SEATTLE GAL
Part 14
Meetings
 
by Susan Jean Charles
 
Jessica meets Phil once more, then has to become Mark again for the meeting with Cindy and her lawyer.

 © 2012, by Susan J. Charles. All rights reserved
Edited by Holly H. Hart

The personal appearance went well Sunday. Someone was opening a new big box hardware store, so I and the other girls stood around smiling and looking sexy. At the right moment, another girl and I took the giant scissors and snipped the huge ribbon across the entrance. Actually, the ribbon was just let go by the other two Sea Gals since the scissors couldn’t have cut anything except, maybe, Jell-O. Then we stood around smiling and signing autographs on the photos being handed out as people entered the store.

Everything went fine until Phil showed up. I guess I should have expected it. The ads about our appearance were in all the media. He tried to talk to me and I told him I was working. I finally agreed to grab a coffee with him at the Starbucks in the store after I was done working. I figured that was as public a place as there could be.

I kept signing photos while he headed towards the Starbucks. I endured a few pats on my tush, which was normal at these events. Secretly, I was kind of flattered to feel hands moving across my rear end. I liked the idea that my body gave the guys a little thrill. The pinching was a different matter. The fake vagina lessened the feelings but I didn’t like it.

Finally, I could not put it off any longer. Our contracted three hours was up and I walked towards the Starbucks. I didn’t want to, but I had made a promise and I meant to keep it.

I bought a small coffee, one of their sweet mixed ones, and carried it to the table Phil was sitting at. He rushed to pull out my chair so I could sit down. That was something he hadn’t done for a while.

“Babe, I don’t understand why,” he began. “Everything was going so great.”

‘Yeah, great for Phil’, I thought. He’d had a live-in cleaner, cook and sex toy for free. Not that I’d minded living that way. I really enjoyed taking care of him. But he’d become distant and I’d wanted more in our relationship. I knew he was busy at work, but would it have hurt to pull my chair out for me a few more times? And, of course, I really couldn‘t get past his dishonesty.

Our conversation was almost a repeat of our phone conversation earlier. Phil just didn’t get it. I guess he thought repeating it in person would make a difference. He’d even dressed in a tight tee shirt that showed off his abs. I assume he thought I would get turned on by his physical appearance and want to come crawling back to him.

Yet, as we talked, I could understand the dynamics of what was going on. Guys carried around an unconscious checklist. As they moved through life, they’d accomplish something on that list, like “getting a promotion” and mentally check it off and move onto the next goal. I had been “get live-in she-male” on his list. Of course, I’d turned out to be much more for him, but somewhere in his mind, I’d still been something to check off and let him move on.

I, on the other hand, had wanted to be as much like a wife to Phil as I could be. And my subconscious wanted all the love and affection that came from being a wife. I’d ignored, for a while, the fact that I wasn’t his wife, only someone living with him. I’d wanted more that I wasn’t getting out of our relationship. I could have gone on ignoring my needs in favor of what I was getting from Phil. I had gotten a sense of satisfaction out of supporting him at home and with his work. That’s why his dishonesty had hit me so hard. It forced me to face the reality that I wasn’t going to get what I really needed out of our relationship.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware that I really, truly understood what Cindy had gone through with Mark. I was seeing the same thing from the other side. And for that, if nothing else, I was grateful to Phil. Just not grateful enough to want to get back together.

I was searching for a way to end this conversation. We’d said everything in different ways about three times and he still didn’t and wouldn’t get it. Just then, I heard a voice behind me.

“Please, Ms. Stafford, do you have time to autograph another picture?” a little girl’s voice said. And I turned around to see the most beautiful little redheaded girl in a wheelchair holding out a photo.

“Deanna? What are you doing here?” I asked.

She laughed and Sarah and Millie came running from behind the counter. We all gathered in a group hug.

“Daddy decided we could come see you today,” Deanna said. “I’ve been wanting to get out for the longest time.”

