For a Limited Time Only
FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY
by Dennis Nau
In Laguna Beach, most people have the common courtesy to leave you alone until at least 9AM. I was dreaming about my wife when the doorbell rang.
I should say that I was dreaming about my ex-wife. I slipped on some pants and answered the door.
“Sir, I’m here about the advertisement that you placed looking for someone to build a deck.”
“What time is it?”
“Six o’clock. You said you wanted the deck built as quickly as possible.”
I meant I wanted the deck built by the end of August and not the end of December.
“Come in.”
I got some decent clothes and made coffee. He sat there at my table, smiling the whole time.
“What’s your name?”
“George.”
He was Hispanic, spoke impeccable English and he was well-built. George had muscles. “Where are you from?” I asked.
“Winnipeg.”
“Winnipeg?”
“Yes sir. It’s a long story.”
I showed him my basic sketches of the deck.
“You drew these plans up yourself?”
“Yes.”
“These plans are very good. Are you an architect?”
“No. I own a small software company.”
He stared at the prints for a few minutes, ran his fingers up and down. The plans were to scale, and George got his calculator out and played with it.
“It’s a beautiful deck, sir, but it will be very expensive. Three different levels spread over this amount of space will cost quite a bit. All the lights and the wiring itself will add substantially to the cost. I would guess two circuits would be needed. Where is the breaker box in the house?”
I showed him.
“This is unfortunate. Sixty feet of drywall will have to be partially removed. Holes will need to be drilled through the studs. Cable must be drawn through these holes and mounted in a weatherproof junction box outside, north of the sliding glass door. Then, of course, when the project is completed, drywall will need to be reinstalled, taped and the wall will need to be painted.”
“How expensive is very expensive?”
“I would say most contractors would ask for 80 to 90 grand. That spiral staircase really adds to the cost. Without it, however, the deck wouldn’t have much personality.”
“That price seems high to me.”
“You should check it out, sir. I always advise my clients to get more than one bid. I can do this project for $72,000. And, sir, if I might be so bold, I could envision four cantilevered beams extending south approximately four feet, cut in a semicircular pattern. My cousin steams and bends wood. That is where you would put the grill.”
“You’re right. That would look beautiful. What would that cost?”
“I would throw that in at no extra charge, if you would agree to let me take pictures of the deck for advertising purposes, and if you would agree to tell your friends and neighbors exactly who built this marvelous deck for you.”
“Why are you cheaper than everyone else?”
“I calculate my hourly rate at $19.99 per hour. Most contractors use $35 to $40 per hour. Of course, the raw materials are the same for all of us.
And I work very quickly, sir. I have a number of children to support. I can give you references and testimonials for work I have done for many of your neighbors in Laguna Beach.”
“I was going to put this project on my credit card, but this might be more than I can handle. I may have to sell some stock. I’ll talk to my broker.”
“Sir, I am willing to accept payment in six equally spaced disbursements two months apart, zero percent interest.”
“I’ll have to give this some thought. It sounds like a good deal.”
“It is a very good deal, sir, but you should act now. There are hurricanes forming in the Atlantic, and if they hit Florida with any force, lumber prices will skyrocket. I will have to increase my price. If you have questions call anytime, day or night.”
“I will. I’ll leave a message on your answering machine.”
“We have no answering machine, sir. If you call this number, a live person will answer, 24 hours a day. An operator is on duty at all times.” He gave me his card.
***
“What the hell is this, Les? I understand you’re putting up a deck on the backside of our house.”
“Loretta, this is my house now. I’ll put up whatever I want to put up. You’ve got your own place.”
“You’re just trying to attract some bimbo with your fancy deck.”
“Maybe I am. It’s none of your business, Loretta.”
“They’ll kill all of my lilies, those builders. I know they will.”
***
“George,” I hollered. “What’s all this digging?”
“We’re installing footings, sir, and we’re taking out the lilies. Where should we put the lilies?”
