Lloyd’s Angel

Lloyd’s Angel
by Virtual Scott

October 2010

It was shaping up to be another busy day. The remote vibrated discreetly in my pocket and I headed for the mall entrance. “On it,” my partner’s voice sounded in my earbud. Angela was there before me, courteously but firmly blocking the progress of a very flustered-looking middle-aged woman. I got there just at the end of the usual speech — “do you mind if we make a quick search of your bag?” We all knew the request was for form’s sake only.

The lady was looking distinctly ashen under her cosmetics when Angela produced the necklace from the bottom of her bag. Unboxed, and unadorned by any of the layers of carefully folded tissue that normally surrounded purchases, it sported only the small RFID tag that had triggered the door sensors. “I have no idea how that got there!” she stammered.

Angela looked frankly disbelieving, but she was always a hard audience. My read of the situation was that she probably was telling the truth. “I’m sure it was an honest mistake,” I told her in my most comforting gentlemanly voice. “Vanessa is always leaving things on the counter, and it probably got caught when she was wrapping your purchases.”

My partner looked briefly rebellious but followed my lead. “Thank you for your cooperation, Ma’am. We truly value your patronage; please visit us again soon.”

Her brilliant smile startled the woman, who mumbled something unintelligible and hurried to put the incident, and us, behind her as quickly as possible. As we walked the necklace back to its rightful place, our minor disturbance was already forgotten by the other shoppers, just like the management preferred.

“Loss Prevention” was management’s buzzword for it, and we were the store’s best team, and a study in contrasts. Angela was young and dynamic and shit-hot; she wore her security uniform in a way that was 100% professional but put those fake-cop strippers to shame. I was forgettably (and intentionally) plain-clothes and old enough to be her grandfather.

We had good chemistry, but what management cared about was that our loss rate was less than half of anybody else’s. When you were the flagship, most exclusive department store at the area’s most upscale mall, that translated into serious dollars. The only knock against us was that we didn’t like working with anybody else and only worked days. Angela was taking classes at night to earn her degree. I could have (and had) retired years ago, and took the job to avoid boredom; I saw no reason to screw up my nights.

The store manager didn’t have any leverage, but probably consoled himself with the thought that our target demographic was rich enough that many of them didn’t work, so we were busier during the days than most of the rest of the mall. Unfortunately, that traffic included the usual proportion of people who preferred to avoid paying for their merchandise.

Angela clearly suspected the lady was one of that demographic. “How do you know she wasn’t lying to us, Lloyd?” she asked me again after we returned the necklace to one of the jewelry counters.

“I don’t,” I replied with a shrug, “but she struck me as genuinely surprised and upset — and not about getting caught. I’ve had practice reading people since before you were born. Besides…” We recited the tired refrain together, she with an air of resignation, “…the customer always gets the benefit of the doubt.”

It wasn’t surprising Angela had pressed me on it; you didn’t get far in this business without learning to play a hunch, and she suspected I had some trick I wasn’t sharing. However, the fact that she was right didn’t change matters. It wasn’t something I could teach, and I wasn’t entirely sure I understood it myself.

It was something I could do with my mind, although I didn’t have a neat name for it. The best description is that I could sort of “push” at another person, and influence them. It wasn’t a “your wish is my command” sort of thing; there was an odd, well, “twist” involved. Several, I suspected. Struggling with its application, and with the murky ethics of it all, had occupied me for several decades. Even if it seemed appropriate, it worked best at a simple emotional level; intellectual things usually required coming at the desired result sideways.

More detailed work was possible, but it was inordinately tricky and prone to outright failure, especially if I wasn’t familiar with the other mind. They looked (or felt?) like fuzzy balls of static, and delicate work required teasing through them like a ball of tangled string.

The immediate point was that, although I couldn’t read minds, I could sense the level of resistance I was getting when I pushed a person. When I’d thought I hate shoplifting at the lady with the necklace, it had been like missing a step on a staircase — I was as sure as I could be that she’d already believed it and hadn’t stolen the necklace.

Reminding Vanessa I feel good when I return jewelry to the display cases immediately was like pushing a finger through a sheet of tissue paper — while holding it with the same hand. I usually tried to avoid messing about with people who didn’t need it, but this wasn’t the first time she’d forgotten, and some folks just couldn’t resist an opportunity if they saw one. It was good if we got them at the entrance, better if we could intercept shoplifters still inside the store, but best if they never got an opportunity in the first place.

If only the shoplifters were our only problem. We headed to men’s furnishings, in response to a report of a customer causing a disturbance. As I feared, it was the young asshole who’d been yanking our chains on and off for a month or so. Even without cheating I could see he wasn’t serious about lifting anything, and he only turned up on our shift. My take was that Angela had a fan who’d seen that stupid toilet commercial too many times — the one where the guy stuffs everything he can down the bowl in an attempt to score a service visit from the foxy plumber next door.

That plumber had nothing on my partner, even with the exasperated frown marring Angela’s expression. The idiot had something, probably a pack of socks, stuffed down the front of his pants; Tim, the sales associate, clearly wanted to belt him but was playing by the rules that said, “Hands off and call security.”

“I ain’t got nothin’,” smirked the slimeball when we got within earshot, “frisk me if you don’t believe me.”

I obligingly took a step forward.

“Not you, old dude!” he warned. “I’m not gonna let some random guy handle my junk unless you want a lawsuit. If the store wants to search me, I want a uniformed officer.” All of us were perfectly aware that I was as fully accredited by the store as Angela, and that she was the only security uniform in the store at the moment.

