Gary's Children (Shingles Book 2)

by Rick Gualtieri

  It was an excuse he highly doubted his boss would accept.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Gary pulled into the parking lot approximately twenty-two minutes later, driving as if the devil itself were trying to crawl up his ass. He briefly considered taking care of his personal business on the ride over. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but being in a rush made that sound like a recipe for disaster. That’s all he needed, for the cops to tell his mother that they pulled his corpse from the mangled wreck of his car, only to find his hand attached to his dick in an unbreakable death-grip.

  Both spooked to shit and utterly unsatisfied, Gary raced inside, sat at his desk, and powered on his computer, doing his best to look as if he’d been there all along—which ultimately resulted in him appearing like he’d come into work late and was doing a piss-poor job of covering it up.

  Fortunately for him, it turned out the district vice president was visiting that day to go over last quarter’s results with management. When he finally chanced a look, he was pleased to see Laura’s door was shut, which meant she was probably busy brown-nosing to the best of her ability.

  Sadly, it was apparently not a great meeting because by the time noon arrived, his boss stepped out of her office looking like she’d gone ten rounds of having new assholes chewed into her backside. He made the mistake of standing up to leave for lunch just as she laid eyes on him.

  Laura Wood was a rather petite brunette, small and, he supposed—in a situation where she wasn’t acting like a total cunt—she might be considered attractive. Unfortunately, that was lost in the fact that she spent most days looking like she’d just murdered her best friend and was pissed because she’d cracked a nail doing it. Go figure, that’s exactly how she looked right at that moment.

  Gary’s bowels clenched as she said the words he’d been dreading all morning.

  “Handler, in my office now.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “And then he told me the marketing forecast was off by three percent.”

  “Only three percent?” Gary regretted the words even as he spoke them. It was such a small number, almost inconsequential. Heck, forecasting was little more than guesswork. So being off by only a few percentage points should have been hailed as the work of Nostradamus. But he could tell from the look in her eyes that she thought it a sin against mankind. And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

  No, the worst part was he had nothing to do with the damned forecast. It wasn’t a part of his job, so he had no idea why he was being yelled at for it.

  “Maybe I should call the VP of acquisitions back, and you can tell him that three percent is no big deal. How do you think he would handle that?”

  Pretty well if he wasn’t a total asshole, Gary thought, but dared not voice. “He would...probably be upset.”

  “Upset? Upset is going home to find your pet goldfish is dead. This is company profit we’re talking about. And do you know what happens when a company doesn’t make enough profit?”

  “Umm...”

  “Oddly enough, the same thing that happens when you find that dead goldfish. Except it’s people who get flushed. People who are, shall we say, underwhelming and quite possibly the source of that lack of profit.”

  “I understand that, Laura, but I had nothing to do with...”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Does accountability mean nothing to you, Mr. Handler?”

  Gary gritted his teeth. She loved to do this crap—hit him with some bullshit that implied he’d be collecting unemployment by the end of the day, then use whatever he answered with to segue into a completely different argument. He was already off his routine from the strangeness of this morning and could practically feel his blood beginning to boil with every venomous word she spewed.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” she continued, transitioning into the next phase of her routine, comparing herself to an angelic martyr, “but I’ve gone out on a limb for you more times than I care to think. Do you know how many complaints have come down from upper management that I’ve had to field? You don’t, because I’ve handled them all, time and again. And do you know why?”

  Gary was silent. He knew what was coming next. It made his left eye twitch and him fantasize about the building collapsing on top of her head.

  “It’s because I believe in being a team player. I’m like a little league coach. All I want is to see my players go out there and win a few games. I don’t want to cut anyone from the team if I don’t have to...”

  Please, shut up.

  “...Gary, but sometimes hard choices have to be made.”

  Ha! Hard choices? “Like whether to go with a regular vibrator or the studded model?”

  Silence descended upon the room as Gary realized he’d accidentally said that last part aloud.

  “What...did...you...say?”

  Murder shone in her eyes. Normally, Gary would have done all he could to apologize and promise to do better, but he realized that what had come out of his mouth went far beyond that. He’d crossed a line in the sand, fired a shot across the demilitarized zone. This was the sort of shit that gave HR managers lawsuit boners.

  There was no going back.

  Oddly enough, though, that knowledge brought with it relief instead of fear. He was going to be fired. There was no way he’d be able to talk himself out of that. This was no slip of the tongue, no accidental curse muttered in front of a higher-up. He’d called her out, using words that were impossible to cover up with a lame excuse that she’d misheard him.

  But that certainty of his fate brought with it a modicum of bravado.

  He was going to be marched out, so he might as well make it worth it, and he could think of no more worthwhile exit than telling Laura off once and for all.

  Before he could think better of it, he let his tongue have free rein. “I have four words for you: Titty City Bang Bang.”

  Her eyes opened wide with recognition and—holy shit—a bit of fear, too. “I...don’t know what you mean.”

  “Cut the crap, Laura. I saw your car there last Friday. I was stopping off to visit the... err...antique shop next door and...”

  “What antique shop? There’s no store next to...”

