Chapter 4

Mr. Bowen stood and walked to the door, embracing Marlene and kissing her on the lips. Now I was totally confused. I thought that he was married to Ms. Flammel at XYZ. The look of confusion on my face must have told the entire story.

“I’ll explain at lunch. Let’s go.”

He hugged Marlene again and they walked out of the office in a totally professional manner. Penny and I followed them out and as we got to the elevator, I felt a hand take hold of mine. I looked down to see Penny’s hand tenderly holding mine. I looked at her and she smiled.

What the fuck!?!?!?

I gently pulled my hand away from hers. When we walked out of the elevator, we all walked out the front door, sans the hand holding, and got into Mr. Bowen’s limo. As soon as we were inside, Marlene took the boss’s hand and Penny took mine, this time without my rejecting her actions.

“As you can see, Paul, Penny is interested in you. Actually, she was hired because she is going to be a tremendous PA to you, but also because she was interested in you. We had the number of prospects for your PA down to four women, and then we tested them to see if they were attracted to you. Of all the women, Penny here, was the best choice we could make. You will find, as you work together, that you have a lot in common. The big question is do you still want to divorce your wife?”

“I don’t know, but I also understand. Am I to understand that you want me to cheat on my wife with Penny?” I asked.

“Cheat is not the word I would use,” Mr. Bowen said as the limo pulled up to the front door of the Chancellery Steakhouse. “Let’s continue this in the restaurant.”

When we walked inside we were greeted by the hostess who directed us to a private party room and gave each of us a menu. Ms. Flammel was waiting for us. She stood and embraced Marlene, kissing her lightly on the lips, like a very good friend. That kiss was followed by a fairly passionate kiss for Mr. Bowen. Ms. Flammel directed Penny and me to a pair of chairs. We sat opposite Mr. Bowen, who had the two older women on either side of him.

“Penny, you have not met my wife, Kristi Flammel. Kristi this is Penny Wondersome, Paul’s new PA. Paul you’ve met my wife.”

“OK! Stop for a minute or two,” I said a little forcefully. “What’s going on? I’m getting mentally scrambled.”

I had both hands on my head trying to stop it from exploding.

Mr. Bowen calmed me. “Let’s check out the menu first and then we can talk during lunch at our leisure.”

“I’m not sure that I’m hungry. I really want to know what is going on,” I said quietly.

“I told you. I set up a situation, and now we are dealing with the consequences and results of the choices you and your wife and Peter have made. I have plans for you, my boy, and as I said, I needed to know what sort of man you were when no one was watching.”

“As I explained, I put you, and your wife, in positions where you might choose to cheat on the other and make other potentially problematic choices. I needed to know if you were morally strong people and if your marriage was a strong partnership that I could use further to build my company. Your wife chose to cheat. And she continued to do so, proving that it was not a one time slip. You did not step away from the correct path, even though no one would know what you might do with the women I sent to tempt you.”

“After the revelation that your wife had cheated, and you thought you were fired by Peter, I arranged for you to get a great job, either back with me or with my wife’s company. And I have more opportunities to make available to you. I told you that you and Penny were going to find out some things that very, very few know. The first is that I’m married to Kristi, and have been, happily, for over forty years, and, for thirty of those years, Marlene has been my mistress. Most of the senior department executives in the company have a wife and a mistress.”

The first thing I thought of was my friend.

“Bobby?” I asked, not believing what I was hearing.

“No. Bobby Ferris is the sole exception. He and his wife are a perfect couple and he is the best HR guy I have ever known. I’ve tested the husband and wife of every executive I’ve got. Both Bobby Ferris and his wife passed with flying colors. When I made the offer I am going to make to you, he turned me down and offered his resignation. I sweetened his package and he stayed. But all the rest, all the other senior execs are members of what some would call the ‘mistress club’.” He chuckled like it was a joke.

“It’s not really a club, but the men and women involved understand the stresses of the job and have chosen this path to deal with it. I’m not ever going to tell you if any other wives failed, because it isn’t your concern. Anyway, as I was saying at the office, Penny filled all the blanks, checked off all the boxes. She already had developed a strong feeling for you and is going to be a tremendous PA to you. And ... if you and she are so inclined, she will be a wonderful life partner as a PA or mistress,” Charlie paused like he was remembering something. “Oh! Kristi, would you let the server know that we would like to order, please?”

“Yes, my dear.”

Kristi Flammel rose and left the room, returning with a young lady who took our drink and food orders and then quietly left. After Kristi rejoined us, Mr. Bowen continued.