“In the trash.”
“Sir, we cannot put lilies this beautiful in the trash. Perhaps we could replant them somewhere else in the yard?”
“Maybe a couple by the front steps.”
“What am I to do with the rest?”
“Anything you want.”
“Thank you, sir. I will plant the rest of the lilies at my house.”
“George, quit calling me ‘sir.’ My name is Les. Call me Les.”
“I will, sir.”
This whole thing was driving Loretta nuts, which didn’t exactly disappoint me. Our divorce proceedings had been more acrimonious than the Hundred Year’s War between the English and French. It didn’t last that long, but it seemed to.
And Loretta had the notion that she could barge into the house anytime she wanted. I never had bothered to get the locks changed. Secretly I was hoping that she would barge in while I was making love to some beautiful young woman on the living room floor. I really didn’t associate much with any beautiful young women. I associated mainly with PC’s and investment bankers.
“Sir, there’s a woman out front, pulling up the lilies that we just replanted.”
“George, I told you not to call me ‘sir.’”
“I’m not George. I’m his twin brother Diego.”
“George has a twin brother?”
“Sir, it’s something you can’t easily fake. George is almost five minutes older than I am. That’s why he is president of this construction business, and not me. Well, it also has something to do with his negotiating skills.”
“So, you’re just part of his crew?”
“No, sir, I am his brother. You buy one, you get one free. Well, I’m not free, but I work for a very reasonable rate. What about the woman out front, sir?”
“Tell her I let Duke out.”
A minute later Loretta ran down the yard and jumped into her car. Duke was my bona fide adultery detection dog, a Golden Retriever with a slight limp. He had made a certified detection, that during a critical moment involving a deal Loretta and my patent attorney were trying to consummate. Duke caught the attorney with his pants down, and I’m not speaking figuratively. There was blood on the mattress and the carpeting and stairs. Dear old James, don’t call me Jim, wasn’t able to return to his office for two weeks, because he couldn’t sit down. That event helped Duke’s self-esteem, however, and I gave him extra dog biscuits from that point on. His limp improved. A dog is man’s best friend.
Well, a dog might be your worst enemy, especially if your name is James and you can’t sit properly and your wife asks why you can’t sit properly and your employer—that would be me—asks why you can’t sit properly. The dog becomes more of an enemy still when your back end becomes infected.
The doctor looks and says, “this is a serious infection and I see teeth marks.”
“I got this from a toilet stool, when I stood up,” James says.
He grimaces, I’m guessing.
“We might have to amputate,” the doctor says. “Do we have on file your next of kin?”
Well, James is still alive and Loretta is too. I have a new patent attorney.
***
Nail guns, electric saws, compressor, and two-cycle engines. Those are noises that make a man’s heart bloom. Men love the smell of sawdust. Software has no smell and does nothing for the heart.
Of course, there were problems.
“Les, we discovered something today that is very disturbing.”
“What do you mean, Diego?”
“I’m George.”
“I’m sorry, George. What do you mean?”
“There is a problem. Your back yard is starting to slide downhill. The soil is not firm and the footings are starting to sink slowly.” He gave me a level.
“Put this on your floor, Les.”
I did. “This can’t be true.”
George took a marble out of his pocket and set it on the floor. The marble started to roll towards the back of the house.
“My God. What’s to be done?”
“We have to jack up the house, one footing at a time, dig down and pour deeper footings. You don’t have to do this, but the house is starting to tilt. Should these footings continue to sink, the house will tear away from the deck. The deck footings are very deep, solid and meet all building codes.
It is your choice, sir, I mean Les, but our lifetime warranty will have to be modified if this situation is not corrected.”
“How much will this cost?”
“This will add close to $30,000 dollars to the price.”
“$30,000?”
“I’m sorry, Les. California is a beautiful state, but oftentimes the soil in this area is not ideal for building. You have mudslides in California. There are no mudslides in Winnipeg. There are also no three-story decks in Winnipeg.”