Some people had it coming. “Fine,” I growled. “If you’ll accompany us to the security office?” Angela knew something was up, because his last few visits had ended with an escort to the door and a suggestion not to return that day. She silently led off, followed by the jerk and myself.

“I’d love to tap that,” he confided, as we both watched her tight ass in the form-fitting uniform slacks.

She stiffened, still in hearing range. “Don’t push your luck, punk,” I warned him, but he was feeling invulnerable and in control.

That feeling faded a bit when we both accompanied him into our Spartan detention room. “It’s for your protection,” I sarcastically informed him. “You’ve waved your right to be frisked by a member of the same sex, but store policy requires an observer be present to ensure the inspecting officer does not behave improperly. You also have the right to have this inspection recorded,” I concluded with a nod at the camera in the corner.

I could see him working the angles in his head, trying to decide if it was a trick question. I honestly didn’t care, but he deserved to squirm. He finally decided to have it taped, which probably was smart if he thought we were going to beat the crap out of him.

I stepped out of the room and started the recorder, verifying it looked good and that the red light on the camera was illuminated. I also used the opportunity to give Angela a quick heads-up via the comm while he couldn’t hear me. “Give him the works.” She twitched. “Be nice, but be thorough — at least five minutes.”

Angela growled inarticulately in response but gave me a barely perceptible nod as I reentered the room. “Please stand with your legs spread and your arms out, sir,” she told him, biting off the honorific as if it were an epithet.

“Don’t try anything funny,” I warned him, “she’s a combat vet.” Besides being true, I hoped it would keep him quiet and avoid unnecessary distractions. I leaned against the wall by the corner, where she wouldn’t be blocking my view, and gave Angela a thumbs-up.

She moved in close and began running her hands slowly and carefully along one arm. She didn’t touch him with anything except the palms of her hands, but Angela was nearly in his face, looked like a wet dream, and had good taste in perfume. I waited until the inevitable stiffening became visible, and then I started pushing.

This was a complicated one because I was trying to juggle several things at once. I knew he must be feeling arousal, and Angela’s hands methodically working their way across his body. I left a space for those, and then wove around them desire and the sort of visceral sensations all men had — the pungent musk of perspiration after hard exercise, the feel of stubble beneath your fingers just before you shaved, the feel of hard cock in your hand; who hasn’t masturbated?

I pushed all of it to him, hard, and kept pushing. It was a lot of effort, and it was difficult to maintain the pressure and keep a physical eye on things at the same time. I knew I was getting to him when I felt the pressure start to fade and he started watching me instead of Angela, but I kept pushing anyway. Fucking slimebag.

Finally, Angela stepped back. “Don’t move!” she told him, before speaking for the camera. “My inspection is completed. A foreign object appears to be concealed near the subject’s genital area.” She looked distastefully at his tenting crotch. “Lloyd?”

I had to let up on the pressure to talk, but I’d already worked out what I was going to say, which made things easier. “Sir, our policies strictly prohibit invasive searches by members of the opposite sex. Therefore, I am going to remove the object you have concealed in your pants.”

I walked over to him, a little unsteadily, then brusquely pulled out his waistband with one hand, reached in to grab the plastic packaging with the other, and pushed as I withdrew it. I didn’t quite have the socks clear before the punk exploded all over the inside of his pants. He jerked like I’d sucker-punched him, but the recording would make it clear neither of us had done anything of the kind.

“Angela, can you escort this gentleman off the premises?” I needed to catch my breath.

“Certainly,” she replied with crisp enthusiasm. “Further, as an attempted shoplifter” — the bag looked like it might not be suitable for returning to inventory — “you are no longer welcome in this establishment. Please do not return.” She marched him out while he was still poking ineffectually at his pants.



“Lloyd, what the hell was that?” Angela asked when she returned a few minutes later.

By then I was up to having a conversation, or at least avoiding one. “I guess you’re just too hot to handle, Angela! Hell, if I were his age, I’d probably have that problem too. No offense intended, of course.”

“None taken, of course,” she rejoined, looking unsatisfied. “Should I feel offended that towards the end I think he was paying more attention to you than me?”

“Probably just worrying that I’d clock him if he got frisky,” I quipped.

“Now I am offended,” Angela said with a smile. “You think I can’t take care of myself? You looked like you were getting winded just holding up the wall, Grandpa; everything all right?”

“Oh, fine; just not a spry as I used to be.” I pushed myself back to my feet. “Let’s get back to making the world safe for retail therapy, shall we?”

With luck, we’d never see sock-boy again. If I’d done the job right, he’d be too interested in getting felt up by other men to bother coming around here. I told myself it was good for the store, and good for Angela, and tried to put it all behind me.

The activity made it easy to do; maybe the official holiday shopping season hadn’t started yet, but the decorations and holiday displays were up, and foot traffic was heavier than usual. We circulated randomly, and I dispensed a few light I hate shoplifting pushes at people that looked problematic.

I hadn’t done a big push like that in a while, and I guess my adrenaline was still going, because I was a little wild that afternoon. Angela got a line on a girl we suspected of being a serial shoplifter; clever enough to never get caught, but always seeming to come out of the changing rooms with less than she went in carrying. While Angela was conducting an on-the-spot search, I pressed my back to the other side of the partition, located the static of the unfamiliar mind, and pushed it makes me hot to leave my clothing in dressing rooms.

Angela subsequently reported she hadn’t found anything incriminating, but that the girl “was weird” without providing any details. I kicked myself, wondering why I’d passed on the usual reinforcement and wondering if the girl would actually stop stealing or just start trading outfits. Well, spilt milk.