“To make a long story short, you have several options going forward. First, if you still want it, you have the job. Period. Nothing you do today will cost you that position. Second, you can divorce Deb and go it on your own, in which case, Penny will be the best PA we could find for you. Third, you can divorce Deb and take Penny as your PA and your life partner outside of work...”

“Wait! What would have happened if I took Ms. Flammel’s offer?” I asked.

“Simple, XYZ would have hired Penny for you and you would have the same choices. Where was I? Oh yes! Fourth, you can keep Deb as your wife and still have Penny as your PA. And fifth, you can remain married to Deb and have Penny as your PA and your other life partner and mistress, like Marlene and me.”

Mr. Bowen paused long enough for me to formulate another question.

“Could I divorce Deb, marry Penny and have Deb as my mistress?” I asked, still very confused.

“That’s a little convoluted, Paul. I guess it would depend on all parties agreeing. Penny would love to marry you, but would Deb want to be your mistress? I could give you my opinion, but you are the one needing to live with the choice. I will tell you this, for your own sanity, both women need to be satisfied with their station in the final relationship.”

Mr. Bowen paused and looked at each person in the room.

“Paul, in case you are still confused, Kristi loves me. Right dear?” He asked his wife.

“Absolutely, Charlie.” She looked at me with the most sincere expression I could have imagined. “Paul, I really do.”

“Paul,” Mr. Bowen continued, “if the opportunity arises, Kristi can have a sexual relationship with Marlene, but they usually only do it on very special occasions, like anniversaries and birthdays. Neither one would choose that as a permanent option. Neither considers themselves to be a lesbian and therefore we are not really a threesome.”

“I can count on two hands the number of times in thirty years that we have had a threesome. So, it’s not just a sex thrill a minute sort of relationship. They both profess their love for me and I for them, just as often as I can.” He chuckled at the last of that sentence.

“I don’t know how I feel about Deb,” I thought out loud. “I mean, I really haven’t spoken to her at all since the day that Larissa came to visit Peter. I basically destroyed my house, walked out, got fired and left town. To the best of my knowledge she may be living with Peter or have moved out of the house,” I mused.

“She isn’t with Peter and hasn’t moved from the house,” Marlene jumped into the conversation. “We also need to tell you that taking all your money, although understandable, did not fit into our plan. She has money now, but she thinks that it came from you. It’s her dearest and strongest hope that you will come home to her. At this point she has not gone near another man, including Peter. To the best of our knowledge, Peter has not tried to contacted her. But that’s an issue you will need to address with her,” Marlene finished with raised eyebrows and a slight smile.

There was a knock on the door and the server came in with our food on a cart. She rolled it to our table and served the ladies first and then Mr. Bowen and finally me. We ate and Mr. Bowen’s ladies spent most of the time talking shop. At one point, Mr. Bowen stood and walked around the table to sit down beside me. He looked at Kristi and nodded towards Penny. Kristi wave for Penny to come and sit with them.

“A lot of stuff to dump on you on your first day back, huh?” Mr. Bowen said to me.

“Ya think?” I shook my head and let out a long sigh at my boss’s question.

He looked at me with an expression I had come to recognize over the years. It was the look he got when he already knew the answer to a question he was going to ask.

“I didn’t take the time to ask, what did you do on your vacation?” Yup, the look.

“I just went for a drive. The car was pointed East and I drove in that direction until I risked running out of gas, then I stopped for a day. Repeat, repeat, repeat. After a week, I turned around and did it again until I got home.”

I got a sly look from Mr. Bowen.

“No thoughts about Deb ... or Peter?”

I looked at him. Could he know?

The night I was going to leave on my two week vacation, I spent a few hours looking for Peter and finally found him at one of the bars he used to talk about. I waited and when he came out to get in his car, I came out of hiding and I hit him, and I hit him, and I hit him again. I beat on him and beat on him until he was no longer screaming, or whimpering, or gasping with each impact. When I finally stopped, he wasn’t moving.

I checked him for a pulse. It was still there and he was breathing, so I walked, in the dark, back to my car and began my drive East. I spent a few days looking in the rear view mirror looking for a police car to chase me down, but it never happened. After the fifth day, I stopped looking or worrying.

The two weeks on the road, cleared away the emotion of my wife’s infidelity. I needed to know the why and I wondered if she was really sorry, or if while I was gone was she taking the opportunity to have a 24/7 orgy with Peter. If she was, we were done for sure. If she had cut him off, and was truly ashamed and sorry, we might be able to move in a direction together. It might not lead to getting back together, but it might lead us to be able to be civil to each other.

Mr. Bowen was looking and sounding like he knew something. I looked him in the eyes, as I ran the night before my vacation through my head, and suddenly, he winked, patted me on the thigh, and smiled before getting up and sitting back between his ladies. Penny returned to my side.

