Epilogue

The best way that Margie Jackson could describe the morning’s events to her husband was a car wreck, a slow-motion car wreck like something in a movie or on TV or just a NASCAR race on the late news. First one car would hit the wall, and then a bit later another car would hit the first, and then after a while longer another car would wreck, and just to spice things up, a car would explode every so often. And through it all, you knew with the same morbid fascination that people watched auto races with, that you could never stop watching, that you didn’t want to miss a single gory moment.

Certainly, that spring morning seemed quiet enough. It was a Monday, and she arrived at her normal time of 8:30. Surprisingly, Tina was missing; she normally was already there, as was Sam, although Tina’s car was parked in the lot. She smiled at the thought that Tina had undoubtedly spent the weekend with the boss. Margie was in the group of women who had considered Sam Charles a bit of a hunk, even though she was happily married herself.

Margie began to be a little concerned as the clock edged closer to the normal starting hour of 9:00 and the rest of the small sales force filtered in and began the normal routine of making coffee and checking e-mails. Though Sam was notorious for always being at least fifteen minutes late, Tina was as punctual as a time clock, and she managed to get Sam on a schedule as well, at least on the days they were staying together.

Five minutes after the hour the front door opened, and a middle-aged couple came in. Margie turned towards them and smiled. “Good morning. How can I help you?”

The man smiled. “Hi. Where’s Tina?” he asked pleasantly. He was of medium height, with a stocky build and the close-cropped hair cut and red neck of someone who works in the sun. He was wearing denim pants, a flannel shirt, and a baseball cap advertising ‘Central Tractor.’ The woman was very slim and taller than the man, and wore denims and a crisp white cotton shirt

“Miss Lawson hasn’t come in yet, but we expect her soon. Can I help you?” Margie asked curiously. Customers normally wouldn’t ask for the secretary, and these two obviously weren’t suppliers or bankers or whatever.

“Really?” asked the woman quizzically. “Her car’s right outside!” At the saleswoman’s raised eyebrows, she continued, “We’re her parents. We happened to be in town and decided to stop by and say hello.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment and thought we’d drop in early. My prostate, you know...” added Tina’s father.

“Frank, the girl doesn’t want to know your medical history!” interrupted his wife. “I’m Anne and this is my husband, Frank.”

“That’s okay,” said a laughing Margie. “My husband is just as bad. Margie Jackson,” she said in introduction.

The two women laughed briefly until Frank Lawson repeated the question. “So, where’s Tina?”

It was then that the first race car hit the wall. Seeing some movement outside, Margie looked up and saw Sam’s car pull in the parking lot with Tina as the passenger. Her parents watched curiously as they saw Sam and Tina leave the car. Tina opened the back door of her car and Sam popped the trunk of his car and pulled out a couple of suitcases. He tossed these onto her rear seat as the young girl laughed, then they closed their vehicles. Before they came inside Tina gave her lover a quick kiss on the lips, then led him inside.

Neither saw the couple watching them as Sam turned aside and entered his office. His door promptly closed and almost immediately the switchboard lit up as he made a phone call. Tina came forward saying, “Traffic was so backed up on the Thruway this morning!” It was only then that she noticed Margie’s impassioned winks and looks towards the side of the room, and she turned to see her parents staring at her. “Mom! Dad! What are you doing here?”

“Who was that?” asked her father, pointing towards Sam’s closed door.

“Who ... what ... huh ... that’s Sam ... Mister Charles...” she said weakly, her head swiveling between her two parents.

“You normally go around kissing your boss?” Frank Lawson asked a bit more heatedly.

“No, I mean, no Dad, it’s not like that...”

“You mean it’s not like your mother sees you kissing a man you call Mister Charles?”

“No, yes, well I don’t call him Mister...”

“Baby, where were you this weekend?” asked her mother. “I called all day Saturday and Sunday and all I got was your machine.”

Tina was sweating bullets by now. The Lawson family had completely forgotten the presence of the rest of the staff staring at the incredible scene unfolding before them. “Mom ... Sam ... I ... Mister Charles...”

Anne Lawson gasped and held her hand up to her mouth. “Tina, did you go away with that man? Are you involved with that man?” she demanded.

