A Load in Every Hole Ch. 03

"Let me guess," Meg said, "he put you in the middle of it? Instead of those studs doing an actress they were doing you?"

"How do you guess all this stuff Meg?" I replied.

"Because I think of sex about 94% of every day and the other six percent of the time, I think about clearing more time to think about sex! Holy shit!" Meg answered. "You guys are tearing it up! Did it get you off?"

"You're violating the rule again," I warned. "I'm sure Mark and I will talk it out when we get there."

"I think talking is going to be last on the list of what he wants to do when he sees you," Meg said perkily. The attendant called for boarding first class.

"I've got to go, they're boarding," I advised.

"Call me tomorrow morning once you break free, okay?" Meg asked.

"Maybe. You know, you aren't entitled to every detail of my married life," I warned.

"Why not? I don't have one of my own, so I get to borrow yours. God knows I've given you enough juicy details from my marriages to write a novel. So, make it fucking lively, would ya Bolskie?" Meg quipped.

I bought wifi on the plane, something I never do I remembered, at least I thought, the phrases Miguel spoke in Spanish when we were in the throes of sex and spent some time plugging them into Google translator. I self-consciously shielded the results on the screen from the passenger sitting next to me. I was damned glad I did.

Miguel had called me his hot little bitch. He'd told me to eat him, then to swallow his sperm. Unless I was misusing the application, the last thing he said to me was "swallow it all you little whore." So much for soft, genteel, sweet Miguel. Maybe hearing me gag was for him having me sigh like a song.

Maybe all men had this buried in them, I lamented before remembering the context. I had just met Miguel the night before, and here I was the very next day, dressing to the nines for him and going down on him in a public parking garage. What did I expect him to call me, Sister Teresa?

The flight to Vegas was long, but pleasant. I was offered lunch again but didn't need it. I did need the two drinks I consumed, badly. What was I going to tell Mark? All of it? Some of it? I felt sure he'd be so embarrassed at how quickly and wantonly I had attacked Miguel. Or would he? Clearly something either had changed in Mark, or something was buried deep within him that we had yet to uncover. As usual, the questions outnumbered the answers, and the key among them were What did Mark really want, and was I willing to give it to him?

I received a text from Mark just before we landed in Vegas, "dinner meeting with Threxxco going long. Have you eaten?"

"Eaten?" I read, and blanched. Yes, I had indeed eaten, but not in the way Mark was asking.

"Just a light lunch," I replied. "I'll just go to the hotel."

"No! Please! These guys are boring as hell and I can't wait to see you. If you haven't eaten, this place is very nice. Superb modern mix, your faves. And we can expense it. Wouldn't hurt to get your opinion on the Threxxco guys either."

Now he'd done, it, appealing simultaneously to my ego, sense of economy, and hunger.

"Okay, I'll Uber, restaurant name?" I was disappointed, realizing how much losing my "moment" of Mark's first vision of me in the airport bothered me.

"Rivea," at the Delano.

"Okay, get there when I can," I said, signing off. Then, thinking further, I texted, "is Lisa there?"

"Yes, of course she is. She's part of the pitch team," Mark replied.

"Them or you?" I tapped out and sent and got a frowny-face in return.

Fortunately, the ride to the restaurant was brief and uncomplicated and the staff handled my stuff quickly. I stopped off at the ladies room to refresh everything and put it all back into place. It wasn't perfect, but I had to admit I looked damn good.

I hated Threxxco's CFO Eddie VanMeter from the first instant I saw him. He was fat, drunk, and hornily unctuous, exuding "guy on the make" vibes from the first instant he laid eyes on me. If Don had looked at me earlier in the day like a cut of meat, Eddie looked at me like a man licking the juice off the platter.

Mark's reaction helped me forget all about that. He picked me up as I walked into the small alcove their group was sitting in and his eyes didn't stop tracking me. He had a wondrous "holy shit!" look on his handsome face, and when he presented me for an introduction, he held me at arms' length as if I were a work of art.

"Mark, you've been holding out on us!" Eddie said, tipsily. "You didn't tell us you were married to Ms. America!" Eddie introduced me to his two lieutenants so quickly and dismissively that I could barely pick up their names, thus categorizing the two as meaningless sycophants. Lisa sat between Eddie and "thing 1" as I came to think of him. She looked enormously uncomfortable, which I could certainly understand. I gave her a curt nod and did not extend my hand. Message sent I know what you did, and you are in the deepest possible shit. She blanched and looked away.

