Crunch Time - Tuesday

TUESDAY

"Are you seriously saying you don't think there's a bug going around?" Claire groused over her morning frappuccino. "Did you drive to work with your eyes shut? People are dressing like it's the height of summer!"

"It's called a heatwave, you nitwit." Tammy rebuked, taking a long pull on her mochaccino. "We're all sweating, or did you opt for a short skirt today instead of long pants just to show off your thunder thighs?"

"Ladies, please!" Sadie interjected, slapping down a jumbo bottle of sanitizer and a box of reusable face masks on a folding card table set up by the door. "Show some professional decorum. Nothing is going around, and nobody is getting sick. We're not going through this again!"

Sam exchanged a worried look with Zoey, who immediately averted her gaze as he handed their manager her cappuccino. Sadie wore her usual office fare: a knee-length sage skirt with a sleeveless, ruffled white blouse that complimented her lean figure and tall, black leather boots replacing her standard pumps.

The middle-aged business owner had her burgundy hair pulled back into a frazzled bun, and worry lines creased her equally frazzled expression as she adjusted her glasses. "We're in crunch time, people. The end of the first quarter isn't going to wait around while you drink chicken soup and lay about in bed. Our clients are counting on us. We're accountants, dammit! It's right there in the name!"

Sadie was panting by the end of her explosive tirade, looking as shocked at herself as the rest of the office. They all stood like statues--Claire frozen in place with a tube of pink lipstick held against her bottom lip and Zoey cringing away--until a soft, gurgling rumble broke the stillness.

"Oh gawd, that's so humiliating..." The timid brunette whimpered.

Rigid postures sagged as the tension drained away. Even Sadie relaxed enough to mop her face with a handkerchief. She had worked herself into quite the lather.

"No, I'm sorry. We should order some takeout. It's going to be a long, busy day." She said, moving towards her office door before spinning back with a vehement addendum. "But get it delivered and left at the door. Charge it to the Mastercard and--for the love of all that is holy--remember to wash your hands!"

________________

Tammy peered suspiciously at Clair over the top of her monitor, reluctantly setting aside her fifth slice of pepperoni pizza. She had been eating non-stop for the better part of an hour and still felt half-starved.

"What do you think you are doing?"

"Hmmm? Sorry, did you say something?" Her sometimes friend and ceaseless rival hummed back, playing coy as she applied thick mascara to her lashes. "I couldn't understand you through the mouthfuls of sausage..."

Another slight. Another jab in their unending game of bitchy brinkmanship.

Honestly, they would probably get along famously if only Sadie had shown the lady balls to pick one of them as her deputy instead of making them share the position.

"You heard me, numbskull. First the lipstick, and now mascara... What's up with the doll face?" Tammy pushed up off her chair to scowl at the other woman. Their desks faced off against each other across three feet of carpet-tiled no-man's-land. "Tarting yourself up for a hot dinner date? Who's the unlucky guy?"

"You're one to talk. Did you think I wouldn't notice?" Claire rose to her feet, meeting the challenge with a vicious smirk on her pastel-painted lips. "That's a lot of purple eyeshadow and chalky foundation... did you slap it on with a trowel? Stop trying so hard, Tam. Winter's over, and warmer colors are back in vogue. Keep up if you can."

Tam...

The inky-haired Asian ground her teeth. Claire only used that stupid nickname when she really wanted to twist the knife. Tammy had stayed up late last night watching makeup tutorials on YouTube and fallen down a proverbial rabbit hole, hoping it might give her a leg-up on the competition.

Then Claire had turned up to work in a tan leather blaze skirt that only came down to the middle of her thick thighs and made her well-padded rump look like a perfect Georgia peach.

Tammy didn't have much in the way of curves. All the women in her family spanned the narrow range of physical stature from slight to petite. That might have looked good on paper, but it gets old fast when you're a grown adult who still frequents the tween section for the right underwear size.

What she wouldn't give for a decent pair of cans to fill out her top instead of the measly ant bites she was hereditarily lumped with. Ant bites that were growing sore and irritable inside her flat t-shirt bra.

Online shopping, that was the ticket. If the stupid cow wanted to raise the stakes, Tammy was prepared to call her bluff.

