Swim or Sink

"I don't get to the lake, I have fucked up the car, and I cannot deliver for Carlos. They say trouble comes in threes." Theresa slowed down as she was speaking as a thought crossed her mind. "Fortunately for me there is a solution to one of my problems. I see it now."

She turned to Carlos. "Could Susan step in for Allison. What do you think?"

Carlos frowned and them smiled. "Sometimes older women can be good, in fact better. Let me see."

Theresa turned to Susan. "You know the probable outcome. Now strip for Carlos."

Susan was taken by total surprise. She started to say, "But...." Then she knew the consequences of her refusal and could see what was about to unfold and gave in to it. She repeated her mantra to herself, remember 'The Plan'. She undressed as if going to bed without any attempt to be alluring but left her self-supporting stockings and high heeled shoes on. She turned around in her near naked state in front of Carlos.

Carlos threw up his hands in a theatrical manner, "Not possible. No ass. Almost flat. Where are the buttocks? Theresa, you know I like to give a good spanking to start. I'd be spanking bone. No ripples. Nah. Not possible."

Theresa jumped in quickly "Ok. I'll let you have her for two hundred less. Eight hundred. What do you think? At least you'll get laid with a good fuck instead of pulling yourself off at your hotel."

Susan was horrified at being auctioned off like a slave. Spontaneous tears ran down her face. It took all the courage she could muster to run the course. She stiffened her spine. She had just learned that Theresa was a pimp.

Carlos spoke, "What about you, Theresa, you have a nice bum and could do with a good spanking."

"I'm not on offer, Carlos. You know that. Mary is away with her sick mother and my two newbies are not ready. Here's the deal. Five hundred and I'll take the prohibition of anal off the table. You can fuck her ass. With so little flesh in that area, it'll be easier to get to her rosebud. Final offer."

Carlos laughed out loud. "You should join my marketing team. Make a positive out of a drawback. OK you have a deal." He pulled out his wallet and dropped five notes on the table.

Theresa counted the money but left it on the table. "I'll even throw in my bed. Upstairs second on the left. Have fun kids."

Susan understood Theresa's seemingly generous gesture. They would be watched in the media room and recorded in high definition. She hoped that Peter would be able to fix that.

As Susan gathered up her clothes and her bag, she remembered the first time she was directed to go up the stairs. She saw the irony of refusing to be a 'two-bit hooker' and seeming willingness to be a 'five-hundred-dollar slut'. She gave a small tight laugh at her situation.

Carlos heard her laugh. "You laughing at me?"

"No Carlos. Of course not. Just a stupid wild thought I had."

Carlos bounded up to the top of the sweeping staircase. He leant over the bannister calling for Susan to hurry up. Shivering, Susan could only move unsteadily and slowly in her unfamiliar sexy five-inch-high heels she had bought to tantalize Victor. Each stair was an effort.

She froze half-way up when she heard Victor's baritone voice bellow, "What the fuck? Who the Jesus are you?" He had just entered the foyer on his return.

The reply came from above her. "Carlos, and who the fuck are you?"

"Victor. You're in my house with a naked woman walking up the stairs. What in God's heaven is going on?" Susan turned towards Victor.

"Susan? Susan? Is that you? Surely not?" There was ring of incredulous dismay in Victor's voice.

Susan squeaked, "Yes, Victor. It's me."

"Get dressed this instant. Carlos, get your things and get out." He screamed, "NOW!"

During the few seconds that it took for the exchange between the two men, Theresa emerged from the living room with Allison just behind her.

Carlos looked at, and after seeing no intervention, addressed Theresa, "tell him, Theresa. I'm your guest. Come on. You invited me here."

Theresa was as cool as she managed a malignant smile. "Carlos dear. Best you leave. Your jacket and what you lent me are on the table in the living room. Pick them up as you go. I'll call you tomorrow." Carlos gave a viscous swipe at Susan's bottom as he passed by her. She dodged and almost fell down the stairs. He missed. "You looked like a poor fuck anyway." Susan just grinned to herself, thinking you'll never know you degenerate. Carlos bolted past Theresa into the living room, collected his things and was gone in moments without a nod to his host.

