Chapter 11
The man walks briskly from his parking space and into the cool morning air. The sun is out, and it’s blue sky to the horizon. An otherwise perfect day, save for the migraine that threatens to debilitate his entire day.
He wears dark jeans, a blue blazer with pinstripes, and an open-collared yellow shirt. He smiles at the guard in the bright lobby, feeling sorry for the guy since he needs to be here working on a Sunday. While standing at the gleaming elevator, he stares at his reflection in the polished metal doors. On the outside, he’s a picture of health, good fortune, and success. Inside—he’s dying a slow death.
Fingers to his temple, he massages the skin as the elevator door opens. He steps inside. A young woman he hadn’t noticed until now enters behind him.
“Good morning,” he says cheerfully, although he feels anything but cheerful.
“Good morning,” she replies back in a demure voice, her eyes down, as if afraid of conversing with him. She stares straight ahead, and he uses the opportunity to sneak a quickened glance her way: shoulder-length brown hair, thin-framed, jeans-clad, taut cotton top, C-cup breasts, and nice, full ass. What is it about these young things nowadays with their big titties and plump asses? God knows they didn’t make girls with racks and trunks like this when he was growing up. Must be something in the water.
The man steals another glimpse. She’s a bit too skinny for his taste, but she’s young, and afraid of him, he can tell—and he likes that. He feels himself begin to harden beneath his dress pants. Staring down, taking in the curve of her denim-covered round ass, he fights the escalating desire to punch the stop button, throw her back into the wood-paneled corner as she stares at him with an unfathomable look, and peel down those jeans to impale her. Oh, she wouldn’t know what to do with his cock, he muses. No, sir. She’s never been ridden, this much he can tell.
But instead of palming the stop button and getting dirty, he just sighs heavily, as if deep breathing will somehow purge him of these negative thoughts.
It does not.
The headache is still there—a dull, ever-present entity that he’s learned to live with. Maybe it’s a tumor in the brain. Maybe his doctor will tell him he has less than six months to live. Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t it? Then he could go out with a bang, the way he dreams of leaving this dreadful place, not giving a fuck whom he takes down in the process.
The elevator door opens. The man waits for the young woman to exit. He follows suit, stepping quickly in the opposite direction, down the hallway that leads to his suite. He opens the door and winds past several offices and his assistant’s cube. He unlocks the door to his office and goes inside, shutting the door, as is his habit, even though it is the end of the weekend and no one else will be here.
The man sits at his desk—sleek glass and shiny aluminum. His computer, an 8-core Apple Mac Pro with dual 30-inch Cinema HD displays, is in sleep mode. A laptop connected to a separate LCD is powered down. He touches the mouse, and it comes to life almost immediately. Logs in with his ID and password. Then checks his in-box, which has about forty unread messages. Ignoring those, he opens a new message window and hovers his fingers above the keyboard.
Cracking each knuckle, the man focuses on the sound for a moment before reaching into his desk drawer and pulling out a Tylenol bottle. He pops a handful of capsules into his palm—six, eight, he’s not sure—and swallows them down with bottled water left over from yesterday.
Fingers rest on the keyboard again.
He grimaces as the pain thunders. He feels the ache in the back of his neck—the steady drone like rain. His forehead. His sinuses. They all hurt . . . like hell.
He closes his eyes. Reopens them.
Fucking pain.
Will it ever stop?
Ignoring the searing ache and pounding inside his skull, the man calls up the images.
They bring him absolutely no relief.
Unhurriedly, the man begins to type.
Chapter 12
Michael walks into the house, followed closely by Kennedy and Zack. It is Sunday evening and dark outside. Michael tosses his keys on the hallway table as he drops his bag by the stairs. Kennedy does the same.
“Zack, be a good boy and bring your stuff up to your room,” Kennedy says.
“Okay, Mommy.” He scoots up the stairs, quickly out of sight. Michael walks the first floor of their home, flicking on lights as Kennedy fingers the mail from the weekend. Michael walks into the den and powers up the desktop computer, dropping his BlackBerry on the desk. As he waits for the machine to boot up, he returns to the kitchen, where he pours himself a glass of orange juice and scans the letters. Disinterested, he throws the pile of mostly junk mail back onto the table.
