THE ROMANTIC OFFICE SAGA: PART 67

THE ROMANTIC OFFICE SAGA: PART 67

I had mixed feelings, lots of them. 

“That is Sally, the girl I have been telling you about, but I am also surprised I did not know she was coming!” I told Carol who looked at me with a lot of amazement.

“She is your girlfriend, you live together and you never knew she was coming? Stop lying!” Carol told me.

“Sure! I did not know.” I was getting used to Sally’s surprises, but this one caught me completely off-guard.

Sally stayed at boss’s office for almost an hour. Inside there was our boss, Derrick, 2 directors and 2 CID officers. Irene also stayed in her office all the time. I wished I would know what was going on in her mind. 

Irene was then told to take Sally around and introduce her to the rest of staff members. Irene however remained lively as she introduced Sally, but I knew deep down she had a lot of questions.

“Carol, meet Sally. She was once an employee here and we are happy to welcome her back, but this time as a Financial manager not the previous work she was doing.” Irene told Carol as she introduced both ladies to them.

Carol greeted Sally with a wide smile and Sally greeted back with an even wider smile. I could feel happiness all over the room.

After Irene took Sally around, she went with her to her new office and did formal introduction to her to the task ahead. She then excused herself and came to my office.

“Tony, I wish to meet you in the evening after work. Please don’t fail.” She told me and left.

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“Tony, you are in deep, deep shit. Irene will kill you. Brace yourself for any drama. This was totally unexpected for her. I feel her.” Carol told me.

“I will just tell her it is over between me and her. That is all. After all, I got what I wanted.” I told Carol. She laughed but told me, “You men are selfish, damn! I would hate to be in Irene’s scenario now. You will give her a heart attack.”

Our office extension rang and boss called me into her office.

“Come in.” She told me as I got into her office.

“Tony, I want to meet you in the evening in private after work. So, finish up your work on time.” Boss told me and dismissed me.

The directors, Derrick and CID officers had already left. Sally settled in her office and most of the time, she was with Irene.

I left with a lot of questions in my head.

During lunch time, I avoided all girls but went to sit with Collins.

“Man! How will you handle these girls? you are in deep shit man.” Collins told me.

“I have no idea, but with time I will know what to do. All I care is Sally is back. But I wonder what is brewing. Boss wants to meet me in private after work, Irene too want to meet me. I guess I will break up with Irene but I know it will be hard for her. I also wonder what brought Derrick here!” I told Collins.

He remained silent.

When he spoke he told me, “Tony, I have given up on women. Carol scared the hell out of me. In fact, I went for an HIV test the other day and I am grateful I am negative. I will now concentrate with my wife alone. These asses are no longer appealing to me anymore. I am scared shitless now.” Collins told me with a smile.

“As for me, I have Sally, I will just chill with her. I am done with hunting pussy.” I told Collins.

As we were talking, a message from Irene buzzed in my phone.

“Honey, I want to meet you at your place in the evening. I have an issue to discuss with you.” Irene wrote. My heart skipped a beat upon reading the message.

I could feel there was a lot of uneasiness between my boss and Irene. I just could not understand.

“Both Irene and boss want to meet me in the evening. They both sound urgent but I am not sure why.” I told Collins. He smiled.

“Mr., soon you will be fucking even our boss!” Collins said.

“No, I am done with fucking around. It is time I got settled. Being a senior bachelor is not fun.” I told Collins.

“So, you mean, your girl will be your superior here? Man! That is crazy.” Collins noted.

“Yes, she will.” I told Collins.

“What if she does like most women and starts disrespecting you?” Collins wondered.

“Time will tell. For now, all I care is she has a job.” I told Collins.

He looked keenly at me and said, “Tony, I hope you won’t come to regret why, but I do not trust women earning more than their men. They become proud.”

“Collins, I love Sally, I did my part. The rest I leave upon her and fate.” I told Collins.

Sally spent most of the time with Irene until evening when I was about to leave. My boss however came to my office and requested to leave with me and she even offered a lift in her car. Irene who saw us leave, was a little disappointed but she had nothing she could have done.

My boss took me to a restaurant and told me to order anything but I ordered a Soda instead and nothing else.

