Revenge of the Screwed

The ceremony drug on and on for the attendees of the banquet. But, since the food was good and everybody else pretended to be having a good time, the audience courteously watched the goings-on at the podium. Finally, a representative of the Mayor's office made his way to the podium to speak, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief knowing that the banquet was almost over.

After the CEO pronounced it over, Kathy and Butch immediately came up to Jean and David afterward who were standing behind their seats at the head dinner table. They discussed the food and the service and Jean said, "Would you fellas mingle for a while so Kathy and I can engage in a little girl talk?" The men walked off.

The moment they were out of range, Jean said, "John is not only fucking you and me but also his teenage date, Kathy, I guess you picked up on that."

Kathy replied, "Yeah. That thought occurred to me early on and the more I think about it the madder I get. Just look at that arrogant son-of-a-bitch strutting around like a barnyard rooster with that 'child' on his arm - though I am sure she is 18 since she is a college junior!"

Jean said, "Well, I will resign as John Harris's assistant editor and go back to writing grant requests - does your mentoring organization need any help in that area?"

Kathy said, "Do I ever! But, is that the smart thing to do? Let's fix that 'rooster' with his boss. Their write up says that Ms. Eisenstein is in charge behind the scenes - and not the 'Gofer' with the title of CEO. You do see that the silver-haired CEO is only a flunky for the elegant lady, don't you? So, Jean, consider what is going on. Not only are you being fucked physically but John Harris is skimming off a percent of each Request that ultimately gets funded and that works out to be a lot of money. He lives in a luxury condo building and drives an eighty-thousand-dollar convertible. A salaried financial analyst couldn't afford that at all. I would bet the Moneybags, Ms. Eisenstein, would love to know that tidbit of information."

Jean's face turned white and said, "That bastard told me when I worked for you that I would continue to 'volunteer' helping needy people since he only deals with community service organizations. All the time I have just been lining the pockets of that slimy Bastard. I think I am going to throw up again, Kathy."

Ms. Phillips grabbed her friend to support her and looked carefully at her former volunteer grant request writer. She grimaced and thought to herself, "Just how fucking stupid can someone be? But, I need Jean's skills badly because the only volunteer proposal writers I get are recent college 'graduates' who would fail a Freshman Composition course." She then sighed and said, "Jean, I have a suggestion. Go to work Monday in John Harris's office and send me a list of the name and the manager of each non-profit for which you and John have edited their proposals regularly. Just email them to me privately as an attachment. In the meantime, let this be our secret - don't tell your children's Nanny or your husband or anyone. Would you do that?"

Jean's face brightened up and looked almost as if she was no longer depressed and said, "Sure thing, Kathy, just to pay that evil man back is all I want to do and I will depend on you to lead us."

Kathy said, "Jean, I know John likes to have his cock, and his balls and asshole licked while he marks up a proposal for changes with his big red marker, but don't you do it. In fact, no matter what he tells you, do not go upstairs to his apartment - Just say, 'David is expecting you,' or some other lie. Just email me that list ASAP. O.K.?"

Jean agreed again, and the brilliant Kathy Phillips looked at her with a worried thought, "Can that submissive bitch say 'no' to Harris if he drops his pants in front of her? I don't think so, but maybe just this once. So I must act quickly." Kathy continued talking while looking carefully at Jean, "If you feel the urge to pleasure him, lock the office door and crawl under his desk but don't go to his apartment..., read my lips! If you go there, this whole thing could blow up so that even our husbands learn that Harris has been fucking both of us."

Fear petrified Jean for a moment when for the first time she considered the possibility that David might find out. Perspiration was clumping on her powdery cosmetic foundation on her face, and her uncontrollable tremble was visible to Kathy. Ms. Thames said, "David refused to marry me unless I signed an agreement. I signed. And, I don't remember all of what it said, but one thing I do remember is if I am caught fucking around, then all I get in a divorce are my personal things. My children won't even want to live with me because they are closer to the Nanny than to me. Kathy, we must make this work without it blowing up."

Kathy was fearful that Jean would have a nervous breakdown if she could fully grasp the shit in which she found herself. The Mentor patted Jean on the back and said, "Don't worry, Dear, the only people who will know will be the Red Arrow's Eisenstein and her hubby plus you and me, and, most of all, John Harris."