"Come, you sit between me and Bill, that way we're all meshed," Eddie proposed. I wanted to sit next to him like I wanted an enema, but I did not want to rock the boat. His hands were on me within seconds. Nothing too ugly or overt, but a touch of the shoulder here and the elbow there, and at one point his chubby arm went all the way around my shoulder to punctuate another crummy off-color joke.

I ordered lightly, not trusting my stomach to hold anything heavy or challenging. My anxiety wasn't helped much when Mark, Eddie and Lisa in turn all glanced at the stain on my collar. Mark's reaction plainly said that he had put two and two together and come up with four. Great, now all three think I'm a complete slut. Oh well, no place to go but forward.

Eddie regaled us with tales of corporate conquest, his prior CFO engagements, his absolute control over the accounting department at Threxxco, and what idiots the government contracting officers who provided Threxxco its business were. In short, we were discussing topics I had no interest in hearing, with a man I had no interest in sitting next to, and a woman I didn't care to share a meal with. It was hard to eat or pretend to be interested.

As always, Mark read me like a book, and knew that I did not tolerate fools well. Soon I would blow and say something that would fry Eddie's eyebrows straight off his face. I didn't have the chance, because Eddie, being Eddie, crossed the line all on his own in such an ugly way that Mark totaled his ass in front of us all.

"What say we go back up to my suite for drinks?" he began. "We can put a little entertainment on the screen that I'm sure Lisa and Mary would enjoy, and all get to know one another a little better," he said, oil dripping from every word. "After all, we're going to working together cheek-to-cheek and I've always felt that for a team to be a team, they really had to let their pants down a little, you know? Really get to know one another? That way, all the ins and outs of the accounting business, they get handled the way they should, no matter how sticky the thing ends up getting in the end. There's a lot at stake here for both our firms, lots of revenue, lots of opportunity, and I'd hate to see disagreements get in the way of a really deep, tight relationship."

Any idiot could figure out what he wanted: to go to his room, throw porn on the video and do God knows what to me and Lisa, perhaps throwing some crumbs to thing one and thing two. Good God! Had Mark become so venal that he would even consider such a thing? The mushroom soup I had eaten turned quickly to acid.

I saw out of the corner of my eye that Eddie had leaned just to the left when he began his oversexed soliloquy. I looked back and recognized that his hand was on Lisa's leg. Not on her knee, up under her skirt so close to her crotch that he had to be touching her privates. Lisa was in a dead panic. She was a deer caught in the headlights of an 18-wheeler speeding towards her and either way she turned it would obliterate her.

I was about to put him in his place when I saw the look on Mark's face. Mark was ordinarily placid, but the quiet collected look I saw on him told me that Mount Vesuvius was about to blow. When Mark got truly angry, he didn't fly off the handle, he just got quiet and went into killer mode.

"Eddie," he said quietly, "you've had too much to drink, and it has clouded your judgment. Nothing like what you propose is going to happen, and you owe Lisa, Mary, and me an apology for even suggesting it."

But Eddie, ever the playground bully and hauling around two-million dollars a year in business, refused to back down or even acknowledge fault. His hand did come off Lisa's thigh for the next exchange, which was bitter and short.

"There are dozens of good accounting firms in Fargo," Eddie warned, waggling his fat index finger at Mark. "Any one of them would be pleased as punch to have Threxxco's business. We haven't signed a retainer agreement with your firm, as you know, and your competitors are still here in Vegas, each just as interested in working for us as they were the day we got here."

"Then I suggest you call them," Mark said, and stood. "Ladies, please come with me while I get the check."

We left Eddie, Thing 1, and Thing 2 behind in a state of shock. I looked over my shoulder and Eddie's eyes were locked onto my ass, so I put my right hand behind me over the crack and shot him the bird. Lisa saw the entire exchange and laughed out loud. It created a vast improvement in her look, and I could see how Mark could become very attracted to this version of the girl. Very attracted indeed.

Glancing back one more time, Eddie looked sullen, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 looked shocked that someone had stood up to their boss. To avoid his glare, they busily rushed to their cellphones to make busy. Eddie lifted his cellphone to dial someone.

"I'm picking up the current bill only," Mark told the maître D. "Anything additional is on them," he explained. We cashed out and walked to the big back Cadillac Escalade the firm had rented. Lisa made for the back seat, and I rode shotgun.

"Thanks," I said when the doors were all shut.

