by Boswell, Ben
My Wife’s Christmas Surprise
Ben Boswell
My Wife’s Christmas Surprise Copyright © 2015 by Ben Boswell
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Cover image © BigStockPhoto used under license
Cover design by Kenny Wright
First digital edition electronically published by Ben Boswell Publishing, December 2015
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without explicit written permission of the copyright holder.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
PREFACE
This is a short story. What does that mean? Well, aside from being readable in a single sitting, it means that it is told in medias res. The characters exist before the story begins. Their lives continue after. The story itself is an episode for the characters, and as such you should expect neither a deep and thorough treatment of their lives before the story begins, nor should you expect a final resolution to all their problems. If this does not work for you…. If you need to understand the characters fully in order for their actions to become intelligible, then you will be disappointed. If you need everything tied up in a tidy, little bow at the end, you will similarly leave unsatisfied. If, on the other hand, you are willing to accept these characters for who they are, then I think you will find this an entertaining twist on an old theme.
You’ve likely read some version of this story a hundred times. I have lost track of the number of hot wife, passive husband, dominant boss, office Christmas party stories I’ve read. Heck, I’ve probably written a dozen of them in one form or another. In most cases, the story is simple. You have the party. Wife is dressed to the nines. At some point between eggnog toasts and dancing, she disappears. The husband seeks her out, and ends up spying on her banging either her boss or his in some darkened office. It is a fun story, and relatable. Every married man has gone to a Christmas party with his wife, and inevitably there will be some boss or colleague who is buff enough and handsome enough to trigger jealous instincts. Similarly, any woman who has ever lusted after any of her colleagues (in other words, every woman) will enjoy the fantasy of giving in to temptation.
This is like those stories… except it isn’t. Not quite. I hope you enjoy the twist I’ve put on this setup. Either way, let me know at [email protected]. I always welcome comments and feedback
INTRODUCTION
My boss is a sociopath. High-functioning and very successful. But a sociopath. He has a kind of burning intensity, physical swagger, and insistent personality that makes him very hard to resist.
I first met him a little over a decade ago. He was an intern in my office back then, and he immediately managed to polarize opinion. I found him scrappy. Others thought he was a raging jerk. None of those folks is still around. Fired. Harassed into leaving. Downsized. In the past decade, I've done pretty well, gotten promoted from an account manager to an office director to a division head. Roger's done even better, rising from intern to corporate VP in that time, which is why he's now my boss.
Get a couple of drinks into him and he'll start pontificating about his strategy for success. "No isn't an answer, it is an opening position in a negotiation. If you take no for an answer in business, you're a loser. If you take no for an answer from a broad, you're a fag." He's also the kind of guy who takes the word "never" as a challenge. Say it to him, and his eyes light up, and a thin smile crosses his face. He never forgets a challenge and never concedes defeat. Frankly, to be honest, he scares me a little.
But more than that, he makes me scare myself. I've done things under his influence that I would never have normally. And I have to admit, they've almost always worked out.
My wife Julie is beautiful and smart. I know every man says that. But my wife really is beautiful and smart. I could describe her long, mahogany hair, her hourglass figure. I could tell you that she does the New York Times crossword puzzle in about the time it takes me to run a 5k – at least through Friday; Sunday is a whole other story. I could tell you all sorts of things, but you’ll just have to take my word for it ultimately.
I am not always sure what she sees in me. Or perhaps I do know, and I worry that at some point she’ll realize that I’ve conned her. That I’m not as successful, intelligent, and good-natured as she seems to think. That one day she’ll wake up and cotton to the fraud I’ve put over on her.
She’s never given me any indication of that. Indeed, quite to the contrary, she often talks about our future. What our kids will be like, the addition we’ll put on our house ultimately, even plans for a second honeymoon once we get to our twenty-fifth anniversary. She’s full of plans, and I’m always in the mix. That’s reassuring. And a lot of pressure.
ONE
Roger tore the draft contract in half and threw it in the air. It rained down like confetti all over his otherwise pristine desk.
“This is shit,” he hissed.
“Best we could do given the time constraints,” I replied.
He scowled at me.
Roger is the kind of guy who won't let what he considers a "mere technicality" get between him and what he wants. Unfortunately, with Roger, that term covers a lot more situations than in normal usage.
Working for Roger is always a high-wire act of dicey deals, creative accounting, and most often bait-and-switch negotiations carried off with little more than his lunatic audacity. I've burned a lot of bridges, usually with little more than the vague expectation that Roger would look out for me.
He’s always delivered so far. Which, it occurred to me, would be a good entry in a list of “famous last words.”
This year was supposed to be an extra big year. Roger had been promising great numbers. Greater than great. The best. Ever.
