Demoted and...

"Of course!" she replied, rolling over onto her side, gazing at me with a look that I never saw from Carrie anymore.

We collected our clothes and went to the shower in the warehouse. The shower was only there in case one of the workers accidentally coated themselves in some horrific chemical. OSHA standards. But, after hours, it worked quite well for cleaning up before I went home.

"Are you going to leave Carrie, yet?" Andrea asked as I was lathering up to rid myself of her smell. Not that I wanted to.

"You know I can't, baby. She owns half of this." I said, gesturing to our warehouse full of boxes waiting to be shipped to destinations unknown.

"I know, but you could divorce her for... something. I don't know. Tell her you're sick of trying to have kids with her."

"But that still leaves us without anything. Do you think that I could divorce her without her starting to take an interest in what goes on around here? She'll fire you the minute she finds out how much I pay you and she'll hire a temp to answer the phones. That's if she even gives me that!"

Andrea had been bugging me to divorce Carrie for a year now. Almost since the time we started sleeping together. We redressed ourselves and I kissed her goodnight as we headed out to the parking lot, her Audi and my Mercedes the only cars left in the lot.

As I eased my Mercedes convertible out onto Berker, I turned my thoughts to Carrie. I wondered what her big news was. Maybe she was finally pregnant. We'd been trying for six years now. She had visited specialists and timed our sex down to the minute she thought she dropped an egg. It was rather annoying, really.

I pulled into Riverside Grill at a quarter to eight. I didn't see Carrie's car in the lot so I went inside and got us a table near the windows overlooking the river. Carrie walked in as soon as I'd ordered us a bottle of wine and lit a cigarette.

"Hey, baby!" I said, standing up to give her a hug and pull out her chair.