119 comments/ 62407 views/ 27 favorites When The Heartache is Over By: StangStar06 Hi Folks, Thanks for all of the E-mails and comments on last week's story. Whether positive or negative I appreciated all of them. This week's story is a bit different though as usual. So If it's not your cup of tea fear not next week's story is very different from this one. Thanks as always to the incredible Mikothebaby for working her magic here. And for everyone who reads it. SS06 * * * * * * I was watching what many think of as one of the most beautiful scenes on earth. Despite the circumstances, watching the sun rise in Hawaii is on a lot of people's bucket list. Somehow with me though, it only served to increase my nervousness and the sense of how alone I was. I'd always dreamed of doing this, but I somehow never imagined that I'd do it alone. I'm at the point now where I understand what people mean when they talk about how success means nothing unless you have someone to share it with. I think I should add that the person you're sharing it with also has to mean something to you and vice versa. I didn't come to Hawaii alone, but after yesterday, I've begun to realize that you can be in a small group of people or even in a large crowd and still be alone. My nervousness stems from the fact that a lot is riding on this trip and it seems like both my boss and I underestimated not only the stakes involved, but also the possibility of not getting what we came here for. With our jobs and maybe even our careers not nearly as secure as we'd like, I feel as if the sword of Damocles is hanging over our heads. At the same time, I found out yesterday that something I thought no one knew about is something that the worst person in the world who could find out, already knows. So this morning I got up extra early to watch the sun rise. I have no idea when or even if I'll have another chance at something like this again. A tear rolls down my cheek because as I watch the subtle hues of light as the glowing ball rises over the horizon bringing with it the hopes of a new day, I feel nothing but sadness, bitterness, regret and anger. It really shouldn't be this way. I have no one to blame for my situation except for myself so I guess I should suck it up and try to make the best of a relatively shitty situation. My name is Elvina Caldwell. And this trip is supposed to be a way for my boss, Lou Grant, and me to impress the new upper management team at our company. Our company, Dalton Industries, was recently sold to a group of younger investors and they seemed dead set on bringing in all of their own people. The people they brought in seemed to all be younger and bored. I'm not an old maid by any standard at 38. My boss, Lou, is 12 years older at fifty. When we first got a chance to look at them during a staff meeting, Lou and I, along with the other members of our staff thought the same thing. We all had the idea that we'd be babysitting a bunch of kids. We thought that maybe these kids were the children of some of the stock holders. Maybe their parents didn't know what to do with them or they sent them here to give them a taste of the real world. We thought that we'd teach them the ropes and serve as mentors for the young whippersnappers and give them the benefits of our years of experience. Within the first week, we quickly found out that we were in trouble. Even though a lot of the kids were barely out of college and some were still attending classes, we found out that it was we who had to bust our asses to keep up. To say that the culture in our workplace changed overnight would be an understatement. Men wearing suits and ties to work disappeared, as did the business suit and semi formal attire for women. Jeans, miniskirts and sweats became the order of the day. One of the things I noticed right away was that every single one of the kids, as we called them, was wired. They all had laptops, tablets or smart-phones and they all stayed connected through all forms of communication that I'd never heard of. In many cases, they communicated far faster and far more cohesively than our corporate network allowed. It was extremely scary and almost nothing was written down. Almost any document they did was sent to a server that I didn't know existed. When I brought that up in a meeting, I was told that the new communications structure had been outlined on the employee's page on the new corporate website. My boss should have given me my log-in instructions weeks ago. Neither Lou nor I even knew that there was a corporate website. Neither did any of the people we'd worked with for years. After a few more weeks, we started to notice that a lot of our former colleagues were no longer with the company. Out of curiosity, I called a couple of them thinking that maybe they'd quit or headed for greener pastures. I was surprised to find out that they'd all been let go. I heard the same story again and again. They simply couldn't adjust to the new company model. Most of them told me that given time, they might have been able to work it out, but things moved so fast these days. And most of them didn't know what a "twitter," was, let alone have one. Lou was pretty much the last of the dinosaurs. I didn't count because I was his assistant. Whatever happened to Lou, happened to me, by proxy. The new owners kind of liked having us around for some reason but they were always criticizing everything we did. They were also making it harder and harder for us to keep our jobs. Neither of us had been given a raise since they took over a year ago. They'd finally found something that we could help with. More and more, businesses were spending a large part of their advertising budget on Net marketing. One of the up and coming leaders in the field of internet advertising was again accepting new business. WellWen Marketing had sprung up from nowhere about four years ago. They had a lot of proprietary processes that were revolutionizing marketing over the internet. Their commercials both on the internet and lately on TV had everyone talking. Their early commercials had a guy who sounded like the AFLAC duck asking the viewer questions. "You said you were going to start advertising your business on the internet," asked the guy. "Well," he screams. "When?" Then an off camera voice talks about WellWen marketing. They got so much business so rapidly that for the last three months of last year they had to stop taking on new accounts. They simply didn't have the staff to service them. I'd give anything to know about their corporate structure, because overnight, the company had sprung from nothing to being valued in the billions of dollars. Anyway, they were having a "new accounts," fair and would be accepting new business starting tomorrow and that was where Lou and I had fucked up. You see, Lou and I both thought that we'd breeze in and sign up with them. We hadn't put together any kind of presentation. We never thought that we'd need one. Even on the plane, we found out our mistake. We'd met a couple of reps from other companies who were talking about the way that the model for business had flipped. It used to be that advertising agencies came to customers and pitched their ideas for ads that would sell the products the customers produced. Now with net marketing taking off like it had a rocket up its collective ass and the few companies who had access to larger amounts of screens, the advertisers had as many clients as they could serve. They could afford to pick and choose. Lou and I hadn't realized that when we got onto the plane. Lou had been so busy regaling me with stories about the old days that we never realized the game had changed. We'd both had the idea that they were going to try to pitch to us. I was along because even though I'm nearly forty, I'm eye candy as well as being half of Lou's brain. I've always been considered to be very good looking. I'm medium height at about 5' 6". I have long blond hair and very blue eyes. I have a rounded butt and very curvy legs, but it's my chest that seems to just pull guys in like a magnet. I have a set of 42 DD's that seem even bigger on my normal sized frame. There aren't very many guys who can look away from them. It's both my greatest asset and my curse. I learned from a very early age that I could get almost anything I wanted from a guy just by breathing hard and smiling. Unfortunately, I also got a lot of things that I didn't want as well. I guess we'd gotten to the point where on this trip, Lou had decided that having me along might be his ace in the hole if he needed to sweeten the deal. That was one of the problems that I faced this morning. My moral compass needle was going crazy. I suddenly realized that that my being here just as something other than as Lou's assistant made me some sort of virtual whore. My real value on this trip would be in wearing a low cut shirt and bending over a lot. I guess I'd come to terms with the fact that in a world where technology and paradigms were changing and expanding faster than I could process them, I had to use every asset at my disposal to stay employed. Letting a bunch of men look at me barely even registered on my moral compass. What set the needle spinning so wildly was the thought that I might have to fuck some of them. I had never done that even once. I could still, at this date, proudly say that I had never fucked a client for any reason. I have never had any kind of sex with a client for either business or pleasure. But this trip might change me from a virtual whore to an actual one. It was a decision that I might have to make and probably a lot sooner than I was ready for. I don't think that I could do it, no matter what. Sex causes too many problems. Trust me, I should know. If the choice came between having sex with some guy and losing my job, I guess I'd have to join the ranks of the unemployed. As I mulled the question and the circumstances over in my mind, my thoughts wandered. There were so many differences in the way that business was handled now and the way things were done 18 years ago when I left college with my bright, shiny Associates degree in business and office practices. Today everything revolved around computers and the internet. Almost everything could be done in house including most meetings. I couldn't believe it when I saw a team of the kids having a virtual meeting with a design team located in Japan. It was like some corporate version of Skype that translated the speaker's words into English on our end and Japanese on theirs. I had no idea how to even begin to set up something like that but the kids picked up things like that as if they'd been born with a computer in their hands. More and more, as I think about the kids and the way they relate to technology better than they do with people, I realize that my husband would be right at home in our current environment. In fact, he'd excel. This was his playground, it had never been mine. As I sat there watching the sun fill the area with warm light, I had an epiphany. Maybe our jobs weren't as precarious as I thought. Perhaps the kids' strength was also their weakness. Most of the kids played well with tech, but they didn't play as well with people. The majority of them had trouble functioning without their tech toys. It was really creepy to me to see them in groups at tables in the cafeteria. Three or four of them would sit together for lunch and never look away from their screens long enough to even actually speak to each other. Did they just text "Hello," or, "Goodbye," to each other instead of actually saying the words? That inability to deal with and actually meet with real people was the only thing that Lou and I had going for us. I saw now that it was probably the only reason the two of us were still with the company. I wonder what would happen to us if we fucked this assignment up. I think that things would have gone better for us if we'd delivered a great presentation and then not gotten a deal with WellWen than if we just had to go back and say we didn't get it because we were not only unprepared but didn't know the game. Would they look for new dinosaurs if Lou and I couldn't get the job done? I tried to take my mind off of business by watching the eager young and not so young surfers out on the waves. As usual, I compared each man whether skinny or fat, short or tall to my picture of the ideal man. It's funny, but my