Ask Aunt Agatha

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Just then, Sam came back in the room. "You okay?" he asked.

I nodded.

"When you confront him Thursday, is she going to be with him?" I asked.

"Most likely," he said, "if they follow their pattern."

"Then I want to be there," I told him.

He looked at me uneasily. "You're not going to do anything stupid, are you, Casey? No revenge scenarios or anything like that?"

I shook my head. "Don't worry, Sam, after what I just heard, she's not worth it. All I want to do is to have the pleasure of personally serving her with divorce papers."

He nodded. "I understand. But you've got to let me and the photog do our thing first."

We were waiting in the wood-paneled lobby of the Hay-Adams at 5:00 p.m. The hotel staff was curious about us, but they were familiar with all the leading reporters in town so they didn't hassle Sam.

The bud in Sam's ear must have passed on a message because he turned to the photographer and me and said, "They're coming down." We stood up and clustered in front of the elevators, with me at the rear. Sam glanced sternly at me over his shoulder. "Remember: no macho stuff."

I gave him the Boy Scout salute. "I swear, Sam."

Just then, the elevator doors opened, and when Nicky and the Congressman emerged, the flash from the photographer's camera startled them. After blinking several times, the Congressman finally recognized the man facing him and recovered quickly. "Well hello, Sam. Always nice to see one of our leading newsmen on the job, but isn't it a little early for questions?"

The reporter ignored his remark. "Congressman Vickers, would you care to comment on why you and your aide just emerged from her room so early in the morning?"

I have to give it to the guy: he was nimble. "Certainly, Sam. Nicole and I were just having a quick meeting to go over my schedule for the day."

"I see. Then would you explain why that "quick meeting' in her room began at 11:00 p.m. last night and continued without interruption until a few minutes ago?" Sam pressed on.

"Well, that is to say . . ." the Congressman stumbled and tried to regain his mental footing. But Sam gave him no time to do so.

"Perhaps this photograph taken of the two of you earlier this month will shed further light on your relationship," Sam continued, holding up a print for the two of them to see.

Sam had showed it to me earlier. The photographer had used a powerful telephoto lens that managed to capture the two of them in an embrace high up in the glass-walled elevator on the exterior of a Marriott Hotel. What made the shot so damning was the fact that the Congressman had hiked up Nicky's skirt and his hand was clearly visible clutching her thong-clad ass. The pair had only held the embrace for a few seconds, but that had been long enough for the lens to capture the juicy shot.

"How do you think this will affect your position on family values, Congressman?" Sam continued relentlessly.

While the confrontation between the Congressman and Sam took place, Nicky was standing there in shock, her eyes darting around wildly. Suddenly, they focused on me, and she shrieked, "Casey! What are you doing here?"

That was a cue if ever I'd heard one, and I stepped forward to face her. "I'm just here to deliver this divorce petition to you in person," I told her evenly, thrusting the papers into her hands. She gasped. "Oh, and by the way," I continued, "in case you're still waiting for an answer to your question to Aunt Agatha, you'll find it in today's edition."

With that I handed her the morning paper opened to my column, and turned away. "Wait," I heard her behind me, "How did you . . . , I mean how could you . . ."

I glanced back over my shoulder to see her staring at the first item in Ask Aunt Agatha: Dear Aunt Agatha, my husband is a nice guy, but he's never going to go very far. In the meantime, I've gotten into a hot relationship with a man who's destined for great things. Now that I've got a chance to trade up, I'm not going to pass it up. Any suggestions on how to break the news to my soon-to-be-ex?
Going for the Gold

Dear Going for the Gold, no need to worry: your husband knows everything and he's already dumped you.

Some of my readers were a little puzzled by Aunt Agatha's answer, but I had been writing for an audience of one, and I was pretty sure she got the message.

When Sam's story hit the stands on Friday morning, it started a firestorm in the news media. It seemed that there were a lot of people who didn't like being lectured on morality, especially when the chastiser was shown to be a sinner.

