02

Author's note: Yeah, yeah, celebs is tacky. But they're just people, highly desirable ones at that. I've tried to make more of my subjects than just eye candy, for, in fact and depending on your taste, they may not be. Please be aware that there is erotica but this story also includes other story elements. This author does not advocate unprotected sex, but hey, it's my fantasy.

i. Meeting the Players

Tasha was stuck on a call. So much for break. Mrs. Kilpatrick from Haddonfield was wondering why we didn’t pay her claim. What she didn’t seem to get was that we couldn’t pay a bill if we didn’t have it yet. The six days that had elapsed since her procedure was too early for the insurance company we both phone jockeyed for to have received something, much less paid it.

After her third time through the same conversation, Tasha tilted her chair back and rolled her eyes. She started to use the word “ma’am” repeatedly, a clear indication of her annoyance. “Ma’am, we just don’t have that claim yet. I can call the doctor’s office and see if they’ll fax it to me. Yes, ma’am. Yes. Ok, Ma’am, will you hold for two to three minutes while I speak to them? Thank you.” Anything to get the woman off the phone.

Such was the life of a lowly customer service consultant. Both Tasha and I considered ourselves long-term employees, as in, we’d been there more than 2 years. We’d learned all the tricks of the trade. Two minutes later a fax was on the way.

“Rough morning?” I asked unnecessarily.

“You bet your ass,” Tasha said through gritted teeth. “Man, these people today…I’ll bet I’ve taken fifty calls…” then the little cloud around her cleared. “I should have sixty-nine by lunch.”

I snorted. “Well, that's easy production. What’s on your mind, girlfriend?” I pretended to leer at her. She avoided the question by asking one of her own.

“So, what are you doing tonight, birthday girl?”

“Probably nothing much--I’m saving it for the weekend. Why, did you want to come over and spank me?” Emphasis on ‘spank me.’

“Oooh, that sounds fun… we’ll have to make a point to do it this weekend.” She was giving me shit. We liked to make people wonder about us even though we were both straight.

“Well, then that’s two of us. We should go out. Do you think you could get tomorrow off? It’s still early in the day. Maybe there’s available time. You should check.”

Tasha mulled it over. “A three-day weekend does sound really good, now that you mention it. I haven’t done that in months. Why don’t I go talk to my supe and I’ll get back to you.”

With that, Tasha left to check the schedule and find her supervisor, so I ran to the bathroom and then back to my own cube in another section of the building. As I put my headset back on for the next two-hour sit, my mind started wandering toward the weekend. There had to be something either fun, naughty, or both to get up to. Maybe we could go on the long-delayed tour of the adult bookstore on the “bad” side of town. Or up into the foothills. That was something I’d been itching to do for as long as I’d lived in our medium-sized city at the foot of the Rockies. With jobs like ours, Tasha and I took delight in anything that would make us laugh. Our senses of humor were a lot alike, though mine gravitated toward kinky and hers toward, “I get drunk, I fall down.”

The rest of the morning passed without incident. Tasha and I have lunch at different times, so I didn’t have a chance to ask her about getting the day off. I figured I’d stop by her cubicle at the end of break. When she wasn’t there, I chalked it up to training; she was in transition between departments. Mid-afternoon I sent her an email:

“Hey. You weren’t at your desk after lunch. Any word on tomorrow yet? I’ll be leaving at 4:00 due to my birthday hour, and I’m definitely not doing any overtime. Let me know, ok?”

At 3:30 I was paged. This was a surprise. Since my family in town weren’t given to public gift-giving, who in the world could be having something delivered? A lot of the (married) people in my unit were constantly being called up front for flowers, balloon bouquets, and various happy-grams. We’d had the clown, of course, but I’d also seen appearances by the bag lady, a gorilla, the grim reaper, and once a stripper, although the big bosses put the kibosh on that and we’d all received a “code of conduct” email from on high. Before today, I’d never gotten a damn thing.

A slender silver vase containing two roses graced the front desk. One rose was the darkest a purple could be without being black. My purple-loving eyes thought it was gorgeous. The other was stark white, all the whiter by contrast, the opposite side of lovely. But who from? The receptionist held out a black envelop. The writing was in pink gel-pen, girlish-looking. The card read, “Happy Birthday, lover. Don’t leave the building alone.”

“I’m supposed to make sure to hand this to you personally, and to tell you not to leave alone,” the secretary said, unknowingly repeating the whole idea.