She already had a browser window open in the background of her desktop. Slowly filling her cart with flirty tartan skirts, embroidered dresses with frilly petticoats, plunging lace-up tops, several pairs of platform boots, and buckets of super cute accessories. Racking up the score between big bites of quickly cooling pizza.

Everything in the blackest shades and dark textured patterns. Because fuck that mouthy shrew and her opinions.

The total price was over four figures, rising with every new mouse click. Tammy knew her credit cards would take a beating this month, but the express delivery charges would be worth it to wipe the smug expression off her antagonist's dumb face.

"Pink lipstick, really, Claire? I never realized you were so basic."

"At least I know how to wear it. Let me know if you ever want free pointers, Tam."

The two senior accountants fumed at each other until loud slurping interrupted their glaring match. Turning as one, they found Zoey seated at her desk, inhaling her third serving of pasta al pomodoro.

She looked up sheepishly--tomato sauce dappled her pasty white chin like blood splatter--before squeaking in terror when she caught sight of their angry expressions and ducked her head low to avoid friendly fire.

"Eep!"

Directly across from her, Sam's desk sat vacant.

________________

The men's room was Sam's favorite place in the offices of Chandler Accounting Services, which was telling.

It was a cramped six-by-six space lined with chipped tangerine tiles that featured a single toilet stall that didn't lock and a tiny washbasin parked close in beside a badly cracked urinal he'd never worked up the courage to use.

Before his employment, this had simply been another bathroom for the entirely female staff to use, and there had been mumbled complaints from a particular pair of the more senior members during his first few days. Still, Sadie had quelled the unrest in her ranks with a clear ultimatum...

Either they abided by the cultural tradition of gender separation in the restrooms, or she would render the whole argument moot by reclassifying both toilet facilities as unisex, and folks could relieve themselves in whichever they saw fit...

Sam included.

Thus, peaceful coexistence was re-established, and the crapper was his by official decree. A private, sometimes pungent, sanctuary where he could sit in silent meditation and occasionally drop a deuce.

Though he strongly suspected the busted urinal might have been a casualty of an

actual

stand-up pissing contest between Claire and Tammy.

Today, however, Sam had a palm splayed against the stall wall for support as he furiously beat his meat.

"Christ, just go down already!"

Sweat stained the pits of his white button-up and spotted his shallow cheeks as the fastidious young man leaned over the bowl and slapped the salami in a desperate bid to rid himself of the unwelcome erection.

It was a growing problem--Sam groaned inwardly at the internal pun--that had begun the afternoon prior as an insistent stiffness that trapped him at his desk until the close of business and necessitated hiding an awkward trouser teepee behind his briefcase on the bus ride back to his apartment.

A forty-minute cold shower had left Sam a shivering prune, a wrinkly scarecrow with a steel prong lancing out from his scraggly pubes. The damn towel had slipped at one point, only to catch and hang from his troublesome boner as though it were a rail.

Finally, shamefacedly, he had resorted to porn.

It shouldn't have been that big of a deal, Sam knew. Almost every functional penis on the planet with wifi access choked the chicken with some regularity. But he had never been capable of reconciling the guilty pleasure with the notions of sexual exploitation and objectification that cluttered his fretful headspace while masturbating to a skin flick.

That was until he had settled on a reasonably vanilla, missionary sex scene and gathered the requisite gumption to touch his rebellious dick.

...and cum expulsively. Almost at a single stroke, Sam had exploded like a salvo of V2 rockets, primed to launch on a hair trigger and made one heck of a mess.

Twitching and spasming, he had blasted right through the fistful of Kleenex clamped over his cock. The steamy heat and built-up pressure of the day fountaining out of Sam. What should have been a month's worth of spurting spunk rolled over his pumping fist in pearlescent waves and dripped down in sticky streamers to splatter into his scrawny lap.

It was a borderline religious experience.

An unholy revelation that left him reeling and gasping for more. So Sam did it again. Him... Sam Hall, accredited virgin, had ended up blowing four more unbelievable loads until he was a boneless puddle of quivering flesh, passed out on sweat-soaked bed sheets with his laptop still playing atop his knobbly knees. The moans and wet slapping sounds filtered into his dreams.