"Thanks, Kathy, I depend on you."

At home later that night, sex was the last thing on Jean Thames' mind, but it was David's first thought. As they were carefully removing and hanging up their formal clothes, David said, "Dear, I know I told you already, but you were easily the most beautiful woman at the banquet tonight. Are you too tired for us to hold each other tonight - I am excited just looking at you!

She thought, "It's important to David, so I will just think about fucking my favorite rock star because Hubby won't know the difference." She faked oozing love and said, "Let's hurry."

The next morning about ten O'clock Jean drove to John Harris secret office and parked in its reserved space. She used her key to enter and turned on the computer equipment. The clerk noticed a stack of three Grant Requests that John had marked up in Red. She was inexplicably angry, to say the least, and her enthusiasm for getting all these edits re-typed had completely evaporated. She asked out loud to no one since she was alone, "John Harris, I wonder if that Teenybopper on your arm last night was licking your balls while you were marking up these proposals?"

She shook herself and continued, "Get a grip, Jean, or the whole show is closed down." She found a list of each proposal draft furnished John Harris for the current year. The spreadsheet showed the sending community service organization, the name of the funder(s), the amount requested, and the manager and phone number of the non-profit submitting the Grant-Request. One column even had a result listed (how much funding received). About a third of the proposals included Red Arrow as a possible funds source. Jean made a digital copy and attached it in an email to Kathy using her personal Gmail account.

That done, Jean lay her head down on her desk and started bawling like a child. In a half-hour, her cell phone rang, and she noticed when she raised her head that her tears had leaked onto the top proposal - and the ink and markings smeared the front page of the top one. It was Kathy on the phone.

"The spreadsheet is 100 percent what we need to nail that Bastard, Jean. Thank you for the good work. For the next phase of our adventure, my guess is that you have lost interest in doing 'volunteer' work for John Harris. Right?"

"Completely, Kathy, I will not look at a single Proposal and was thinking about calling David to see if he would meet me for lunch."

"Hey, Mrs. Thames, there is plenty of time later for us to make up to our husbands for your and my sluttish behavior, so I suggest let's continue to work on nailing that Randy Bastard, John Harris. Will you walk over to the Starbucks one block from John's condo building in about a half hour?"

"Yes. I know the one, Kathy, and I will see you there at 11:15." The clerk felt better than she had in months as she broke the circuit.

After they had met and the greetings had petered out, and they had finished the comments about last night's banquet, Kathy said, "I ran a background check on Misses Eisenstein - treating her as if she applied to our organization for training to become a mentor. She lives in this five-star apartment hotel with her husband," as Kathy pointed to a well-known luxury residence. "Drink your coffee and we are going to see if Ms. Eisenstein will meet us in the lobby of her building. If she visits us, we both will tell her the whole story in confidence of John Harris skimming money off of grant checks and let the chips fall where they may. Are you O.K. with that, Jean?"

"Yes, Kathy."

After driving over to the five-star Hotel, the two eye-candy ladies walked up to the doorman at the Buckingham Residencies. Kathy began flicking her eyelashes and pouted her lips slightly. With her face very close to that of the early-20s uniformed doorman, she presented her and Jean's business card and said, "Please ring Ms. Elizabeth Eisenstein and ask her if she will talk to us. Tell her that I said, I have proof that John Harris is skimming money from Red Arrow."

When he called the tenant, the nervous young man identified the two ladies and their organizations. He spoke, "Ma'am, these women say it's important to talk to you about John Harris, and they have proof that he is skimming money from your Foundation. They asked if you would please visit with them?"

He listened for a moment and then said into the phone, "Yes Ma'am, I will do that." He hung up and said to the ladies, "Please have a seat in the lobby over there as she will be down in about fifteen minutes."

When the frail, silver-haired woman walked up to them, both Kathy and Jean stood up. She asked, "Show me what proof you have that John Harris is skimming off the top of Red Arrow funds destined for community service organizations."

Kathy produced a print out of the now colorfully enhanced spreadsheet that Jean had sent her earlier. She meticulously explained each entry. She said, "Jean Thames sometimes preliminarily edits the Grant Requests submitted to John Harris's office addressed to Red Arrow and other funding agencies, including but not limited to SSGF."

