Knuckles

The conference rooms had no windows. A hot pink inflatable palm tree had withered under internal air loss. A green inflatable turtle was flat on the ground. A black boot mark on its back and busted open seam hinted at its fate. Someone had written with pink lip stick on the wall: "Always be closing." The writing was in a cursive tattoo style, where the first letter was five times as large as the following letters. A trio of hearts seemed to pop out of the final word.

"It's bonus season. The top selling person will get a brand new BMW. Let's all put our current car keys on the table. One of those keys will be replaced today."

John was standing at the top of the table. He was leaning forward onto the table and holding both sides of the table at the same time. His suit jacket folded open. His red tie was hanging forward, moving over the table like a pendulum. His face was spray tanned. His eyes were active and wide open.

Tatianna stopped tapping her fingers on the iPhone. She begrudgingly reached inside of her rhinestone purse and pulled out a Kia car key. She straightened her spine a little more demonstrate dignity. After she placed the car key in front of her, she pleated her knee length black dress as a guy instinctively straightens out his clothes after a street fight. Mammals have this instinctive cleaning impulse after a fight is over or the threat of one has passed.

"Ouch, Gucci in the office and Kia at home."

Marla looked triumphantly at Tatianna. Marla was shorter and chubbier. She had an almost boy short blond hair cut. She was wearing a tight mini-dress like a club rat. She had big plastic jewels on her rings. There was a pink emerald the size of a walnut with a skull inside. There was a quarter sized coin with lightning on another. She bounced on her air swivel chair, when she put down her Vespa scooter key.

"There ain't no knocking America," said Eric. His hand proudly pulled the Chrysler key straight in front of him. With gray hair and a puffy face, he was clearly twice the age of everyone else with his fifty laps around the track. His nose, ears, and brows had equally bushy hair sprouting like broccoli.

"It may be momma's ride. But, I removed the shocks to get it lower. I removed the back seats and cut holes into the doors to reduce the weight. That bucket is light like a fly."

Steve, the youngest with 23, put the tattered Honda key on the table. The grip on the key had been filed down to its minimum. He was a lanky lad, who hadn't figured out clothes sizes yet. The pant legs suffocated his shoes. The trunk of the shirt fluttered in the wind like a clothing around a broom stick on a scare crow. His skin was reddish and full of freckles. His hair was short and slicked back with a deep desire to burn through Costco overstock.

"The lowest ranked person will receive no bonus at all," announced John with an evil smirk playing around his lips.

"But, we only get paid minimum wage. We make almost all our money from the bonus," exclaimed Tatianna.

"I am tired of pulling dead weight. Move up or move out if you can't handle the heat," added Eric with a red face and the scorn looking down from his pedestal of age and experience.

"To make the decision process fair and transparent," continued John, "you will get to decide the ranking of associates. Nobody leaves this room until you agree on the ranking."

"That's like voting someone off the island at a reality TV show," exclaimed Tatianna exasperated.

"Let's be professional about it," insisted John with a stern face. "The Wild Waters deal was the most important deal in the past accounting year. Let's discuss each person's contribution to it. Who got us in the door?"

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On a lazy Friday afternoon, Tatianna had been silently fuming at her desk. The guys had split all the good leads amongst each other. Marla had been in the bathroom for an hour applying makeup to get ready for hitting the bars right after work. Tatianna had called with her cheery pitch of "Do you want your customers to have fun? We have customizable inflatable pool toys to suit any business. Let's talk about how we can customize them for you." The third contact that day had turned out to be a funeral parlor.

The lead database was downright shitty. She knew that neither Steve nor Eric made her call funeral parlors on purpose. It was rather a side effect of them gobbling up all the top leads. Everyone else had been promoted after two years. She was still stuck as a junior analyst. Even if she'd bust her ass and call twice the leads, she'd never have the chance to make the volume needed to get promoted.

So, she browsed the Internet to get her own leads. Water parks seemed like a place for people to enjoy pool toys. A teenager had picked up. After a trying conversation, he had given up trying to sell her admission tickets over the phone and had given her the number for the management office. From there, it took good old telemarketing to work her way through to the right person. She ended up talking to an Imagineering engineer who was working on a new ride. He had a vision of creating a bubbly, bouncy dream like experience through a grotto of huggable and cute animals. The inflatable toys fitted in perfectly.

