BARE HUNTER

Chapter 3

I slept like the dead after my run last night. This was good because Greg had a list of things I needed to fix when I got to work.

“Look, Ted, I know you got a lot on your mind with your ex-wife and all, but you can’t send in unfinished paperwork. This isn’t like you. Snap out of it, buddy, or you’ll be looking for a new job.

“Unfinished? No way. I went over these files all day yesterday, and they were perfect. I double-checked them,” I protested.

“You call this finished?” he said, holding an end-of-month financial report in my face.

“Shit. Man. What the fuck? I was certain it was finished.”

“Did you save it right? Maybe you printed it before you saved it with the new information,” he suggested.

“Damn. Maybe. Let me go over today’s stuff, and I’ll do these again before I go home tonight,” I offered weakly.

Great. Just what I needed. I couldn’t afford to lose this job. Alimony and child support were eating me alive as it was. Everyone at work told me I got screwed in my divorce and I needed to re-negotiate. If I lost, then what? More money going for a lawyer was all I’d likely gain. The next time I looked up from my work, Phyllis, the office slut, was standing in front of my desk, “Hi, Phyl, what can I do you for,” I joked.

“You got plans after work?”

“Yeah. More work. Why?” I asked.

“I want to go clubbing, but no one is interested,” she whined.

Just what I needed was to be Phyllis’s wingman and backup singer. No one else wanted to go. She could have spared me that detail. What the hell was wrong with people? “If I can get through these financials by six, maybe,” I teased, hoping she’d offer to help type them out for me. One thing Phyliss was better at than blow jobs, was typing spreadsheets. Or so I’d heard.

“Give me a stack of your handwritten ones. I’ll have them formatted and typed up in a few. By the way, I’m really, really horny today.”

I handed over a pile of what I’d been working on all morning when my phone buzzed. She grabbed them and hustled off to do her magic while I read the new texts from Becca complaining that I didn’t text her last night, and she always had to reach out first, blah, blah, blah. No. Nope. Not answering. I was getting lucky tonight with someone who didn’t care if I texted first, second, or never. Maybe I could slip out of Becca’s noose by ghosting her. I hated confrontations, and technology had finally figured out a way for me to avoid them. I decided to block Becca’s calls and texts.

When Phyllis returned the finished worksheets to me in two hours, I almost kissed her. But I heard she doesn’t kiss, so I didn’t.

“Ew, your arm is bleeding, Ted. You better clean it up and put a Band-Aid on it. What’d you do last night—wrestle with a cougar?” she laughed.

The back of my neck prickled. Wow, my arm was bleeding down to the wrist. My shirt sleeve was soaked. What the hell? I went to the men’s room and noticed more cuts on my arm and scratches on my hands. Wonderful. I cleaned the blood off and tried to wash the shirt sleeve in the sink and dry it under the hand dryer. I looked a little less like a slasher when I finished, but I’d have to run home to change clothes before meeting Phyllis tonight.

Greg was pleased with the extra effort I (Phyllis) put into the paperwork, finishing it quickly. Not that I’d get a promotion or raise or anything. At least I was free to leave at five. Phyllis stuck her finger in her mouth and mimed blowing me as I passed her desk on my way out. Maybe things were looking up.