Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [9]
Gloop.
Mrs. Abrososa exited, laughing hysterically.
Rather abruptly my immediate situation overwhelmed me. Naked from the waist down. In a place of business. Erect. After having—mere moments before—sexually assaulted an attractive female employee. It was a rather compromising position. Someone might come by and see. Someone with authority. Someone who’d prefer that, while engaged in my profession, I wore pants.
What if ‘someone’ was already on their way? A representative from Human Resources with anti-harassment literature, disapproving looks, and things I’d have to sign while not wearing underwear? Or the police to discuss my lewd and lascivious behavior—or worse—to arrest me and haul me downtown in my overexposed state? Or perhaps Ms. Nuckeby’s Schwarzenegger-like father with a machete in one hand, an Uzi in the other, and a cigar to light the explosives he was going to shove up my ass?
Terrified, I called out through the door.
“Mrs. Abrososa? How long do you think it’s going to take?”
“Gimme half an hour,” she replied.
I felt a jolt run through me. I couldn’t stay in here—literally bucknaked—while SWAT teams converged on the area! I looked around, nervously trying to figure out what to do next when the phone rang.
And rang.
“Are you going to get that?” I called.
No answer. Must have gone into the bathroom, or the closet, or the company kitchen to show off my skid marks to other employees.
I looked at the phone. Internal line. Reasonably safe. Besides that, all the tension was ‘felling the old redwood’, if you get the supreme subtlety of my meaning, so I felt less perverted and more able to pick up the receiver.
So I did.
And heard the sound of an indescribably sexy voice on the other end.
“Mister Wopplesdown?” Pronounced correctly.
Gloop.
“Yes.”
“Mister Cor-CAR-an Wopplesdown?”
Well, .500 ain’t bad.
“Corky. Yes. Who’s calling?”
“Um…sir? This is Ms. Nuckeby.”
‘Mini-Me’ noisily banged a cup of pencils off my desk. “What was that? Is everything all right?”
“Fine, Ms. Nuckeby, fine,” I said as if, for all the world, I still wore pants. “What can I do for you?”
“I don’t know if you know who I am, sir, but…“
“Of course I know who you are, Ms. Nuckeby. You’re the model. The one wearing…”
“No top.”
I breathed deeply and fought to keep blood vessels from bursting in my brain. “Yes. Satin-Lace-Babydoll # 43 with no…no…no…em…correct.” I turned nervously, and my ugly stepson slammed the phone’s cradle to the floor where it clanged, banged, and ranged.
“Did something fall?” she asked. “What’s that ringing? Do you have to answer another line?”
“Yes. No! Something…uh…I have a…uh.” I picked up the phone cradle Polyphemus had trashed in his blind rage and tried to silence the ringer, “…the phone got…uh…hit by…” there appeared to be no off-switch, “…knocked down by…” damn, where was the “…it fell. It fell, somehow, all by itself, and…” I smacked the noisy thing against the desk, and it shattered into a million pieces, one of which continued to ring pathetically. “Sorry. All good. Speak.”
“Woof.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Just kidding. I…uh…I wanted to come by and see you, sir. I…”
“No!”
She paused. Struck.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “I was hoping that if I saw you…”
“I’d rather you didn’t come to see me, Ms. Nuckeby.”
“Oh.”
“Right now, I mean. Parts of me at least. All of me. What there is of me to see.” I sucked air. In lots of ways. “Now is just not a good time.”
“Then when might be? See, I was hoping maybe I could buy you lunch, and we could discuss…em…”
What? Settlements?
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
Another pause. “I see,” she said finally.
I flushed again, but from a different kind of distress. “I didn’t mean…what I meant to say was: I’m in the middle of something.” I looked down angrily at my throbbing, insistent little friend. “An unexpected guest has popped up in my office and is demanding my undivided attention.”
Her voice fell. “Oh.”
“He and I—we have other pants. PLANS!”
I repeatedly bit my tongue, angrily punishing it for its failure to get off its lazy ass