Bitter Sweet Street Page 2

  “It isn’t that I love her, Angelica. It’s that I’m not sure if I love you.”

  I opened my mouth but couldn’t get a word out.

  “I’ll sleep in the guest room,” he muttered and walked off.

  I stared at him, shocked to the core, about the fact that what I hadn’t wanted to believe was true, but even more because he simply walked away.

  “Shouldn’t we talk about this?” I called out after him.

  He turned and looked at me, calmly.

  “You wouldn’t listen anyway, so what’s the point?”

  “I would –”

  “No, you wouldn’t, Angelica. You never do,” he said.

  “What?”

  “For Christ’s sake, I’ve been telling you for years to get yourself together. You haven’t listened, so how can you be so goddamn surprised that I finally stepped over the line?”

  “I should get myself together?” I echoed.

  “Jesus,” he muttered and walked off.

  I stood there staring after him, not knowing what to do and not entirely sure what he had meant. Then he suddenly came back with a pile of something that looked like my underwear. He threw them in my face, but I was too stunned to react, and they fell to the floor, except for a pair of panties which hung on my shoulder.

  Stewart snagged them and held them in front of me. “Granny panties,” he snarled. “Is it such a surprise that a girl who wears a thong is of more interest to someone like me?”

  I opened my mouth, but he stormed off before I managed to get a word out and I heard the door to our guest bedroom slam shut.

  I looked down at the panties and bras by my feet.

  The bastard was trying to pin this on me? He excused his adultery with the fact that I wore comfortable underwear?

  Deep in my belly, anger started to simmer.

  Chapter Two

  Lysol

  I was the last one to join the management team for our Monday morning meeting, and my eyes met Stewart’s when I saw the lone empty chair at the oval table. The bastard had deliberately put me in a situation where my only option was to sit exactly where I’d caught him in flagrante delicto. I almost laughed out loud when that term skedaddled through my mind because I was quite sure there hadn’t been anything flagrante about the whole thing. I knew my Latin, and blazing wasn’t a word that usually had anything to do with Stewart and being naked. As I put my notepad and pen in front of me, I wondered if they’d wiped off the table when they were done.

  Weekly status meetings weren’t my favorite thing. I had, in fact, on more than one occasion thought about pushing needles into my eyeballs just so I’d have a valid excuse not to attend. When I was younger and full of the restless, naïve kind of energy that years in the corporate machinery hadn’t managed to extinguish, I’d submitted improvement suggestions.

  Bi-weekly status meetings, to free up time? Performance measures that actually meant something, and wasn’t just there to give us all the annual bonus? Accountability for your deliverables, instead of a set of meaningless magnets on a whiteboard, depicting a traffic light that was perpetually green?

  Management had smiled and nodded, patted my shoulder and given me promotion after promotion until I was so promoted I didn’t quite care anymore and stopped submitting suggestions. My bonuses had gone into the kids’ college funds until they were overflowing, and then into retirements accounts and the cleaning crew that kept our huge house in perfect order. Now I had minions who came to me, fresh-faced and energetic, asking me if we shouldn’t do a review of our key performance indicators. I nodded and agreed, knowing well they’d work long into the evenings to produce a report which we’d all hum and haw about. And bury in a folder somewhere on the server.

  “Angelica, what do you think about the suggestion?”

  I jolted, although only slightly, and likely not in a way anyone noticed. My thoughts had been drifting, but this wasn’t at all uncommon in these meetings, and I glanced quickly over at the presentation on the wall as I smiled calmly. Ah, I thought. Process improvement suggestions. Again.

  “I think it’s an excellent proposal, Michael. Innovative and fresh,” I said confidently to my colleague, who had a whisper of a smile in his eyes.

  He’d known I hadn’t been paying attention.

  The young man who was standing at the head of the table had no clue, and he blushed a little as he straightened his back. Oh, God, I thought. To be that young.

  “I agree, that’s what I thought too,” Michael said in an incredibly serious voice, nodding decisively.

  He was heading our engineering organization, and I knew for a fact he disliked internal processes even more than he hated his ex-wife. He’d told me exactly that at our last Christmas party. He had also shared emphatically that he wanted no part in trying to improve neither his former spouse nor our ways of working. Futile endeavors he’d muttered and called out to the bartender for another round of shots.

  “Maybe we should put a small workgroup together, and have them draft a charter for the activity?” I asked, and added, “Someone from sales might lead it, to ensure the customer perspective is properly embedded into our ways of working?”

  When most of my colleagues in the senior management team nodded, I thought the young man would stretch his arm up and shout, “Me, me! Pick me!”

  I looked at the head of sales, who also happened to be my husband, and raised my brows.

  “Excellent,” Stewart muttered, clearly not enthusiastic about the prospect of using his resources on yet another internal project. “I appreciate that you want to keep us involved, Angelica, but shouldn’t finance –”

  Oh, hell no, I thought and interrupted him immediately.

