Anita looked forward to the raise in pay and the opportunity the new position would give her to have a baby. Howard’s expensive tastes in clothes left little in their paychecks to spend after the bills were paid. After he had gotten his job consulting, he had gone out and bought a Yukon Suburban with all the accessories without discussing his extravagant purchase with her. Anita had been furious with his fiscal recklessness but had never said a word of reproach in his presence. She knew that a man had to have his “toys” or he wouldn’t be happy. Anita made do and cut household expenses to make up the difference. They weren’t poor, but money was tight. She wore old bras underneath her dresses and took bag lunches to work. As a manager, Anita was used to making a department work on less than optimal funding, so she had no difficulty making adjustments at home. Of course, like any good money manager, she had a plan to increase future profits. She had taken every extra dollar from her pay to buy company stock in anticipation of the enormous profits the firm would reap from the new drug’s release. If events moved the way she expected, she and her husband would be extremely wealthy within the next year. The President of the company had been very understanding about her need to become a mother and had promised her that she would be given tremendous latitude in her working hours after her promotion. It was the least the company could do, the President said, after Anita’s contributions to the company. She had not informed Howard of her investments in her company. She had the bad feeling that if Howard had discovered the extra money, he would spend it on something foolish. She knew that her efforts wouldn’t be in vain, in six months at most they would recoup her investment tenfold. Anita went to work and put her nose to the grindstone every day happily, knowing that she had done her level best to provide for their future. If Howard had been able to regain his health, her life would have been perfect. As it was, Anita spent every spare minute trying to come up with a solution to Howard’s medical problems.
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The first inkling Howard had that something was different was when his retreating hairline reversed course and began noticeably advancing toward his forehead. Initially he thought that he was imagining it, but after a week it became clear that his new hair was no illusion. The dingy yellow-gray strands of premature toxic aging were replaced with a luxuriant, full-bodied mat of rich brown hair. Howard was pleasantly surprised when he woke up with an erection three days in a row. His body odor began to diminish and he felt like a million dollars. Howard’s digestion improved to the point where he was able to eat the Porter House steaks, burgundy-soaked mushrooms and twice-baked potatoes with mounds of sour cream and chives that he loved so dearly without the awful flatulence that accompanied his usual fare of hamburger steak and french-fried potatoes. Aside from a mild case of diarrhea and the worst case of dandruff he had ever had, he felt great. He was even more surprised when his incipient pot belly melted away and was replaced by the hard muscles of his twenties. Howard looked around and discovered that the shadow over his grimy existence had dissolved in the light of the new day.
Howard felt like he was king of all he surveyed. Howard Brian Stinson had become a man of inestimable value again. He had been validated to world, his wife and his coworkers. He whipped the black leather-wrapped steering wheel back and forth as he lashed his jet-black Yukon Suburban through traffic every morning in a harrowing fashion. The cool October wind whipped a stream of loose skin flakes from his scalp through the open driver’s side window as he careened down the highway and settled like dirty snowflakes on the expensive black leather of the Suburban’s upholstery. The drivers who saw the huge hearse-colored vehicle looming in their wake were terrified as it zoomed around them and left them in the dust. They invariably wiped their brows in relief after their close encounter with the ebon van as if Death itself had been tailgating them and then passed them by as if unworthy of its murderous intent.
Driving the enormous Yukon Suburban had always been an ego boost for Howard, but since his recovery he felt like the raw power of the vehicle’s diesel engine was an expression of his body’s youthful vigor. Howard’s confidence soared. His demeanor became so direct and impressive that everyone took notice when he entered the room. Suddenly receptionists were flirting with him instead of consigning him to some dingy corner of their lobby to wait upon an executive’s forbearance. It was like a dream come true; he had always wanted to be the center of attention and have women fawning over him. The women discovered that his craggy world-worn appearance was the epitome of masculine pulchritude rather than the look of a broken-down, prematurely-aged engineer.