Chapter 1

I decided not to panic. I tend to make bad decisions. I was expecting this one to fall apart any moment now. I stayed still, laid out behind my shades in a pair of swimming trunks surrounded by beautiful women. The loungers on either side of me held gorgeous girls, early twenties at the oldest, face down with their bikini tops untied. I glanced around from behind my sunglasses. Women were everywhere, swimmers, sunbathers, a waitress, a bartender. I couldn’t spot another guy. Maybe I had had a stroke and this was heaven? No God to be seen and, since I was pretty sure he didn’t exist, the hypothesis held.

Had I gotten drunk last night? My last clear thought was letting my mind wander out the window during a presentation. Yeah, I would’ve gotten drunk last night. I liked being drunk. I was no stranger to waking up confused and displaced. The problem was that I had woken up amid sunshine and palm trees. In my expert opinion, palm trees were not common for Seattle in the fall.

“Hey Brian,” I heard my name on a mellifluous smile and turned my head to see her walking towards me, “Did you have a good nap?”

I was reconsidering panic. Rena Ghasra was a slender six foot tall lesbian who had once worn a t-shirt as the height of her sexual signalling. Her hair, which she had recently, and thankfully, stopped hiding under a hijab, should’ve been cut short. It had grown out, down to her shoulders. She had on a very sexily cut bikini. What threw me was her belly; she was five or six months pregnant. She certainly hadn’t been when she was hissing at me to pay attention in a bland charcoal pantsuit.

“Uh ... It could’ve been better,” I said guardedly as she walked over and sat down next to my hip. She was the only one from our firm near my age at the conference. She was looking incredible. Looking at me with a look reserved for people she cared to talk to.

“What went wrong?” She asked. Her soft hand settled across the lounge and brought her to hover over me.

“Uh ... No one to cuddle with.” I tried to make a joke.

“What?” The girls on either side of me popped up and filled my eyes with round, evenly tanned, naked breasts.

Brunette, girl on my left, reached out for Rena’s shoulder while shaking her head.

“He asked us to move over so he could sleep. He made us!”

“Oh shush,” Rena laughed.

“But--” Blonde on my right had freckles all the way down.

“You look like the old Brian,” Rena physically turned my head from the young breasts.

“I am so utterly confused,” I moaned.

“We knew this was coming,” She nodded, “C’mon, I’ll try and catch you up.”

Rena got to her feet with an ease I didn’t expect out of a pregnant woman. I slipped out to the side and as Rena shushed the blonde. She took her orders and lay back down. Brunette had taken off running, leaving her bikini top behind.

“It’ll help if you tell me where your head’s at.” Rena looped her arm in mine, “When I surfaced, I felt like I had been pulled right out of my girlfriend’s family dinner on Thanksgiving.”

“I--” Thanksgiving. It was supposed to still be October! What were we Canadians?

“Hard to imagine it’d been two years,” She laughed, “No one else got hit with more than seventeen weeks. Except Amanda. And Shani, maybe?”

“Shani?” I scratched my head. The only Shani I knew was my sister-in-law. But why would Rena know her?

“Hey,” She poked me. I was hardly listening to her. All around me beautiful women were noticing me and smiling at me. That wasn’t my regular. Most looked like college kids but there was a good helping of twenty somethings and a light sprinkling of thirty somethings. I spotted a very fit pair of fortyish women sitting at one of the bamboo bars, “Hey!”

“What?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“PharmaSeattle. We had arrived late ‘cause of weather delays. So we had skipped day one and were just settling in on day two. I was, after one full presentation on orphan drug subsidy abuse, already dead in the brain. You were pissed at me.”

She laughed. Apologized. Laughed harder. She took me up in a strong hug, “You poor man. The amnesia, it’s not entirely permanent. But day two of PharmaSeattle? Oh my God! You don’t even remember Amanda, do you?”

“I don’t know--What does not entirely permanent mean? You said it’s been two years since PharmaSeattle!” I pulled to a stop at the open lobby doors. Rena took a step back and laid her hands on her nicely shaped hips.

“Two years, three months, plus an extra couple of weeks from when you fizzled out,” She shook her head, “Hey, at least you didn’t wake up pregnant.”

“Oh my God,” I flashed down at her belly, “I wanted to ask you about that.”

“We’ll get to the minor things,” She promised, “But--”

“Three months? So it’s January?”

“February. Tomorrow’s Valentine’s day,” She smiled and leaned in and kissed me. I shook my head in surprise.

“Is that mine?” I feared staring her in the inverted navel.

“They are yours yes,” Rena said but reached out and grabbed my upper left arm before I bolted, “Listen. You’re not a dad yet. You didn’t miss out on anything like that. I’m having twins. I’ll probably be first.”

“First!” I yelped. There was a gathering huddle of women watching us. I was hyperventilating. I wasn’t taking my advice as she helped me sit down against the stucco wall.

“OK, OK,” She knelt beside me and wouldn’t let go of my arm, “There’s so much to tell you.”

“It’s summer, where are we?”

“Off the coast of Brazil,” She shushed me, “The island was called Sao Huberto but we renamed it when you bought it.”

“I bought a tropical island!” I widened my eyes at her, “I can hardly afford my Yonkers apartment.”

“Is Master Tanner, OK?” A skinny hispanic girl, maybe 20, probably not, was wearing a blue polo shirt and a short white skirt. She wouldn’t look at me, only at Rena.

