Babalú, Lou Baby!
Note: The descriptions and accounts in these stories are fictional and do not portray any actual people or events
After Nora and I got back to Austin from San Antonio, we spent another night completely plugged in to each other, literally and figuratively. We then slept another exact nine hours, and I awoke with both a raging hard on and ravenous hunger. Nora woke at exactly the same time, but with a need to talk before we did anything else. She brushed her platinum tresses away and fixed her shining grey eyes on me.
"Before we go any further, we need to talk about the next few years."
Uh-oh.
"I have decided to go get my MBA next, so I'll be spending the next two years at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, and then have another 2 or 3 years somewhere else to complete a PhD. So not at Harvard, nor in the Boston area. I need a little more academic diversity on my record."
I was thinking more about the sexual diversity she was going to get for the next few weeks.
"But I wanted us to be clear – my long term plan is to be with you. Before you speak, let me say I understand that you love Lara and Suzanne, too, and I am not expecting that to change. Whatever arrangement we have will not preclude either of them being with you, too. With us, more likely."
Holy shit. I can't think of anything to say to that except "What about the bigamy laws?"
"You should talk to Lara about that. She believes they will soon be passé and intends to take an active role in speeding up that process. Surely you must have wondered why she is going to law school?"
It was enough for me to know she wanted to do it.
"I realize with your alternating school and work plan it may take you 5 years to finish your engineering undergraduate degree, so you probably haven't even thought about grad school yet, but an MBA seems a natural path for you. When you visit me in Boston, we can start networking some of the b-school professors there on your behalf."
Nora doesn't do anything half way, does she? She smiled, in a way I had not seen before – it was both motherly and predatory at the same time. What else was she planning?
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Dwight choose his outfit for the product review meeting carefully, to make the right impression on his team mates, and send the right messages to the overly detached and self-absorbed PhD CEO. It had to look slightly nerdy and ambiguously ambisexual, yet connote competence and confidence. Not easy to do. He thought back to his agency training on clothing and disguises, and selected expensive light grey slacks with blue and purple Argyle socks and black wingtips, then added a bright pink cotton dress shirt and a blue and purple paisley tie. No coat, no pocket protector, no jewelry.
He arrived at work early as usual, and checked out the setup for the 9:00 AM meeting. There was only one other person there early – the VP Marketing that he enjoyed sharing Thai food with.
She smiled from across the room. "The CEO is not coming to the meeting this morning, Dwight. He is on a 'conference call with potential investors that he must join from home.' She sighed. "Since most of the VP's only attend so they can suck up to the CEO and/or make another VP look bad, the other programmers and I may be the only ones here."
Dwight sighed, too. He could still bond with the folks from other departments, and identify those with potential for helping his investigation. He would have to include in his report to his real HQ that the company was doomed to failure through mismanagement, even if it was not penetrated and didn't have its technology ripped off.
The rest of the group filed in and went through the agenda. The other programmers seemed to get how Dwight's clever fix solved their performance problem. None of the other VP's would get it anyway. About the time Dwight was finishing his report to the product review meeting, Roger Sherman sat down at a corner table in the back at Bucks of Woodside and waited for Shaniqua to arrive.
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Shaniqua made her entrance to the restaurant a little late, as was her habit. She had heard of this place, but had never been here before. She knew that Woodside, California was a small town with some big money - one of the richest zip codes in the USA. On the way in, she spotted a couple of clients, with women that must be their wives, based on the way the guys ducked their heads when they saw Shaniqua. She had sent lots of girls and a few boys to work big time 'ranch parties' out here, but never attended any herself.
She spotted this Roger Sherman asshole at a back corner table, looking like a very forgettable clerk or accountant. She would never even notice him if she hadn't memorized his picture. She was going to tear this little asshole a whole new one.
As she approached the table, Roger Sherman held up his phone. It was one of those big Android jobs with the huge screen. What was on that screen stopped Shaniqua in her tracks. It was an exterior shot of a little unassuming wood frame house in Palo Alto. It looked just like a Google Maps street photo, but the color was even better and the leaves on the trees were moving in the breeze. It was her babysitter's house.
Once he had her attention, Roger swiped right and Shaniqua saw her little angel, crying in her crib. What the hell? The screen then split and she also saw her babysitter, the 60-something ex-hippy Miss Marks, sitting on her couch, watching Maury Povich, eating Cheetos, smoking a joint, taking the occasional pull on a Bud Light, and making absolutely no move to check on Shaniqua's crying adopted daughter.
She looked at Roger, angry eyes blazing. Roger actually managed to look supportive. "She forgot to turn on the baby monitor" he said. "We turned on the video to check, but left the audio off until you could see for yourself."