The most exciting moment, for bystanders, came mid-afternoon. A guy at the watch counter tried a snatch and dash, with Angela in hot pursuit. In the open, she probably would have caught him; in the store, the gawkers stirred up by his passage got in her way and she was losing ground.

He was at the limit of my range when I pushed a frantic I love to taunt people but couldn’t feel if it had any effect. Whether it was me or karma, he turned to look back at Angela and ran right into a newly-emplaced Christmas tree inside the store entrance. A gun I hadn’t realized he had went skidding away, and my heart missed a beat — what if he’d shot her?

Angela was on top of him before he could regain his footing, and it was all over after that. She had him on the ground and cuffed before I could even get there. My contribution was to collect the watch and gun before somebody else could. The onlookers applauded as she jerked him to his feet and we marched him back to our holding room to wait for the real cops to take him off our hands.

I tried to apologize, although I wasn’t sure for what exactly, but Angela cut me off and told me she knew I wouldn’t let her get hurt. It felt nice, if unrealistic. I’d already hurt her worse than she’d ever know.



Dinner was reassuringly normal. I gulped a couple aspirin for my headache, and flipped through another chapter of “Advanced Topics in Supply Chain Management” while I waited for the microwave to heat one of those allegedly healthy freezer meals, and then absent-mindedly consumed it.

After that, I sacked out in my recliner and listened to the classical station for half an hour or so while I just let my mind drift. Then it was time to get dressed for my night job. Ironically, although the surroundings were seedier than my day job, the dress code was much classier. The commute was better, too; I walked downstairs and the car was waiting as usual.

It whisked me, with only desultory conversation, to an uninhabited alley. I let myself in the back door, nodded to the staff in sight, and headed up to my office. If I’d gone in the front door, I would have had to navigate velvet ropes and bouncers to pass under a sign reading “HOME RUN — Home of the Grand Slam Girls.”

My office door boasted a small sign that read, “LP.” It amused Danny, the owner, to use the same term the store did — “loss prevention” — even if the merchandise was different. I was already getting hard in anticipation as I opened the door and walked into the office, closing it again behind me.

“Boss,” she greeted me, rising from the expensive chair. “Angel,” I replied. The body was the same, and the perfume, but nothing else. She was my greatest creation, my worst failure, the fairest fruit of my gift, and a stark warning of its corrosive effect, all rolled into one sultry package.

Like a modern-day Jekyll and Hyde, two personalities inhabited the body before me, each ignorant of the other. Angela had a body built for sex; Angel frankly invited it. Angela was my partner; Angel my depraved toy. She stalked across the office to me, displaying herself for my enjoyment.

There was a lot to enjoy. Dark hair cascaded across one shoulder to fall just short of her breasts. As I watched she brushed it back with one hand to present herself, parting lips painted a deep ruby red to reveal a flash of white teeth and pink tongue. Her breasts, high, firm and beautifully shaped, rode exposed atop the ribbed bustier she’d chosen to wear this evening. The nipples capping them were rigidly erect and dark with rouge.

Angel’s hands drifted to her hips and plucked the ties of her string bikini, letting it fall to the floor. It revealed a bare sex swollen and dripping with desire. She swayed close to me, limbs covered with opera gloves and dark lace stockings, balancing gracefully on the five-inch heels that enhanced her blood-boiling gait.

“Fuck me,” she breathed in a husky voice that couldn’t be mistaken for her alter ego’s business-like soprano. I unzipped my fly, but she batted my hands aside and finished unfastening my trousers. Squatting gracefully, she inhaled my rigid organ until her nose was nestled in my wiry hair.

My balls churned and I shuddered with need, but she knew my body nearly as well as I did. She rose again and pulled me toward the desk, which not coincidentally was cleared. She leaned back against it, and the slight spreading of her legs and the molten urgency in her dark eyes was all the invitation I needed. I sheathed myself in her welcoming depths, both of us gasping with the intensity of the sensation.

I hissed, “Fucking slut,” through my teeth as I withdrew slightly and forced myself into her again.

“I’ll always be your slut,” she sighed, her eyelids heavy with desire. I knew I’d go to Hell for what I’d done to her, but at the moment there was nothing the Devil could tempt me with that would outdo my Angel. I shot my load inside her, and she climaxed too, as she always did. She milked my rapidly deflating organ with her muscles, and then pushed me away so she could kneel and clean me with her kitten tongue.

While she worked, I stroked her hair gently and carefully laid my latest reading assignment into the baroque tangle of sparks that was her mind. Angela would wake with memories of another lecture. I actually was qualified to teach this subject, and most of the others Angela had “taken” over the past two years; it was the least I could do for her.

Our mutual tasks accomplished, we dressed ourselves. Angel didn’t bother to clean herself before tying on her panties and checking her garters and stockings were straight. Call me petty, but it was another unexpected twist to our strange arrangement.

A hint to other seventy-plus-year-old would-be perverts: do not acquire companions whose sex drives significantly exceed your own capabilities. I could play a few games with my own mind, but my body just was not physically up to the challenge of orgasming more than once a night. Angel lived for sex and needed multiple climaxes a night to be happy; unfortunately my conceit of tying her orgasms to her partner’s necessarily meant she was a party girl.

She fit right in at Home Run. A natural Grand Slam Girl — “you get all the way to home base, and so do your friends!” — Danny usually had her booked well in advance. I wasn’t the jealous type, mostly, as long as I made sure all the other guys got sloppy seconds. I kept an eye on her, and knowing she was taking all those other loads solely because I wanted her to pandered to my baser instincts.