I knew better. Our year was actually riding on the Transcom deal. Long story short, it was a megadeal, and those fuckers had us over a barrel because of the way various deadlines aligned. If we wanted to close it before the end of the fiscal year, we’d have to give blood. On the other hand, the longer it dragged out, the better our position got. So, here was the trade off: Pad our numbers now and get a big bonus before Christmas, or kick the deal down the road and book revenue for next year.
“Fuck it,” Roger virtually shouted. “No fucking way I’m not going to have my cake and eat it too.”
“Um, Rog, that’s the whole point of that expression,” I noted. “You can’t.”
“That’s loser talk. I’m not a loser. Are you Jack?”
I laughed. A mistake. Roger doesn’t like people laughing at him. I downshifted in a more ambiguous, ironic chuckle. He seemed mollified.
“I’m not, but I don’t see the play here.”
“Fiscal year ends October 31. Up until that date, Transcom has us over the barrel, and they’re fucking us up the ass.” He thrust crudely to demonstrate the point. “Come November 1, we have no incentive to sign anything for months, which mean we get to flip it around and ream them.”
“Right. I know that,” I noted. “So, we wait, book a good start to next year, and –“
“The Great October Socialist Revolution began on November 7th.”
“Huh?”
He glared at me like I was a particularly dim child.
“Roger, I swear, I don’t get it. Sorry if I’m being dense.”
He sighed. “Two calendars. Same day, different dates.”
I finally got it. I
let out a groan. “We can’t. That’s falsifying a contract.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “No, Jack, it isn’t. You’re just exercising your preference for dating things according to the Julian calendar.”
I shook my head. He fixed me with his weirdly intense gaze and nodded. We must have looked like a couple of bobble-headed idiots, but it worked, and somehow, before I knew it I was nodding as well.
He smiled. “That’s my guy. I knew I could count on you.”
TWO
I’m not sure why he gets to me like that. It’s not as if he’s physically imposing. We’re both about average height. I may have a half-inch on him. He’s slimmer, fitter, has better hair. I think I could take him in a fight. Or at least I like to say that to myself, particular when I’m doing something dicey to please him.
This one was bad, back-dating a contract. Intellectually, I knew it was wrong. Illegal and wrong. And probably stupid. But with him looking over my shoulder, I couldn't refuse. I changed the papers. We blew through our targets, and were in line for great, big bonuses. Still, I continued to lose sleep over it. Every day that passed got us closer to being in the clear. But if we were discovered, it would be grim. Fired. Sued. Maybe even facing criminal fraud charges.
It made me want to drink. So I did. Not the most mature way to deal with stress, I admit. On the other hand, it did prep me for the Christmas party.
Every year, our division has a big Christmas party. Roger is one of those guys who revere the 1950s, "when men were men, and getting drunk was no big fucking deal." He was Mad Men before the show ever aired. With him in charge, it is always a blowout -- open bar, rocking band, the works.
He sends out an email saying, "what happens at the Christmas party stays at the Christmas party." He means it. Two years ago, he got into a shouting match with one of the account managers, Todd, and they ended up trading a couple of jabs before we managed to break them up. Todd was cleaning out his desk the next morning when Roger dropped by, poured two glasses of Scotch, and toasted, "no hard feelings." Todd still works with us.
Attendance isn’t mandatory. But anyone who doesn’t show immediately ends up on “the list.” That’s the converse of the Todd situation. There isn’t actually a list. It is all in Roger’s head.
“No better friend, no worse enemy,” he noted one time about himself.
“You stole that from the Marines.”
“And those assholes stole it from Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix. Felix, Jack, as in lucky, not the fucking cat.”
So, in addition to be a pompous lunatic, he’s also smart and often funny. And yeah, lucky.
None of those positive qualities seem to register with my wife. Julie hates Roger. Hates him. She thinks, and I guess she's right, that he brings out the worst in me. Seeing me pounding drinks every night for a month after the Transcom deal did little to change her mind.
"You're going to end up in jail or dead because of that man," she warned.
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not. He’s Mephistophelian.”
“So if I’m Faust, does that make you Gretchen?”
“Perhaps, though I am not sure I’ll be able to intercede on your behalf to save you from damnation.”
“That’s okay. That was Goethe’s invention anyway. I’ve never considered that plot twist canonical.”
But the truth is, there was more to that comparison than I liked to admit. If Roger hadn’t tried to pick up Julie’s friend, Karen, at that happy hour, I’d have never had the guts to speak to a girl as unapproachably attractive as my wife. We owe our lifestyle to his wheeling and dealing. We paid for our honeymoon, bought our house, and saved up enough for Julie to plan to quit work so we can start a family thanks to the firm-high bonuses in Roger's divisions. Indeed, all those big plans she has about the future are only plausible because of Roger and the lifestyle that working for him affords. As I argue to Julie, you have to take the good with the bad.