As Susan finished her dressing, she was aware of Victor and Theresa in a hushed-tone argument.

Susan headed straight for the door. Victor called after her, "I'll be in touch." Seated in driver's seat, crying Susan collapsed over the steering wheel at the realization that she had just evaded the most humiliating moment of her life. She had no memory of driving home. Once inside the safe confines of her living room she once more found the Cognac and poured herself a stiff one. Once steadied, Susan's resolve to complete 'The Plan' was firmer than ever.

On further reflection, Susan was certain that Theresa would try to punish her out of sheer spite. She knew exactly what Theresa would do. Against all the caution she had taken thus far she called Peter ungently.

Without preamble, "You know the project you have in hand? Can you activate it tonight?"

Peter understood what she was talking about without any specifics. He added his own embellishment. "Yes, I'll write you something on the universal numbers overnight, but it may take twenty-four hours to have full coverage. I'll see you after school tomorrow to tell you about the results."

******

All day at school Susan was on edge and worried such that her stomach kept churning. Peter was absent from her class. She enquired and found he had called in sick. She was uncertain if his absence was a good sign or bad. The rest of her life probably hinged on his success. When she could no longer stand the tension and uncertainty, Susan called Peter. She reached his mother who told Susan that Peter had a bad headache and stayed in his room all day. She would not put Susan through to him as he was now sleeping. This almost drove Susan mad. After taking some deep breaths, Susan settled down accepting the fact that there was nothing she could do without sounding desperate and thereby drawing unwanted questions.

Out of the corner of her eye, Susan saw Peter enter the second period class the following day. Peter sat at the back as was his new chosen location. When the class settled, Susan could see Peter had a broad grin on his face and he gave a subtle thumbs up. Susan covered a huge sob that came over her by converting it to a cough. She told them to read Chapter eleven and prepare some questions about it. "Read and no talking. I'll be back in a few minutes." She left the classroom to collect herself and have a cry of relief in a stall in the staff washroom. When she returned, she asked Peter if he would come by after school to give her an update on his project.

"How did it go? What did you do?"

"I had planted a utility on their computer that allowed me to take control of the computer. Making sure it was not in use, I took over and cancelled their cloud account. Luckily, they'd chosen one of the cheaper services, otherwise I may have had difficulty pulling this off. Once you cancel the account, they delete everything they have, including backups, within twenty-four hours after sending an email seeking confirmation of the cancellation. The service keeps their costs down by freeing up space on their storage almost immediately after they have a cancellation."

"Are they allowed to do that?" Susan was curious.

"It's in the contract. The Adams either did not care or missed that aspect. Either way, it worked for us. I had to hang around to handle the confirmation email and later to check that their records were truly deleted. They are. That's why I took the day off. Susan strode around the desk and gave Peter a big hug, and suddenly became aware of what she was doing. "Oooops. That was inappropriate, but well deserved." It was unlikely they would have been seen through the small window in the classroom door.

Susan was tempted to ask Peter if there was anything she could do for him but guessed what he might want and that was a slippery slope. She resolved to find a way to reward him once he was out of school.

Peter filled the silence as Susan tried to form words that conveyed her gratitude. Peter broke the pause in their conversation. "The shit will hit the fan in the Adam's household once they have discovered they have lost all of their files. I removed my control file and shredded the delete files, so you and I are no longer in danger. They'll probably have a security company have a look at the computer. I know I would. They may well find some anomalies but not their source. We're good."

Susan found her voice to pour amazed praise on her star student for a full ten minutes until he said, "Enough Miss Smith. I must go. I have a squash game. And you're most welcome." He grinned. He felt good. He rose and left a relieved and content Miss Smith.

******

Susan was now free to work on the rest of 'The Plan'.

At the weekend, after a visit to the bank to get a thousand in cash, Susan drove forty-five minutes out to the swimming pool she thought interesting. She dressed in a plain white tee-shirt and jeans. On her head she wore a large-brimmed straw hat and covered her eyes with supersized sunglasses. As a distraction, she wore an uncharacteristic bright vermillion colored lipstick.