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“Tony, I called you to talk about some work I want to offer you, and it is not related to our work in office that is why I did not want us to discuss it there. I want to start importing cars from Japan and selling them to local market online and I want you to make for me a nice website where people can log in, see the vehicles, place an order, the order to come to me and all sales to happen online. I urgently need the website and I want you to start working on it immediately. I also want you to design for me fliers and brochures over the same. Ask my any details you wish to know and I will give them to you. Also name your price so that we can negotiate.” Boss told me.

“Madam, that will cost you Kshs 300,000. There is a lot to be done to achieve such a system. I will have to search for photos of cars online, you will give me your list of prices and anything you want on that online portal.” I told my boss.

We discussed a lot about what she wanted until we came to an agreement. Boss made it sound like it was very urgent too.

Just as I was about to leave, a text came over my phone from Irene, “Honey, I went to where you used to live and found you no longer live there. Why didn’t you tell me you moved house? I want to see you, where are you?” 

I replied, “sorry, I cannot meet you now. I am holed somewhere in an urgent meeting.”

Irene tried to call but I terminated her call with a message, “Will call you later.”

As I was leaving, my boss looked at me and told me, “Tony, if you don’t mind, I would prefer you be calling me by my name, not madam.”

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I arrived home in the evening around 8 pm and I found Sally had already arrived and prepared for me my favorite beverage, chocolate with masala in it.

Immediately I got home, she welcomed me at the door, “Welcome home darling, I missed you!” and she gave me a kiss, took my laptop and placed it in my study desk. She also took my shoes off and placed them at a shoe rack, gave me some slippers to wear. The way she was treating me made me feel like a king back from conquering some foreign hostile kingdom.

“Honey, make yourself comfortable, welcome. You may have your drink as I finalize preparing supper.” She told me. From the kitchen, there was an aroma of fish and it made me feel hungry already.

Sally served me with Ugali and some Tilapia and Kachumbari with lemon. We ate while discussing the day’s event.

“So, tell me, how did you end up being brought by Derrick to the company?” I asked Sally pausing to chew the sweet food she had cooked.

“The call came as a surprise. He called and told me to avail myself at his office within the next 20 minutes. In fact, I had to take a taxi to there. When I got there, I found them in some meeting. Derrick told me to wait at the visitors lounge which was next where they had a meeting. Derrick was so furious with them; I did not know where but I heard him asking them, “Do you really know the consequences of what you have just done? Solomon according to my sources is a wanted international conman, how the hell can you recruit him and even post him to one of our best clients? You will damage our reputation and we must undo this with immediate effect. We have no choice than to take her there urgently!” She paused.

“…and then…” I asked eager to know more.

“And then he came out and called me to his office, I faced the panelists again and they kept asking me, “are you really conversant with computerized audit? Since that will be your first assignment in that company we are posting you. It is actually not a request but a demand from the directors of that company after realizing they have incurred huge losses for the last quarter of the year amounting to almost 100 million. So, if you can do a complete audit, we are taking you there right now, if you cannot, tell us and we will have to find someone else with immediate effect.” I told them I am able to.”

Sally paused.

“And are you able to? Have you ever done an audit? Financial audit?” I asked Sally.

She looked at me, smiled and said. “No.”

“No? What do you mean no?” I asked Sally looking at her keenly.

“I needed the job.” Sally said with a finality.

I felt a little confused.

“Sally, do you remember I told you Derrick is a no-nonsense man? If he ever finds that you are not able to, you will be in trouble.” I told Sally.

“Actually, that is my first assignment there. To do a complete Financial audit for the period of the last 2 years or 3. I have exactly 2 months to accomplish that. How I will do that, I don’t know.” Sally said and funny enough, she laughed.

I just stared at her.

“Sally, I must tell you this: You are crazy!” I told Sally. She laughed even more.

“It is called survival, at times you have to lie to survive. The truth here would have not gotten me the job. Now what remains is for me to learn how to audit, and perform the actual audit. I hope you will be of much assistance since they told me the process is highly computerized since the company has a sophisticated IFMIS which needs a lot of IT knowledge to interact with. I know you are competent with IT; you are going to help me. I am going to really need your assistance.” She told me taking time to tear some flesh from her Tilapia fish.

I remained silent for a while.

