Separate Vacations

I smiled at him. I couldn't help it. If he hadn't been fucking my wife and he didn't have that huge dick that had enchanted her, I would have really liked the son of a bitch.

"I'd say a burglar or two, maybe home invaders, broke in and you fought them off. You can reach a phone and call 9-11 and have somebody here in a few minutes."

He smiled back.

"I could probably call them in time... for them to catch you before you...got back to your alibi....and....what would you do then?"

"Spend a few years in prison. But I'd get out. And the next time I'd have an iron clad alibi and I'd rip your dick off with my bare hands and cripple you so you'd never walk again. I'd do it even if I had to go back to prison. You can buy a gun, but you can't watch your back forever."

He took a deep breath and coughed up blood again, then breathed shallowly until he could talk again.

"I guess I have to...chalk this up to...experience.....I'm going to miss her...you know...but she's not worth....dying for...."

I got off the couch and knelt down beside him. He drew back for a second but I didn't reach for him.

"You can still see her."

"What?"

"I divorced her...you're right....I lost the right to say who she can fuck....and if she wants you...that's okay. But...."

I looked down at him and made a quick chopping motion in the direction of his dick. He flinched.

"But, you will never, ever, go along with her calling me while you two are having sex again. As long as you live. I don't care how you do it, but convince her that would get you killed. If she really likes you, she ought to be willing to stop tormenting me."

He shook his head.

"I thought it was true. You still love her.... don't you? Why in the hell....did you throw her away....?"

"It was the best thing for both of us. Don't try to figure it out, and please...if I can ask you any favors and I won't hurt you if I find out you went against me, don't ever tell her I still love her. It would just make things worse."

I got up and walked out and there was no one around in the night and I made it back to St. Augustine in an hour and a half to my friend's marathon gaming session and it was like I had never been gone.

Nothing else happened. I heard from the girls a week later about Uncle Stephen's house being invaded and his fighting two men off. And mom cried and spent the day at the hospital with him. Eventually she went back to work and Uncle Stephen went back to work and the cops had absolutely no luck finding the two black guys who had tried to rob him.

It was a Saturday night and my latest cell phone rang at 11 p.m.

"Hello Bruce."

"To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Stephen told me everything."

"He probably suffered a little brain damage from that beating he took. No telling what he thinks happened."

"I feel guilty. You hurt him really bad, and it's all my fault. I won't....call you again like that."

"Thanks."

"I knew you still loved me. The sad thing is, now, it doesn't matter anymore. I could never be satisfied with you now, even if you came to your senses. And even though I don't call you, you know I'm going to be fucking him. As often as I can. Because I can't get enough of him."

I didn't say anything.

"Do you ever wonder, Bruce...sometimes late at night and you're all alone, what it would be like if we were still together? I know you'll find other women. But they won't be me."

This time she didn't slam the phone down, just hung it up gently. But it still sounded like the end of the world.

I dated and I fucked and I partied over the next six months. I took the girls to school events and to soccer practice at the YMCA field in Orange Park in the Spring. There were times in the months after my little heart to heart with Stephen that I sat in one bleacher cheering the girls and Stephen and Tiffany sat 50 feet away on another bleacher.

We'd catch each other's eyes and nod once in a while. I'd see Tiffany talking to Stephen as they snuggled and stared at me, but they weren't obnoxious about it. They were just another couple watching their kids.

Then during the summer when I went to pick them up or when we went to summer camp events and Theatrical Camp because Kaitlyn was a budding thespian, I noted that Stephen wasn't around any more. Not once in a while, but he had vanished.

The next time the girls came over and I subtly pumped them I learned that Stephen had started disappearing four months ago and for the last two months they hadn't seen him at all.

Mom had told them that she and Uncle Stephen decided to stop seeing each other. They weren't fighting, just wanted to take a break. Kaitlyn told me that Mom hadn't cried, but she'd walked around looking sad for a week and then she seemed to be her old self.

And the first new guy the girls had never seen before had come to pick Mom up on a Friday night while Grandma babysat.