Before Tina could answer, Frank weighed in loudly. “Don’t be stupid! He’s old enough to be her father! What’s he doing, some kind of harassment? That’s it isn’t it, he’s making trouble, isn’t he? They got laws about that sort of thing!”

The race cars kept piling up and the explosions became louder. Tina was unable to answer one question before she was bombarded with two more. Finally, the noise level grew so loud that Sam’s phone light went out and the door to his office opened. “Can I help?” he asked curiously.

“Yeah, I’m Frank Lawson, Tina’s father...”, started the angry man.

Sam stared as his mind went a million miles a minute. He and Tina had been avoiding this meeting like the plague, though both had known it was coming. Now that it was upon him, he could see no choice but to lie. Thrusting out his hand, he said, “Hello! I’ve been hoping to meet you...”

“You son of a bitch!” roared Tina’s father. Stepping forward, he ignored the outstretched hand. Before anybody could stop him, he drew back his right arm and then drove his fist forward at Sam’s face. Sam flinched and instinctively drew away, but not fast enough. The punch that was aimed at his nose missed the mark and glanced off his right eye, and the startled target fell backwards, arms windmilling, as he tripped over a chair and fell against Margie Jackson. Stunned, Margie collapsed backwards to the floor with her boss falling on top of her.

“DADDY!” screamed Tina as she threw herself between the two men.

“Frank!” cried Anne Lawson as she wrapped her arms around her husband to restrain him.

“You son of a bitch, you stay away from my daughter, you hear me! You stay away from her!”

“Daddy, get out of here!” screamed Tina as she began to cry.

By now the stunned office staff had begun to mobilize, with the women helping a flustered Margie to her feet. Jake Harcourt, the junior salesperson, and the only other man in the building, rather nervously positioned himself between Tina’s father and the others. Anne Lawson dragged her husband away, even as he continued to yell threats at Sam and demanding that Tina come with him.

The uproar continued as Jake helped Sam to his feet and Margie and the other women gathered around the weeping secretary. Sam spent the rest of the morning rubbing his bruised cheekbone and eye socket, wondering if he was developing a black eye and trying to get some work accomplished. A few hours later he gave up the effort. Stepping back into the lobby he leaned against his door frame and smiled at Tina.

Tina looked up at him and gave a weak smile. “I guess you met my father.”

Sam rolled his eyes at this and rubbed his face again. “Let’s go get some lunch.” Tina wordlessly nodded agreement. She didn’t pay attention as Sam walked down the hallway to Margie’s office. “Keep an eye on the place,” he asked her. “We probably won’t be back today.”

“Or ever, if her father gets a hold of you,” quipped the saleswoman. Sam grunted and left.

Outside, he pointed Tina to her own car. “Follow me, we’re only going over to the parking garage. If we get separated, I’ll park on the top level.” In the noon rush hour, even in a small town like Oneonta, the pair became separated, and Sam had a chance to consider the changes their relationship had been making.

Following their ‘coming out’ at the Christmas party, family feelings had begun crystallizing about the new couple. Unsurprisingly, both Big George and Momma were scandalized that their son-in-law was cheating on their daughter and had put him in the deepest of freezes imaginable, even going so far as to uninvite him to the traditional Christmas Eve party they held. They pointedly ordered that ‘Lee’s’ children attend, which they both did with considerable misgivings, and only at the express wishes of their father.

Several of the Busby wives held him in considerable contempt as well, not so much for desecrating the memory of Lee, but for doing so with a girl young enough to be his daughter. They didn’t think much of her, either.

The biggest surprises came within the fellow owners of the company. Pearl had accepted the relationship easily, and Sam had figured her to be very much against the idea. Derrick, on the other hand, previously a friend and supporter on the board, had been stiffening in opposition to it, and had pointedly expressed the opinion that Sam should terminate the relationship immediately.

With eight owners, however, Derrick was limited to what he could order Sam to do, and Sam knew the game as well as Derrick did. He could play the gossip game as well as any of the wives could. Several key suppliers would offer vacations and cruises as sales incentives, and there was a regular rotation among the eight family members as to who would go. Both Sam and Lee had enjoyed Caribbean cruises, but since Lee’s death, Sam had not taken a vacation. He had turned down the ones offered to him, but now let slip the word that he’d like to take one and that he was overdue. Sales incentives fell under the authority of Jack, not Derrick, and Sam found himself with a cruise at the end of March.

