While I was sitting in the waiting room of Hurricanes R Us LLC (HRU in the industry), one of many businesses owned by eceentric billionaire James Howard, I felt something akin to anxiousness, a feeling previously unknown to me. I really needed the job of hurricane-chasing pilot advertised by HRU on the Internet and in industry publications. The feeling disturbed me.
I was disturbed because my reputation is that I've got ice water in my veins and make Cool Hand Luke look like a long tailed cat in a rocking chair factory. As a pilot in the military my call sign was Glacier; stupid but descriptive.
I had been waiting since five minutes before my appointment time of 9:00 a. m. and it was now 9:22. I was offered coffee or a soft drink by the receptionist -- the only person I had seen so far -- but politely declined. Just after checking my watch for the tenth time a whirlwind came through the door, followed by three other people; I guessed that the whirlwind was James Howard when the receptionist said "Hello Mr. Howard," and stood up.
If I was capable of being nervous I would have shit my pants; I expected my interview to be conducted by one of Howard's minions, not the man himself. My gaze turned steely but I didn't stand.
"You must be Andrew Peele," Howard barked at me after gruffly acknowledging the receptionist.
"Yes sir," I said, now standing up and taking his offered hand.
"Come on into my office," he snapped, then turned to the three people who had followed him in the door and said "Bill and Axel you stay in the waiting room until I'm finished with Peele here, and you Candice get on the phone to confirm my afternoon appointments at Masterson Dynamics," Masterson Dynamics probably being the largest company that Howard owned -- at least according to my bible, Wikipedia.
I had barely settled into a comfortable chair across from Howard's impressive mahogany desk when he got right to the point. "I wanted to interview you myself, Peele, because I have a real personal interest in the project that you'll be working on if I hire you, and you have such an interesting resume."
I simply nodded as Howard opened up a file on his desk.
"How did you end up as first in your class in flight school?"
"I was better than everyone else."
"I can understand you not being first in your class at the Air Force Academy, but in the lower 50%; what's with that?"
"They had lots of bullshit classes in addition to the important ones -- I aced all of the important ones."
"Why did you get kicked off the fencing team?"
"I broke too many swords -- and there were too many rules -- and I laid out one of my 'teammates.'"
"How did you end up in the Hurricane Hunters, the United States Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron? I thought that was just for reservists?"
"They made a special exception for me because the Squadron lost their three most experienced pilots, and the Air Force didn't like the way that I handled the F-35A; they said that I was too hard on it."
"You're not making any sense, boy," Howard chuckled, but then immediately continued. "How many hurricanes have you flown in?"
"Five; two category 2s as a co-pilot, and a 1, 3, and 5 as a pilot."
"All in the last year?"
"Yes sir."
"How did you end up getting bounced out of the Air Force early, and with only a 'general discharge,' not an honorable one?"
I paused before snipping "Do I really have to talk about that?"
"Only if you want this job," Howard grumbled, "and give me the complete and unvarnished truth, no pussy footing around or happy horseshit."
"Does anyone else have to know?"
"Probably not, but I can't guarantee that I won't tell someone else if they have a need to know," he snickered.
I paused again then gave the straightforward truth. "I got caught fucking a general's wife."
Howard now displayed his first emotion of the interview; his eyebrows raised and his eyes opened wide before he continued.
He had been taking some notes in my file, but now he just leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and said "Give me the whole story; this should be good. But before you do, do you have a photo of her?"
If I hadn't already exhausted all of my other pilot job possibilities and didn't need this job so fucking bad I would have told him to eat shit and left the room; BUT I did need this job badly.
Trying not to display any emotion I got out my smartphone and started scrolling through my photos. The best ones of Slone Kellogg were when she was naked, and I sure as shit wasn't going to show Howard any of those; despite my desperation I do have some pride. I found one of her in a one-piece bathing suit, enlarged the photo, stood up, and holding onto my phone showed it to Howard.
Howard held my hand that was on the phone while he looked at the photo for a good ten or fifteen seconds; then he cackled "I can see the attraction, but she looks ten years older than you are."
"Her chronological age is twenty one years greater than mine, but her biological age is only a few years more than my chronological age," I replied trying to have no emotion in my voice. That was hard to do since I still thought of fucking Sloane at least once a day -- and it had been seven months since I had actually fucked her.
Howard did the leaning-back-in-his-chair thing again and said "Don't leave anything out; spill; how you meet her, how you hooked up with her, how you got caught, the whole works."
I had heard that Howard was kind of a pervert; this proved it.
"I saw her in a grocery store looking at and testing cantaloupes. While she's not classically beautiful she is sexy as hell and does have prominent mammaries, and I was between unsuccessful relationships and was feeling a little lascivious so I walked close to her and said 'Those are some really nice melons,' while looking more at her chest than the cantaloupes."
"Rather than getting pissy she gave me a good once-over with her eyes then smirked 'Why do you say that?'"
"I'm a connoisseur of honeydews and those look natural, firm, and delicious," I replied.
"These are cantaloupes, not honeydew melons," she replied with a sly grin while holding one of the fruits in her hand. Then she said "I think that you're probably espousing a double entendre, dude, and not talking about fruit at all. Are you always this brazen?"
"I played dumb and then pretended to have a Eureka moment. I hoped that I turned red, but I'm not that good of an actor so I'm sure that I didn't. 'Oh, I'm so embarrassed. You thought that I was commenting about your breasts. I can see how you'd be confused because you fill out a top as well as any thirty five year old I've ever seen,' I smiled, knowing that she was more than thirty five, but since she hadn't spit at me or kneed me in the balls yet, I thought that I'd see where this went."
"She got a big grin on her face; then she turned the tables on me. 'Do you have a big cock?'"
"When she said that I swear that my Johnson partially saluted and since she was staring at my crotch she had to have seen it. It was clear that she wanted an answer."
"'I haven't had any complaints,' I replied."
"'Show me some ID,' she continued, holding out her hand while simultaneously sticking out her chest, flouting her Grand Tetons.'"
"I took out my military ID and handed it to her. She looked at it, returned it, and in a husky voice said 'You've caught me on just the right day, flyboy. Put your cock where your mouth is. Get a room not visible from the street at the Hyatt on Maple -- about a mile from here -- and text the room number to this cellphone,' she said pulling a card from her purse and handing it to me. 'I'll see you there in ninety minutes.'"
"Then she smiled, put two cantaloupes in her cart, and headed for checkout, wiggling her ass."
At this point Howard was cackling like a hyena, the perv. I sighed and continued.
"At first I was gobsmacked. While I had made similar attempts in the past, before I had always been shot down like a Piper Cub being hit by an AIM-7 missile. I looked at the card carefully; it only had a phone number on it, nothing else. I watched her ass wiggle some more as she exited the checkout counter, and when she smiled at me -- I was frozen in my tracks in the produce section -- as she exited the store I made up my mind. It might have been a waste of $250 and/or a group of thugs might come and kick the shit out of me, but my Glacier persona -- and cock -- took over my brain. So I bought the few items I had come to the store for, brought them to my off-base apartment, and drove to the Hyatt on Maple and got Room 1212, which faced the back."
"I texted just the room number -- nothing else -- to the phone number on the card. It apparently went through but there was no reply."
"After sitting on the bed in Room 1212 until it was almost two hours since I saw Miss Grand Tetons in the grocery store I was about to give up and admit that I had been pranked worse than any other time in my life when there was a knock on the door."