I wondered if he had dumped her or she'd finally got her fill of his big dick. And now she had gone to playing the field. Just like me.

So we lived our lives on parallel tracks, trying not to pay attention to what the other was doing, connected only by two little girls, one of whom had her period and started developing little breast buds.

And then I was really glad that Kaitlyn had a mother, because no way did I feel up to guiding her through the treacherous waters of adolescence -- being a teenage or even pre-teen girl.

The other major change in my life occurred about six months after Tiff and I divorced. I was at one of the Blockbusters in Arlington when a big dark-haired man came in with a half dozen DVDs to return He was cursing under his breath as he dumped the DVDs off and then pulled out his cell phone and punched a number in.

He talked for a minute and then slammed it shut and said, "Fucking waste of air...sorry son of bitch...you miserable bastard....""

I usually shot the breeze with customers I knew and tried to tell them what was out that was new and worth renting. I knew this guy and he was usually a happy-go-lucky bastard who, when he came in, was usually with a woman, always a "10" on his arm, and usually a different "10" each time.

He was obviously not in a renting mood tonight.

"I'd give you the new release list, Mr. Fleming, but something tells me you're not in a DVD-watching mood. Is there anything I can do to help?"

He looked at me and shook his head as if to physically dispel the dark thoughts and said, "Oh, hey Bruce. Nah, nothing you can do. It's just a goddamned shame that when you pay people good money to come up with words for you, the sons of bitches get drunk and overdosed and I wind up trying to come up with the copy myself. And I'm not a word man."

I thought he was in public relations, for some little firm in Jacksonville. We'd talked briefly over the last couple of years when I'd run into him about the vicissitudes of the PR game.

Then he stopped muttering and looked at me and, I think, saw me for the first time.

"Bruce....am I remembering correctly? You write novels and short stories?"

"Yeah, plugging away....haven't sold the novels yet but I've placed some short stories."

"You ever done any non-fiction? Any PR or promotional writing?"

"No."

"Could you?"

"I don't know. I doubt it. I don't really know anything about that type of writing. I haven't even tried it since college. There must be tons of guys around that have experience doing that kind of thing."

"Yeah, there are, but I don't know any I can trust that will finish a job for me tonight."

"Tonight? You mean, like in the next 4 hours or so?"

"You'd have till 8 a.m. tomorrow, which means about 11 hours."

"You ought to try to find somebody else. If I can't get it done, I'd feel bad about getting you in a bind."

"I'm already in a bind, Bruce. You know we're a boutique agency. We're small, but we work for really high dollar clients and we've built up a good reputation over the last 20 years. Hank --Henry -- Clark and I are the owner/partners. We built it since we left UF. Hank has always been the word and idea man. I handle clients and sell our stuff.

"We've gotten a little too big for ourselves lately and we had to bring in three writers. Which was enough, but we've got this account and we need copy for a very expensive retirement community that needs to go into the printer tomorrow morning to make the deadline for their national ad campaign.

"Two of our writers are jammed on big accounts that provide a good chunk of our income. Hank is a walking zombie because...of his family situation...and my last hope was just busted by the cops for possession of cocaine after plowing his car into the front of a nightclub in Orlando. He blew a .19, which means his blood is basically almost pure alcohol.

"I am shit out of luck, Bruce, unless you could help me. Even if you can't do it, it would at least give us a shot."

"I -- uh -- I'll take it but I'll tell you right now I might not be able to do it. You'd be better off looking for a pro."

"I'm going to, but in the meantime could you try to crank out some copy? I've got some samples, their talking points, stuff that will show you what they're looking for and what we need."

I told him I would and I looked it over between customers and took it home with me. I didn't get to bed until 4 a.m. and was up at 6 a.m. in time to get into Jacksonville and be in his office by 7:30 a.m.

I had kept it as simple as I could, basing my copy on what I thought the owners were trying to sell. What they were trying to sell was security and reassurance that even though you were aging and might need some help with daily living, you were still better than 95 percent of the working stiffs and Their Place was the Right Place for a special person like you.

