CHAPTER I
"Would you care for anything to drink?" The flight attendant was brunette,
buxom and all business.
"Ginger Ale." Nancy was anxious. Hell, she practically spewed saliva like a
lawn sprinkler from her nearly foaming mouth. Well, maybe it wasn`t that bad, but anyone
watching got the idea she wanted the fucking Ginger Ale and hurry.
"Ginger Ale," the flight attendant repeated as she passed the drink past me to
Nancy at the window seat. "And you?"
"What beers do you have?" I always ask this question, but I rarely give a shit.
Just don`t make it light unless it`s Amstel Light. I prefer pilsners, ambers, and/or
dark/stouts. I can`t stomach wheats, honeys, or any "flavorful" beers like
raspberry or pumpkin or cinnamon apple or some such. And yes there probably is some idiot
brewing cinnamon apple ale. Like I said, I didn`t care what beers she had, I just liked to
ask.
"Bud, Budlite, Miller Lite, Miller Genuine Draft, and Heineken," the flight
attendant shot that information out of her mouth like a stock ticker--boom, boom, boom,
boom and Heineken. I mean she was, as I said, all work, no bullshit.
She had great tits too. I`m not always careful about how I notice a woman`s scoops. I
can`t help it. I usually look and form a judgment before I even realize that I was
looking. I try not to gawk, but I know I do anyway, so I forgive myself for gawking as
long as I don`t drool.
Thankfully I didn`t drool at our flight attendant`s rack even though she bounced them so
close to my face while she was taking my order I could have stuck my nose in her
businesses. I wasn`t going to get to check the channels on the flight attendant`s knobs
anyway with them buried beneath the light blue uniform shirt and dark blue sweater. Nor
was her shirt opened low enough for me to get much of a cleavage shot. She slammed the
door on what little I could see by covering herself with her left hand as she readied her
right hand on some can of beer while she was giving me the stock options.
I was busted. She caught me. Like I said, I don`t always notice when I`m noticing.
"Heine..."
She popped and propped a can of Heineken in my hand before I could get the last of the
name out of my mouth. She fired, "Four fifty please," at me like a vigilante
sweeping the neighborhood streets clean of all perverts.
C`est la vie. I enjoy taking the Peeper Plunge down the Mammary Gulley. No harm no foul.
I`ll enjoy it after I`m married, and I`ll enjoy it when I`m old and gray. What is
that--you can look but you better not touch? Read the menu but you got to eat at home?
Look, I was never a `clean little boy`, and I thoroughly expect to become a `dirty old
man` too. So consider my wandering eye to be nothing more than practice or experience for
a post retirement occupation.
Anyway, I wasn`t quite so fast with getting the cash to the flight attendant as she was
getting the beer to me. In fact, I did what I know all the flight attendants hate, gave
her a twenty.
"I`ll be back with your change in a bit. Would you care for something to
drink?" and she advanced to the row in front of us, with the bookmark of returning
change to me.
I figure they have to hate that. I would if I was them. I`ve seen the beholden look on
their faces as they announce that "they`ll be back in a bit with your change."
Beholden in the sense that after servicing a hundred or so other passengers with free
beverages, moving the cart up and down and out of the way for small bladder passengers,
retrieving pillows from overhead compartments, retrieving blankets from overhead
compartments, answering questions about arrival times, and if there is anything else
besides nuts `cause I have that thing with nuts, and navigating it all through occasional
and random acts of turbulence now the attendant has to find change and get it back to you.
And oh by the way, they don`t take tips.
I washed the minor guilt I felt away with a gulp of suds and reassessed my environs. This
was a smaller plane, a Boeing MD80. Nancy and I were assigned to a set of seats several
rows up from where we were now on the back row, and we were suppose to be on the right
side with three seats. As good fortune would have it, however, the flight wasn`t full,
closer to three fourths. Upon discovering our luck, Nancy relocated us to the very back of
the plane. Last row, left side, she got the window.
Taking another sip of my beer I glanced over at Nancy and wondered why she didn`t request
any vodka or something. Why`d she just order Ginger Ale? Especially with how nervous I
could see that she was combined with all that went on yesterday? Hell I almost felt like
we were a couple of criminals today fleeing the scene of a crime. We weren`t the criminals
of course, although there was a crime. Nancy and I were the accusers rather than the
accused. A lot of shit went down yesterday, and I`m still scratching my head on how we got
to sneak away like this.
