Excerpt
Reason intervened at last and yanked their wild thoughts back
to reality at almost the same moment. As suddenly as they started,
they both stopped and stepped apart. Frances quickly fixed her clothing
and hair, took a deep breath, and walked out of Eteo’s office. Helena
and Logan noticed her brusque, nervous manner as she passed
them on the way to her office and thought their different thoughts
about what might just have taken place in their boss’s office.
Meanwhile Eteo’s mind ran back to the VSE annual gala the previous
November. Pacific Trends had reserved three tables and invited
its top twenty brokers and the four big wigs of the firm to occupy the
twenty-four seats. Before the dinner, people gathered, mingled,
talked, exchanged ideas, laughed, and gossiped. Eteo always attended
these events—he was always among the ten top producers in his
firm—but that year he had truly paid attention to Frances Woodruff
for the first time. She was also a perennial big producer, and on that
occasion she had been seated with Bradley and the other big wigs.
Eteo was at the adjacent table with seven other brokers. It was shortly
after his divorce, something all his colleagues had known about, and
when Eteo was at the bar getting a drink, Frances came up behind
him, rubbed her beautiful, lush breasts lightly against his back, and
then hugged him from behind. In front of everybody else at the bar
she said, “Hello, handsome Cretan,” her voice resonating with everything
Eteo was tuned to at that moment.
When Eteo told Logan about this startling show of affection the
next day, his son had said, “Be careful, dad, take precautions. She’s
known to sleep around.” Eteo had laughed and assured him he would
be careful, but he had never pursued the affair even though he had
often imagined it. He promised himself that this time he would not
fail to visit Frances soon and light his devotional candle on her altar,
as he put it to himself. Pleased with that image, he turned to his
screen and the behavior of the stocks in his accounts. The performance
was good on every front except Golden Veins, where he remained
exposed without any reasonable exit. He called Richard.
Manolis Aligizakis 