The privately run swimming pool was rather rustic but met Susan's requirements. She flashed her YMCA membership and signed up for the thirty-day subscription for herself as Serena Smith and for Peter, as a guest called Michael Chow. She paid using some of the small-bill cash she had to hand in. Susan breathed a sigh of relief that the kid behind the counter did not look more carefully at the Y-membership card. She carefully stored the cards in her purse. The paper membership cards were printed with thirty squares that had to be checked off at each visit. One of the place's attractions for Susan was the lack of electronic records, or, as far as she could see, electronic surveillance. Step one accomplished.

The following weekend saw Susan drive thirty minutes in the opposite direction. The stores at value mall covered both her needs. She found a great deal on six nondescript large beach towels, two to use, two in the wash and two in reserve. The only problem was that they were either dark blue or brown. After stashing the towels in the trunk of her car she checked-out a somewhat run-down beachwear store. It seemed to have what she wanted -- a large selection of swimming costumes at reasonable prices.

Susan hated trying on clothes in any store, but felt she had no option in this case. She was uncomfortable with the little changing booths having full-length mirrors and ill-fitting curtains. Fortunately, it was quiet in the store. With help on sizing, and after selecting about nine different costumes, carefully counted by the salesclerk, "please keep your panties on," she entered one of the three small changing booths, saw the curtain had a gap, and tried the other two booths only to find the same. Susan debated with herself whether to just leave but saw there was only one other customer in the store.

She tried on the one piece. Wrong color. She was struggling to get the second garment on when she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. Some pervert was looking at her over the top of some racks and through the gap in the curtain. Susan turned her back to him and wriggled the costume up. He was still there. She could see him the mirror. In a flash she realized he could also see her in the mirror. Yanking on the curtain did not help. She looked at herself and liked the piece. A lattice of open material joined the solid top and bottom of the quasi-two-piece. It looked quite smart to Susan's eyes.

Taking the costume off she faced and looked the voyeur in the eyes thinking she would shame him into looking away. He was unmoved and stood taller. She could see a faint smile cross his face. Susan thought to herself, "What the hell?" And pulled off the one piece. He grinned and winked. Susan felt a slight frisson of arousal. Although she had long known that to be a good teacher one had to be an actor, but she had never thought of herself as an exhibitionist.

Susan decided to play to her audience but did so with a detached impetuousness fueled by an annoying and unfamiliar growing sense of arousal. She knew that if she made a fuss, she risked drawing attention to herself and ruining the anonymity she had carefully engineered. She pulled on and off costumes. Susan lifted her breasts to the mirror and took an inordinate amount of time tucking the lower parts of the costumes around her crotch that was now getting damp. She could see the man getting redder and redder in the face, until, on her eighth change his eyes scrunched up and he looked down. He ran off at this point. Susan smiled to herself. She knew he had just lathered his pants.

Susan made her selection. In making all the costume changes she found an unexpected benefit of having her pubic hair removed. She had no further action to take in that department. As she paid for the costumes, she picked up a large tube of sun blocker and bug spray prominently displayed by the cash register.

Her final purchase was difficult to locate. She eventually found a large hip flask in an engraving store that carried gift items. After a brief internal debate, she decided to leave the flask without any engraving. All her transactions for the day she paid out in cash. Susan now felt set for her next step.

With all her school obligations met Susan settled at her computer after her evening meal to research Victor more closely and to also find out more about the lakeside property. The only problem was that she had no idea where the lake property was located.

Susan phoned Victor. He picked up on the first ring, "John. Did you get it?"

"No. Susan here. You were expecting a call from John, I assume."

"Yep. Got that right. What can I do for you Susan?"

"I'll get straight to the point. Two questions. One; what's the address of your lakeside place, and am I still on your invite list for the solstice party? And might you still want to follow up with me?" Susan wanted to sound as though she had no clue that he no longer had any leverage over her.

He laughed, "That's three questions. Yes, you will be invited. The invitations go out early next week." He then proceeded to give the address. "And yes again. That was on my agenda to give you a call next week, but since you raised the matter why don't you come over next Friday? I promise to be alone this time."

