THE MISER, THE RISER AND THE WISER

Chapter 2: Old flames

“Another fight today, then?” I asked Lor, who entered my cabin with fumes like a dragon breathed in wars. Our Office was on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. Boy, she loved the air here. Her anger changed into a smile in no time. “Hmm…so what’s today, then?” she sipped a coffee that I laid in her hands just when she entered. I knew she always liked Brooklyn coffee, which had a more Italian style than New York’s Arabian style. No wonder it was better. Although the Arabian style is good when you are sick at home, I still would prefer Brooklyn coffee. “You know everyone at your office knows I love this side of the bridge than my soon-to-be husband’s side.” “Soon to be? Well, I hope it works for you with him. He is a good man, though.” There I was talking well about a relationship that I wanted to end. “Well, he isn’t and yet here I am looking to tie the knot with him. Tell me, Benny, do you think we will ever be married after today?” I didn’t want to answer the question which would affect her decision. I could easily see she wanted to marry him and not anyone else, and I dared say anything for the time being. Why would I? All I wanted was to be with her, although it was only business. Still, it was good being with her. And my company’s product sales had reached new heights these 3 years being with her. Her key decisions have somewhat aided our company. There were always people who didn’t like Dan’s way of clothing and she was brilliant in extracting that in these 3 years and we reached such audiences in New York. Although only some hundreds to thousands compared to the (3-4) million we have in Brooklyn here. Yet Dan’s reach in New York City was unchallenged, still even with Lor’s eye for grabbing the haters.

“You know, maybe our clothes and shoes need a new touch!” I tried to change the marriage topic. “You know, Dan’s grasp in New York is something like a magnet. It’s as if most people are like iron or steel, which are attracted. I took the haters out, maybe all of them Benny. And there were only some 800-8000 people. I don’t think a change in clothes would do a miracle at that end of New York.” She was talking like me, although I would have told the same thing differently. The marriage had obscured her head nowadays, it seemed. Yet, I needed her to be the CEO who made Dan’s distributors increase to thousands, which she did some 8 years ago when she entered his company. His distributor's range increased to other states, such as Vermont and Connecticut. Although New Jersey is one state, we have a grasp on, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are the new hot states where our brands were competing against Dan’s. Neither liked ours nor Dan’s. “So Boston is what we are aiming at then Benny?” “Well, Lor it’s the only city where Dan’s clothes haven’t been distributed and if we get our distributors there may be those thousands of people there who might love our brand.” Lor looked somewhat unnerved by our product. She only felt nervous about her problems with Dan. It was as obvious and blatant as it seemed. There I was trying to persuade Lor to change her thinking about Dan and rather focus on products, and there she was again, thinking about him. I could see her eyes thinking. Yes, I can see those beautiful bulky blue eyes with love all over them thinking about only him. “You know he had forgotten the purple lilies today Benny!”.I looked at her strangely and as much as I adored the man, I hated the effect he had on her since college. I used to bring red roses to her, which was her favorite, and then some months later she started liking purple lilies. Why? Because Dan gave it to her in their 7th meeting. She remembers it was at the 7th meeting and now I was fuming. How is that even possible? He is that Charming, isn’t he? Well, he wasn’t. He was very good at changing people’s thinking. That made him very good at what he did. She picked up her cell phone and started bantering. "Dan! Now what? No, I will not be OK. Go do it yourself!” she threw her phone into the corner of the room. “Tell me he wants you to go home and check if the gas is leaking again?” “Yes, how did you know?” “Actually, it’s the 7th time you said the last time he called you, remember?” “It’s 5 times already I returned home to check the gas is leaking?” “No, Lor it’s the 7th time you will return home again and check if the gas is leaked.” “You want me to go as well?” “Well, you look tired and I think I don’t want Dan to come here and fight with me.” I was trying to make her angry again and persuade her not to go home. “You’re right. I should. I have the car and he only walks. Poor Dan!.” And there you go. She went back home feeling pity for the man. She would hate him in the morning to love him in the evenings. Maybe that was the reason they still were engaged.

A few hours later I got a call from her saying that the gas wasn’t leaked, but some old neighbor had grown fond of one of their vases in their homes and barged into their house for which the alarm had sounded. They had an alarm in the kitchen and their living room where they mostly kept their valuable things and alarms would be sounded which would alert the surroundings. And Dan, as you knew, would always want to get the work done and had the same reason for her to go back to the house being a gas leak.

The next day, I saw Dan from my home next to his office. He looks at the windows of his office. Looked like a window cleaning work to be done or something different as it seemed. He looked here and there as I went back to my room. Yes, I lived in New York City and not Brooklyn, where my office was. Now you may ask why you live in a place that you hate. It’s because of my mother who was born here in the city. My father, being from Brooklyn, loved not to come here, yet she persuaded him to come here. Reminds us of a love story that is happening. Maybe it might be the reason I didn’t want to break Dan and Lor. I could have tried, yet I haven’t. “Why didn’t you?” asked one of my friends Rhea, who knew about my allurement towards Lor during my college days. She was one of my employees here at Norman Clothings and Boots until Lor joined here 3 years ago. She hated her. Lor was a beauty in college such that girls were jealous of her and, despite that, she chose Dan. Dan was charming. There was no doubt about that, yet it felt she was way out of his league. So why choose Dan? First, he is her rival in everything, at least now, and I am charming as well and have shown all my desire to be with her since I met her, not with her now. The reason was going to show up in the next few hours. When I passed Dan’s office on my way to work, I mistakenly saw Dan and Lor’s sister Uma together at his office window. And then saw the bizarre thing happening: they were being intimate. Oh, I could barely watch, I did record with my phone. Yet I left them alarming no one. I knew one way or another Lor would find out about them and I would have time to be here. And I drove with a smile on my face to my office. Yet I had to make sure Lor would see that he was with Uma in his office or at least know so that she knows about his whereabouts. I didn’t want Lor to fall into the wrong hands.