The initial news was followed almost immediately by the announcement that the good Congressman was no longer under consideration for his party's Vice-Presidential nomination. Shortly after that story broke, Congressman Vickers' wife made a live appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Network. Oprah gently comforted the weeping woman while loudly castigating her philandering husband to Oprah's millions of viewers. The divorce that followed was very public and very messy.

Ultimately, the Congressman made the foolish decision to stand for re-election in his own district. He was defeated in a landslide and subsequently disappeared completely from the political scene. "Very fitting," I thought. "His name may be remembered by history, but it will be written in infamy."

As for Nicky, she found herself stalked by tabloid reporters who wanted the inside story on "the other woman." I had changed the locks on our apartment, so she was forced to move in temporarily with a girlfriend. When the paparazzi got too bad, she left town and ultimately moved back in with her parents.

Our divorce went through quickly; Nicky could hardly contest the grounds of adultery after having been exposed on the national news. She did try to contact me once or twice, but I made it clear that all communications would have to go through my attorney, and she quit trying. We split the little we had equally, and since the syndication deal had not yet been finalized, she didn't get a penny of those funds.

I became a bit of a minor celebrity around the paper when my role in the expose was revealed, but whenever people began asking too many questions, my boss would somehow appear and bark at them until they left. He was a tough old bird, but I found I really appreciated him, even with his gruff ways.

I had thought that I'd feel better after divorcing Nicky, but instead I felt more depressed than ever. I didn't miss my ex-wife, but I did miss what we'd had before all this started: a loving relationship. It made me angry that she'd taken all that away from me. I dated a little and it was fun, but I kept thinking "been there, done that."

I was sitting at my desk one day wallowing in self-pity when I caught myself daydreaming about Mandy. Once again I felt terrible for having driven her away, not only for her sake but for my own as well. I started thinking about office romances and I suddenly remembered an Aunt Agatha letter I'd answered on that very topic several months ago. I had to dig through my files to find it, but after a lot of searching I came up with it.

As I reread it, I decided I'd been pretty harsh on the girl who wrote it, and I wondered how I'd answer the same question today. Then a wild thought struck me and I checked the date I'd received the email. Could it possibly be?

I rushed over to Amir's cubicle, clutching the note in my hand. "Amir, I know it's a lot to ask, but could you ask your NSA buddy to check one more email? Please? It would really mean a lot to me."

He reluctantly took the email address from me. "This had better be important," he said sternly.

"Trust me," I said, "it's a matter of life and death."

The next time I saw him, he had a pained expression on his face. "I don't know what you're trying to pull, Casey, but that email came from here, from the newspaper's offices."

"I knew it, I knew it," I shouted and gave the startled techie a hug.

Of course it had been Mandy all along. She'd developed feelings for me but didn't know how to go about pursuing them. And I, I realized, had told her in so many words to butt out of my life. No wonder she quit and left town! What a great advisor I was: I'd had someone really special right under my nose and I hadn't even realized it. Not only did I overlook her, I actually managed to drive her away.

I had to find her. But everywhere I turned I ran into a dead end. Her old friends hadn't heard from her. She'd discontinued her Facebook page. HR wouldn't let me look at her job application for privacy reasons, but a friendly clerk let me know off the record that she hadn't named any next-of-kin I could use to try contact her. The University of Missouri hadn't heard from her since she graduated.

My lonely personal life, my depression about my failed marriage and my utter inability to find the only person who really mattered to me outside of my parents were all beginning to affect my work. It got so bad that one day my boss stuck his head in the door and snarled at me. "Look at the poor little boy crying over spilt milk! Listen, dummy, you'd better get your head out of your ass and straighten up or your syndication deal is going to die before it even gets born."

His words were harsh, but I guess they woke me out of my stupor because I really began to buckle down. I had come to care about my job and I didn't want to blow it. "Damn," I thought, "if I blow it with Aunt Agatha on top of Nicky and Mandy, I'll really have hit the trifecta of stupidity!" And it was true: I really had come to love Aunt Agatha and all her readers, even if I was as clueless as they were.