Anyway, it made me want to have a beer, so cheers. Nancy? She doesn`t drink beer. She
does like her vodka though. So why`d she just order soda? Because she has her own stash of
mini bottles in her purse and so all she needed was just a fucking can of mixer, a small
plastic glass with ice, and some room while she concocts her Aunt Nancy`s Special Elixir
of Calm M`Quivers--80 proof. Hey, I`m guessing that somewhere along the line she saved
money doing it this way, so who am I to judge?
Speaking of which, I mentioned how fast the flight attendant was at shooting me a can of
brew before I had finished saying the product name? Well by the time the flight
attendant`s blue polyester covered pooper produced the drink for the bald guy in front of
me, Nancy had her ice cubes doused with Crown Royal in the convenient travel size bottle
and was en route to adding the Ginger Ale fizzle. Impressive.
I looked at my watch. Nine a.m. Three quarters of a plane full of passengers minus two
sipping soda, coffee, fruit juice or sleeping. Not us. Feeling like I`m on the lamb or
taking a victory lap on a plane ride, I`ve got to tell you now, before you form the wrong
opinion, I don`t usually drink this early ... except on St. Patty`s Day, and its April
seventeen. Two days past tax day and a month since St. Patty`s Day, so no I`m not usually
having cocktails at this hour. I`m usually not having cocktails at this hour while on a
plane, with my boss, and heading to a business meeting either. Even if that were all true
I`m especially not used to having drinks at this hour with my boss on my second day on the
job. No shit. Did you catch that? Nancy`s my new boss and today is my second day on the
job.
All that shit that went down yesterday on my first day of work, combined with how I`m
drinking at the start of my second day of work, makes me wonder if this is the right place
for me to work. Anyway, the HR lady gave me the `wanna come on board` question two weeks
ago. By the end of that week, I was in the `Lab` taking a squirt in a cup. I continued my
programming trade at BS yesterday, whereupon the frisky little vixen seated next to me and
my new boss informed me that we were heading to San Diego tomorrow. That`d be today.
Two weeks ago. Yesterday. Today. Do you believe it? I just barely do, and I`m living it
right now. It`s been amazing. It`s been atmospheric. And for a boss? Nancy`s the hottest
little thing I`ve ever worked for. That includes all the restaurant jobs I held before I
graduated college. She captured me the first time I laid eyes on her. I fell in love with
her vodka burping little ass right off. First thing. Did I drop that yet? No? Oh shit.
It caught me off guard. I mean in one tick I`m interviewing for a job, and in the next,
I`m flirting with who might become my boss. You hear what I`m saying? Not just me though.
I flirted with her, and she flirted with me. I am so ready to slap a label of `All Time
Favorite Job` on this BS gig, you know? BS, of course being the name of my new company,
but I`ll get to all that later.
There are two bottom lines here: work and play. The first bottom line is that I`ve been
working in the professional world for fourteen years now, and I`ve had at least a half a
dozen different occupations during that time. I`ve been a laborer, fitness counselor,
salesman, HR recruiter, corporate trainer, Finance Analyst, and now IT programmer. The
other bottom line is that I`ve been on the dating circuit for twenty-three years or since
I was fifteen. My love life is and always has been a wreck. I`ve dated all the hair
colors, many of the skin colors, several nationalities, older woman, young girls, some
full figured, some waifs, some buxom and some barely there. But someone I work with?
Someone I work for?
Did I fall in love with my boss? Yeah. I did. I never saw it coming. I mean it wasn`t in
the job posting you know? That read:
"WANTED: Programmer Analyst with BS, a company you`ll grow to love."
Not.
"WANTED: Programmer Analyst who`ll fall in love with the boss."
But that`s how I hear falling in love goes. Blind Cupid shooting an arrow and it`s
suddenly spring and the birds and the bees and let me fondle these. It is April after all,
you know? Anyway, that`s how it happened for me. I mixed my bottom lines of work and play
together, and Cupid was on me like an aging, psychopathic Vietnam War vet. A fucking
Marine no less, huh? Now do you see why I`m sipping so early in the morning? No? It`s a
long flight. Just listen.
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