Happy is He Who Understands the Meaning of Things

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I was about to change that as I slid under the back of the Escalade. One nice thing about these obscene SUV's, there's lots of ground clearance. I was careful not to touch the truck and leave fingerprints in the process as I crabbed on to get to the gas tank. I found a hole factory punched in the metal shield under the tank, and rammed the awl up into the tank. It was really, really tough plastic, of course, it would have to be, wouldn't it! I had to rotate the awl back and forth until it worked it's way through the gas tank wall, making a small hole. When I pulled the awl out, gas trickled out in a steady steam. I rubbed my hand in the grass to wipe off the residue of gas, walked down the driveway, lit the cigarette, ripped the filter off in case it had my DNA on it, and eyeballed the advancing dribble of gas. I set the burning cigarette directly in the path of the advancing fuel, just past the front bumper and figured maybe one or two minutes.

I got in my car, and drove off. It takes a few minutes to get to the main road from our street, and from the arterial road, there was a spot where you could just make out our house across a field. I glanced over as I went by, and saw there was a healthy glow from the fire. Eight minutes later, at 10:40, a fire truck passed me going the other way. I made good time back to the motel. One nice thing about hotels with the electronic keycard, you don't have to formally check out, so with my change of plan, at 11:30 I swiped my key in the door lock, and was back in the motel room. No messages on the hotel phone, so I turned in, and tried to sleep. What the hell was she doing? The guy was older than her father. I was also worried that I had just torched a $60,000-$70,000 car which was not the smartest thing to do. I eventually fell asleep.

I went through the motions the next day, going back to the convention. I dumped the awl and the cigarette filter in a trash can on the street. I suppose I was paranoid, but I'd never done anything like this, and frankly I hoped my wife could say the same. To make matters worse, I ran into that idiot Gus Rogala. Gus offered to buy me a coffee and raved about the restaurant, and I was pleasant, engaged, and smiled the whole time. When I paid his bill for the coffee and a scone, he asked:

"Have you ever been to Swirling Eddies?"

"Well, not really, just to sign the credit card, it got good reviews on Zagat, and looked pretty good. Was it a mistake?"

Gus laughed,

"No no no, it was excellent; very good food. It's a gay bar/restaurant! We were about the only couple there who's genitals didn't match! Actually we had a really good time, and have a fine tale to tell!"

"Shit! I'm brain dead! I never got the pun on the name of the place! Oh god! Thank you for seeing the humor here. I absolutely didn't know!"

"Chris, whatever, it made no difference to us."

We parted friends.

I wondered why Wifey hadn't called me with the big news. I mean, it's not every evening a car gets immolated in your driveway, and it had to be the talk of the neighborhood.

I really didn't trust Gus to remember to cover for me, and as we were talking, I spotted a good friend, excused myself from Gus, and chatted up Roger Axelson. After some small talk, I asked him if he could cover for me for supper. I told him I took my wife there, but was going to put the meal on my expense account, and needed to name a business contact. No problem! His smile turned into laughter as he said:

"So what did you think of the place? The waiters there are so light in the loafers you can't hear them coming. The service is great and the food superb!"

I gave the happy face and was on my way.

I stopped by the restaurant, and rescued my receipt before it got into the mail. All my sneakiness would not stand up to a real investigation, but I figured as long as it looked good, no one would interview wait staff at the restaurant.

As I was on the authority's time, I stopped at the plant about 1:30 PM, and started working on my expense account. One of the operators stopped in my office. As it happens he's a volunteer with the fire police, and had a few questions, like where I was the night of the fire.

I liked to shit! Jesus! The goddamn voice inside was hollering guilty! guilty!

"Well Robert, I was at a convention in Philly, which I went to on my own, but I ran into Allen, and he said bullshit to the ahole saying the Authority wouldn't pay for it, and agreed to pay for it all. Here, I just finished my expense account, with receipts attached. I stayed at the Ben Franklin Motel, and took Roger Axelson out to dinner last night. We went to Swirling Eddie's. The receipt is right there, I looked at it. Ah, here's the date and time on the credit card receipt, I left about 9:30."

"Oh, well, let me make a copy of it. You like the restaurant?"

"Sure, nice place, good food?"