Suddenly an idea came to me. It was crazy, quixotic and probably pointless, but desperate times call for desperate measures.Dear Aunt Agatha, I worked with a woman who was everything I ever wanted, but, due to other things going on in my life, I didn't realize it at the time. As a result, I let her get away, and now I don't know how to find her. What can I do to remedy the biggest mistake in my life?
Blind in Bethesda

Dear Blind in Bethesda, your only hope is that someday she'll learn how you feel and give you another chance. But if she ever does, you better not let her get away again!

I know, I know: what a stupid, pointless gesture. But I had to try it, for my own peace of mind if nothing else.

One afternoon a few days later, I got called to the office upstairs. Waiting for me were a couple of lawyer types and the Managing Editor himself. I'd only met him once, so I was pretty intimidated. But he soon put me at ease, letting me know that the purpose of the meeting was the contract signing for the syndication of Ask Aunt Agatha. Once I put my name on the dotted line, my little daily column would be syndicated in papers around the country, starting the following week. From that point on, the paper and I would start splitting the weekly proceeds that the deal garnered. To make it even sweeter, the Big Man informed me with a smile that the number of papers that'd signed up to carry Aunt Agatha had grown from twelve to twenty-two during all the negotiations, with the possibility of even more after six months.

Once the papers were signed and I'd shaken hands with everyone around, I wandered back to my little office in a daze. For the first time in my life I had the prospect of earning some serious money, assuming I could keep my little goose laying its golden eggs. I might not be a crusading reporter like Woodward and Bernstein, but I was earning a living in my chosen field, and I might even be giving some good advice to my readers in the process.

I should have been ecstatic, but I found myself wishing I had someone with whom to share my good fortune. After work I went out with a group of the other reporters to have a beer or two, but I didn't say anything to them. I knew the word would get around eventually, but I didn't want to boast about my good fortune.

After I left the bar, I spent a quiet evening at home. I did call my folks to tell them the good news, but I had to ask them not tell anyone about it. Officially, the identity of Aunt Agatha was still a secret, although I knew that eventually the truth would come out. The Managing Editor had mentioned something about keeping it under wraps until they were ready to launch a publicity campaign. My folks were delighted for me, but my Mom was disappointed that she couldn't brag to her girlfriends about her son. My Dad was still a little confused about what I was doing, but he was happy that I looked to be financially independent for the foreseeable future.

The next day I was industriously working my way through a new stack of letters when I heard a timid knock on the doorframe. I looked up but didn't see anyone at first. Then a hesitant voice spoke up, "Casey?" I knew that voice.

"Mandy!" I yelled, and then I was scrambling across my desk, papers flying everywhere. I picked her up and crushed her to me desperately. "I thought I had lost you," I told her, and then I was kissing her and there was a roaring in my ears. After a minute, when the roaring hadn't stopped, I looked up, only to see the hallway outside my office filled with my office mates cheering and yelling.

Mandy looked at me apologetically. "They sort of followed me when I came looking for you," she said.

Finally the commotion began to die down and people began returning to their desks, leaving only my boss standing there. He fixed Mandy with a steely gaze. "It's about time you got back," he said. "This idiot hasn't been worth a damn since you've been gone."

As he left, I whispered in Mandy's ear, "For once in his life, he's absolutely right."

Dear Aunt Agatha, against all odds, the woman I lost came back to me, and she's even more wonderful than I remember. What do I do now?
Blind in Bethesda

Dear Blind in Bethesda, ask her to marry you as quick as you can, you idiot!

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ViolentKnightViolentKnight9 days ago

I agree with drjlcherrytree, movie producers need to consult people like you so they don't make the garbage they release these days.

5 stars.

AnonymousAnonymousabout 2 months ago

Again, like many of this writers stories it ends too soon. The revenge isn't sweet until the offending party learns the full extent of their hubris.

drjlcherrytreedrjlcherrytree2 months ago

Better than the crappy rom coms of lately

NitpicNitpic3 months ago
Very

Very enjoyable story.

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