All You Have To Do Is Ask

I was almost broke, an underperforming salesman on the cusp of losing his job, his apartment and his car. The girlfriend was already long gone and, if I owned a dog, I'm sure he'd have run off, too. I came back to my crappy dwelling after a long day that started with getting ridiculed in a sales meeting for being the lowest producing sales rep for the fourth month in a row and continued with a long string of appointments where I didn't get an order. It was only Monday and I had the sinking feeling the rest of the week was going to be the same day repeated. That's the way the previous week had been. Hell, the previous sixteen weeks had been like that, so there wasn't much hope for this week to be any better.

I stopped by the local Chinese place on my way home and picked up an order to go. It was cheap, but not very good. I ate it anyway, finishing up by breaking open the fortune cookie and reading the little slip of paper inside it. "Everything can be yours," it read. "All you have to do is ask."

I know, I know, you really shouldn't take those little sayings seriously, but there was something about this one that made sense. In fact, it felt like it was Meant, capital M included. Unlike every other cookie fortune I've ever gotten, I kept this one. I pinned it to the corkboard over the desk in my little home office area even before I cleaned up the trash from my takeout dinner and washed my hands.

My hands were barely dry when someone knocked on my door. My landlord, with papers in his hand. Not good. "Jimmy," he said, "I'm here to collect the rent. You missed last month's payment and you're already two weeks late with this month. I gotta have the money or you'll have to move."

"I know, Mr. Blakemore," I nodded, "but things have been really tight."

He stood there looking at me for the longest time. Too long. Then I realized he wasn't moving. I waved my hand in front of his face. Frozen. As Elmer Fudd would say, 'there's something skwewy going on...'

Then I thought of that little piece of paper, that fortune from the cookie. "Will you give me ten days to come up with the money?" I asked.

"Oh, sure, Jimmy," Mr. Blakemore smiled, suddenly unfrozen and putting his hand out to shake on the deal we'd just made. "No problem. I'll drop by next Wedneday."

"Thank you, sir," I grinned, closing the door behind him.

I was pondering the oddity of the whole situation. It was strange enough that the landlord had given me the ten days I asked for, but what was the deal with him standing there like a statue for twenty seconds or more? Weird. Very weird. I shrugged it off, though, flipping on the TV so I could watch a movie to keep me occupied until bedtime.

The next morning, I went to work, expecting it to be just another Tuesday, and went out on my sales calls. The first client had the potential to be a good one, but I couldn't ever get them off the fence and buy from me. The meeting with their buyer started off the same and then we got to that point where the client is tossing up objections and the salesman is trying to overcome them. Then there was total silence in the room. The noise of the factory and the low buzz of the office stopped completely. The buyer was frozen in place like the universe was waiting for me to say something and restart everything. I blurted out, "Will you tell me what it will take to get an order from you?"

"If you can get the price down by ten percent, I can give you an order," he told me as the noise started up again. Weird.

Discounts aren't a problem if the order's big enough. Customers can also get a break if they pay up front, or on delivery, or pay the invoice within ten days. I got out my calculator.

"I can manage the ten percent," I told him, "if you give me a pre-paid order for at least five thousand units. Can you do that for me?"

"Not a problem," he answered. He didn't even blink.

"How many units do you need?" I continued.

"We use about three thousand a month," he answered.

"Can I make this order for six thousand units and set you up for another in two months?"

"That'd be great," he grinned.

"Shall we tell your finance people to set up the payment?" I pressed on.

"Let me call them and I'll take you down there myself," he replied.

He did, and within twenty minutes I walked out of there with a signed order and a receipt slip for a wire transfer of two-point-one million. All I had to do was ask.

I had one more call to make before lunch and the office was along the way, so I stopped by and left the receipt in my desk. I didn't want to accidentally lose it somewhere.

On to the next appointment. I usually had trouble getting past the receptionist, even with an appointment, but today there was a frozen silence, so I just smiled at her and said, "Would you please tell Mr. Higgins I'm here for our appointment?" and she caved. He came right out, shook my hand and led me back to his office. We made a little small talk and then everything went quiet. Higgins was frozen in place, looking at me. I thought of Yogi Berra's line about déjà vu all over again while I pondered what to ask for.

