All characters depicted in this fanciful tale are over twenty-five years of age.

I am well aware that I am no Tom Cruise. I don’t have his looks, although I am taller. I don’t have anywhere near his money, although I have suddenly come into a huge fortune by my own standards. In my nearly forty years as an attorney I have not earned the thirty or so million dollars he has purportedly made portraying them in film, although financially I have done alright. I do have various complaints, but not about money.

It is equally true that my old man was certainly no Gene Hackman from Cruise’s movie ‘The Firm,’ he wasn’t evil, we just didn’t see eye to eye. I guess that is why it came as such a surprise that, at the reading of my father’s will, I found that I now owned very nearly half of the Bar-B-Q, the family cattle ranch. My great-grandpa who named it had a sense of humor that dad sorely lacked.

Wes, my older brother received just over half, ensuring his continued control and management of the property. But forty-five percent was roughly forty-five percent more than I had expected. Especially considering the document the old man pushed in front of me, demanding that I sign back in nineteen-eighty. That I rudely refused was irrelevant; it merely stated Texas law. That as an mentally competent adult residing in the State of Texas I had no claim on my parent’s estate. Dad also lacked subtlety.

I did not believe it was real until I had actually signed the document transferring title. I mean intellectually I believed it. Charles Marston Esquire was the second best attorney in town after moi, but for twenty-nine years I had been told that the old man had cut me out of his will for my transgression. I never thought he would reconsider.

I wonder how I would have felt, what I might have said to him, had he actually told me before he died. The old man was damned stubborn. So am I, when we had our annual or semi-annual meetings I would tell him that he did me a favor. That when one of the other 83,000 people who hated him slit his throat, I would lack a motive. Now I felt bad for having said such a thing; like I said he was an ass, not evil.

My unforgivable transgression took place way back in 1978 when I was working at my first firm after graduating from Law School at the University of Texas. It was unforgivable only to the old man, and a few other big landowners tracing their ownership of sizable spreads back through error laden Spanish land grants. Mere homeowners did not care, they were insured.

The older attorneys at the firm allowed us younger ones to take the lead and the heat while they got the credit for directing us and their percentages. It was my idea to hire a Professor of Religion at Austin, someone who specialized in textual criticism. He joined a Professor of Spanish to review the written record of those grants purportedly made by the Spanish Crown.

The two professors separated them into three stacks. Those that were correct. Those with textual errors likely caused by the fact that the scribes were functionally illiterate copiers of text, and were probably legitimate. And those more suspicious examples that contained anachronistic or Anglicised text or syntax.

We made our client very happy, and in the process validated a great many grants as being undoubtedly genuine. No innocents were harmed, those we examined but felt queasy about are locked away in our files, legally protected as attorney client work product, and only a fraction of all grants were examined. Other than our positive exemplars, and the client’s faulty one, none were publicly identified.

It took me years to understand why the old man held back his considerable anger towards me during the process. To have pressured me during the process seemed to me to be to be much more logical. Punishing me after I delivered to him proof that the grant that greatgrandpa’s purchase was based on was legitimate seemed so utterly irrelevant. I guess he so distrusted me and my motives that he felt he had to await a favorable outcome to act, lest his disapproval cause me to retaliate and declare his abstract faulty.

The late Roy Earl Esquire probably hired me for my cajones or maybe because it so riled the old man. He and maybe others suspected I had every land grant in Tom Green County examined, I had given copies of the academic proofs that sixteen were legitimate gratis to the many recorded successor owners to those properties. With a nice cover letter that was in essence an advert for our law firm.

The unasked question was: were those who did not receive such a document owners of properties with flawed titles or merely those with titles based on grants we had not examined. Although I clearly know the answer, I could not tell you or anyone else because that is privileged information.

So at nearly seventy I owned half of a large spread south of town as well as my lake house by the airport on South Concho Drive. I was a junior partner at Davis-Cochrane. I was set for life. I suddenly had a plan, a way to make some of my earthly dreams come true. As Jimmy Buffet said in ‘A Pirate Looks at Forty,’ “I go for younger women, lived with several a while; though I ran them away; they’d come back one day, still could manage a smile.” Out came my electronic version of a little black book.

Dawn was on the edge of just chucking it all in; competent and under utilized by the Metcalfs in preference to less competent kin; she was frustrated to the max. We had a few romantic go-arounds together in the past. But it was hard to keep a relationship going with someone outside of work as we were both so busy. I had never married, Dawn and Tina had and were both divorced.

It was even harder being in a relationship with an excellent attorney you worked with. When Dawn worked at Earl and Shiner we had worked together, and she was just too competitive for me. I was good at fighting on the job, but not interested in fighting in the bedroom. She felt shortchanged by life, and she didn’t just have to win. Her win had to be by at least two touchdowns. She disdained my laissez-faire attitude.

Fifty-ish and ultra curvy, short and damned feisty, she thought she was a little bit heavy. But to my eye it was in all the right places both front and back. To boot Dawn was a damned snazzy dresser, at least for San Angelo Texas. Dawn was first on my naughty little list.

