Henry groaned. "Not tonight, shit!" Then almost immediately, he recollected that the Bakers were giving a party and it was most important that he be present. No help for it, he'd have to bite the bullet. Casting a fond look at his Lazy Boy as he passed the entrance to the living room, he ascended the stairs feeling like a doomed man mounting a scaffold.
"You look like death warmed over," his wife, Kate, announced caustically, as she met him at the top of the stairs.
You're no raving beauty yourself, Henry thought. Kate was an athletic, slender woman of forty-two. She neither thought herself beautiful or required that others did. Henry often lamented the fact that with all the money they had, she could afford to go to one of the many body shops and get some or all of her sagging flesh lifted, but Kate opted to live naturally and age gracefully. He was continually after her to at least wear makeup but she adamantly refused.
When they were married, Henry didn't mind the over a decade age difference between them. Kate was an exciting woman—an exciting, rich woman. Her money had been the deciding factor in asking her to marry him and it was one reason he stayed married to her. The other was that he basked in the prestige her place in society lavished on him.
"Go on in and get your shower and hurry up. We're going to be late as it is."
"Oh, hell, it doesn't matter if we're a bit late for this. Everyone understands that I'm really busy with this damned hearing," Henry grumbled as he made his way to the ornate bathroom.
When he entered his bedroom a few minutes later wrapped in a towel, Kate called through the connecting door from her room to ask how the hearing was going. Her innocent question brought the whole disgusting mess back, along with the foul humor that went along with it.
Henry set down heavily on his bed. "What a day. You wouldn't believe the absolute stupidity of that NERD chairman and his little boy bad, Fecesi. You'd think after all the trouble they took to have this hearing take place that they would at least be prepared. But no, Lyle couldn't even remember how many Smurffs were involved—two or three. As if that wasn't bad enough, he let that damned woman, Trenchant, tie him up in knots on cross examination.
"Then Fecesi testified. He's the guy that actually found these suspicious SmurFFs and I was told that he'd been well coached. Mark and Lyle both had gone over and over his testimony with him. The trouble is, the guy is the pits. A horny, crass bastard if I ever saw one. He put on a world class demonstration of constipation of the brain and diarrhea of the mouth. If I hadn't adjourned the hearing when I did, there's no telling what else would have come out of that foul throat of his.
"Now, add to all of that, those stupid broads on the panel got teed-off at the document examiner and apparently aren't convinced now that Trenchant wrote those evaluations at all. The only one I can depend on is Frank Anuse." Henry buried his head in his lap and massaged it with both hands.