“What!? Who said that? What did they look like?”

“It was the guys who dropped this off, around noon. I was supposed to wait till close to the end time of your shift to give you this,” she gestured at the vase, “and then tell you what I just did.”

“What did these guys look like? Did you catch any names?”

I wasn’t sure whether to be excited or paranoid. Apparently, whoever they were, they were well-informed of my movements. My ex was far enough removed I didn’t think he’d hire a hit-man. Briefly I thought of Tasha, with her mischievous sense of humor and family connections. Maybe it was her. But what was up?

The receptionist was speaking. “…Both of them were tall. Definitely not from around here… maybe up to ski or something, that kind of crowd. Probably snowboarders, now that I think of it. That type. Anyway, one had long blond hair, really long. And a real potty mouth. Talked like an East-Coaster. Used to be on the phones myself, so I know what that sounds like: ‘Youse guys,’ ‘get in the cah,’ ‘Nointy-noin.’ "That kind of thing.”

"And the other?” I cut her off.

“Oh. Sorry. Uh, that one…he slouched. Kinda reddish-brown hair. And you should have seen the nose on him!” She snorted. That made me mad. I’m hardly a perfect specimen. I took the flowers and card and my leave.

Hm. My mind was going like a hamster in his little exercise wheel. I knew who they sounded like. Until recently, ‘cause it was just too silly for a 30-year-old woman to act like she was still in junior high, I’d refrained from posting pictures printed off the ‘Net in my cube. Since my diagnosis of cervical cancer a couple months ago, though, I’d started doing things fatalistically. And why not? If I’d done something so damn wrong in my life to be visited with this, then a little more self-indulgence weren’t going to make any difference. My monitor reminded me of my locker in ninth grade. Different guys of course. I knew, staring at the fuzzy likenesses, who they had to be. But how? And why?

My remaining twenty minutes was going got be a bust. I stayed off the phone and wrote up a couple medical review cases. Right at 4:00pm, as I was shuttling the day’s production into its various bins, I was paged again. Tasha still hadn’t returned my email; I figured it was a no-go. Since I was on my own, there was no reason to hurry.

Finally I turned in my time report, got my purse and short leather coat and then briefly returned to my desk for what I’d forgotten, the roses. “…Don’t leave alone…” What the hell did that mean? I decided to try Tasha one more time so I’d at least have an idea of how to proceed into the weekend. If nothing else, there were plenty of cyber friends who’d be willing to come out and play tonight.

Tasha’s system was all shut down, and her best shiny vinyl coat on. She stood with her back to me, spinning her car keys around her forefinger and glaring down at her cell phone, punching buttons one-handedly.

I got up behind her to within a foot of her before announcing my presence. “What’s up, baby?” I asked from the vicinity of her right ear. She jumped.

“Shit, Amy! You scared the crap out of me!”

“Well, you never got back to me. What’s up with that? Did you get tomorrow, or what?”

“Yeah, I got it; I lucked out,” she said like it couldn’t have happened any other way. “Now we can par-tay! Hey, where did that come from?”

Tasha eyed my little bouquet. She had a look like the proverbial cat that ate the canary. I loaded suspicion into my voice.

“What do you know about this, exactly, missy?”

“I’m an Ashford, remember? That’s still of some use, you know.” That summed it up pretty well. If only I knew what “it” was. My curiosity was eating at me like a buzz saw. Still, I took the time to stare her down.

“Oh, come on! Wait till you see,” she giggled. “You're going to cream your jeans.”

I wasn’t wearing jeans, but otherwise she was nearly right. We made for the front foyer and as we passed the receptionist’s desk, two guys stood up. Way up. I immediately knew them, though I’d never met them. My mouth didn’t know whether to go dry or water, and it was opening and closing in a close imitation of a big-mouth bass. Tasha, beside me, burst out laughing. “Jeez, Amy, close your mouth! You ought to see yourself.”

What I saw were two stunning males in front of me. In our conservative town they’d probably been looked at strangely by the average citizen all day. But then, I didn’t consider myself the average citizen. The first thing that came into focus was a river of flowing dark gold hair. On a man who stood around 6’2”, it fell an inch or two past his waist, framing what anyone given to be attracted to males would call a baby-face. Wide greenish-blue doe-eyes, a perfectly chiseled nose, and pale pink lips both caricatured and belied his true nature. Or, as it was portrayed in the movies, anyway.

