BUSINESS TRIP

PART 12

“SO WHAT’S THIS about being the other man?” As agreed, Ann had waited until they were in the car to ask that question.

“It was out in Berkeley.”

“When you were staying with your college girl friend? At her sister’s?”

“The next year.”

“Oh.” Ann was trying to figure out the chronology. “The summer you got married?”

“No. The summer before that. I had never taken Jane out on a date at that point. We were just buddies.”

“Oh. What were you doing out in Berkeley? The next summer? Wasn’t that the year you were living with the crazy student?”

“Yep. Her family had a cabin on Lake Tahoe and we had gone out to spend the summer there. But somehow we were stuck at her mother’s place in Palo Alto. It was miserable. She didn’t want to f**k with her mother around and there was nothing for me to do and I don’t know ...” Brad gave a sigh. “We had a big blow up and she dumped me. Literally dumped me at the bus stop with my suitcases. Her idea was that I would take the bus into San Fran and then go to the airport and fly back home. But instead I called the sister. We were still friendly. She’d moved into an apartment but she took me in for a few days and then set me up to stay at the International House.”

“Did she make a move on you?”

“No. I liked her okay as a person but no attraction there. At least not for me. So anyway, the I House was coed, and I was sort of at loose ends wondering what I was going to do for the rest of the summer. There was this girl in the library who looked interesting, and I decided I was going to try to pick her up. Only time in my life I’ve ever done that. You ever pick up a guy like that?”

“Never had to. Never let myself get picked up, either.”

“Well you don’t have to prove anything. Different for a guy. So anyway, I asked her if she wanted to do dinner and a movie and she said yes and we wound up naked in her bed that first date. Well, it turned out she was only a freshman, well it was the summer after her freshman year and she went to college down near LA but she’d come up to Berkeley for the summer on a sort of sabbatical from her boyfriend. Which I understood. My girlfriend and I always had that understanding that we were going to date other people over the summer. But it wasn’t a one night stand.”

“You were f**k buddies.”

“Yeah I guess that’s what they call it now. She was a lot of fun.” Brad paused.

“And? I can tell there’s more to this.”

“Well, the next week the college girl friend came out to see her sister.”

“Oh.”

“So I went over to see them. They invited me for dinner. I didn’t think anything of it. We were just friends. Especially when I was living with someone else, it was safe to be friends again and we both still really liked each other. You know?”

“Not really. Do you think the two of us can go back to being just friends?”

“Maybe that’s why I’m telling you this story. Maybe it’s because there never has been someone to tell it to.”

“Jane doesn’t know about all this?”

“She might. I forget how much I told her at the time. Before we started to date. When it didn’t matter. Anyway, we fell very deeply in love.”

“So you broke if off with your f**k buddy?”

“No. She became the other woman.”

“You were f*****g both of them. At the same time?”

“Well, not at literally the same time. No threesomes. But maybe within an hour or so.”

“Oh. I always thought you were so upright. I thought I was corrupting you.”

“Same the other way around. I always thought you were a good girl.”

“And now?”

“Even better than I thought.”

“Brad, you know I’m doing this flick tonight.”

“Oh yeah. I guess we’ll do dinner after?”

“Brad, sweetie, can I ask you a favor? Come up with me?”

“You want me to watch?”

“Just sort of be there? I’m sure they’ll have some beer and maybe some munchies.”

“Okay. Least I can do.”

“Thanks.”

* * * * *

KATIE WAS WAITING for them in the lobby. She whisked Ann away to a corner of the coffee area. “So what happened?”

“When?”

“After you got back to the hotel?”

“Nothing. We went to our rooms and got up and had breakfast and drove over here. But Brad was telling me stories about his wild youth.”

“Brad had a wild youth? He seems so buttoned down. At least that’s what I thought until we went to the lake.”

“One of his girlfriends dumped him once. Literally. At a bus stop in California.”

“Really.”

“And he was f*****g two girls at the same time. Gee, I guess three within a couple weeks.” Ann was putting the time line together.

“So this is nothing new for him?”

“Guess not. Not for a long time, but maybe it’s like riding a bike.”

“Do you think we’re going to be like that? You know, respectable on the outside?”

“Maybe. I don’t think it’s a front with him, exactly. He’s just, I don’t know. A lot of things at once. Things you can’t be at the same time but he is.”

“Really. You know, Harry is talking about settling down. Maybe even getting engaged.”

“Do you love him?”

“Think so.”

“Even after last night?”

“Why would that make a difference? We went home and made love very nicely and it’s all okay now.”

“You still had something left?”