I sensed that Penny wanted to say something to me, but everything seemed so awkward. A couple of times I had a thought and looked at Penny. Finally, I decided to do a bit of an inventory of my PA. I had already noticed her breasts and her beautiful, rich brown eyes. I looked at her arms and saw that they were well muscled, but not bulky. Her neck was firm, there was no loose skin under her chin.

Sitting as she was, all I could really tell was that she was a lady. She knew her way around a meal as far as the way to comport herself. She didn’t chew with her mouth open, and what few words she spoke, she did so after she swallowed. Her posture was attractive. The skin of her face was flawless. She was a woman that I would enjoy being seen with, but a lover? A mistress? I guess time would tell if I could wrap my head around the idea.

We finished lunch and Mr. Bowen asked a loaded question.

“Paul? Penny? Do you have any questions?”

“I thought that this was going to be a meeting to discuss expansion opportunities?”

Mr. Bowen smiled and raised his eyebrows looking at Penny like I should already have the answer to my own question.

“Oh. Expansion opportunities. Like the opportunity to expand my relationship status.”

“I know I should have tried harder to hire you,” Kristi said with a smile.

The clock on the wall told me that I was really late getting back to the office. Mr. Bowen saw me and grinned.

“Still worried about the job, huh? Good man. I had HR sign you out for the day. You need to do some deep thinking and get ready for dinner with us tonight. Penny, you are invited as well. Paul, you might want to consider asking Deb to come along and see where she stands after she learns the new lay of the land.”

We took the limo back to the office, Marlene and Kristi sat with, and talked a lot to Penny about their lives. I must admit that I didn’t listen and Mr. Bowen didn’t bother me. My mind was flying everywhere. So many options and not one of them, other than divorcing Deb, was normal. Once we arrived, Marlene stopped everyone from getting out of the limo.

“Paul, Penny, in private, I’m not Mrs. Dever, I’m Marlene, and Ms. Flammel is Kristi, and Mr. Bowen is Charlie. In private we are family, in public, we are professional. If either of you have a question about how we live our lives, feel free to ask us in private. We have no secrets between us when it comes to the senior execs and the relationships we have.”

The driver opened the door and all of us got out except Kristi. I leaned back inside the limo.

“Kristi, I’m sorry that I couldn’t take your job offer, but this place IS family. It was before all of this, and when I thought that I’d lost everything, it seemed that I needed family for than anything. Now I want to keep it that way.”

“Paul, that was exactly the right thing to say,” Kristi said patting my hand as it rested on my leg. “Charlie is right, you are a good man. Welcome to the family.”

I left the limo, and closed the door. The driver smiled, nodded at me, got back in and drove away. I walked next to Penny, behind Charlie and Marlene, to the elevator. As we got to my floor, Charlie asked me to stay and come to his office for a moment.

“Penny, I’ll be back as soon as I can and we can look at the schedule for the rest of the week.”

I smiled at her and she seemed at ease for the first time that afternoon, now that she was back in her normal environment. It was quiet on the elevator as we went to the top floor, I had questions, but I didn’t know how to ask most of them. We exited and Marlene went to her desk and I followed Charlie to his office. He pointed at a chair and I sat.

“There are a few things that we need to get straight between us. First, in case you are thinking about it, none of the men in the company who have a mistress are swingers. This is not some crazy sex club, and it never will be. We are not wife swappers.”

That calmed down one of my great fears/concerns.

“Second, and more importantly, Peter is still in the hospital. He has two broken legs, two broken arms, two broken feet. Really? His feet? Except for his head, he had numerous cuts, bruises, and of all things, slices.”

“Really? He must have been fooling with some other wives.”

“He wasn’t. And he wasn’t robbed, at least not right away.”

I looked at Charlie and he smiled again.

“Paul, I knew it was coming, and I figured that you would take after him before you left town for two weeks. I had you followed while you were trying to find him. MY guy was just about to jump in, so you didn’t kill him, but you stopped just in time.”

“If he had gone after Deb, I would have killed him. But he didn’t. I asked Larissa to give him that message. I don’t know if she did or not, but he didn’t act.”

“You do know that you left your DNA behind and since he wasn’t robbed, the cops would have been looking for a jealous husband. MY guy, took all his belongings, including his car. He cleaned up your blood, your knuckles must have been bleeding. When my guy was done, there was nothing at the scene that would lead to you. If for some reason, someone should ask, your story should be that you left that night and drove East until you were almost out of gas then you stopped.”

“That’s what I did,” I said sounding like Capt. Obvious.

