Chances Aren't (3 page)

"Happy Birthday. How old?"

"Sixty two." He plops down in a chair in front of me and smiles.

"Wow."

"How do you do it?" I ask.

"Do what?"

"You are always happy."

"It is my birthday."

"No, you’re like this every day. You're either on some amazing drugs or maybe are having much more than your fair share of sex."

He flashes me a smile. "Well, it is my birthday if you know what I mean."

"Oh, gotcha."

His smile fades as he mutters, "If only it was my birthday every day."

"What?"

"Oh, nothing," he says and suddenly his smile reappears somehow even brighter than before. "Hey, when I retire in two years you'll be this happy too."

Okay, that's number eight.

"I know…" Struggling to hold back my chuckle, I curl my lip. "I'm looking forward to that."

I bring my closed fist to my mouth to hide my smile as I reach for my keyboard itching to show him the outlook calendar entry documenting his last announced retirement date. I can hold out with the knowledge that the reveal will carry so much more weight eighteen months from now. "I was thinking of taking Tuesday off next week. Do you see any—"

"Take off Wednesday too."

I smile. He's such a refreshing change from the first boss I worked under here. That lady would sneer at you no matter how far in advance you asked for time off. God, I love this guy.

"No, Tuesday is all I need."

"Are you sure?"

"Thanks, but yeah."

Suddenly serious, he says, "Hey, remember we have that meeting in Washington tomorrow. I'll meet you here at 8:30."

"I haven't forgotten."

He looks me over seemingly with concern. "You okay?"

"Yes, why?"

"I don't know. You just look tired."

"I didn't sleep much last night."

"Everything all right at home?"

"Oh, yeah it's great," I lie.

"Good, you know what I always say a happy wife equals a happy life."

"Don't I know it." I paint on a happy face.

Rising from his chair, he heads for the door. "Make sure you don't miss my cake at lunch. Becky is bringing in her famous red velvet."

"I'll be there." I say cheerily, even though I absolutely hate red velvet cake. What the hell is it anyway? It kinda tastes like chocolate cake loaded with lots of deadly red dye in it. I mean, why do people like it?

A pop up appears on my PC screen. It's for a project meeting that's starting in fifteen minutes, but it's in building one and will take me just about that long to get there. Grabbing my planner and a pen, I head off through the warehouse.

The meeting is short and uneventful and when I arrive back at my desk, I have a voice mail waiting in my synchronized email inbox. Ah technology is amazing. Now I don't actually need to go through the absolute nightmare of hitting a few buttons on my phone, I can simply click twice in my email box and the message plays. Wow, what will I do with those four seconds I'll save? After giggling out loud at my own warped sense of sarcastic humor, I recognize the number as Emily's from her office, open up the message and press play. Emily's voice booms loudly out of my computer speaker.

Ben, it's me. Laurie from work, um, her sister is a— what? Oh, yeah ok... look sorry, I'm late for a meeting. I'll call you back.

I stare at the screen, dumbfounded. Her sister is a— a, a, an amazingly sexy woman looking to do nothing except please a man and she thinks you're hot. I chuckle... there is no way she's trying to fix me up all ready, hell that would be awkward no matter how far out we go. Her sister is a lawyer and she's going to sue you in divorce court for everything you have, yeah maybe that's it. I delete the message and get back to my exciting job.

At 11:30, I head out to the gym, making my first appearance in a little over a month. I suffer through my fifteen minutes of stretching and core stomach and back exercises, ten minutes of cardio followed by twenty minutes of pretty hard core circuit weight training which keeps my heart rate up just enough and spare me from logging a real stretch of cardio, which I absolutely despise.

After showering, I return to the office just as the crowd is gathering for Greg's birthday celebration. Years ago I became the unofficial corporate newsletter photographer, tasked with capturing all the important moments in the company's history, so I use my iPhone to shoot a few pictures of him opening presents and cutting the cake.

I'm not in the mood to socialize, so I slip into my office with my slice and take one small bite before hiding the remnants at the bottom of my trash can. I work the rest of the day without receiving a follow up call from Emily, but I don't bother calling her back. I figure she said she would call and if it was truly important, she would.

An urgent issue materializes in one of our production systems and it occupies what's left of my work day, making it fly by quickly. Wrapping it up just after five, I ensure all is well before heading out of the building.

I arrive home at just after six and find two cars in the driveway— Emily's and another one I don't recognize. My first irrational thought is that Emily is there having sex with some guy with amazingly fertile super sperm. For a moment I consider driving away and returning hours later, but instead I go inside.

Walking through the kitchen, I discover Emily and a woman wearing a pant suit standing outside in our relatively new outdoor kitchen area looking over our overpriced in-ground pool. Both unnecessary improvements we rarely use and were added to the house to fill the childless voids in our lives. I've heard kids can be expensive, but filling voids can't be that much cheaper, trust me.

I head through the patio door and Emily spots me. "Hey."

"What's going on?" I ask.

"Diana, this is my, uh, this is Ben."

Diana powers over with her hand extended— all six feet of her. "Ben, good to meet you."

I narrow my eyes at her, confused. "Yes, um, nice to meet you. Emily, what's going on?"

"I told you." Emily gives me another one of her disappointed looks.

I fucking hate her looks. I take a deep calming breath before replying with forced cheer, "Told me what?"

"Laurie's sister is a real estate agent."

