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“Trust me, Dad. What they wanted would’ve compromised the company’s name a lot more than that.”
The look he gave me spoke volumes. I wasn’t going to get away with not explaining. All right then. I’d tried.
“I was willing to work with them on their demand that I personally handle their entire account, but I refused to cross the line when Theodore told me that I had to sleep with his wife.”
I waited while Dad processed. Finally, he shook his head. “You had to have misunderstood him. No man is going to ask someone to…do that with his wife.”
“He didn’t ask, Dad. He said that I had to have sex with Loretta while he watched, or he wouldn’t give us his business. And he was actually more graphic than that. There was no misunderstanding.”
Dad shook his head again. “You missed something. That’s the only explanation for it. People just don’t do things like that.”
I shrugged. It was pointless to push the issue when Dad dug his heels in. “You’re welcome to talk to them yourself.”
I doubted they’d even take his calls, but at least then he’d see that they were the ones being difficult. Still, I wondered if he’d ever believe me about the proposition.
Dad had always had a strange view of the world. Contradictory, actually. He was a strange blend of cynical and naïve. People were either good or evil, based on what he saw of them and what his own sense of mortality said.
Sometimes, I wondered if he realized how much my presence here kept him from ever having to face the real world, and for the first time, I wondered what he would do if I decided to step back my responsibilities here and make a life outside of work.