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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: General Interest
- Published: 11/24/2020
2020Adultry (Approx. 1,400 wds.)
Susan2
I turned off the program my wife Sally and I had been watching and wondered: what would writers do without the subject of adultery? In the program the husband, for no reason that I could fathom, had confessed to having an affair and the wife, as I could have told the husband, didn’t forgive him but told him to get out of the house.
After this, Sally and I, senior citizens who’d been married fifty years, watched a bit of the local news, all bad, and then went to bed. I fell asleep fairly soon but at five AM my eyes opened and I was fully awake. That stupid TV show had caused me to remember someone I hadn’t thought of in years. Susan. Susan Collins. Yes, that was her name. Before retiring, I’d worked for the State for 25 years. I’d had a number of different jobs, most of them crunching numbers and writing reports (my job title was Statistician) but this one was different.
A liberal governor and legislature had been swept into office and a bill had been enacted to examine the various services offered to “children and youth,” assumed to be in a mess, and to devise a plan to reform them. A small unit had been created to do this and it had been placed in the State’s giant Health Department. The unit had been in existence for two months when my sometime mentor DeWitt Bender called me into his office and told me I was being assigned there. “That children’s thing,” I remembered saying. “Isn’t Lola Agualara its chief?” Lola Agualara was a well-known activist who was reputed to carry a knife in her boot.
“Yes. Needless to say, nothing has been accomplished. Marcus has his eye on it. You know how he likes to save money so it’s on thin ice. I want you to go there and at least write some kind of report. You’re good at that.” Marcus Aurelius Gonzales was the head of the Health Department.
“And what after that?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll find something for you.”
When I reported to my new job the next Monday I was shocked, not at the small office holding two desks that I was to share with another analyst, but at the other analyst. Women who worked for the State were not known for their looks, yet here was one of the most attractive women I’d ever met. She had an oval face, dark hair and eyes and a cover girl figure. I guessed she was about 25 years old. Her name was Susan Collins.
As I was to learn over the next few weeks, Susan, like himself, was from New York. Besides her looks she was smart and ambitious. She had a master’s degree in health economics or something like that from Columbia. She’d come out to California as an adventure, she said, before really settling down. The rest of the staff consisted of Mary, a Latino, who was a competent secretary; Zelda, a woman with wild hair who looked like a witch; and Harris, who looked liked someone left over from the hippie era. Somehow they’d collected a lot of information from the state agencies currently providing services to those under 21 and a lot of folders lie untouched around the place.
Susan and I decided to divide up the many folders and write summaries of their information and we also interviewed people from some of the most important agencies. Lola Agualara, I should mention, spent most of her time making phone calls to legislative aides and to people representing different children and youth groups, of which there were an amazing number. Susan and I got along well and took to having lunch together at the State capitol cafeteria. Whenever we appeared in the cafeteria we drew a lot of attention from the men eating there. I didn’t think they were looking at me. A few of my friends who spotted Susan and I together called to ask where I’d found her and to tell me State workers weren’t supposed to enjoy their work.
Then something happened. Lola, perhaps befitting her role as head of the Children and Youth unit, became pregnant. While this had no effect on the unit’s work she eventually had to take a leave of absence and I became the unit’s acting head. This was okay until late one afternoon when DeWitt Bender called to say that I had to come to the office of the Health Department’s Chief, Marcus Aurelius Gonzales. I asked him why and he told me that Marcus was on one of his periodic rampages to cut costs and this meant to eliminate useless projects such ours seemed to be. I put on my jacket, which luckily I’d worn that day, and bid Susan good-bye. She wished me good luck. Then I had a second thought. Marcus was known to have an eye for good-looking women and in fact the staff on the floor of his office was known to some as Marcus’s harem although no impropriety was ever reported. You’re coming with me, I told Susan.
Marcus Aurelius’s office, as I recall it, was big and, at that time in the evening, looked dark and threatening. Besides Marcus, his financial guy. Henry Simpson, was there and of course DeWitt Bender. I should mention that Marcus knew me, if only slightly, from several other meeting we’d had and these hadn’t been cordial. The first thing he said, looking at me, was, “So you’re in on this?” Before I could respond, DeWitt Bender said that I was very competent with numbers and writing reports and he’d assigned me there. Then Marcus looked at Susan. I quickly introduced her and mentioned the degree she had from Columbia. “So, smart as well as beautiful,” he said. You could say things like that back then. “She’d very capable,” I said. Marcus leaned back in his executive chair and said “So, tell me why I shouldn’t disband your unit and save the department some money?”
