The Ex

25

“You’re killing me!” Chumley moaned.

Behind him nighttime Manhattan glittered outside his office window. It was a large office with gray file cabinets along one wall. On another wall was a sales chart, a bulletin board plastered with memos and shipping schedules, a Minolta copy machine on a table with folding legs. Cardboard storage boxes were stacked in a corner. It was an office not for show, but where work was done.

Two gray steel desks, one larger than the other, matched the filing cabinets. On the large desk sat a black multilined phone, file folders, a wire Out basket, a fancy gold and black marble pen set, and framed photos of a smiling, middle-aged woman and two preteen girls wearing smaller but brighter versions of the same smile.

Chumley was seated in his desk chair rolled out from behind the larger desk. Deirdre, her skirt hiked to her waist, was straddling him, moving her hips with increasing speed and force. With each pump of her hips the chair squealed as if in pain. Sometimes it was Chumley who groaned, not in pain. After hours had never been so good for Chumley.

He had his head thrown back now and was moaning softly. Deirdre knew the moment. She grinned down at him, cupped his face in her hands, and kissed him violently on the lips. His body arched and trembled beneath her and she rode him as he reached orgasm.

“Jesus!” Chumley moaned, and his body relaxed. Went completely limp.

Deirdre lifted herself up from him just enough to work her hand down between their bodies. She kissed him again, hunching her shoulders, then used her hand to bring herself to climax. She’d been close, and it took her less than a minute.

Her breathing was only slightly hard and not at all ragged, but Chumley’s chest was still heaving as he sucked in oxygen. Laughing deep in her throat, she leaned forward and probed his ear with her tongue. He turned his head away.

“I’ve had it, Deirdre,” he gasped. “Whew!..Sorry.”

She planted her feet on the floor and rose up off him, letting her skirt fall back into place then smoothing it down over her thighs. She leaned back with her hips against the edge of the desk. Chumley, fully dressed but with his pants and boxer shorts down around his ankles, remained sprawled in the chair, slowly winning the struggle to regain his breath.

“You are something,” he said between gasps.

She smiled at him, then picked up her panties from the floor and stuffed them in a pocket of her skirt. She was looking out the window behind them. The blinds were raised high and the drapes opened wide. Hundreds if not thousands of lighted windows faced them. And some that were not lighted. Those were the ones that interested her, people staring out at the world from darkness.

Chumley was breathing more evenly. The desk chair, tilted as far back as it would go, gave a final eeeek! as he dropped forward in it.

“We should do this at your place,” he said. “In a bed. We keep this up and you’re gonna kill me.”

“It’s possible.”

“Your place next time?”

She yanked her belt around so it was aligned with her skirt. “I kind of like this, with the window behind us and everybody in New York with a telescope watching.”

Chumley laughed. “You’re an exhibitionist.”

“Only sometimes.”

Chumley bent low, then pulled up his shorts and pants as he managed to climb out of the chair. It was an awkward maneuver. He rebuttoned his shirt, fastened his belt, and straightened his clothes. Then he stooped and picked up his tie from the floor. Also on the floor were a goose-necked desk lamp, a jumble of file folders and papers, and various other items brushed from the desk during their sometimes violent lovemaking. Chumley picked up the In basket, which had been lying near his tie, and set it on the desk next to the Out.

He looked around and shook his head. “We made a hell of a mess here.”

“Worth it?” Deirdre asked.

“Worth it.”

She picked up an ashtray and laid it on the desk. “Don’t worry about the mess. You go ahead home and I’ll straighten things up and put everything back where it belongs. There’s a place for everything, and I know where.”

“You live in a conveniently compartmented world,” Chumley remarked, smiling.

She tilted her head, thinking about that. “Sure. That’s how the world should be.”

“Well, since you came on the scene, this place is certainly getting more organized.”

She flashed him her wicked grin. “Not to mention more fun.” Then she put her hands on her hips and looked at the folders and papers scattered on the hardwood floor. “But now’s the time for organization rather than fun. Time to pay the pauper.”

“‘Piper,’ you mean.”

“Whoever.”

“You’re too good to me, you know that?”

“Uh-hm, part of my job.”

He tucked in his shirt, then rolled down and buttoned his sleeves and put on his tie, making sure the wide end overlapped the narrow. He knew his wife could be on the alert for any sign of irregular behavior in the city. When it came to that kind of thing, women had radar.

“Presentable?” he asked.

“At least.” She brushed off his suit coat and handed it to him.

He worked his arms into the coat. She stepped in close and buttoned it for him.

“You are something!” he told her again.

She smiled up at him. “You already said that.”

“Well, I think it’s worth repeating.”

She kissed him lightly on the lower lip, then nudged him toward the door. He hesitated, looking back at her.

“Don’t be late,” she said. “We don’t want questions.”

He nodded, then went out the door.

Deirdre picked up the still-glowing goose-neck lamp and placed it on the desk, then gathered some papers from the floor, rearranged them, and placed them in the In basket.

When she’d decided that Chumley was gone from the building and enough time had passed that it was unlikely he’d return, she went to the door and shot the deadbolt into its shaft. She rolled Chumley’s chair into the kneehole of his desk, then lowered the blinds. The office suddenly seemed smaller, quieter.

Still in her stockinged feet, Deirdre walked to the file cabinets and opened one of the bottom drawers. Squatting effortlessly so that her buttocks rested on her heels, she quickly found the hanging file folder she sought and lifted it from its steel tracks, then stood up and nudged the long drawer shut with the side of her foot.

She carried the folder to the copy machine and set to work, smiling.