I looked up and saw Ken smiling behind the girls. “This seemed to be a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon,” he said.

I took the photos and signed each of them with a personalized message for each girl. I signed each one, “Love, Jessica.”

“Good seeing you, Phil,” I said as I stood up. “I’ll see you for the next dinner party.”

Then I walked away with the girls and Ken. “What other plans did you have?” I asked Ken.

“I was thinking about dinner at the cafeteria across the street,” he replied. “Do you have plans? Or did we take you away from that guy?” He looked back at Phil, still sitting there wondering what had just happened.

“Oh, no,” I replied. “No to both. I have a small catering business, and he’s one of my clients. We were just discussing the next dinner party I’m doing for him. And I’d love to join you for dinner, if that’s okay.”

Judging from the squeals from the girls, that was okay.

“Just let me get changed,” I said. “I’ll just be a few minutes.” I retreated to the women's employee locker room to slip back into the sweater and jeans I’d worn to get here. I packed my Sea Gal uniform in my gym bag and was ready.

We had fun. The nice thing about cafeterias is that they have enough selections to accommodate the varying tastes of growing children. And, after we’d gone through the line, Deanna actually stood up out of the wheelchair and took a couple of steps to sit down in a chair at the table, rather than eat in the wheelchair.

We all laughed and joked. The girls wanted to see my new apartment, but I put them off until I could get everything unpacked and fixed just right. We decided they could come in two weeks.

“What happened to your big house by the water?” Millie asked.

“That just didn’t work out,” I replied.

Too soon it was time to get Deanna back to the clinic. We all hugged and the girls reminded me of our date to see my apartment. As Sarah and Millie wheeled Deanna out to the car, I turned to Ken.

“Thanks so much for stopping by,” I said. “It was a really nice surprise.”

“After the girls saw the ad for the grand opening with your picture in it, there was no way we wouldn’t come,” he replied.

“Well, it is great to see Deanna out and about,” I said. “I’m so glad she’s on the mend.”

“You have no idea how much it meant to me to watch her step out of that wheelchair and sit at the table,” Ken said, brushing a little moisture out of his eye.

“I know,” I said, putting my hand on his arm. “It thrilled me too. I just wish I could do more.”

“You’ve been a great friend,” he replied. “Not many celebrities would go out of their way for people like us.”

“Hey, we’re just people too,” I said. “I got into this whole cheerleading thing by accident.”

“Well, we’re glad you did,” he said. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” I said. Then I reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “You’d better go before the girls start racing Deanna around the parking lot.”

He grinned and hurried to his car.

I spent Monday and Tuesday getting ready for our meeting with Cindy and her lawyer. I carefully reviewed the documents Karen had given me and spent some time doing research on the internet. I also went out for some supplies.

I straightened my hair and put a wash on it so that it was lighter than my trademark Jessica scarlet red. I’d kept my hair short while we were married, but I wasn’t about to cut it now just for a meeting. I thought it best to change the color a bit since Cindy had seen Jessica several times. I put it in a low ponytail and covered the holes in my ears with a little bit of putty.

I took an eyebrow pencil and thickened my eyebrows. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but I didn’t have time to grow my brows back after appearing at the big box store a couple of days before. They looked okay from a distance, but I decided not to take chances and opted for a pair of “Clark Kent” glasses to obscure them. Hey, it’s worked for him for 80 years!

Wednesday morning, I left off my all-in-one and added some padding around my waist. I didn’t undo my taping. I couldn’t stand the feeling of male equipment bouncing around between my legs and no one was going to see what was underneath my pants anyway. For the same reason, I didn’t bother with male briefs but went with some black panties.

Reluctantly I pulled on my white shirt, tie and blue pinstripe suit. Black socks and male wing tip shoes completed my look, and Mark was back.

I picked up the old briefcase that Karen had brought by from the office and was out the door.

