Re: Tha Age of Demeter
Chapter 1 – The Beginnings
In disgust, Joe threw the morning paper onto the patio.
‘What is it now?’ asked Sal from the kitchen.
Joe had bought the house on the edge of town because of what he liked to call its ‘Prairie Style ambience’. With its long eaves, natural timber and open plan spaces looking over the broad lawns, there was something of the great Mr Wright’s influence in the place. There was also a lot of the couple’s money in it, with more in a secluded lakeside cabin a couple of hours away.
Annoyed, Joe pulled the side of his dressing gown back up to cover his pyjama’d body.
‘Only two guys now on the city council. If this…’
Joe stopped abruptly.
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Sal,’ he said, raising his voice and staring at his wife’s clothing.
Sal continued walking towards the table, carrying her coffee. Her hips swung as she walked, accentuated by the tight blue denim of her jeans. Her full breasts swung beneath a brushed cotton plaid shirt under which the neck of a white t-shirt could be seen. A boyish crop replaced the luxurious, dark locks that once cascaded over her shoulders. Heavy-looking lack boots completed her outfit.
‘I agreed to a haircut, not to you looking like, like a builder’s labourer!’ continue Joe.
‘Joe,’ said Sal quietly as she sat down. ‘You didn’t agree to anything. I said I was going to have my hair cut, and you eventually accepted it. As it is, I’m the last in the management group to do it. And yesterday, I decided to buy some new clothes because I wanted to.’
‘Management group,’ Joe snorted while Sal was speaking.
‘What was that, Joe?’ asked Sal, standing up to collect the paper from across the patio.
‘Nothing,’ said joe.
They had had this identical argument before, and Joe didn’t want a repeat of the dicussion or its after-effects. Joe glanced at his wife, or more particularly at her waist, which was at eye height as Joe lay back in the big deck chair. There was silence, except for the call of a bird across the lawn. This could have been idyllic, thought Joe, until these women…
‘Joe, my ‘management group’ is responsible for over $100 million construction per year. Six of us. We took over from 14 men,’ Sal said.
Joe looked at Sal’s thick, wide leather belt. The brass buckle looked good against the black leather, he had to admit. But on a woman? The denim was taut over Sal’s muscular thighs. She was lifting weights in their home gym now. His weights, of course. She was probably fit, although she still had a few curves. As she shifted her weight, Joe watched the denim over the low bulge of her crotch crease and tighten. Not that he’d been there much lately, thought Joe. Sal’s late nights at the office and early morning runs had restricted their once thriving sex life. Anyway, he thought…
‘Joe, where the hell are you??’ Sal was practically shouting at him.
‘What?’ asked Joe, lamely.
‘What did I just tell you?’ Sal asked angrily.
‘Your company’s a big deal?’ Joe offered.
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, Joe, I said that next month we are expanding into power infrastructure. Hnoestly, you’re worse than a teenager. Your attention span! It means I will be in charge of the new division. On a salary big enough that you can stay home if you want. I’m offering you a choce about that, Joe, if you’d only listen. Now what were you ‘Oh for Christ saking’ about a minute ago?’
Joe looked dazed. He looked up at Sal. She was standing tall and confident, hands on her hips, with the morning sun directly behnd her. Joe squinted up at the black bulk of her body against the sun.
Her jeans, Joe thought. Her shirt… It seemed a bit churlish to bring them up now. After all, his wife was right. She was becoming quite a big deal. Not beyond criticism by her husband for her clothing obviously, but perhaps now wasn’t the time or place.
'You have no idea, do you Joe. And you wonder why men, having dragged us into economic meltdown, stumbled around without a clue what to do until we - WE - rescued the world. That’s why your dad’s company, your grandfather’s really, went down the chute on your watch - ’
‘It’s still there,’ Joe objected quietly.
‘Sorry, yes, it’s still there - as a licensed brand name on a pipe fitting. Produced by MY company, and I might add, the pipe fitting will be deleted from July 1 this year. But that’s not important. What is important, Joe, is that I have the support of a competent adult spouse, not some teen layabout… Oh, what now, Joe?’ Sal asked as she saw tears forming in her husbands eyes. ‘What NOW?’