picture was far different from what people would expect. Because of my physical attributes, I could probably have any guy I wanted and when I was younger, I had. I was a very late bloomer and didn't get the gifts of my genes until my first year of college. My mom had always told me that when, "they," came; I'd have to fight the boys off. By, "they," she meant the breasts. Most of the women in my family are very well endowed; some to ridiculous proportions. I didn't want, "them." I'd seen the damage that, "they," could do. My mother married my father because she loved him with every fiber of her being. She wasn't unrealistic in her expectations the way some women are. She simply wasn't prescient enough to realize that all of the factors in an equation don't always stay the same. Some women marry a man knowing that he has faults because they think that they can change him. Women always believe they can turn a man into their perfect vision of what they think he should be because they have this magical hole between their legs that God has given them to allow them to control men. Men are equally stupid though, because men have their own version of it. Men don't marry women that they think are flawed. Men screw around until they find exactly the woman they want. But then they expect her to stay the same forever. Gravity, time and the aging process, both physical and mental prevent that from happening. My mother, in her wisdom, knew that my father had a problem. He had an addiction of sorts. Nope he wasn't an alcoholic, or a drug user. He didn't have a problem with gambling and he wasn't abusive. My father was a tit man. He loved my mother, but he worshipped her breasts. My mother could control my father simply with how many buttons she opened on her blouse. She could get my daddy to agree to anything just by leaning over or rubbing her tits against his arm. By the time that I was old enough to understand what she was doing, I loved watching it. She'd say, "Honey can you cut the grass today instead of tomorrow? I want to have a few people over and it might be nice to do it outside." He'd say, "But I was going to play golf today. I always cut the grass on Sunday." She'd open up a button and his eyes would head for her cleavage. Then she'd smile and some unsaid message would pass between them. He'd put the paper down, call his friends and I'd hear the lawn mower within five minutes. My mom would just laugh. When I got older, I asked her about it. "But Mom, doesn't he get to see and play with your breasts whenever he wants anyway?" I asked. "Of course he does," she laughed. "They're actually his anyway. I just carry them around for him. He got so jealous that you got to suck them when you were born that I had to let him suck on them too. My boobs are just one of your dad's triggers. Once they come out, no matter what happens, we end up making love. And they come out a lot because I love being with your dad at least as much as he loves being with me. I just have to pretend to give it to him, like it's something only he likes, so I can keep the upper hand. It seemed like a very complicated relationship to me at the time. But I had to admit that it worked for them. There were no happier couples in my neighborhood. All of the women envied my mother. And all of the men were jealous of my dad. And the two of them loved each other fiercely until... It all came to an end my first year of college. My, "freshman five," was actually more like a freshman twenty. My bean pole legs became curvier and thicker. My ass got rounder as well. But the biggest change was that over the course of a year my boobs got bigger so fast they hurt. I went from a respectable smaller "C" cup that barely appeared on anyone's radar to a double "D," between August and June of my freshman year at college. When I got home, none of my clothes, especially not my underwear, fit anymore. I also arrived home to help my mom through the pain of discovering her breast cancer and the treatment and recovery. Over the years, my mom had continued to only love my dad more and more, but within a few months of the surgery it became clear that what he'd loved most was gone. The year following my mom's surgery, I could feel his eyes on me everywhere I went while I was at home. I was twenty years old and had lost my virginity that summer so I knew what he wanted. I also knew that it would never happen. Please don't paint my father as a monster. He never laid so much as a finger on me or even made a lascivious remark. But he couldn't help what he was. He left my mom with a note that she never revealed the contents of to me. He split everything with her fifty/fifty, except that she got to keep the house. My father was and probably is a good provider. She also gets half of his pension until she died. And he paid for me to finish college. My mom told me that he only divorced her so that she could find someone else. Someone who would love her the way that she deserved instead of loving her for what she used to be. In his own way, I guess he was being honest and though I've never sought him out, I've always respected him for that. Instead of stretching things out and torturing her, he'd chosen to give my mother one sharp blow and he waited until she'd fully recovered from the cancer to do it. No one can ever tell or control how one person feels about another. It strikes me funny as I think about it. I spend probably a quarter of my salary on private investigators but I've never tried to find my father. Anyway, my father leaving us affected my mother. It changed her and made her old and eventually killed her far faster than the cancer might have and in a more insidious way. As I've mentioned before, my mother loved my father with every fiber of her being. I think that must be genetic too. She was simply never able to get over him leaving her. She started to look much older than her actual age overnight. She also lost a lot of her confidence about her own self-image. She spent a lot of time looking at pictures of herself, from when she had her boobs. She dated a few times and a couple of the guys really liked her. But her heart never beat for anyone else the way it did for my dad. Seeing that made me realize that the guys I'd been dating were all wrong for me. I'm certain that eventually I'd have come to the same realization on my own, but seeing the breakup of my family made me even more conscious of the fact that it was very important that I find the right man. Most of the guys I'd been dating had been the athletes or the outgoing types. They were the kind of guys who were competitors and were willing to do what it took to get what they wanted. In a lot of cases, what they wanted was to get their hands on my tits and their dick inside of me. That was, after all, normal and I got a lot out of it too in a purely physical sense. But after a while of that, I started to wonder if there was anything else. I didn't feel the way my mother felt about my father about any of those guys. In fact, I sometimes broke up with guys just because they pissed me off or made the wrong kind of joke. There were always a lot more guys who wanted me than I needed anyway. Things went along great until my third year of college. I had put off taking all of my math classes until that year because I hated math. Even doing percentages and compounding interest formulas in the accounting classes had me ready to pull out my hair. When The Heartache is Over They assigned me a tutor. Danny Caldwell was the kind of guy I usually looked past to see my date. Someone who looked like Danny would never have registered on my radar at all and when I first met him, it wasn't love at first site. The first thing I noticed about him was that my grades went up. I don't think back then that if you asked me to describe him I could have, even though I was spending three or four hours a week with him. Slowly some of the things he said began to sink in and they weren't about math. Most of the guys I went out with couldn't wait to get me naked. In fact, the guys that were the most confident, didn't even bother with the dates before the sex, they just came over to fuck me. Some of them had so little patience that they'd start stripping my clothes off and just push my face where they wanted it. I started to find myself remembering how patient Danny was with me and how he'd always make time to see me. I think the thing that made Danny jump from faceless dweeb to dating material was my birthday. The guy I was dating was supposed to be a great wrestler. Everyone thought that he'd go to the Olympics and then...Shit what do wrestlers do after the Olympics? Anyway on my birthday, Stu, the wrestler, came over. I expected that we'd g out to a show or a nice movie but it was business as usual. Less than thirty seconds after he got to my dorm, I was on my knees bobbing my head up and down in his crotch. "Slow it down Babe," he growled. "I got something special I wanna try." I continued sucking his dick and put everything I'd learned that he liked into it. I really believed that Stu had something worked out for my birthday. "Oh shit," he growled suddenly and pushed me off of him. That was unusual for Stu because he expected me to swallow his stuff and I did because it beat cleaning it off of my clothes and furniture. But this time he roughly pushed me away from him which surprised the hell out of me. Then he just shot blast after blast of his sperm right in my face and then yelled," Happy Birthday!" Just as I thought it had gotten as bad as it could get, he pulled out his cell phone and snapped a couple of pictures of me with his semen all over my face and running down until it dripped off of my chin. "What the fuck did you do that for?" I hissed. "It's called a facial," he smiled. "Did ya like it? Wait until I show these pictures to the guys." He zipped up his pants and got ready to leave. "What about my fucking birthday?" I asked. "I gave you a present," smirked. "What are you whining about? Jeez." I wanted to cry. After Stu left, I took a shower and cleaned myself up. I'd just gotten out of the shower and had put my robe on when the doorbell rang. I went to the door still drying my hair off. It was Danny. "Sorry Danny," I said. "I didn't know that we had a session today." "We don't," he said. "Happy Birthday." He handed me a small box and then walked away. I opened the box and inside was a beautiful gold locket. It was real gold too, not one of those cheap fakes. I opened the locket and there was nothing in it. I thought about that locket for the rest of the evening. My roommate even commented on it when she came home from her date. "I'll trade you my gold ear rings for it," she said. "I don't think so," I told her. "Why'd he give it to you?" she asked. "Today is my birthday, remember," I said. "Shit, I forgot," she said. It hit me then. I was this hot, beautiful, popular woman, yet not one of the guys I dated had even bothered to remember my birthday. Not even my roommate who was supposedly my best friend on campus took the time out to get me a present. Only Danny had. I started to think about Danny then. I thought about the way that he always looked at my eyes when he spoke to me. He was always patient with me when it came to teaching me new things or even going over things that I'd forgotten for the twentieth time. I started to wonder how he'd be with other aspects of life. I even started to look at the long term picture. I was sure that he'd be perfect for me. Like my mother before me, I realized that Danny's limitation might be a good one for me. So he was socially inept and not that great looking. One we were out of college, no one would care what he looked like and it meant that he was far less likely to cheat on me. And since he wasn't mesmerized by my tits, the way every other guy was, maybe he'd get to know me and love me instead of just my boobs. The next day, when we met for tutoring, before he even got the books out, I was asking him questions. "Danny, what is this for?" I asked. "I got it for your birthday," he said. The he looked in my eyes and his face changed. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's my mistake. I've been tutoring you for a few months now and I didn't mean to overstep. I guess I'd started to think of us as friends instead of just...me being your tutor. It won't happen again." He actually looked sad. He had done the only thing that kept my birthday from being grounds for suicide and he was apologizing for it. "Danny, it's a great gift," I smiled. "It was very thoughtful. I just wondered why you'd done it. And we are friends. I'll never take it off." I had worn a deep V sweater and the tiny locket dangled between my breasts. He looked at me and smiled and the smile wasn't sexual or anything lewd. He was just happy that I liked it. "What should I do with it?" I asked. "I have no idea," he said. "I guess you could get a small picture of yourself and one of Stu and put them in it." I was really floored that someone just wanted to make me happy. I didn't get much math done that day, but Danny was as patient as ever. I spent the whole afternoon staring at him. He was small but not ridiculously so. If he started working out, he could probably have a decent body. He wasn't exactly ugly but he hid his features under a mop of long frizzy hair and those gigantic glasses. I told him that I'd been distracted all afternoon by a big blot of dirt on his glasses. I took them off on the pretense of cleaning them for him. I was struck by the biggest, softest most innocent brown eyes I've ever seen. The best thing about it was that with his glasses off I could look at him and analyze him as much as I wanted because his vision was so bad that he could barely see me without them, let alone tell that I was evaluating him. I decided right then and there that he was the one. I was done dating. I was also stupid. And although Danny couldn't see, I was the one who was blind. As my mother had told me, ever since I got my boobs, I was used to things going my way. It was kind of like the golden rule only with tits instead of just gold. Those who had the golden tits made the rules. It had worked for me just fine until I met Danny. All of those hormonally driven football players and others would do whatever I wanted for a shot at the golden tits. Danny never even noticed. If I came out of the shower with no bra on under my blouse or robe, he was still able to concentrate on math, but he'd tell me how great my hair smelled. Once I even pretended that I'd forgotten to put on underwear and he noticed that. He even told me to avoid my embarrassment. I don't think that the thought of me trying to seduce him ever occurred to him. It took me two weeks, and that was far longer than I'd ever tried to get any guy to do anything for me. And that two weeks, was just for me to find out that not only did Danny have no idea that I was interested in him, but he had a girlfriend already. I smiled when I discovered that. I saw myself as being involved in a competition that I would undoubtedly win. It took me two days to find out who his girlfriend was. I laughed my ass off. The girl was so plain that there was no way she could give him anything that I couldn't. I also couldn't figure out why he hadn't dumped her immediately when I'd begun to hint that I was interested in him. No other guy that I'd ever known would have even thought about that. I guess that was what made him so God damned special and made me want him even more. He was a man who honored his commitments and stuck with what he had. It also showed me that he was more of a man than my father had been or any of the assholes I'd dated had been. Danny was the kind of guy who had his girl's back no matter what happened. Luckily for me, his girlfriend didn't have the same kind of scruples. If she did you probably wouldn't be reading this story. We did what they call in team sports a three cornered deal. I offered one of the guys on the football team a date with me in exchange for going out on a date with Danny's girlfriend. I also hinted at what he might get if he broke the two of them up. To make a long story short, less than an hour after I'd made my call, my football playing sucker put the moves on Danny's girl. She was in his bed in less than ninety minutes and had broken up with Danny in less than two hours. Did I get to do my best Hannibal Smith impression and tug on my cigar and say, "I love it when a plan comes together?" Surprisingly, not. I expected Danny to fall in my arms that evening but it didn't happen. I didn't even see Danny or hear from him for more than a week. Even then, I had to go and track him down. I was so used to breaking up with a guy or having him break up with me and then seeing him out with someone else the same evening, that the pain I'd caused Danny shocked me. I asked a bunch of his friends where he was and found out that he hadn't even been to his classes for a week. They pointed me towards his dorm and the Danny I found was not what I expected. Danny was never what I expected. I don't know why it took so God damned long for that to register with me. Danny was depressed and had been beaten badly. He was also drunk and Danny didn't even drink. Danny had called his girlfriend to ask her where he'd gone wrong so he could get them back together. She told him that she'd just found someone better. Danny kept trying to win her back and she was beginning to see that my football player was only using her. Danny had written poems for her, and done a lot of really nice things, to try to win her back. The little guy was doing so well in fact that she was beginning to waver. My football player couldn't compete with Danny's full court romantic press, so he resorted to what he knew. He beat the shit out of Danny in public. He got the worst end of things though, because he outweighed Danny by more than a hundred pounds and was six inches taller than Danny. But Danny wouldn't quit. He just kept getting back up and Ralph almost just gave up and told Danny why he'd done it. The entire crowd ended up ganging up on Ralph and he didn't have nearly the fight in him that Danny did. After the second time that he got hit, he ran away. I guess the hardest blow for Danny was finding out that the feelings he had for the girl didn't matter to her. She'd just thrown him away for a chance to be with a guy who didn't give half a damn about her. She tried to get back with Danny after that but he wouldn't have anything to do with her. In fact, most of the school reacted like an Amish Community and shunned her. Even with her out of the picture, it took a while for Danny and me to hook up. First, he had to get over her. The fact that she'd moved away and switched to a different school didn't matter. She still called him trying to get him to talk to her. Once he got over her, he decided that he just didn't want a woman of his own. When I asked him why, he told me the saddest thing I've ever heard. He told me that women were like cars, it was sometimes better to lease them than it was to own them. "If I lease a car," he said. "As long as I keep the payments on schedule, maintaining the car is the responsibility of the leasing agency. When I'm through with the car, I get another brand new one. I can have a new car every two years." "If I buy the car, long before it's paid for, I have to start paying to get things fixed," he said. "And in the end, no matter how much I love that car, if I can't drive it, it's not doing me any good. Leasing is better. We all pay anyway. But it's less painful to pay up front. Then you know what you're getting and you don't get kicked in the teeth." "We're not really talking about cars are we?" I asked. "So Danny, how exactly do you lease a woman?" "They're called hookers or escorts," he said. "Danny, why would you pay for something that I'd give you for free?" I asked. He burst out laughing. When he saw that I wasn't laughing. He just changed his tactics. "Elvina, I couldn't do it," he said. "So, I'm just ugly, I guess," I said. I just couldn't figure him out. "Vina, you're probably the most beautiful woman I've ever seen," he said. When he said that, he almost got raped. I'm not much shorter than Danny and I'm pretty strong for a girl. I really believe that I could have wrestled him down on the bed and took him. "But it just wouldn't work," he continued. "The whole idea behind leasing or renting is that there are no emotional entanglements. That way no one gets hurt. And you're my friend. There couldn't be any meaningless sex between us because I care about you and it would mean something and someone, probably me; would get hurt and I'm just not strong enough to go through that again." We kept going, supposedly with me supporting a friend and helping him through the break up. We got closer and closer until we were together. Believe me it wasn't as easy as it seems. I've always had more than enough attention from guys and some of them are not good at taking no for an answer. And I'm no one's idea of a saint. I did slip a couple of times because I'm a normal healthy female who likes sex and Danny and I weren't in a committed relationship until we were. From the time that we were, though, I never did it again. On the other hand, Danny wasn't exactly chopped liver. The news of the fight and just how far Danny was willing to go for his ex had spread across the campus and there were lots of girls who wanted a shot at being loved that God damned much. Surprisingly, I was at the head of the line but he couldn't see me there. I almost lost him, so I had to take matters into my own hands. Even though we weren't doing tutoring any more, Danny and I often visited each other. Shit, we saw each other so often we may as well have lived together. He was all excited over going out with come ditzy English major and I couldn't stand the bitch on sight. She was one of those artistic nerd goddess types and I was sure they'd have a lot in common, so I had to play my hole card or risk losing him. He came over to ask me about his pending date and I smiled at him. I showed him the locket he'd given me, and had him put it on me. "Danny, you know I've never taken this off since you gave it to me except to shower, right?" I said. He just smiled. I opened the locket up and showed him the pictures of us in it. He was really surprised. I couldn't believe that he had no idea how I felt about him. "So I have some advice for you for your date tomorrow," I said. "It's not like I haven't gone on dates before, Vina," he said. I smiled and grabbed his arm and pulled him down on the couch. I held onto to his arm and wouldn't let go. I always did that to him but somehow it just registered as friendship to him. "Well, I want you prepared," I said. "So let's start from the basics. How can you tell that the girl likes you?" "You can just feel it," he says. "Maybe, but there are a lot of more obvious signals too," I said. "If she smiles a lot when you're with her and she takes every opportunity to touch you, she probably likes you." I was rubbing my hands up and down his pants leg by then. "But those are just signs of her liking you. Maybe that could be friendship. I know that you'll probably also wonder whether or not she's sexually aroused by you enough that you'll eventually turn the friendship into something else. The worst thing for a guy is to be stuck in the friend zone. That can be really frustrating." He looked at me strangely then. And I knew that I had him. "Do you know how you can tell that without wasting weeks or months of your time for nothing?" I asked. "Okay how?" he asked. I crooked my finger and gestured for him to come closer. We were sitting on a couch together and our legs were touching so we couldn't physically get any closer unless he rolled on top of me. I took his hand and pushed it under my robe. "If you feel her pussy and it's warm and almost feels like it's throbbing that a really good sign," I whispered. "If you take a finger and gently rub her slit and it's wet, that's even better. Is my pussy wet Danny?" I asked. "Unh huh," he said. "I have one last piece of advice about tomorrow's date for you, Danny," I said. He was still rubbing his finger along my labia and I was about to explode. "After we're done," I said. "I think you should call that bitch and cancel the date because if you ever date anyone other than me again, I'll hurt her, understand." That was it. It was my big chance to seduce the man I loved. I'd been working on him for months. With most of the men I'd known I could have simply said, "let's fuck," and it would have happened. But with Danny, it had taken months. Neither of us were virgins, but I'd been around the block far more than a few times. My intention was to make sure that what I had with Danny developed into