Chapter 2

I ended up going out of town the next day and when I got back; I took some much needed comp time. I spent a couple of days with my folks, and then took off for the weekend with my brother, Frank, and a few buddies who wanted to go ice fishing. Translate that to, wanted to get away from their wives and girlfriends, get shit faced and play cards.

But for all their bitching about getting away from all the women, guess what was basically the only topic of discussion? You guessed it. Jesus, a couple of times I thought I was at a taping of Sally Jesse Raphael show. I didn't have much to contribute myself and since the sound of my voice is one of my favorite things I was sort of disappointed in the weekend. Oh well, the beer was free.

I got back in town Monday morning, so I went straight to work. That afternoon, we got a call from one of our customer's and an hour later I was on a plane headed for Albuquerque.

I didn't see home again until Thursday afternoon. I was beat. Nobody was there when I got in and that mildly depressed me. I was sort of curious about what kind of changes Amy had decided to make and if she'd gotten Miriam, from work, to help. On second thought, it might be better not knowing. I had a feeling things were not going to go according to plan.

I went to bed and slept for 13 hours.

Usually, I'm not someone who remembers much of their dreams. A dwarf here, a talking dog there, that's pretty much about it. But that night was an exception. I woke up to the image of little Charlie encased in the hot, tight tunnel of someone who started out looking a lot like Winona Ryder until I got a good look at her face and saw an eyebrow that stretched across her entire forehead.

Shit.

I sat up and tried to stop my heart from pounding. I was covered in sweat and... Oh Christ, it had been years since I'd had a wet dream. That did it, I had to go out and find a girlfriend, or at least someone who was willing to play that role for an hour or two.

I got up and went to the shower to get rid of the remains of my relapse into puberty. I didn't even want to think of who that was that I'd been having those dreams about. It wasn't like it meant anything after all. Dreams meant shit. Hell, one time I'd got off on one with Olive Oyl. Granted, I'd been twelve at the time and more familiar with cartoons than Playboy, but still it figured as one of the weirder sexual fantasies of my horny youth. So the fact that I'd placed Amy in a sex dream was nothing, right?

Anyway that was my take on it. I got dressed and by the time I got to work, I'd managed to forget the whole strange interlude.

Mostly.

I work for a company that develops medical software, the kind that's used by doctor's offices and small clinics. We're a little fish, but getting bigger all time because our programs are really user friendly. Unfortunately though, they are not idiot proof. And there are a lot of idiots out there.

That's where I come in. I'm the guy who fixes the mess that your nineteen-year-old temp makes when she fucks up your entire patient reference base and old Mrs. Marshall is showing up for an appointment for an ekg and you have her down for a barium enema, while Mr. Lanzerotti is still sitting in his chair trying to figure out why he has to wait for the results on his pregnancy test.

Some of the time I get lucky and there's someone in the office who actually knows something about computers and we can handle things over the phone, but most of the time it doesn't work that nice. That's when I have to do my Superman imitation and fly out to Podunk, Iowa to flip the right switches and reformat the software. For this I make a not obscene, but fairly inflated, salary while fulfilling the apparent dream of my employers to have me intimately familiar with the location of the ice machine in every Motel Six west of the Mississippi.

When I'm not jetting off to exotic Peoria, I occupy a cubicle in a ratty old warehouse that's supposed to be chic, but instead comes off looking like the set for a slasher movie with it's poor lighting, dark corners and the worst work stations that money can buy. Add to that the fact that there are enough computer cables on the ratty linoleum floor to stretch across the Mackinac Bridge, putting everyone in the place in imminent danger of giving themselves a couple of dislocations and a concussion if they aren't careful where they walk, and you can see why I wanted the travel job in the first place.

Since my promotion, I actually have very little in-house work and as my bosses are used to lunatic behavior as they've been working in the software field for most of their adult lives (and for that matter aren't exactly the picture of mental health themselves) I'm pretty free to do as I please. This translates to lots of computer games and possibly the largest collection of porn downloads in the free world.

Of course you can guess which is my favorite of the two.

The rest of the staff is mainly comprised of a bunch of idiot savants, excuse me - PROGRAMMERS - who would fit right in with the folks on most sitcoms except they might be too odd for that format. Think Andy Dick and French Stewart on acid.

Two of them, Leroy Sykes and Clement Forrester (it's like their parents just knew how they were going to turn out) had taken up the slack of John's leaving to become my best friends in town. Actually, they're pretty nice guys if you can overlook the Grateful dead tee's and black nail polish that Leroy sports and the pocket protector that's apparently Clem's security blanket since he never leaves home without it. But like I said they're sort of cool in a surreal way and I hang with them on a fairly regular basis.

