The Sales Man

I was trying my best to keep from vomiting as I listened to the details regarding my wife's betrayal. Trying to remain on focus, I asked, "Anything you suggest?"

"We can put a recorder on your land line. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for her to use your land line as long as she has her cell. They never seem to meet at your home, so we're not going to get video of those two doing the dirty. Is there any way you can get her to use the land line? Maybe you can cancel her plan or something."

"No, she still has her own plan and she pays her own cell bill. That's not going to happen. Give me a day or so and I'll try to think of something. In the meantime, put a recorder on my land line - just in case."

In the end, I took the easy way out. Late Friday night, when I knew Hailey would have to work all day Saturday; I took her phone and smashed the shit out of it. Saturday morning, Hailey looked all over the house before she had to leave for work.

On Monday, I listened to Sunday's recording; I had what I needed. Here's the transcript from Sunday morning's call:

"Hailey, what the fuck? I've been calling you since last night. Why didn't you pick up or answer my texts?"

"Lonnie, why are you calling me here? My cell phone went missing. And I called you yesterday from the tavern, but you didn't answer."

"Shit, that was you? I didn't recognize the number and figured it was some asshole my ex put on my tail to squeeze more child support outta me."

"Damn, you are an asshole. I need to replace my phone later today. I'll text you when it's activated."

"Hailey; I've had enough of this bullshit. Divorce his ass, get your half of his money, and let's get back to being together. I'm sick and tired of waiting here while you fuck this asshole. We decided it would only be a year and it's already been fifteen months. A half-million sounded like a lot when we decided to fleece his ass. But; every time I think of you in bed with this fucker; I lose it. If you don't make it happen in the next month - I'm outta here."

"Lonnie; calm down. Give me four weeks, six tops. I'll figure out a way to make the break-up his fault, walk out with a half-million, then you and I will be set for life. Please baby, trust me. Before the year is out, we'll be together and loaded."

The call ended; but I heard enough. Shit, how did I get so stupid? How did I get sucked into a marriage with a harpy who only wanted my money? I was sad; but mostly I was fucking pissed at the bitch.

I barely kept it together as I went through the motions necessary to end it with Hailey. My attorney was a shark; he knew what needed to be done and did it with gusto.

Hailey argued in court that she nurtured me back to life after my first wife's death. My attorney countered that Hailey's betrayal set me back, further back than when she met me.

Justice may be blind; but luckily for me, it's not deaf. When the judge heard the recording of Haley's conversation with Lonnie, he ruled in my favor. No fifty-fifty split, no alimony. Haley was allowed to withdrawal the same amount from our account that she brought into the marriage, keep her clothes and the engagement ring.

Hailey tried a few times to talk to me; even tried the old ploy of refusing to sign the divorce papers until I sat down with her. I told her to go fuck herself and I'd wait the full year for the divorce even if she didn't sign. She ended up accosting me outside my workplace, shoving an envelope in my hand. She turned and walked away; but I called out to her, "Hailey!" She turned, I held the envelope in my hands above my head and ripped it in two, tossing the two halves in the air.

Last I heard, Hailey quit Donovan's and moved to the coast with Lonnie.

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I've heard bad shit comes in threes; it did for me. My wife cheats on me, my therapist retires, and the coup d'état - the company I work for gets bought out and I get a pink slip. Oh, they gave me a couple months severance and the promise of a good recommendation; but I really liked my job and I didn't receive one decent offer in response to the two-hundred resumes I mailed out. I was getting desperate. I had money; but I didn't have anything in my life to help get me up in the morning besides the hours I spent in the gym. There must have been a dark cloud hanging over my head because the two or three women I met at the gym all declined my offer to buy them a cup of coffee.

Five months after the divorce and three months after my lay-off; I caught a break. A computer company out of Arizona, Biblia-tekna, was looking for a salesman for the Mid-west region. It was a commission-based compensation package selling their systems. They would train me on the system; but everything after that was strictly up to me. Researching the potential customers, making cold calls, my travel expenses, training the customer after the system was installed, the whole ball of wax; it was either sell or starve. No one else was banging down my door to hire me and with every week that went by without a job, I was getting more depressed; spending more time sitting on a bar stool (not Donovan's anymore) - so, I decided, 'fuck it' and took the job.

