The Girl with the Man with a Plan Ch. 04

"You really stink, sir. And now, so do I. Come on. Let's go."

We have a large, walk-in shower that has a bench at one end. She uses it to shave herself. This time, I sat on it because I doubted I had the strength to make it through an entire wash cycle. She did most of the scrubbing for both of us; but eventually, we emerged. I studied the growth of beard in the bathroom mirror, but decided I'd let it go one more day.

I sat at the kitchen table, drinking water and waiting for her to cook an omelet at three in the morning; and I picked up that newspaper, which had been folded and left on the table where I'd put it. To say it was a shock would be a wee underestimation. The main front page story above the fold featured my picture. "Local Savior Delivers Vital Med Equipment." It was all extremely vague, and featured nothing specific at all except that our company had donated the money, and that I had gone myself to get the ventilators, which I had been told were "obsolete Army surplus." The story quoted Dr. Griswold, who had given half the devices to other area hospitals. There was also a quote from the truck rental dealer, who said he had refunded my money just as soon as he realized his agency (which was located on the corner of Dinwiddle Street and Centre Avenue) had furnished the vehicle used by the area's "Angel of Mercy."

"Who did you contact at our company?" I asked her. I practically inhaled the omelet.

"Wendy, the CEO's secretary. I told her that I just had to let her in on the Public Relations coup of the decade. I explained it all... or at least most of what you had told me. And about how much our small hundred-thousand-dollar investment was going to mean to the entire community. I wanted to know if she and the boss could take care of the press release, since both of us had contracted Covid while working on that project, and we were therefore unable to do that."

I shook my head in wonder. "Well, there's still the small matter of those ventilators actually being the property of the U.S. government."

She shrugged. "That's a problem being studied from several different angles. Wendy knows someone working as an aide to the governor, in Harrisburg. She let her friend know that the feds might be trying to take away ventilators from local hospitals in Pittsburgh, when they are desperately needed right here in Pennsylvania. The mayor's office is involved here, as well. The military procurement folks know that heads are going to roll for this, and they're frantically trying to shift blame from one organization to another. Storage depots are being monitored and inventoried by outside agencies, but they have no people available because of the virus. All the way up and down the chains of command, everybody is very anxious for this problem to just go away."

I tore into my second omelet. "And what do you think you and I should be doing now?"

She sipped a cup of coffee. "Now that we've had breakfast, I think I should change the sheets and we should both go back to bed."

I thought about that long and hard. But, by the time I'd finished my second helping of eggs, I couldn't think of a better course of action.

-------------------

From the very beginning of the pandemic, medical scientists made a prediction; and from Fauci to the lowest lab assistant, they pretty much stuck to it: If the CDC and FDA shortened some of the most time-consuming test periods, they could have a vaccine on the streets in about a year. That, as it was proven, was spot-on. Don't let that statement fool you. Those vaccines were some of the most-tested drugs ever produced. The only shortcut was the five or six years-long length of time many of the tests normally ran.

A year after my little road-trip adventure, a lot of things had changed and lot of things hadn't. Many mandates were still in effect. Many parts of our population were still huddled in their homes. But the advent of the first vaccines in December were touted as "the beginning of the end." By April 2021, they were generally available to everyone, and there were rumors of boosters by fall. The scientists now said that, without forcible immunizations (which nobody even considered), the virus was here to stay. But the death rate plummeted, at least among the inoculated. In the coming years, variants would be even more contagious, but not as deadly. At long last, comparisons between Covid and the flu were actually somewhat valid.

Old Man Bukowski retired in the middle of all that mess, and I moved up to VP-Operations, as well as taking a seat on the Board of Directors. In March 2021, I was appointed Senior VP of the company, number two behind the CEO. Polly, in turn, was the second most highly-paid secretary in the firm. Most of her wealth, she gives away. That's Polly for you.

She never spent another night with Rodriquez. He, as it all turned out, was a recipient of something that would eventually be dubbed "Silent Covid." In other words, he was a person who had contracted and transmitted the disease without ever showing symptoms himself. He obviously gave it to Polly. And afterwards, he gave it to his wife and his little daughter. The daughter's nanny eventually contracted it, as well. Forced to care for his sick spouse, they somehow fell in love all over again. And, as sole caregiver for his toddler (who only suffered the sniffles for a couple days), he formed a strong bond. With a new frame of relational perspective, he decided that he wanted to be a "family man" first and foremost; and so, instead of traveling the world in search of ever-greater wealth, he stayed home, played with his kid, and put a great deal of effort into making more of them, an endeavor in which he was eventually successful.

Polly gave her niece and nephew iPads next Christmas. I pointed out that they'd never thanked her for the bicycles, but she just smiled and shrugged. True humanitarians, it seems, don't expect recognition.

She still wore the diamond earrings wherever she went. Hidden about twelve inches below them, a new set of gold rings permanently reminded her of her devotion. And, she still wore the locket with my picture in it, though it didn't rattle anymore. The ledger was still there in her underwear drawer, but it wasn't locked, and I would never need its instructions, from either the first section or the second. It was my silent reminder of a pledge that I would never break. Polly, it seemed, prevented my molehills from morphing. She isn't a cure, but she is the only one who can treat my symptoms.

As it turns out, the Senior VP in our company is in charge of corporate charitable donations. If the quality of a literary work could be judged by its degree of irony, then you would now be reading a masterpiece. "Altruistic sociopath" has got to rank very high on the list of contradictory terms. But, of course, I let Polly handle all of that. Our firm has rocketed to the top of regional businesses where philanthropy is concerned. We have spokesmen from the ranks of both the Pirates and the Steelers guiding one cause or another. Also, the top five businesses in the Greater Pittsburgh area (PNC, PPG, Hownet, Wesco and U.S. Steel) all doubled their giving last year in an attempt to keep up with us. Directly and indirectly, Polly has made a huge difference here; even if, deep down, I personally just don't give a shit.