"Please, pleeease, cum already..." Sam panted, dashing perspiration from his brow with the hand not jerking the teak wood between his legs. His khaki trousers and boxer briefs swan around his ankles. Skinny legs and bony butt bared under the grimy tungsten lightbulb. It wasn't a great look. "Calm down, need to calm down."

Someone had grabbed his ass again at Starbucks today. A definite squeeze. There were likely fingerprints back there.

Sam had spun about to face his attacker, only to find a milling crowd of mildly interested female faces smiling innocently back at him. Beautiful faces delicately touched up with cosmetics and shooting him coy looks. All the attention fluttered his tummy with a kaleidoscope of nervous butterflies. Sam had muttered an incoherent apology to nobody in particular and turned to face the front counter again.

His poor posterior was mauled twice more before the barrister--a cute blonde who batted her lashes at him with the name Mandy pinned to her pert breast--finally called out his order. Four coffees for the girls at the office and six breakfast bagels for himself.

Sam had woken with a terrible hunger chewing at his gut that morning, and the crumpled balls of grease paper in the waste bin at his desk were a testament to his vain efforts to sate it.

What's more, it wasn't just him. The smell of microwaved bacon and eggs had turned every head. Even Sadie had made an appearance, nose sniffing the air before locking her laser-like stare onto Sam with avarice from her office door as he wolfed down more food in one sitting than he typically ate in a day.

Nobody had said anything. He would have offered if they had asked. Reluctantly. Instead, they just watched, licking their full lips and touching their flushed cheeks distractedly. Both Tammy and Claire were wearing a lot of makeup.

Zoey kept making breathy, mewling noises and giving him sad puppy dog eyes from behind her blocky glasses. She had wiggled a lot too, unable to sit still in her chair.

"Almost there... C'mon, you can do it..." Sam gasped, pounding a palm against the side of the stall as his balls clenched and he fisted his frustrating pecker. "Almost there!"

The bathroom door opened, and a soft, quavering voice cut through the hot haze of anguished arousal just as he crossed the event horizon.

"Sam, are you okay?" Zoey sounded concerned. "You've been in here for a while, and we're about to order an early lunch--"

"CUUUMMIIING!" He hollered. The single word yelled far too loud. The tiny bathroom--and probably half the Radley building--echoed with the triumphant battle cry.

At least it drowned out the meaty slapping of manflesh and the splash of his copious seed impacting the toilet bowl.

"Oh... okay. I'll let them know!" She chirped back. "S-sorry for interrupting, you know, whatever."

Then the door creaked on its hinges, and Sam was alone again, head spinning from the torrential release and blushing furiously with his dick still at half-mast in his hand.

"Fuck."

Were his eyes playing tricks on his, or did that fucking thing look bigger than usual?

________________

Sadie stood at her window looking over the street down below as she polished off her second fully loaded beef, rice, and bean burrito. Licking sour cream from her fingers.

She was stress eating, she knew, and was going to punish herself for it by taking extra spin classes once this fiscal quarter came to a close.

As an independent business owner competing in a male-dominated business sector, Sadie held herself to a higher standard than the rest of her corporate fat cat contemporaries. She had to if she wanted to stand out from the crowd as something more than a nice pair of legs with a good head for numbers on her slim shoulders.

The unfair expectations heaped upon women in finance were nothing new. There was nothing to be gained in wailing and gnashing her teeth about a glass ceiling everybody knew was there going in.

No, from the beginning, Sadie Chandler had taken one look at the rocky path to success before her, hitched up her big girl pants, and marched to the beat of her own drum.

She had slaved her ass off as a junior accountant for Winston and Kirk over on St Andrews Boulevard, working for a pittance while cultivating her list of contacts and studying for her CPA before striking out on her own the moment that certificate was in the mail.

Chandler Accounting Services was her baby. It had to be. The all-consuming drive for professional excellence and building a thriving business left scarce time available for personal indulgences. Like, for instance, meaningful interpersonal relationships--beyond the rare hook-up with an acceptably attractive, consenting body from a dating app--and certainly not anything remotely resembling marriage.

Children weren't even a blip on the radar of her latest five-year plan, which extended well past Sadie's fortieth birthday.