  “We would be delighted to review the outcome, or even participate to some extent if you need the assistance, but we have an audit coming up, as you know, so we’re a little bit short of resources right now,” I murmured coolly. “Besides,” I added with a pointed look on the cheating fool, “Sales and Marketing are so much better at collaborating, aren’t you?”

  Stewart knew what I meant and backed down.

  “Fine,” he snapped.

  I’d finally remembered the name of the young man who stood silently at the head of the table, shuffling his feet and clearly sensing that something he didn’t understand was going on, although he was clever enough to not interrupt. I decided to reward him for that restraint with the torture he so clearly wanted, gave him a smile, and turned to my husband.

  “Maybe Joshua would want to take the lead on this one, Stewart? His initial findings were impressive.”

  Our eyes met and held, and finally he gave in.

  “Josh, put a team together,” my now sulking husband muttered.

  The meeting went on, and I sighed with relief, hoping I would be able to zone out for the rest of it while the others gave progress reports which in reality were just lists of things they’d done which firmly omitted all the things they hadn’t.

  We were almost half-way through the agenda when the door opened, and the next presenter came in. This was common practice because we never managed to stick to the time slots, so the ones invited for briefings often joined us a bit before they were up, and simply sat at the back until it was their time. I was busy trying to figure out how to handle the fact that my husband wasn’t sure he loved me, so it took me a while to notice that the others around the table seemed uneasy. I turned my head slowly and glanced over my shoulder to see who had come in. The pale, yellow skirt was the first thing I saw, and then my eyes met those of the twenty-something girl my husband was doing on the side. She realized immediately that I knew, or maybe Stewart had warned her, and a faint blush colored her cheeks. She raised her chin a little, though, and met my gaze defiantly, almost smugly.

  I kept my face blank and turned forward. What in the hell was Stewart thinking? She was on his team, so she was clearly there at his request. I had no clue what he was trying to a
ccomplish by bringing her into the meeting.

  I saw the glances everyone was aiming at me, and at Stewart, and realized that they all knew, which meant my philandering spouse had been lying that morning when he told me it had been a single, unfortunate, event. It took me another minute to figure out that they might know what was going on, but none of them condoned what my husband was doing. The glances they gave him were not friendly, and when my eyes met Michael’s, he winced apologetically. No one said anything, and after a brief pause, our head of human resources continued talking about our upcoming career assessments.

  As he droned on, I also realized that they were all waiting for me to cue them in on how we would handle the situation. Having a married couple on the management team was something we’d discussed off and on over the years, but Stewart and I had early on promised to never bring our personal life into the office, and we never had. Not until that moment.

  I sat in silence for a while, trying to calm down. Trying to behave like a calm, cool and collected business woman. The others debated upcoming changes within the company, and through their quiet murmur, I felt how the anger that had been simmering since the evening before bubbled into fury. In a final effort to keep it together, I turned my head toward the glass wall showing the rest of the employees that the management style we had was open and inclusive, except when we pulled the blinds, which we did most of the time. They were open now, though, and our cleaning lady had parked her pushcart outside.

  “Excuse me for just a little while,” I heard myself saying as I got to my feet.

  Then I walked outside, ignoring their stunned faces as I swiftly picked what I needed from the cart and marched back into the still silent room. Holding a roll of paper in one hand, I put a spray bottle of Lysol on the table with a loud thud, right where I’d been sitting.

  “This table needs cleaning,” I said calmly.

  “Angeli –”

  “Will you do it?” I interrupted Stewart. When he didn’t reply, I turned to the girl in the back and noted with great satisfaction that her face was less arrogant. “Or maybe you would like to do it?”

  “What?” she breathed, and I almost laughed at her surprise.

  “No?” I asked, but it wasn’t a question at all, and she didn’t answer. “Okay then,” I said, and pushed my notepad off the table with such force it flew into the glass wall.

  The loud bang echoed in the stunned silence around me, and I could see heads turning in the open landscape outside. I calmly sprayed a good part of the table with detergent and started wiping.

  “Angelica, what are you doing?” Jonas asked calmly.

  Jonas was our CEO and majority owner of the company. I’d known him since I started as a junior accountant, when he was just the son of the owner and way before his father retired and handed him the reins. We’d always liked each other, and he was a big part of why I’d stayed so long in the company. His face was blank, but there was a tightness around his mouth, and he had straightened his back in a way I knew from experience meant he was upset.

  “I’m sorry, Jonas, this will only take a second. It’s just that a week ago, I saw your vice president of sales and marketing right in this very spot. He was on top of the girl cowering in the back, and I do not want any of their bodily fluids on my papers.”

  There was a stunned silence, and then Stewart cleared his throat.

  “Maybe we should talk about this outside the office, Angelica?” he asked.

  “Maybe you should have done her outside the office, Stewart?” I retorted, straightened my back and snapped, “This is beyond even your brand of stupid. Leaving this chair empty for me to sit in.” I paused and thumped the spray bottle into the table again. “Right here, where I saw that yellow skirt,” I paused to point at the offensive garment behind me, “swaying on each side of your flabby ass as you FUCKED HER.”