After a surprisingly chaste kiss and a final grab of that sweet ass, we went our separate ways and I settled down to business. The concept was the same, but “Loss Prevention” had some unique twists when it applied to workers at a thinly disguised brothel when prostitution was illegal. There was a lot more proactive work, for one thing. Danny didn’t understand exactly what I did, but he understood I was doing something that netted him a lot of profit and he took care to keep me happy.

For my part, I sometimes regretted our pact but I felt owed it to the girls to make sure they were treated semi-decently. And, honestly, it provided a place where I could do the least damage when I hit one of my backsliding phases. I’d had a lot of them over the years.

November 1961

It was ludicrous, but I couldn’t tell Dr. Reynolds that. I might have been short-sighted enough to tell him anyway, but my mouth and brain were frozen in stunned surprise until the opportunity was past.

Finally I just picked up the notes and left without saying anything. I was convinced none of this would have happened if Dr. Needum hadn’t been on sabbatical, but he was — and my Ph.D. prospects were in Dr. Reynolds’ hands for this academic year.

It was expected that Reynolds would have me doing his scutwork. It was, perhaps, bearable that he had me doing busywork for the benefit of his own graduate students; I could expect they might feel they owed me a favor in return some day. Accusing me of deliberately sabotaging one of his researcher’s experiments was nearly unbearable; not least because the accusation was completely unfounded.

Now I was committed to spending the weekend before Thanksgiving, including my birthday, redoing some screw-up Master candidate’s work so I could prove that I was innocent of malfeasance. What a farce. The worst part was that it was all statistics, which I hated. I’d seen math wizards who could make their slide rules fly, but I wasn’t one of them.

I started after dinner, putting aside my own dissertation and research notes, and proceeded to cover my desk with neat stacks of paper. By the time I’d finished sorting, I’d remembered the experiment they described. It had been another deadly dull survey intended to measure attitudes across the student body; anybody with any excuse had contrived to be unavailable and Reynolds had started drafting the unwary — like me — to assist.

Reynolds’ student, Alex, had claimed I had messed up my interviews and thrown off the entire study. More precisely, my data was skewed enough from the other interviewers’ data that the uncertainty intervals became absurdly large. Removing my data reduced the population sufficiently that it was no longer possible to draw statistically significant inferences, even if the act of removing them didn’t raise questions about the survey’s methodology.

The survey was too simple to screw up. The interviewer showed the subject a pair of pictures, and recorded which was preferred. Then repeat about a hundred times. There were a lot of pictures, all carefully ordered and categorized so as to eliminate bias and allow conclusions to be based on the subject’s demographic. It was deadly dull, but I knew I hadn’t messed it up — which meant the math claiming I did was wrong.

My problem was that by Saturday afternoon, it didn’t look like the math was wrong after all. Sure, I’d done it five times and gotten three different answers, but I was beginning to think the accusation was correct — or there was something subtly wrong with the experiment and nobody else had picked up on it. I changed tack and started looking for patterns in the data for my surveys.

I stumbled across it after dinner, and ended up awake well past midnight trying to confirm it. When I looked at my interviews in chronological order, I found the deviations were greatest with the first interviews of the day, and decreased until they became indistinguishable from the data collected by other interviewers. The other interesting quirk was that the deviations seemed to be generally in the same direction.

By Sunday afternoon, I had established a statistically significant trend existed; responses at the beginning of each day tended to converge, and responses at the end of each day tended to match the overall survey results. I also knew that I didn’t know enough to take things any further. Since there was no way I was going to go to Reynolds and tell him that without knowing why, my obvious next step was to find Alex and talk to him.



I hurried through my own class Monday and let my students go a few minutes early so I could get across the quad before the end of the period. I’d never met him, but a glance at the schedule showed Alex was teaching a recitation section of Reynolds’ Introduction to Psychology class; I figured it would be easy enough to intercept him at the end of the hour and introduce myself.

The students were already bolting from the classroom when I rounded the corner, so I let the mob pass before poking my head in the door. My first thought was that I’d missed Alex; the only person remaining in the room was a stunning blonde transferring some papers into a briefcase. I paused to admire the view for a moment, until it was clear she’d noticed me.

“Yes?” she prompted, obviously less taken with me than I with her. “Did you want something?”

“I was looking for Alex Sullivan; do you know where I can find him?”

The blonde barked a brief, unhappy laugh. “I’m Alexandra Sullivan — what did you want?”

I walked a little further into the classroom. “I wanted to talk with you about your popular opinion survey.” Her expression lightened, until I added, “My name is Lloyd Parker.”

“You!” I think if she’d had something heavier in her hand than paper, she would have thrown it. “Do you know what kind of mess you’ve caused?”

Holding up both hands in self-defense, I admitted, “Yes; Dr. Reynolds pointed it out to me last week, rather forcefully!”

I thought perhaps her stern expression wavered a little bit. “Do you know how many weeks this is going to set me back while I repeat those surveys? I was supposed to have the next draft of my thesis submitted before the holiday break!”

“Hey, I’m really sorry about that. I looked at the data all weekend, and I agree that something funny happened, but I honestly don’t think I did anything and I don’t know how to explain it. I was hoping maybe you would spot something I missed.”

It looked like she wanted to refuse, but nobody I knew put in the effort it took for post-graduate work unless it really meant something to them. “Yeah, okay,” Alexandra sighed. “I have office hours, but I think everybody is already thinking about Thanksgiving. Listening to you might be more entertaining than wondering how to salvage my study.” She finished filling her briefcase and we headed out.