The meeting was held in Cindy’s lawyer’s office. It was in one of those big office buildings downtown. Fred met me at the door and we both went in together. We were escorted to a conference room, provided with coffee cups and left alone. Two urns of coffee, regular and decaf, and the various condiments were on a side table. I absentmindedly grabbed both my and Fred’s cups and went over to the urns.

“Regular or decaf?” I asked. Only then did I realize that I’d slipped into girl mode. Mark probably wouldn’t have served Fred. He didn’t seem to notice however, and I filled his cup with regular and mine with decaf. He took a sugar and I took a low-cal sweetener.

“You look a little different, Mark,” Fred said, grinning.

“Don’t get smart,” I said. “I needed to alter myself a little for this meeting.”

“I meant the glasses,” Fred said, smirking. Yeah, right!

We waited. I didn’t want to say too much. I didn’t think the room was bugged, but I was paranoid enough to not trust the lawyer on her home turf.

We waited some more.

“This is getting rude,” Fred said. “We’re over 20 minutes past our agreed time.”

“Standard procedure,” I replied. “Give yourself every advantage in a negotiation.”

After the second cup of coffee, I was feeling an urge. Telling Fred I’d be back, I went out and asked the receptionist where the rest rooms were. Following her instructions, I went out of the offices and down the hall to the end. I found the rest room doors and went in. I hurried into a stall and dropped my pants and slid down my panties just in time.

As I sat there feeling much better with every passing second, my foot bumped something and I heard a sort of metallic scraping sound. Looking down I saw one of those little white boxes on the floor. The ones with the swinging tops provided so used tampons and napkins can be deposited there rather than flushed down the toilet to clog the plumbing. I saw that my shoe had moved it a little.

My wing tip shoe.

My male wing tip shoe.

Oh Crap!

I’d gone on automatic pilot and come into the Ladies Room.

I quickly finished my business and wiped. Just as I was starting to pull up my pants, I heard the door of the rest room open. I quickly sat back down and lifted my legs so that my legs and feet couldn’t be seen under the stall door.

There was the sound of two pairs of heels walking into the room. Then I heard voices, one of which I recognized. Cindy was standing right outside the door of my stall.

“I just want to get this over with,” Cindy said. “Why are we waiting?”

“I want us to...” another voice started and then stopped. I knew what that stop implied. The other person was looking along the bottoms of the stalls to be sure they were alone. Satisfied, she, the lawyer I assumed, continued.

“I want us to have every advantage,” she said. “Your divorce is complicated. If we play our cards right, I think I can get your husband to give us part of the royalties on the software patents along with everything else. But you have to let me do the talking.”

“Whatever you say,” Cindy said. But I thought I heard some doubt in her tone.

From the sound of their voices, the two women turned to the mirrors and freshened their makeup.

“Now then,” the lawyer said. “Let’s go win this thing and get it over with.”

I listened as they walked out. I waited until the door had closed and gave it a minute longer. Then I stood, pulled up my pants and hurried to the door. I peeked out and didn’t see anyone in the hall. I quickly stepped out of the ladies room and into the men’s room across the hall. There I washed my hands, noticing how much nicer the ladies room had been and turned to leave. I resisted the temptation to check my makeup.

I strolled back into the conference room to the hostile stare of the lawyer. “Sorry,” I said. “I was down the hall getting rid of some of your coffee.”

“Well, now we can start,” she snapped. I took a seat next to Fred. Cindy and her lawyer sat on the other side of the conference table. The lawyer started in and it only took me a couple of minutes to understand why this process had taken so long.

There are several ways women can get what they want from men. One is what I call the “Sexy Vixen” approach. At its basis is the unwritten statement, “If you do what I want, you’ll get a sexual thrill.” Hollywood uses this approach a lot. It ranges from the woman sprawling out on the bed with a sexy negligee, to a woman opening an extra button on her top. The promise is, “If you do what I want, I’ll give you a view of a little cleavage.”