“What the fuck?” I finally managed to squeak out. They all laughed at me.

“Jay?”

Oh lookie here, the pretty little bitch has found her tongue. Hey, I got somethin’ you can do with it too… Damn right it’s Jay! Recognize!”

The other guy snorted and made a strange kind of “heh, heh” noise in the back of his throat. My vision swung in his direction. Though it’s something I try not to do but can’t always help, I looked down before I looked up. Jay was all in layers of baggy sporty gear, but not this guy. Extremely thin, still he wore jeans that weren’t especially loose, complete with a thick silver-buckled black-leather belt. I have a thing for that particular combination. My line of sight strayed to the brush-finished buckle, then lower, and then, busted! I caught myself visually probing for the outline of his cock. Well, I found it. He kept his to the left of his fly. I wasn’t the only one who caught me, either. Turning red from embarrassment, I looked at the floor.

Jay spoke up again. “DJ, man, she wants your cock!” I hoped to god that no upper management was around.

Here I was, acting like a startled adolescent: totally inept. After a moment I composed myself somehow and started asking questions.

“You guys brought the flowers, didn't you? What're you doing in Mellion? Are you two really friends, I mean, you know each other, right? You must. Tasha, you’re behind this somehow. Spill! Somebody tell me how… um, did she mention anything else…?”

Trying not to be obvious, I wanted to find out how much Tasha had said to them about my respective fascination(s). Fixation(s). Whatever.

As I talked we had exited the building through the front door and walked over to where a medium-sized black limo was idling in the “guests only” spot up front. Several people passed us as we made our disjointed way. A few looked startled. I attributed it to Jay and DJ and decided to just shrug and pretend to know as little as they did, which was not far from the truth.

Inside, I was squirming, still embarrassed about the ‘drop eyes, check package’ scene; I was hard-put to speak to DJ at all, much less look at him again. He was so damn young. Twenty-three or so, according to what I’d pulled off the ‘Net. Jay was intimidating too, partly because of his notoriety and partly because he was so damn beautiful. Would he light up, shoot up, drop his pants; or was he anything resembling what you’d term normal? How we were going to party or hang out in a town the size of ours was another question. These two had to be used to the very latest of everything—VIP rooms, designer drugs, after-hours clubs—things I’d only heard of. Pondering all this, while staring back and forth between the two men seated across from me now in the back of the limo, something else was surfacing. There seemed a possibility that one or both of them might want to get laid later. I almost couldn’t remember what sex felt like; it had been that long. And I wondered if it would feel different now.

All three of the others talked at once. No one answered my question, not directly. Jay and DJ did know each other passingly. They had (“in real life”) come to check out some property. Our general area didn’t see much celebrity traffic. They usually stayed much higher up in the mountains. Having heard there were places up there you couldn’t get into without a ‘known’ name, I’d never tried. My few adventures at altitude were only day trips for sight-seeing or shopping. It dawned on me gradually that I was missing all the introductory chit-chat people make. I’d been gazing out the tinted window, trying to puzzle out where we were going.

“…So, I survived, and here I am,” DJ was saying. “Amy, how long since you were diagnosed?”

This wasn’t a particularly good subject for me at the moment. It was still very raw. However, I’d always admired DJ for having been through his own form of gene mutation and living through its treatment.

“Um, not quite a month. They’re just finishing the final workup; I’m supposed to start chemo on Monday or Tuesday.”

"Are you scared?” DJ asked.

“Scared as hell,” I told him, all of them, in a saucy way, trying to hide the truth of my fear, but at the same time wondering how he knew. Oh, of course—Tasha again. Then I wondered why he’d brought it up. Was it some pity thing? Did Tasha really think I was going to die?

“You’ll make it,” DJ was saying reassuringly. He stared directly into my eyes, his blue ones so light but deep I was starting to tear up.

“You will,” he repeated a bit more softly and he leaned in. Hs hand appeared on my leg, lightly, squeezing it through the leather pants that had been my birthday present to myself. Which reminded me…

“Do you know how old I am?” We had to get this out of the way, the sooner the better.

“Yeah, you’re twenty-nine, right?”

“Right, as in, perpetually twenty-nine, and turning thirty.”

“Oh, Ok, thirty. Whatever. Well, you look about twenty-seven.” It appeared not to matter to him.