When Tatianna clicked off the call on the automated dialer, she took a breath of triumph for a still moment, before announcing her win to the team. Marla stuck her head out of the bathroom with a furious face: "Wild Waters was my lead. You filthy thief!"

The boss John confirmed that Wild Waters had indeed been on Marla's lead sheet. Tatianna had to hand over the prospect. That's when the feud started. Marla would leave the women's toilet unflushed for Tatianna to have to deal with the brown floater.

Friday's Marla would strut around the office in a bikini with a wrap over her hips telling everybody how she was on the way to her business meeting to discuss the sales. As the discussions intensified, the new slide became more complex. And the deal grew. Early talk of one ton of inflatables grew to two tons. A second sales person had to be added.

Eric and Steve charmed Marla in any way that they could. They brought coffee. What stung the most was that they'd talk badly about Tatianna. They noticed that Marla perked up each time, someone mentioned that Tatianna was too try hard or was slacking of browsing Facebook. The old guy Eric won, when he said that Tatianna only made sales because of her hot figure. That ass was so tight that anybody would want to slam her against a wall. Seeing the old, stark white guy walk around with board shorts was the ultimate defeat. He had skinny legs and a big belly. Yet, he walked around like a king with the knot for the tie band hanging outside instead of being tucked in.

Tatianna burned her anger by studying hard in her accounting evening class and working out Pilates. Her body became taut. The belly was flat and smooth. The attractive dresses that she had to wear for her sales job accented the belly well. Her legs became strong and firm, downright thumpers with muscular definition. She became familiar with Excel spreadsheets to the point of her fingers flying to through complex accounting statements and projections.

It all came with a price. Her determination of pushing herself hard, actually punishing herself on a deep level, made her bitter. She had withdrawn from her circle of friends to work hard. Her face started losing the innocence of a young girl to become focused and tough. Every crunch and every drop of sweat running down her face in Pilates made her tougher and more capable, yet also more of an adult.

All the while, Marla was going to the water park once or twice a week, way too often. John ignored it, because the contract was good. He also liked that Marla had wrapped the Imagineering engineer around her little finger. They were going on dates. Yet, she never gave him nookie. She stringed him along. And the poor lad was lost in day dreaming about the party girl Marla. He spent his money on bottle service in the club with her. The rest of the weekend, when Marla was partying with her friends, the lad would dream about making the ride larger and more extravagant. Any reason to call Marla back to the office and then float down the lazy river in the park was worth it. He'd get to savor her breasts, while she would lean back in a floating tube. He got to hold her feet, when they raced down a slide in a double tube. He imagined those feet on his cock in his dreams at night.

It all came crashing down, when the deal expanded to three metric tons. To fulfill the giant deal, they had to distribute the order over twenty manufacturing facilities. The company didn't make its own floats. Factories in China were fulfilling the order. With the expanded need and fast turnaround, they had to contract to companies in South Korea as well. The currency conversions complicated the deal.

Marla messed up the numbers, because she was too busy with life. She quoted the customer ten times the final cost, 30 instead of 3 million dollars. The deal blew up to upper management at the Wild Waters. Their board got involved. Marla blindly insisted on the numbers instead of recalculating them.

In the end, there was a final hour. The parent company of Wild Rivers had a meeting that would have struck down the deal and demoted the Imagineering engineer for mismanagement of company funds. John knew that Tatianna was the only one to redo the numbers in such a short time. They were all sitting at the parent company's waiting room at the time.

Tatianna hampered by only having her cell phone redid all the numbers from the ground up. When she found the crucial mistake, her heart was pounding. Her hands were shaking. She almost spit John in the face, when she was fighting against the adrenaline in her body to get the words out: "It's 3 million, not 30 million." Her purse dropped of her lap and spilled everything on the ground. Her keys, her makeup, the tampon, the grocery coupons.