"My son worked there for three or four years. He's gay so he fit right in. That pretty much settles it, then. It looks like a leaking fuel tank, but we can't find the ignition source, so that is up in the air. We're having a guy look over the vehicle to see if he can figure it out.

By the way, Red Rabbet, as he hates to be called, is a pisser. He fucks anything young and remotely good looking, and Karen certainly fits the description"

"You're saying my wife is remotely good looking!"

"No no no, She's obviously a nice looking woman, everybody would say so, Rabert included, so watch out for her. My cousin worked for him for a while, years ago. Her problems with him ended, when he came up behind her, reached around and squeezed her tits. She was wearing heels, and stamped with all her might on his instep, and then while he was dancing on one foot, she kicked him in the balls. She broke some bones in his foot, and when she kicked him, he fell over and broke his collar bone, and was limping for six months. That ended the harassment; he was polite as can be after that."

I thanked him for the information, and went back to work.

it looked like a UFO landed in the driveway. Big black spot on the pavement, grass, shrubs and trees shriveled, even some paint boiled off the trim on the house and vinyl siding melted and drooping. The ground was soaked from the fire hose, but not the driveway. Looking carefully, the asphalt close to where the car was oxidized, and to a lesser extent the surrounding area, but I could see a little line maybe a foot long ending where the cigarette was placed! Shit! If I could see it, so could the fire investigators!

No note from Wifey inside. She obviously would expect me to call when I saw the damage, so I picked up the phone.

I paused as it struck me what a lot of damage I had done, the damn house could have caught fire with my wife and child inside. And I torched the car without much real evidence. After all, they were dressed, not kissing, with my toddler daughter up stairs. If I hadn't wimped out, I could just have walked in on them and had a conniption. There was a very good case to be made that I grossly over reacted, and I should watch out for that in the future. I was eager to talk to her too, if only to see what story she had come up with. She answered on the fifth ring, and claimed that she couldn't talk just then, that she had a lot to tell me when she got home. She added she loved me.

I picked Karen Jr. up at day care, and we had a nice toddle about the yard. She's talking quite well, but if she saw the fire, she couldn't tell me about it. I casually asked her if she woke up during the night, but if she did, she didn't remember that either.

Karen came home, and started her tale.

"President Rabert called her about 7 PM, to say he needed to consult with me on a problem in the accounting department that evening. I told him to come about 9:00, so our daughter would be in bed."

"Ah! As soon as you knew he was coming, you called me right? Telling me you were really beat, and going to bed at 9 PM, and not call you later? Why did you lie to me?"

"No, right after I called you, he called, and he totally stressed me out! I mean I couldn't tell him not to stop by, and I had to pick up the house, get dressed, bathe Karen and get her to bed. So anyway, he arrived about nine, and we talked about the business, until about 10:00 when we heard the fire truck drive up. I went into the hall as the firemen were pounding on the kitchen door, I could see Red's new Escalade in flames right next to our garage!

My god, I ran up stairs to get Karen, and we all had to go out of the house through the back door. She was cute. She slept through the whole thing! We stood over in Mrs. Haney's yard. The firemen had it out in a few minutes, but then they poked over it for the longest time. A cab came for Sam about the time they put the fire out, so he must have called for one as soon as he saw the flames. The tow truck hauled what was left at midnight, and with all that commotion I didn't get much sleep, I'm exhausted!"

"What business did you talk about? Your future with Car Deals perhaps? You know he wants to fuck you."

I surmised that last remark was true, but from what I saw through the window, it probably wasn't slander.

"I knew you wouldn't understand, and there's no call to be crude. In fact we discussed my future with the dealership. I'm a candidate to get Janie's job when she retires later this year. It would be a really big promotion!"

"So what was the big hurry that he had to come over to the house?"

"Chris, people like him don't just work 9 to 5, he's going all the time!"

I wasn't buying a word of it, but,

"Well, That's very good news, about the possibility of promotion. You're a bright, hard working woman. What does Jane do?"

"She's in charge of payroll and tax compliance, and has several people working for her."

The wife's education and experience is in bookkeeping? No fucking way!