"Yes, Thank you!" Lisa repeated behind me. "That bastard had his hand on my... my thigh! Can you believe that? Worse, than that!" Lisa said, still panicked, "all the way up! All the way! I didn't know what to do. He was right there. I know Bill could see it. He was right there too, and he didn't say anything to Eddie either! The little coward."

Mark said "I'm going to drive a little bit just to calm my nerves. I have a couple of things I need to do. We'll head back to the hotel once I get them done. I think it's best that you two be involved in this part of it, because it isn't going to go over well in some quarters." He got on one of the local freeways, punched up his phone and said, "call Mel." The phone rang several times before we heard Mel's sleepy answer.

"I just fired Threxxco," Mark said calmly.

"Oh?" Mel asked. "This may be the shortest engagement in the history of the firm. Wait, we haven't been engaged, so this could be the longest pre-engagement in the history of the firm."

"Yeah, they wanted me to offer up Lisa and Mary as a little love offering to seal the deal. Go up to their room, put on some entertainment, get to know one another far better. I think that was the gist of it, but frankly I was too pissed to hear much after the first sentence. Did I miss anything ladies?"

"Yes," I said, and repeated the entire monologue, which was burned into my brain, nearly verbatim. And, you should know that Eddie had his hand on Lisa's thigh and was feeling her up while he said it. There was zero doubt what he wanted."

Lisa agreed, adding a phrase from Eddie I hadn't recalled, and mentioning that "Bill" (aka Thing 1) had seen Eddie's hand on her thigh and done nothing to stop it.

"Well, I didn't much like those bastards anyway," Mel laughed.

"Mel, can you log in and lock out the retention agreement?" Don's going to be angry that this has gone south, and I wouldn't put it past him to sign the damn thing and send it to them to spite me.

"Consider it done. But he can always copy it to a new document and sign that," Mel added.

"If my guess is right, I'm about to have a very heated conversation with him anyway. I'm going to tell him point blank, in writing, that he's not to sign it and we will not issue a bill to these guys.

I don't want the retention, Mel. These guys are dirty. I haven't seen how in the little basic work we've done so far, but my 20 years tells me they're filthy little bastards. The culture is all wrong for a major governmental contractor. Or, maybe it's all right, I don't know, but it isn't something we want to have any connection with when the shit hits the fan. You can't carry enough insurance to survive guys like this."

As if on cue, Mark's cell lit up showing an incoming call from Don.

"That's Don," Mark said, "let me weather this storm and we'll talk again afterwards."

"WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?" Don screamed into the phone, "OR WERE YOU FUCKING THINKING AT ALL? WE'VE SPENT A HUNDRED K GETTING READY FOR THIS AND NOW THAT WE'VE GOT IT, YOU THROW IT DOWN THE TOILET OVER A DRUNKEN COMMENT? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GODDAMNED MIND, MARK? THERE ARE A LOT MORE PEOPLE THAN YOU AND YOUR PRECIOUS LISA INVOLVED IN THIS. LOTS OF PEOPLE WIN OR LOSE DEPENDING ON THIS OUTCOME, BIG TIME.

COME ON MARK! WE'VE HAD DRUNK CLIENTS BEFORE. THE PROTOCOL IS TO LET IT BLOW OVER AND WHEN THEY WAKE UP THE NEXT DAY TALK SENSE TO THEM. YOU KNOW THAT!"

"What, pray tell, did Eddie say to you?" Mark asked. I was surprised both that Mark was so incredibly calm, and that he didn't simply hang up on Don.

"He was very apologetic. Said it was just a miscommunication, that he just invited everyone out to continue the evening somewhere, but that you misunderstood and took it badly and went off on him. He was very surprised because he didn't intend anything negative by it," Don blurted.

"He's a liar," Mark said, firmly and calmly. "In fact, Don, all three of us are telling you he's a liar. He invited my wife and Lisa and I to his room to put on 'some entertainment' so that we could get 'better acquainted,' he emphasized how critical it was that we 'let our pants down' with one another so that the 'ins and outs' of the work we would do didn't get the way of 'cheek to cheek' working relationship which would get 'very tight' and result in 'sticky situations.' Oh, and Don, he was attempting to feel Lisa up when he said it."

"THIS IS ALL JUST A MISCOMMUNICATION!" Don screamed. "We don't lose three million dollars a year in business over a miscommunication."

"Don, do you accept what I'm telling you as the truth, or not? It's really that simple," Mark asked, quiet steel in his voice.

