Chapter 3

School did start up again, and other than for those people directly involved in the destruction, like Valerie, life in The Falls tried to return to normal.

It was very different being in the house alone with her. I hadn't realized how much noise two ten-year-olds made until they weren't there, making it. For her part, Valerie took her new job very seriously, asking dozens of questions, many of which I didn't have answers for. How I wanted things filed, for instance. And where, for that matter. I'd always just thrown papers associated with a particular job into a box and then stacked the boxes along one wall in the storage room. I wrote on the outside of the box, in magic marker, the information that would remind me of what that job had been. I fed my accountant all the stuff he wanted as it was generated, and what he sent me back each year as my tax return filled another box.

"What a mess," she commented, standing with her arms folded, looking at all the boxes.

"That's old mess," I said. "All I want you to worry about is new mess."

"Ever heard of file cabinets?" she asked.

I looked over at her. She shouldn't stand with her arms folded under her breasts like that. What it looked like to me was that she had laid them on her arms, and was offering them up to me like a mid-day treat on a tray.

I know. Don't say it. If you're a man, you understand. If you're a woman, you never will.

"Want me to get you half a dozen?" I asked.

"Where is this new mess you speak of?" she asked. I'd been giving her the tour and had started in the storage room first.

I took her to my desk, which was in one corner of the craft room. She got distracted along the way by a three-quarters finished pane of stained glass that, when finished, would be a blue bird sitting on a branch among lots of different colored foliage. The blue bird was finished, and only the leaves in the upper right corner were missing.

"This is gorgeous," she said, reaching to touch the blue bird with one fingertip.

"Thank you," I said. "That's how I reduce stress."

"And this?" She moved over to a piece of bass wood that had a line drawing on it of a mountain man with a musket, standing on top of a rock looking rugged. I'd traced that on there from a picture. Each line would be made permanent by going over it with a wood burner.

I bent over and reached under the table to get an oval shaped piece of wood. That one had a muskrat on it and it was finished. Light glinted off the polyurethane coating I'd put on it and I frowned. I should have used semi-gloss.

"Wow," she sighed. "This is beautiful. You're a man of many talents."

"Everybody has many talents," I said. "Most people just don't develop them."

"And modest too."

I admit I liked the sound of her voice when she said that. There was a note of approval in there that I enjoyed entirely too much. This woman was getting under my skin.

"My desk," I said, pointing to the corner.

"Oh my God," she said, as she looked at the heaps of paper scattered all over the top of the desk. They included receipts, letters, photographs, reports and, admittedly, some trash. I sat down and sorted through it all every so often. There was a big box on the floor beside the desk that had "accountant" written on it in black magic marker.

"I don't think he'll help you much," I said, smiling. "He seems to have weightier things on his mind. That's why I hired you."

"That will take months!" she said, a little breathlessly.

"Employment usually lasts months," I pointed out. "Some people work at the same job for years." I smiled at my clever response.

She turned to me. Whether it was fear, or a good challenge, or whatever emotion that desk caused, her nipples were standing up again. I caught myself licking my lips, but I don't think she noticed.

"I don't feel so bad now," she said.

"What?"

"You really do need an assistant," she said. "This is awful, Bob. You can't run a business this way."

"Been running it this way for years," I said, a little proudly.

She looked back at the desk.

"How much of that actually needs to be kept?"

"I don't know. I usually keep it all. You saw the boxes in the other room. The way I figure it, if the tax man ever comes snooping around on an audit, I'll just show him all the boxes and tell him to audit away. I'm pretty sure he'll lose interest when he sees all that."

"That's not the way it works, Bob," she said. "The way it works is that the tax man says he wants to see such and such, and it's your responsibility to find it and show it to him."

"No, it will be your responsibility to find it and show it to him," I said. "After all, you are my executive assistant. What do you think I'm paying you for?"

She put her hands on her hips. I wanted to put my hands on her hips.

"You can forget that rent I was talking about paying you," she said. "You're not paying me nearly what this job is worth."

"Deal," I said, instantly.

She shot me a dark look.

"Let's start with two file cabinets," she said. "You go get them while I start sorting through this disaster."

I didn't leave to get the file cabinets right away. I wanted to be there as she started either making things better, or much, much worse.

She dove right into things. I was impressed, because in a way, she did what I usually do. She looked everything over and came up with a system to sort things out. I had to stay right there for a while, to identify what each kind of paper meant, but she caught on pretty quickly. I was still standing there when the phone rang and she insisted on answering it.

"Bob Masters Consulting," she said, smoothly into the phone. She looked up hopefully and shrugged. It was obvious she was looking for approval of how she'd answered the phone.

I smiled. I'll be honest. I enjoyed any excuse to look at her.

"I'll get him for you," she said. She handed me the phone. "Somebody named Phil," she said in a loud whisper.

Phil Jenkins was my contact at Tan Gen who screened the jobs somebody wanted to give me. Apparently there were some problems the company was willing to live with, rather than pay me thousands, or tens of thousands to find a solution to. I never understood the process he used to decide what to give me and what not to.

Phil was also Tan Gen's "warranty agent", which meant that any time one of my solutions needed clarification, he called me. I didn't craft the equipment needed to fix a given problem. I simply described it in the report I sent them. It was up to them to engineer it and have it made. In other words, I gave them theoretical solutions and they decided whether or not to implement them. If they did, and it made them money, it made me money too. Once, a middle management type had tried to game me, saying the fix wasn't worth the expense, and then using my report to do things secretly. I found out about it, of course. My contract gives me access to internal company financial data, and when the division I'd worked on suddenly started making more money, it wasn't hard to find out what had happened. I didn't sue them, or raise a fuss. Instead, I took a two year sabbatical from the job, refusing to do any more work for them. While I traveled and enjoyed some of the money I'd earned, they figured out how many millions of dollars they were losing because I wasn't working for them anymore. When I got back I told the CEO that if it ever happened again, I'd go to work for the competition. There hadn't been any problems since.

