Amanda

“Thanks so much, Gina, for meeting me for lunch,” I say, glad there’s no wind on this fine August day. Consuela–Connie to Andrew and me–has been kind enough to offer lunch once a week for those of us who are addicted to her inspiring food, and I dangle a big, flame-roasted and perfectly seasoned carrot in my husband’s executive assistant’s face: Lunch at one of the most exclusive restaurants in town.

No. Not one of them.

The most exclusive.

“Thank you for bringing me here? This place is great?” Gina talks as if every sentence out of her mouth is a question. It leaves me with my eyebrows perpetually jacked up, like my eyes are getting the brake pads replaced. Nerve endings in my ears connect to my brain, forming expectations that my skin and muscles have to manage. We are primed to hear questions and to respond. Not to hear statements phrased as questions and absorb.

Connie comes over to our table with a sampling tray of marinated olives, mushrooms, cheese, and almonds, with a little fig cake that makes me want to move to Spain. “Amanda! And you are Gina, yes?” She gives Gina her hand, the gesture proper and pleasant. “I believe I have spoken with you on the phone regarding Andrew, but we have never met in person.”

“Nice to meet you?” Gina’s grin is spectacular.

Connie blinks exactly once, touches my shoulder, and retreats. “Ladies, I leave you to your talk. If I have learned anything in my years of business, it is this: the combined energy of a man’s assistant and his wife is greater than the sum of his board of directors. All power to you.” She winks. “But you will not need it.”

The expression on Gina’s face makes it clear she doesn’t quite get Connie’s joke/not joke.

“This wine is amazing? It’s really okay to drink during lunch? We’re working?”

“It’s a working lunch,” I say. “Drink up. It’s on Anterdec, too.”

“But that’s a violation of human resources policy,” she says, deadpan. It takes me a couple of second to realize she’s joking. It’s the inflection. As she sips more wine, she laughs.

I pick up an olive and start eating, pairing it with an almond at the last second. “Gina, you know why I’ve brought you here, right?”

“To fire me?” Her laugh makes it clear she knows Andrew couldn’t function without her.

“God, no!” I gush, going along with it. “He really can’t function without you.”

“Isn’t that great?” she says, swigging more wine, eyeing an olive like it’s a tiny incendiary device.

“You’ve got all the job security you could ever want,” I say, buttering her up.

She bursts into tears.

Um... that wasn’t part of the plan.

“I–I’m sorry?” Great. Now I’m saying my sentences as questions.

“You’re sorry? I’m the one who’s sorry?” She is red faced, her nose flaring, her teeth gnashing together. “I don’t want job security!”

Uh oh. A declaration. She is mad.

“You don’t?”

“I want a commitment!”

“From... Andrew?” A beat passes. My dread skyrockets.

“From Louis!”

“Who is Louis?” Dread pours out of me via a huge, relieved sigh.

“My boyfriend? The one I bring to all the company parties?”

I am drawing a total blank.

“He’s an accountant? Wears a blue suit?”

“Two hundred men who work at Anterdec wear blue suits every day, Gina. You need to be more specific.”

“He has a service parrot.”

Oh. My. God. I know who she means. Josh, Carol, and I spent an entire visit to the tapas bar doing alcohol-infused imitations of him.

“What is a service parrot?”

“Blackbeard is his emotional support bird. Louis has anxiety and–”

She continues speaking, but I don’t hear her. My brain short circuited somewhere in that explanation.

“–and then he said that monogamy is a social construct designed by the rich to control the poor and middle classes, and I started to realize he’s just avoiding the proposal?” Gina finishes, sniffing.

Connie walks out with two tiramisu cupcakes, putting the plate between us. She pats Gina’s shoulder and says, “Eat dessert first. And Louis sounds like a cheater. Cheaters don’t change.”

“But then I wasted all this time trying to make myself fit into his world?” she wails.

The look Connie and I share could cut a diamond with exquisite precision.

“Don’t waste another second of your precious time, my dear,” Connie says, pulling a chair from another table over to ours, inserting herself between Gina and me with a resigned, worldly sigh that I could live three hundred years and never possess. “He is beneath you.”

“How did you know he prefers the woman on top?”

Connie’s blink speaks a thousand words in six languages.