"Excuse my English but after the last debacle no fucking way. How about this -- I'll get a room at an upmarket hotel, and you'll meet me there for the night." Susan almost retched at the words coming out of her mouth. "You can pay though."

Victor was silent for a moment. "OK. Call me with the details when you set it up. Must rush now and leave the line clear for John."

She found the lakeside place on Google Maps. The house plan looked huge, much like their local home. It fronted onto a large lake. The photo was taken in the summer, and a large motor cruiser could be seen at a dock. There also seemed to be a couple of small sailing dinghies or fishing boats in the water tied to the dock. Apart from the main house there were five small buildings spread out along the shoreline. They looked like cabins with a faint trace of a pathway running along in front of them. If her guess was right that the cabins were sleeping accommodation. She knew she wanted to sleep in the unit farthest away from the house to help with 'The Plan'.

Next, she looked up Mr. Victor Adams. She found that he came from old money, notwithstanding that the major income Theresa mentioned seemed to come from his present job. His father had a Russian sounding name that had been changed legally to Adams. Susan also found references to the father making a huge fortune from the purchase and resale of state assets when the Russian federation collapsed before escaping initially to Canada and later to the US.

Victor is five years older than Theresa at thirty. Victor and Theresa had a huge wedding. Susan further found in the local lakeside paper record of a planning dispute about the 'cottage' that sat on a hundred acres of property. The reporting of the dispute details included pictures of the layout of the house, boathouse, dock, and grounds. The existence of the cabins she detected on the map was confirmed. Susan felt at least she knew something of the physical environment she would be facing. A few of her initial plan ideas were modified as they were supplemented with the new information she now had.

Susan and Peter firmed up the dates for swimming lessons starting on the second day of the long vacation. Peter was starting a summer job on the fourth week of the holiday. Susan had three weeks to learn. Susan also learned the good news that Peter's parents would be away in Hong Kong over that period. Peter would not be subjected to explaining himself and what he had been doing.

Susan dropped by and booked a small suite at the local Hilton for the Friday night. She called Victor and told him she would text him with the room number and time. All was set.

Routine set in at school. Susan cursed all that she had been subjected to even though she was no longer under Theresa's and Victor's control. When she was alone, Susan was consumed with 'The Plan'. She pulled it apart and looked at it every way she could.

At school, Susan felt a niggling annoyance that was more subtle. Arising from recent experiences, Susan's new awareness of the boys looking at her sexually distracted her in a way she had never experienced before. This in turn made her very conscious of her own body. As much as she would like to deny it, she started to take notice of the type of attention she was getting from her students and found it evident when she was followed by their eyes.

Being a scientist, Susan tested her own situation by gauging the reaction of the students depending on how revealing her clothes were on any given day. She noted that the slightly transparent white blouse that revealed her pale blue bra or a new shorter pencil skirt with a high walking slit, she had recently purchased, evoked greater attention from her male students. She detected a clear correlation between the amount of interest in her body to the amount she was revealing. She wryly concluded to herself that maybe she was hot as she had been told. For the first time in her life, she was having wave of spontaneous, yet unwanted, mild arousal.

She started to have almost erotic dreams about students. This was new. Susan attributed the dreams to a working out of her post-traumatic condition. One student dominated these dreams. Jerome. Although he was eighteen, he was still in grade eleven due to missing a year through getting a severe case of mononucleosis. He was the local Pastor's son, shy and introverted, bright, but not brilliant; he was bullied when younger mainly because of the dark skin of his African heritage but also because of his non-resistant attitude. He did not like to fight and was thought of as weak. He failed to assert himself when bullied despite the physicality of his over six-foot slim frame. His gentleness and probably sensuality were signaled by his delicate long fingers.

Susan found Jerome's brilliant white teeth against his dark skin made his broad smile jump out. She loved his smile and his large deep-brown eyes edged by long eyelashes. His looks and soft demeanor reminded Susan of her father's record sleeves that starred Harry Belafonte's photographs. In class, Susan could not help herself from returning to look at those enticing eyes. She thought that perhaps her erotic dreams arose from the one-time quick look she had of a large hill she slyly spotted in his lap as she paced between the desks during a test she had set.