Chapter 3

Get a Cell Phone Already

Cliff sat in his office at Meryll Lynch for days in a row, trying to contact Ally on the phone.   He left numerous messages, but she didn’t return his calls.  He used the company’s phone to make personal calls, since he didn’t have a cell phone.  Cliff refused to spend money buying his own cell phone when he could use everyone else’s phones; Meryll Lynch, Jonathon Club, The Pearl Dragon, The Brass Cap…the list goes on.  A voice from the phone intercom buzzed thru, “Mr. Slater.  A woman with a Russian accent is on line 3. She wouldn’t give me her name.  Shall I transfer her to your voicemail?”

“Yes, that’ll do.” Cliff noticed he had several messages, but was still focused on Ally.  Cliff recalled the night he had sex with her.  She awoke the next morning early in a confusion and surprise, then involuntarily vomited.  Afterward, she bolted away like a bat out of hell.   Cliff now realizes that he did something wrong.  Cliff could feel a veil of shame impregnating him.  Good thing that’s the only thing that could possibly become pregnant considering both their ages, he mercenarily thought.  

Ally sat in her high-rise Wilshire Boulevard Condo feeling distressed and sick every time the phone rang. She thought to herself, did Cliff have sex with her while she was passed out drunk? He’s just an old guy, he didn’t mean to do that, she tried justifying. Maybe he didn’t know she was passed out. Maybe he thought because she didn’t kick him or push him off, that it was okay.  Whatever the reason, she just wanted to erase this event from her mind forever. And every second that passed she wanted to scream.

 The next several hours, Cliff was still impregnated not only with shame, but pride!  How proud he was to finally have sex again.  It had been almost 20 years. He just wasn’t attracted to his wife anymore, and when he thinks of her, he cringes.  He decides to check his voicemail, finally realizing one of those messages might be Ally.

“Hi Cliff, It’s Lilia. I’m leaving to Bulgaria in a couple of days”, her more Serbian accent begged through the phone. “My family is looking forward to meeting you.  They are pleased that you will buy my family’s home, so the government won’t take it away. You told me you would do that, right? And I told you I would repay you with our arrangement.”   Cliff was dodging Lilia over a week now. He couldn’t resist her at the time.  The thought of a girl young enough to be his granddaughter, would be an accomplishment.  He regrets that he had promised to go to Bulgaria with her to look into buying her parent’s home and at the time thought it was an unconventional “property income” endeavor. But now, come to think of it, he would rather have money than a little sex.  Why buy the cow when you can get your milk for free?