You never know what life is going to dish out on any given day. You make plans, you try to follow through on those plans, and the universe has a way of throwing pie in your face. Sometimes that pie is lemon, and sometimes...just sometimes mind you, it ends up being much worse or much better. Now I'm a glass half full kinda guy. It's the only way to cope with a life as chaotic as my fifty-five years have been.
The first thing that most people think about is wife problems. In this case you would be both right and wrong. My wife and I get along very well. She is loving, sweet, caring, good looking, very curvaceous, and very forgiving. She'd give the shirt off my back to anyone in need. Yes I said that right. She has no qualms at all about volunteering my days off to one needy cause or another.
Over the years, well, twenty plus now, one of the needy causes I've had to help oh so many times is her best friend Dena. They became friends at a school they both taught at, and have been the best of friends since. Now you'd think that's no big deal. Unfortunately her ex is way out of the picture, and as a result, I got tapped to be the man on the spot more times than I can count. At one time I was doing so many favors for her that we jokingly referred to her as my second wife. Unfortunately for me it came with the duties but none of the benefits.
As Dena aged she started looking for what to do after teaching. The first thing was of course the random home businesses. Tupperware, then Amway and when that didn't work she went whole hog and invested in a tanning salon. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I had to help out with something in an emergency. Eventually the tanning craze slowed down and she ended up liquidating for barely more than she had in it.
Her next, and current venture, is doing much much better. I think she really hit it off with Dena's Delights. No, it's not food. It's lingerie. She opened, of all things, a lingerie store. In this case I put my foot down, HARD! I was not, repeat one hundred times, NOT, under any circumstances going to be her emergency help. The only thing I know about lingerie is where to buy it, and what kind I like on my wife. Beyond that... I know squat. I'm pretty good at guessing breast sizes, but then what guy isn't. I eventually agreed to do a few electrical and building repairs as long as they were after hours, but that was as far as I'd go.
Skip forward to today. April first. I had the day off because I had to work the whole previous weekend with an emergency problem at my real job. So today was get the boat out of winter storage and go fishing day. Notice I said WAS. Was is an appropriate term because while I was outside just past seven am pulling the covers off the boat and thinking about what needed to be done in the next hour to go fishing, my cell phone rang.
"Hello?" I said without even looking at the caller ID.
"James!" I heard Dena's cheerful voice say from the other end. "How's my favorite second husband?"
"Oh lord. What do you need?" I asked in irritation, knowing full well that with an opening like that she was going to ask me to do something that would probably spoil my plans for the day.
"Awwww. Now is that any way to greet your favorite second wife?" she said sweetly.
"It is if you're calling to ruin my fishing trip," I answered, stopping pulling the cover off the boat. "That IS why you're calling, right?"
"Well, Nancy did say you had the day off," she said in a tone that conveyed her sweet, pretty please smile even across the phone."
"Uh huh. And she volunteered me to do what?"
"Welllll. I took a little tumble last night and I'm waiting on the doctor right now to get a cast on my ankle. I called all my people but no one can come in and work. She said you'd be happy to work at the store until one of the girls can make it in later today."
"No. I can't," I answered flatly.
"But I REALLY need help. Won't you PLEASE? Just for a few hours."
"Remember that little talk we had? The one when you told us what you were going to open? Well, I meant it then and I mean it now."
"Oh James! That's not a very nice thing to say," she said as I became even more irritated that she was going to try to guilt me into it. "I mean I'm sitting in the hospital and you're going to turn me down? What will Nancy say?"
"She'll say I'm mean spirited and stubborn and uncooperative. And she would be right on the second two," I answered. "I'm going fishing. Period!"
"Ohhhhh James. Pretty please? Just for a few hours. I'm sure I can make it worth your while."
I'd heard that line so many times in the past it was a broken record. She had on infinitely many occasions promised to make it worth my while and had rarely succeeded. In this case, making it worth my while would be nearly unattainable, since it was something I really had no desire to do. "Sure. You gonna lay on your kitchen table naked and spread for me?" I asked intentionally trying to shock her into realizing that my price would be much higher than any of us was willing to pay.