She's always looking for some new way of giving. And so, it probably shouldn't have been a huge surprise when she knocked on my office door late one Friday afternoon in February 2022. Almost everyone else had gone home for the weekend, but I often work late; and since we're a team (inside the company and out), she stays late, too.

There was a girl with her, a smallish girl of about twenty, though that was hard to tell. At first, I considered the term "waif," but I reassessed that, because she actually possessed the characteristics of a nice figure; or, at least, her breasts and hips suggested she ought to have one. I settled on the least attractive moniker. She was skinny. And unhealthy. I wondered if perhaps she was anorexic.

"Mr. Baxter, this is Ellen," Polly said politely. "She works in receiving. Part time."

I nodded to the girl and scowled. "Hello, Ellen."

The girl began to back up away from me, but Polly reached down and took her hand, holding her in place.

I waited for something else to happen. Finally, I said: "It's after hours. Shouldn't you be heading home, Ellen?"

The girl looked frantic. She tried to pull away, but Polly turned them both so that they faced each other, and she hugged her tightly, whispering in the smaller woman's ear. That went on for a minute. Curious, I stayed out of the interaction. Finally, they both turned to face me again.

"Now, Ellen," Polly ordered, "tell my Master why you haven't gone home."

Well, THIS was interesting. The girl took a moment to get up her courage, but she only said: "I don't have a home, sir."

There was another pregnant pause. If Polly wanted me to act in some bizarre play, the least she could have done was give me some lines. "Where did you stay last night?" I asked.

"At the Homeless Mission on Crawford Street." When I hadn't said anything else for a long moment, she added: "You can only stay there five nights at a time. There's a waiting list because of the cold weather that blew in on Monday."

I nodded. "And how, exactly, did you meet Polly?"

She looked up at my secretary as if she was a cross between a movie star and Mother Teresa. "She... she bought me lunch. I still can't believe it. She was sitting at a table with all the most powerful women in the company; and she saw me picking through a trashcan across the room. She left them and came to me. And then, she walked me through the cafeteria line and filled up a plate for me. It was one of the most amazing things that's ever happened to me. And she's the most amazing...."

"Yes," I interrupted. "Isn't she just?" I turned my attention to my secretary. "What the fuck are you doing, Polly? You're suggesting that we take Ellen home with us, but I am not going to start collecting women like they're stray cats!"

Polly laughed, put an arm around the slight girl, and marched her up to the front of my desk. Ellen looked shocked and disoriented, but allowed herself to be led. "Don't think of her as a 'stray,' sir, think of her as a valued employee that can serve a tremendous benefit to the overall morale of this company."

I sat back in my chair and shook my head, giving her a look that let her know that I knew I was being had. She graced me with one of her laughs.

"And just what is this benefit?" I asked, deadpan.

"Lamont Jones, in Shipping."

I sighed. "I do not know Lamont Jones, in Shipping. Is Mr. Jones the benefit, or is your plan to benefit Mr. Jones?"

"Both," Polly announced happily. "Lamont has saved for three years to buy a home; and three months ago, when the housing market was in the toilet because of the pandemic, he bought a small place in Mount Washington. But his girlfriend dumped him just before Christmas and ran home and married her old high school sweetheart in Mississippi. So, he's all alone and sad. But on Monday morning, I'm going to introduce him to Ellen, here."

"What?" Ellen and I spoke simultaneously.

"Sir, would you please excuse me for just a minute?" Polly asked. Then she turned toward Ellen, reached up and grasped her chin between thumb and forefinger, tilting it slightly upward; and she bent forward and kissed the girl on the lips.

It was a nice kiss, by anybody's standard, if perhaps a bit long. In point of fact, it seemed to go on forever. After a while, Ellen reached up with her right hand and grasped my secretary's upper arm in an effort to steady herself. But eventually, Polly pulled away, leaving the smaller woman breathless and dizzy.

"I need to talk to our Master for a moment, Ellen," she said succinctly. "When we're through, we're going to take you home and sexually enslave you. But for right now, I need you to be quiet and let me speak. Alright?"

The girl stared up at Polly as if she was looking at the face of God. "I... I... Okay."

"Polly...." I began sternly.

"It's just for a few days, sir," she interrupted. "After lunch, I took her across the street to the medical lab our company uses, and I had them do a full blood panel. She's clean and she's healthy, except for some anemia, probably caused by malnutrition. There are no STD's, thankfully. She's been selling herself for food for the past few weeks, though not often enough, apparently."

When I seemed unconvinced, she continued. "She's like me, sir. Like I was when you enslaved me. So submissive. So obedient and passive and compliant and in need of guidance. We're going to take her home, and you're going to hypnotize her, and we're going to train her together; and she's going to learn how to give us more types of sexual pleasure than she ever dreamed existed.

"Monday, I'll introduce her to Lamont; and, after a whole weekend of hypnotic conditioning, she's going to fall ass-over-teakettle in love with him. And he's going to love her, too; because she's going to give him everything he wants in life. She's going to give him the love and affection and loyalty he craves. And she's going to give him the emotional and physical pleasure he deserves. And she's going to bear him the children he's always wanted. And our company is going to be a happier place because of it."

I sagged back in my chair. "Aw, Polly. On top of all the charitable crap we do, you're going to get into matchmaking now?"

She gave me the grin she uses when she knows she's gotten her way. "You are the great, award-winning humanitarian, sir. You have been ever since you made that famous all-night drive to save our city."

"I was only protecting my personal property!" I bellowed, exasperated.

"Whatever you say, sir."

THE END