As hard as it was trying to make time with a lawyer in your own firm it was impossible doing it with a lawyer in another firm. Inevitably a perceived conflict of interest situation would develop. It happened twice five years apart with Tina. She was currently a junior associate trying to make partner at Drake and Drake. Forty-ish, elegant, nearly as tall as my five-eleven she was physically the tallest and the thinnest candidate on my list. Her perky A-cups were just perfect.

Now I’m not overweight, but she is just well, wow. What a great looker in designer business wear, those skirts and hanging blouses are made for her physical type. Runway model ... I told her that once; she made me an appointment for me with an optometrist. Apparently she had never heard the old joke...

Wife to her neighbor: “my husband is crazy, he thinks he’s a chicken.” Neighbor: “have you taken him to see a psychiatrist?” Wife: “Lord no, the children love the fresh eggs.”

Candidates for what you may well ask. Well, I was planning on creating my own personal harem, what else. Sure every teenaged boy dreams of having an adoring harem, fifty years later I could actually make those wet dreams a reality. I started off with three former lovers and the rumored lesbian lover of one of those three. I just needed to vette them.

Ellen and Natalie were both paralegals at Evans and Marston, I had known them for years working around town. I had recently interacted considerably with them working out the family spread’s deed transfer and its related tax implications. They both knew I was older, loaded and without heirs. I wondered if they were so friendly by nature, or because of what they knew. Eventually I decided that it did not matter.

They were both oh so cute, and very bright. Ignoring those persistent rumors my vibe sensor told me they were either lovers or open to the idea of so becoming. Ellen was shorter, about an inch shorter than Dawn and quite buxom, although Dawn easily had her in the posterior category. Hmmm, that would be a beautiful sight, Dawn having Ellen in Ellen’s cute little posterior.

Natalie was almost as tall and almost as thin as Tina. Natalie had been my lover ten years ago, she wanted to marry me but I was honest and told her I was happy with what we had. She found another who professed to want what she wanted, but then he kept finding ridiculous reasons to postpone matrimony. Reasons that translated into “well he just didn’t want to” in my opinion. He wasn’t honest with her, and he got what he wanted. A practical lesson in the uses and limitations of honesty.

After years of working so hard to be seen as being the best, it just didn’t seem to matter to me anymore. I asked my partners at Davis-Cochrane to buy me out, and made a generous offer on terms, a payout over twenty-five years.

With interest, which they could deduct, rolled in. It didn’t matter, it wasn’t for me. They were smart and quickly accepted my offer. I immediately called my interviewees, not that they knew they were being interviewed. Interviewed for what I hoped to be the best thing ever to happen to any of them.

After meeting with each candidate individually over the course of the week at restaurants around the downtown area, I decided that each one was suitable. So I invited each of them to the building nearby that I had just purchased. This second meeting was everyone together. We were in what I envisioned to be the office of the firm’s senior partner, my office. I pointed at the beautiful spanish oak desk, the sole piece of furniture in the entire building. There were five stacks of cash on the green leather top.

“There are fifty one hundred dollar bills in each of those stacks,” I said. “Five thousand unreported dollars apiece for each of you. Your sole obligation to receive this sum right now, today, is to sign these non-disclosure agreements, and to give me one full hour of your time this evening.” I handed them the forms.

Smart girls, each read the single page document that essentially said what they heard in this building today went to their grave with them unrepeated. Then each signed without question. I disrobed. Three of the four assembled were not terribly surprised, they knew of my antics. Tina giggled, Natalie broke out into a huge grin, Dawn asked if she should join me. I said yes.

Ellen was just taking it all in. Natalie told her it would be OK. That I was OK. Dawn soon joined me in nakedness. I looked at Ellen, she was still wondering what to think. Tina had slipped off her designer blouse, she wasn’t wearing a bra. Like I said her smallish breasts were absolutely perfect.

“Ellen darling, you are the only one here that has not previously been a lover of mine.” I said as I stepped towards Dawn and wrapped my arms around her beautiful curvaceous form. “If you don’t wish to stay, pick up your cash, you may go. But before you do, please talk to Natalie, or Dawn, or Tina, or all of them. The offer that I will make in a moment to the naked women assembled in this building will be worth millions.”

Natalie started to unbutton Ellen’s blouse. Ellen did not help her, but neither did she move in any way to stop Natalie from completely disrobing her. By that time Tina was naked. Natalie completed the perfection of this exhibition of the wonder of the naked human female form being exhibited in my office. Once the five of us were unclothed I took them on a tour of the building.

As I walked I revealed to them my idea. I told them I had resigned from Davis-Cochrane, that I was starting a new firm, here in this building. A firm that I would nominally be the Senior Partner of, but that Dawn would run. I think that statement made her wet. A firm that Tina would be a partner of, that grabbed her attention. Then I grabbed her left buttock and kissed her deeply.

I offered twenty-nine percent of the firm to Dawn, and twenty-seven percent to Tina and pointed out that, once vested, together they outvoted my retained forty-four percent. Then I looked directly at Natalie and Ellen.

“You are both offered jobs as paralegals here,” I said, “at a better salary than you have at Marston. If you accept all of my terms I will personally, personally not through the firm, financially support either or both of you in obtaining your legal degrees and passing the bar exam. Once either of you do I will make you partners as well and transfer twenty-two percent of the firm to you. If you both become partners the four of you will own this firm in its entirety.