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The following paragraph may sound as if I'm bragging; but you need to know something about what I look like in order to understand this next phase of my life.

I'm six-one and in great shape from spending five days in the gym every week. I have my father's dark, Mediterranean skin and my mother's deep blue Nordic eyes (plus, my paternal grandmother was a rare blue-eyed Sicilian). I have a full head of hair and a gift for gab, when I'm not depressed, that puts people, and especially ladies, at ease.

I spent the next three years putting these assets to work. I sold library computer systems: monitors, servers and the software to mid-size town and county libraries. I'm ashamed to admit, the hardware equipment was cheap Chinese crap and the software wasn't much better.

How did I get away with selling this crap? Well, if you know anything about libraries, you know that most libraries are managed by women; women are on the library boards and the libraries themselves are staffed almost exclusively by women.

I did my research; it took time; but I knew when I came into a town that there was a decent chance - almost fifty-fifty - that I'd be leaving within a couple weeks with a sale worth at least two-hundred thousand for my employer and a commission for a fifth of the sale. I was a great salesman, with few scruples and I wasn't above seducing one or more ladies to make the sale.

I can make all kinds of excuses, give a hundred justifications for my behavior; but the truth is - I had lost my bearings and moral compass. I was careful in one respect; didn't want a lot of Harry Collina's growing up throughout the Mid-west. And maybe a few of my conquests actually got as much out of our affair as I got out of it. I mean, some of these women were OK to look at, some probably never had a date in the past ten years, only a few were what anyone would consider to be attractive. So, maybe having a brief fling with a good looking guy would be a highlight for them. They were all adults; they all knew I was a traveling salesman and I never promised to change my life for any of them.

I did regret that the systems I sold would be worthless in a few years; the monitors and servers probably had a lifespan of four or five years - tops - and the software support they received was less than desirable. I probably had another year before the first systems I sold would start to fail; then I'd have to find a new line of work; the Internet makes information too readily available, bad reviews will start to crop up and it will be next to impossible to sell garbage, no matter how good the salesman.

I pulled into the mid-sized Indiana town of Polk (named after James Polk, the eleventh president) - just across the border from Illinois. It was the middle of summer and, even though it was eleven in the morning, it was hotter than hell and the humidity made it intolerable. I arrived with plenty of time to spare; my appointment with the head librarian, the director Marian Howard, wasn't until one o'clock; so I pulled into Denny's to get something cold to drink. The air-conditioning felt good and it would help keep me from sweating through my white shirt.

I used the time to chat up the waitress, trying to get a little gossip about the town and such. Since it was a half-hour before the lunch crowd, Alice wasn't busy and turned out to be a wealth of information. Alice filled the sugar bowls and salt shakers as I sat at the counter and listened. Hell, I could have paid a PI a thousand dollars and not gotten half of what Alice gave me for a two-dollar tip.

I learned about the mayor's affair with his admin, about the mayor's wife and her attempts to even the score by screwing the guy who owns the bakery. All good gossip, but nothing that could help me - neither the mayor, his wife, nor the baker were on the library board of trustees. But; I did learn something.

It seems Ms. Marian Howard is a widow; her husband was a state trooper, killed in a tragic accident when a semi-trailer hit his vehicle during a routine traffic stop. The Howards had one son, who Ms. Howard was raising with the help of her mother-in-law. Best of all, Marian Howard wasn't dating anyone.

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I parked my car in front of the library and checked myself in the visor mirror. Hair in place, clean shave, nothing stuck in my teeth, tie straight - I was ready. I smiled at my own image and said to myself, "Showtime!" I grabbed my briefcase and ran up the steps and into a whole different understanding of myself.

I clearly wasn't ready for who greeted me when I walked into Ms. Howard's office that afternoon. She rose from her chair and reached over the large oak desk to shake my hand. She had a face as beautiful as any Hollywood starlet.

"Mr. Collina; it's a pleasure to finally meet you."

My confusion over her welcome obviously registered on my face because she immediately explained herself.