"Oh my. Now that is a steep price. Is that what it's going to take to get you to do this?"
"Yep. Now unless you're really going to make it worth my while, I'm going back to getting my boat ready to fish," I answered, intending to hang up.
"WAIT!" she practically shouted.
"What?" I asked, putting the phone back to my ear.
"Seriously? That's your price?" she asked a mixture of trepidation and curiosity in her voice. "You don't want to do this so much that you'd put that kind of a price on it?"
"Dena! I don't know squat about lingerie. I know what I like to see, and I know where to buy it. Beyond that..."
"So you don't want to because you don't know about it?"
"That and being uncomfortable. I suppose it'd be like you having to walk naked across my living room in front of me. Not something you think of as a fond task," I answered.
"Okay. Fine. I'll just close the store today! It won't be bad. Thirty percent of my week's profits come on Fridays. But hey, it's only money," she said evenly.
"Damn," I mumbled angrily, realizing that I was going to give in despite my bravado. "You better damn well make it worth my while somehow!"
"Trust me. I'll think of something. And it won't be lying across my table naked for you, even though it's a much more appealing prospect than you might think... As long as you were as naked as I was."
"I doubt that Nancy is going to go for that, but hey, anytime you want, just let me know," I answered with a shrug, knowing damn well that it'd never happen.
"Okay. Good. I gave Nancy a key to the shop some time ago. It's on the hook on a white key fob. When you get there, give me a call and I'll give you the code to the alarm system."
"Fine," I huffed quietly. "I'll call you when I'm there."
"Great! I knew I could count on you," she said before she clicked off.
"Real good James. Way to stand up for yourself," I chastised myself as I started putting the cover back on the boat. It took me almost an hour before I had the boat all put away, I had showered and changed into some decent looking clothes, a pair of cargo pocket pants, a button down dress shirt and a dark blue tie the same color as my pants, and driven to the shop. Dena stepped me through shutting off the alarm, getting the change out of the safe and setting up the register. All that I had to do, according to her, was to greet the customers and ring up their purchases. Anything more was purely at my own offering.
She was basically right. There were a few customers through the morning, a few young ladies and one middle aged women, all who seemed more nervous about picking lingerie in front of a strange man than I was about having to handle what they were going to soon be, or in two cases, had already had been, wearing.
Just before noon a very curvy middle aged woman, maybe in her early forties at most, came into the shop. I greeted her like I had all the rest of the customers. "Welcome to Dena's delights. If there's anything I can do to help you, feel free to ask."
"Well. I think I'll look around a bit first, but right off the top I can think of a few things you could help me with," she said, sending warning bells off in my mind. I'm often more than a little flirtatious, but this is the first time I could remember it coming my way first.
"I'm pretty sure I'm limited to just help with the lingerie," I answered her, trying not to blush as she struck what was definitely a suggestive pose.
"Well, in that case, I'll have to see if I can find a lingerie question to get help with," she said with a grin, turning and walking away from me.
I watched from the counter as she wandered around the racks, picking several items and bringing them to the front. "Would you be so kind as to show me to a dressing room?" she asked sweetly.
"Certainly," I answered, stepping from behind the counter. "Back this way," I continued, walking toward the back corner where the three curtained dressing rooms were located.
She followed me back and then stepped into one, closing the curtain slowly, but not quite all the way, as if she intended to leave a gap for me to see through. It was tempting. She was quite good looking. Maybe not playboy model good, but hey, I bet she'd look damn good on a stripper pole. "Are you still there?" she called from the dressing booth.
"Yes ma'am."
She pushed the curtain back and stepped out toward me and then turned away. "Would you be a dear and unzip me?" she asked, pulling her long blond hair from her neck and pulling it around to her front, exposing a zipper down the back of the tight fitting red dress.