“I guess I have no choice.”
“Sometimes I have to give people very unpleasant news, and it causes me much emotional distress.” He sat down. “I should have gone into a different line of work. I passed the entrance exam for law school. I could have become a lawyer.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t afford the student loans.”
True, I thought, but you could repay those loans rapidly the way things are these days. James had hired a lawyer to sue the doctor after his ass got infected. He wanted to sue me because my dog had bitten him, but his attorney advised him that the case would be laughed out of court.
Of course, James’ wife, Diane, hired a lawyer to sue for divorce and James had to get his own divorce lawyer. These were not the same lawyers that Loretta and I used during our divorce proceedings.
Actually, things were not that simple.
When James’ wife finally guessed the truth about her husband’s encounter with my golden retriever, she threw a frying pan at him and nearly cut off his ear. Diane is a sweet woman but she has a temper. Somehow, as he fell, James managed to grab the wireless phone and he called 911 after he hit the floor and Diane was arrested. She hired an attorney and the charges were later dropped. However, the health insurance company covering James didn’t like paying the bills for all of that reconstructive surgery on James’ ear. Diane was sued.
James could likely have sued Diane for the scar tissue on his ear as well. He could claim that it made him less physically attractive to women, but patent attorneys have no imagination and are generally not very attractive to begin with.
One night, when Duke barked because he needed to go outside to relieve himself, I thought about a three-story deck and sliding glass doors. No up and down a staircase anymore in the middle of the night. No more standing in the front yard in pajamas hoping the neighbors wouldn’t see me.
I could stand on the deck, look down at Duke, in the fenced-in backyard. I’d wait a few minutes for Duke to do his business. He’d come back up, wag his tail, as if to say, I can now enter the bedroom, lie down, go back to my adultery-detection mode and, master, if I may be so bold, this process is so much easier since you constructed the deck. Those thoughts germinated and grew, and look what I ended up with.
“George, I think attorneys always have work. They don’t have people manning phones 24 hours a day and they don’t work for $19.99 an hour, and they don’t give lifetime warranties.”
***
I made the second credit card payment on my deck. The next day the entire crew looked very jovial.
“Well, George, everyone looks very happy today.”
“I’m Diego, sir.”
“I told you not to call me sir.”
“You told George not to call you sir.”
“Oh. Why is everyone so cheerful?”
“We got paid last night. We had food and beer. We bought groceries. Everyone is happy. My children laughed all night.”
“How many children do you have?”
“Five.”
“How many does George have?”
“Seven. How many children do you have, sir?”
“None. Loretta thought that we should wait to have children until we were financially secure. We bought a small house and thought we were financially secure, but then we bought a more expensive house, and we weren’t nearly as financially secure. This happened a number of times and then Loretta was too old to have children. I lost interest in everything except developing software. I think Loretta lost interest in me. It wasn’t only because we didn’t have a deck.”
I sat down.
“I envy you,” I said. “I envy George.”
“Why? We barely scrape enough together for a meal.”
“You got family. You have a reason to get your deck finished.”
“I don’t have a deck. My family and I can’t afford a deck, although it would be very nice. A person could go out into the backyard and watch the moon spreading its favors on the world. His favors don’t generally shine on me. You could ask my parish priest. He can pardon my sins but he can’t build me a deck.”
“I can’t do either. I can’t pardon your sins and I certainly can’t build you a deck.”
“But you develop software, sir. I’m told that software powers the world.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I don’t know. Probably some television commercial.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Diego. Software engineers are overrated. Civilization won’t end when some disease kills all of our software engineers and our lawyers and our professors. It will end when some disease kills all our plumbers.”
“I see your point, sir. I wouldn’t be the same man without indoor plumbing. I certainly wouldn’t have spent all those years in Winnipeg without plumbing. I don’t think there’d be a Winnipeg without indoor plumbing.”
