Dreary Office Career Arouses Fantasies and Misbehavior
Modern Realism - Adult Fiction
134 e-pages
Publisher-Shelf Price: $4.95
Five years on a treadmill to more of the same and less than expected has worn a deep rut in Jack Taylor's path to personal gratification. Nearly thirty, he spiritlessly endures the daily tedium of an empty professional and home life as his wandering mind seeks relief from boredom through sensual fantasy and immoral behavior
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Suit on An Empty Chair - Excerpt
1. Suit on an
Empty Chair
A novel by,
Richard M. Baker, Jr.
Available at: www.web-e-books.com
Excerpt:
Short of quitting then and there, Jack could only do as ordered. Fists clenched, every
nerve in his body screamed as he walked to the rear of the room and pushed the button to
bring up the self-service elevator. The elevator rose smoothly and the doors slid open. Jack
stepped in without a backward glance at Perham, the son of a bitch.
The doors closed. The interior of the elevator was cool, quiet, and calming. Jack
breathed deeply. He straightened his tie and combed the fingers of a hand through his thick
brown hair. He pushed the button to take him down.
Down is where I am and this won’t take me any lower. This job is miserable enough
without a prick like Perham trying to humiliate me out of it. I wonder if he dishes out the
same kind of hell to his kids and his wife, Judith. Hell, I don’t know. They seemed happy
that night we went to their house for dinner. Beautiful, good-natured hostess, attractive,
well-mannered kids, a small but tastefully decorated, neatly kept house. It really was a nice
evening. Suzanne’s still talking about it.
The elevator doors opened to the basement-level floor. Jack knew from having been
there that this was not the bank face presented to the public. This was the cellar, the
dungeon, the slave quarters, the prison where minutes felt like hours, days like weeks, and
weeks an eternity.
The narrow, dimly-lit hallway led to the vault on the left and rooms on the right
housing dusty records. Roger and Paul sat at a table in one of the closet-sized rooms where
they would spend two or three weeks checking mortgage files. The more challenging task
would be to somehow manage to keep out of each other’s way. With a feeling of revulsion,
Jack looked at Roger’s sweat-glistened head of short, black, curly, hair and wondered if
Roger’s skull was as empty as his face. He disapproved of Roger’s necktie, a dull maroon
color with yellowish-white, crisscrossing streaks, but couldn’t fault him for frayed shirt
2. cuffs because his left one was, too.
Damn, why don’t they make shirts that don’t fray on the collars and cuffs? If my
wife sewed, she could turn them under and I’d be all set. But she doesn’t and I can’t afford
to throw out shirts that are barely worn. I could if I had a million bucks in the bank, but
then, I wouldn’t have to wear a shirt to work because I wouldn’t have to work.
The vault door was open. Jack heard above the voices of whomever else was in there
the hearty, boisterous voice of the chairman, the pompous, self-important joker who always
managed to excuse himself on audit days at five o’clock sharp in one of those unspoken but
implied, now that I’ve given you boys such a big hand I guess you can carry on without me,
kind of deals. Boy, if I don’t know anything else, I know people, Jack decided. Not that it’s
worth a goddamn cent.
There was an empty chair for him in the vault between Clair and the chairman. The
reserve cash was stacked on a long narrow table. The job was to first count the bills in each
wrapped pack and check the total against the amount printed on the wrapper. The second
step was to tally the pack amounts to verify agreement with what was supposed to be there.
Jack squeezed into his seat. The vault was warm, too warm. Clair’s cheap perfume or
whatever it was she’d splashed on herself filled his nostrils. Had it not been for the strong
scent, her closeness might have been a pleasant distraction. He watched her flip through a
pack of ones and wondered if she knew what her finger resembled with the rubber gizmo
on it.
The larger denominations had been checked. Jack picked up a pack of ones and
glanced at the people across the table.
