The Sandstone Affair

After he withdraws, I drop one leg on the ground and he holds me until I let the other down. Slowly, he turns and gives me a moment to get myself together as he walks to the couch and gets a blanket. Mark gently wraps it around my shoulders. Still shaken by the depth and power of the moment, I can barely walk, but he guides me to the couch.

“I do trust you,” I say softly.

“Good,” he says, twirling my hair in his fingers.

“But, Clank and Clack?” I ask.

“I couldn’t take the risk Blake or Kenneth would know I helped you. We have to keep it a secret. For your safety, and for my plan to work. Besides, Robert is a good man and friend. If you’re going to run around assaulting people, you should probably get to know him.”

I nestle against him satisfied with the explanation. He’s so different, after sex—so loving and nurturing. Tiger, then tabby.

Chapter 8

Sitting at a sidewalk café in the East Village, I squint against the sun and discover I’m staring right at Janice even though I barely recognize her. My normally neat and professionally dressed friend is wearing old jeans with an oil stain on one leg, a football sweatshirt, floppy hat, and sunglasses. She makes an effort to look up and down the street then slides into the seat across from me.

“You couldn’t pick an inside place?” she whispers. “Why didn’t you wear something unusual? You look just like you always do. They can spot you a mile away!”

“Oh, I don’t know Janice. Maybe I thought looking like a drug dealer or international terrorist would attract more attention than it would repel,” I reply with a sarcastic smile. “Are those even your jeans?”

“They are my sister’s. You don’t understand, Julia. You don’t know what it’s like there. They keep your office door closed and locked unless Kenneth All-Slime is there poking around. They changed the password to your computer and put in a privacy program to protect it on the network. Then they made everyone change their own password. John Kellen thinks they are using some kind of tracking software to read everyone’s new password as it was put in.”

“Jeez Janice, what’s next? Kenneth is going to peel off his face like they do in Mission Impossible and turn out to be Cameron Diaz?”

“Ha ha, very funny. I’m glad you’ve kept your sense of humor. It must be nice to be you. I have two ulcers and an eye twitch.” Janice pretends to be teasing but I can see she’s really under a lot of pressure.

“Yep. It’s great to be me. I’ve lost my job, my magazine, my life work, been escorted by security guards not once—but twice, had two conversations with the cancer treatment center about how I’m going to pay for my Dad’s experimental treatment which may or may not be working, been arrested for assault, and been notified my lawyer’s retainer runs out at the end of the month. My life is just peachy keen!” I respond.

I nearly blurted out “became a sexual slave” in the laundry list, but didn’t. I trust Janice, but I don’t think Mark would enjoy that part of the deal becoming public, and I’m not sure how she’d react. I don’t know what I think about giving myself sexually in exchange for help, let alone what she might think. Plus, there’s no way I could describe the incredible pleasure his rough thrusts have been providing me.

“I know. I’m sorry. I guess I’m just tense. The whole office is abuzz at you punching Blake the Snake right in the eye. How is your lawyer doing? Have you found a way back?”

“I’m working on a plan. I can’t tell you anything about it, but I may call on you and need your help,” I reply, adding a hint of mystery. It works for Mark, maybe it will work for me. “And, for the record, I slapped Blake’s face. Although I’m sure by the time it gets to court, I will have crippled him.”

“You know, there are some things I could do. Kenneth is asking me to run the office when he isn’t there interrogating people or searching through things. I could find a way to jam the copier, stall contracts and slow things down further, trip the breaker and shut the system down claiming brownouts. Heck, no one at the office does anything real at work anymore. They keep their real writing at home.”

“Thanks for the thought, but I don’t think that’s the best idea.” I’m a little taken back by Janice’s offer. She’s as meek as a mouse and once cried when she got a warning for speeding because it was her first ticket and she didn’t like the fact she broke a law. Now she’s willing to sabotage the system for me? It must be terrible there.

“I’m serious, Julia. If you need a ghost in the machine, you can count on me. In fact, the whole office is behind you. No one quit because they keep thinking you’re going to come back. But, I’ve heard a lot of people say they’d rather become internet bloggers than work for that hack Valerie James.”

“Janice, when you said, ‘when Kenneth is not interrogating people’ what did you mean?”

“Well,” she leans over and whispers louder, only drawing more attention to us. “Kenneth calls them interviews and says he and Blake are just trying to get an idea what everyone’s talents and projects are but it’s clear they are looking for something. They keep asking people what they’ve written about, what they are working on now, and if you assigned them anything that isn’t in the system. Everyone is stonewalling them.”

“Have they found anything?”

“No, and they’re pissed. At one point Blake shouted loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘I am truly amazed you people have an award winning magazine when none of you seem to be working on anything interesting!’ People just laughed at him, and he slammed the door and started poring through your files again.”

“What are they looking for? Did they mention the Wall Street piece by name?”

“No,” Janice squints when I say the words out loud. “But I think they know something about it. They were asking if anyone had done a ‘political or financial’ piece. And they requested all your payouts, personnel files, and have been going over your source lists. The first thing they did was block my access to accounting, but they keep asking questions about money.”

“Is the Wall Street piece still secure?”

“They will never find it.”

“Is the source secure?”

“She’s out of reach and out of touch. She’s safe.”