It turned out she had half of a small office on the third floor. It was, as she’d predicted, deserted. Unlike my basement lair on the other side of campus, it sported a window, but the folded towel stuffed along the bottom of the pane suggested this wasn’t the best time of year to appreciate it.

Alexandra set her briefcase on the desk in one corner, leaned against the wall next to the radiator, and turned her blue eyes on me. “Go ahead, Lloyd — impress me.” Her crossed arms and body language suggested she wasn’t expecting much.

In other circumstances, I might have been intimidated — I didn’t run across really attractive postgraduate coeds every day — but my mind was already focused on the puzzle I’d turned up the previous afternoon. I plopped my own briefcase atop the bare table in the center of the office, extracted my quasi-legible notes, and started talking.

She lasted about five minutes before abandoning the radiator and trying to read my notes upside down. That lasted about a minute before she was standing beside me trying, with equal lack of success, to read my notes right side up. “Can you read these?” Alexandra asked in annoyance, before proceeding to barrage me with a stream of increasingly pointed questions.

We’d been alternating at the chalkboard and pacing back and forth arguing for some time when I finally noticed it was dark outside and my stomach was rumbling. “Hey, it’s late; would you like to continue this over dinner?”

“Oh!” Alexandra had been pretty animated, but she visibly shut down as her sense of surroundings returned and she looked at the clock. “I’m sorry, Lloyd, but I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

“Maybe a cup of coffee, then?” I suggested, unwilling to let things go without making another try.

“Thank you, but no.” I would have felt better if she’d shown at least a little regret.

I belatedly noticed she was wearing an engagement ring, although not a wedding band. Smooth move, Lloyd, I told myself in disgust. “Okay, well, thanks for listening,” I told her, trying to smooth over the awkward spot. “Let me know if you figure out anything, will you?”

“Certainly,” Alexandra said, a bit distantly.

Probably I’d never hear from her again, but hopefully at least I’d done enough to get off of Dr. Reynolds’ shit list. “Good night,” I told her, and walked out.



It was hard to get going on Monday morning. The roads hadn’t been good Sunday, and although my ten-year-old Ford would probably live to run me into the ground, the tires were a little bald and I’d been sane enough to drive slowly. One of the perks of being an advanced student was the avoidance of early morning classes, but apparently nobody had told Dr. Reynolds that.

Another of his annoying qualities was a bizarre fondness for early morning status meetings, which this semester were every Monday and Friday. I told myself that I was lucky he’d let me skip the post-Thanksgiving meeting, but I was still in a bad mood when I stumped into his office.

I was surprised to see Alexandra waiting in his office, apparently for me.

“Now, Alex tells me you’re willing to work with her to correct your little mishap, Lloyd,” he said without anything in the way of a preamble. “Commendable, my boy, commendable.”

That wasn’t the way I remembered leaving things and I was trying to collect my wits enough to respond when Alexandra, who also wore a pained expression, spoke up. “Um, Dr. Reynolds, what I had meant to suggest was that Lloyd perhaps could assist with a follow-on study to determine the source of the error in the original.”

“Well, of course!” Reynolds chuckled. “Of course he’ll assist you; that’s what collaboration is all about, right? I expect to hear details on your plan come Friday, now. Carry on!”

I hated morning people. I was really tempted to hate Alexandra, too; my own dissertation had just been sidetracked indefinitely and Reynolds effectively had put me in the role of an assistant to a researcher who was junior to me. However, it was hard to hate a girl as beautiful as Alexandra, and in all fairness, she didn’t seem much happier about it than I.

“Your place or mine?” I asked as we stood in the hallway.

“Uugh!” she cursed a moment later after the double entrendre sank in. Alexandra turned away without another word and stalked toward the stairs.

Dr. Reynolds could still see me from his chair, so I hastily scampered after Alexandra, catching up with her as she started upward. Apparently, she preferred her office to mine.

“Just be quiet!” she snarled, before I even opened my mouth. “Do you know how hard it is to be a woman? Nobody takes you seriously! I use ‘Alex’ for a pen name so I can get published.” She was stomping up the stairs rather noisily. “I’ve spent years trying to get men to treat me like somebody competent, and then this happens!”

Alexandra stopped abruptly and turned to face me. “You know what they’re going to say about this…”

She was two steps above me; I forced my eyes up to her face. “What?”

“Oh, Alexandra just got her math wrong; it’s so hard for her. Luckily she’ll have Lloyd to help keep her from getting into trouble now!” She twitched as if she’d been planning to throw up her hands and discovered one of them burdened by her briefcase. “Aaaaah!”

I couldn’t help it; I laughed in her face. “One of NASA’s chimpanzees probably can do better math than I can! Besides,” I continued, “how do you think I feel about this? I’m a doctoral candidate, for crying out loud; I should be conducting my own research, not assisting some… graduate study.”

Visibly clenching her teeth, she replied, “Well, I guess we can agree that neither of us wants to be doing this.”

Glumly nodding, I couldn’t resist adding, “And Dr. Reynolds could care less what we think, so we’re stuck doing it anyway.”

Alexandra sighed in agreement and resumed her climb.

That conversation pretty much foreshadowed the short remainder of the semester. I became a fixture in Alexandra’s office. Her officemate, Susan, silently procured an additional chair from somewhere, further cramping the already-tight space. After her initial stairwell explosion, Alexandra remained punctuously correct but distant. I dreaded those sessions, but the kibitzing Susan, who was rather more taken with my exalted status than was Alexandra, interjected enough humor to keep them bearable.