"I'm very good friends with Ms. Rose Peters, the directing librarian in Falls Junction, Iowa. Rose and I were roommates at U of I."

This was not good; Rose Peters happened to be one of my previous conquests; some time during the previous year. I might still have a chance at making a sale, though. The Falls Junction system was still new and still functioning. Best of all, I think Rose and I parted on pretty good terms.

Marian continued to stun me with her straight-forward approach. "Do you think we can dispense with the seduction and concentrate on what your system can do to modernize our library?"

Marian Howard said this with a slight smile on her lips; but what I really noticed was how her eyes twinkled as she smiled. Without being too obvious and still looking into those beautiful blue eyes, my peripheral vision took in the fact that this woman had an incredibly sexy body. Despite her reluctance; I knew I'd pull out all the stops and eventually ravage Ms. Marian Howard. The back of my mind was already working on how I could make that happen, but first things first; I went into my sales pitch.

For the next two hours, Marian told me exactly what she needed to accomplish the library Board of Trustees' goals. I did my best to convince Marian that the Biblia-tekna system was state of the art and would meet all her library's need for the next decade. Marian listened to the pitch, asked tough questions; there were questions I couldn't answer, I promised to get back to her the next day after talking to the head office. We didn't even touch on price and I was already sweating.

We broke off the meeting, I was heading out the door, on my way to the motel so I could get on the phone with Phoenix, when Marian surprised me.

"It must be difficult being on the road all the time, eating in restaurants. Would you care to join me and my family for a home cooked meal? My mother-in-law is an excellent cook."

"I'd love it; but I do need to call the office."

"Here's our address. We'll have dinner at six. If you change your mind; call me here before five. Otherwise, show up any time after five-fifteen."

I walked out of the library shaking my head. Librarians are generally very nice people; but not nearly as friendly as Ms. Howard. I laughed at myself; who was playing who? Was the prim librarian setting me up for some super discount by feeding me a home cooked meal?

I went to my motel room, made my calls to Phoenix and asked them to email the answers before my follow up meeting with Marian the next afternoon; then washed up and put on a casual shirt. Most of the time was spent trying to figure a way to turn this around and get into Marian's panties.

The Howard home was something out of the last century, sometime before the second world war; everything but a white picket fence. It was a white Craftsman with a nice covered porch around the front and one side. The front yard was filled with flowering shrubs. There was even a American flag flying from one of the posts. A woman in her sixties, but with the movement of a trained athlete, came out the front screen door as soon as I approached the walk with my obligatory bouquet of flowers and bottle of wine.

"You must be Mr. Collina; what a pleasure! Marian is upstairs changing; she's running a little late. She asked me if I'd entertain you for a minute. I'm Audrey Howard, Marian's mother-in-law."

Before I could say a word, Audrey hooked her arm in mine and pulled me toward the house. As we walked up the front steps, she asked, "What can I get you, Mr. Collina? A beer, iced tea, open your wine, or maybe a cocktail? I make a mean Manhattan."

"Please, Ms. Howard; call me Harry. I could use a beer."

"Well, then you must call me Audrey. I'll be right back with the beer. Sit down."

Audrey floated out of the room; that's the only way to describe the way this woman moved. She came back with a bottle and a glass.

"Poured?"

"Yes, please."

She poured the beer in the glass and handed it to me before turning to make herself a drink from the small liquor cabinet.

"Rose Peters visited us last Easter and had so many nice things to say about you. Marian and I couldn't wait to meet you. How's the beer? I only had Pale Ale in the fridge. I hope that's all right."

"It's perfect." I felt like I'd fallen into some kind of 'Twilight Zone' episode. Rose had obviously shared some details of our relationship with both Audrey and Marian; but how much detail? My mind strayed to some horror film I watched years ago in which three women kidnapped the man who had seduced all three and held him for sex. I couldn't remember; but I think it ended badly for the man.

I nervously looked around the room until my eyes landed on the framed photo of a handsome man in a uniform. Audrey's eyes followed mine.

"That's my son Ron, Marian's late husband. He was a state trooper who died last year. A stupid accident. It was raining and Ron pulled a drunk driver over. A truck driver clipped Ron's patrol car just as he was getting out of it." Audrey went over to the photo and picked it up; tearing up.