Derrick had been furious at this, deciding that Sam’s sleeping with his secretary was an affront to morality and decency. Jack pointed out, however, that Mickey had taken his current girlfriend, one of the Albany saleswomen, with him on a recent vacation, so they had no reason to deny it.

Tina had been blissfully unaware of the commotion in the executive suite and was ecstatic about the thought of a sea voyage. The weather had been brutally cold and snowy that winter, and she and Heather had gone overboard in buying some new clothing and swimsuits for the trip. One of the more interesting events for Sam had occurred even before the trip had started.

Sam had come over for the evening and Tina had invited her lover inside, then ordered him to sit on the couch. Mystified, Sam had done so, and Tina had left him alone for several minutes while she retired to the bedroom. She had returned and come around to face him and asked, “Do you like my new swimsuit, Sam?”

Sam stared at the busty girl as a lump formed in his throat and his eyes goggled out. Tina wore a smile and some high-heeled sandals, and not much else. The swimsuit consisted of some dental floss and tiny triangles of sheer nylon in a side tie thong pattern. Tina turned around twice modeling it.

“Oh my God!” he whispered, his eyes lighting up.

“There’s just one problem, Sam. It’s a little smaller than I thought. I didn’t think you would mind, but maybe you could help.” Sam stared as the girl’s fingers pointed to the problem. The bikini bottom was so brief that even her tiny trimmed heart-shaped bush showed around the edges. “Could you help me with this? I would simply hate to get a nick?” She said this so innocently that Sam simply nodded his head in fervent agreement.

Tina stripped off the suit, though she left the sandals on, and led Sam into the bedroom. Once there she brought her shaving gel and razor out and then lay down on the bed. She directed him in the procedure to shave her pussy completely bald, the sight of which drove Sam wild with desire. Finished, Tina threw her legs over Sam’s shoulders and reached down. Spreading her pussy lips wide, she said, “Sam, there’s still a little irritation. Could you kiss it and make it better? It’s right here!” She pointed at her clit, inflamed with her desire, and Sam dove forward to kiss and lick it better.

Sam was unsurprised when, once on the ship, Tina refused to wear the extreme bikini. Chickening out at the last minute she had instead worn a different suit, still a small one, but one that she hadn’t needed to shave for. Sam teased her the rest of the day by making clucking sounds at her, to which she had furiously commented, “See if you ever get another cluck out of me!” which only set him to laughing even harder. Happily for Sam, Tina’s swimsuits were practically her only underwear for the trip, since Heather had convinced her of the usefulness of a ‘no-undie’ vacation.

It had been a very enjoyable trip for Sam, as he and Tina enjoyed a week without any family or work pressures, and they luxuriated in their ability to simply slip back to their cabin at any time of the day or night. The sex was by turns quiet and passionate or hot and sweaty, or sometimes even both, as they lost track of the times they held and loved each other.

On one occasion they almost didn’t make it back to the cabin. They were walking around the Promenade Deck late one night, well out to sea, and they stopped to look out over the bow of the ship. Tina giggled and pointed out a closer sight to Sam. Two decks down, in the dark shadows of the superstructure, a young couple cuddled on a deck lounger. Sam had seen them around the ship before and whispered to Tina that they were on their honeymoon. Tina giggled again and pointed again. The amorous young couple began to get carried away with themselves, and suddenly the bride looked around closely. Mistakenly thinking they were unseen, and that the night was darker than it really was, she quickly undid some buttons on the front of her dress and straddled her new husband. He began fiddling between them as well, probably undoing his pants, and then Sam and Tina smiled at each other as the woman began a rapid humping motion as the man grabbed her ass and helped her along. A few minutes later she shuddered and collapsed into his arms, then they quickly stood up, rearranged their clothing, and ran off.

“Ummm, Sam, I think we need to go back to the room,” commented Tina. She was dressed the same as she had at the company Christmas party, in the scarlet dress, stockings, and heels, and was feeling very excited. She turned towards her lover and tried to pull him along. Sam smiled but held his position. “Sam?”