There were some regrets there, indeed, but nothing that kept her up at night overly much. At least none that a tub of Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk and a fine pinot couldn't repress.

She had made peace with her chosen lot and found other ways to fill that vacuous void in her life.

...like turning Chandler Accounting into a pseudo-adoption service for ambitious young women aiming to achieve the same goals she had and those misshapen puzzle pieces who wouldn't fit in anywhere else.

Sadie strove to offer them the opportunities she never had. Eliminate the career speedbumps she was obligated to navigate as a woman and provide a nurturing workplace environment. Founded on the principles of equality, meritocracy, and respect for all, no matter the creed, race, or gender of the employee.

"Goddamn sluts. Parading about with their tits hanging out like a bunch of street corner whores!" She spat, glaring contemptuously on the busy downtown sidewalks below.

They had been at it all day. The regular foot traffic of bustling men and women in conservative business attire was replaced with a significantly lower male presence and an increasing number of disproportionately charming females.

...Females sporting a more risque, revealing range of fashion than one might expect to encounter in Charlestown's commercial center.

Minimalist pencil skirts and deeply unbuttoned blouses were the new norm. Flashes of smooth stockinged legs and hints of brightly colored bras were out on tour, along with the bulging pushed-up cleavage they supported. Every inch of bared flesh shone in the sunlight with a slick of feverish perspiration.

How was a strong, independent woman meant to stamp her mark on the business world with obstinate tramps like these diluting the ink?

Sadie tugged at the collar of her blouse, trying to cool down. The weather app on her phone clocked the outside temperature at a mild seventy degrees. Warm for an early Spring day in the Palmetto State but hardly sweat-inducing conditions.

It was making her testy. Ill-tempered. Hungry.

Stalking back to her desk, the growling office manager scooped up a handful of salty french fries and crammed them into her maw. Following the starchy mouthful with a long sip from her thirty-ounce cup of iced cola.

Chewing thoughtfully on the plastic straw, Sadie absently calculated how much time this lunch break would cost her in the gym. She prided herself on keeping firm and trim in the face of fast-approaching middle age.

Like everything else in her life, she tackled fitness with single-minded dedication. A grueling routine of advanced spin classes and heavy workout sessions ensured every part of her svelte figure was toned to perfection. She regularly squatted one-fifty and had a sculpted rear and muscular thighs to show for her efforts.

Sadie's body was a lean, mean fighting machine, and she was growing tired of hiding it behind the veneer of proper conduct. It was a temple to her inner strength and achievements, be it one that would need a bit of TLC once this tax season was over.

She fought back a sniffle and blotted her neck with a paper napkin. It came away wet.

"Nobody is getting sick!"

________________

Claire wasn't feeling well.

It was clear to her that the entire office was coming down with a bad case of something. Probably the same something that had people coughing and wheezing in the streets.

Funny thing about that... only a year ago, an errant sneeze garnered the same flinching response as a stray gunshot. The pandemic had hit Charlestown hard. Fear and lockdowns had paralyzed the community and decimated the local economy.

Her favorite froyo kiosk had shut down its soft serve machines for good and it was dearly missed.

This time, everyone seemed to be set on steadfastly ignoring their symptoms as though there were an unspoken agreement that if nobody said anything and kept going about their daily grind as if nothing was wrong, then suffocating facemasks and all the associated unpleasantness could be avoided.

But Claire could admit to herself that she was sick.

It was becoming a shared joke amongst her fellow bean counters for one of them to comment on how the air conditioning was on the fritz again. They would all nod in solemn agreement before sticking their heads back in the sand, ignoring the way their hot breath misted in the frigid climate-controlled air.

They were all flushed and damp. Claire was running a temperature, and every muscle ached. Her shoulders, back, and butt felt painfully tight. Even her tits were sore, like two throbbing softballs of discomfort stuffed into her restrictive bra.

Eating helped if only a little. Fevers were the human body heating up to burn out the infection, right? Surely, that was fueled by calories and fat reserves. How else could the thick-set senior account explain the unexpected spike in appetite?

...and it wasn't just her.

The office as a whole had agreed on Mexican for lunch and proceeded to order enough food to feed an NFL team at the end of a training camp.