Monkey see, monkey do. They’re all holding the packs the same way and counting
the same end. It wouldn’t take a whole lot of brain power to catch on to the routine and
lighten a few packs by slipping out a bill and folding the next one in half. No one would
ever know as long as both ends weren’t counted. Cripe, maybe I should ask Corny to leave
the table and step out into the hall. What a kick it would be to one-up Perham.
But should I? The cash count is nearly complete. As soon as it is, the herd, excluding
the directors, will go up to list the savings account balances on adding machine tapes. The
schedule is sacred. I could get blasted for suggesting a recount. The directors will go nuts.
Not Perham, though. He hates overlooked angles. He loves improved procedures. He’d
keep us here counting bills all night, the prick. Meanwhile, those two little bank guys
assigned to hover while we count seem anxious to lock up their precious cash. How they
hate our pawing the merchandise, tearing wrappers, creasing bills, and disturbing what
they handle so neatly every day. Imagine their relief when it’s handed back to them, the
gentle custodians of all this dough. Hell, they don’t look like they’d have the nerve to slip
bills in their pockets. Why cause a fuss over nothing? What Perham doesn’t know won’t kill
him or me.
“Well, gentlemen and, ah, my dear young lady,” the chairman said, sounding as if
about to address the Rotary Club, “I think you can finish without me now.”
Corny smiled and thanked him. Boyer smiled to himself. So did Jack. Clair was
3. pleased that the distinguished man had singled her out.
Mr. Franklin cleared his throat, blew his nose, and stood up with a teeth-clenching
screech of the legs of his chair on the tile floor. Jack stopped counting and waited for the
annoyance to leave. He half-expected the heavy steel door to clang shut behind the old man,
perhaps because the imagined sound of it was already in his ears. Prisoners had it better.
They didn’t work nights.
Jack, you’re nuts. What’s better about being in prison? The vacation you get without
having any responsibility? Is that what ails you? The responsibility you have? Would you
rather be single, free to go anywhere and do anything? Sorry, Jack. You can’t have it both
ways. You love Suzanne and there’s the trap. Love keeps a man from going wild…not all
men, but enough of them to keep things running -- business, government, the whole works.
If you truly love someone, you’re automatically responsible. You work like hell, even if you
hate it, to take care of your own.
Jack tossed a pack onto the pile and reached for another. He was dying for a smoke,
though when working under pressure, smoking usually made him feel nauseous. His
stomach felt empty, but he wasn’t hungry. He seldom was. Eating didn’t interest him. Too
damned routine, too many pieces of dry chicken, too many spoonfuls of frozen peas, corn,
green beans, lima beans, succotash, any and all of which fueled battles with the kids over
cleaning their plates or no dessert, not that dessert was anything special unless you
happened to like canned fruit.
He shifted his feet which were uncomfortably hot after a long day in socks and shoes.
His ankle ached, the one he sprained as a child, so did his head and the wrist and fingers of
his writing hand. Damned if he was completely over his cold, too. Of all weeks for the bank
job to start, he wished to beat all hell it hadn’t been this one.
How much do I have to do, anyway? I really put out the work this winter, more than
ever, probably three hundred tax returns. Christ, they automatically pick me to handle
every joker who wanders in looking for help, most of them with tax records stuffed in every
pocket and half still missing. Would Perham touch jobs like those? The hell he would! He
wants his jobs to be big and clean. I think he and the other guys are afraid to deal with
people on a level where they have to ask questions about personal financial affairs. So,
they’re happy to pick over the records of a cold, impersonal corporation, and shove little
old ladies over to me. Why? Because I treat people with sympathy and understanding.
Which begs the question: Who says I’m not doing my part for the firm? The total billing on
my work over the past three-and-a-half months was probably enough to cover my annual
salary and leave a damned good profit.
Damn. If I could borrow enough money to open my own office and do nothing but
personal tax returns and small accounting jobs, I might take more than a few of the
Littlefield tax clients with me. I hope some of the clients like me enough to do that because
it sure would be great to work in peace and quiet, on my own time, for myself, when I feel
like it. Boy, it sure would.
Jack toyed with the prospect until he and the others were finished with the cash.