Smiling, Sam turned her back so that she was facing the bow, then stepped close behind her. Taking her hands in his, he placed them on the railing, then slowly drew his fingers along her wrists, then her forearms, and up to her shoulders. Leaning forward, he began to softly lick and nuzzle at the side of Tina’s neck, a location he had pleasantly discovered was exceptionally intense for the girl. Tina began whimpering as Sam gently kissed and licked her, his fingers caressing her arms and shoulders. She thrust her ass back at the erection that was pressing against her. She begged for him to take her back to their cabin and fuck her. “Please, Sam, my pussy juice is running down my legs!” she whispered piteously.

Instead, Sam had tormented her even further, taking her inside but stopping first at the Champagne Bar, an elegant late-night lounge. He ordered champagne cocktails and dawdled over his as he continued to gently caress Tina’s skin, now reaching down to surreptitiously run his fingertips across her knees and thighs.

By the time Tina had drawn Sam back to their cabin she was as aroused as she could ever remember. She practically raped him as soon as the door was closed. Shrugging her dress to the floor, she had pushed him to the bed and almost torn his trousers open, then climbed on top and impaled herself on his cock. An orgasm ripped through her even before she had fully sank down onto him, then she had ridden him to a second, even bigger ‘Big O.’ Afterwards, exhausted and sated for the moment, Tina had collapsed onto Sam’s heaving chest had whispered, “I love you, Sam, I love you. Anything you want, Sam, anything, that’s what I’ll do for you.”

Startled, Sam had smiled upwards and said, “Really?” Tina had started at that, then looked her lover in the eye and nodded with a smile. Sam had directed the girl in removing the rest of his clothing and then sucking his cock until it was stiff enough for a second go around. Then he had placed Tina on her back and lifted her legs up high enough to stuff a pair of pillows under her ass. Satisfied with this posture, he had knelt between her legs and fucked her cunt briefly, then pulled out and stuffed it into her ass, so that he was assfucking her while watching her face. The expressions of lust and pleasure had been well worth the trip.

Sam’s pleasant reverie was ended when he noticed Tina driving into the parking garage. Waving to her, he directed the girl to park next to his car, then held her hand as they walked around to Main Street. Sam led the way to the Subway. Tina looked at him curiously as they ordered their subs. “A little different, isn’t it?”

Sam shrugged. He didn’t answer until they were sitting in their booth by the window and had unfolded their napkins. “I figured we could do some shopping here as well as eat.” He pointed out the window and across the street. Tina followed his finger but only saw a string of shops at the corner, including a jewelry store. She gave him a very confused look. “I bet they sell engagement rings over there.”

Tina’s head whipped around wildly as she stared at Sam. Her mouth moved wordlessly for several seconds before she could control herself sufficiently to talk. “Sam, are you asking me to marry you?” she demanded.

Sam smiled as he finished chewing the bite of sandwich he was working on and nodded. Swallowing hurriedly, he said, “Yes, I guess I am.” He sipped from his drink and held up a hand to forestall any questions. Finished, he wiped his mouth and continued. “Honey, we have been dancing around this for the last three months, so it really shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s been ‘what if’ and ‘what would you do’ and ‘hypothetically speaking’ since the beginning of the year. I say we do it.”

Tina began to cry, and Sam began to get worried. “Uh, are those good tears or bad tears?”

Tina rolled her eyes and wiped her tears away with a smile. “Good tears, you idiot. Is this how you asked Lee to marry you? In a sub shop?”

Sam looked at the floor sheepishly as he answered. “Well, actually I asked her at her parent’s house, while we were watching a football game.”

“A football game!” Tina demanded incredulously.

“Yeah, it was at Thanksgiving, so it had to have been the Lions. I asked her at halftime.”

Tina simply shook her head in disbelief. “I had to fall for Mister fucking Romantic. Jesus Christ, Sam, a football game? And now a sub shop?”

Sam looked down at the crumb-swept floor. “Uh, you want me on my knees or something?”

Tina simply shook her head and decided to let him off the hook. “No, Sam, you don’t have to kneel on the dirty floor. Just marry me.” She laughed at the sudden look of delight on his face.

“Jesus, you had me scared there. I thought you were going to say no,” he admitted.

