Service Call

I met the man I love back in 1996. He came to my house on a spring day, and knocked on the door.

“Hello, ma’am,” he said. “My name is Peter, and I’ll be your GeneSys cable repair man for the day. I hear you have a box that needs to get set up?”

I let him in, and showed him to the TV. He said something about needing an hour to get it fixed, followed by more technical information than I could understand. I smiled, and thanked him, walking awkwardly back to the kitchen.

I had purchased the house only about a week ago, and I was still moving in. There were cardboard boxes everywhere, and stacks of random objects on just about every flat surface. My fridge, though, was working fine, and I had a healthy (or rather, unhealthy) supply of sweets squirreled away already.

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be in the room with him as he fixed the cable or not, but I decided that being friendly never hurt anyone. I brought in an ice cream sandwich for him, which made his face light up like a kid getting out of school on a Friday. He was so excited.

“This is my first day at work,” he said, “and I was afraid people were going to yell at me. But you’re nice!”

He was so honest, I couldn’t help laughing along with him. Before I knew it, we got to talking and suddenly three hours had passed. The cable had long been fixed long ago, and I was watching some game show while Peter held me in his arms, sitting beside me on the couch.

He never went back to work that day. In fact, he didn’t even leave my house that night. The next morning, I woke up and there he was, cooking me a breakfast in bed. He already had his work clothes back on, but he didn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.

“I always wear clothes while frying eggs,” he explained, with a grin. “One little drop of hot grease where it doesn’t belong is enough to teach any guy that lesson, permanently.”

As it turned out, Peter was the best boyfriend a girl could ask for. He was patient, kind, and was always willing to help around the house. He’d offer to pay for every meal, joking that he was “on company payroll anyway”, but we always ended up splitting our checks. He helped me get moved in to my apartment during the day, and during the night… well, he helped me with other things. Those first few weeks were a dream.

It was after that, though, that the some cracks began to show.

I couldn’t help but notice that, despite having never actually returned to the cable company that day, he still carried his employee ID badge with him at all times. He even had it nearby him during long intimate nights. I didn’t understand his fixation with it, but I could overlook it easily.

Then there was the fact that I caught him with his old employee uniform on when he thought I wasn’t around. If I came home early to surprise him, he’d be sitting there, staring at the inactive TV, in his neatly-pressed and freshly-cleaned uniform. It was a little unsettling, to say the least, but he always greeted me with such a warm smile that I couldn’t help but ignore his strange quirk.

Well, most of the time. There was the time I was, shall we say, engaging on a course of intimacy and pulled his shirt over his head, only to discover that he had his uniform on underneath. I asked him why he was so fixated on these strange parts of a job he no longer works, but he just responded with a joke about “being on the clock.”

I would have pressed him on it right then and there, but I had bigger news: there was a baby on the way. I was afraid he’d run away, my perfect man, but instead he yelped with glee and embraced me. He was so excited he could barely contain himself. I knew, right then and there, that I needed to marry this man.

Three months later, we did end up married in a small chapel in town. His family didn’t show up due to his “estrangement from them,” which he had mentioned once or twice, but my family made up for it by being twice as supportive. It was an amazing day, and an amazing week honeymooning on the gulf of Mexico.

Peter and I named our son Billy, and he was the most perfect child you’ve ever seen. He was smart, talkative, and eager to learn as much as he could every day at school. I was so proud of him. Peter was, too. There was a lot of love in our house to go around.

So, when I found Peter’s note on the day of our son’s graduation, then, I was utterly mystified. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, it all seemed so illogical, so out-of-nowhere. I was shaking, my tears falling on the paper. It all seemed so unreal.

Billy came up to me, dressed in his lovely black gown and cap, diploma in hand, and asked me where Peter was. I couldn’t talk, through the tears, and he assumed the worst. He went charging off upstairs to see for himself, and when he came down, he had a crestfallen look on his face. He didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t believe it.

“Dear Helen,” the note read, “thank you for 22 years of love and support. You’ve been excellent. I really appreciate everything we’ve done, but it’s time for me to move on now. I have another appointment today that I really need to get to, or my boss is gonna be on my ass, big time. Your GeneSys account will be billed for 197,230 hours for this service call. Have a great day, and thanks for being a customer of GeneSys!”