  “Doesn’t matter. Your car was parked there big as day. So what was it? Looking for the director’s cut of Big Black Cocks IV, maybe a strap-on? Ooh, I know. You were buying a big old butt plug. Yeah, I bet that was it. Would explain why you always walk around like you have a stick up your ass.”

  Gary couldn’t believe the words that were flowing out of his mouth. Three years of pent-up frustration being let loose at once, as if someone had broken the damn and deluged the village below with a tidal wave of bitter bile.

  His ire spent, Gary sat back. A part of him was horrified at what he’d said. The rest waited for her to reach down and call human resources, let them know they should send up someone to escort him out of the building. The sooner the better as far as he was concerned. He could get back home, find some angry porn, and slap his hamster until such time as his head was clear enough to update his résumé.

  He continued to wait as Laura stared at him, mouth agape. Then, she lowered her eyes and said in a small voice, “It was a dildo.”

  Wait, what?!

  Before he could say anything, she continued, her head still downcast. “It was a suggestion from my sister, and she was right to make it. This place, it drives me nuts. You have no idea the pressure I’m under as a female manager. It just builds up and up and up, and then I go home at the end of the day to an empty apartment. I can’t tell you the last time I had a steady boyfriend or even a date for that matter.”

  Gary was confused. He’d been expecting a volcanic eruption. But it was, instead, as if he’d suddenly become a priest sitting on the far side of a confessional.

  “I was thinking of trying one of those adult dating sites. Well, not so much dating as hooking up. You put in your email address, find someone you hope isn’t a four-hundred-pound serial k
iller, and ask them over for a quick fuck. But I’m not quite there yet. I’m...just not good with people. So, I thought I’d start small, a little stress relief. I pass that stupid store every goddamned day on the way home from work, and I finally worked up the courage to stop in. They were discrete, too. Helpful, tasteful even, and they packaged it up for me as if I’d just run out to the grocery store.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Not as discrete as I’d hoped, though. Guess I should’ve gone to Hello Titty over on the bad side of town.”

  Gary was gobsmacked. This was so far off base from what he’d been expecting, he didn’t know how to reply. He could only nod numbly and say, “I know how it is.”

  “Do you?” She looked up and met his eyes. He still wasn’t sure what to say, so he simply smiled in what he hoped was a comforting way. “Well,” she continued, “now you know. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Um...it’s not really my place to judge.” That was an understatement, considering he’d purchased a used wank toy from a sweaty guy named Pop. “I mean, what you do in private is your business.”

  She smiled back at him and nodded. “Thank you for understanding. And...”

  “What?”

  “Thanks for calling me out on it, too. I’ve been a terrible person, taking it all out on you. I don’t mean to, but it’s...”

  Gary had no idea where this was going. “It’s what?”

  “Like I said, I’m bad with people. I guess I’ve been inadvertently doing the same thing that kids on the playground do.”

  Playground? What the fuck is she talking about?

  “What I mean to say is,” Laura continued, “maybe tell me a little bit about yourself, if you don’t mind.”

  “Huh?”

  “What do you do after work is done for the day?”

  “Me?” Oh crap. Was she asking about his jerking off habits? Because if so, that wasn’t something he really cared to compare notes on.

  She looked away, her cheeks turning red. “I meant, is there anyone waiting for you at home?”

  “Oh. Just Chunks.”

  “Chunks?”

  “He’s my cat,” Gary explained.

  “So, nobody special?”

  He shrugged. Chunks wasn’t exactly his idea of unique. His mom was pretty darn special in an immensely infuriating way, but that was only once a month.

  “Maybe, you and I...we could get a drink sometime?”

  WHAT?!

  “I have nobody. You have nobody. Maybe we could share that loneliness together. And then, well, who knows?”

  All of the spit in Gary’s mouth immediately dried up. He had no idea what to say. Laura had always been nothing more than an uber-bitch to him, a source of pain, anger, and stress...so much stress. But here she was, actually asking him out. Hell, she was pretty heavily insinuating the possibility of hooking up, too.

  Sure, she was an attractive woman, but it was hard for Gary to re-compartmentalize on the fly. Heck, even hate-fucking her was easy to imagine, but this new—what to call it—vulnerability on her part, it threw him for a loop. This wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting when he was called into her office.

  His hands felt slick with sweat, and words failed him. He realized, after a moment, that he was probably sitting there looking like a deer in the headlights, all while this woman was basically offering up her goodies to him on a silver platter.

  What the hell was up with this week? He’d already gotten hit on once by that crossing guard. It had been unexpected and almost awesome until he’d fucked it up with that... In a near panic, he turned his head and looked around, hoping that a dripping Jacklight wasn’t in sight.

  Don’t be stupid. Why the fuck would I have brought it with me?

  “Gary, are you okay?”

  Oh yeah, he was still sitting in his boss’s office, looking around as if he were contemplating the Feng shui of the place instead of jumping on her offer before she reeled it back in. That snapped him out of his strange malaise, and he forced himself to speak again. “Me? Just a crick in my neck. Nothing more.”

  “So...about what I was saying?”