Jay put his two cents in: “Yeah you're old now, baby, but yo, I’m almost as old as you, so now who’s your daddy?” He slapped his own knee and laughed. So did Tasha, with whom he’d been talking non-stop. “Don’t feel like you’s robbin’ the cradle. DJ here, he likes dat shit. Likes the ladies who know what you’re doin’. Don’tcha, man?” His Jersey accent was coming through thicker.

DJ smiled what you’d have to call a secret smile and said yeah. My earlier restlessness left me when DJ leaned back and pulled out a PDA. Curiosity over the hand-held device replaced what I clearly noted but pushed away for later as a sexual rush. The man, boy, whatever you’d term the creature next to me as, now had his long spidery finders wrapped around a piece of technology no one in my little circle of friends owned yet. He started tapping buttons on the front.

We have a full itinerary planned for this evening,” he announced in the voice of a Hollywood Homes tour guide.

“Listen to Robin Leach over here,” said Jay. Tasha made a face at him. She and I winked at each other over his pronunciation of “here” which was like, “hee-ah.”

“First stop, shopping. The fabulous west end downtown mall, home of one hundred-plus stores including the only in-mall nightclub in the tri-state area.” Downtown Mellion had been restored a few years back. Instead of moving all the stores to a mall, downtown had become the mall, but better because there was a uniqueness to it leftover from its original lineup.

”Yeah, and all they play is radio shit and MTV music,” scorned Tasha, though teasingly. She knew I liked the place.

DJ continued, “Once these fine ladies are fully geared up for the evening, we will proceed to the restaurant of their choice for some excellent cuisine, and perhaps some fine wine.

“And then I show them my cock,” said Jay. This supposed predisposition of his seemed to have some basis in fact.

“No, no, that’s not till later,” DJ deadpanned, rolling his eyes. “We have left the rest of the evening open to whatever you see fit. We know about the mall joint, now. Tasha, you said you like karaoke. I for one feel the twisted need to see a real live, genuine shit-kicker bar. Yee-hah!” Now that was a sarcastic remark, not to mention a very sarcastic “Yee haw,” but I believed he was serious about his intent. “Jay and I hear you’ve got a techno place…”

“Yeah, it’s a real pit,” I jumped in. “Kiddie bar.” Meaning, they’re let in the 18-and-over crowd. I’d been there only once, before the weight came off, and had been disconcerted at being the oldest and fattest woman in the place. That night I’d slunk away humiliated. It was still a sore enough point that to make up for it I said derogatory things about the place. That aside, it was a pit.

DJ wasn’t finished. He punched one of the miniscule buttons on his PDA and said, “And to end the evening, your lovely friend and cohort has booked Room 302 at the Riverdale Suites.”

I was stunned. The ritziest place in town, Riverdale went for about $400/night, more than any accommodations in a 200-mile radius. It was said to be very exclusive and to have everything one could possibly require on the premises, available 24/7: room service, masseuse, full service bar, a pool and its trappings, and as rumor had it, “escorts." Again, no one I knew even vaguely had actually stayed there overnight, though a couple had been there for dinner. You needed reservations to get within two miles of the property, most of which was completely hidden from the main road.

Back in the present, we were pulling into my driveway. Tasha instructed me to grab as much gear as I thought I’d need for a long weekend. Specifically, I had to make sure to bring an outfit that was all white, and a coat. Trying to make it quick, I threw a couple mix-and-match outfits, a few assorted girly things and the necessary toiletries in a bag. Giving my place a last look, wondering if it would seem strange to come home to after who-know-what-was-coming, I flipped the light switches off. Finally, door locked, I returned to the car.

When I got back in, DJ and Jay were discussing their flight in the 30-seater which was the only daily connection into and out of Mellion. It was a little over an hour up from Denver, but Jay said it had felt like 6 hours to him because he’d had to piss the whole way.

“Well, then why didn’t you?” I asked naively.

“No bathrooms,” answered the other three-quarters of my party.

“Holy shit, that must have sucked,” I said immediately. Having to pee and having nowhere to go sounded like my worst nightmare.

“Yeah, you shoulda seen me in the airport, man. My eyeballs were swimming. It was like, get outta the way! Nearly ran over a couple of little old ladies. Does everyone move that slow around here? Damn, and I thought I was the stoner. Surprised I didn’t explode. Well, maybe later….” he said almost thoughtfully with a quirk to his eyebrows.

II. The Store