The Happy Man by Eric C. Higgs

Author:Eric C. Higgs [Higgs, Eric C.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Horror, Classics
ISBN: 9781943910953
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 1985-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Ten

I didn’t know how far I wanted to take this office romance. I didn’t know if I wanted even one repeat performance. The more I looked at it, the more it seemed a bad mistake. Why had I let myself be taken to her apartment? I should have known what was going to happen.

Vicki, however, was ready for the next rendezvous. Whenever I walked across the bullpen she would flash a secret lover’s smile, but I would only hurry on to my office, wondering if one of her co-workers had caught on. Which would be just what I needed. Christ!

It was coming up on the two-week anniversary of our one and only tryst when Vicki walked in and shut the door. Ed was out at one of the plants, chasing down a production problem. I wished I’d gone with him.

“I guess you want to talk.”

“Is something wrong with me, Charles? Honestly, you act like I got herpes.” She smiled at what I hoped was a stab at humor. “I thought for sure you’d have come over another couple times by now.”

The swivel chair squeaked as I leaned back. I didn’t know what to say. “Listen . . . it’s not you.”

She leaned on the desk and looked down at me, pert young breasts pressing at her blouse. “Why don’t you drop by and we’ll talk about it? How about later today?”

“Well, I’d love to, but . . .”

She pushed away and strode to the door. Just before she exited she threw me a look that made me feel like a gooey place on the sidewalk. This was followed by the loudest, most monstrous slam in the history of the eighteenth floor.

I threw my pencil on the desk and sighed. Shit. I had been half preparing for just such a showdown, absently marshaling all the reasons why we should never see each other again. One, that I was a married man. Two, such relationships were severely frowned upon by Aerotel. Three, there could by no stretch of the imagination be a happy ending. Four . . .

But that was all crap. The sound reasons had evaporated while Vicki was confronting me, and all that was left was the real reason, naked and unadorned. It wasn’t being married that bothered me. It was the sex we had had. Or at least the perversity of it. I had gotten off so powerfully—and Vicki, too—simply because of the pain.

So . . . did that make me a sadist?

No way, I immediately told myself. No way at all. That hair yanking had been an accident. Or almost, anyway. And even if it wasn’t, how did that stack up to the things described in Juliette? Like it was nothing, that’s how. Call de Sade from the dead and he would classify it as an act of pristine innocence. Of course he would. He would laugh.

Or he might whisper in my ear, Don’t be such a coward, Charles. Find out who you really are. The only thing worth knowing is yourself.

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