Tina wadded up the remains of her lunch. “Come on, Sam. Hurry up. We have to buy me an engagement ring and then go back to my place for some really great sex.”

“Hmmm ... Really great, huh? Not just regularly great, but really great,” he teased her as he rolled up his trash.

“Sam, you won’t need just one Viagra,” she warned him. “You’ll need two!”

“Yikes!”

The afternoon had gone very well, by practically every measure. Surprising everybody, the engagement ring that Tina had chosen had been on a ring that was her size, so that Sam had little more to do than pull out his credit card and pay for it. A perfect-cut stone of slightly over one carat in size, it gleamed nicely on Tina’s ring finger. Shortly after they arrived back at Tina’s apartment the ring was all that she was wearing. The afternoon had begun with an extremely enjoyable blow job, then later settled into some excellent missionary position and doggy style.

Afterwards, cuddling naked beneath the sheets on her bed, Tina lay across Sam’s chest and asked, “Sam, what happens now?”

“Hmmm?” he asked in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Tina wiggled her engagement ring in front of his face. “This, Sam! What happens now? You asked, I answered, but now what?”

“Well, we get married,” he responded, still not understanding what she wanted.

Tina gave a low shriek of exasperation and sat up, pulling the sheet around her naked form. “No, I mean, what’s next, you know, the office, the wedding, your family, mine. What do we do now?”

Sam nodded in final understanding and sat upright, to move backwards and lean against the headboard. “Okay, first things first, we should probably tell our families. You already know my kids, and you know they will be cool with things. Do you want me to come with you when you tell your parents?”

Tina gave a horrified look and shrieked, “NO!” Calming slightly, she continued, “Jesus, Sam, this is going to be tough enough without my father killing you on sight! I’ll drive down there tonight and explain it. Maybe I can hide his shotgun and ammo! Christ!”

“And what if he forbids it?”

“He can’t. Like you said, I’m not a minor and I can marry who I want to,” she answered evenly. “If they don’t want to come to the wedding, that is their problem. What about your family?” she asked.

Sam shrugged. “Like I said, my kids will be fine with it. We’ll have to see my lawyer sometime soon, to redo my will and the pre-nup, but we’ve discussed that.”

Tina nodded her understanding. In an earlier conversation, one of the ‘hypothetically speaking’ talks, Sam had explained that he would need both to redo his will and get a pre-nuptial agreement signed, so that his children would be taken care of in all cases. They would both get a third of any eventual estate, and any new wife would get the other third, with possible modifications as his children grew up and moved out on their own. If anything, Tina had taken this to show how serious Sam was about the possibility they might be moving closer to marriage.

Sam continued, “If you mean what about Lee’s family, that is probably going to be another story entirely. I’m going to have to go to Albany tomorrow and have it out with Derrick.” At Tina’s confused look, he said, “Let’s face it honey, he already knows about this morning.”

“How?” she asked.

Sam stared at her briefly and laughed. “Your old man decked me in the lobby! The whole fucking company has heard by now! Hell, it’s probably already in the company newspaper!” He reached over and grabbed his jacket and pulled his cigarettes and a lighter out. “No, this is going to come to a head tomorrow one way or another, and Derrick and I are going to have to settle this. If he falls in line the rest of the family will fall in line as well.”

“I’m not sure I understand, Sam?” Tina got out of bed and brought Sam an ashtray, then pulled a short silk robe on and climbed back onto the bed. “What is the problem with you and the Busbys?”

Sam delayed answering, going through the ritual of pulling out a cigarette and lighting up, then taking a long drag before answering. “Well, for want of a better explanation, we could simply say that the only thing that we have in common is Lee. We met in college, you know, and the truth is that we had absolutely nothing in common. Literally, nothing! The Busbys are all hard core Catholic; I’m Lutheran. They’re Yankees and I’m from Atlanta. They are white trash that made good; my family is upper-middle class. The list goes on and on.” He waved around his half-finished cigarette. “I’m the only one in the family that smokes. They used to make me feel like a child molester when I went outside to light up.”

“Sam...” replied Tina in a disbelieving tone.