the kind of love I'd wanted all my life. I wanted...no needed to have him love me the way he had loved his ex, only more so. I was going to fuck the living shit out of Danny. I was going to turn the poor man into mush. He was never going to be the same after that. I was in full feral creature mode and my nipples were so hard that they could have punched through steel. I was slightly worried that Danny might pass out or I might have to chase him down and pounce on him. Vision of running down the hall stark naked with my tits flying and leaping on him in front of witnesses flooded my head and I smiled. Fuck those people. I didn't give a shit what a bunch of people in college thought. This was for all of the marbles. This was for a happy life and future. But again it didn't work out the way I expected. Yep, I'd been around the block a few times, but apparently I had never been to school. Looking back on it I realized that all of my vaunted experience had come from men who were completely selfish. And all they had done was to use me. Danny made love to me. He gently opened up my robe and started kissing me all over until he had me tingling everywhere. He spent so much time rubbing me and kissing me that I thought I would have an orgasm just from his kisses. Danny licked my pussy. I'd had that done to me a couple of times but never like the way he did it. He took his time and swabbed every inch of my deck. I was gushing juices like a flood and begging him to fuck me. I felt so weird. Then he did it. He curled his tongue and made it stiff as if it was a small dick and started fucking me with it and licking up every drop that came from me. I was embarrassed that so much moisture was leaking out of my pussy. The slurping sounds he made just made it worst. Then he licked and nibbled at my clit and I exploded. I actually had to reach down and cover my pussy because I couldn't take any more. I was too sensitive. It felt as if a breeze blowing across the road on the other side of the campus would make me cum again. He licked his way up my body until he got his hands on my tits. He sucked and tweaked each one until my fire was stoked again. I was howling and I didn't realize how loud I was until later. Danny kissed me then. He is a very good kisser. His tongue was rough and that rough texture rubbed me the right way. It was as if he was trying to give me everything he had in each kiss. I started thinking of things I hadn't given anyone and I wanted to give him anything and everything I could think of. When The Heartache is Over I was so engrossed in trying to kiss him back and rub every square inch of skin I had against him that I didn't realize that he had pushed his dick into me. It was so wonderful. It didn't feel like what I'd thought sex was like. It didn't feel like Danny pushed his dick into me. It didn't rip me apart and force its way deeper and deeper inside of me. It felt like his penis and my vagina simply melded together and became one. Nerve endings that I never knew I had fired and made me scream. He didn't slam me like a jackhammer, we moved together and I just lost track of time. I don't know if we fucked each other to sleep or if I just blacked out from pleasure and Danny stayed with me but when I woke up it was dark outside and we were still entwined. I pulled the blankets around us and I must've made more noise than I thought because my roommate looked into the room. "God damn it, you were having a good time," she said. "They were standing outside of the room listening to you when I got home. Who've you got in there with you?" "My husband," I said. She closed the door still laughing. Danny and I got married as soon as we graduated. We both got great jobs for a couple just out of college and we started down life's path hand in hand. That seems like it was so long ago now. I smiled as I remembered that. I was so lost in my memories that I didn't remember my own rule. I never let myself think about the past because it always hurt me to think about what I'd lost. If I didn't stop myself, I'd start crying and then get depressed. I focused on the things that were directly in front of me. I concentrated on the waves and focused on the surfers. One guy came out of the water as if he was heading straight for me. He rode his board all the way up to the beach and when the water got too shallow he just picked it up and waded in. He picked up his board and something seemed off. With the sun almost fully up, he put on the sunglasses around his neck. He was not big but he was muscular. He wore those long board shorts and walked out of the water and turned before he got to me. His hair was cut so short I could smell his brains. But it was a good look for him. He was burned so brown by the sun that I'd almost thought he was a native Hawaiian. He went over to the guy who rented surf boards and jammed his board in the sand. The guy handed him a towel, a shirt and a pair of deck shoes. When he got done dressing, the guy threw him a soda and he walked off. For some reason, I couldn't stop looking at the guy. I'd expected him to come over to try to talk to me. Though he was obviously younger than I am, very few men could really resist my girls. He had though. He hadn't even looked at me twice. He headed for a car that I hadn't noticed there. It was a beast. The car was a Mustang. I knew that much because I saw them everywhere now. My husband has one but not like this one. His was much older. This was one of the newer ones. It had a custom paint job too. It started out a bright orange that morphed into a tribal motif near the back with a volcano and pineapples. I don't know anything about the car's mechanical systems because I'm not a car nut, but Danny would have known. I'm sure he and that guy would have sat down and talked about Mustangs for hours. The interesting thing was that I'd been told just yesterday, that perhaps it was time for me to move on with my life. I wonder now what my husband would think of what I've become. Would he still love me? My biggest problem was that since I'd lost him, the love I felt for him simply refused to die. But now it was more and more difficult to remember what he looked like. I seemed like a crime to forget the face of the man you swore to spend eternity with. I couldn't believe that after only five years I could barely remember his face. * * * * * * Cal I couldn't believe that after five fucking years I could still remember her face. She was standing there on the beach like some kind of large breasted fertility goddess as I came out of the surf. Out of reflex, I put my shades on. I was sure that they'd be enough of a disguise, although Grace always told me that no one from before would ever recognize me. I'm the same height that I always was, you can't change that. But other than that I'm completely different. Over the past four years, after nearly starving for the first ten months, I've packed on about thirty pounds of muscle. I cut my hair because Grace wanted me to, but now that I've gotten used to it, I have to admit that it's a lot easier to deal with. Of course, all of the added weight, even though it mostly muscle, also changed the contours of my face slightly. I traded in my glasses for contacts. And the sun here tends to bronze everything. My own mom didn't recognize me at first when she finally came out to visit me here last year. It was funny, but still a shock that my mom had stood right next to me and didn't know me. On the other hand, I'd recognized Elvina the second I looked at her. There was simply no forgetting her. You could probably write songs about her tits alone. They have seemed to settle a little bit further down on her chest but that's probably just gravity working its magic more than anything else. Maybe there are a few more lines on her face and her expression doesn't seem to be as full of hope and happiness, but I knew it was her. Most of the guys on the beach seemed to be unable to look away from her tits. If any of them had any idea how soft and yielding they were or just how heavy those orbs were, they'd defy decorum and attack her on sight just to get their hands on them. Helen of Troy was said to have had the face that launched a thousand ships. Elvina's tits could probably launch two thousand. I hope that whoever was claiming them now was ready for all of the attention they brought her. Even as I toweled off, I got a flash of pain at that thought. I'd seriously thought that all of that was behind me. In the back of my mind, there was a niggling thought that they should still be mine. Those tits and all the rest of her were supposed to be mine for the rest of my life. But that like everything else that came out of her mouth was simply a lie. Elvina should be about 38 by now. I just turned 36. We met when she was 21 and I was 19. We were together for 13 God damned years and I never really knew her until I left her. I was a fool and she was the one pulling my strings almost from the beginning. I smile a bit when I think about how thoroughly she played me. It was almost as if I was a two dollar fiddle and she was a violin virtuoso...no take that back. I was a Stratocaster Guitar and that bitch was Jimi Hendrix. She played the shit out of me and got sounds out of me that didn't seem humanly possible. She had her entire audience in on it and enjoying the music then she slammed me down on the God damned stage and set my ass on fire. I guess that she thought that after her performance was over, not only would she never play me again, but after the flames, no one else would ever be able to either. Was I bitter? Hell yes. Was I angry? Maybe. Was I jealous of whoever was fucking her now? I want to say no, but I'm just not sure I can. Did I miss her? Fuck no. I guess those of you in psychological trades would say that I need closure or one of those dumb assed concepts that don't hold water in the real world. But I don't. What I need is to have that bitch and the trouble she brings, off of my island. To tell the truth, most of my anger revolved around my building materials. For four of the past five years, Elvina has resided in a wooden box in the farthest reaches of the back of my mind. She's back there with my third grade English teacher who tried to force me to learn about using commas and that guy who used to take my lunch money in elementary school. I have people now that I pay to write my reports for me, and if that bully showed up looking for some money, I'd hand him his ass. I'm a different person now in more than just appearance. But somehow, Elvina managing to get out of that fucking box has me afraid. All I need to do is wait for her vacation or whatever she's doing here to end and I'll build her a new box. This time, I'll make the fucker out of concrete and steel though. I get into my Mustang and drive off without a backwards glance. Okay, I'm lying. I did check the rear view mirror once and saw her still standing there staring at me as I drove off. I wonder if she has the same sense of Deja vu about it that I have? It's different this time though, because this time I'm not crying. I take the coast road towards my building and during the twenty minutes my focus is split. One part of me watches the road and the other spins the clock back to the events just before we did this the last time. I think that had to be the worst two weeks of my life. Vina and I had been married for about twelve years then. We were settled in and comfortable. We had a nice house, savings, friends, the whole nine yards. Vina had started to make noise about having babies or so she claimed. I really believe she'd said it because her mom was going fast and maybe she thought that having a grandchild or two to spoil might bring her out of it. Or if that wasn't it, maybe she just wanted her mom to see her grandkids before she passed. I don't know but I do know that we never had any kids. Anyway, my old company screwed me. After working there for over ten years, they decided that I was becoming too expensive. I didn't find out until after I was gone. They may as well have had me dig my own grave. They had me spend two weeks training my own replacement. I'd trained people before who ended up working along with me or even doing jobs similar to mine in other departments so I never gave it a thought. This time, the person I had to train was a woman. Actually she was more of a girl. I had never seen anything like