Ms. Eisenstein looked especially at the Red Arrow funded entry rows as if to verify from memory that the numbers on the printout were approximately correct, then she looked carefully at the two ladies - one of whom, the best looking, Jean, hadn't spoken a word.

The elderly woman said, "There is something else going on here that you are not telling me about, Ms. Phillips and Ms. Thames. I was young once, and I can almost guess what eye-candy ladies do in private with a handsome, rugged man like John Harris. Is our Senior Analyst enjoying you two ladies sexually?"

Kathy and Jean shamefully bowed their heads and Kathy said, "Yes, Ma'am. I have a part time day job and run our organization in the afternoons because I want to help disadvantaged people. Jean feels the same way, but neither of us could withstand the full court press that Harris used to seduce us. And, the fat, old, handicapped and ugly principals of the community service firms get a lower incidence of funding from organizations like yours."

Ms. Eisenstein stood up livid with anger, and breathing in gasps, and completed Kathy's statement, "While firms whose managers are stylish eye-candy ladies- like you two - win more grants but get fucked for their efforts. Right? Don't answer that. And, don't worry as your secrets are safe with me. Please keep your seat for a moment."

She reached into her pocket and produced her cell phone and touched a 'favorites' and asked into the phone, "Would you drop what you are doing and come over to the lobby of my residence hotel right now? I want you to listen carefully and privately check out a story they two ladies will tell you."

There was a pause and then looking at the business cards she said, "One Kathy Phillips and Jean Thames will await you in the lobby." She broke the circuit.

Looking down at the two ladies, she said, "My personal assistant who also works at Red Arrow, and whose name is Marvin Banks, will be here in about one to two hours. In the meantime, tell the doorman what you want for lunch and it will be delivered to you here in the lobby. When Marvin arrives, repeat everything, you said to me plus fill in the details. You will hear the outcome of this meeting, brave ladies, one way or the other." She shuffled toward the bank of elevators.

Later an effeminate man, well dressed in very expensive clothes, and with pendant earrings dangling from both ears, walked up to the ladies as they were finishing their pizza. He identified himself and asked, "Kathy and Jean, right? My name is Marvin Banks."

They stood and said, "We both are glad for a chance to tell our story. May we refresh ourselves and meet you here in five minutes as we are just finishing lunch?"

He replied, "Certainly. I will fetch a cup of coffee in the meantime."

When they returned, the first thing Banks said was, "I am recording this conversation, but it's only to prompt my memory, so please start at the top."

First, Jean Thames spoke starting from when she worked for Kathy Phillips but then was invited to work for John Harris. She said, "I jumped at the opportunity to work for John because I would only be editing Proposals rather than writing them and would still be doing volunteer work. Then John encouraged me to work in his office and keep it a secret from anyone except my Husband. I started doing that one or two days per week. Then after I finished editing, he began asking me to visit him in his condo In the same building as his office while he went over it with me. After we started having sex, he always read my edited proposals while he was naked and I was pleasuring him with my tongue. I had no problem fucking around as far as my husband was concerned - I had done that before - but anger consumed me when I learned that he was inviting other Proposal Writers to his condo so they would pleasure him while he read and marked up their work also."

Banks asked, "How did you learn about others visiting his condo?"

Jean was embarrassed to pour out the truth to this stranger, but she said, "I had worked all day in John's downstairs office and had preliminarily-edited four proposals. He had told me, 'Just lay them on my desk, Darling, and go on home to be with your family.' I was angry because he didn't want to see me even though I had thought about him most all day. I then took the elevator and walked by his condo door when the young lady, who is the manager of this after-school activities program, came out his door." She looked at the spreadsheet and pointed out the person and the organization, and continued, "So I just walked on down the hall as if I were going to another apartment."

Ms. Eisenstein's assistant asked, "Did you know her on sight?"

"Not then, but she came to the podium Saturday night to receive an award from John Harris, and of course, I recognized her and her agency."

The man asked Kathy, "Please tell me about your relationship with John Harris if you would?"

