Spin Round

By markhahn2000

Sitting in his darkened kitchen—eating dinner alone—Alex Hoffman looks out the back window into the remnants of his domestic life. In the end, all he sees is his own refection in the glass. The empty twenty odd years he spent with his emotionally detached and materialistic wife Hillary weighs on him. By all outward appearances, they look like the picture of success living in their imposing Colonial McMansion nestled in the New England woods. In reality, this illusion is at the brink of exploding.

• Language: English
• Publisher: markhahn2000
• Release date: May 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311065513

markhahn2000

Mark Hahn is both an artist and writer. His writing has appeared in Bad Subjects and Souciant Magazine as well as the numerous essays he has published on his website (http://markhahnphotography.wordpress.com/). Hahn studied at both the College of Creative Studies in Detroit and the School of the Art Institue of Chicago. His work has been displayed in New York, Chicago and LA. He has published two photo essay books, Beautiful Pointless Universe and Empty Spaces.

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Spin Round

Mark Hahn

Copyright 2014 Mark Hahn

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 by Mark Hahn

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Send inquiries to: [e-mail]

ISBN: 978-1-311-06551-3

The planets thus revolve about the sun [and] may at the same time carry others revolving about themselves as satellites or moons.

--Sir Isaac Newton,

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Chapter One

Alex was working late at the Allied Technologies Leadership Center in Stratford Connecticut. He was sitting alone in his generic putty-colored modular office staring into space. He had worked here for 18 years. He started in an entry level position right out of college. He graduated from Purdue University. Purdue was only 60 miles away from Huntersville, the tiny Midwest town where he was born and raised.

At Allied, Alex had worked hard to impress his boss Dan Sylvan. When Dan was promoted, he brought Alex with him. This is how Alex got his first executive position. Many on the A-97 team resented that he had been promoted in this way—especially since he had no direct management skills and no hands on experience within the program. There were many who had been on the program for years and were thought to be better candidates for the position.

Consequentially, many of those working for him didn’t treat him with a lot of respect. Alex knew that it stemmed from their resentment. He tried to let it roll off him. What he really cared about was continuing to look good in Dan’s eyes and moving up further in the organization. Alex was a classic suck-up. All he really cared about was getting his next promotion. He didn’t care what people thought about him or what he had to do for it. In the end, Alex just wanted one of the gold nameplates outside his door and a personal executive parking place.

In his office, Alex was struggling to put together a PowerPoint presentation outlining the current status of the A-97 program. In it, he was trying to explain away recent test failures related to the SAPL unit. Allied was an aircraft subcontracting firm. While busy with his presentation, Tracy tapped on his door.

She hesitated and tentatively whispered, Do you have a minute to look over these view graphs I’ve been working on?

Tracy was a young engineering intern from Yale. She was both naive and insecure—especially around Alex.

Alex looked up at her and motioned her into his office, Yeah, sure Tracy. Let’s see what you’ve got.

Tracy entered Alex’s office and placed a small stack of plots on his desk. Alex quickly looked through the stack, nodding as he looked at each of them.

Very nice Tracy. Very nice indeed! he said.

Tracy had obviously put a lot of effort into making them look good. This made Alex happy. He was going to be the one presenting them to the top brass in the morning. Alex looked up at Tracy. He couldn’t help noticing her tight cleavage which was softly framed by her low cut cream colored angora sweater. Alex was struck by how smooth and pure her skin looked. He even imagined that she might still be a virgin. This was a great turn on for him.

Like Alex in his younger days, Tracy took both her school work and career seriously. She always put in unpaid overtime and got everything done for Alex on time, no matter how aggressive or unrealistic the schedule was. Alex noticed this and always tried to give her encouragement.

You know Tracy, I have to tell you again that I think you’re doing a great job here, and personally, I appreciate all the effort that you’re putting in for us. If we had a whole staff of employees as dedicated and enthusiastic as you, this company would simply take off—we’d be unstoppable.

Tracy stumbled for words a moment, then she managed to say, Thank you Mr. Hoffman. I think working here at Allied is the best opportunity I could have had outside of school. I’m not thinking of it as free overtime, I’m thinking of it as valuable experience.

I’m glad to hear that Tracy. If you decide you want to come to Allied full time—after you finish your degree—I promise that I’ll put in a good word for you and I can almost guarantee that we’ll find a position for you, and hopefully, you’ll come in working for me, Alex said.