“Gina,” I say, pausing to drink half my glass of Artadi Rioja. “You know the best way to get over a jerk?”

Connie hands her a full glass of wine.

“You throw yourself into your job,” I tell her, working this angle so hard, I’m basically a human protractor. “Spend all your time really working on your career. Show guys like Louis they’re not the center of the universe.”

“Yeah?” she sniffs in between hearty mouthfuls of wine.

“Yeah!” My overly enthusiastic reply gets me a gimlet eye from Connie, who delicately sips her red wine without leaving even one tiny smear of red lipstick on the rim of her glass.

How does she do that? Is this something they teach teenage girls in Spain? Or is it handed down coven to coven?

“Gina,” Connie interjects. Her eyebrows are perfect, hair pulled back in a simple ponytail held with a strip of red silk fabric. “Amanda is correct.”

“I am?”

“She is?”

A sage nod seals the deal. “You need, in fact, to get rid of as many men in your life as possible.”

“I do?”

“She does?”

“Yes.” Connie’s eyes twinkle. She looks like a gemstone, a witchy crystal infused with energy more powerful than words. A warm, creepy feeling takes over my limbs. It’s not the wine.

It’s the wise woman before me.

“Andrew is an impediment to your perfect self,” Connie says, slowly, hypnotically swirling the wine left in her glass.

“Andrew? What does Andrew have to do with me and Louis?”

“He is a man, is he not?”

“Yes? But he’s my boss?”

“And my husband,” I add, clearing my throat for reasons I don’t quite understand, but that feel like a perverted form of jealousy.

Connie silences me with a look that reminds me of harvest moons in dreams where they chase me and swallow me whole.

“Surround yourself with feminine energy. The divinity of womanhood. You need cooperation. Support. Patience. Joy. Men are nothing but competition.”

“You really do know Andrew well, don’t you?” I marvel.

Gina is nodding, her tears slowing. “You’re right? But–how? How do I get rid of all this masculinity in my life?”

“Does Andrew have a vacation planned soon?” Connie asks innocently. I narrow my eyes.

Wait a minute.

“No?” Gina says, pulling out her phone. “Let me look at his calendar?”

“Andrew never takes vacations. We didn’t even get a honeymoon,” I point out.

Her eyes widening, Connie stares me down, the message clear: Don’t blow this.

How did she know?

“That’s right?” Gina murmurs, eyes glued to her screen. “You didn’t? I asked him about it and he seemed to blow me off?”

“He did?” Connie’s indignant voice is formidable. Why do people with European accents always sound so authoritative? “How rude of him to dismiss your concern for his welfare!”

“Yeah!” Gina’s gone declarative again.

Victory will soon be mine.

“That’s right!” Gina shouts, setting down her phone. “He–he did dismiss me. Like Louis! Like Louis and his crazy threesome argument.”

“Threesome?” I lean in. “That’s what the anti-monogamy speech was about?”

“Yes! Can you believe it?”

“Well,” Connie demurs. “A good threesome is to be treasured.”

My turn to glare at her, my message loud and clear: Don’t blow this!

“I am not a prude?” Gina’s voice goes uncertain. “But he insists Blackbeard needs to be there, and that he isn’t cheating if the woman he’s been sleeping with comes into our relationship?”

“About Andrew and that honeymoon,” I say. Not only have the wheels come off the bus, they’re rolling into traffic and turning logging trucks over.

“His schedule’s fine? Nothing he can’t dump off on other people? Why?”

“Can you clear two weeks of his schedule?”

“Hell, yeah! I’ll get rid of him for two weeks and ask for mentoring from more women in the company. Like you!” She reaches for my hand.

“Um, I would be gone for those two weeks, too, Gina.”

“Oh. Right. Why would you want to spend time around so much masculine energy?” she asks.

Visions of my morning lovemaking session with Andrew flash instantly into my mind. “Oh, um–”

“Because Amanda has a grand estate in Weston that she is now in charge of managing, and it is woefully out of date. Remodeling is a large undertaking, and the effort is so great that she will need time with Andrew to bring the property to a standard befitting a Fortune 500 CEO’s private home.”

I point to Connie. “Yeah. That. That’s why.”