***
Loretta’s hair clippers exploded in late July and she was injured, with multiple lacerations to the face and neck, and I had no idea that it was possible for hair clippers to explode. Loretta called me from the hospital.
“I was cutting Marjorie Kelly’s hair, then ‘Bang.’ I’m lucky I turned to the right as I fell or I might have hit her in the face, and she’s due to go to the Emmys. If I had turned to the left, well, there’d be scars and curses and articles in all the gossip magazines and paparazzi chasing her everywhere. Maybe they’d be chasing me too. Marjorie did have the presence of mind to call 911. I turned to the right and I got all of the plastic shards to my face.”
There was a moment of silence.
There was another moment of silence.
“Won’t you take me back, Les?”
“I don’t know how I can, Loretta, after what you did. You not only committed adultery, but you did it with James, my patent attorney, for heaven’s sake.”
“Les, you ignored me for 13 months, what, with all that software shit.You’d tell me that you’d be home at six and than you’d pop into the house at eleven, without even an apology. I figured there was another software engineer involved, and she was an expert at Microsofting this and that, likely you.”
“You know me, Loretta. It always takes me five hours to make love, doesn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, Les, for what I did. I truly am. I know I was wrong.”
There was crying and more crying and I felt bad and told Loretta I’d be in to see her in the evening. There were tears and bandages at the hospital and guilt.
The next afternoon I thought I’d pass the time with someone who knew how to use a hammer, someone who would reinforce my own misgivings. Someone who would say, Les, you cannot show weakness. A man can only put up with so much.
“13 months. That’s a long time. I’m sorry, but I don’t know any woman who would put up with that. You ignored her for 13 months?”
“It was a critical time period in our corporate development. Bill Gates was chasing us. I know he was. I had 17 people to supervise. I had to make enough money for groceries, medical care, our 401K plan, our timeshare and Mexican Villa, my country club membership, a Mercedes and a new deck.”
“So, you abandoned your wife for a new deck?”
“I wouldn’t say that, George.”
“I’m not George.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that, Diego.”
“I’m not Diego.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Juan. I’m George’s twin brother.”
“Diego is his twin brother.”
“I am too. We were born as triplets. Sit back and relax. How long were you married to Loretta?”
“Eighteen years.”
“No, I mean really relax. A man can’t relax with a tie around his neck. Let me get a glass.”
He took a pint of tequila out of his back pocket and poured me a drink.
“Drink it quickly. You have a critical decision to make and a man can’t simply sip at a time like this. Eighteen years is not an accomplishment to be trifled with. Let me suggest this: you sleep with another woman or two and call this whole thing even. Loretta returns. You resume a happy domestic life.”
“How do I find these women?”
“You don’t have to find any women. You’re putting on a three-story deck. They will find you.”
“How do you know these things?”
“I’m a licensed psychologist.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Helping to finish your deck.”
Juan had a point. Actually, the point was moot. Loretta never knew, but I had a short affair with a legal secretary when I was incorporating. You wait in these lawyer’s offices and you start talking with anyone who will listen. The lawyers don’t believe that someday you’ll have a company with 18 million dollars of gross revenue and that you, personally, will have a deck worth almost a $100,000. A secretary makes small talk with you while you’re waiting for this lawyer. Yes, I thought the Red Sox were going to win. I’ve never seen traffic this horrendous. The flu season is going to be bad.
OK, I have your papers here. Come sit in line in two weeks and we’ll go over this, after I’ve had a chance to review it. That’s what the lawyer says and he doesn’t make eye contact.
At the next meeting a woman walks out and says, I’m sorry sir, things are backed up. It might be an hour before Mr. Whatever-his-name, esquire, can see you. Kimberly, can you take Les here out for a cup of coffee? Kimberly takes me for a hamburger and we talk. At the next meeting I take her for a drink. You can guess what happened the meeting after that. When I came home that night, Duke looked up at me with a disappointed gaze, as if to say, I know what you’ve been up to, master. I’m a bona fide adultery detection dog, for heaven’s sake, and I can smell adultery up to five miles away. Maybe Loretta can’t trust you, but I hope I can trust you to take me outside so I can urinate by some tree in the middle of the night.
