Ch. 4: The Director
Lakshmi's life continued normally. She was in charge of a bake-sale at her children's school. She helped her husband, Robert, who was promoted yet again, by organizing a pool party at the house for his new underlings. Being on the Board, she was involved in many facets of the Lakeview Country Club.
Lakshmi was determined to not think about the Howell Club for the Aged. Of course, as happens when one is told not to think about an elephant, she thought about it frequently. She promised herself she would not re-watch the videos Charles had sent her.
After one Board meeting, where she found herself staring at Ginny Butland instead of paying attention to the meeting, her commitment to keep her promise was put to the test. She sat in her car with her phone. Somehow she summoned the willpower to not open the video, but she could not find the willpower to delete it.
Despite trying to remain calm, on her first free day, she was a bundle of eager energy as she returned to the Howell Club for the Aged to volunteer. As she checked in at the administration building, she noticed Lily's office door was open.
"Hey, director!" She said cheerily from the doorway. She was dressed casually, but looked very pretty and her petite athletic figure was not hidden by her white t-shirt and khaki shorts.
Lily was dressed as usual with large dark rimmed glasses, white blouse, dark blazer, matching pencil skirt, and high heels. Her hair was in a bun, although today a few stray bangs were loose, framing her pretty face. She looked like a tall young sexy Asian American librarian as she looked up from her computer.
"Hey, volunteer!" She matched Lakshmi's degree of cheerfulness. "You know, when you applied to be a volunteer, I didn't really know what to expect. I was sort of worried you'd be more work for me. But you're really an awesome volunteer!"
"Awww, Thank you!" Lakshmi responded sweetly. "And you're an awesome Director!"
"Well that's very nice to hear. Thank you." Lily replied genuinely.
Lakshmi glanced over her shoulders before stepping into the office and closing the door. "Um, Lily" She said nervously. "I'm pretty sure you know this already, but you know that Charles has cameras around here, right?" She winced before continuing tentatively. "And he records... things."
"Oh yeah, I know." She said nonchalantly. Then she chuckled. "Funny story. He actually tried to use them on me. To be honest, I gotta admit I was a little flattered, he can be really charming. I almost gave in, but, of course, I turned him down. You know, out of principle."
"You turned him down?"
Lily shrugged. "Yeah. Well, no, not exactly. I didn't want to burst his bubble completely. So I played along and we settled on him having access to my office instead." She giggled "He's probably hoping to find my panties in a desk drawer or something."
Lakshmi was incredulous. "But weren't you afraid you'd lose your job or people would find out?"
Lily laughed "I'm sure that's what he wanted me to think! But he's actually way too nice to go through with it."
"But he has the videos, how can you be so sure?" Lakshmi asked worryingly.
"Here's the deal. He's old. Yeah, he's smart and he knows a lot about a lot of things, yadda, yadda, yadda. But he knows diddly about tech. I'm not sure he knows the difference between a website and a browser."
"But, how can you be so sure?" Lakshmi asked still unconvinced.
"OK, OK. Let me explain the whole thing. He came to me all confident-like, thinking he had it all figured out. But I had a hunch. So I searched his room. Well, it wasn't much of a search, cuz there it was sitting right on his desk. He's got a little notebook that he writes in. And he literally wrote "Passwords" on the cover."
"No way, really?"
"Yup. You wouldn't believe how many of these old guys still write everything down. It's super common. It's like how I get at least one call a day from some old dude asking for a brochure. I mean, Hello! When was the last time you saw a brochure, uh, 1995?" She said scoffed.
"So you just go in and delete his files." Lakshmi said with a sense of relief.
"Well, I was about to... actually I was going to shut the whole thing down, but then I felt kind of bad. I mean, I didn't want to completely ruin his fun. So I let him keep his little vids. I've got a pretty good idea what he does watching them." She rolled her eyes and made a gesture with her hand as if she was stroking a cylindrical object.
"What! You let him keep them? Why?" Lakshmi was nervous again.
"I just set it up so that any file he sends is in self-destruct format. They can only play once." Lily said reassuringly. She thought for a second. "Of course I could always shut it all down in a flash, but I'm really not that worried about it. And, like I said, he's really actually sweet, I kinda like him. Let him be happy."
"You can do that?" Lakshmi was intrigued. "I mean the self-destruct thing."
"You do know that one of my degrees is in computer science, right?"
Lakshmi pulled out her phone and tapped away. "Oh wow, you're right!" The videos Charles had sent her gave error messages. "God, I wish I knew that before."
"Oh really?" Lily cocked her head inquisitively. "Why? Before what?"
"He sent me one, well two, well two of the same thing... me with Bill." Lakshmi said sheepishly. "I didn't think I had a choice... so... Oh God! I can't believe I did that! Lily, I need you to delete some videos for me. You can do that, right?" She pleaded desperately.
"Can do." Lily started tapping away on her keyboard. "Well let's see what we've got here, shall we?"
Lakshmi came around the desk and stood behind Lily. With her arms on the back of the chair, she leaned forward over Lily's shoulder. They were cheek to cheek staring at the monitor.
Lily quickly accessed the account. "Wow, he's got a lot more since the last time I checked." She started scrolling through the numerous files. "You'd think he would've at least labeled them. Wait, here's several tagged as favorites. Let's try this one."
She opened one of the files and a video started playing. It began with Lakshmi and Charles entering a reading room. "Oh God!" Lakshmi exclaimed as she recognized the scene. "You shouldn't watch this!"
"Hold your horses there, volunteer. Let's let the Director decide, shall we?" Lily said teasingly as she enlarged the video to full screen.