To Sal, Joe looked even more helpless than the men at the final board meeting of her company when they were asked to leave the boardroom - for good.
‘All the pipes, Sal?’ he asked.
Now Sal understood.
‘There was only one left in the catalogue, if you’d been interested enough to keep up, Joe,’ said Sal, ‘You would have known that we’ve been deleting the lines as stocks ran down. It was all old technology, Joe, yesterday’s products.’
Joe deliberately looked away from Sal. If he han’t then wiped his nose on the sleeve of his dressing gown Sal might have felt a morsel of pity for him and his family’s antiquated outfit.
‘There’s nothing to cry about, Joe. Every post a winning post. It’s called business. Work. Joe - look,’ Sue commanded, moving opposite Joe and undoing the buttons - the studs, Joe noticed - of her plaid shirt to reveal the white t-shirt beneath. Sue grasped one braless breast in each hand and pulled them aside so that Joe could read the words clearly. ‘TO WORK’ it said in big black letters, over a background of the circle and cross symbol for a woman, in blue.
Joe was doing his best to stop the tears that had formed in his eyes. He could mourn the demise of his family company later. He felt he had just been battered by this woman. The very word seemed to take on a new, larger aspect. Battered by this Woman. Joe felt… he didn’t know how he felt. He had felt like a lazy teenager, when Sue had called him that. Now he felt - weak, tiny and helpless against this elemental force which seemed to be driving his wife.
Sal was crouching next to Joe now. He could smell the perspiration from her firm, warm body. She no longer used deodorant.
‘Joe, I also wanted to tell you that Lisa would like you over in her section for a month,’ said Sal.
‘In sales?’ asked Joe. ‘What’s wrong with Lisa doing that? Why move her? I thought you said she was brilliant.’
When the company of management consultants Sal worked for were called in by the frightened directors of Joe’s family company, Joe, an engineer by training, had just moved upwards on his privileged and accelerated path from sales to junior management. To go back to sales would feel like a demotion. It would be a demotion, dammit, thought Joe. He resolved to make a stand.
‘You don’t listen, Joe. We’re not moving Lisa,’ said Sal. ‘She is brilliant.’
The penny began to drop in Joe’s startled brain.
‘But I’ve just left sales,’ whined Joe. ‘Why would I go back to work in sales?’
‘Not sales, honey, sales support,’ Sal said. ‘We thought you’d do well there.’
Joe couldn’t believe what he heard.
‘But, Sal, sales support isn’t even repping! It’s merchandising! Its… it’s window dressing and displays and price tickets - the girls do that! All those…’ Joe began.
‘And ‘the girls’ as you call them, will continue to do it. You will support them, help them with their point of sale material and so on,’ said Sal.
‘So Lisa is still in charge of the girls…’ said Joe.
‘Absolutely,’ said Sal with a smile. ‘And you’d report to whichever girl wanted your assistance.’
Joe stared at Sue for a long moment. She watched his bottom lip start quivering. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, enjoying the pressure of the tight fabric over her pubic mound.
Joe had his head in his hands now. Again, a bird chirped in the stillness. Sal took a deep, slow breath through her nose as she looked around the garden. She hadn’t done badly, she thought. With a little help from Joe, of course, she thought. Sal loved the smell of the grass in the morning, and she loved the way her thick nipples slid beneath her cotton shirt as her chest expanded. She flexed her toes, her fists, her neck muscles and finally breathed out. Then there was a watery, trickling sound. Hesitant at first, then steady.
Sue looked, amazed, at the dark pool growing on the tiled patio under Joe’s chair and flowing away to the lawn.
‘Are you wetting your pants, honey?’ asked Sal.
Joe was crying in earnest now. Sal helped him up and into the house. Her own crotch was damp too. She squeezed her legs together hard, savouring the feeling.
To be continued in chapter 2- ‘To Work’