“Yep.” Katie giggled. “I told him he could f**k me anywhere he put his tongue. Apparently he had been watching me, at the river.”

“That’s not fair.”

“He wanted to do the same thing, just lie there and let me do whatever to him. But I said no, I was tired, other way around, I was going to lie there and he could do anything he wanted except he had to do it with his tongue first.”

“And did he?”

“He wasn’t going to let himself be upstaged by some college kid. First he French kissed me. Then, well you get the idea.”

“He stuck his tongue up your butt?”

“Yep. And his prick. Then he French kissed me again.”

“Oh no!” Ann was sputtering out her coffee. “This is too rich. And you let him, like ...”

“What was I supposed to do? They were my rules.”

“Guess you didn’t think that one through.”

“Guess not. You know what? It wasn’t so bad.”

“I’ve done it. Not with a real prick though. And done it to other girls. So exactly what did you do to Jim?”

“Well, after you two had r***d me all afternoon, I figured it was time to be on the other end. So I played a game that one of my old boyfriends liked. Except I used to actually tie his hands down. I had him lie on his back with his tongue and prick sticking up and then I would use those like dildos. Except when I used to do it only up my p***y. That was before you two loonies had corrupted me.”

“It’s Brad. He’s got, like this anal fixation. The guy is a total pervert.”

“So what about you? Was Hal any good?”

“Neither of us were really into it, you know? Everyone else paired off and there we were. We just sat and talked and he was saying how beautiful I was and I decided might as well show him a little p***y. So I did. And then I thought, well why not let him have a little taste. So I did. He actually knew what he was doing. Then he wanted to f**k me but I told him only my boyfriend could f**k my pussy.”

“Why?”

“Oh I don’t know. That was Brad’s rule at one point before the two of them just declared open season this week. I think his wife has something going on too.”

“Oh. Think they’re going to split?”

“No. I think they’ll have a nice makeup session like you and Harry did and get on with their lives. Anyway then I rolled over to see if he could figure out the loophole.”

“Oh no. You’ve been around Brad too much.”

“Tell me about it. Here I thought I was corrupting him. Well, he did, but I told him he had to use his tongue first.”

“And he did?”

“I don’t think it was a novelty for him.”

“Maybe not. You know what Harry told me? That Carla told him she’d been doing this stuff since she was nine. That she had run away from home at thirteen and lived as a hooker. Then wound up in jail.”

“Wow.”

“So are you going back to the lake today?”

“Yep. Coming with us?”

“I don’t know. When I told Harry I was going yesterday he said I needed to work it out of my system. Then I told Brad that and he said maybe we needed a couple more treatments.”

“He said that?”

“So I’ve been thinking how it would be fun to do the hands by your side thing with him. Think he’d like that? I mean, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“I just want to swim this afternoon. I’m doing this stupid movie tonight.”

“Oh. Forgot about that. You’re going through with it?”

“Guess so. I was all hep on it Tuesday. Now I’m not so sure. Ever do that?”

“Once. A long time ago.”

“When you did it with Sam?”

“Same time period. I was sort of a slut in those days. It was this big college orgy thing. I think I only show up in it for about ten seconds.”

“Oh. What was it like?”

“It was a lot of fun. But I was like twenty. Not even.”

“I can’t imagine how beautiful you must have been.”

“Yeah, everyone wanted a piece of me. And I gave it to them. Well, that was a long time ago. What are you doing for this flick?”

“I think it’s just me and a couple of guys. Not sure though. Guess I’ll find out when the time comes. What are we doing today?”

“More on those data classes. We’ve got a few existing data sources to work with. Mostly old stuff, IMS. Want to know how to integrate them.”

“Okay. Brad gave me some notes, but we may need to get him in to help.”

They went up to the same conference room as the day before with the same people in it. “Good morning.” This time it was easier for Ann to get them to shut up. Had Harry been gossiping about their night at the volleyball place? Apparently not. “Today we’re going to talk about how to use your existing data. I’ve got to tell you, Atlanta has written everything so far on the assumption there’s a nice clean relational database with all the data. And all the customers are telling them it’s not really that way. The next thing our group is doing is the internal version. So we need to figure this out too. So here goes.”

Ann put up a foil. “Now the way we’ve been thinking of it is that you have a data base table and a data class. The fields in the table correspond to the attributes of the class. But why does it have to be that way? Brad already has implemented the idea of related and computed fields. For example, an order line might include the customer name from the order. Or the price computed from the unit price and the quantity. But what if you wanted to get data from several different places? To instantiate the class, you need some sort of identity information. For example, the order number and line number or part number depending on how you have the keys set up. But suppose your order isn’t sitting in the new database at all? Suppose it’s sitting over in IMS somewhere?”