  Though his stress levels were currently shooting up through the roof, he realized that fucking up two opportunities in as many days was pathetic, even for him. He opened his mouth and managed to blurt out, “Sounds good.”

  “Great. Well, we both get off about six, off work anyway, maybe we can meet up at...”

  “Sure thing.” Gary stood, having reached the very limits of his bravery. “Sorry. Nature calls.”

  His boss raised an eyebrow, but then smiled. “Okay. Have fun draining...little Gary.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Gary usually refrained from jacking it during office hours. For starters, the men’s room was usually pretty gross. All of the employees were supposedly salary-earning, tax-paying adults, yet it was amazing how often they seemed incapable of not pissing on the floor. He didn’t even want to think of the times he’d stepped into a stall and spied a log hanging halfway out of the bowl, as if some tiny frogmen had surfaced in the toilet and needed a means to climb out.

  Secondly, and often far worse, were the idiots who thought that taking a shit was a social gathering and insisted on talking to him from the stall next door.

  Thankfully, the restroom was empty, and the stall at the end looked clean enough to hopefully ignore the fact that it really wasn’t.

  Fuck it. The place could have been knee deep in crap and crawling with rats, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Gary’s head felt like it was going to explode from the pressure. He needed release. Then, and only then, would he be able to deal with the ever-increasing weirdness of the day.

  Thank goodness F*ck-Axis had a reasonably good mobile site. He checked to make sure his phone was muted and then got to work in a way that had nothing to do with marketing forecasts.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Six minutes later, Gary stepped from the restroom feeling much more in control of himself and a fuck-load more mellowed out. His brain swimming in a pleasant stew of endorphins, he realized he had nothing to be stressed about. What had started as an epic bitching out had ended with a date offer from a cute woman. Even better, she made a shitload more than he did. So if she wanted to pay for dinner, who was he to say no?

  Hell, being a kept man definitely had its appeal if things progressed far enough. That wasn’t even the best part. He was well aware of Laura’s somewhat explosive temper. If there was one person who wouldn’t take his mother’s shit, it would be her...and Gary wouldn’t even need to feel bad about it.

  Okay, so maybe he was getting a little ahead of himself. For now, he’d keep it simple. They’d go out, grab some dinner, drink plenty of liquid courage, and then perhaps he’d see if she was in the mood to shake hands with “little Gary.”

  Except maybe this time he’d first make sure his buddy Jack wasn’t lying out in plain sight like on Saturday. It was ironic that, despite its function, it sort of had the potential to be a total cock-blocker. But that was easily remedied. He’d just pick it up off the...actually, he wasn’t sure where he’d left it last. For some reason, it had slipped his mind. Probably a result of the strangeness he’d woken up to.

  Oh well, his apartment wasn’t big, and it’s not like there were a lot of spots to misplace a heavy aluminum tube with a rubber...

  Gary stopped dead in his tracks as he stepped into his cubical. “Um, excuse me?”

  The little brunette girl, maybe seven or eight years old, was wearing a cute flower-print dress and had her hair up in a ponytail. She spun around in his chair and smiled at him, revealing a gap where her two front baby teeth had apparently fallen out. “You’re back,” she said sweetly, stating the bleedingly obvious.

  “Yeah,” Gary replied, somewhat annoyed to find someone other than him in his seat. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m having a lot of fun.” She began playing with Gary’s fidget spinner, one of many failed past attempts at finding ways to get through the day
without losing his mind.

  “That’s great, but it doesn’t answer my question.”

  She inclined her head up at him and giggled. “It’s bring your daughter to work day, silly.”

  It is? He must have missed the memo. Of course, he wouldn’t have given a shit about it, being childless, but still. Usually HR couldn’t bleat enough about their stupid office events. Ultimately, it didn’t really matter much. “Fine, so where’s your...mom, I guess?” Whoever her parents were, Gary hoped they’d be apologetic about letting their larva stray from their cocoon. Probably not, though. People were assholes in general. Adding kids to the mix merely tripled that inclination.

  “She’s in her office.”

  Office? That made it even worse, like someone letting their dog escape from a fenced-in yard. “Which office?”

  The girl stood and pointed. “That one.”

  Gary followed her outstretched hand and then did a double take. “Wait, that one?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, duh.”

  “So...” He leaned down, not wanting his officemates to overhear. “You’re Laura Wood’s daughter?”

  The girl nodded sweetly.

  The fuck?! Had his boss been lying about being alone? Of course, that didn’t prove anything. Having a kid and being single weren’t mutually exclusive. Maybe she was going through a bad breakup or divorce. That would certainly explain why she’d been such a harpy. Of course, that probably meant she was either using him as a rebound or maybe for revenge sex. Mind you, he had no real qualms about either. Still, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to pry a little while he had the opportunity.

  “Okay, so... Where is your daddy?”

  Again, she looked at him as if he were daft. “Here.”

  Gary nodded. So, an office romance. That was interesting. If so, she’d been pretty damn coy about it. They both had, whoever her other half was. That was good. If Gary ended up bumping uglies with her, it meant she could be discrete. Mind you, he probably wouldn’t be, but that was a bridge best crossed after he’d planted his flag. “Can you point me to your daddy?”