“He’ll be just fine,” Rena promised her. The words flashed through the entire crowd of looky-loos. They cheered. Cheered. There were easily forty women out here. I had to stop myself from autistically counting them after I made my estimate.

“C’mon, let me introduce you to Amanda. She can explain the drug.”

“I’ve been drugged? For two years!” I finally took a breath that wasn’t a wheeze. Rena leaned her forehead against mine. “How many times? How often?”

“No, you were only drugged the once,” She sighed, “Amanda can explain it better. I promise.”

“She’d better!” and “Who’s Amanda!” and other exclamatory thoughts roiled my guts. Rena climbed to her feet and offered me a hand. I took it but only after I was certain I was standing up on my own power. She was pregnant. With twins. She squeezed my fingers and led me into the hotel.

“Mistress Ghasra, is everything OK?” A blonde bellhop, dressed like the hispanic girl outside, hurried over.

“Call Mistresses Deering, Tanner and Hess.” Rena said without looking as I was led to the elevators.

“Which Mistress Hess?”

“Lacy’s new here,” Rena explained. She shot a fiery glare at the bellhop who dashed over to the front desk and phone.

“Hess? But--” Mistress Tanner? Was that Shani? And Hess? Two Hesses? I thought of twins, teenagers, college girls, they lived in the other flat in the house I rented.

I got into the elevator with Rena, she used a keycard to access the top floor.

“Your key will access any of the locks in the hotel.” She promised me, “Maybe the whole island, you never shared that with us.”

I patted my swim trunks and found a lanyard and keycard attached to a flotation device. In my other pocket was my wallet. Well, a new wallet. I had had a beat up New York Rangers velcro wallet since high school. This was a black leather wallet with my initials: BT, in relief of a silver oval in the bottom corner. The elevator doors opened and I returned everything to my pocket untouched.

The first other man I had seen was in the room. Larry, my elder brother, was passed out under the foot of the bed, naked. I cringed to see his floppy unguarded and shriveled cock laying against his belly in a twisted wet mess. On the bed, amid a perfect tangle of bedclothes, were two Asian girls. Oriental girls. Is that OK? I mean, Asian could mean Iraqi or Indian or Moscovian. These were East Asian. Naked and tiny. One still wore a half cup bra and the other had a hair clip holding up a short ponytail. They were alert and naked.

“Larry!” I shouted, aghast. He twitched and flopped and sighed. I would’ve stomped over there if Rena wasn’t gripping my arm. Shani was family. You don’t fuck around on a woman like that and-- “LARRY!”

“Jesus! What the fuck?” My brother rolled back onto his ass. He let his back fall against the foot of the bed. The Asian girls took off, without notice from me. They went for the bathroom.

“Lawrence, he’s waking up,” Rena warned, “You better go get your wife.”

“How could you?” I scowled as Larry put on a sympathetic face.

“Man, I hope I’m there when you find out who’s the bigger piece of shit.” I didn’t have a clue how to respond to that. He left, naked. Grabbing a keycard on a lanyard from a small table. The elevator door closed behind him.

“Do you want me to tell Jade and Ahn to leave?” Rena asked.

“Whatever,” I sighed. The room was huge, being the seventh floor of a squat pyramidal hotel. This first room was wide open, with a king sized bed, a large four sofa home theatre, an island separating a large kitchen. There were six doors leading off to either side and a massive veranda through a glass solarium on on the far wall. It was a garden out there.

Rena came out of the bathroom with the Asian girls, Jade and Ahn. They quietly collected theirs and Larry’s clothing and headed for the elevator. I collapsed down on a sofa. Rena walked over lifted my left leg and set it against the back of the sofa. She sat down, laying her side onto my chest, and cuddled with me. I was awkward as I wrapped my arm around her. I needed this.

“That man is going to be the death of me,” Shani entered from the elevator. She wore the broadest smile I had ever seen on her and a soft blue summer dress. She had been a mildly chubby workaholic as I last remembered her. She was in gorgeous shape now, still larger than some of the twigs and models down at the pool, but well sculpted. Her legs were strong swishing under her light skirt. Her square neckline showed off her large breasts and that the little bump on her stomach wasn’t fat. She wasn’t near far along as the girl in my arms, “Larry just walked into the lobby and pulled Lacy over the front desk and onto the carpet. I’d never seen him that pissed since that whole Okinawa shitshow.”

“Shani, I--” I almost pushed Rena off to rush over to my sister-in-law. Except, Shani wasn’t alone. Next to her was a curvy black woman with blonde highlighted hair. She wore it in two puffy pigtails and it framed a bright eyed smirk. She was about 5’3’’ and looked so tiny next to Shani and because of her own distended pregnant belly. I had to guess she was as far along as Rena. She was wearing stretchy pants and a bikini top.

“He’s coming out of it?” The black woman interrupted me.

“He’s out of it,” Rena shook her head, “Have either of you noticed any flashes?”

“None,” Shani hurried across the room and onto the couch. She touched my foot, “I’m sorry I haven’t been paying as much attention to you.”

I saw, on her finger, no wedding ring, not even a thin tan line. There was a gold chain on her neck, dipping into her cleavage, the sparkle there could have been the ring. I looked shocked.

“I was with him all yesterday,” Said the black woman who had come up behind me. She wiped my hair, “No flashes.”