Chapter 9: Secrets and Lovers
I was surprised by how much I had missed Julie. I sent been sending her emails and text messages after our weekend in lake country, infrequently at first but increasingly over time. I kept them all pretty generic, since I didn't know how private they were, as in whether her boyfriend might be able to see them. For nearly a year, I had successfully seduced a smorgasbord of women with my mindreading glasses. But after my long weekend at the lake with Julie, she was the only woman I wanted to be with—a point made poignantly clear by the feeling of emptiness that followed my recent liaison with my former graduate assistant, Jessie.
I can't lie, a big part of the attraction was that as far as I was concerned, Julie was the best fuck in the history of earth. Lots of women are beautiful and hot, but nobody worked as hard as Julie did to give her partner whatever he wanted. The years she had spent as a sex worker, first in LA then in Las Vegas, had provided plenty of training in that regard. But even if that were not true, I would still have only wanted to be with her. The times I had spent with her may have been brief, but they were intense. I had come to know her intellectually and emotionally as well as sexually, and I loved everything about her. Yes, loved: when last I saw her, I knew I felt strongly for her, but I didn't know for sure it was love. Now, having been apart from her for almost two months, I knew.
I had no idea how Julie felt, though. I knew that she had cried when I had taken her to the airport a couple of months ago, and that she was having some problems with her boyfriend back home. But by now, she and her boyfriend could have patched everything up and she might well not want anything to do with me anymore. In fact, for weeks I had feared that she would cancel out on our planned rendezvous at a conference I was attending in Austin. Yet she hadn't done so, and further she always sent some sort of reply to every email and text message I sent. And her last message had said "looking forward to seeing you." I considered these to be encouraging signs.
Nevertheless, the understood basis for our meeting was as a sugar daddy and sugar baby. As the sugar daddy, it was my responsibility to provide for my 'little girl.' I had made a special casino junket to earn enough money at poker to provide for my baby. Unlike last time, she didn't have any specific money needs that I knew of, but in addition to my own spending money I had 10 grand in cashier's checks with Julie's name on them packed in my bag.
Finally my travel day arrived. I got to the airport more than two hours early, because I was so excited about seeing her again I was just pacing the floors the whole time I was home anyway. There was a bit of a line at security, but I arrived at my gate with over an hour before my flight time—and I still had to endure a layover in Memphis before I got to Austin and my chance to see Julie again. The anticipation made each minute seem like an hour. Julie, I knew, would already be en route, driving the seven hours from her home in Oklahoma City to Austin.
Needing something to do, I turned my attention to the courtesy television in the gate area. The all-financial news channel was recapping the latest stock trades. When the headlines came around, the top story was about a number of arrests being made for insider trading. Some investor had been getting tips on a company's financials from a junior executive and made millions trading on the insider information.
The discovery of the mindreading glasses had not been a "Eureka moment;" I had spent months working on the idea, and by unexpected dumb luck the project did far more than I had ever hoped. But that day, sitting in the airport, I had a true "Eureka moment." Suddenly, I saw how I could use my glasses to make money at levels that dwarfed my poker winnings. I could establish a permanent address again and stop moving around all the time, living under assumed names. And the best—although also scariest—part was that I would need Julie to be my partner if I was going to pull it off.
-----------------------
When I deplaned in Austin and turned on my Blackberry, I saw that I had missed a call from Julie. Uh oh. My heart sank—my first thought was that she was canceling out on me after all. I pushed the button to call her back.
She picked up the phone saying "Hi honey, did you have a nice flight?"
That didn't sound like she was backing out on me. I exhaled, which was the first I noticed that I had been literally holding my breath. "It was fine, thanks. I guess you must have called while I was in the air?"
"Yeah," she said, "I'm on I-35 just north of Austin. I figured as long as I was so close, I could pick you up at the airport so you wouldn't have to take a cab."
The sooner I could see Julie, the better. "That would be awesome, thanks. I'll wait for you at the pickup area."
"Okay, it'll probably take no more than 20 minutes for me to get there," she said.
"What kind of car do I look for?" I asked.
"A red pickup truck. Don't worry, you won't miss it," she said.
She was right. She was driving a twenty-year old Toyota mini-pickup; originally red in color, it was liberally spotted with large patches of blackish-gray primer, while other parts had rusted away altogether. A beat-up old truck cap, originally white but now dusty gray, covered the bed of the truck. But there behind the wheel was my smiling blonde sweetheart. I stepped out so she could see me and waved.
She parked in the pickup lane and got out to give me a hug and welcome kiss. She was dressed for driving—flip-flops, tan short shorts, and a yellow cotton camisole top with spaghetti straps that mingled with black straps from a bra otherwise not visible. She opened the back of the truck and I tossed my bag in. She had a suitcase and a couple of large plastic storage containers in it already. We closed up and got in and she started to drive toward the hotel.
We chatted on the drive, and I could tell right away that something was wrong. Julie was trying to be the Julie I knew, but I could tell that she was preoccupied with something else—something she couldn't stop thinking about.
I tried a little small talk. "So where did you get this truck from anyway? Its like older than you are," I said.
She smiled a little, "Not quite, I have three years on it. Actually it was by stepbrother's. He couldn't bear to part with it when he bought his new one, but he didn't have any use for it, so he gave it to me when I came back to Oklahoma."
"That was nice," I said.