He told her this before looking down at his paperwork again. This was Tracy’s cue that it was time to leave. As she turned to go, Alex looked up at her and took in her young body just before their eyes met. Alex couldn’t help but fantasize about how good it would feel to hold her in his arms. Tracy seemed to sense Alex’s thoughts and gave him a smile. A slight blush lit up on her cheeks as she turned and left. Alex looked right at her young tight ass as she walked out of his office. Alex shook his head with a smile and said half out loud, Mmm, I could get myself into trouble with that sweet young thing.

Alex worked at his desk for another 45 minutes before shutting down his computer. He walked out in silence and closed the door to his office. Since it was almost seven at night, there was almost no one left in the building except for Tracy and a few of the older employees who never seemed to go home. Alex walked down the aisle. He stopped by Tracy’s desk.

Half joking, he asked, Doesn’t such a pretty young girl like you have better things to do than stay here all night?

Tracy averted Alex’s eyes and said, I just have a few more things I want to get done before tomorrow. Then I’ll be going.

I know you’re dedicated to this work and I understand, because in many ways I was just like you when I was young, but don’t let it eat up your youth. Things are never going to be as good as they are now for you. Take my word for it. Once your career starts moving along and you end up married, you won’t have any time to try out what you want in life. You have to do it now. Look at me. I’m here working late every night. This is my life whether I like to admit it or not, he said.

Alex didn’t know why he was saying these things to Tracy, he just felt like they were the right words to say.

Tracy looked up at Alex in puzzlement and replied, Thanks for the advice, but I’m not complaining. I love working here. I love my school and I’m still making time to enjoy myself.

Alex wondered how she enjoyed herself when no one was around—when she wasn’t trying to prove how smart and professional she was, but he just continued, Oh, don’t worry about it then. I’m probably just getting tired of all the pressure this damn critical design review is putting on me and I feel a little guilty when I see you working away so hard. I don’t want to think that I’m the slave driver forcing you to stay here all these hours.

Don’t worry Alex. I’m working on this stuff now because I want to get it done. There’s no reason to feel guilty, she said.

Alex momentarily lost track of the conversation and found himself having a misty sexual fantasy while looking at Tracy’s young body again. Her soft clear face and tight sweater made him forget everything else in his life. Tracy noticed the attention and instinctively thrust out her small chest as he gazed at her. She felt the power of her youth and sexuality and it gave her a sudden burst of confidence. For once, she felt bold enough to look Alex back in his eyes. As their eyes connected, Alex met her challenging gaze and gave her a genuine smile before he nodded and said, Goodnight then Tracy.

Then he turned to leave the building. He felt alive and aware of his physical self as he entered the icy cold February New England air. He felt the spark of life in his middle-aged bones. He knew that the feeling would be extinguished before he made it home to his wife Hillary, but for that moment he didn’t care.

Alex had met Hillary at a sports bar when he was a junior in college. Hilary was out with two friends—she was the pretty one in the trio. Alex was usually too shy to talk to girls when he was out. He liked playing pinball machines while his classmates went out getting drunk, having fun and making jackasses out of themselves trying to pick up women.

On the night they met, Alex was playing pinball and was close to getting a high score. Hillary and her friends walked past him giggling. Hillary’s friend Agnes was drunk and was laughing uncontrollably about some jerk that had come by trying to pick up Hillary. Agnes started mimicking the poor chap and all three girls started laughing so hard that Agnes accidentally spilled her beer down Alex’s back.

Agnes ran off laughing in embarrassment and left the other two girls to face Alex alone. Hillary apologized profusely for Agnes and for her being so drunk. Then she quickly grabbed some napkins and started to wipe down the back of Alex’s shirt. After they had a chance to settle down a little, Hillary and Alex started talking. Alex could see Hillary’s two friends off against one of the bars drinking beer and laughing whenever they looked over toward him and Hillary, but he was so excited to be talking with such a beautiful girl that he managed to ignore them.

Hillary recognized Alex from the School of Business and they started talking about their majors. Alex had only two more semesters to go before finishing his degree in business administration and Hillary—who was more than two years his junior—was just starting classes that she hoped would lead to an MBA with a focus on international business. She dreamed of getting a high-power job that would take her all around the world. Alex wanted to get an MBA as well, but his plans were more traditional—get a good job, get married and raise a couple kids.