We wasted the rest of the month re-interviewing subjects, comparing results, and checking math, to no avail. Alexandra surveyed students I’d interviewed earlier in the semester, and, while there were some minor variations, got basically the same results I had. I repeated some of her interviews, with Alexandra watching me like a hawk, with the same lack of useful results. All of us got a lot better at statistics, but the numbers stubbornly insisted that “my” interviewees had noticeably different preferences than their peers, regardless of demographic. I left for Christmas wondering if pumping gas was such a bad living after all.

November 2010

I was nursing a drink downstairs in the lounge, watching the crowd, when the detective came in. The lounge provided space for the bar, and a small dance floor. It looked like a typical (and law-abiding) club offering adult entertainment, if you didn’t stop to wonder how much of the building it didn’t occupy. It catered to heavy drinkers, those too clueless or too timid to make it to the suites upstairs, and to our friends in the law enforcement community.

I’d been grinning over my beer at the dazed expressions on the frat boys coming down the stairs; by my watch, these would be Angel’s first party. The change in the eddy of the crowd by the door caught my attention. I don’t know what it was about the police types; no matter what they wore, they seemed to exude a buzz-kill aura that tipped off even those much less observant than myself.

What I should have done, and had done countless times before, was have the hostess bring the guy over, spot him a drink and a seat for the floor show, and leave him positively convinced that nothing illegal was happening here, even if the place was littered with Danny’s stupidly clever allusions to the contrary.

But, like I mentioned, I was in a bad place. What I did do was buzz the hostess on the comm, tell her to stall the cop for ten minutes, and bring him up to the red suite. Then I ghosted up the back stairs to find Angel. She was alone in the gold suite, which reeked of sex, but looking remarkably composed as she combed out her lustrous hair. Her panties were gone and her swollen slit was oozing cum, but with a little lipstick she’d be as presentable as she had been at the beginning of the night. What a slut; my cock gave an involuntary twitch at the thought.

“Hey, Boss,” she said, noticing me. “What’s up?”

“Change of plan,” I told her. “We have a visitor downstairs, probably a cop. How’d you like to drop by the red suite and pretend to be Danny for a while?”

“I can do that,” she answered, her face so intent that she reminded me of Angela and my conscience twinged again. “How do you want me to play him?”

“Find out why he’s here. Compromise him, if you can; just be sure he makes the first move.” The red suite was right next to my office and outfitted with video and audio pickups — perfect for catching people red-handed, and thus the name. I shrugged. “Go with your instincts.”

The little vixen grinned widely. “I love a challenge! How long do I have?”

“About five minutes now,” I replied, looking at my watch.

“I’ll be ready!” she rose and swept out of the room, moving quickly without looking like she was working at it.

I sauntered back to my office, riffed through a set of placards until I found one reading, “Staff Supervisor,” and another labeled, “Ms. Jones.” Stepping back outside, I popped the “Red Suite” sign off the magnetic mount on the door and positioned the two replacements in its place. I pushed open the door and took a quick look at the room, confirming it was presentable and could reasonably pass for an ostentatious, but not extravagant, office.

Angel brushed past me, making sure I felt the curve of a breast through our clothing. She’d put up her hair in a quick twist, traded in her slut shoes for more modest three-inch pumps, and exchanged the gloves for a corporate grey pinstripe skirt and blazer. I doubted she looked very modest beneath it, but that wasn’t the point. After a quick look in the wall mirror (which incidentally concealed the main camera) she wiped away the remains of her lipstick with a tissue and quickly but neatly retouched her lips with a more muted shade.

We traded thumbs-up, and I closed the door behind me before returning to my own office. Once there, I started the video and confirmed I had a good image; Angel was seated behind “her” desk typing at the PC there. I buzzed the host station with a go-ahead, and sat back to finish organizing my thoughts.

A knock sounded through the speaker a moment later. “Ms. Jones? There’s a Detective Snowden here to see you.” Angel nodded and beckoned.

With a grimace, I noticed she was surfing a pornography site. The face of the display wasn’t visible from the visitor chair in front of the desk, but I hoped we wouldn’t need that secondary view later.

An obviously disgruntled middle-aged man entered the picture and stared at Angel for a long moment before settling into the chair. I heard the door close behind him.

“You’re the manager of this place?” he asked in evident disbelief. Is this your idea of a joke? Where’s Sullivan?” That was Danny.

Angel arched one delicate eyebrow. “Yes, I’m the manager. No, I am not joking. Mr. Sullivan has better things to do with his time than fill out personnel reports and cater to unannounced visits from sexist troglodytes.” She considered, and added, “Not that it’s your business, but the girls prefer a manager who can sympathize with their viewpoint.”

“This makes it my business,” he snarled, slamming his badge on the desk. Yep, there was a lot of anger there. “And we both know ‘your girls’ spend far more time on their backs in these rooms than they do on that sham of a stage you have downstairs!”

“I beg to differ,” Angel responded calmly. “What we both know is that we provide changing rooms for the comfort and convenience of our featured entertainers, and that multiple previous investigations — official ones — have uncovered no evidence that would substantiate your wild, and frankly slanderous, accusations.”

What an earful. Maybe it was somehow bleeding over, but it sure sounded like Angel was making good use of Angela’s unorthodox MBA coursework.

“Perhaps you would care to explain this?” Snowden asked, suddenly ice cool, as he flicked a small trinket onto the desk with apparent indifference.

“A lapel pin, it appears,” she commented, not impressed. “Your point?”