  My voice had increased to a loud shout, and I pulled in air, forcing myself to calm down. The situation had totally justified it, but I was almost fifty years old, a goddamned finance vice president, and it wasn’t like me to yell crude vulgarities in the office. Or any kind of setting. When I had regained some sort of composure, I turned toward the circle of men around the table, aimed my eyes on the head of human resources, and growled, “Get the maximum severance package lined up for me.”

  He didn’t reply, and I turned to our CEO. “I have no right to demand it, but I ask you to please sign off on that package, Jonas. I think I deserve it.”

  I swung around, looked at the pale girl behind me and leaned toward her. “Doing your boss is never a good career move, honey, whatever he told you.”

  I heard loud shouting ensue behind me as I marched out of the conference room and through the open, activity based, landscape where we had no fixed seats which meant you had to be in the office early in the morning to get one of the good ones. Unless you were a part of the management team because everyone knew which desks we always used and I could roll in any time I wanted and expect my activity based desk to be free.

  Michael caught up with me as I reached my desk.

  “Angelica,” he started, but I whirled around.

  “I will not apologize!” I snapped at him.

  “Wasn’t going to ask you to,” he murmured. “Are you okay?”

  I started throwing the few things I had on my desk into my laptop bag, for the first time glad we had that ridiculous clean desk policy, so you were barely allowed to have a pen lying around.

  “How long have you all known?” I asked.

  “A while,” he muttered.

  I froze, staring at my laptop.

  A while. And none of them had told me.

  I had nothing on my laptop which wasn’t company related. Not a single picture, or email. With hands that were shaking a little, I pushed it to the side, reached over to my assistant’s desk, and snagged a stack of post-its.

  “Mrs. Marsden?” she asked quietly.

  I wrote down my password, straightened and looked at her. She seemed worried.

  “Here’s my password, I have the same in all systems.”

  “Okay,” she whispered, and I saw her throat work as she swallowed.

  “You have my private email, so tell the team to contact me there if they ever need references. You will all get glowing ones.”

  “Okay,” she repeated, although this time, a little bit hoarsely.

  I saw Stewart walk out of the conference room together with the head of human resources and the blonde girl, and our eyes met. He glared angrily at me, but that only sparked my fury.

  Unable to stop myself, I turned to my assistant again and said, “Tell the team that if they ever feel like sleeping with one of the bosses, they should not pick the vice president of sales and marketing. He’s not very good at it.”

  I wasn’t shouting, but the open office landscape around us was silent. Some had stood, and they were all watching me.

  “Ange –” my assistant started, about to use my given name for the first time.

  “He isn’t,” I assured her, and put my hand on Michael’s shoulder. “He deals with sex like Michael here wants his spare parts stock to operate.”

  “Huh?”

  “Get everything in and out as quickly as possible,” I clarified.

  Michael made a choking sound, but I kept addressing my assistant.

  “It’s true,” I said. “And his delivery times are extremely short,” I added, and when Michael’s eyes widened, I nodded to indicate that I was serious.

  For a second I thought he would laugh, but he collected himself and put one of his arms gently around my waist, giving me his support. That felt really, really good because it had started to sink in that I’d just told the entire office my husband sucked at sex.

  Excellent.

  I took a deep breath and turned around to survey the room. My team had gathered around us, and the looks on their faces ranged from supremely pissed to sad. My accounting manager
wiped her cheeks, and I knew I couldn’t just walk away without telling them what was going on. When I spoke again, I did it quietly, knowing that word would spread fast but only addressing my team.

  “I might as well tell you myself that I’m leaving the company, mainly because two weeks ago, I walked into the main conference room and found my husband with his pants by his ankles. He had his fifty-year-old, hairy behind in the air and he was on top of that blonde girl on his team.” I tried to smile as I threw my bag over my shoulder, although I was fairly sure it looked more like I’d smelled something bad. “She was wearing that yellow skirt. You should check it for stains,” I added, and it wasn’t very nice of me, but I was beyond caring about anything.

  Then I walked out of the office where I’d worked for the past twenty-two years, with my head held high and an ache in my belly that felt like fire.

  ***

  I had packed as much as I could fit into the car and was sitting on the front porch when Johnny came home from school. My boy wasn’t stupid, and he knew the minute his eyes hit me that something was wrong.

  “Have to talk to you for a while, buddy,” I murmured and patted the step beside me.

  He sat, and I took a deep breath, at that moment hating Stewart with everything that I was.

  “Your dad and I…”

  I wondered desperately what words one was supposed to use to make this right.

  “You’ve finally had enough of him and the floozy,” Johnny said calmly.

  I turned and stared at him.

  “What?”

  “We don’t know her name, so that’s what we call her.”

  “We?” I wheezed out.

  “Annie and me.”

  “Annie and you,” I semi-repeated. “You know?”

  “Yup,” he said laconically and looked down at his shoes.

  “How long have you…”

  “Probably since it started,” he replied.

  “What?”