her before. I didn't realize it then but it was like looking at raw diamonds. Before they're treated and cut, raw diamonds sometimes look like just another rock. And that's what she looked like; just a gawky awkward girl trying to grow into her body. She was cute enough in her own way. She was exotic as hell, with her inky jet black hair and gray eyes. That cinnamon skin tone of hers made her look unreal. Her eyes were almond shaped so I knew that she was Asian in some way shape or form. After a few conversations to pass the time, I discovered that she was half Asian and half Brazilian. It looked like she had the best features of both. For two weeks, she followed me around like a puppy. She was a very quick study and after the first week, she didn't need me anymore. But for some reason, she stuck with me. She constantly asked me questions and I noticed her staring at the large framed picture of Vina on my desk. I was sure that some of the guys around work who were already trying to get into her pants had mentioned seeing Vina with me at some of the company affairs. I was sure she'd been talking to someone when she started covering up her upper body more and wearing shorter skirts. I thought at the time that it was cute but pointless. I loved Vina so much that there was simply no way anyone could ever take me away from her. The next thing I remember or at least the next thing that stood out more than anything else was the day they fired me. I remember Grace bawling her eyes out while people I'd worked with for over ten years just stood there in shocked silence. I didn't even get a fucking going away party so some of the guys I worked with and Grace, of course, took me out to lunch. I had no idea how I was going to tell Vina. It wasn't that big a deal, I could get another job, but it was kind of a shock. I called her to give her the bad news. Vina made most of the decisions in our marriage. We talked about things but if we couldn't agree on things, she just flashed those big old titties at me and things went her way. Somehow I never got around to telling her that I loved her eyes far more than I did her tits. But they were her pride and joy and I loved her so I let her keep the fantasy. After all, I had my fantasy. I came home to her every day. On paper, there was simply no way that a nerd like me should have had a woman like that. I thanked my lucky stars every day that she loved me as much as I loved her. I called her cell and it went straight to voice mail. I knew that Vina would be getting off in a few minutes so I decided to go by her office. When I got there it was a bit later than I expected. Most of the cars were already gone from the parking lot. I even saw some of Vina's co-workers wave at me as they drove off. They were nice people. We'd had a few of them over for barbecues. I was sure they were as perplexed about Vina and me as I was. I grabbed the door just as one of the last guys left. I walked through the darkened hallways until I got to their office. There was only a crack of light showing through the barely open doorway. "Wait a minute," she said. "I have to call Danny and let him know I'm going to be late again." I thought about just opening the door and telling her that I already knew. I'd even reached out and put my hand on the door until I noticed that her blouse was completely open and her bra was pulled down. Her boss, Lou, was behind her with his pants around his ankles. Even as she called me and waited for my phone to ring, he was squeezing her breasts roughly. "Stop it Lou," she said. I had barely the presence of mind to turn off the ringer on my phone. She left me a message telling me that she'd be late and that she loved me. How's that for irony? "You're lucky I let you call him at all," he said. "Shit, you're really lucky that I haven't stopped you from fucking him." "He doesn't deserve you at all," he said. "You're mine." Then he slapped her on her ass and yanked her head down by her hair. "You like that don't you bitch?" he said and she nodded. "Suck my dick," he hissed. He jammed it into her mouth so hard and so fast that I thought he'd hurt her but she just started bobbing her head up and down on it like she loved it. Then he roughly pulled her up spread her legs and jammed it into her from behind. . He fucked her hard and fast and kept slapping her on her ass the whole time. "Stop it Lou, if you leave any marks on me, we'll have problems," she said. "Shit, you already have problems," he snapped. "Did the little punk find out yet that he's losing his job?" "Not yet," she said. "At least he hasn't told me yet." He was fucking her so hard I was sure he had to be hurting her. I guess that explained why we didn't have sex when she worked late. The next night she was always all over me. I guess it was rough having to cover up the bruises from what she really liked and then put up with giving me guilt sex the next night. He flipped her over and she jumped up onto the desk and spread her legs. He plunged right into her burying his dick in her in one thrust. After a couple of strokes she was eagerly fucking him back. "Come on baby. Fill me up," she moaned. I was sick. I almost vomited. "When are you going to leave that loser anyway," he asked while grunting away at her. "As soon as you leave Mary so we can be together," she said calmly. I guess what I probably should have done was to burst in there and beat the shit out of both of them or at least die trying. But I was shattered. If I'd thought that losing my first girlfriend back in college had been rough; this almost killed me. The first time I'd gone through it in college was nothing compared to this. I'd only been with Belinda for about 8 months. Vina and I had been married for 12 years. The funny thing about it was that it had taken me the first five years of our marriage to get over the thought that she'd probably leave me. Even funnier was the fact that it was Vina who'd helped me to get over Belinda. This time I'd have to pull on my big boy pants and get over her myself. I think that deep down inside I'd always known that something like this would happen. I'd fought for Belinda and gotten my ass kicked badly. I'd already heard Vina call me a loser and say that as soon as Lou left his wife they'd be together so what was the point? The best thing for all concerned would be for me to just disappear. I left the building as quietly as I could and got into my aging Mustang. I drove home as quickly as I could and grabbed as much as I could. Then I set up the stereo and wrote my note. The weirdest thing about it was that in over twelve years of marriage I never ran out of things to say to Elvina. We often talked for hours. But at that very moment, perhaps the most critical moment of our time together I couldn't think of a single thing to say to her. I settled for, "press play." Then I got into my car to wait. Once I got the car where I wanted it, I pulled out my phone. I dialed the office number and tried very hard not to let my voice break. Ironically Elvina answered the phone. "Lou Grant please," I said quickly. More out of reflex than anything else Elvina just handed the phone to him. "Hello, this is Lou," he said. "Hi Lou, this is the loser," I said. And he took a deep breath. I think he was in shock. "What do you mean buddy," he said. "We're almost done. The little woman will be home all safe and sound in a few more minutes." I heard the click and I was sure he put me on the speaker phone. "There's no need for her to rush home. I'll probably be gone already by the time she gets here. I was there earlier and I saw the two of you. I heard the things you said about me. I guess the thing that hurt me the most was that Elvina agreed with you." "No, Danny, you don't understand," she screamed. "I'll be gone in a few minutes so she won't be burdened with me anymore. I loved her with everything I had. I'm just sorry that it wasn't enough. I have no intention of trying to tell your wife about this. In exchange for my keeping your secret. I only want one thing. Just be good to her, Lou. Tell her she can have everything. I'm just taking some cash. She can do the divorce however she wants." When I hung up the phone, I was sure that Lou was there alone because I didn't hear Elvina in the background anymore. She must have broken every speed limit in town because she made the ten minute trip from her office in under six minutes. She drove her car right up onto the lawn and got out of it completely naked. She opened the door to the house and went inside. I heard her scream loudly and keep wailing. A few moments later, I heard the sound of the stereo come on and Tina's soulful voice oozing through the walls. I thought about the sound I'd heard coming from the open door of the house. It was the sound of a tortured soul or perhaps just a really good actress. Lights on the porches of the surrounding houses came on. I started my engine and the exhaust system that I loved so much betrayed me. My MagnaFlow exhaust system has a deep thrum that is both easy to identify and hard to miss at the same time. Within a second of me starting the car, I noticed the light on the dash board telling me the trunk wasn't completely closed. With all I owned and could grab in the back seat and the trunk, I had to get out, to close it. It took me less than four seconds to reach the trunk and another to close it. In those five seconds, she was out of the house with only a jacket, one of mine, to cover her nakedness. As I heard her bare feet beating on the grass and then the pavement, I was stunned for a second. Why the hell was she going through all of this anguish for a loser? She should just let me go. "Danny," she screamed. She must've put every ounce of breath she could spare into the yell. It started out loud and demanding but ended up sounding like a mournful whelp. It was amazing that she could put so much emotion into one, short, two syllabled name. When The Heartache is Over I waved at her as she closed the distance between us and then got back in my car. Just as she got close, I drove off. She started trying to run faster. But two legs against four wheels wasn't even a contest. The last memory I have of Vina was the one from my rear view mirror. It's burned into my brain. All of that blond hair wildly arranged around that angelic face, giving her that just fucked look. Those huge tits barely contained by my jacket as they heaved with every breath she took. The jacket didn't cover much as she turned around you could see her entire ass. She didn't even try to cover herself up. Why should she? Vina, had always been some kind of Amazonian goddess. She was living, breathing art. I guess like Stu did before me, I found out that no mortal man can own a goddess forever. My time had just run out. My turn was over. I turned my back on everything I knew then. I left Michigan, never to return. I left behind all of my friends. I had a lot of them but really what did that mean? None of them could help me. Sure some of them could help me find another job or give me a couch or even a guest room to sleep in for a while. But there's truly nothing that even the best friend can do against the kind of desolation I felt at that moment. What can even the best friend do when you've had involuntary heart surgery? I have a friend who's a doctor. He's told me several times about how much preparation it takes to perform any kind of minor heart surgery and how dangerous it is. The doctors, even the most gifted among them, can't do it alone. Just to repair a minor valve takes a team including an anesthesiologist, a surgical assistant, a surgical nurse and several others besides the doctor. Sometimes there are six or seven people on the team and they all have a vital role to play. In even the most minor heart surgery, if any of those team members don't do their parts correctly or make a mistake, a tragedy can occur. Those medical professionals make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and they're worth it. Elvina, on the other hand, makes thirty five thousand dollars a year and she'd just done all of those people's jobs alone. She simply reached in and yanked my fucking heart out through my chest, held it in her hands still beating and just shit on it. Of course, in defense of the medical team, Elvina had a distinct advantage. In her case, it wasn't necessary for the patient to live. As I said, there