The Sandstone Affair

Mark pulls out of the lot and drives down the freeway for several miles before pulling over in a grocery store lot and shutting off the engine. He calls Mr. Clank and gives a description and instructions about my car.

He puts his phone down and looks at me so lovingly that I burst into tears.

“Are you okay, Julia? Did he hurt you? Did he?you know—”

“No!” I slam my fist against the dashboard. “NO! NO! NO! But I didn’t get the folder either. It was all for nothing. I went through that for nothing and now Blake knows I set him up and the file probably got water all over it and it’s all gone. It’s all gone.”

Mark holds me for a moment, and then begins to pull his shirt out of his pants. I can’t believe he wants to do that now.

“It’s not all gone,” he says reassuringly opening his shirt.

“Mark, I’m really not in the mood for—”

He opens some buttons and pulls a folder out, the same kind of folder as the fake in my purse. At least Blake won’t know we tried to set him up.

“You saved the fake? Oh good,” I reply half-heartedly.

“I saved the original,” he said, flipping it open to show me all kinds of tables, charts, pictures and notes.

“What? How?”

“I hid under that stairwell while you went in. You weren’t very cool, by the way. I saw you looking for me and Blake could have seen it too. But he stayed in his office. I saw him dragging you to the conference room. That was something I didn’t think about ahead of time. It has more cameras, and better lighting. He was so excited to get you in there he left his office door open, so I went in and made the switch. But I could feel something. I can’t explain it, but I knew you were in trouble. I walked out and saw your shoes in the hall. So, I pulled the fire alarm by the door and went back under the stairwell.”

“You beautiful, wonderful, man,” I say, hugging Mark and looking through the folder. It was all there. Spreadsheets, emails, even more pictures of Valerie and Mark. I didn’t care. I was so happy to see all that evidence nothing could have stopped me from cheering.

“I’m so sorry, Julia,” he says reaching out to touch me. I react and pull away from him, the thought of his brother’s hands on me still overwhelming my senses. “I’m staying with you tonight. Tomorrow, we will see the judge.”

“Tomorrow, my life begins again.” I sigh, hoping somehow to rid myself of the ghost of Blake’s perversion before Mark notices its presence too clearly.

“You are amazing.” He starts the car and backs out of the parking lot.

“I love you.” I kiss the folder and hug his arm as he drives us back to my place.

Chapter 22

We park the junker in my space and leave the key in the car. Mark texts Mr. Clank to have his helper leave my car in the space and take this car back to wherever it came from. We walk up the stairs hand in hand. I keep touching and rubbing Mark’s arm, reminding myself what good touch feels like.

We sit down at the table and look at everything in Blake’s folder carefully. Spreadsheets show how he used the Lynx account number to attach funds to each order or payment I made. $300 for printer ink for the staff became $3,000 with the overage going into a private holding area, eventually transferred to Blake’s personal bank. That was just one small transaction but the sheet was filled with them.

An envelope with smaller pictures reveals more than a few additional shots of Valerie and Mark playing hanky spanky. Some show Valerie on her knees or bent over for other men, all of whom granted some kind of exclusive interview or content for Ladies World.

“Those were a long time ago. When she was starting,” Mark said, attempting to explain the obvious.

I collected the pictures and put them back in the envelope. “Give these back to her,” I say softly.

“I called Paul Fries today. He agreed to do this work for us and let me pay him later. He’s got the rejoinder paperwork ready. We have an appointment with him at ten o’clock tomorrow morning for him to put the evidence in the request and then we have a one-thirty appointment before a judge. You have to sign the rejoinder in front of an officer of the court first, so we need to get there around one.”

“I’m surprised Paul’s helping,” I say, “He’s always been clear his is a cash and carry law-firm.”

“Well, some people hate my brother even more than they love money.” Mark smiled. “Blake has made more than a few enemies in town.”

We keep looking through the stacks of fudged receipts, threatening emails, and corruption when there is a sudden, loud knock on my door.

“That’s probably Bob’s guy,” Mark says as he gets up. I stop him.

“No. It’s not. You didn’t tell him my apartment number.” I run and look out the peephole but see nothing. We both crouch by the door waiting to hear the footsteps walk away. When we are sure the coast is clear, Mark sends me to stand behind the couch with the phone in my hand as he opens the door and looks out. Slowly he reaches outside and takes something off the door knob.

He pauses, looking at it carefully, then brings it in. I can tell from the look on his face it’s not good.

“You don’t need to see this.” He places it on the table by my door. It’s my purse from this evening, dripping wet.

“I need to know. We’re in this together.” I look at the purse. At first-glance everything seems fine. Soggy, but fine. Then Mark pulls out the one dry thing inside the bag. It’s a picture of me on my knees in front of Blake, my mouth open, his hand on my head. You can tell by the pixels it’s a still he made from a video camera.

Across the photo he wrote in marker: “You’ll pay, bitch.” As a piece of punctuation, there is a white glob of ejaculate right over my face.

“Oh my god, Blake,” Mark says, the disgust evident in his voice. “Julia, I— ”

He stops as he sees the tears pouring down my face. I pull away from him, wondering if he feels that disgust from what Blake did on the picture or what I almost did with Blake. Mark leans over and takes my hand.

“Come on.” He pulls me toward my bedroom. We cross in front of the bed and head straight for the bathroom. He reaches in and turns the shower on; the room fills with the warm mist of the steam. “There is nothing of him on you. There is nothing of him about you. He is scum and you are beautiful.”

I feel him unbuttoning my blouse and I reach to help him. Undressing myself, I imagine my time in Blake’s office falling away from me like scales. I step in the hot shower and let the shame, the guilt and everything wash off me. As I release my feelings, wracking sobs pulling from body, I see his arm enter the shower, and the rest of Mark soon appears.