I am not much to look at any more. I am twenty years past my prime, when I played college basketball and I could easily persuade any girl I met that an evening playing one-on-one with me would be a game they would want to play again and again. No, now I am in my forties, my taut abs have given way to a paunch that threatens to overlap my belt, my well-defined arms are not quite so defined. The only thing that people says hasn't changed is my blue eyes and my ready smile. I ain't complaining. It's been a good run. I've got a lovely wife and four beautiful daughters and life is good. My oldest will be leaving college in a year and my youngest is a junior in high school. They all take after their mother, long legs, long blonde hair, easy tans, and they are all gifted athletes. They did get their blue eyes from me. Their mother has green eyes.
We all love to go to the beach and hang out. We surf, play volleyball, the girls check out the boys and I check out the boys who are checking out my girls. It's not that I am a prude, but I slept with more than a hundred women before I got married and I know how easily young women can be persuaded to drop their inhibitions and their panties at the same time. When we aren't at the beach, we are out by the pool, grillin' and chillin'. I've been pretty fortunate in my career and I can afford all the creature comforts. When I finished up my college playing days, I knew that the NBA was a no-chance for me. But others on my team did have a good chance and what they didn't have was a clue in how to pick an agent. So I helped them screen agents and for my troubles I got a job as an agent's assistant for one of the biggest talent management firms in the world. It didn't take me long to become an agent myself, building up my own client list and after five years I was made partner. Now I am the managing partner of the West Coast Division for Talent Associates. I make an obscene amount of money and I only work hard a few days a month.
Life is very good.
About a month ago one of my junior agents was having trouble locking down a contract on a very talented wide receiver from a Division II school near the Oregon/California border. If you know college football, you know which school and by association, which athlete I am referring to, but that's not important to this tale. What IS important is that I have family in the town where this stud plays. So I decided to use a little management prerogative and make a trip up there myself to get this young man to sign on the dotted line. His signature would mean that he would like get 3-5 million dollars more in signing bonus and first contract. When TA walks into the room, every general manager in the NFL knows that the price of poker just went up.
I called my sister and her husband to see if they would be interested in dinner after my arrival.
"Hey sis, it's your favorite brother. I am flying up tonight."
"That's great Dave. Maybe we can get together when you are here."
"Funny you should ask, I am hoping to take you both out to dinner tonight."
"Well, tonight might not work."
"Is Matt working late?"
"I guess I should just tell you. Matt left me. He has moved in with his secretary. He's been gone nearly five weeks. I thought it might be just a mid-life fling, but I haven't heard or seen him since he left....." She was crying and I felt terrible about it.
"Listen Beck, I will be there by 4. You get yourself all dolled up and I am going to take you to my favorite restaurant tonight. I have one stop to make, but I should be at your house by 6:30."
"I don't think I am going to be up to it."
"Nonsense. Get yourself dressed and be ready. I won't take NO for an answer."
"Oh, all right." She hung up the phone. I made a couple of extra phone calls, one to my wife saying that something had come up and not to expect my home until the next day, and one to the pilot of my private jet telling him that we were only going to layover at our first stop, our second stop would be Seattle.
On the flight up I thought about my sister Becky and her husband Matt. I never cared for him, but I never told her that. I felt like she had married way beneath her and that he had kept her from reaching her fullest potential. I also thought back to a few special days when we were both horny adolescents and the Truth-or-Dare games we would play, sometime leading us dangerously close to something particularly incestful. But I had supported Becky and Matt throughout their married life, both emotionally and financially. I know Matt never told Becky that two or three times a year he would put the touch on me for money. I never refused his request because money is something I always have plenty of, and because I knew that to refuse him would cause my sister and my godchildren to suffer needlessly. But my loathing of him grew with each request for more.
The flight up from my offices in LA to the sleepy college town was uneventful. We were wheels down by 3:47 and I was on campus by 4:05. By 4:15 I was in the room of a top ten draft pick and by 5:00 I had his name inked to an exclusive rights contract. He had an agent and I had made more than a million dollars for the firm. I gave him my card with all of my personal numbers on it. A handful of my best clients get all of my personal numbers. Numbers that are always answered promptly and requests made by the men calling those numbers were also fulfilled immediately, no questions asked. A good agency might help you move. We are the kind of agency that will help you move bodies.
I stayed and visited with a couple of underclassmen on the basketball team who I thought had some potential and gave them my other business cards. The telephone numbers on those cards rang into my team of junior agents who were trying to build their own books. They would be good clients, just not uberclients like this wide receiver. I also stopped and talked with his coach, who in the course our conversation mentioned in passing something about budget cuts and not being able to afford some new equipment. I made a couple of quick calls and the needed equipment was available at a discount and one of my clients, another former athlete of this coach, was picking up the tab. The coach never asked me for a favor, didn't imply that he wanted one, didn't hint that he needed one. I did what I did because in the future I might need a favor myself, when a promising young quarterback was having a hard time deciding to go with TA or IMG. This goodwill gesture could come back to pay me a thousand times over or even a million times over. Or it might not. That's the risk I was willing to take. It helped that my reputation as a zealous protector and champion of my clients was without blemish.
By 6:15 I pulled up in front of my sisters comfortable middle class home. My niece and goddaughter Melissa answered the door. At 18 she was a stunning beauty. All curves and sex appeal. If she had been so inclined, I could have had her adorning billboards and checkout counter magazine racks for the last two years. Instead she was a brainiac, studying hard to get into Berkeley to study something I don't understand. She gave me a warm hug and a peck on the cheek.
"Hello Uncle D. Come on in. Mom's upstairs getting ready. Where are you taking her?"
"Carmelo's."
"Carmelo's?" she asked. "Where is that?"
"Up north a ways. We might be late, you and your sisters shouldn't wait up."
I made my way into the house and upstairs to the second floor. I've been there before, dozens of times. I know where Becky's room is. I knock on the door lightly and my sister answered.
"Come in."
I opened the door and stepped in and caught an eyeful of something I hadn't expected. There stood my sister in black lacy bra and French cut black lace panties, not quite a thong but not quite the middle age undergarments I would have expected. She was wearing real silk stockings, sheer and shimmering.
"Wow sis, you look great!" I was being honest. She must have been working out hard to keep that kind of shape. Firm and curved only where curves belonged. Not a bit of cellulite from my vantage, her breasts though not large, were not flat or sagging. She spun around.
"David! I thought you were Melissa or Andrea. I am not dressed. Avert your eyes!"
"Not a chance, sis. You are one hot mama. If you weren't my sister....."
"If I weren't your sister.......what? You'd stare at me?" She laughed and so did I, but I didn't take my eyes off of her. "You'd probably start something you couldn't finish because of the ring on your finger. I know you, you love to talk. But you let one of your assistance do the real work."
"Not in this case," I answered truthfully. "In your case I would spend a good deal of time servicing your needs, as I do for all of my most special clients."
