours, bad coffee, morning donuts, network issues, lunch meetings, cubicle hopping, technical issues, paper jams – every little thing in my office was adding to the stress. I was kind of glad I wasn't happily married at the moment – the stress bleeds over, and if things hadn't been so fucked up at home, I would have driven Mary crazy with the late nights and the devotion to the job.
Luckily, she was distracted by a shattered marriage and a deep depression. She was lonely and feeling sorry for herself. She moped about the house incessantly, rarely going out – her forays into public had been exercises in humiliation, so apart from the grocery store she was a pregnant homebody. She'd stay in her room reading or watching TV. She slept a lot. I checked in on her a few times a day over the web – love those hidden web-cams – but I didn't call. Neither did she, after I shut her down when she called 'just to talk'.
Was I being cruel? Perhaps. Needlessly cruel? A matter of opinion. I wasn't just being an asshole for the sake of revenge, despite what you might think. In a lot of ways, this was as hard for me as it was for her – the desire to break down, run to my wife, and beg her to return our marriage to normal was overwhelming, at times, and I'll cop to a fair amount of depression in my own right. Apart from that little sadistic part of me that was enjoying this brutal revenge, my rage had been – mostly – appeased. So why continue the farce? Why not just either cut Mary loose to begin a new life, or go ahead and reconcile and try to rebuild our marriage the way sane people might do?
Good question. I spent many sleepless nights trying to adequately answer it. The conclusions I came up with were difficult to face, but impossible to ignore without lapsing into self-delusion. Everything kept pointing back towards the plan I had formulated, and once I have a plan I stick with it unless there was a compelling reason to alter it.
Now, I know female psychology places a premium on communication – women don't process their emotions until they've had a chance to talk about them at length. While it was a difficult hurdle for me to clear, early in our relationship, I eventually understood it for what it was, and relaxed my natural masculine instinct to recoil from those inane phone calls about someone else's relationship, what she saw on sale at the store, or what some celebrity did to some other celebrity, and why it was scandalous. I learned to do it because I loved my wife and knew that such patient indulgences on my part contributed to her mental health and well being. If I didn't always pay close attention to what she was saying, I'll plead a Y chromosome on that one: men really don't care.
But I didn't have to put up with that any more. When she called that first time – about something ostensibly "important" about groceries – I berated her for the interruption in an icy cold manner that left her cowed for days. I had work to do, I couldn't be bothered with mindless blathering from a woman I didn't need to please any longer. She took the hint, and thereafter she didn't call unless it was, indeed, an emergency. That just made her more depressed. Which made me more depressed – but I couldn't dare show it. That would violate the sanctity of the Plan.
I was content to let her mope in near-silence for a few days until I got a call from her younger sister – my sister-in-law – Susan.
Now if you are just joining us here in Bean Counter world, you should probably know that Susan has it out for Mary, in an understated way, considering that late-blooming, slightly nerdy Susan always played second-fiddle to busty, outgoing Mary growing up. In a lot of ways, Susan was more like me than her sister – she taught High School English, had excellent taste in antiques, was witty and quick with a come-back, and she had a perverted mind that enjoyed the thought of her cheating bitch of a sister suffering – though she harbored enough love not to wish any lasting ill on her.
She had also launched a secret affair with me after I gave her the lion's share of Mary's wardrobe, shoes, and cosmetics. You can't afford that stuff on a teacher's salary, and Mary had taken every opportunity during our marriage to lord our affluence over her single, bookish little sister. Susan expressed her gratitude to me with her tight little schoolmarm pussy, and while Mary wasn't aware of our sexual liaison, she knew Susan and I had gotten closer in the wake of her affair. Later, after I used part of my annual bonus to subsidize her laser corrective eye surgery, she was so pleased with me she gave me access to her ass – and later flew to Canada to spend the New Year's holiday with me.
Susan was largely responsible for my hunt for a second wife. You might wonder why I wanted such a thing, after the debacle with Mary, but the truth is I enjoy being married – when I don't have to worry about fidelity. There's a security and predictability I like about it. As much fun as I was having getting some strange pussy on the side, eventually, when all this was over, I wanted a wife to come home to. That might sound strange, but as sour as I was on marriage with Mary, I was still pretty positive about the institution as a whole.
Mary had no idea I was banging Susan, of course, and we were content to keep it our secret. I love Mary and Susan's parents dearly, and would never want to have them look down on me for "taking advantage" of Susan in my grief over my lost marriage. Or her taking advantage of me. So for the sake of propriety, we were, in effect, having an affair. Of course, that made it all the more exciting.
"What's up, Bill?" her sexy voice asked over the phone. Susan manages to sound alluring even when she's discussing her mother's birthday. "Haven't heard from you in a while, so I thought I'd give you a buzz."
"Well hi there," I grinned into the phone. "I've been ass-deep in alligators at work, or I would've called you."
"I know the feeling – I've got a stack of utterly mediocre essays that I just can't bring myself to read. Spring break can't get here soon enough. How's Sissy?"
"Mary? You'd have to ask her. I haven't been paying attention."
"Liar. Is she still living up to her part of the bargain?"
"So far," I admitted. "We're kind of in a holding pattern. But she hasn't tried to get out of it. If anything she's even more committed. Or so she says."
"I figured as much. Still getting it good and regular?"
"Actually, I've just enjoyed her oral talents. I haven't touched her pussy. I'm wondering how long she can go without dick."
"Well, how long can you go without pussy?"
"My freshman and half of my sophomore year. Accounting major, remember?"
"Well, how about you stop by after work for a refresher course? Besides, I have your first two victims for you. Remember? You wanted me to get you dates?"
"I didn't expect you to move so fast," I chuckled.