"Janie probably has a degree in accounting? Karen nodded, "And she also does the tax stuff? So is the company sending you back to school, to finishing your accounting courses and get some courses in tax law? So you were talking for hours, what else did you discuss?"

"Well, the accounting policy at the Dealership and that sort of thing."

"Well, Karen, it doesn't sound like anything so urgent that El Presidente had to visit you at bedtime to talk about it. That bastard has the reputation of being a ball buster, not the nice guy he apparently was last night... By the way, are you getting overtime pay for your services last night?"

"No, of course not! I would never expect that!"

"Look, regardless of what you may become in the future, you're not part of his management team yet! Under the Pennsylvania Wage and Salary Law, you are a wage worker, paid by the hour, and by law he must pay you for overtime work, assuming the visit was indeed work, and not a social call."

"Well, Chris, it was certainly not a social call."

"Then what you two did was business, and you should get paid for it. By the way, did you mention to people at work that I would be away Monday and Tuesday night?"

"I don't know, I might have. I mean, I would have no reason to not mention that. You're usually home at night, so it would be remarkable that you were going to be gone, so yes I probably remarked on it."

"Hmmh. So President Rabert might have known that you would be home alone, with an infant, of course?"

"Well anyone might have known that, but I didn't talk with him. In any event it was a business meeting!"

"I'm disappointed in your behavior here..."

"What the hell? My boss can't see me about a business matter if you're not here? Is that what you think?"

"Of course he can, but please hear me out. For one thing, it would be much more professional for you to have someone here to mind Karen Jr. so President Rabert could have come by earlier, wouldn't have had to be out so late, taking time away from his own loving wife and family. He could have come at 7:00 or 8:00 PM, plus with someone to take care of Karen, you wouldn't have had the risk of interruption. Hard to have a professional conversation when, by your own statement you were exhausted, and right in the middle of a discussion, the baby wakes up crying. With help and an earlier meeting time, you wouldn't have been so tired. Plus, if another adult was here, your mother, or even Mrs. Haney, then there can be no question that this wasn't a business call."

"And exactly what questions do you think there are?"

"Lets talk about it. There's some problems with your story. It could have happened as you say, but it didn't. You said the fire company got here at 10PM, Bobby Ryan at the fire company says they got there at 10:45, so you spent a lot more time with the President than you 'fessed up to. It is conceivable you called me after you knew he was coming over, ensuring that I wouldn't interrupt anything with my call."

"I resent that. I did not! He called after I called you!"

"Your cell phone would prove that. Show me and I'll concede the point but it's a minor point. You have the appearance of hiding from me the fact that you were entertaining a gentleman visitor late at night, on an evening where I wasn't expected home. Unfortunately the scorched earth ended any hope of secrecy, and what I'm hearing sounds a lot like damage control.

"Only a pervert like you would think that of Mr. Rabert's coming by on business. Really! He's old enough to be my father!"

"Hmmh. Well, don't take my word for it, ask your own mother about what's proper. Having others in the house would have sent a signal to President Sam Rabert that to you, this was definitely a business call.

Well, my dear, last night was strike two."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You know, like in baseball, three strikes and your out. The Pinwheel, strike one, Having President Rabert over here, alone with you late at night, and lying to me about it, is strike two, figuratively speaking."

"Chris, nothing happened."

"It is as you say Effendi, perhaps thanks to the arrival of the Fire Company, but I am not impressed."

She stormed off to our bedroom, and locked the door. When I wanted to go to bed, I pounded on the door until she opened it, but it was a cold bed than night.

He wasn't gone ten minutes when Skip, our instrument guy, stopped in, and said,

"I'm working overtime tomorrow, meet me by my truck in the parking lot at 5:15."

He startled me,

"Why?"

Skip looked around and whispered

"You'll see. 5:15."

Skip is a little weird, but never this weird. I nodded, and he nodded, and I went back to work. The only thing I could think of was that at 5:15, the parking lot would be about empty. Skip's a guy that pulls his dick out and pisses in the bushes anywhere in the plant, and now he want's privacy?