was nothing a friend could do. After the operation Vina had performed so skillfully on me, I was nothing more than a zombie. I wandered around, obviously alive but saying nothing and only eating, sleeping and driving. I withdrew half of the money in our checking account and half of our savings. Vina could keep the rest, but I needed money to live on and it was rightfully mine anyway. I was being more than generous. I never slowed down and I never stopped until I was too tired to drive. I needed to put as much distance between us as I could. It was two days before I even thought about my phone. I realized then that I'd left more than Vina behind in Michigan. There were a few people who needed, maybe even deserved to know that I was okay. One of the worst things about smart phones and the iPhone in particular is that they're power hogs. My phone was deader than disco. I reached into the center console for my cable and started charging it. I kept driving for another hour and decided to stop and get something to eat. I pulled into the driveway of a McDonalds. On my way out of the parking lot, I saw a girl hitching a ride or trying to. She kept looking around her. I guess she was trying to make sure there were no cops around. I pulled over and opened the door. She got in. The whole God damned car smelled like McDonalds. She didn't even look towards the food. Not noticing that was my first mistake. I looked at her, she was okay looking. She had long legs, but she wasn't even close to Vina's level. Shit, who was? She opened her coat and I saw small breasts but a very flat stomach. Vina had a small rounded pouch on her tummy. She hated it. She did thousands of crunches and sit ups from time to time but it didn't ever go away. I thought it was sexy. When we were in bed, I rubbed it every night. "Leave my fat stomach alone," she'd say. "The only reason that no one notices it is because my tits are so big. But you see me without my clothes, so you know about it. It won't go away." She'd put her arms in front of her stomach to cover it up and I'd move them and kiss it. "My babies are going to grow in here," I'd say and kiss it again. And then her legs would spread and she'd get that look on her face. The look that told me, that if I didn't fuck her, right then she'd probably kill me. At that moment, back in my car, staring at the hitch-hiker's tiny breasts in her dirty Hawaii T-shirt, I wondered if Vina had faked that look too. More than anything else, I wondered why she'd put up with me for all of those years. "Hey snap out of it, guy," she said. "Ain't you ever seen titties before?" I almost died laughing. A thousand things came to mind at that moment. "I've never seen any that small," was one of them, but I didn't say anything except, "sorry." "If you want a better view or maybe a little more, we could pull over and conduct some business," she said. "No thanks," I said. "Too bad," she said. "It might have been better." "Better than what?" I asked. "Better than me having to rob you to get the money I need," she said. Her entire voice and demeanor changed. I don't know where she pulled it from but suddenly I was staring down the barrel of a very business-like pistol. "Pull over," she ordered. "Nope," I said calmly. "I'm just going to keep driving." I stepped on the gas and pulled into the freeway's center lane. "What the fuck are you doing?" she asked. "I said to pull over." "I heard you," I said. "I'm just not going to do it." She put the gun higher and pointed it towards the side of my head and I leaned towards her. I leaned closer to her until the barrel was touching the skin on the side of my face in the temple area. "Go ahead," I yelled back at her. "Shoot me. Shoot me right fucking now." She pulled the gun back farther. "Are you crazy or something mister?" she asked. "No, I'm perfectly God damned sane," I said. "I just don't want to live any more. There is simply too much God damned pain and I want to see what comes next. What is there really after you die? I don't know what there is but it has to be better than walking around with this empty feeling and a hole in your heart where your wife is supposed to be." "Slow down mister," she said nervously. "It's not that bad. You can get back together with her if you're still alive." The speedometer was rapidly heading towards a hundred mph and she was clearly nervous. "We can't, fucking, get back together," I sneered. There were flecks of spit coming from my mouth as I hissed each word looking into her eyes. "Mister please, get your eyes back on the road," she begged. "Why?" I asked. "I don't want to die," she said. "I do," I said. "Put that fucking gun back against my head, right now or I'll kill us both." "Mister, you can get her back," she said. "If you love her that much, you just have to fight for her. If she sees you fighting for her, she'll realize that you do love her and everything will work out. It'll even fix the hole in your heart." "She doesn't fit in the hole anymore," I said calmly. "The hole in my heart was made for a woman who loved me, not some big titted whore." "Why do you guys get so God damned crazy over women with big tits?" she asked just as the horn from the truck on the other side of the road started blaring. I'd crossed over the median and she screamed. I yanked the wheel sharply to the right and we missed the truck by centimeters. "Please mister," she begged. "Look if you want to die, that's fine with me. But let me get out." "Roll down your window," I yelled as the car started veering towards the left again and car horns started to blow. She didn't hesitate. "Throw the gun out of the window," I said. She did and again she didn't hesitate. I yanked the wheel to the right and started to slow down. I pulled off onto the shoulder and told her to get out. "I'm really sorry, mister," she said. "I...I just needed money so bad." "So you didn't see that big assed, "Help Wanted," sign at the McDonalds where I picked you up?" I asked. "I don't want to work fast food," she said. "There's no future in it." "But there's a present in it," I snapped. "So you do that while you're working towards something better." "Do you really want to die?" she asked. I just nodded my head. "You loved her that much?" I nodded again and drove off. The last thing she mumbled as the door closed was, "Love is for suckers." I don't think she realized that I'd heard her. But her words had an impact on me. She was right. Every time I'd given my heart, all it had gotten me was kicked in the teeth. I looked at the screen on my phone as I settled back in on the freeway. I had over fifty messages and most of them were from Vina. I turned the phone off and went back to my zombie like drive. But the girl's words were stuck in my head. And I had a moment of clarity. I decided right then that I would pick myself up and simply start my life over again. But this time, I'd do better. This time I wouldn't be distracted. And this time I'd do it all alone. I will never fall in love again. * * * * * * Vina I will never fall in love again. That was the thought going through my mind as I gathered my belongings and slogged back across the beach towards my hotel. I tried to wipe the image of the guy in that Mustang out of my mind but it refused to leave. There was something so primal about him. As I passed the guy renting the surfboards, I reached out to touch the board he'd just returned. A hand like iron closed around my wrist before I made contact. "You're a very pretty lady," he said. "But that board isn't mine. It's privately owned. I just wax it and store it for the owner. He comes out here to surf every morning." I should have noticed it before. The board matched the car. The paint scheme was pretty much the same. There was even a large Running Pony Mustang emblem on the center of the board. "You have a nice day now," he said. I turned to go back towards the hotel yet again. I dreaded going there though but I had to. I guess what I was going back to wasn't what I'd expected to be doing. I'd slept in a comfortable if no-frills hotel room last night. I'd slept alone. I guess I'd expected to have a bed partner. But it hadn't worked out that way. I wonder what had made Mary, Lou Grant's wife, decide to come with us on this trip. Mary had nothing to do with our business. In fact, she was almost my direct opposite. Mary had dark brown hair and was very slightly built. But she had a grip like a steel claw around both Lou's heart and his balls. In all of the times that I'd met her, I'd never seen her as anything more than some mousy little woman. She was a non-entity. I'd ignored her for years the same way I'd initially over looked Danny. Yesterday on the plane, Lou had moved back a couple of rows so he could stretch out and take a nap. Mary had moved over and sat next to me. "Oh joy," I thought. "This is the part where we talk about girl power and shopping." For the first few moments she didn't say a word. She just watched me looking over the report from my PI that I'd just paid another four hundred dollars for. "It's been five years, Elvina," she said. "He's either dead, or moved on. In either case, just for your sanity, don't you think you should move on too?" I looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. There was an iron tone to the little mouse's voice that I'd never heard in any woman ever. "No," I said harshly. "I can't. I won't ever give up on him. No one can hide forever. They even found Bin Laden eventually. I love Danny and we are going to get over this and move on with our lives together." "Elvina, you're a good looking woman. You could get another man just by snapping your fingers," she said calmly. "I don't want another man," I hissed. "I had lots of men before Danny, but I love him. He does things to me that no one else can. I love him like my mother loved my father. She died of loneliness after he left her. It took years for her to waste away and finally just die. But that won't happen to me because I'm going to find Danny. He's the only man I'll ever love." Among polite people a declarative statement like the one I'd just made would have ended the conversation. Maybe she'd have come back with something like,"I hope you find him then," or the slightly snarkier, "Good luck with that." But Mary Richards Grant went ahead and elevated herself from barely noticeable mouse-like creature, to the top of the bitch list with her next question. "If he's the only man for you and you love him so God damned much, why are you fucking mine?" she asked calmly. Every alarm bell in my head went off as she turned from sitting beside me to facing me. Her eyes roved over my face taking in every nuance as my face fell in shock and I gasped for breath. "Relax," she said. "You're good for at least two more years, maybe even six. My question was more out of curiosity than anything else." "What do you mean two years...or...?" I asked. "Before I divorce Lou," she said. "Of course, if you guys can't pull this off; and he gets fired after this trip, I may have to do it now. That's why I'm here. You know how it works in business; that is what you studied in college right? When there's a major problem for the company, the chairman or the CEO steps in to see what's going on. And that's what I'm doing." She smiled at me. "I have to protect my share of the assets. I have to make sure that my kids are provided for and taken care of no matter what. You wouldn't know about that," she smirked. "It still amazes me to this day; titties that big just going to waste. God damn, you could have had some fat, happy babies. Anyway, if you and Lou fuck this up, I'll be filing for divorce immediately. Lou is fifty, he'll be fifty one next week and he's in very poor health. Fucking you and beating your ass is the only exercise he gets." I gulped loudly. "His skills, like yours, haven't kept up with the times. The chances of him getting another position at his current level and rate of pay are not very good, so it might be time to cut him loose. The divorce papers have been ready for just over six years. The only thing left to do is to fill in the numbers and update the evidence file." "But I haven't been..." I began. "Fucking Lou for six years," she filled in. "Nope you haven't been," she said. "You also weren't the first one. You started about three days before your husband caught you. I even know why you started doing it. You're pretty smart