A diabolical look takes over Gina’s features. Either that, or the wine makes her spunky. “I like it. Men hate remodeling, right? They hate decorating and picking out colors and tiles and all that. So Mr. McCormick can spend two tortured weeks remodeling while I get time to focus on the feminine divine!” She finishes with a flourish, sucking down her wine and giving Connie and me a laughter-through-tears grin.

“Perfect,” we say in tandem.

Note to self: never, ever piss off Connie.

Andrew

Gina is running late. She’s not the type to take long lunches, and after two hours have passed, I’m starting to get annoyed. The phone messages are piling up, someone came into the office to ask about a parking spot issue for a department director, and my favorite coffee isn’t on my desk at two p.m.

Huh.

They say you eventually become your father, but I didn’t know it would start so soon.

Conference calls have dominated my day, with a lunch meeting that ended on a sour note. A walk to the coffee shop would be a nice break.

If annoying.

I text Amanda, Coffee? Gina’s not here and I’m going to get my own.

No immediate answer.

I’ve gone down the elevator and am in the revolving door at the building entrance when I get a reply.

Poor baby. Can you manage the walk all by yourself? Need a user manual on how to buy coffee?

Whoa, I reply. What did I do to piss you off?

We’re having an asshole-boyfriend summit, she replies.

We, who? None of your friends have boyfriends. They’re married or single.

Gina, she answers.

Who’s Gina? I reply. I don’t remember Amanda having a friend named Gina.

Your assistant. Way to prove the point that men are dismissive and feminine energy is more supportive and enveloping, my wife shoots back.

You’re with Gina? My caffeine-deprived mind is calibrating as new information comes in. That explains the two-hour lunch and missing my afternoon coffee. I reach the coffee shop, open the door, and get in line with everyone else. They’re all on their smartphones, necks like giraffes finding tasty blades of grass low to the ground.

I know, I know. I should get my coffee from my brother’s coffee shop chain. I don’t. Because this place is closer.

We’re having lunch at Connie’s, Amanda replies.

I freeze.

My wife. My assistant. My high-powered celebrity-chef friend.

They are together.

And they are likely talking about me.

Are you talking about me? I type quickly, sending before I realize men are at a deep disadvantage when it comes to modern communications. We’re evolutionarily designed to act first, manage later.

This does not serve us well in times like–

My phone rings.

Like this.

“You know,” Amanda starts, in a voice that makes it clear Connie brought out the Spanish sherry, “you shouldn’t assume that when a group of women connected to you get together, you’re the topic of conversation. That is so egotistical.”

“It is.” I shuffle forward, the phone zombies all moving in unison as we get closer to the Order Here sign. I count eleven people ahead of me. Gina has an app on her phone for this. It is pre-programmed with my drink order, Amanda’s drink order, my credit card–you name it.

“You–wait. What? Did you just agree with me?”

“I did. Can you put Gina on the line?”

“Why?”

“Urgent work matter.”

Shuffling sounds, then: “Andrew?” Sniff. “What’s wrong?”

“Can you order my afternoon coffee for me?”

“Oh, my God? I forgot? I can’t believe I forgot? I’m useless?” Sobbing follows. I hear Amanda loudly call me misogynistic and something about smashing the patriarchy.

I’m cool with that. Smash it nice and good.

After Gina puts in my coffee order.

“No need to come back to the office,” I tell Gina, turning on the charm as my temples start to throb. The customer at the counter, an older woman with short, grey hair who is wearing a soft, camel-toned cardigan, pulls out a piece of paper with a long list of orders on it. I hear her say “church youth group” as she smiles at the cashier. “Gina, just put in the order. I’ll pick it up myself. You stay for your lunch and have fun. You deserve it.”

“Really?” Sniff.

“Give me my phone back,” Amanda says in the background, then yells at me. “You’re manipulating your assistant while she’s having a personal lunch?”

“And what, my dear, are you doing having lunch with Gina? Are you two plotting against me?”

Stunned silence greets me. I know what she’s up to. This is about that honeymoon conversation. She’s playing Gina. Good for her. Buys me time.

“I–what? No! No, of course not.”

In the background, I hear, “Tell Andrew I put the order in? I used my phone app? He can get it at the pick-up counter–”

Success. I look to the right and see the special “App Pick Up” line.

Two people.