For a while, Kimberly and I didn’t need a meeting to get together.
The incorporation papers were signed and I haven’t seen Kimberly since.
I went to see Loretta in her apartment, after she was discharged. Perhaps, Juan was right. Maybe women can’t put up with such things.
“It was kind of you to come,” Loretta said. “They will schedule plastic surgery after the swelling goes down.
I’m lonely, Les. I was an idiot to have cheated on you, especially with James, a low-life bastard if I ever met one. He’s ugly, too. I wouldn’t feel quite so bad if it had been with Brad Pitt or someone like that.”
Let’s flip the coin. Kimberly had been quite attractive.
“You wouldn’t have to pay alimony any longer if we reconcile. Do you know that I’ve gotten contracts with another two modeling agencies? Fifteen more women once a month. Think about this: two incomes, and one residence. I have trouble cooking just for myself. Every recipe I look at serves four. We could save money.
And maybe you could learn to love me like you did when we were younger, before I betrayed you.”
“Let me think about these things, Loretta.”
“Thirteen months was a long time.”
“I know that.” I bent down and gave her a kiss. She started crying. Maybe I was wrong, I thought. A man should pay attention to his wife, even when software development is not going well.
“I treated you poorly,” I said, “and I’m sorry.”
“While you’re re-doing the deck, do you think we could replace some of the kitchen cabinets and put an island facing directly out back—an island with a granite top, surrounding a stove? Guests could pull up a chair. We could put a nice wine rack in the corner. I’m truly sorry for what I did.”
I sympathized with Loretta. I thought about telling her about my own indiscretion to ease my conscience, but I didn’t.
Actually, only politicians commit indiscretions. The rest of us commit adultery. I stood up to leave.
“I didn’t actually commit adultery with James, Les. I would have, but Duke got to him first. I don’t think James would be any better at adultery than he was as a patent attorney.”
***
Three weeks later we got remarried. It was a small, civil ceremony. The swelling had gone down and the plastic surgery had been completed. Loretta had just a couple of small bandages on her face. George served as a witness.
“We must celebrate. You will come to my house.”
“We really don’t need to celebrate. We had a big wedding the first time.”
“No, I insist.”
“Really, we don’t want a public celebration.”
“If you don’t have a celebration at my house, I will refuse to finish your deck.”
We pulled up to this 4,000 square foot home. God, I thought, I must be paying George entirely too much. I didn’t realize that eight or nine adults lived there and maybe 300 kids. We drank Tequila. I talked with Juan, Diego and George. Loretta started cutting kid’s hair.
And then there were four. A man walked up to me and said, “I know what you’re thinking. We’re not quadruplets. I’m two years older than my brothers. We just look alike. I’m Randy. I just flew in from Winnipeg. George needed help. In our family, if someone needs help, you drop everything and show up. Besides, my kids wanted to see all their cousins.”
“What do you do in Winnipeg?”
“I’m an attorney. I tried to get George to go to law school, but he doesn’t believe in amassing large amounts of debt. I specialize in patent and trademark law.”
I knew all this stuff was too good to be true. I knew I was in some stranger-than-fiction dream. Twilight Zone, Laguna Beach Style. Tomorrow, I thought, I’ll go to my psychologist and get this all worked out. Wait, my psychologist, Juan, was part of the stranger-than-fiction life that I was living.
We all sat around and drank Tequila and talked for an hour and George said you must go; it’s your wedding night.
Loretta walked into the room “I can’t leave yet. I’ve got five more kids’ hair to cut. Give me a half-hour.” More Tequila. More BS. We sat in the back porch. A woman appeared in the doorway.
“Excuse me, Les,” said George. “This is Rosa.” I stood up. “Rosa is my sister.”