"You didn't tell me. You started to leave me a message, but—"

"Sorry," Emily says. "I got side tracked at work and thought... anyway, I think we should sell the house."

"Um, I'd love to, but we've got to owe more on it than it's worth."

"The market is starting to come back," Diana says as she runs her hands along the counter top. "Nice granite. Did you pick this, Emily?"

"Yes."

"How much did you spend on improvements out here?"

Emily looks toward me wide eyed as Diana turns her attention to me as well.

"Um, let's see, the pool she
had
to have was, with the fencing and landscaping… about eighty… plus the kitchen, outdoor fireplace and all this." I point up to the covered extension area. "Seventy, um about one fifty total."

"Well, it's lovely," Diana says, smiling.

"So how much value does this add to our house?" Emily asks.

The sharply dressed Amazonian real estate agent pauses a moment studying the area. "Forty… maybe forty five."

"What?" Emily asks, shocked.

"A pool only adds maybe fifteen to twenty and all the rest another twenty five or so. But it's gorgeous."

"Yeah, thanks," I say rolling my eyes.

Suddenly looking concerned, Emily asks, "Ben, how much do we owe?"

"The first mortgage is four twenty and the second is about one twenty five and the credit line it a little over sixty, I think."

Diana's eyes bug out of her head. "Six hundred, that's, uh—"

Emily scoffs. "How do we owe that much? How did you let that happen?"

"Me?" I ask, perplexed.

"I knew about the second mortgage, but what is that credit line?"

"Remember the cruise, oh and your Lexus. We also consolidated our credit card debt."

"This doesn't make any sense." Emily shakes her head and sighs. "Diana, so what do you think we can get for it?"

"You could move it pretty quickly at four fifty… it's probably worth closer to five hundred, but it could take nine months or more to sell at that price."

"We want to sell it quickly." Emily announces.

I scoff. "Hold on a second, there's no way I—"

"I think I know a couple looking for a five bedroom like this." Diana bulldozes over me heading toward the pool. "Is that a salt system?"

"Great…" I put on a fake smile. "So, I just bring a check for a hundred fifty to the closing table and we can sell it, right?"

Diana glances back and says authoritatively, "Uh, more like one eighty."

"What?" My jaw drops, flabbergasted.

"Commissions and closing costs."

"Oh, I forgot about those," I say. I see Diana typing into her smart phone, so I turn and give Emily a bug-eyed look.

Glaring, Emily swats her hand at me and mouths 'stop!'

I raise my hands as if to say, 'what did I do.'

"I'd like to take some more pictures of the bathroom." Diana looks to Emily.

"Oh, sure. Go right ahead."

Diana heads past us toward the house sporting her super high heels, which snap loudly against the patio and make her even more unnecessarily tall. After she's safely out of ear shot, Emily glares at me. "Stop being rude."

"What am I doing?"

"You know what!"

"I don't."

She gives me a tired look. "Nevermind."

"Why all of a sudden are you selling the house?"

"I can’t take living with my parents."

I scoff. "You've been there one night."

"And that's enough. All they do is fight. My father is crazy and… you know how it is being around those two."

"Yeah." I nod in agreement. "But you know we can't sell the house right now. Maybe in five years or something."

"How about I let you have it and I'll—"

"Oh, that's so nice. I get the house and you get to take your name off of it. Are you going to give me seventy five thousand… sorry, ninety thousand to buy me out?"

"No, I'll just sign it over to you."

"I appreciate that…" I close my eyes and sigh. "But I can't make the payments on my salary alone."

"You can't?" She gives me a look like she smells something foul.

"No, I'm sorry my career is a crushing disappointment to you." Rolling my eyes, I look away from her.

She ignores my remark and says, "There has to be something we can do."

I don’t reply and instead focus on our beautiful, sun shade arbor that we added to the outdoor plan at the last minute. I try to remember exactly what that set us back.

"What about renting it?" She asks.

"What was that?" I ask her to repeat the question since I’m still preoccupied as I add up prices of assorted accent pieces we purchased to adorn our amazing backyard that we barely used.

"Can't we rent it out?"

I shake my head. "Even if we did that until the prices come back, I don't think the rent would cover the mortgage. We wouldn't each have enough money left over to get our own places."

She slumps down in our lovely fifteen hundred dollar outdoor couch and sighs. "What about our savings?"

I let out a chuckle.

She looks me in the eye. "What do we have in the bank?"

"About ten grand in an emergency fund."

"And our retirement accounts?"

"Two fifty in mine and about eighty in yours."

"Great, let's use that money?"

"We can't without giving away about half of it in taxes and penalties." Pausing, I do some quick math. "That still wouldn't be enough."

"Half?"

"Yeah, the government sorta discourages blowing your retirement money before you hit a certain age and this is how they do it."

"That stinks," she says.

"Well, it makes sense since they want to..." My words trail off and I don't bother explaining since I can tell by her expression that she could care less.

She looks off toward the pool and grumbles, "How is this possible?"

"We just kept making improvements to the house and buying crap. I guess it just got out of control."

"You were supposed to be watching our money."

"Okay, yeah this is my fault."

She nods in agreement.

"Really?" I raise my hands in defeat. "I only agreed to about half of the crap you wanted to do. Thank God, I didn't say yes to the boat and the, um, the R.V."

"One of us could have lived in the R.V."