It was pure horseshit of course, but it appealed to the twin needs to assuage the fear of dying on the part of aging customers and stroke their ego at the same time. I wasn't sure if my stuff was any good at all, but I thought I'd hit close to the mark.

I sat across from Vic Fleming and watched as he read through the copy, then read it again and read it a third time.

He finally looked up at me, hit the intercom after which a blonde with 42DD tits and an ass to die for swayed into his office and took the papers from him.

"Candy, get that to the courier and get it over to The Right Place before 8 a.m."

She took it without a word, gave him a glance that should have melted steel, and glanced at me on the way out. I could feel every nerve ending in my body tingling.

"Who do you have to kill to get a job around her?" I asked, only half joking.

"She's a very sweet lady, high IQ, great secretary, happily married and the mother of two small boys. But she's also wonderful eye candy and we've gotten a lot of business from guys that were dreaming about getting between her legs. Fortunately," he said and lowered his voice so only I could hear him, "she likes what I have between my legs. She loves her husband, but she's not fanatical about it."

Then he turned his attention back to me.

"It's not the best or most polished stuff I've ever seen, but it's useable and good enough that they'll come back to us. For a first time effort, on the fly, under unbelievable deadline pressure, it's pretty damned good. What do I owe you?"

"I've got no idea what to charge. Whatever you think is fair."

He opened his wallet and passed me five $100 bills and then fished a form out of his desk and slid it over to me.

"Sign this. You're signing away any rights to your text so we can use it whenever and however we please and you can't come back and sue us if it winds up making somebody a million dollars. That's because you're a freelancer. If you were working in the shop your work would be covered and we wouldn't need to do this."

I looked at the $500 and couldn't believe my eyes. $500 for only two or three hours of real concentrated work. It was a nice piece of change. I reached out and shook his hand and got up to leave.

Before I could make it out the door, he asked me, "Would you like to try this again. I think with some effort and maybe a little training by one of our regular writers, you'd be a valuable addition to this firm. The money is good for freelancers. I'd like someone who can write fast, and turn out acceptable copy."

I shrugged.

"Sure. I can always use the money."

"Ever thinking about doing this full-time, if it works out?"

I thought about it for a moment.

"Naw, I don't think so. I like Blockbuster and the people I work with. This way I've got time for my fiction writing, I'm keeping my Blockbuster option open, and I would almost always be available when you needed a quick turnaround."

He just nodded at me. Before I could leave, he said, "I could introduce you to Candy. Maybe you could go out to lunch sometime. Let her fill you in on how the office works. It would be good to know."

"No thanks."

"I could tell you were impressed and she's been around here long enough that I know when she's interested. It might be fun. And it's a definite perk to working around here."

I shook my head.

"No. No offense or anything personal, but I'm not interested. I divorced my wife six months ago and I think she might have been running around on me before we made it final. I just don't -- I don't want to do that to some other poor bastard."

He looked at me and smiled a sad smile.

"You and my friend Hank. God, I'm glad I've never loved anybody like that. Sometimes I think I've missed out on something important, and other times I say my prayers of thanks that I missed out on it."

I walked out and for the next year and a half wrote ad copy for Vic and Hank. And made enough to beef up my bank account and take the girls to a few nice places.

I was nowhere near Tiffany's league, but I was making more money part time than I was with my full-time Blockbuster job. And I was up to 400-plus rejections on the Great American Novel and wondered if my dreams would die before I did.

#############################

Vic Fleming sat up a little straighter in his chair behind the big marble desk he had had carried to three different offices over the years as the firm had grown or changed locations for strategic reasons.

It was probably something very childish, but a memory of a desk like this seen in some movie or documentary when he was a child had stuck in his head.

And when he and Hank had begun making the money they had never dreamed of making, he had the desk produced to his specifications. He always felt more powerful, more in control of the world around him behind this desk.

He sat up straighter in what he recognized was an instinctive attempt to preen for this young woman entering his office.