Phil called pretty often and we were friends, of a sort. It became clear almost immediately that Valerie had impressed him too, because he gave me a hard time.

"What's she look like?" he asked.

"None of your business," I said.

"That good?"

"Fuck you, Phil."

"That good?"

"I presume you have an actual reason for calling me," I said.

"Yes, but I'll make it quick. I wouldn't want to keep you from your hot new secretary any longer than necessary."

Rather than say anything that might keep him going, I just listened. They were having a problem implementing a work flow change I'd suggested in the warehouse for one of their auto parts subsidiaries, and he asked me if I could fly out there and verify that their interpretation of my report was correct.

"Sure," I said. "Be there tomorrow."

"Want me to come over and babysit the girl with the beautiful voice?" he teased.

"That won't be necessary," I said. "I may take her with me."

"Damn! The lone wolf has finally been trapped?"

"It isn't like that, Phil. Her house burned down and she needed a job. I needed somebody to sort out the mess on my desk. That's all it is."

"Why would you take her with you, then?" he asked.

"I was kidding, Phil. She'll be staying here while I'm gone."

"What a shame. I thought maybe I'd have something interesting to toss out around the water cooler."

"When the water cooler conversation pertains to me getting a new assistant, it's a sad day, Phil."

"I know," he said, cheerfully. "She's got a lovely voice, though. I can milk that for a couple of days."

"You're a sad, sad man, Phil," I said.

"I know that too," he laughed. "Give the new girl a pat on the ass for me."

He hung up and only then did it sink in that Valerie had been sitting there the whole time, listening to my side of the conversation. I wasn't used to anyone else being in the house.

"Take me with you where?" she asked. She tried to make her voice sound uninterested, but I could tell that wasn't the case.

"I have to fly out to South Dakota. It probably won't take but a day or two."

"And you'll just leave us here?"

"I can't haul all three of you everywhere I go," I said.

"You trust us in your house?"

"Why wouldn't I?" I asked.

"Most men wouldn't."

"I guess I'm not most men," I said.

"I guess you're not." Her voice held no inflection at all.

"You guys will be fine. You've got plenty of food. You've got plenty of things to keep you busy. I'll leave you a credit card in case you need something."

"I have my own credit card," she said. This time her voice sounded tight.

"Then I'll leave you a credit card so you can order some file cabinets and have them delivered."

"Oh, that's fine, then," she said.

"Good. I'd better go pack," I said.

I turned to leave and felt her smack me right on my rear pocket, the one that didn't have a wallet in it.

"Go get 'em, tiger," she said.

I stopped and turned to look at her. She was a teensy bit pink in the cheeks, but she wasn't embarrassed.

"Oh!" she said, putting her fingertips up to her mouth like Betty Boop used to do. "I'm sorry. It was supposed to be the other way around ... wasn't it."

"Very funny," I said. "I'll be sure to remind Phil not to talk so loudly from now on."

"Instead of that, just remind him not to be a misogynistic asshole next time," she said, sweetly.

"I try not to use words Phil won't understand," I said.

"Go." She waved at me and turned back to the desk.

The trip to South Dakota involved a meeting with an engineer who was trying to design the machines I'd recommended installing to speed up the reconditioning (and therefore the delivery times) of rebuilt parts for customers. The theory was that by improving delivery times, the customers, who were primarily auto shops, would choose this supplier more often than others. The new system would also allow the existing work force to produce more, meaning they wouldn't have to hire and train more people to expand their market share. As usual, the employees thought I was trying to eliminate their jobs. And change is always difficult for most people, who think things were just fine as they were. It took me two days to explain things to people why this would be better for them and actually start cooperating with the man who was going to actually make it better.

When I got back, a lot had changed in my little house. I supposed I should have expected that, but I didn't.

The first thing I wasn't prepared for was two kids running at me and giving me hugs. People think that children don't notice what's happening in the world around them, but that's wrong. Even at ten, both Chip and Samantha knew the gravity of their situation, and that I was responsible for their lives being much happier than they might have been otherwise.

Valerie came out of the kitchen to see what the fuss was about. She was wearing an apron I'd never seen before and therefore knew must be a recent acquisition. She looked fabulous, of course, even with a smudge of flour on one cheek.

"You're back," she said, smiling. That smile meant a lot to me. Women didn't smile at me like that very often. I got lots of fake ones, but not the genuine kind gracing her face.

"I am," I said, as my hands fluttered about the heads of the two children whose arms were around me. I wasn't used to returning affection like this.

"How'd it go?"

"All is well again in Watertown," I said.

"Good. All is well here too."

"You're baking?"

"I love to bake," she said. "And I have more time now than I used to."

"A delightful side effect of your new job," I suggested.

"Actually, no." She looked startled, and said, "I have to get back in there. The kids will show you what changes I made."

"Changes?" I wasn't sure I liked that concept.

"Come see!" squealed Sam. She took my hand and dragged me toward the hobby room.

It wasn't a hobby room any more. Actually, that's not quite true. The table that had sat out in the middle of the room was now where my desk had been. The desk was missing, but all the hobbies were still on the table.

There was also a bed in the room now. It was a queen bed, and obviously new, since I hadn't owned one when I left.

"This is our room now!" said Chip, proudly.

"Your room?"

"Mine and Sam's," he said. "Except we're not allowed to touch any of your hobby stuff."

"Where's the desk?" I asked.

"Mommy had the men move it into that room with all the boxes and the food and stuff."

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Bewitched

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