Just Keeps Getting Better -8
Phone Call
With Eva standing over him, Jeremy called his wife. She was her usual testy self.
When he insisted he had something to discuss with her she told him she and his daughter would be at the hairdressers at 4:30. He could see her there. Under no circumstances come to the house, her work place, or the child's school.
Jeremy agreed because he had no choice. However, he was more than happy not to go to her mother's house and get a trailer load of insults, not to go to his wife's workplace and be treated like a beggar and not to go to the school where the police might be involved.
As Eva knew where and when he had to go she would make sure that he would not be deployed by any other member of staff. She designed that he would have to take her to an invented errand at three.
This would get him out of the building on 'official' business.
He felt more like a puppet than usual but getting it all over and done with as quickly as possible seemed the best solution.
The Past
Jeremy knew he was a great disappointment to Amanda, his ex-wife. He was a great disappointment to himself.
He had such big dreams, and Amanda had believed in his dreams. When he got the first job as a driver he felt like crying but Amanda said it was temporary, he'd find something else.
He never found anything else save a better job as a driver.
Meanwhile, Amanda was moving up in business. When she became an assistant
manager she didn't want to be seen with a chauffeur. He wouldn't want to be seen
with himself either.
When Amanda realized that his position wasn't temporary but the best he could do,
she withdrew her respect, her love and moved out. He accepted it because he would have moved out from himself if he could.
He'd seen her and their daughter a few times over the years, sent gifts and money.
Amanda didn't ask him for anything. She made three times his salary and as she
lived with her mother had virtually no expenses.
She had never gone for a divorce because she liked this kind of free. She hadn't wanted another man in her life. Her mother, her daughter, other relatives were enough. A come and go boyfriend, a weekend hook up, was enough for her.
For Amanda, freedom, independence was her desire.
Encounter
Eva had him drop her at their flat just after three. He bathed, dressed more formally, and left the house before four.
He drove Eva's car to the hairdressers and waited for his wife and daughter. The child seemed genuinely happy to see him but Amanda had an attitude.
She'd sized him up, pricing his clothing, looking at the car, and coming to the wrong conclusion.
Amanda stood as if waiting for a bus looking at her watch, then mentioned the appointment. She took the child inside for her hair to be done, then returned. He opened the car and they sat in the back seat.
Before Amanda said anything which would leave to an argument or revelation he used the word divorce.
She snorted: "And that's what you wanted to see me about? That's why you got all dressed up and tried to impress me with your fancy car? So that I'd regret what I was missing?"
"No, Mandy." he said tiredly.
"And that's it?"
"That's it."
Amanda's lips rolled in fury, but keeping her voice flat said; "You know my address, I'll be waiting for the petition anxiously..." and she slammed out of the car and into the Salon.
He sat in the backseat preferring this environment then going 'home' to Eva.
His wife thought he had the money to buy the clothes, the money to own such a top of the line car.
Amanda thought he had come all this way to rub her nose in it; as if to say; "See! You should of waited!"
He should have... what? Told Mandy that he was the kept man of The Pillsbury Dough Girl who owned the car, bought him the clothes, and ...
Owned him.
Yeah. Tell that to Mandy. Yah...
It just keeps getting better.