John ignored it, got up, and stormed into the conference room. He threw the receptionist to the ground, unintentionally, when she tried to block him. He offered them a generous discount on top of it. The deal was saved. The contract was taken from Marla and given to Tatianna.

Marla was a mess in the office. She cried. She sobbed. The white t-shirt got wet from her tears. It was the saddest thing to see such a despaired girl in the cheeriest of bikini bottoms with playful ribbons on the side. Her eyes were red. She cried out for her childhood teddy bear Bronco.

Tatianna felt empathy for the poor girl, whose world had shattered so soundly. She went to a toy store across the street and bought a teddy bear. Marla ripped the teddy bear out of Tatianna's hand. She hugged the teddy bear to her car. She pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around it. The intense sobbing quieted to a slow whining. Tatianna slowly padded down Marla's hair. The guys had left in fear of having to deal with emotion.

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"There were players who shone at key moments," began Eric with his slow way of talking. "Getting the numbers right was absolutely crucial. Establishing the relationship with the engineer was crucial. However, what really closes deals is the continuity. I was there through all the upheaval. I was the rock that the customer could trust. There is a lot of grunge work in a deal that goes unappreciated. That's why I want to give myself a pat on the back for the deal."

"Yeah, and I had been fighting for Marla to get that lead. There was a lot of lead hogging. And I made sure that Marla got the best lead," added Steve enthusiastically with a fervor that made his nose red. Everyone looked at him bewildered. Eric was shuffling imaginary papers uncomfortably in front of him.

"Let's talk about the signing of the intent letter in June. What got us to that point? And who was behind it?" John steered the discussion to specifics.

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The meeting was in the park club house. There was a room sized lifeguard tower made from white painted wood high above the park on the slope. There was a far reaching view across the entire park from the porch of the tower. The meeting room had lounge chairs arranged in a circle. The water park operator used it as a non-traditional conference room to show off its flair.

Everyone showed up in beachwear to fit the theme, except for Barbara. She was the head of accounting for the park. She was a little chubby. She sported a little beard over her lips. She wore shorts and a surf shirt that covered her up as much as possible, while still allowing her to ride slides. She looked at everyone with a stern face. When she shook hands with Marla, she held onto her hand lingeringly and stared Marla deep into her eyes. Marla shrieked a little bit uncomfortably.

Matt, the Imagineering engineer, tried to steer Barbara away from Marla. However, every question that Barbara brought up was aimed straight at Marla: "How thick is the rubber? What are the exact terms for the liability insurance?" Matt tapped Marla on the shoulder and made a face to hint that Barbara didn't really have any say.

An hour into the tensely technical meeting, Barbara interrogated Marla about the anti-fraternization policy of the inflatable company. Both Matt and Marla blushed heavily, when Marla explained, "Under no circumstances may there be any sexual contact." Barbara doggedly asked for more details. With a fiery red head, Marla turned immature to hide the explicit topic, "like no 69, blow jobs, and full on humping and the like." Her voice trailed off into inaudible babbling.

John's voice came booming in, "hey, we are getting way serious here with all the numbers. Let's take those inflatables for a ride. Yes, as a surprise, we brought prototypes. Our Taiwan manufacturer tried to impress us by making free samples. We've got Betty the pig, Daniel the dragon, and Howard the horse. Let's go for a test ride."

John pulled plastic wrapped packets out of his briefcase. Everyone started blowing hard into theirs. The heady pressure of blowing up something got everyone into a different mood. The flat pieces of rubber expanded into animal shaped inner tubes. The pig was hanging out its tongue to suggest a speedy ride. Its ears were the handle. The tail was a quirky spiral. Everyone got excited and walked out onto the porch and down the long stairway to the park.

Yet, John stayed behind. He stood in the way of Marla. So, Marla had to wait until everyone field into single line in front of her down the stairs in between the bushes. The moment, she stepped her foot forward to follow everyone at the back with nobody paying attention to her, John grabbed her upper arm violently. The heavy middle aged manager dragged the smaller woman to the side of the lifeguard tower. He pressed her against the wall. Her flip flops were hanging in the air.