"I think memories fade. I think memories can be manipulated, even the story can be manipulated. I think you panicked and fucked up, and now this has become a hard story from all three of you to justify making the decision, which, by the way you didn't have the power to make."

Mark waited a full minute while Don prattled on about what a big mistake it was before beginning his next sentence, all of which, I'm sure, was spent trying to get himself under control.

"Shut up Don. I'm tired of listening to you babble. One of two things is going to happen. Either by 10;00 a.m. tomorrow you will issue a written apology to each of Mary, Lisa and me for what you've just said, or you'll find another firm to be a partner in. Do you understand these choices?"

Don burst forth in another stream of profanity, screaming at Mark that he didn't have the power to fire him, that he would sign Threxxco despite Mark, and that he would open his own firm and "sink" Mark, but through it all Mark was both calm and unperturbed.

When he was finished Mark said, "Ten O'clock, a.m., Fargo time" then hung up.

Mark pulled the Escalade into the parking lot of an adult theatre. I looked at him inquiringly and put my eyes in the direction of the billboard carrying its name. He nodded "yes," indicating that this was the one he'd gone to.

"Don't worry, we're not going in," he said. "I just have to send out a text blast."

He pulled his phone out of the bracket and did a firmwide "blast" style text, showing it to both Lisa (first) then me: "No person is to sign an engagement agreement with Threxxco Corporation, or undertake any communication tending to commit the firm to enter into an engagement. Anyone violating this instruction is subject to immediate termination for cause." He hit send, and Don hit the roof.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU FUCKING JUST DID THAT. YOU DON'T HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO DO THAT," His return message read. "NOW WHEN WE ARE RETAINED, WE'VE GIVEN THE PLAINTIFF'S LAWYERS A GOLDEN KEY TO SUE OUR ASSES BECAUSE WE RAISED OUR OWN RED FLAG BEFORE WE EVER GOT HIRED."

"Ten O'clock a.m., Fargo time," Mark texted back and hung the phone in its cradle.

Five seconds later, Mark received a text from Mel: "Well done! Greaser Eddie tried to call me. I texted him to contact you if he wanted to speak to the firm."

"Don insisted that all three of us were lying," I saw Mark text. "I told him to issue a written apology by 10;00 tomorrow or find a new firm. I should have talked to you first, but he's pissed me off for the last time."

A few short moments later Mark's phone beeped and Mel's message appeared on the screen "So it is written, so let it be done." Mel was into old time movies and often borrowed phrases from them to push a point. But then he sent a follow up message. "You might think about letting your partner of fifteen years come down a bit and apologize in his own time after the fight or flee instinct in him has died," Mel texted. "Just a thought."

"Both of us have our backs up, but I'm tired of his shit," Mark texted.

Ten minutes later we'd handed the big SUV off to the valet and walked to our rooms, Lisa's room was on the 6^th floor.

"I upgraded," Mark said as the elevator door shut after Lisa left. "I wanted this to be special."

"Thanks," I answered, "It's already special. The look you gave me when I walked into the restaurant was worth all the effort. Out of curiosity Mark, where was your room before the upgrade?" I asked.

"Three doors down from Lisa's," he said unapologetically. They put me, Don, Mel and Lisa in order on the same floor."

"Okay, I think being at the scene of the crime just makes me a little crazy," I replied.

"Er," Mark said, smiling.

"What?" I asked.

"Makes you crazier," he chimed, and I slugged his right shoulder.

Mark then turned to me and said "you are the most stunning woman. The only good thing I can say about Eddie Van Meter is that he has a sharp eye for talent. I am married to Ms. America."

Wrapping his arms around my waist, he said, "I'm really sorry I couldn't pick you up at the airport. I would have loved seeing all the guys making goo-goo eyes at you as you walked out. I love everything you've done, the hair, the dress, the lipstick, the nails, all of it."

I kissed him, chastely at first and then as if I were starving for him. His hands went immediately to my ass and he pulled me towards him. We were both panting when the elevator door dinged to tell us we'd reached the penthouse floor.

"The penthouse?" I asked.

"You only live once," Mark answered.

The room was utterly spectacular, with an incredible view of the strip and luxury piled atop luxury. We stood next to the window just staring at the crowds milling around below us and at the fountains going off down the street. I felt Mark's hand drop from my waist to the top of my right ass cheek. I had read that soldiers often had the extreme urge to copulate right after a battle, something about their feeling the need to reproduce after being threatened.