Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [13]
“Shut up. You couldn’t help yourself. I saw her. I understand that. She’s damned attractive; the kind of girl who could turn a man such as yourself, if only for a while. So I had to make certain she wasn’t going to involve lawyers. Fortunately for you…”
He stopped cold. He was no longer aware of me, as a whole, but was instead staring down with a deeply frightened expression at my…er…‘be fruitful, and multiplier’. Pale, lips quivering, eyes expanding madly like Peeps in a microwave (try it. It’s fun). I adjusted my hands to cover my ‘Ballpark Frank’ and Grandfather ratcheted his attention away from those ‘plump-when-you-cook-‘em’ loins back up to my face, and seethed, rather spectacularly, for several seconds.
“What the hell is wrong with your head?” he asked through clenched teeth.
“The water bottle soaked my pants so Mrs. Abrososa…“
He closed his eyes as if in pain and held up a hand to stop me from going further. “Mrs. Abrososa? I can’t hear this. Now you’ve involved Agrapanthila? I knew her husband. We were friends. He was a pious man, offended by the very notion of sex.”
Unlikely, I thought, with twelve kids. But I let it go.
Older generations have an interesting gift for compartmentalizing their sexuality away from their real lives, honestly seeming to believe themselves sexless and disinterested—as if just saying so makes it true—often in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Of course, counter to this fact, Mrs. Abrososa had apparently reached a greater comfort level with her own—suddenly, images of my elderly secretary monkey-loving her wrinkled, dead husband exploded into my brain, and I had to steady myself against the desk.
“Armando Abrososa was not the kind of man who would approve of you parading your wood around in front of his beloved wife, Corky. Hell, no one would! ESPECIALLY OUR LAWYERS!”
“Mrs. Abrososa offered to dry my pants,” I said, still weaving a bit, but I managing to banish most thoughts of my elderly, rutting secretary. “And the water bottle was an accident. It fell on me…”
“…and you sat there with your dick in it, then made the Nuckeby girl stand around and watch you.”
He made it sound filthy. A lawyer would likely do the same. I wilted. Most of me anyway. I suppose it was kind of filthy. What the hell was wrong with me?
Grandfather rubbed his temples and opened his mouth as if hoping to expel demons.
“This ‘sexual harassment’ bullshit is going to be the death of me,” he said quietly. “No more, you understand? I need this model for the show next week a lot more than I need someone to take notes on clothing designs,” he said pointedly. “You get me?”
I got him. And seeing that I had, he gestured toward my family tree as if it were diseased.
“So, if you want to keep your money, your house, and your cushy ride on the Wopplesdown family gravy train, you will learn—like the rest of this oversexed family—to squelch your urges, and keep that thing where it belongs—under at least two layers of clothing!”
I lowered my head and spoke softly. “I’m sorry.”
“And until you can, you are to come nowhere near this office—or that model! In fact, I never want you to see that model again! Ever! Even in your imagination!”
He paused a moment to let the hot lava in his veins distribute itself evenly.
“Now, take the week off,” he said. “Take two! And before you leave today, Human Resources has a video. I want you to get a copy and watch it—repeatedly—and don’t come back to Wopplesdown Struts or its affiliates until you can quote it back to me, verbatim. You don’t have to believe it—lord knows I don’t—but know it! And if you ever come back to a job, here—any job…”
I winced.
“…I never again want to hear that you’ve been sticking any body parts, in any water bottles, anywhere…”
“I wasn’t..”
“…EVER AGAIN!”
He paused, glaring, and let the moment settle. Then he glanced down again and immediately regretted it.
“And if I catch you doing—whatever it is you’re doing with your pants off, and that goddam stiffy sticking out between your shirt tails—in this office, or anywhere else, in my lifetime