“Sally, my knowledge is in IT, not accounts. The only person who perhaps can help you is Irene with accounts.” I told Sally. She stopped eating and looked at me.

“I feel Irene won’t cooperate. Madam boss told her to cooperate with me but she sounds so reluctant. Like she did not give me all books of accounts and I do not know where to get them. Irene knows a lot about the company’s accounts and she seems hesitant to divulge more details. We spent the day together and she kept taking me in circles. I pretended to understand her, but I know she will not cooperate.” Sally told me.

“On my side, I can log in with elevated privileges. The system stores a log of people who log in to it. I will give you my password tomorrow. But you must be careful with it, if you do something by mistake that was not supposed to be done, it will be so hard to undo the damage. And system logs can never be deleted.” I told Sally.

“You sound too technical. But ok, I will try to be careful.” Sally told me.

“I will also give you Irene’s password.” I told Sally and she stared at me.

“How will that happen?” She asked.

“I am the system administrator, I can access any password I want. However, it is illegal to share people’s passwords so I trust you won’t do any changes with her account.” I told Sally.

“Derrick was very helpful, I must say. In fact, he convinced the rest that I am the most suitable by virtue of me coming from marginalized regions in Kenya. He argued that for a Turkana to have a Degree, that is an indicator I am highly intelligent and given opportunity, I can perform. So, I have to prove to them that I can perform. My probation period lasts 6 months, but they will review my work within 3 months. Within those 3 months, I have 2 months to do a complete 3 years audit and present the details to the directors.” Sally said. I was beginning to like Derrick. He stood for absolute integrity with unwavering principles but it seemed like when you fell on his favorable side, you stood to benefit from it. He showed no favoritism at all whether it pleases you or it sends you to hell!

DAMN! What a story!” I told Sally and continued talking, “Honey, remember the story I told you about Luke, do you think Luke might be innocent?”

Sally looked at me for a while as if thinking what to answer but said finally, “Time will tell.”

I knew if Luke was innocent, Irene would be in deep trouble. 

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After supper, Sally went to wash the dishes as I went, took out some clothes which I wished we would wear the following day and ironed them. For Sally, I took one of the grey suits I had bought for her as I also ironed my dark green suit; I also brushed both of our shoes and set them ready for the following day.

“Honey, I want you to teach some items.” Sally told me after she finished with her work.

“Ok. Right here if you don’t mind.” I told her.

She came and we sat together as I taught her some computer lessons. That evening, I taught her a lot of Keyboard shortcuts to use to accomplish certain tasks on the computer. Some she crammed, and she even wrote some on a note book. I would show her, then she would practice. After about 2 hours, I told her, “I am going to give you an exam, if you fail I am going to punish you.”

“Honey, be serious, you cannot punish me.” Sally joked but I was serious.

“I am serious, do the following as I go to bathroom to take shower.” I told her and left her with some task to do.

As I took shower silently inside the bathroom, I kept thinking: If I had ignored Sally as a simple tea girl, just concentrate on fucking her, I really would have missed an opportunity to have the most wonderful girl in my life. The thought of it even scared me. I thought of the far we had come, the love she had given me, the sacrifices we had done for each other, and so many other things and I found myself smiling alone in the bathroom.

I took time to bathe since the water was nicely warm and it was cold outside. I even smeared more soap on my body than usual as I took time to rinse myself over and over again as I waited for Sally to finish her assignment. I knew the much I could assist her had to be from my field of work, as for accounts, I had no idea how to help her. I even kept toying with the idea that if Luke was around, I would have contacted him to offer some assistance. Audit even though a field of accounts was highly sophisticated and it meant whoever could do an audit was some highly qualified accounts personnel with vast financial knowledge. But I knew the directors were looking forward to have a report, and we had to get the game rolling.

As I was bathing, I heard a gentle tap on the bathroom door and upon opening, Sally stood there looking at me smiling. She had wrapped herself with a long white bathrobe and by the look she just wanted to come in and have bath with me.

As I was about to tell her to come in, I heard her voice from our table room that startled me into reality. 

“Honey, I am done with the assignment, come and mark for me now; I want to have shower and sleep, I feel tired.” My heart raced.

>>>To be continued>>>

As narrated by Dr. Love.