I’d used this approach myself when I wiggled my ass at Phil when I bent over after “dropping” something.

Another way is the “Daddy’s Little Girl” approach. This is the one women learn first. The little girl gets Daddy to do what she wants with hugs and being coy. Smiling through eyelashes is a common approach. The underlying message is, “I’m little and helpless and need a strong man like you to take care of me.” Some women even do a little lisp like a little girl when working this approach on a man. I, personally, find this affection a little revolting. This was what Phil was hoping I’d do last weekend.

The approach the lawyer was using on Fred and, she assumed, on me was the ”Mother” approach. This is conveyed by voice tone and body language. The basic message is, “I’m your mother (or teacher) and what I say goes!” We all learn about this one as we are growing up. It is an easy trap to fall into, since we all have to learn to deal and cope with authority figures as we grow up and go through school. And we learn that the easiest way to cope is to go along with the program, whatever it is.

I watched Fred squirm and try to be a gentleman in the face of the lawyer’s demands. He was trying to do the best for me, but he kept losing ground each time he tried to say something. Obviously this had been going on for some time. No wonder we were still going at it a year later!

I, on the other hand, wasn’t buying it. I wasn’t a gentleman any longer. I was a woman and knew how to deal with other women. Furthermore, I’d observed negotiations at a very high level with some of the best negotiators in the world. This lawyer wasn’t even close.

Finally, I decided to step in.

“Fred, let me say something,” I said, remembering to use my Mark voice. “I’m not happy with how I’ve been treated this past year. Cindy’s leaving was a shock. I admit I’d been so preoccupied with my work that I hadn’t seen it coming and it took me a while to deal with it. But the fact is, she left me. When I finally did start to look through my mail, I found I hadn’t responded to some things I should have. That happened, but it shouldn’t have affected our divorce like it did. I was kicked out of my home and business, denied any access to any funds and essentially put on the street homeless.”

“We had to get those injunctions,” the lawyer snapped, breaking in. “You suddenly started spending like crazy. It was obvious you’d run into some whore since you started buying her thousands of dollars worth of clothes. She must have wiggled her tits at you and was taking you for all you were worth.”

“Well, I admit there were some tits involved,” I said smiling. Actually I was feeling their lack just now.

“The point is, you took these actions with no attempt to contact me or find out what was going on. If I hadn’t had a very generous friend, I might have ended up sleeping somewhere in Underground Seattle and begging on the streets. I didn’t like that one bit.”

Cindy turned red and looked down. I could tell she was feeling guilty. I knew her. I knew from our time in college and when we were first married that she wasn’t really the vindictive person who had done this. My feeling had been reinforced after I’d met her as Jessica.

“In spite of the way I was treated, I’ve made a very generous offer to settle things,” I continued. “I’ve offered to let Cindy have her agency, the one started with my funds from my business. I would take my business and we’d split all our money and investments down the middle. I think that’s more than fair.”

“Throw in 50% of the revenues from your patents, and we can accept that,” the lawyer said.

Well, there’s couple of things wrong with that,” I said. “I shouldn’t have to remind you that Washington is a community property state.”

“Of course not,” the lawyer sneered. “That’s why we are entitled to those royalties.”

“The Washington law is very clear,” I replied. “It states that all that has been accrued during a marriage should be distributed to both parties in a fair and equitable manner. Note the phrase ‘accrued during the marriage.’ What you may not realize is that most of the software I was writing in my business is based on patents and copyrights which were in place before Cindy and I got married.”

The lawyer looked up at me, startled. Obviously she hadn’t done as much of her homework as she’d needed to. It was obvious she usually relied on intimidation of the man in the case to win her cases.

“As a result,” I continued, “those are off-limits under state law. Yes, I made a lot of money off of applications of them after we were married. And that money should be split.