“Yeah, just suppose.” That from Ned drew a wry chuckle from the others.

“Well one solution is to do a mass migration over to the new database. And there are reasons to do that.”

“And a lot of reasons not to, honey.”

“That’s why we’re having this talk. So step one would be to set your data class up to look at the IMS database to get the data. But how? How do we get our stuff to do that? Well what we would need would be some sort of handler class that knows how to serve up data from IMS. So what would that look like? Any clues?”

“Some connection to IMS. And some methods to do the retrievals.”

“Good guess. But there’s another piece to it. If you look way way down in our system, you find classes that are just wrappers for C code. Any of you ever code in C? Well this is what a C class to do IMS stuff would look like.” She put up another foil.

“So the idea would be, you get the C code working. Then get the wrapper working. Then build data classes that use it. And no, we haven’t done it yet.”

“Think we can get this going in time to do us any good?”

“Why don’t we give it a c***k today and see how far we get?”

Which was not all that far. Even getting the C sample class to do anything was driving Ned and Harry crazy. Along with the ladies. The four of them were staring at Ned’s terminal in frustration when Brad came.

“You guys doing lunch?”

“I guess.” Ned gave a sigh.

“Smokey Joe’s?”

“Whatever.”

Today pulled pork was the featured item. But even that was not enough to cheer them up.

“Why the long faces?”

“f*****g C. You ever do any work with IMS?”

“Lots. In PL1.”

“Us too. Our test box with IMS doesn’t have a C environment on it. Ever set one up?”

“Nope.”

“We need Jake,” Katie said. “He got all that stuff going with DB2 in Atlanta.”

“You’re going to get Jake out here?” That was enough to make Ann choke on her iced tea. “Seriously?”

“Depends on how badly we need him.” Katie was giving Harry a look. “I’d have to, like, move back into the hotel. Just for the week.”

“How about Al?” Ann said. “If we could get him to come out?”

“If.”

“I assume,” Harry said, “you would have a way of convincing Jake to come out?”

“We’d have to talk about it.”

But Katie wound up riding back with Brad and Ann.

“My first year of grad school,” Brad said, “my college girl friend broke up with me. Actually she had at the end of my senior year, but then I went out to see her in California and everything was lovey dovey again. Then as soon as school started, it was over. Except a few weeks later she gave me a call. She had a job doing poll reporting, and she wanted me to come along for protection.”

“I think I know where this is going,” Katie said. “It’s none of your f*****g business. Look, what did we do at the lake yesterday? And you said you wanted more and I’m going to come over this afternoon and give you more. If you want me to.”

“I do.”

“So why the f**k is this any different? f*****g Harry does not f*****g own me. We’re not married. We’re not even engaged. Did he say anything last night? No, he couldn’t wait to get his hands, more than his hands, on that little girl. So why the f**k is it such a big f*****g deal?”

“It just reminded me of something that happened,” Brad said.

“Brad, could you get this working for us?”

“I’ve never set up a C environment. Maybe we could get our test system to talk to IMS?”

They walked into Ned’s office to a chilly reception. “Harry, sweetie.”

“What?” Harry gave Katie a brief scowl.

“Could you install IMS on our test system?”

“That I know how to do,” Ned said. Brad gave Ann a hush sign and the left the other three to work things out.

An hour later Brad came out and gave them a thumbs up. “Got the C code working. Did an unload reload into that box.”

“What about the wrapper?”

“Harry and Katie are working on it.”

“Let me see if Katie still wants to come with us.” Ann came back a moment later. “Okay, she wants us to take her over and bring her back here. If that’s okay?”

“It’s fine with me. You’re the one with stuff to do.”

Another foray into the Ned’s office. This time both ladies came out. “We’re going to go now? If that’s okay?”

Brad looked at his watch. Way too early to call home. Okay, he’d have to risk that he’d have time to call later.

“I need to get my stuff out of my car.” Katie went dashing away in her heels, came back wearing sneakers and carrying a towel. It was so hot she was sweating hard by the time she was back to their car. “Turn on the f*****g AC!” They did that, pointing the air back at her, filling it with her musk. “Damn! Damn! I’m f*****g up this f*****g dress!” She had the towel draped over her, wriggling around underneath it. The dress appeared on the seat next to her, followed by her bra, then her panties.

“Watch where you’re going, damn it.” That was to Brad, who was spending far too much time peeking into the rear view mirror. “Jesus! Men! Just don’t get pulled over, right?”