It took me a moment longer to recognize it; the video quality was good but not great. I wanted to beat my head against my desk. Danny couldn’t resist being clever, especially when he thought he had me to bail him out. It looked like I was going to be doing some bailing tonight.

“A lapel pin I confiscated from my son,” the detective grated. Just great; I just shook my head. “You will please not insult my intelligence by pretending it is a coincidence that it is shaped like your ‘Home Run’ logo, or that by coincidence that same logo appears on the plaque at the head of the stairs, which by further striking coincidence bears my son’s name, among others.”

I was already pulling up the roster on the computer; there was a Darren Snowden added in the spring. That explained the detective’s interest, and suggested this was an off-the-books probe, but why the intensity?

“Yes,” Angel admitted blandly, “we do award the Home Run pin to some of our best customers.”

“My son is 16 years old!” he erupted.

Snowden and the office computer had a critically important five-year difference of opinion regarding Darren’s age. If, as seemed likely, the elder Snowden had a heart attack next door, I couldn’t decide if I would be happy or sad.

Angel managed a nicely calibrated expression of pained surprise and sympathy. “I assure you, Detective Snowden, we do not knowingly admit minors to this establishment and we are extremely vigilant about checking identification. I am profoundly sorry this situation has arisen, but you cannot reasonably hold us accountable for it.”

He waved her off, “oh I know, of course he has fake identification! But you are the peddlers of smut that actively encourage this moral decay! Peddling sex — no, women — like they were pieces of meat. A Home Run pin — to my son!”

The cop was literally pounding on the edge of her desk. I knew what was coming, but what remained to be seen was how Angel would respond.

“Best customers!” he shouted. “You know how you get a Home Run pin?” It was obviously a rhetorical question, and Snowden raced on as soon as he drew a ragged breath. “You tit-fuck one of your ‘performers’ — and then she blows you, and then you fuck her, and then you’re not done, oh no, you sodomize her. Then you give him a fucking pin so he can boast to his friends and corrupt them too!”

Technically, the guy had to ejaculate all four times. Originally, the only restriction was that they had to occur on the same visit, but some high rollers weren’t beyond forking out to engage a girl all night; now, Danny had a one-hour limit on it. Pin holders had their names engraved on the wall of fame and received preferential booking and discounts on their future visits. There was no doubt Snowden had the basics down; it was one of Danny’s wildly idiotic brainstorms that had proven to be wildly successful. If you ignored fallout like this.

“You must be very proud of your son,” Angel told him.

The detective was literally shocked silent, and I might have thought he’d suffered that promised heart attack if it weren’t for the continued sparkle of his consciousness.

“What?” he choked out, apparently unable to believe his ears. I couldn’t blame him.

“It sounds like your son is a real man,” Angel purred. “Think about it. Imagine trapping your cock between a woman’s breasts, and spraying your essence on her body.” She leaned forward intently, bracing her forearms on the desk.

I didn’t for a second think the way her upper arms compressed her breasts, exposing more of them and emphasizing her cleavage, was accidental. Nodding with appreciation, I focused on Snowden and pushed. Lust. Envy. It was surprising how little resistance I found.

“Teasing her with his scent,” she continued, “until she just has to taste him.” Perfect lips formed an open “O” as she paused to reflect a moment.

Snowden stirred but said nothing.

“If he’s still hard, why, what woman wouldn’t want a tool like that inside her?” Angel jerked minutely, and both of us realized her hands were no longer resting on the desk.

“Slut!” Snowden screamed, standing. His erection was obvious, at least on the secondary camera; I had a feeling we wouldn’t need it after another minute or two. Two long strides took him around the desk. “Fucking slut! Is this what you want? Is it?”

He slapped her and Angel went over backwards. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have taken a pratfall; the blow hadn’t really looked that hard. The detective’s eyes bulged as he took in the view I had on the overhead camera; somehow Angel’s jacket had come unbuttoned and fallen open, exposing a bustier and her heaving tits. With one of her long legs still propped on the fallen chair, the front of her skirt had ridden up to her waist, providing a classic beaver shot of her creaming gash framed between the tops of her stockings.

Best of all, none of it showed on the main video, which didn’t extend down to the floor. All I could see was the one calf and a foot atop the overturned chair, and a man who, after a moment of stunned inaction, began frantically unfastening his trousers.

Pay dirt. We wouldn’t have to worry about Detective Snowden again.

I took a deep breath, and stood up to go back downstairs; Angel could take care of herself now. On reflection, I double-checked to make sure the time of day was visible in the corner of the monitor. If I knew my Angel, Snowden was going to join his son in the Home Run club tonight or die trying.

January 1962

“Maybe Lloyd guessed somehow,” hypothesized Susan. The comment came out of left field, interrupting Alexandra’s stilted description of her wedding planning progress. The only other news we had to share was that Dr. Reynolds had talked to Dr. Fredrekksen, with the result that Susan was officially part of our research team now.

I gazed appreciatively at the brunette. The thought was ridiculous, but she’d changed her hair over the break. Susan was no Alexandra, but she was attractive — especially once she’d come out of her shell — and I’d thought more than once letting her hair down would look better — a good guess on my part. I was sure Alexandra spent hours each morning perfecting that professional look before she set foot outside.

“Guessed how they’d answer the survey? Don’t be ridiculous, Susan!” exclaimed the blonde, echoing my thought. “We took people in the order they came in, randomly. And even if that weren’t true, how could he possibly know what they’d think?” She smiled, which was like a laugh for Alexandra. “That perm didn’t get to your brain, did it?”