The woman entering his office was well dressed, although not too dressy, and appeared very professional. Despite looking all business, she was still hot. Young, probably too young for him, but what the hell, robbing the cradle occasionally was fun. Slim, brunette, not ostentatiously built, but there was just something...

He reached down as unobtrusively as he could to move his rapidly thickening cock to a more comfortable position. Having a big dick was usually not something that posed a problem, but getting an erection in front of an attractive woman in a business setting was not good business.

As it was, he was forced to be somewhat impolite simply because he couldn't stand up to shake her hand without embarrassing himself.

She just looked at him for a moment with a hint of a smile as he gestured to one of the chairs in front of the desk, then sank gracefully into it, crossing her legs and revealing some very nice leg encased in sensuous nylon.

"Miss...Hampton, I believe it was....I appreciate your taking the time to come down to our office, but I would have been happy to meet you."

She shook her head.

"No need. I had business downtown. And I wanted to talk to you in person and meet some of your staff. And it's Mrs. Hampton. I'm keeping my ex's name for awhile since some of our larger customers are familiar with me under my married name."

"Meet some of our staff? I'm afraid I don't understand."

She reached into a slim briefcase she had set down beside her chair and pulled some papers out and leaned over to hand them to him. As she leaned forward some very nice swells of small but attractive breasts peeked out from her cleavage. He wondered if it was accidental.

He looked over the papers she had handed them. They were primarily print ads, along with a few transcripts of radio ads and a few television ads with still shots attached.

"We've used other advertising firms in the past, but the owners of our firm and staff including myself felt they'd gotten a little...stale....over the past year. We started looking around at some other agencies' work and some friends pointed to your agency as a possibility to handle some of our new advertising campaigns.

"After we decided to study your agency, we got a list of your clients and started looking at the print and media ads you've done for them. We were pleasantly surprised.

"These ads are ....I don't know quite how to say it and we haven't quite pinned down exactly what the quality that impresses us is, but the easiest way to explain it is that they are fresh, Their concepts and writing doesn't seem like the same old-same old.

"I've dealt with a lot of advertising agencies over the past 10 years and I think I've developed a pretty discriminating eye. I like the work and the feel for the written word and the buyer's market pitch that whoever prepared these had.

"I'd be happy to meet with anyone on your staff, but I really would like to meet the individual or individuals who did these."

Fleming looked over them and most were relatively easy to place. A couple were harder to place, but a few moments recollection brought them back to him. He wasn't surprised.

"I know who did these, Ms. Hampton. We run a small shop here as I'm sure you've been told. Our total staff including Mr. Clark, my partner and co-owner, and myself, amounts to only 15 people including secretaries. We have four writers and idea people. One is Hank Clark, we have two writers on staff, and a fourth writer who is basically a freelancer but on call whenever we need him."

He laid the papers down in front of him against the cool marble desktop.

"These were all done by the fourth writer. He's a freelancer. Actually, I brought him into the business about a year and a half ago. We were in a crunch and I ran into him where he was working at his fulltime job. I knew he'd written some things and asked him if he were willing to give copywriting a shot.

"He did and the rest is history. I started using him for freelance assignments and he always delivered, always did a good job, and he was fast as hell. Fast and dependable, and good. It doesn't get much better than that."

She looked down at the papers.

"He did these as a part-timer? I'm impressed. Actually amazed. You wouldn't believe how much crappy copy I've had to wade through over the years, from people who were supposed to be dependable professionals.

"I'm quite surprised that you let him hang out there as a freelancer. Somebody else is going to notice this guy and snatch him up."

"I've had the same worry. Unfortunately, he likes his full-time job and he's also a writer of fiction on the side. One of those guys who keeps trying to write the 'Great American Novel.' But a few months ago my partner and I finally bit the bullet and decided we didn't want him to get away.

"Hank and I have always been 100 percent owners. We split the company 45-45 and offered him a 10 percent ownership stake to be exclusively ours. If he writes for us exclusively for five years, he's vested in half that, and if he stays with us a full ten years, he gets 10 percent of the company. He can stay or sell his percentage and walk away. It's win-win for everybody."