The real answer was that there was no reason not to but the same could have been said about a lot of other parts of the State, maybe most of them. I related what Susan and I had been doing and reminded him that this was all because the legislature had demanded that something be done. Marcus grunted. DeWitt Bender said, “A report will be coming soon, by the end of the month, I believe, isn’t that so?’ He looked at me. The end of the month! Was he kidding? But I knew that was my cue, “Yes, I said. Marcus looked at Henry Simpson, his financial guy. Henry told him the departmental budget could stand it. The meeting went on for a while longer but that was essentially it. Susan and I left Marcus’s office and got into an elevator. She threw her arms around me and kissed me. “You did it,” she said. “You saved our unit.” I put this down to the enthusiasm of the moment. But when we got out of the elevator she said, “We should celebrate. My apartment is only a few blocks from here. Why don’t you come over?” What? Maybe that wasn’t only an enthusiastic kiss. And she’d held it for a little while and I’d kissed her back, hadn’t I? I tried to recall the moment. Yes, I’d been tempted, I very nearly said, “Sure.” Instead, idiot that I was, I looked at my watch, said I could just catch the last bus home and virtually ran off.
Of course that report wasn’t ready by the end of the month but by that time Marcus had gone on to other things. Lola had her child, a girl I think, and returned to the office, I was no longer Acting Chief, a report was produced and sent to the legislature recommending some changes, some of which were pretty good, I thought, but nothing was ever done. DeWitt Bender kept his promise and I was made head of another unit that was involved in crunching numbers.
As for Susan, she returned to New York. We kept in touch for a while but then I think she got back together with an old boy friend and that was that. So, that was as close as I’d come to having an affair. If I’d done, I certainly wouldn’t have told Sally.
I eventually got back to sleep.
###
Susan2(Martin Green)
2020Adultry (Approx. 1,400 wds.)
Susan2
I turned off the program my wife Sally and I had been watching and wondered: what would writers do without the subject of adultery? In the program the husband, for no reason that I could fathom, had confessed to having an affair and the wife, as I could have told the husband, didn’t forgive him but told him to get out of the house.
After this, Sally and I, senior citizens who’d been married fifty years, watched a bit of the local news, all bad, and then went to bed. I fell asleep fairly soon but at five AM my eyes opened and I was fully awake. That stupid TV show had caused me to remember someone I hadn’t thought of in years. Susan. Susan Collins. Yes, that was her name. Before retiring, I’d worked for the State for 25 years. I’d had a number of different jobs, most of them crunching numbers and writing reports (my job title was Statistician) but this one was different.
A liberal governor and legislature had been swept into office and a bill had been enacted to examine the various services offered to “children and youth,” assumed to be in a mess, and to devise a plan to reform them. A small unit had been created to do this and it had been placed in the State’s giant Health Department. The unit had been in existence for two months when my sometime mentor DeWitt Bender called me into his office and told me I was being assigned there. “That children’s thing,” I remembered saying. “Isn’t Lola Agualara its chief?” Lola Agualara was a well-known activist who was reputed to carry a knife in her boot.
“Yes. Needless to say, nothing has been accomplished. Marcus has his eye on it. You know how he likes to save money so it’s on thin ice. I want you to go there and at least write some kind of report. You’re good at that.” Marcus Aurelius Gonzales was the head of the Health Department.
“And what after that?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll find something for you.”
When I reported to my new job the next Monday I was shocked, not at the small office holding two desks that I was to share with another analyst, but at the other analyst. Women who worked for the State were not known for their looks, yet here was one of the most attractive women I’d ever met. She had an oval face, dark hair and eyes and a cover girl figure. I guessed she was about 25 years old. Her name was Susan Collins.
As I was to learn over the next few weeks, Susan, like himself, was from New York. Besides her looks she was smart and ambitious. She had a master’s degree in health economics or something like that from Columbia. She’d come out to California as an adventure, she said, before really settling down. The rest of the staff consisted of Mary, a Latino, who was a competent secretary; Zelda, a woman with wild hair who looked like a witch; and Harris, who looked liked someone left over from the hippie era. Somehow they’d collected a lot of information from the state agencies currently providing services to those under 21 and a lot of folders lie untouched around the place.