“I am not kidding, babe. Big George and Momma always had me figured for the biggest loser, someone who was marrying their moron daughter for their money. The fact that the money divided so many ways means nobody gets shit means nothing to them. Likewise, the fact that for years I never worked for them, and they asked me to join the company. It’s a good thing Lee and the others bought out Big George and Momma before she died, because all of us used to joke that if Lee died, the big question would be whether they would fire me before or after the funeral.”

“Sam!” cried a surprised Tina. “What about your parents?”

Sam’s face split with a big grin. “Oh, they’re just as bad. Our mothers simply cannot stand each other! They’ve only been together five times - the wedding, three christenings, and the funeral. They hate each other’s guts!” He counted off the times on his fingers.

“Why?”

Sam laughed. “All of the above. I married a Yankee Democrat, for starters. What really set them off was after the engagement.” Sam took a deep drag on his cigarette and continued. “See, we had a real problem getting the ring, it wasn’t like today. I was living in New Jersey, she was up here, the jewelers screwed up, yadda, yadda, yadda ... It took almost three months for me to get the ring to Lee. Lee’s mother wrote a long letter to my mother claiming that I was simply leading Lee on and dragging things out so I could get in her pants. At this, my mother writes back saying that Lee is a tramp using sex to lure her wonderful son over to the ‘Dark Side.’ Oh, it was classic!”

“Jesus!” exclaimed Tina, in shock.

“It got better when I left being a chemist to go sell homes. My father stopped talking to me for three years! They paid for me to become a scientist, not something lower than a lawyer!”

“College was pretty important to them, huh?”

“Listen, here’s one of the biggest differences. You know I’ve had a bunch of college, right? Are you aware that most of the Busbys have no more than a high school diploma. Big George and Momma never considered it important, and if the kids didn’t want to go, fine. They could work at the company. I am not joking when I say that I have more degrees than the rest of the owners combined.”

Tina gave him a reproving look. “Sam, don’t be a snob. They’ve done very well! You don’t need a lot of fancy degrees to do okay.”

Sam nodded and stubbed out his cigarette Tina moved to lie against him, and Sam enjoyed the feel of the smooth and warm muscle beneath the silky robe. “I agree, they have done well. Derrick and Dickie and Jack are some of the brightest people I know. On the other hand, most of the rest are as dumb as a box of rocks. In both Pearl’s and Billy’s cases, they barely got passed through a parochial school that their parents practically supported single-handed. Besides, education isn’t about how many diplomas you have, but about opportunities later, jobs that the diplomas open to you. I mean I’ve gotten jobs just for the initials RPI and MBA,” he said, referring to his undergraduate degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his first graduate degree later.

Continuing, Sam said, “Do you realize that I am the only owner of the company who has ever, and I mean ever, worked anywhere but at Busby? Even the ones who went to college always worked summers for the company. They have no idea what the real world is like. Momma once asked why I would want a degree in computers, since I could never leave and earn more than twenty grand a year at that.”

“Sam, I make almost that myself,” remarked the beautiful girl leaning against him.

“See what I mean? She literally has no clue what life is like elsewhere. Education is about options, and most of the Busbys are very aware that I have many more options than them, and they do not like that at all.”

“Just how many degrees do you actually have?” she asked.

“Well, back in the Seventies I got my BS in Chemistry and an MBA. Later, when I started in computers, I picked up an Associates in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in math,” he answered. “Information theory, actually.”

Tina goggled at this. “You’re a doctor?”

“No, doctors are the guys in the funny white coats who make you stick your tongue out and go ‘Ahhhhh!’”

“Sam, I don’t know. I think you are full of shit!” she said with a laugh.

Sam’s face gained an annoyed look to it, but then he laughed. “Piled higher and deeper, honey. Still, you can do the test. Next time you have the Times-Union, look in the Help Wanted ads, and check out what people get paid for their jobs. Compare the pay described with what various job skills the owners have.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, consider Mickey. Hell of a nice guy, but he is at most a freight dispatcher. Look at what dispatchers make in the real world and compare it to my salary. We get paid the same, we’re family, we all get the same pay. Or look up construction foreman, which is the same thing that Billy does, or secretary, which is Pearl. Hell, check for sales managers and salesmen, which accounts for the rest of the bunch.”

“And?” she pressed.