Back in the den, he sits down and pulls up a Web browser. Like most people, Michael has multiple e-mail accounts. The main ones, his personal Yahoo! and his work e-mail, are synched to his BlackBerry. The others, the Gmail and AOL accounts, are not.
On the quiet train ride home, Michael had spent some time checking his e-mail. So he’s already up to date on his Yahoo! and work e-mail. Now he does a quick scan of his Gmail mail. As usual, it’s mostly spam. A few “real” messages that he reads but doesn’t respond to right away.
Michael knows that after Zack is put to bed, Kennedy will spend the rest of the evening working on her laptop. That’s to be expected, since she went an entire weekend without it, which is a pretty big feat. He’ll be cool with her working—Michael will take a shower and then retire to the couch in the family room, remote in hand. He’s thinking about the stuff that is on his DVR and what, if anything, of interest is on television tonight.
He logs in to AOL next. He’s greeted with the familiar “You’ve got mail” voice and scans his in-box. He zeroes in on the messages he sent himself from his BlackBerry earlier today. The photos of their tryst with the lovely Makayla are there, and Michael resists the urge to open them now. Better to wait until Zack is fast asleep before pulling up the images in their entire splendor on the large computer screen. He can hear Zack on the steps, taking them quick, as he’s prone to do.
“Zack, slow down!” Michael yells, his eyes going to a message with a blank subject heading. He scans the address field: [email protected]. One he doesn’t recognize. He clicks on the message, and a new window pops open.
FUCKERS. YOU AND THAT BITCH WILL REGRET FUCKING ME OVER.
Michael does a double take. He rereads it. Checks the header to see if it was addressed to him explicitly.
It was.
Michael crinkles his forehead. WTF? His first thought is to hit Reply and bang out “Who is this and what are you talking about?” But the lawyer in him knows that it’s better to take a step back before doing anything rash.
Zack rushes into the den, eyes wide.
“DADDY, you said I could open my present from New York as soon as we got home!”
Michael quickly closes the message window and smiles at his son. He minimizes the main AOL window and gets up as Michael drags him into the hallway.
“Okay, okay,” Michael exclaims. He bends down and unzips the outer pocket of his garment bag, reaching in up to his elbow. “Now, where did I put that present?” he says. “Hmm, I don’t see it here.”
“DADDY!”
“Okay, okay! Can you NOT wake up the entire neighborhood?”
Kennedy has joined them, arms folded across her chest as she observes amusedly.
Michael pulls out a plastic bag and hands it to Zack. He tears through it, pulling out a white T-shirt with I ♥ NY! emblazed in black letters with a red heart on the front. Zack looks up at them with a sour look on his face.
“Thanks. Is this it?” he asks disbelievingly. Kennedy rolls her eyes.
“You can be so ungrateful, Zack. Give it, I’ll wear it,” Michael says, snatching the tee out of his son’s hand.
“Daddy, be serious!”
“Okay.” Michael reaches deeper and pulls out another plastic bag, this time encasing something heftier. He passes it to Zack, who glances quickly at his mom while reaching inside. He pulls out a Transformers Optimus Prime action figure. Zack’s eyes grow to saucers.
“Oh my God!” he exclaims.
“Zackary Christopher Handley!” Kennedy scolds.
“Sorry, Mommy, but this is WAY cool! Wait until Jeremy sees this. He’s gonna be so jealous. Thanks, Mommy! Thanks, Daddy!” Zack yanks away the plastic and paper backing, pulls out the figure, and skips away to the family room.
“Do you mind getting him ready for bed?” Kennedy asks.
“I need to spend a couple of hours on the laptop and don’t want to be up all night.”
Michael eyes her. “What do I get out of the deal?” he asks with a smirk.
“My undying gratitude,” she retorts but gives him a playful squeeze.
Michael grins as he says, “Zack, you can play for ten more minutes, and then it’s bath time.”
“Ahh, Daddy!”
Michael shakes his head as Kennedy disappears. He heads back to the den. He sits back down and calls up his mail again, reopening the offending message from [email protected].
FUCKERS. YOU AND THAT BITCH WILL REGRET FUCKING ME OVER.