They arrived at the lake without more excitement. It was even less busy than the day before, no one around as the other two traded clothing for sunscreen. Katie took her towel down with her, using it to flick the other two on the butt while they were on the level part of the walkway. It was a big beach towel, twice as big as the hotel towel Brad had with him. She seemed quite adept at using it, getting it to flick with the very end so that it produced a little sting. Able to aim it so precisely that she could get the back of Brad’s balls or Ann’s p***y.

“Does Harry know you’re that good with a whip?” Ann asked.

“Not yet.”

“How about a strap on. Tried that on him yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Really.” Ann turned back to say something more, and the towel caught her n****e. “Ouch.”

“Sorry.” They had reached the steep drop to their rock.

“Same deal as yesterday?” Brad asked.

“Maybe you could stop here on the way back. Instead of going down to the end?”

“Sure. Whatever.” It wasn’t more than a hundred yards to the end of the swim area.

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“Off he goes,” Ann sighed, “the creature of habit. The Lake Travis habit creature.”

“Like the Loch Ness monster?”

“Something like that. You know he eats the same thing for breakfast every morning? I wonder how many times he and his wife have done it exactly the same way.”

“It’s already like that with Harry. What about you?”

“If it even happens. Hard to remember from one time to the next.”

“I don’t know about you, but there is no way I am ever getting married.”

“No kids? You’re going to be alone when you’re old?”

“Jesus. f*****g. Christ. What about you?”

“I’m going to tell Evan exactly what happened this week. Show him the photos from the Bayou. Show him the tape I’m making tonight. If he still wants to marry me, I’ll do it. If he loves me enough to still want to marry me.”

“This was your plan all along?”

“No. Maybe. What the f**k are you doing to Harry? The same damn thing? Except right in front of him?”

“Maybe.”

“Where’d you learn how to use a whip like that?”

“At the other end of one. God, there he is.” They were far enough out that they had scramble to get back to the rock before Brad did.

“Hi ladies.” Brad was sitting with his legs out, leaning back on his elbows, watching them emerge from the lake. Like Venus rising from the sea, except Venus didn’t stub her toe on a rock and curse and hold her foot up to look at the damage. He had a sudden vision of the goddess being knocked over by a wave as she worked her way to the shoreline.

“Don’t move.” Katie was walking closer to him, then legs akimbo as she walked over his, right up to where his head and torso blocked her, leaning over him. Why? So he could lick her? She was up a bit too high for that. She was wrapping her towel around his arms. “Lie back now.” That trapped his arms. “Stay that way.”

“Rubber? There’s one in my shoe.”

“You aren’t ready for a rubber.” She took his little hotel towel and flicked it at the part that wasn’t ready. A few more flicks and it was. “Okay, here’s the deal. You know the game I was playing with that boy last night?’

“Not really.”

“Okay then. Here are the rules. You keep your tongue and your prick sticking up. I do what I want with them. Anything I want for as long as I want and don’t you dare come until I tell you to. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?” A flick of the towel.

“Yes mistress.” That was enough to provoke a snicker from Ann.

Okay, now what? Katie gave a sigh. Not much urge to use her mouth on that tongue. Or on the other end with the rubber on it. Shove them into her p***y? Not in the mood. And it was getting late, time to get back to working on the IMS problem. Why was she even doing this? Squat on his face then and get it over with. God, he liked it. He was trying to work his tongue in deeper. What kind of tongue was that? He really was a monster. His mouth was wide open, teeth upon her flesh, lips somehow finding her c**t, rubbing it against his incisors, his lower fangs. Okay, to the other protrusion, throbbing in its dayglo sheathing. “Your little wifey ever do this for you?”

“Yep.”

What? Wrong answer. How many times had they done it this way? Hundreds? Thousands? f**k him! f**k him! “Okay, you can come now.”

“Thanks.” And he did, straining up against her just a bit. So casually. She was nothing to him, nothing. What if he had done it with his wife this way a thousand times? What was this, a tenth of a percent? Noise level. “That was great,” he added. “You are so beautiful.”

“Better than your wife? Prettier than your wife?”

“I’ve met his wife,” Ann said. “She was wearing glasses and a clunky bathrobe and her hair was a mess. No makeup.”

“Oh.”

“She was beautiful.”

“Oh.” Katie stood up, took the pool towel, and flicked it against Brad’s n*****s. “So why the f**k are you doing this?”

“Maybe to scratch an itch.”

“Scratch too hard and it starts to bleed.” Katie went into the water to rinse off. The other two followed.

X