“Sweetie, I don’t want to take up one more minute of your precious time bonding with Gina,” I tell Amanda. I can imagine her face right now. Teeth clenched, pert nose cute and red at the tip, cheeks pink, eyes angry.

I’m getting turned on just thinking about it.

I frown. Even I have a line. Think I just crossed it.

“I cannot believe I married a man who can’t order his own coffee,” she huffs.

“Wrong. I did just order my own coffee. I simply used a method you would never consider. But I did it. The goal is the end result. The process doesn’t count as long as it’s moral and legal. Tell Connie I said hi, and make reservations for us to have dinner there next Thursday. Gina can check my calendar for the exact time.”

“Andrew! You’ll pay for this!”

“Gotta go,” I lie. “Sultan on the other line.”

She hangs up on me before I can do it.

Double success.

Because a call hangup doesn’t count against you if they do it in anger.

But then the dreaded text follows. You know. The Post-Call Text. The one I normally pretend not to see. The one where they get the last word. Where they say all of the smartass comments they wish they’d said when the conversation originally happened.

Call me right now, you pig lover, for I have a question, the text says.

WHOA.

I squint at the phone. That’s not Amanda.

It’s the sultan.

Shit! I conjured him. The lie to Amanda is biting me in the ass.

And with a nine-figure deal negotiated and construction barely on schedule, I have to answer.

Hello, Omar. What’s up? This is not a business call. I brace myself for a forty-minute conversation about the sultan’s sex life, questions about American politics, and–worse than all of that–his obsessive search for a rare pessary once worn by Jane Austen’s chambermaid.

My cock. Let me call you, he replies.

I groan.

“Dude, there’s one person ahead of you. Have some patience,” some small man with a shaved head, thick-rimmed glasses, and a flannel shirt last fashionable during Bill Clinton’s first term says to me.

I glare at him.

He backs up and finds nirvana in the coffee stirrers.

My phone rings. Unknown Caller. I answer it, shifting my weight from one leg to another, knowing he’ll want to Facetime.

“Omar! So glad to hear from you.”

“Put me on Facetime, Andrew. I cannot derive any benefit from this conversation without watching those superb face muscles of yours.”

“Ah, I am in public right now.”

“Public! Doing what?”

“Getting coffee.”

“What is the ‘getting’ part, Andrew?”

“I am in a coffee shop, waiting for my coffee. It’s almost up.”

“Waiting? Why do they not bring the coffee to you?”

Here we go. If Amanda and Gina wanted to talk about the patriarchy, they should have taken this call.

“My assistant–” I change course midstream, knowing my explanation will get me nothing but shit from the sultan if he hears that I’m fetching my own coffee because the woman who works for me is taking personal time. Appealing to his baser nature will get a better result. “I am here because it is a visual feast of female flesh.”

The little hipster in line in front of me suddenly goes still, like a rabbit listening for prey.

“You Americans. I love it. You get tits and ass with your caffeine. I need to buy the house next door to yours and build a better one, Andrew. Then we can hang out at these feasts of flesh and find women to bed.”

This is his version of small talk.

“McCormick?” My name’s called, drink handed off to me, and I get the hell out of there before Omar gets me talking about nude women in public.

“If you moved here, there would never be a dull moment,” I say, shining him on. “How is the search for the missing pessary?” Do I want to hear about it? Hell, no.

Do I want to hear him shit talk? Even less.

“I have it on good authority that a retired physician from Fiji who supplied drugs to high-level businessmen in China is hiding the pessary in Gibraltar, so I have sent a special-forces team there on an assassination mission to get it for me.”

“That sounds... illegal.” I’m at the revolving door, going into my building, when I finally take a sip of my coffee.

And damn near spray the glass door.

Bzzz.

I look at my text window.

Like the new peppermint pumpkin stevia drink? Yum! Love you! Amanda texts.

“Sonofabitch,” I mutter.

“Excuse me?”

“Wasn’t talking to you.” Plunk goes the nasty coffee in the trash. “But I am listening.”

“Who did you call a bitch? Is that a new term of endearment you use for women?”

“I kicked a homeless person who was in the way of the trash can,” I lie.

“Ah. I understand completely. So, I am calling to ask you about energy systems for your island.”

“My what?”

“Your island.”

“I don’t own an island.”