"Will you tell me what it will take to get an order from you today? I asked. Why not? It worked on the last sales call.

Sure enough, the noise of the world came back and Higgins sat there for a moment, apparently thinking of an answer to my question.

"Well, Jimmy," he said, "we only use about a thousand of your units a month, sometimes more and sometimes less depending on our production. We buy them from Ace Industrial Supply because they can turn an order around overnight for us. We order by four and they deliver by eight the next morning. An order is usually between thirty and fifty units. Our system works with Ace but I'm starting to think they're gouging us on shipping."

"Can I step out and make a phone call?" I asked him. He directed me to a small conference room where I made a phone call to our warehouse manager.

"Pete?" I said when he got on the phone, "Jimmy Carlson here. Can we help out a local customer by turning an order around for them overnight? Say they order by four and we deliver by eight the next day? Probably thirty to fifty units at a time and several orders per week?"

"That's no problem, Jimmy," Pete told me. "I got trucks on the street by seven every weekday. I can set up a route with them as the first stop."

"What would that do for the cost per unit?" I asked him.

"It's fifty bucks a stop unless they'll take a whole truckload of about a hundred of those units. Those we do for no charge."

I thanked Pete for the information, hung up, and walked back to Mr. Higgins' office.

"Our warehouse manager says he can do it," I told him. "Fifty dollars per shipment on local deliveries under a hundred units and he can put you as the first stop on his route. Will that work?"

"We can certainly try," he smiled.

"How would you like us to bill you?" I asked him.

"Can we get a monthly invoice at net thirty?"

"I don't see why not," I replied and started figuring out what his per-unit price would look like. When I showed him the numbers, he noted that I just saved him about fifteen percent. I gave him the sales secretary's phone number for future orders but wrote this first one out myself so I could get the process lined up for him to have what they needed the next morning. Twenty-seven units isn't much, but a sale is a sale and this was only the first of a long run. All I had to do was ask.

The rest of the week went the same way. Frozen silence followed by me swinging for the bleachers and asking for a big order. It never failed. By Friday morning I had gone from the office goat to the sales department's G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) by producing the biggest week ever by any single sales rep in the company's history. That was all well and good, but the payday on those orders was ten days away and I only had five days before my rent was due. I went to my boss and asked him for a small favor.

There was the frozen silence, just like clockwork. By now I knew what to do. "Could I have an advance on my commissions to pay some bills I racked up during my slow time?"

Bam! The boss just nodded and started asking how much I needed. Deciding not to be greedy, I only asked for five grand. It was just a small part of what my commissions would be for this week, but it would cover all my overdue bills above and beyond my rent. While I was at it, I asked for it to be paid today. Again, not a problem. All I had to do was ask.

It also wasn't a problem for me to take the rest of the day off, so I took the check and headed for the bank, made a deposit and rented a safe deposit box. After a quick trip home and back to the bank where I secured the slip of paper that changed my life, I decided to check into a hotel and try my luck at the bar. Back at home, I threw together a couple of changes of clothes, drove to one of the nicer hotels in the area, one that had a reputation as a pick-up spot, and checked in. It was only four in the afternoon. Since I knew there wouldn't be any action at the bar until at least eight that evening, I took a nap.

I awoke refreshed at about seven. After showering, I shaved and dressed in some clean clothes. Then it was down to the bar. Imagine my surprise when I spotted Melinda Formby sitting at the bar with an empty stool next to her. Melinda and I had gone to high school together but she was always out of my league back then. Let's see if it's still that way...

I slipped into the stool next to her and said hello. She actually remembered me! OK, here goes.

Bam. Frozen silence. "Can I buy you a drink, Melinda?" I asked.

"Sure," she smiled. "I'm almost done with this Negroni, so why not?"

I flagged down the bartender, ordered Melinda's Negroni and got an Old Fashioned for myself while I caught up on Melinda's life since we'd graduated. She learned I was still single, lived and worked here in our home town and was here to celebrate a triumph at work. I learned she and her husband were visiting his parents for the weekend. That was about the time her husband came back from the restroom, or wherever he'd been, and I was face to face with one of the biggest bullies of my high school days, Bill Tagliaferro. He hadn't changed much either. He was still an ass.