That day was no exception. After a spirited spitball battle we went out to an early lunch and annoyed our waitress by ordering in pig latin. (Okay, I know, but there is something about these guys that make me regress to the third grade.)

We got back to the office at two and I sat around for a while and pretended I was interested in some 80 page memo about a coding problem the engineers were having with the new Medicare system. That lasted about five minutes and then my eyes stopped focusing and I settled in for an open-eyed nap, something I'd perfected in college during my lecture class on Renaissance and it's effects on modern thought.

So it had been a long day and I was dragging by the time I got home. Amy's car was out front and I felt my chest sort of seize when I thought about seeing her, but I shouldn't have worried. One look at that droopy little frame convinced me that whatever my dreams had been about, the reality was that this little bit of a girl did nothing for me.

In fact, I was glad to see her again. Mostly this was because she really wasn't a bad kid but also because I was still looking forward to seeing the changes the mysterious Miriam had wrought in her.

But in this, I was doomed to disappointment. It was the same old Amy. Same oversized clothes, same limp hair, and same eyebrow. I couldn't see her ears, but I imagined they were still pointy.

I felt let down. Hey, I didn't think it would work, but that didn't mean I wasn't hoping there'd be an improvement. And it's not like it could get much worse.

"Charlie," Amy smiled shyly at me. At least her smile was okay, kind of sweet, really.

"Hey Amy, how's it going?"

"Great Charlie."

She stared at me for a moment like she was trying to make up her mind about something. Suddenly she walked towards me and threw her arms around me. I hugged her back.

Well I had to, didn't I?

She stepped back and grinned. Maybe there was something different about her.

"Thank you Charlie, thank you for everything."

"You're welcome Peanut, though I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh, of course, I forgot."

She motioned me to have a seat on the couch, then perched on the arm, at the other end. I hate it when somebody does that; it makes me think they're waiting for an excuse to get away from me.

Amy saw me frown. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, you just look uncomfortable sitting that way."

"Oh," she slid off the arm and landed on the cushion with a light bounce. Then she tucked her legs under her baggy skirt and grinned again. "Better?"

"Much, go on."

She took a big breath and looked at me. That was it, I thought, that was what was different. Amy looked happy.

"I took your advice. I talked with Miriam," she leaned towards me a little. "Oh Charlie, she's wonderful. She told me, she thinks we're going to be best friends. Last Saturday, she came to my house and we talked all afternoon, and last night we went to the movies and..." She laughed and I grinned back. "I know this doesn't sound like much to you, but I've never had a real girlfriend before."

"Yeah, that's great." I meant it too, but I wanted to know something else. "Did you ask her about that other thing we talked about?"

"The thing... ? Oh, sure. You were right; she wants to help, says she'd been dying to in fact, ever since she met me."

I knew it; women love that shit.

"That's kind of why we got together last weekend. Miriam said she needed to get to know the real me."

I choked. I wasn't sure Amy had any me, let alone a real one.

"All week long she's been making appointments and lists for me - my hair, clothes, all of it. She has to fly home tomorrow for a wedding, but next Saturday, we're going to Woodfield Mall and spending the day."

"It sounds like fun," I lied. It sounded like having your testicles ripped out through your nostrils would be less painful.

"I'm going to go home now and call Miriam; we're still going over all the plans. I can't believe how much work this is going to be."

Apparently Amy'd never looked in a mirror.

"Well, good," I stopped, as a thought struck me. "Aren't you going to wait to see lover boy?"

"Nope, I just stopped by to pick up some shirts for the cleaners."

She caught me rolling my eyes, and stuck her tongue out at me. Hey, wait a minute; Amy stuck her tongue out at me? She really was changed. Maybe Amy had a real me after all.

"In case I forget, tell Liam, I'll pick them up next Friday as usual, but I won't drop off the stuff that's done until the next morning, on my way over to Miriam's."

I said I would and saw her to the door. I didn't walk her to the car because, it was still light outside and besides, as she pointed out, she'd gotten a space across the street this time. But I watched until she drove away. Always the little gent, that's me.

A few minutes later, I left to meet Clem and Leroy for some brews and see if any of the women at our usual watering hole would be interested in a little between the sheets skinny dipping. With me doing the dipping of course.

I really don't care much for bars. Some of it's a hold over from the nerdy kid in high school who always knew that he was never going to get the girl at the school mixers, and some of it was because of a comment the poetry loving Ms Nigg had made about my dancing looking like the last gasps of a dying stork. But John Barleycorn's Pub wasn't too bad a place to go if you were looking for love in all the wrong places. Dark and cozy, it had lots of little tables crowded into a room overheated by a huge fireplace and a big mahogany bar that you could sit at and take in all the sites. Best of all there was no dance floor.