“You have a wonderful wife,” she said. “She is cutting my kids’ hair.”
How was I to know that Rosa was an interior decorator?
“Les,” said George, “We have a cab waiting outside to take you and your bride home, when you are ready. When a man has too much Tequila he should not drive.”
“When did you call for a cab?”
“We didn’t call. My cousin lives here and he is a cab driver. I, personally, will drive your car to your house tomorrow morning. It will be there no later than 7:30. There will be a truck outside your house shortly after that. There will be some digging. We will take pains not to disturb you. This is your wedding night.”
“What type of digging?”
“We are replanting the lilies.”
***
“She’s right on the money, Les.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rosa says that this wall should go. It’s not a supporting wall. It interferes with the sightline going out to the deck, and it gives our kitchen a feeling of confinement. She says a nice Burnt Sienna color should be used on the walls, in semi-gloss paint, which is easier to clean and more durable than flat paint.”
***
“You could patent this. It’s very innovative, I will admit.” Randy set his briefcase on the table, and sat down. “It will take 13 months or so for the patent to go through. Within two days Microsoft will figure a way to get around it. My advice would be to keep the information and design of this software proprietary. It will take Microsoft maybe four years to figure it out that way. How many people were involved in the development of this software?”
“Seven.”
“Do you pay them well?”
“I think so.”
“Do they have non-competes?”
“Yes.”
“Non-compete agreements don’t generally mean much in court proceedings. Tell your employees that you are going to be attacked by Microsoft. Tell them to guard themselves for battle. Every man dreams of defeating Bill Gates.”
“Three of our engineers are women.”
“They probably dream of marrying Bill Gates, but he’s already married. Give your employees raises. Sound a battle cry. Don’t patent anything.
And you really should repaint your house. The color outside is not very attractive and it will not go well with your new deck.”
“Who’s that in front?”
“That’s just Rosa. She’s putting fertilizer on the lilies.” Lilies in the front yard, lilies in the back. There were lilies around that little semi-circle area where the deck would protrude, lilies in a larger semi-circle arrangement than the protrusion from the deck, for outdoor grills often drop grease onto the surfaces beneath them. You couldn’t be vigilant enough but you could consider the lilies of the field, who toiled not; neither did they spin. Lilies are more beautiful than Solomon and all of his lady-friends and they cannot commit adultery, even if they try.
“Lilies produce a calm, soothing effect, especially in women,” Juan said. “You want your wife to be calm. If she gets uneasy, she’ll probably want to remodel your living room as well.”
“You have to admit it, Les. We never use the fireplace. We never have any wood to burn. I think we should have an insert put in and switch to natural gas. And the mantel is much too small. It should be longer. I could put the picture of you accepting the award from the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce on one end, and the picture of you shaking our state senator’s hand on the other end. We should actually look at our bathroom as well.”
“Well, sir, the tile is curled up because of the moisture. The moisture is likely coming from your toilet, which has a poor seal. Ceramic tile would have been much better. It does not curl.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Anything can be fixed. The toilet will have to be removed. The rotted sections of the subfloor will have to be removed. Actually, it will be easier to remove the entire subfloor and replace it with cement-board. Ceramic tile could be installed, grouted and sealed. The toilet would be re-installed and it would last forever, and it would be both beautiful and functional at the same time.”
“What do you think this would cost, George?”
“I’m not George. I’m Diego.”
“I never asked. What do you do when you’re not working for George?”
“I’m a plumber.”
“Honey, the kids are here. I think they need their hair cut.” Loretta ran out the door and there were hugs. Rosa was with the kids.
“I’m sorry,” Rosa said to Loretta. “They all tell me that you must cut their hair because you know proper style. You know the haircuts they wear on MTV.”
“I never watch MTV.”
“Who cares? They trust nobody else.”