In the course of their conversation they found themselves complaining about their teachers. It turned out that Hillary was taking Calculus I for Business Majors from one of the most hated professors at Purdue and she was seriously worried about flunking the course. Alex made a few jokes about how sadistic Professor Rathbone had been when he took calculus from him. They both laughed. Alex then offered to help Hillary with her calculus and suggested that she could meet him at the library. Alex spent most of his free time studying there anyway. Alex was too timid to ask for Hillary’s phone number, but he told her where she could find him in the basement of the main library, any day from 3 to 7 pm. He always did his homework there and then—just like clockwork.

Much to Alex’s surprise, Hillary showed up at 3:30 the very next day with her math book. She asked if he could help her with a few problems that she couldn’t solve. It turned out that Hillary didn’t have a clue what was going on in her calculus course and it didn’t have anything to do with the professor being a jerk. Alex wouldn’t have had the patience to spend so much time helping her get through all her math assignments had she not been so pretty. Hillary certainly wouldn’t have spent any time at all with Alex had she not felt that it was imperative for her to passing her math course. Later in life, Hillary would tell their friends—half joking—that she had just been using Alex for his free tutoring.

Alex walked up the icy hill to the remote parking lot where he parked his car. It bothered him, that after almost 20 years of service at Allied, he still didn’t have his own private named parking place under the roof and near the front entrance like the top employees were given. Every day that he walked by the V.I.P. section and read the names of his superiors he was filled with scorn and jealousy.

There was almost no snow on the ground but everything was covered with a light coating of ice. When he saw his car, Alex muttered to himself, Goddammit!

First he chipped the ice off the key lock and then scraped off the handle so he could open up the frozen door of his car. When he thought he was done, he gave the handle a good pull. It stuck midway and his hand slipped. He caught the nail on his index finger. It bent backwards and caused him to cry out in pain. When he looked at it, even under the street lamp light, he could see the pool of blood forming under his nail.

Fucking shit! Alex shouted out.

After this, he felt embarrassed by his outburst because he realized that Tracy may have left the office behind him and might have heard him. Alex looked around the empty parking lot. He wondered how everyone else managed to leave work so early. He was always one of the last to leave. After prying his iced-up car’s door open, Alex started the engine and dug out the ice scraper from behind the seat. He began the laborious task of scraping off all the windows.

Alex thought to himself, How many goddamn days out of every stupid year do I have to spend alone, out in the cold dark night, scraping this goddamn ice off my windows? What's the goddamn point to it all anyway?

Alex climbed into his cold SUV and turned on the local pop love song station. A sad sounding female vocalist sang about how deeply in love she was with someone who had gone away. Alex thought to himself, What a load of crap!

Alex had started out feeling that he and Hillary were in love, mainly because she was the first woman who would talk to him, but also because he had nothing to compare their relationship to. After spending the rest of the semester studying with Alex, Hillary recognized that he was going to be successful once he finished school and that he would do anything that she wanted him to do. Her practical side decided that Alex would make a suitable husband and their marriage would provide her much of what she wanted out of life. She made up her mind that she was going to marry him. With no effort whatsoever, she led him into proposing to her.

Alex only now recognized that his marriage to Hillary was an arrangement born of convenience. It didn't bother him much though—it had been as convenient for him as it was for her. From the beginning, he was more interested in his career than his marriage and he was happy that he got such a beautiful bride. He was willing to put up with nearly all of her demands, which didn’t amount to much other than her having her way with the credit cards and his respecting her wish to be mostly left alone.

Hillary's family was not wealthy and she had always felt uncomfortable about this and tried to hide it. When she saw Alex’s confidence and determination she knew that if she were married to him she’d never have to worry about her future again. Of course, she could want more than he could offer, but there wasn’t anyone else lining up to offer it to her. She made the prudent decision to take the known quantity over some unknown future possibility. Hillary looked at marrying Alex like a practical compromise.

Hillary was the first and only woman that Alex had sex with. She didn't have to be very good or enthusiastic to satisfy him—he didn’t know what he was missing. For her part, Hillary saw the whole sex business as a necessary chore with Alex and nothing more.

Back in high school, she had fallen in love with Carl, the good looking basketball star—one year her senior. Carl ditched her immediately after getting a sports scholarship to play for UCLA. Hillary had felt real passion for Carl and had fully given herself to him emotionally and sexually—eagerly doing anything to please him because she was so in love. After he dumped her, Hillary was filled with revulsion whenever she thought about sex and love. She swore she would never be used like that again.