for a stupid woman. And you do seem to love your husband. If your plan had worked, you'd probably be really happy right now and I'd be in the same position, only it would be some other bimbo that Lou was fucking." "But if you've known for all of this time why...?" I began again. "Why haven't I said anything?" she asked. "It's complicated. You do know that Lou loves me, right?" she asked. And I nodded. "He loves our kids just as much. The problem is that we're not like you and your husband were. Our sex life has never been good. It's probably some physical thing in me. But I don't enjoy intercourse at all. I never have. It may even be the way that Lou does it. But he, on the other hand, has a very high sex drive and he's like a bull in a china shop. I put up with it and gave him two kids, but after that we just dwindled down to once, maybe twice a month and on his birthday. That's all I can stand." "It's really frustrating for him because he really does love me, but I'm not giving him what he needs. That forces him to cheat and it's slowly burned away any feelings I have for him. I made him fire his previous two lovers because things got out of hand. I will not stand for being disrespected. And I will not stand for things getting even close to not being discreet. You've never said one single disrespectful thing about me. But some of the things he made you say about your husband were pretty bad. You do know that you hurt him far more with your words than with the sex, right?" "But none of it was true. Lou makes me say those things because..." "I know already honey, because he's insecure because he doesn't float your boat the way your hubby does or...did. It really pumps Lou up to have you telling him that he's better and that your husband is a loser and you'd leave him for Lou. And he, like almost every other nincompoop is bedazzled by your boobs." "But how do you know all of this?" I asked. "Ever since I found out about Lou's first lover, before you even got transferred into his office, I had the whole place wired for both sound and video. I have taps on his phone and yours. They were in place before you ever became his assistant. I even have your side of your cell phone calls on tape. I know that we aren't friends and never will be but can you accept some constructive criticism?" "What choice do I have?" I asked. She smiled and looked at me. "You have plenty of choices," she said. "You always did have them. Look, most of us are colored in some way by some traumatic experience from our childhood or young adult years. In your case, it was your daddy leaving when your mom got her boobs cut off. Your mom died miserable because she really loved your dad and you decided that would never happen to you. According to what you told your old college buddy last year when she called you, you started out just having flings with guys because you didn't want to fall for anyone so hard that it would shatter you when they left you." My eyes widened that she'd been able to analyze me from just phone conversations with other people. "That was really self-destructive behavior, Honey. But you seemed to get over it. What struck me as funny was her reaction when you told her about how upset you were about your husband leaving you. When she asked why you'd care about him leaving, you got really pissed at her. I guess she's the type of woman who is really more of a cartoon character than a person. In her view we can all only fall in love with a six foot tall blond Adonis with a ten inch dick. From listening to you talk about him I figured out your attraction to him. It isn't physical although you do go ape shit over the way he fucks you..." "Danny didn't just fuck me..." I interjected. "Yeah I know," she cut back in. "He made love to you. Yaday yada yada...he took you places that no one else could get close to. I've heard you tell that shit to more people than Ford sells cars to. It doesn't matter, Honey. You fell for him because he was the only guy you ran into that saw the woman behind the tits. He loved Elvina, not Elvina's boobies. That guy would drive through hell in a gas truck wearing flammable underwear for you. You knew that even if you ended up like your mom and lost your sweater melons, he'd still love you and the two of you would still have your happy ending, right?" I started crying and nodded my head. "And somewhere in this little fairy tale it got way more serious didn't it?" she asked. "You responded to how much he loved you. It became like some sort of weird feedback loop. The more he loved you, the more you loved him. When I heard you telling Lou about how you wanted to strangle the women he worked with, I knew what was coming. I knew how you meant it and I saw how Lou took it. It's too late now Honey but you do know that Lou lied to you, right?" When The Heartache is Over "What do you mean?" I asked. "And if you know all of this and you do or did love Lou why are you letting it go on? Why haven't you done anything about it?" "I already told you," she said. "You haven't let things get out of hand and it's in my best interest to let you continue. You serve a purpose for me. I've already told you that I just don't find sex pleasurable. The few times a month that I have to endure it to keep Lou happy are like torture for me. He uses you like a rented mule. He slams his dick into you like a nuclear jack hammer and you take it. He slaps you around, spits on you, ejaculates on your face and even pisses on you, and you take it. He doesn't even know that you don't like it. We know why you did it in the beginning but now you do it to keep him helping you pay for the PI's don't you? I've seen the bills and there's no way you could afford them without his help." "What do you mean he lied to me?" I asked. I was becoming more and more upset. Before she could even begin, Lou showed up and sat down. Because of his bulk, he needed the middle seat so she had to move back over to the aisle seat. Since then I'd been wondering what she meant about him lying to me. Even when we had dinner last night, there hadn't been another chance for us to speak alone. I was angry and frustrated but at least I hadn't had to fuck him last night. I got into the elevator and went up to our floor to get ready for the conference. I showered slowly and washed my hair. For some reason I was moving in slow motion. If I didn't get the lead out of my ass, I'd never have time to review the packet about WellWen that I had on the table. I decided that I'd save time by not doing my hair. I would just blow dry it, run a handful of styling gel through it and then brush it all back into one long loose ponytail. I put on my makeup and looked into the mirror. I remembered then why I didn't do my hair that way anymore. Danny loved my hair like that. I was glad that he couldn't see the lines that had formed around the corners of my eyes in only four years. I didn't know if those lines were from all of the crying I seemed to do or just from how much older and less energetic I felt. My life wasn't really a life. I never went anywhere. I never did anything. I had very few friends left because I just didn't want to be around anyone. It was just strange. At the beginning of our relationship, Danny had been the socially inept one. I would take him to parties and make him move away from the wall and talk to people. He never really got to the point where he was the life of the party, but he did get to the point where he could hold up his end of a conversation if he had to. It had never been difficult for me. Because of the way I look or looked, I've never had to worry about figuring out what to say or when to say it. Attractive women don't have to work at anything. Attractive women with big boobs have to do even less. I could walk into a party and there'd almost immediately be people for me to talk to. Danny had it much worse. Now it seems the tables are turned. For a long time being with me gave him the confidence to try things that he wouldn't ordinarily have done. Being without him on the other hand makes me not want to do anything. I have a mammogram twice a year and so far there hasn't been any sign of cancer, but it terrifies me. If Danny and I were still together, I'd still get them done but it wouldn't be as much of a factor. I've considered having my eggs frozen or something like that. I know that if I don't have a child soon, there may not be much of a chance of it happening. At thirty eight, if I don't do it in the next two or three years, there won't be much point in it. I guess that I could just go out and find some random guy or go to a sperm bank but I want my children to come from Danny. I know that this sounds stupid but he and I aren't done. I've done terrible things to him, but in each case, every bad, shitty decision that I've made has been because I love him. One of the reasons I fell so crazily in love with Danny over the years is because of his gentle nature. Danny would never ever hurt me for any reason. Well, he did once, but that was my fault. And the way he hurt me was by leaving me. I can still remember running through the building naked with nothing but my car keys in my hand. My boobs were flying everywhere as I ran and I had several truck drivers nearly drive into walls or other cars as they looked down at me. I didn't care. My only thought was to get home to Danny before he ended us. I ran up the stairs and into my house screaming his name. There was no note, he was just fucking gone. Everything got blurry then and I almost collapsed but found myself holding onto the dining room table. I found it then. A piece of paper rolled up very tightly. I wondered why it stayed rolled so tightly then I saw it and started to cry all over again. It was held so tightly rolled by Danny's wedding ring. I opened the note, expecting to read a very long, very sorrowful declaration of why he didn't love me anymore and how bad I was. I knew that we'd have a few phone conversations and argue. But what he didn't know was that there weren't going to be any fucking arguments; because I would win. I won every argument or disagreement that we'd ever had. Of course, I only won them because he loved me so much that he'd do anything for me. I made all of the decisions in our relationship. But it was mostly because things didn't seem to matter much to him as long as we were together. But this time it would be different. There wouldn't be an argument. I would simply tell him what I'd had to do and why and then I'd throw myself on his mercy and do whatever it would take for us to stay together. I'd quit my job or kill Lou or anything else he wanted no matter how far out it was, I would do it to keep us together. At first I thought the paper was blank. Then I saw the two small words in the middle of the page. "Press play," it said. So I did. "Once in a lifetime you find, someone to show you the way," sang Tina Turner in her trademarked deep vocals. "Someone to make your decisions, and I let you lead me astray." I lost it after that line because that line alone told me that Danny thought I'd done something to fool him or hurt him on purpose and nothing could be further from the truth. I cried then. I wailed. He had missed everything. The pain shot through me like someone had just taken a fireplace poker that had been heated until the metal was white hot and just plunge it into my stomach. I curled into a ball on the floor. I hated that fucking song with a passion that I never knew existed. "When the heartache is over, I won't be missing you," sang Tina, that bitch. I know that from Danny's perspective this was his way of telling me that he would get over this and when it was all over I would no longer be a part of his life or his heart. "I won't look over my shoulder. Cause I know that I can live without you." And that hurt me the most because I knew deep in my heart that he could. Despite the fact that I seemed to run things in our relationship Danny was the strong one. And his strength wasn't the blatant machismo that a lot of men needed. It wasn't arm strength. It was strength of character and convictions. That had been one of the things that had drawn me to him. He didn't need to prove how strong he was by trying to dominate me or telling me what to do. He had no need to abuse me to prove he could. All he'd ever done was to love me. Even before we'd started having sex, I could remember wondering