I was sort of a regular, but I hadn't been there much since getting the new job. So it was gratifying that the bartender grinned and called me by name when I walked in. There were a few other regulars too that nodded, and of course Clem and Lee acknowledged my existence, even in the midst of a heated debate over AI, so I was pretty pleased with the whole idea of spending a night there getting shit faced. And of course there were the women.

One of the perks about going out to the bar with those guys was that, while they were someone to sit with, they were in no way competition. For one thing Leroy kept saying he was gay although with that name, those clothes and the fact that he lost the ability of speech everytime a cute guy said hi, it really was like a non issue for all the impact it had on his sex life which centered on his left hand and several video's that featured hairy man in camoflage on their jackets.

Clement on the other hand liked girls, but I don't think he actually knew what they were for. If he had he might have some success, at least that's what Kendra (who'd had this annoying habit of checking out my friends like she was sizing up the possibility of dating them next) had said when she'd met him. She told me he reminded her of this guy Poindexter from some old Barbie game and when I looked at her like she was nuts, she assured me that 90% of the woman who'd grown up in this country would understand what she was talking about and agree that anyone who reminded them of Poindexter was hot.

But Clem would probably have been happier with a life sized Barbie Doll then a real live girl. At least he never seemed to need to make anymore contact with the female side of things than an occasional appreciative glance and an addiction to Baywatch.

Of course I was a little more hands on than that, and so while they segued into their 999^th argument about the impact of Unix, I looked over the talent that had assembled itself in the regular seating area of the bar. It looked like a good selection. Even though it was early, the tables were crowded with luscious young ladies who looked good enough to eat and more than willing to allow you to do just that. After careful consideration, I settled on a table of three. Hey, I know I'm passable, but still, there is nothing wrong with stacking the odds in my favor. One of them was sure to fall for my line of bullshit, or at least to pretend to.

Her name was Rachel and she was dark the way you should be with that name. She had black hair and black eyes and a cherry red mouth that fascinated me by the way it gleamed when she took a gulp of beer. She probably was packing about 10 extra pounds on her hips, but that was forgivable by the way her large breasts balanced out the weight. She giggled a lot and I'm betting that she was never in the running for a Rhodes Scholarship, but what the fuck, I wasn't interviewing her for a job, and it wasn't her mind I was interested in penetrating.

I talked to her for three hours and she giggled back enough to let me know that I didn't have a lot of worries about where we were going after the bar closed. I was right. I said goodnight to the guys and watched them stagger off to their El stop still arguing, now about the devil that most of us know is really Bill Gates.

"Do you want a drink?"

We were at Rachel's place, whispering so we didn't disturb her roomie. I thought about the offer, but I'd already had double my normal quota and I'd learned the, er, hard way that any more alcohol would just make me too relaxed, if you get my drift. I reluctantly shook my head no.

Rachel didn't seem to mind. It had been obvious by the way her tongue had kept trying to make friends with my tonsils in the back of the cab (how I was going to get my car out of the bar parking lot was something I'd think about later) that she wasn't interested in continuing the meaningful discussion we'd started about Buffy, The Vampire Slayer in the bar.

I grabbed her hand and told her to lead the way to her bedroom and giggling, she did. Then we did a race to see who could get naked the fastest. I won, and then gracious winner that I am, I encouraged her own strip tease with appreciative moans and touches that earned me a couple more giggles and one pretend slap.

Ever since Johanna, I have to confess that I've always been attracted to tall women and Rachel was no exception. She must have been close to my own height and I'd have said she probably weighed more than me if I didn't know that muscles is three times heavier than fat. But that makes her sound flabby and actually she was anything but. What she was, was voluptuous, J Lo proportioned and hotter and sexier than even the alluring lawyer, Vanessa. (Whom I 'd just heard to my sorrow, had gotten engaged to an insurance salesman who was in the Million Dollar Round Club.)

But I forgot about Vanessa and everyone else as I latched my hungry mouth on one of the big fat breasts Rachel was shoving in my face. Tasty was the adjective that came to mind and I attacked it like it was a hot fudge sundae - with a cherry on top. As with most big-breasted women, Rachel lying down was not the same standout woman she was in an upright position. In fact most of her breasts were now neatly tucked into the hollows of her armpits. But there was enough padding still front and center to satisfy me and I snuffled and licked and nipped with great satisfaction.