“What do you mean, you do not own an island? Everyone owns an island! How can you not own an island? Next you will tell me you do not fund a spaceship prototype operation. Ah, Andrew. You are so funny. Americans are so funny.”

Right. Ha ha.

For the next five minutes, as I ride the elevator up to my floor, I’m treated to a monologue about the sultan’s private island. Sea levels, water filtration systems, desalination protocols, you name it.

He never, not even once, asks me a question. Nor does he expect any response, even during his deep breaths to continue.

I get to my office, sit down, and look at the stack of contracts I need to review and sign. My agenda’s glowing on one of the three screens on my desk, and CRM software with escalated issues glowers at me like my dad’s disapproval after I lost a swim match.

“Andrew! Let me show you my island. I need the opinion of someone almost as powerful as me. Join me in my world. You have the virtual reality goggles I sent you, no?”

I shake myself, shocked that he’s soliciting my involvement.

“I do.”

“Then come. I am king. I will let you in. We will sleep with all the women we want and your wife never has to know. Even you and I can have sex in virtual reality, Andrew. Sodomy is illegal in my country, but not in VR! Well, not in VR for me. I need to think about whether it is illegal for the masses. But you and I can bugger each other in virtual reality and it means nothing!”

“Uh...”

“Ah ha ha! You thought I was serious. Of course I was not. Americans are so humorless. You are not my type.”

“Right.” That nasty taste in my mouth isn’t just the stevia.

“When you are here, in VR, you are completely safe. No one can harm you.”

“Why would anyone want to harm me? Aside from the crazy paparazzi,” I ask him.

“You do not receive the death threats?”

“What? No.” Changing my focal point, I hone in on the conversation. Death threats? This just went from endless prattle to seriously troubling in three seconds.

“Really?” His voice takes on a boastful tone, like Dad with an accent. “I receive them daily. My bodyguards require their own bodyguards.”

“I am not a ruler, Omar. I do not have your problems.” Or your wealth. I don’t say that part aloud.

“Some people want a piece of me. Some want me in pieces. That is why I am so focused on securing my genetic legacy.”

He moves from topic to topic like a dragonfly on a New England lake in late summer.

“How are you doing that?” I ask, regretting the question instantly.

“Cryogenics. Cryogenics will solve everything. It’s not just for storing sperm to create seven hundred babies with surrogates, you know.”

“I didn’t know that was a feature.”

His laugh rings into the phone like a fire alarm. “Oh, Andrew. You slay me. I assume you have sperm stored in appropriate volume for your genetic heritage? People like us should spread our genes far and wide. DNA as strong as that of rulers and CEOs should be used to yield superior beings.”

“I like to use my sperm the good old-fashioned way, Omar.”

“One woman at a time? You impregnate them yourself? What a waste of your time. You can only do what–ten? twenty?–per month at best. What is your personal best, Andrew?”

He’s asking for a number.

First person to mention a number always loses. Dad taught us that when we were kids.

“My number could never compare to yours, so I wish to avoid embarrassing myself by answering your question.”

Right answer. He laughs.

“Oh! Oh, dear. I must go. My team has captured the retired physician in Gibraltar, but no pessary. Should I have him beheaded? The live video feed shows they are waiting for my command.”

“No! No. Show mercy.”

“Mercy?” He says the word like he’s never heard it before.

“He, uh... I wouldn’t have him killed. He might know about other rare Jane Austen artifacts. Beheading him would cut off the supply of information.”

“Good call! I will let him live. You are a wimp, Andrew, but you are amusing.”

Beep. Call ended.

I lean back in my chair and rub my pounding temples.

Tap tap tap.

It’s Carol, my sister-in-law’s sister. The connection means nothing, but her sister and my brother made a little girl a few months ago, a child I’m uncle to, and Carol is her aunt.

More than anything, though, we’re employer and employee.

She marches up to my desk holding a coffee from the same place I just left. “Here. Amanda said to send this.”

Wary, I take a sip. It’s normal.

“Uh, thank you?”

“No. Thank you. Anterdec just bought my department mid-afternoon coffees. Amanda called and asked me to do the run. Something about teaching you a lesson but not being too cruel.”

“Mercy,” I say, contemplative as I take another sip.

“Mercy is underrated.” Carol smiles as she walks away.