Carl hadn’t really meant to hurt her—he never even gave it much thought. He figured that he and Hillary got along fine and were just having fun together—especially in bed. How was he to know that Hillary thought they’d be together forever and that she had built up a whole fantasy life around him?

Carl always told Hillary that he loved her when they had sex because it seemed like the right thing to do and it came out naturally in the context of their foreplay. When Carl finally told her that he was going to be leaving for California and felt that they shouldn't see each other anymore, Hillary reacted as if her fantasies had been actual promises and she fell apart. Hillary felt as if she had been betrayed by the entire world and that the world owed her for it—big time.

When Hillary started seeing Alex, she had already hardened her heart and would only allow herself to be motivated by the promise of personal gain. Ultimately, her aim was to have a comfortable life provided to her by an easy to manipulate man. She had no intention of being hurt ever again—and to Hillary—that meant being the one who was in control. From then on, she was determined to be the one who wore the pants in her relationships and if she had her way, they would always be designer pants. She had planned on first starting out with a professional career to insure her self sufficiency, but Alex was so obviously willing to devote himself to her that she decided she might as well take advantage of the situation. She dropped out of college right after he proposed to her.

Hillary knew that she was pretty, but she was still no ravishing beauty. She couldn't count on her good looks to get her what she wanted. Most men would give her a second look, but then lost interest after talking to her for a few minutes. She was simply unable to hide her selfishness and wasn’t pretty enough to get away with it—that was until she met Alex. In Alex's eyes, Hillary was more beautiful than anyone he had ever fantasized about and he was willing to put up with almost anything to have her.

Their relationship, while quite passionless, worked out fairly well on a basic level. Hillary, while giving very little in the way of love and affection, was not unrealistic in her demands on Alex. All she wanted was to be left alone and be provided for, and in return, she was willing to be as pleasant as possible and even willing to give a reasonable amount of sexual services in return. Though deep down inside, she loathed the fact that she was doing it with Alex.

Alex and Hillary had an unspoken agreement that after sex, Hillary was able to go out and buy herself something nice the next day with Alex’s blessings. Their whole relationship revolved around unspoken agreements and bargains. They both felt it was mostly a fair exchange and neither complained.

Alex pulled out of the parking lot and headed north on Route 34 which wound its way up the Housatonic Valley. It wasn't the most direct route up to New Town where he and Hillary lived, but it was the nicest drive. Besides, Alex was never in a hurry to get home anyway. After their daughter Sarah went off to college, it was usually dead quiet in the house when he got home. Alex and Hillary rarely engaged in any sort of conversation.

Typically, when Alex got home, Hillary would have already eaten her dinner and was in the study exercising on her elliptical trainer and watching prerecorded prime time sitcoms. She didn't like being disturbed when she was exercising so Alex would serve himself up some of the food that she left out for him on the stove top. He’d sit by himself in the kitchen and eat. Then Alex would go into his office, close the door, turn on CNN and log onto the internet. Many nights Alex and Hillary wouldn't even talk to each other. By the time Alex went to bed, Hillary was usually asleep. Sex was by appointment only.

Most of Alex’s drive home was through historic working class neighborhoods that consisted of small wood frame homes slowly rotting away under oppressive foliage. They were filled with what Connecticut locals call valley people. In the early stages of the state’s industrialization, a common mode of commercial transportation was the steamship. Early industries built up along all the navigable waterways which were in the river valleys. Along with the new industries came workers who built homes and lived and raised their families in and around the places they worked. Afterward, they tended to stay in these houses generation after generation. This was fine when jobs were plentiful, but when all the small American companies became unable to compete in the global economy, they went out of business or moved their operations to countries where labor costs and environmental regulations were much lower.

The plentiful jobs that the valley people relied on were vanishing. A whole way of life was slowly dying. With the loss of high paying labor jobs, there was no way for anyone to comfortably raise a family while working as a laborer. The remaining jobs at places like the local gas station or Walmart didn’t replace the unionized manufacturing jobs for pay or benefits. Consequently, there were many bitter and miserable people living in the valley. Alex would sneer at them on his way to and from work. Sometimes he would stop and buy beer in an old liquor store in the small town of Derby. Alex would look at the working-class customers and was filled with disgust. Now that Alex was older and felt secure in his career and position in the community, he felt superior to everyone financially beneath him.

Alex slowed down as he drove into Derby. There were only a few stores open in the town, the rest had gone out of business and were boarded up long ago. When Alex stopped at the traffic light before making the turn to cross