Susan and I decided to divide up the many folders and write summaries of their information and we also interviewed people from some of the most important agencies. Lola Agualara, I should mention, spent most of her time making phone calls to legislative aides and to people representing different children and youth groups, of which there were an amazing number. Susan and I got along well and took to having lunch together at the State capitol cafeteria. Whenever we appeared in the cafeteria we drew a lot of attention from the men eating there. I didn’t think they were looking at me. A few of my friends who spotted Susan and I together called to ask where I’d found her and to tell me State workers weren’t supposed to enjoy their work.
Then something happened. Lola, perhaps befitting her role as head of the Children and Youth unit, became pregnant. While this had no effect on the unit’s work she eventually had to take a leave of absence and I became the unit’s acting head. This was okay until late one afternoon when DeWitt Bender called to say that I had to come to the office of the Health Department’s Chief, Marcus Aurelius Gonzales. I asked him why and he told me that Marcus was on one of his periodic rampages to cut costs and this meant to eliminate useless projects such ours seemed to be. I put on my jacket, which luckily I’d worn that day, and bid Susan good-bye. She wished me good luck. Then I had a second thought. Marcus was known to have an eye for good-looking women and in fact the staff on the floor of his office was known to some as Marcus’s harem although no impropriety was ever reported. You’re coming with me, I told Susan.
Marcus Aurelius’s office, as I recall it, was big and, at that time in the evening, looked dark and threatening. Besides Marcus, his financial guy. Henry Simpson, was there and of course DeWitt Bender. I should mention that Marcus knew me, if only slightly, from several other meeting we’d had and these hadn’t been cordial. The first thing he said, looking at me, was, “So you’re in on this?” Before I could respond, DeWitt Bender said that I was very competent with numbers and writing reports and he’d assigned me there. Then Marcus looked at Susan. I quickly introduced her and mentioned the degree she had from Columbia. “So, smart as well as beautiful,” he said. You could say things like that back then. “She’d very capable,” I said. Marcus leaned back in his executive chair and said “So, tell me why I shouldn’t disband your unit and save the department some money?”
The real answer was that there was no reason not to but the same could have been said about a lot of other parts of the State, maybe most of them. I related what Susan and I had been doing and reminded him that this was all because the legislature had demanded that something be done. Marcus grunted. DeWitt Bender said, “A report will be coming soon, by the end of the month, I believe, isn’t that so?’ He looked at me. The end of the month! Was he kidding? But I knew that was my cue, “Yes, I said. Marcus looked at Henry Simpson, his financial guy. Henry told him the departmental budget could stand it. The meeting went on for a while longer but that was essentially it. Susan and I left Marcus’s office and got into an elevator. She threw her arms around me and kissed me. “You did it,” she said. “You saved our unit.” I put this down to the enthusiasm of the moment. But when we got out of the elevator she said, “We should celebrate. My apartment is only a few blocks from here. Why don’t you come over?” What? Maybe that wasn’t only an enthusiastic kiss. And she’d held it for a little while and I’d kissed her back, hadn’t I? I tried to recall the moment. Yes, I’d been tempted, I very nearly said, “Sure.” Instead, idiot that I was, I looked at my watch, said I could just catch the last bus home and virtually ran off.
Of course that report wasn’t ready by the end of the month but by that time Marcus had gone on to other things. Lola had her child, a girl I think, and returned to the office, I was no longer Acting Chief, a report was produced and sent to the legislature recommending some changes, some of which were pretty good, I thought, but nothing was ever done. DeWitt Bender kept his promise and I was made head of another unit that was involved in crunching numbers.
As for Susan, she returned to New York. We kept in touch for a while but then I think she got back together with an old boy friend and that was that. So, that was as close as I’d come to having an affair. If I’d done, I certainly wouldn’t have told Sally.
I eventually got back to sleep.
###
Kevin Hughes
11/26/2020Aloha Martin,
Cowardice often masquerades as self control. LOL I am glad it worked out the way it did for you...and forgiveness is a difficult thing to deliver to someone you used to trust. All in all, I am glad you got back to sleep! Smiles, Kevin
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