"My first wife was killed in an auto accident when another driver ran a red light; she was pregnant with our first child."

Audrey looked at me with sympathy in her eyes. "Isn't it just so damn hard? I don't know how Marian will do it; raising young Ronny on her own."

"She has you."

"Only until Ronny starts school in the fall; full day kindergarten. I'll be moving back to Florida. I have a boyfriend who's been very patient these past fifteen months while I've been here."

My thoughts were interrupted when Marian walked in the room wearing a nice pair of shorts and a short sleeve white shirt. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail and she was still smiling with her entire face.

"Hi Harry. Thanks for coming. I see Mom got you a beer. I'm going to get myself an iced tea."

I didn't have a chance to reply before she skipped out of the room. Damn, what a fine ass in those shorts. And those long legs ending at her pretty bare feet.

Audrey finally put the photo down. "I'll go check on dinner. I hope you like pasta with gravy."

"Gravy?"

"Oh, it's a tomato sauce; where I grew up everyone calls spaghetti sauce 'gravy'."

"Well, I'm half Italian; so spaghetti and 'gravy' sounds great."

Audrey left the room and Marian walked in. Audrey had the radio on in the kitchen; I thought we could talk without being overheard. "Marian; you and Audrey seem to know more than I'm comfortable about my relationship with Rose."

"Don't worry about Mom; she doesn't know about the sex part. She just knows you two dated and Rose said she enjoyed your time together. Yes, she told me you two were intimate; but no details - don't worry.

"Rose did tell me how you helped her get over the terrible self-respect issues she was having after her divorce; said if a guy like you could show such interest in her, that she must be prettier and have more going for her than she thought. Her husband left her for some bimbo. After you left town, she was happy when you sent a couple letters, writing how much you enjoyed the time with her. She actually started dating and is now engaged to a very nice, handsome, successful doctor. She claims she owes it all to you."

The way Marian put it; I started to think that maybe I wasn't as big an asshole as I thought. It's true; I did use seduction as part of my sales pitch, but I did try to leave each lady with a sense that our time together meant something; and it was especially easy with Rose - she was a fantastic lady. And I always followed each sale with at least one letter and a bouquet of roses.

I spent the next twenty minutes listening to tales of Marian's time at school when she was Rose's roommate. Marian shared a few funny stories before Audrey stuck her head in the room. "Dinner in five minutes; Ronny needs to come home and wash up."

Marian pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket. "Sue, hi, can you send Ronny home?" Marian listened, kind of blushed, lowered her voice and answered a question. "No, he's a traveling salesman trying to sell the library a computer system. I invited him over for one of Mom's meals. Cut it out."

Marian pressed 'end' on her phone and looked at me, embarrassed. "My neighbor saw you pull up and thinks you're cute. Before the end of this evening, all the neighborhood gossips will be picking up their phones and talking about the man in my house. Sometimes small town living can be over the top."

I chuckled my reply to Marian's observation; hoping I didn't come off like some big city slicker, "I grew up in Chicago and now I spend most of my time in small towns. I can see the advantages and disadvantages in both."

"I don't know about city life; but after Ron died, it was nice to have the support of so many neighbors and the community. So I'll take the little bit of bad with all the good."

Just then a small hurricane came roaring into the house. He stopped and stared, "Who's this?"

"Ronny, this is Mr. Collina. He's our guest for dinner tonight. Harry, this is my son, Ronny."

We shook hands and exchanged "hi's" before Marian told Ronny to go wash his hands for dinner.

Dinner was excellent, spaghetti and meat balls with garlic bread. Not only the meal, but the entire atmosphere was superb. I couldn't remember the last time I sat down for a family dinner.

Ronny was a sharp five-year-old. He was disappointed to learn the Bears are my favorite football team and not his beloved Colts. He brightened up when I told him the Colts beat my beloved Bears in Super Bowl forty-one, a few years before he was born. I learned more about Audrey's 'boyfriend' in Tampa. A sixty-eight-year-old ex-steelworker who was currently building a house for the two of them. Audrey wasn't supposed to know that Daniel planned to propose marriage as soon as she returned from Indiana.