"You get that letter of intent signed. No matter what you have to do, get it done. Get it done. No excuses. We hired you as a little girl out of college. This is the big leagues. Seven digits are on the line." John's face was intimately close to her face. She could smell his breath, the coke and the cupcake that they had as refreshments."

John let go of her and seized her. Marla was shaking. She wasn't sure if she should cry or if that made it worse. Her face displayed the fear of a strong father. The interaction had torn open deep memories.

"Pull yourself together and meet us at the top of the slide."

Marla was left naked and feeling exposed in her white bottoms and bikini. She had wanted a blanket to hide in and preferably a desk to hide behind. The cicadas were singing to her as she stood there alone leaning against wood boards. She could feel the rough paint against her shoulder blades. She could taste the raspberry from her lip stick that she had carefully applied before the meeting. It was a still point for a minute, two minutes...

... and then she realized that people would ask questions if she stayed away longer. She went running down the stairs with the flip flops slapping her bare feet loudly. The ribbons on the side of her bottom were flying around in circles.

When she found them, she overcompensated with cheeriness to hide her inner turmoil, "Oh my god, I love the spiral slide. There are all of these twists and turns that make the water splash every which way. It feels like I'm turning over in my tube each time I go down there. I'm such a small girl that gets banged around in there like crazy."

The ride had a tower that was seven stories high. The line of people snaked down the tower and all the way to the exit of the slide. It was that popular. People showed a lot of tattoos. The people in the shade wear shivering. The little girls were screeching with excitement about the ride. Dads wear standing with their legs wide and faces bored, while their kids were clinging onto their knees for comfort.

They walked past all of these people. The perks of working of being there on official business were the wet dream of a teenager. Matt had thrown over an official park t-shirt and called out to people: "Please, step to the left. Official park business coming through." The only one not impressed was John. He made so much money that he could have just rented out the entire park for an hour during afterhours.

The lifeguards at the slide entrance were curious about the prototypes. They had to test sit in them. John highlighted design aspects and talked about the technical superiority in the construction. Anyone could tell that the enthusiasm in the faces of the lifeguards was winning over Barbara.

A little five year old girl called out, "I want to ride the piggy!" Barbara's face melted. "You can't ride on it yet. However, you can sit in it for a second if you want to." Barbara took the little girl by the hand. The father smiled to give permission. The little girl bounced up and down in the piggy and screamed, "Go, little piggy, go!"

"No, we can't because of liability," Barbara looked around apologetically to everyone, even though nobody was pleading with her.

Everyone went into the dark hole to shoot down the slide. It was an immediate drop into darkness. A sharp right turn that splashed a solid wave of water into the face. The water was cold. However, by that splash and twist, everyone forgot about the temperature and was holding on for the turbulent ride. Marla was still taken aback from the lecture. Her mind was dazed. She hadn't said a single word since her re-introduction to the group.

"No excuses. Get it done," flashed through her mind over and over.

Then she undid the bikini behind her back, while almost getting whipped out of her doggie inner tube. The tube was painted to look like a dog with long floppy tongue and ears flying in the air. Her thighs pressed hard against the rubber to cling to the tube without her hands. She anticipated her exposure breathless. Her physical palpation was camouflaged by the excitement of the ride.

She left the bikini in place. The ride exited out of the tube above the water. Marla flew into the air still covered. She shot into the pool beneath her. The water ripped her top off over head. Her arms went flailing through the white water that she had steered up. She paddled to the surface. With one arm holding onto the tube, she was paddling to the exit ladder. Her bra was curling into a little circle behind her with the strings freely floating around.

Her boobs emerged out of the water with a strong surge of her arms pulling up on the latter. The silvery water shot off her boobs. The perky firm boobs of the 25 year old were out there to see for the park. Her nipples were rosy pink. The lifeguards at the bottom, the group of business associates, the throng of families waiting, the masses of visitors pushing past the ride, the trees braving the hot summer son, the birds chasing errand flies through the air, her breasts were bare to all of that. She pretended ignorance and ran with happiness and her boobs flopping left and ride with her stride. Their shape lifted up round and came slapping down, when her foot hit the floor.