when he'd make his move on me and he never did. When I brought it up, I remember wanting him so badly that I almost cried. When he'd said, "We could never have meaningless sex because I care about you and it would always mean something," I'd been his from that moment forward. From that instant, I knew that we were fated to be together and I would do ANYTHING to protect that. Before then it had been something I wanted. When he gave me the locket, I wanted him. Shit, I used people and broke him and that girl Belinda up just to speed things along. But from that moment forward, Danny and I were an out of control train. Nothing was going to stop us from being together. And even now, when it's been five years, one week, three days and...six hours, we will eventually get back together. Even if it's me moving my rocking chair next to his in the old folks home... The knock on the door pulled me out of my thoughts. "Elvina, we need to get going," says Lou through the door. I opened the door and he stepped inside of my room. Even with my back turned, I can feel him staring at my ass. My skirt stops about four inches below my knee. I pull a small waist-length jacket out of the closet and put it on over my blouse and he frowns. I unbutton three buttons quickly and the smile that forms on his lips doesn't last very long. I put on my locket as I have every day since Danny gave it to me and button the buttons back up. Next I grab my bracelet off of the dresser and put it on my wrist. A man's wedding ring dangles from the bracelet and that makes Lou smile even less. I wear the ring every day as well. As we walk down the hall towards the elevator, Lou brushes his finger against my ass. "I really missed you last night," he said. I let it slide off of me. "Elvina, when are you going to stop pining away for that loser anyway?" he asks smiling. I know that this is one of his games to make him more confident before going into battle but the past twenty four hours have been hell on me so I'm not up to it. Before I even realize what I'm doing, I've bared my teeth like a she wolf and growled, "Never." The elevator opens and cuts off his response. We take the elevator down to the main floor and catch a taxi to the building the conference is being held in. WellWen's headquarters is nearly as big as the hotel. The taxi driver tells me that the building had originally been planned as a small casino. It has five floors of business space. The first floor houses two restaurants and about fifteen stores. The second floor is leased to several businesses. The next three floors are all WellWen. And the top floor and even the roof which has a large garden and a pool are supposed to be private living space. Lou and I are amazed at how many people there are circulating throughout the building. When we got off on the third floor, there was absolute pandemonium. Lou and I looked at each other and realized that this was far bigger than we'd ever thought. The sea of people humming and buzzing around while clutching laptops and other props was staggering. We had nothing to show. What were we going to do, just walk in and say, "We're Lou and Elvina. We're from Dalton Inc. We don't have much to show you but you can look at Elvina's titties for a while or take her for a spin?" This was going to be a disaster. Before we got back to our office back in Michigan and even sat down, we'd be fired. If I got fired, how the hell would I pay for the PI's to find Danny? I found myself humming that God damned song again. It was strange how Danny intended for the song to make me feel like shit, but it hadn't worked out that way. I'd reversed it to the way I interpreted it and the song had become a source of strength for me. In my version, when the heartache is over, meant when Danny and I were back together again. I won't be missing you, meant that he'd be back with me where he belonged. "What the hell are you humming?" asked Lou beside me. Suddenly the people around us all moved out of the way and the sea of people parted as if Moses was walking through. I craned my neck and saw a tall Asian woman stride through the crowd and walk casually towards a dais at the other end of the room. The woman had to be at least 5'10" and in her 4" heels she easily stood over six feet tall. She oozed confidence from every pore. I wasn't often intimidated by other women, but this time I was. The sheath dress that she wore had to have cost at least a couple of thousand dollars. Her shoes alone probably cost more than my car was worth. I had her beat in the boobs department. But her ass, legs and waistline made me look tired and old. For once I was glad that I wasn't standing next to her. There was something familiar about her though. She got up onto the dais and started to speak into one of those wireless headsets. "Hello," she said, smiling brightly. "I'm Grace Wen..." before she could even finish there were people screaming, "Hi Grace," as if she was a rock star. "Where's Cal?" someone else shouted. "Who the fuck is Cal?" asked Lou. A guy next to us told Lou, while staring at my boobs, that Cal was the CEO and majority stockholder in WellWen. Grace was the COO. Cal had supposedly developed WellWen's proprietary software soon after moving to Hawaii. Cal and Grace had shared a tiny apartment surrounded by computers and living on pineapples and tuna while setting up the company. In the ensuing three and a half years, WellWen had virtually taken over net marketing in North America, Europe and some parts of Asia. If you saw an ad on a tablet, smart phone or computer screen and even the streaming ads on console video games there was a 67 percent chance that the ad came from or was streamed by WellWen. "Holy fuck," said Lou. "I had no idea this was that fucking big." "Welcome to WellWen," she said. "Since there are so many of you, we're going to divide this into two sessions. Can we please keep things nice and organized? Trust me we will see each of you over the next couple of days. It won't be like last year when we were seriously over our capacity. We've hired a lot more account reps and have access to substantially more screens worldwide. We're also pushing into South America and the African continent as well. That means that your products will be seen in even more places than ever before." There was another big round of screaming and if I didn't know that this was all about business, I'd swear that some of these people were drunk. "I love you, Grace," screamed one man from the back. She just rolled her eyes and smiled. "Okay, here's how we're going to do this. We...we...uhm..." she started stuttering uncharacteristically and was looking at something. I looked at Lou whose mouth was gaping and turned and looked on either side of me before I realized that she was staring at me. Seeing me had made her stutter. She picked things back up and continued though. But I could tell that though her delivery was again flawless, her mind wasn't on it. She was doing the speech by remote control while she thought up a solution to whatever was bugging her. "Maybe my tits distracted her," I whispered to Lou. "It's not your tits," he said. "Besides no one can even see them in that nun suit you're wearing." I wondered what it was. "I wonder how the hell she ended up here?" he said. "You know her?" I asked. "Not nearly as well as you do, dummy," he said. "I've never seen that woman before in my life," I said. "Elvina, get your head out of your ass," he said. "This might just save our asses and our fucking jobs. Why don't you do what you normally do 18 hours of every fucking day anyway? Maybe that's what's up your ass lately; it's the lack of sleep." "What the hell are you talking about Lou?" I asked. "You sleep for about 5 hours and some change a night," he said. "You have my dick inside you for the other fifteen minutes. And that's the whole day." "What about the other..." I started to say. "The other eighteen fucking hours are spent, mooning over, remembering, or dreaming about your wimpy loser husband," he spat. "Now if you think about him while you look at her it will all become pretty God damned clear who she is." I took a good look at her face and even from the stage, I could see her staring back at me. "That can't be her," I said. "If it is we're toast. After the way I spoke to her, she'll never give us shit. We might need to pretend to be from separate companies." "Will everyone on this side of the room go to the large conference room on the north side of the building? You'll be registered there and placed into groups for your corporate appointments and presentations tomorrow. That was our side of the room. All of the people who'd been here before looked around in confusion, as did the guards. The people around us started moving towards the room she'd indicated. "Everyone one this side of the room, go to the auditorium on the south side of the building." A couple of Grace's assistants went up to her and started telling her that she'd made a mistake. She must've been so flustered that she forgot her wireless microphone was still live. "Just shut the fuck up and do what I said," she told them. Her delivery was intense. When she said the word "Just," you could hear the "T" sound at the end so clearly that it was as if the word was made of concrete and she'd broken the end of it off with a sledge hammer. The word "Shut," was even more precise. It began with a long "SH" and ended again with that very pronounced, very crisp, "T." When she said "Fuck," that one syllabled word held so much import and impact that it rendered the rest of the sentence impotent. It was as if all Grace really wanted to do to was scream, "FUCK," in frustration. It was like she'd just stumbled into a really bad situation and she needed to find a way out of it quickly. "Or I'll get someone who God damned CAN," she continued. All of her assistants gathered around the stage stepped back and found other things to do. Grace quickly headed for one of the exits and found her way blocked by a well-meaning employee. He pointed towards the other door as if letting her know that she was going the wrong way. Grace tilted her head as if seeing him from a different angle and he blanched and knocked his head against the wall trying to get out of her way. It was as if he'd realized that Grace had some kind of superpower that allowed her to picture him on the unemployment line. I don't know what caused Grace to lose her grace, but something was going on. Even as we registered, there were problems. People kept telling us, "Usually Grace does that." It was also apparent that Lou and I were a problem. To start out, we didn't know what kind of account we were supposed to sign up for so we didn't know which group to join during registration. "The parameters for accounts were spelled out both in the E-mail and in the packet," said the woman at the desk. "I wish Grace was here. Didn't you read the packet?" Lou just looked at me in confusion. I looked back at him angrily. "Elvina, please tell me that you read the fucking packet," he said. "You got a copy of it too," I said. "You're the boss, Lou. I'm only your assistant. This is your fuck up, not mine." "You're about to be an unemployed assistant," he hissed. "I have a solution," said the woman. She called a guard. A big Hawaiian guy and he hurried over to us. "Take these two to the auditorium," she said. "They can listen to Cal's speech and that will outline the different types of accounts. They can then look over the packet during lunch and register during the other session. Grace would have probably done it differently, but that's all we can do right now." The guard, who looked like he didn't want to go anywhere grunted towards the exit. The heavenly dominoes of Chaos started to fall into or out of place, depending on your perspective at that moment. When we stepped out of the conference room, one of the mail boys was delivering messages and documents on that end of the building. The guard who hadn't felt like walking all the way across the huge building spotted the golf cart that was used to deliver the mail. He stole...borrowed it, figuring that he'd be back here long before the mail boy got done with his deliveries. He quickly drove the golf cart across the large building and got us to the auditorium faster than Grace had gotten there because she'd had to walk and was constantly stopped by people who needed to ask questions.