***
“I need a workshop at home, Les,” Loretta said. “All of my big clients want a shop on the beach, but they come by appointment only. Why should I drive for 45 minutes if I’m not sure that anyone will show up? Our third bedroom could become a place where I can cut hair on a more informal basis. I have to give permanents and wash hair on occasion, so I need a sink. What do we need a third bedroom for anyway? We don’t have any kids. We don’t even need a second bedroom, except when our dumb-ass brother-in-law comes to visit us.”
“Well, I suppose it would make sense to rough-in the plumbing up there while the other plumbing is being done.”
What the hell was I doing? I wanted a simple deck at one time. It became a more complicated deck. Then a kitchen; then a living room, bathroom, entryway. What would be next?
“The lawn mower clutters up the garage. A garden shed might not be a bad idea. Maybe it could go under the deck.”
Why was I letting her get away with this?
“I can detect that you have a sense of guilt, Les.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You are a real man.” Juan unscrewed the top of his bottle of Tequila. “I’m sure you could drink six ounces. You don’t need a glass. It will unlock your soul.”
It might have been eight ounces. We talked for an hour and a half and my soul was not only unlocked. It fell out of my body and rattled around the floor. It didn’t flow downhill, however. Since the footings were raised, the floor was even.
“Well, Juan, this is the problem.” I told him about Kimberly.
“I knew this already, sir. These things are covered in first year psychology classes. I just didn’t know her name. You couldn’t enunciate properly the last time we talked.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tequila loosens a man’s tongue, sometimes entirely too much.”
“You won’t tell Loretta?”
“Of course I won’t tell Loretta. Loretta already knows.”
“How can you say that?”
“Well, I’ve been doing some counseling with Loretta as well. I can’t divulge any of the details, because of professional ethics considerations, but it might be possible that, in the course of this lawsuit against the hair clipper manufacturer, an assistant to one of the law firms involved may have mentioned something to your wife.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure. If I was sure I couldn’t tell you anyway. Professional ethics are very important. I was never told the name of this assistant. It might be Mary or Kay or Rita or Kathleen. Still, it’s possible this assistant’s name might be Kimberly.”
“This is all too far-fetched.”
“It is far-fetched. Loretta knows, however, of your affair with this woman. I can say this without any doubt whatsoever.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Your wife ordered three sets of bay windows this afternoon.”
***
“I think, George, I’m going to give up on this credit card and stock redemption stuff and go for a second mortgage.”
“A wise choice, Les. The application process for a second mortgage is annoying, but the interest rate will be much less.”
“What are we up to now?”
“$547,000. Those bay windows and those skylights will be spectacular. The track lighting will be a nice touch. This is a fabulous house, Les. I don’t know why you look so depressed.”
“I think I’ve wasted my life.”
“That’s not true, Les. You created the software that allowed people to play on-line Poker.”
“I did. That means I wasted my life in front of a large viewing audience, all of them with aces up their sleeves.”
“You are a good man, Les. You create jobs. Your wife cuts hair. You support a large number of people.”
“Who?”
“All of my relatives, maybe 26, 27 people. Well, not Randy. You don’t support him completely. Lawyers can make money anywhere.”
“I have to ask you this, George. How can you afford to have an operator on duty, 24 hours a day?”
“We don’t have enough beds at our house. We sleep in shifts. Somebody’s always awake.”
Makes sense.
“I don’t know if I should have started all of this remodeling, George. It would have been cheaper to have Duke euthanized. He sheds a lot of hair, though he has a good sense of smell.”
“A man cannot go backward in life, Les. Besides, your satisfaction is guaranteed. If you are not completely satisfied, you can send back all of the products we have installed, and we will refund $547,000. There will be shipping and handling costs, however. We would not insist that the new footings be removed. That would be counterproductive.”
George stood up. There’d be another nine weeks of construction, I guessed, another 30 years with Loretta.
“Juan says that you should take very good care of Duke. Randy says that you should have his genetic structure analyzed and patented. Adultery detection is a big, billion dollar industry. I think you should build him a real doghouse. Rosa says you should paint it green.”
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