She said, "I run this organization," pointing to its name on the spreadsheet, "And, I preliminarily edit the Proposals that my volunteers write. Then from time to time John invites me to his condo to study and mark them up with editorial changes using his giant red pen. Yes, in time, we would fuck and then he would have me pleasure him sexually while he studied the proposals. I became suspicious that he was doing this for others because from time to time, we had planned for me to take my finished GR to him in his condo after work, but then he would call and postpone until tomorrow. Yes, before you ask, I enjoyed the sex but more importantly I knew my chances of getting funded rose enormously 'working' with John.

"Then one day he broke a 'date' where I was to drop by his condo after work and so, in anger, I drove to the building in spite of that, only to find Jean's car in the reserved spot. That is how I learned he also was fucking my ex-Grant Request Writer. I was seething with anger at John from that point on. I confronted her with my knowledge at the banquet Saturday night. So, we called a truce and hatched this plan to ask Ms. Eisenstein to intercede to shut this evil man down for the sake of all the organizations who need funds and funding organizations like Red Arrow and SSGF."

Banks rose to go and said, "First of all, Ladies, thank you for your candidness. A man's sexual appetites and your partnering with him are not a Foundation concern. However, skimming funds destined for Community Service Organizations, even a small percent, is very much both an SSGF and a Red Arrow concern. You will hear from me... Please erase any correspondence you might get from me after you read or write it. Please say nothing to John Harris or anyone else that might indicate a private investigation of him is ongoing, O.K.?"

They both stood and said, "Yes," as they shook Marvin Banks' hand.

Driving home later, Jean felt a huge burden lift off of her life. She even took her children to the park and played with them while she awaited her husband to come home. While the kids were swinging, a text came from John Harris, "Call me ASAP about a GR Proposal." She wrote back, "Later. I am with Children now and busy with family matters all week." When David got home, she sat with him to just visit, and then her husband said, "I have had a long day, and I need to shower and hit the floor running early in the morning, but thank you for coming home to join me."

She asked, "Anything special tomorrow?"

He replied with a big smile and named a Cooper-Mini Dealership and said, "They are losing money, and Scuttlebutt has it that the business is for sale. I have an early appointment at the Bank to discuss arranging financing and floor plan transfer. I am super excited."

Jean was truly excited this time, as well, and she was aware for the first time that this feeling was for real. She decided to support her husband's business affairs in the future. This support was a first because heretofore Jean was passively indifferent to this kind of news. She stepped into the shower with her husband. He said, "Wow! Thank you, Darling, this is a banner day for me!" Two and half hours later, the couple finally dropped off to sleep. Jean's final thought was, "Everything I do from now on will have the goal of making it possible that this man and me and my children to find happiness."

Kathy Phillips drove to a subdivision where her husband, Butch, was managing the construction of four-thousand-foot home while chewing on a giant cigar. He was in the middle of talking heatedly with two sub-contractors while pointing to a blueprint of the project. Then the construction manager glanced up to see Kathy's car approaching, and her driving it. He finished his explanation, trashed his unlighted cigar, and genuinely smiled big as he walked up to her car. "My what a pleasant surprise, dear Wife!"

Kathy said, "I thought you might hurry home after work and that we might spend some quality time together."

Butch was almost jumping up and down with excitement and said, "This is a first! Thank you. Go on home and cater some food for us, I have about one more hour here before I can leave. O.K.?"

Kathy touched her lips with her fingers and then pressed her fingers to Butch's lips and said, "Hurry home ASAP."

Neither lady had heard a word from Marvin Banks or Ms. Eisenstein on this beautiful Thursday noon a week later. Jean and Kathy were lunching together when Kathy picked up the Local Business section of the daily newspaper. She screamed with excitement and opened it to show Jean the page. She showed her lunch partner a photo of Ms. Elizabeth Eisenstein and a headline. "Look at this, Jean. It says, 'Ms. Elizabeth Eisenstein, the granddaughter of the Founder of the Red Arrow Foundation, announced a major shake-up in that organization. The former CEO and the chief financial analyst have resigned... "The short article named the temporary replacements while a search was on for permanent ones and went on to say, "The owner announced a more efficient flow of requests for funds by community service organizations is upcoming. It is important to us that that the region's non-profits be funded as quickly as possible since they play such a vital role in our community..."