“I know! Now you won’t have to remember any lies. You better take off. I was serious about talking to Deb, and bringing her along with you tonight. She is still your wife. She cheated when pressured into doing it by Peter. He is an almost professional seducer. I think that you will find that she has a completely different outlook now. Oh, dress tonight is business casual. Deb should be able to come up with an outfit for that.”

I nodded and wondered what else he knew. I went back to my office and asked Penny to join me.

“Close the door please,” she did and then sat in one of the chairs. “Penny, how much of this did you know about?”

“I knew the job interview was not normal when they asked me to take a personality index test. I was asked about some personal things, some very personal, and then I was shown pictures of men. I was asked to point out the man, just from the looks of them, that I would be most attracted to as a friend, then to date, and then as a lover. I picked you on all three. I didn’t know what that meant.”

“Then they had me listen to the voices of several men as they spoke at work. I was asked to choose the man whose voice I would like to have as a friend, to date and which one gave me confidence. When we first met, I found that it was your voice. Then they showed me pictures of men’s bare butts and of men’s genitals. I was asked to pick the ones I found most arousing. I’m going to guess that they were yours, too.”

“Where the hell did they get pictures of my bare front and back?”

“I don’t know, Boss. For all I know, they were guys with similar stuff.”

“What about the mistress thing?” I asked her trying to sound as serious as I could.

“I had no clue, now that I know what is going on, I’m more than open to the idea. Especially after I got to know you better today. So far I really like what I’ve seen and heard,” Penny smiled when she finished.

“Needless to say, I’m completely blown away. I’m going to take off, unless you have some more secrets to drop on me,” I said trying to read the look on her face.

“Paul, no matter what happens, I want you to know, no more secrets between us. I plan on being the best PA you could ever have. And a big part of that is, no secrets. Beyond that we will see.”

“Thanks for that Penny. Would you mind if I finished our day with a hug?”

“No, I’d like that.”

I held my arms open and Penny stepped into my arms. We embraced and my first opinion, that she was in good shape, proved to be right. She was firm as could be under her clothes. As I was ready to release her, she reached around and took my hands. She placed them on her butt, then took hold of my head with both strong hands and planted a kiss on my lips. Her tongue slid across my lips until I parted them and we touched our tongues, tip to tip.

“Sorry Boss. I had to get that first one out of the way. I still don’t know if you are a fast or slow mover, so I jumped on the chance.”

“I’m still married, Penny. Until we get all this figured out, I would like to limit ourselves to hugs and the occasional kiss on the lips, but nothing passionate yet. Please, for my own sanity.”

“Yes, Boss. Whatever you say, Boss. But don’t be surprised if I get impatient and grab your ass some day soon. Especially since your hands felt really good on my butt.”

She straightened her outfit and swept her hair behind both ears and glided out of my office.

I’d sat there for the longest time until I felt I could handle it. I picked up my phone and was going to push the speed dial for Debs phone until I realized that I had smashed her phone with the table leg. Maybe she got it replaced with the same number. I hit the button and listened. The number rang and rang and rang, then there was a click.

“Hello?” A soft and quiet voice answered.

“Hello, Deb.”

“Paul?” She sounded hopeful.

“Yes.”

“Oh Paul! Please don’t hang up! Please come home. I’m so sorry.” She started sobbing as she plead.

“Deb, stop,” I said firmly. “I’m going to come over to your house in about a half an hour. Will you be there?”

“My house? You mean our home?” She said hopefully.

“No, I mean your house. Will you be there?”

“Yes,” her voice deflated.

“I’ll see you then.” I disconnected the call.

The first hard part was over. I called her and talked to her and didn’t freak out. I sat back in my office chair and for the first time really took in my situation. I took the time to look around my office for the first time. It was a generic office. Nothing in it said Paul O’Dell, yet. I’d have to fix that. I stood and looked out the big picture window in front of my desk before I walked out the door to find Penny sitting at her desk typing.

“Penny, I’m going to take off. Oh! I never asked, am I supposed to pick you up or is there another limo, or are you going to meet us there? Wait. Where am I going to meet you?”

“Good thing you have an excellent PA, or you’d be standing on your head in the toilet. We’re supposed to be at Barney’s Beer and Brisket at 8PM. How we get there is up to us to decide. Is Deb coming?”

“I don’t know, Penny. I going to the house now to see her for the first time. I don’t know what she’ll do.”

“Of course you do. She loves you and she’ll come tonight, if for no other reason than to be with you. You just need to let me know if you and she are picking me up, or if I need to get there on my own.” Penny smiled as she spoke.

“Give me your number and I’ll call or text you after I talk to Deb and see what’s up.”

She gave me her number and I entered it into my phone. I was going to need it anyway since she was my PA. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.