Office manager "Big Red" Lynn Fortier continues her shenanigans at her New Jersey publishing company. This time she gets Paul's wife Janey involved too, but not at the same time for the sex. The "concrete fortress" of course refers to the appearance of the suburban office building. This is happening in the spring of 1989.
*********
It had to happen eventually -- Big Red Lynn Fortier and my wife Janey would wind up in the same place at the same time. There wasn't necessarily a reason that it had to happen. Like a lot of people, I had a feeling that bad luck was just part of the normal workings of the world. I could imagine Captain Edward Smith of the
Titanic
losing his British stiff upper lip. He'd bang his head against the wall and complain, "Why does everything happen to me?"
In the period immediately following our tryst in the back of the building, Lynn became almost careless in the way she behaved. While once she had mostly stayed in her office, now she was often out and about in the rest of the place. Twice more, once in the afternoon and once in the evening, we had trysts in that unrented space at the north end of the structure. On one other occasion, we did it in her own office late in the evening.
The uncomfortable part was that she was now spending a lot of time near me. If she was walking around, she would smile and wink at me if I caught her eye. Sometimes she would sit in the extra chair in my cubicle and chat with me. At one point when this was going on, I got the attention of my supervisor, Denise Behrens, and gave her a look.
Please get me out of this.
Denise just looked back and shook her head.
There is nothing I can do.
There was another incident in which we had a staff meeting and Lynn planted herself in the chair next to me. She smiled warmly at me when she sat down.
I realized that this was my own problem to solve. One day Lynn was in my cubicle, talking softly about how she was going to get an English schoolgirl outfit and we'd play a game with me as the mean, aggrieved headmaster.
The situation was getting out of control, and I felt I now had the authority to tell Lynn what I thought. I made a gesture for her to follow me, and we went to the window at the north end of the first floor, the floor just below ours.
I said, "Lynn, you really have to act more carefully, I mean in interactions with me. You haven't been doing that very well recently."
Her answer was almost irrelevant. "That unrented space we go into, that is not actually part of our company's facilities."
"It doesn't matter. And you have been all over me like . . ."
I couldn't finish the thought, so she did it for me. "Like yellow on bananas." She laughed, "What a stupid clichΓ© that is."
"I think it's actually, 'like white on rice,' but never mind."
Some of her innate arrogance came out, "I'm the boss around here, and it doesn't matter to me who knows about our affair."
"Well Lynn, it matters to me!"
"You worry too much. Nobody is going to get fired over this."
"Probably not, but it would be very awkward if people here start gossiping about us."
"So what do you want me to do about it?"
I glanced down the hallway to make sure no one we knew was around. Then I let her have it. "One thing is, stop coming around and sitting in my cubicle with me. You never sat with anybody else before in all the months I've been here."
She pouted at me, and I knew it was mostly a put-on. "You just don't like me anymore."
I still wasn't sure if I had ever really liked her at all or if I was just in it for a convenient sex ride. I said, "Look, this isn't college. It's a workplace, our livings come from here. There has to be some -- call it professionalism in the way we act in this place."
"Even if we are banging each other."
"Discretion, Lynn, that's what I'm talking about. Discretion. And you seem to have lost that recently."
I thought she'd continue arguing with me, but she didn't. "All right, I admit, I've overdone this behavior. From now on I'll tone it down. I mean, I promise, a lot." Then a second later she was back to sexual topics, "I need to put together that English schoolgirl outfit I mentioned before."
I said, "It can't be that hard. All you need is a plaid skirt and knee socks. And a jacket of some kind."
"How about those schoolgirl hats? Where would I get one of those?"
This was long before one could just go online and order something of that type. "Lynn, I don't know a fucking thing about women's clothing. Probably you could get one if you looked around in Manhattan."
As she pondered this, I broke in again. "Lynn, I have to have your word that you are going to be -- whatever, bringing it down a notch, acting like an adult around here."
She sounded chagrined. "I know Paul, I have to act responsibly. I mean, I do hold an important position in this company." Actually, in the larger scheme of things, she was far down on the personnel chart of the larger corporation. Anyway, then she grinned at me. "Maybe I need a good sound spanking to get the point across.
******
A week later Lynn came up with a concept that I sometimes wonder was actually aimed at me, but maybe I was being a bit paranoid. For some reason, she decided that she would take all five production editors, including me, plus Denise Behrens, to lunch at the Alexus Steakhouse not far from our office. To top it off, all of us could bring along our spouses or significant others along for the festivities.
The point of all this was to honor the "fine work" that the production staff had been doing in -- well, in recent weeks; the timeline was rather vague. I hadn't seen that we all had accomplished anything of any unusual importance in that period. It had been the same old grind as always. I did have to decide whether I'd tell my wife Janey about it and then invite her to attend the event.
Some instinct told me that Lynn had cooked up this plan mostly so that she could meet and assess my wife. It somehow seemed important that I follow through on Lynn's plan and make sure that Janey attended this lunch date. I couldn't say why that would matter. It seemed below the level of my conscious thought.