Michael stares at the screen for a moment. He contemplates calling his wife over to see it, but quickly decides against it. Kennedy will worry and overanalyze things. Better to leave this alone, seeing as how it’s probably a mistake.
Michael stares at the message for a moment more before unceremoniously hitting Delete.
I haven’t fucked anyone over,
Michael tells himself as he signs off from his desktop.
Neither has Kennedy.
We are good people. We are law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. We try to raise our son right, leading by example. We both come from good families. We have kind friends and good coworkers. We’ve never hurt anybody.
We have nothing to worry about, he muses.
Michael hopes this last part is true.
Chapter 13
Life, which for Michael and Kennedy had been stimulating and rejuvenating on the weekend, goes back to normal on Monday.
And normal for Michael, Kennedy, and Zack is pedal to the metal.
They awake at six.
Michael is in charge of breakfast most days, unless he has an early meeting. Kennedy has the task of getting Zack dressed and situated before she gets herself ready. Michael will then feed him. Rare is the day that the three of them have breakfast together. Kennedy normally takes her breakfast to go.
Usually Kennedy drops Zack at school, but today she has to be in the office extra early, so Michael has that duty.
Kennedy, dressed in a sharp pinstripe pantsuit, kisses her men good-bye in the kitchen, wishes them both a good day, and heads downstairs to her BMW. After cleaning up and wiping Zack’s face and fingers clean of syrup, Michael follows Kennedy out the door, strapping his son into the Range Rover and heading to school.
Traffic is as to be expected. Michael drops Zack off about fifteen minutes later. He is unbuckling his seat belt to get out and give his son a hug, but Zack swiftly extricates himself and jumps out of the SUV, spying Jeremy on the sidewalk. The two, once they see one another, are lost in their own world. Michael wishes them a good day and drives away.
He gets on North Capitol Street heading south, and surprisingly traffic is light and moving. Past Union Station he bears right onto Louisiana Avenue, then a series of right turns onto Constitution and Pennsylvania avenues. His commute ends at the Department of Commerce on Fourteenth and Constitution, where he works. Michael parks in the underground garage. He is in his office and logged in to his computer, ready to start his day a few minutes shy of eight
AM
.
Less than two miles away as the crow flies, Kennedy is in a conference room in an unassuming brownstone off New Hampshire Avenue, that houses the National Association of Urban Development. Jacket off, fingers poised over her laptop, she reworks a brief with her paralegal, a bright young man named Daniel. The two make small talk; Daniel asks about Kennedy’s weekend, and she gives him scant details before inquiring about his. Daniel is single, good looking, and gay, so he’s always getting into something. Kennedy can count on him for a good laugh or two.
Both Michael and Kennedy are hard workers. They are focused and stay busy at work, very rarely taking time for themselves. Most days they talk only once on the phone, preferring to text each other. Today is no different. There are back-to-back meetings for Michael until lunchtime, then a quick walk down the street to buy a sandwich and stretch his legs. Kennedy and Daniel are hunkered down in the conference room until after lunch—a Caesar salad with grilled salmon—then it’s back to her office, where she returns phone calls and e-mails, followed by several meetings with senior staff.
It’s amazing to both Michael and Kennedy how quickly the feelings they had over the weekend dissipate by Monday afternoon. Life always pulls one back to the here and now, and regardless of how much they enjoyed their encounter with Makayla, now, several days later, it’s as if their dalliance were a dream.
Several times during the day, Kennedy pauses in her work to consider their weekend. She smiles to herself as she remembers the scent and taste of Makayla.
Less than two miles away, Michael, in the privacy of his office, is doing the same. Face to the glass of one window, he takes a moment to remember Saturday night in all of its splendor—the way he felt at that exquisite moment he entered Makayla, glancing downward as he disappeared amid the honey flesh of her heart-shaped ass.
A beautiful wife. A wonderful son. A great job. Health, success, and a lifestyle that 99 percent of the male population would die for.
Michael knows he has it good.
He counts himself lucky.
He smiles at his reflection in the window.
Several miles away, Kennedy pauses to do the same.
Neither realizes this is the calm before the storm....