The next day flew by, and I nearly forgot about Skip and his mysterious request, but at 5:15, I walked out to the lot. Skip had moved his truck next to my car. Turns out he heard about the Burning Car incident in my driveway, and assumed the worst. He suspected his wife had been cheating on him early last year, of course not with Red Rabert. I've met his wife, and she's a nice woman, but not to be nasty, probably not up to Rabert's standards. Anyway, he bought a bunch of spy stuff to catch her. I've know Skip for years because he and my dad were buddies until pop died. They were in Vietnam at the same time, although they didn't meet until they got back here. He had tiny video cameras, tracking stuff, microphones, even a directional mike that you point at a noise source, and could hear a quiet conversation 100-150 feet away. I tried to deny that I had a problem, but he was a wise old bird.

"Chris, I was lucky, turned out my wife wasn't running around on me, but everybody on god's green earth gets tempted. A lot take a few steps towards broken vows but stop short, and...and well, some end up fucking a lover. You think she's in the early stages. Head her off before she fucks up. You can always divorce her later, but believe me, try to save your marriage, if only for you're daughter's sake. It can't hurt. Not such a big thing her giving somebody a kiss and a feel, you can piss on her and rage about it, but it's not cause for divorce. I'm telling you man, be proactive here!"

That night I told Karen about Skip's wife, mentioning there were lots of similar stories, most of which did not have such a happy ending.

"I suppose this is your oh so subtle way to bring up President Rabert. Why are you against my getting ahead in business? There's nothing improper happening except in your jealous mind. Mr. Rabert is not trying to get in my pants, and wouldn't succeed if he did try!"

"Unlike the idiot at our wedding who got caught by his wife while he was fucking one of the bridesmaids?"

"Will you stop the ancient history crap!" and she stormed off.

So that night I put the tracking beacon in her car, and later in the week, a camera in the light fixture in our living room. While I was at it, I checked the phone records, which confirmed that she did call me after Rabert invited himself over. I tucked that away until I needed to use it.

Bob Fitzroy, the insurance claims adjuster concluded that the damage to the house and driveway was covered by our home owners policy, subject to $1,000 deductable, and then in effect. He cut our out of pocket in half by tossing in $500 in cash for misc 'other.' Our insurance didn't cover the trees and landscape, but he gave me a letter estimating the damage at $4,500, including $2,100 to remove the damaged trees, $900 for new trees, and the balance compensation for the destruction of mature shrubs.

Nothing out of the ordinary the rest of the week, and the weekend was quiet.

As it happened, her overtime should have been in her check the following Tuesday. It wasn't. So in the role of family bookkeeper, I wrote a letter:

Car Deals Inc.

Attn: Payroll Dept

Subject: Uncompensated Overtime

Gentlemen:

As you know, my wife Karen Wickander is an hourly employee at Car Deals. Last week Tuesday, President Rabert telephoned Karen at 7 PM to say he wanted to stop at our home later in the evening, and discuss some business matters. Immediately after President Rabert's call, Karen had to change into appropriate dress, and tidy up the house to prepare for the unexpected visitor, etc,etc. The President arrived a little before nine PM. They conducted business and whatnot until 10:45 PM when the arrival of the fire company caused them to notice that President Rabert's Escalade was burning brightly in the driveway. President Rabert called a cab, and left about 11, but it was well after 1 AM before the fire company towed the charred wreck away and Karen was able to return to her personal life. I was out of town that night, so I cannot corroborate my wife's account, but cell phone records, and the fire company are suitable evidence. President Rabert's visit, and its consequences occupied my wife from seven PM to one AM, and is thus entitled, by law, to six hours of overtime pay.

Looking further at the payrole stubs, on July 27, Karen was required to attend a dinner business meeting with Mr. Rabert at the Pinwheel Restaurant, which took place from 7 to 9 PM. An after hours business meeting is also covered by the wage and hour rules. Also owed is the additional costs in driving to this venue over and above her normal commute, was 22 miles, as 0.55$/mile is an additional $11.

Please correct these oversights.

Other but related matters, the immolation or Mr. Rabert's defective car in my driveway during the business meeting caused extensive damage to my property. My insurance company covered the fire damage to the house and driveway, but not the landscaping. The insurance deductable on the house was $1,000 and the landscaping damages not covered, listed in the accompanying documents was an additional $4,500 for a total of $5,500 you need to pay me to make me whole.