"What you doin' with my wife, punk?" he said by way of greeting. Oh my.

Then, BAM! Total silence. "I'm catching up with an old classmate," I replied. "Would you please go sit somewhere else?"

"Uh, Okay," he mumbled as he slinked away. Melinda looked at me a little strangely but didn't comment. We got back into our conversation, and I confessed that I'd always had a crush on her but didn't have the confidence to approach her back then.

"That's too bad," she said. "I always thought you were cute, and now you're what I'd call handsome." Time to swing for the bleachers again.

Total silence. I love this universe. "Would you like to come up to my room?" I asked. "Would you like to spend the night naked with me, having wild monkey sex?" She nodded, took my hand and started pulling me toward the elevators. Bill spotted us leaving hand-in-hand and stepped in front of us, blocking the way.

"Where you think you're goin'?" he growled.

"My room," I stated, standing my ground as the silence engulfed us. "Would you like to come up and watch me screw your wife?"

He followed us like a puppy and sat in the corner while I stripped Melinda and laid her on the bed. When I had her positioned where he had a good view, I stripped myself and slipped between her thighs. In no time, I was balls deep in the pussy of my high school fantasy girl and it was every bit as good as I imagined it to be.

I'll admit to being a little overexcited. Wouldn't you be? I came in her within the first few minutes. The good news is, being overexcited, I stayed hard and just kept fucking her. This time I lasted a lot longer. Long enough, in fact, to push her to at least five orgasms. It was hard to tell because they were starting to run together there for a bit. The last one, though, kept building up rather than merging into the other climaxes she'd had. I was getting close by then myself and hoped I could time it right.

Then, with a scream, she started to cum harder than any woman I've ever seen outside of the faked ones in porn videos. Just in time, too. I joined her, bellowing out my pleasure as my cock spurted its creamy load up against her cervix. I collapsed on her for a moment, trying to get air back in my lungs. Melinda was barely conscious, covered in sweat and lying under me with a silly grin of satisfaction on her face. I finally rolled off of her and looked in the corner where Bill was watching us. He was stroking his half-hard cock, and the remains of an ejaculation covered his hands, his shirt and his pants leg.

Silence.

"Would you like to lick her cunt clean of all my cum, Bill?"

He practically shoved me out of the way as he dove for Melinda's pussy and started noisily lapping up the two loads of jism I'd dumped in her and whipped to a froth. Seriously, I've heard dogs eat more quietly than Bill was while devouring Melinda's pussy. He had the area spotless and would have kept licking except she was getting too sensitive and pushed him away. Poor guy looked heartbroken that he couldn't keep cleaning her. That's when I had an evil idea.

Remember how I said he'd always bullied me in school? Some things just need revenge, don't you think? Yeah, revenge. So, even though I'm totally straight, I had a question for Bill Tagliaferro...

As the silence deepened, I looked my bully in the eye and said, "Would you like to suck me off?"

The next thing I knew, Melinda was gasping in shock as her husband, the big he-man himself, pushed me onto my back and engulfed my dick in his eager mouth. To take my mind off the gayness of this, I pulled Melinda to me and started making out with her. Her kisses helped me forget that a man was blowing me, at least at first, but then I realized that I was being treated to a first-class blowjob. I kept kissing Melinda, of course, since she had been my fantasy for so long, but I quit worrying about labels like gay, straight or bi and actually started to worry about coming too soon. This was so good that I wanted it to last.

All good things come to an end, and I was about to cum from this good thing that was happening to me. I thought about warning him but decided that my revenge shouldn't be spoiled by an act of kindness. Instead of a warning, I just grabbed his head so he couldn't get away and proceeded to shoot my third load of the night into his throat. I heard him moan as I came. He swallowed without backing off. He just kept sucking. I had to pull him off my rod because I was getting too sensitive.

"Thanks, Bill," I said, "Now, would you please go to your room and let Melinda and me have our privacy? I'll give her back to you in the morning."

Bill nodded, straightened out his cum-stained clothes the best he could and left the room. I lay down next to Melinda and she curled up next to me. I knew we'd fuck some more before morning, but for now I was content to hold my fantasy girl in my arms as I wondered what other good things might lie ahead for me, knowing that I could have everything I want. All I have to do is ask.