“But …” I paused for emphasis. “But a large amount of that money was used to start and build Cindy’s agency. And that’s something that happened during our marriage. So under state law, if anything, I should be entitled to half of the retainers and billings the agency has done throughout our marriage, up to and including what has come in today, since we’re still legally married.”

“What?” Cindy gasped. “What is he talking about?”

“Then there’s the question of alimony,” I said. “State law addresses the question of alimony where the one who has more may be ordered to pay a monthly amount to the party who has less. In this case, the person with less would be me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” the lawyer shouted.

“No it’s not,” I said. “You denied me the means to earn a living for almost a year. Without me, my company has had no new revenues and has been getting by on the royalties and licenses already in place. Business is starting to go elsewhere. The financial and tax reports my company just filed outlines this.” I held up a bundle of papers that Karen had given me the other night.

“On the other hand,” I continued, taking out some more papers Karen had given me from my briefcase, “Cindy has done very well. Her agency’s annual report and financial report filing boasts that it has grown to be, and here I quote, ‘The largest agency in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada, with billings in excess of...' well I don’t think we need to get into exactly how many millions of dollars you earned last year, Cindy. Needless to say, you’ve done very well and I congratulate you.”

I smiled at her and she gave me a weak smile in return.

“On the other hand,” I continued. “Aside from a small allowance which I just began receiving, I challenge you to find any income Mark Stafford earned in the past year. You can’t, because it doesn’t exist.

“So,” I concluded, “if anyone needs alimony, it’s me.”

“We’ll challenge this in court,” the lawyer almost screamed.

“It won’t hold up,” Fred said. “Mark’s right. The law doesn’t say anything about which sex gets the alimony. Men have gotten alimony before in this state, and I can cite the cases before a judge.”

“And yet,” I added. “I didn’t ask for any in my proposal. All I ask for is the chance to get back and build my business back up again.”

“And that potential is worth millions,” the lawyer said.

“The law doesn’t address potential,” I replied. “I can just as easily choose not to write another line of code and live next to a steam pipe down by the waterfront.

“Cindy,” I said, looking at her directly. “I meant what I said about you doing so well. That’s all because of you, and you should get the rewards from your efforts. All I ask is the same.”

Cindy opened her mouth, but the lawyer cut in. “I’ll fight you on this,” she said.

“What? Do you get a percentage of the settlement?” I asked. “What if it’s a negative amount for your side?”

She glowered, and I suspected I’d hit close to the mark. “I will not let my client settle for anything less than what she’s entitled to,” she said in her best “Mother” voice.

“Rita,” Cindy said, “Mark is right. What he has offered is more than fair. We’ve done him a terrible injustice. I’m going to accept his offer.”

“No!” the lawyer, Rita, said. “I won’t allow it.”

“Then,” Cindy said, “you’re fired.” With that simple statement, I could see the businesswoman who had built a multimillion-dollar business. A woman who could make decisions. I felt proud to have known her.

“Fred,” Cindy said. “Draw up an agreement. I want to have us sign it today and be done with this.”

Fred agreed. I’d have to sign that I considered the agreement fair and renounce any claims against Cindy, but that had been my objective from the start.

Cindy smiled. “I think our business in this office is concluded. Nicely done, Mark. I’d almost forgotten how analytical and what a thorough researcher you are. I’m so sorry I put you through this.”

“I’m not,” I replied. “I’ve learned so much in this past year. Your walking out was a real wake-up call for me. It probably saved my life.”

“At first I was so bitter I let Rita talk me into some things I regret,” Cindy said. “I tried later to find you, but you’d disappeared. Even Karen didn’t know where you were.”

“That happens when a court tells you not to have any contact with someone,” I replied.

As we started toward the door, I paused. “Cindy,” I said. “I’m glad you found Jake. You two are so good together.”

She touched my arm in gratitude and walked out. The following week we appeared before a judge. We both testified that we felt the agreement was fair and equitable and we were declared divorced. All restraining orders were reversed. That was the last time anyone saw Mark.