For the Christmas party, Roger had booked out a nightclub and we had a crazy spread. Champagne tower, cigar room, and a surf and turf buffet with three pound lobsters as decoration. The wait staff welcomed everyone with a double Martini, getting things off to a raucous start.
Roger arrived late, making a big entrance. He was flying solo as usual, though these events often ended up with him taking a some unattached young woman (or two one year) home for an "after party." Roger is no more concerned with human resources regulations than he is with SEC rules.
He was wearing a tailored black suit, cut perhaps a little too tight for my tastes, but he did make a pretty dashing figure. He ran up on stage, gave a few quick words of congratulations, wished everyone a merry Christmas, and then hoisted a glass for a quick toast, "you worked hard, now let's party hard!" With that the band came out and got the place jumping.
He hopped off the stage and made bee-line for me. He had a manic look in his eye. Cocaine? It wouldn’t be the first time, though in truth he often had a natural high going on. Is there such thing as a glandular disorder that causes excess production of adrenaline and testosterone? He clapped me painfully on the shoulder.
“Jackie, old boy, having fun?”
“Always, Rog.”
He laughed. “Good, good, man. This year is as much on you as me.”
I felt my heart skip a beat. I didn’t really want to be held responsible. I clutched tighter at my glass.
I forced a smile. “Hopefully we won’t end up in jail.”
He seemed shocked. “Do you really believe that?” His voice was tight, barely controlled.
I shrank from his intensity. “Hehe. No. Just being a Nervous Nellie.”
He hesitated, his eyes still boring into me. Then he smiled. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a thick envelope. He pulled me close and placed it in my inside pocket. It was heavy.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Just a little token of my appreciation.”
From the bulk, it was surely five figures worth of appreciation. Problem is, I’d already gotten a bonus in my paycheck.
“Where did it come from?”
He shrugged. “Just between you and me. Off the books.”
“I can’t.”
He laughed. “Sure you can, you big pussy. Buy Jules something nice. Or hell, go to Vegas and spend it on some world class blowjobs if she doesn’t already provide those.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he gave me another painful shoulder squeeze and then disappeared back into the crowd.
“What was that all about?”
I turned to see Julie.
“Just Roger being Roger.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Well, he does throw a good party,” she admitted. “Even if he is insane.”
THREE
We did have a great time. Even Julie who usually hates anything work -- or Roger -- related was enjoying herself. She'd broken out that little black dress that I always encourage her to wear. Classic party dress. Real short showing off her great legs and with a cleavage displaying V neck. Julie had her dark brown hair up in an Audrey Hepburn bun. Diamond-studded, silver mesh earrings and necklace completed the look. Super stylish and super sexy.
We danced and drank and generally made merry. Around midnight, the band took a break, and Julie and I went over to the bar to refill our glasses and catch our breath. Then Roger showed up.
He sidled up close to Julie and from behind his back pulled out a mistletoe branch. He held it over their heads.
"Looks like you owe me a kiss, pretty lady," he beamed.
Julie rolled her eyes. "Fat chance, Roger."
He laughed, "You can't refuse. It would violate Christmas party rules."
He reached around her and pulled her toward him. Julie spun out of his grasp and pushed him away.
"No Roger, I'm going to kiss you. I'm never going to kiss you!" She exclaimed, a little too loudly. A few other people noticed and were now discreetly looking our way.
&
nbsp; "My, my," Roger replied in an amused tone, but I noticed a manic gleam in his eyes. "You're quite the wildcat tonight. Is there anything else you're never going to do with me?"
I was praying Julie would let it go. But she couldn't.
"What I wouldn't do with you could fill a book!"
“A whole book of things you wouldn’t do with me? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised that you spent so much time thinking of me to compile such a list.”
She blushed, but covered it with a hissed, “Fuck you, Roger.”
He smiled. A thin, dangerous smile. "Well, then, Jules, looks like I should find someone else to play with." He turned to me, raised his glass, and said, "Well, cheers Jack! Merry Christmas."
We watched him go off and pull the same stunt on several other women, all of whom gave him at least a quick kiss, which Roger routinely topped off with a furtive ass grab. And after each success, he quickly glanced back in our direction.
Julie gulped down her drink and hissed, "Oooh, that man! God, I'd like to knee him in the balls."
"Oh come on, he's just having a little fun," I replied without thinking.
She rounded on me. "Goddamn it Jack, do you always have to defend him? The creep grabbed me."
"He just wanted a little kiss. No one else seems to mind."
She looked at me incredulous. "I can't believe you just said that. Really?"
But before I could reply, Roger suddenly reappeared. He handed Julie a refill.
"Julie, I just wanted to apologize," he began.
"No, no," she cut him off. "I'm the one who should apologize. It's just that you caught me off guard," she continued, now batting her eyelashes at him.
For a second, he seemed surprised. Then he gave her a grin, "Well, I still have that mistletoe." He held out the twig.