Susan huffed. “Well, we didn’t think of anything better last year! Besides, it would be easy enough to test, right?”

“No,” Alexandra and I replied in unison. It was scary, sometimes, how similar we could be; if she would just take the chip off her shoulder and thaw out a little bit… “I don’t have any way to guess what people are thinking,” I objected after Alexandra gave me a wave.

“Oh, poo!” Susan dismissed our concerns. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Would you rather be building up calluses with your slide rules? Just try it!” She laughed. “I volunteer to be your test subject.”

“Oh, no you don’t!” cautioned Alexandra, but it looked like she was trying not to laugh. “We’ve all been over this data so many times that I bet all of us could recite answers in our sleep.” Standing, she added, “if you want to do this, I’m going to find a subject — this is my research, after all.”

“Okay,” Susan assented, “but I’ll do the survey, and you’ll watch both me and Lloyd to make sure we aren’t cheating or influencing anything.”

Susan and I spent a few minutes clearing the table and pulling out one of the survey photo decks before Alexandra returned with a student in tow. “Do any of you know each other?” she asked.

All of us, and the student, shook our heads. He sat at the table across from Susan, and I took a seat at Alexandra’s desk where I could see his face and the pictures, but not what he was writing. Alexandra hovered like a parochial school nun, ready to dispense corporal punishment to unruly students.

“Okay,” Susan smiled, and launched into the standard introduction. “This is just an opinion survey — there are no right or wrong answers; what we are interested in is what you, personally, think. I’m going to show you a series of pictures, in pairs. All you need to do is look at each pair, and note which image you prefer.”

I studied the student, Robert, while Susan ran through the introductory demographic questions, and tried to get a feel for him. He just looked like some random undergrad who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and couldn’t say “no” to a beautiful girl. Susan’s suggestion was ridiculous, but I wasn’t going to open myself up for any grief from Alexandra by giving it less than my best effort.

As Alexandra had alluded, I already had the photo decks memorized, so I was free to devote all of my attention to Robert, concentrating on his face, and looking down to note a choice just after he made his. President Kennedy or Reverend King? Ocean waves or a hillside meadow? A kitten or a puppy? A blonde or a brunette? A swath of tartan, or one with polka dots? Alexandra knelt beside me at one point, apparently to make sure I couldn’t see which column he was marking, but remained silent the entire time.

“Darn!” Susan interjected unexpectedly when she reached the end. “Somebody left the deck out of order; number 1 got rotated to the end by mistake. What do we do now?”

“Well, we’re not doing this again,” I voted. Maybe my eyes needed checking, because after 30 minutes of this I had a splitting headache.

“Just make a note on the forms, Susan,” Alexandra decided, “and we can correct the data when we analyze it. Thank you very much for your time, Robert.” After he left, she gave Susan and me a new set of blanks and we quickly copied the two spoiled sheets, moving each answer down one space and pulling the last up to the top so they would correspond to our existing data.

The three of us gathered around the table and stared at the results. I admit I was thinking mostly about where I could get some aspirin.

“Sugar,” a disappointed Susan said, “it’s not even worth running the numbers. I don’t think even half of them matched — are you sure weren’t trying to lose, Lloyd?”

“Unbelievable,” Alexandra breathed in a very different tone of voice. She found a column of data and laid it beside Robert’s survey; even at a cursory glance it was clear they were very similar to each other. “What are the odds?”

I looked more closely and saw the new data was the aggregate data from “my” demographic group. The alignment was as inexplicable as my predictive performance was expected; Alexandra had pulled this guy out of the hallway, but she might just as well have pulled the data from the folder on her desk! “I need a drink,” I moaned, wishing hard for the day to be over.

“I agree,” Alexandra chimed in unexpectedly, and an excited Susan squealed assent and grabbed for her coat before either of us could change our minds.

We ended up in a booth at Nino’s, nursing beers while we waited for our burgers and fries. Apparently, having an unofficial chaperone in Susan was sufficient to get past Alexandra’s defenses. I caught one or two envious glances from guys who saw me with the two girls; if only they’d heard the conversation!

Alexandra started out worrying over the practical impossibility we’d just encountered, then loosened up enough to start worrying about whether she’d be able to keep ahead of the wedding preparations and live up to her family’s and fiancee’s expectations for it.

The guy sounded like a pompous prick, frankly, which might make him a good match for Alexandra Sullivan the Ice Queen but not somebody I’d want to marry. Luckily, all I needed to do was maintain a noncommittal expression while Susan made sympathetic noises and Alexandra spilled more personal information in an hour than she had in weeks.

We didn’t resolve anything, but I stumped back to my room feeling better than I had — at least I didn’t have Alexandra’s problems! I told Mrs. Hudson I’d already had dinner and went up to flip through the professor’s notes for my class the next day before going to sleep.



I tromped through an inch of fresh snow the next morning, determined to take another look at Robert’s survey with a clear head before heading off to my first class. I remembered that Alexandra had a lecture that hour, but it appeared that Susan had decided to come in early, too.

“Ha!” she exclaimed when I appeared in the office doorway. “I knew it!”

“Knew what?” I asked, hanging up my coat and hat. The radiator wouldn’t catch up enough for me to remove the sweater until much later in the day.

“I knew you were sandbagging,” Susan laughed, “look!” She gestured at the paperwork spread out on the table.

I sat down heavily. Susan had matched up my original response sheet with Robert’s and our aggregate data. “Matched up” was the right term — my results were exactly on the baseline, and Robert was in the 99th percentile.

“Why didn’t we see this before?” she crowed. “When we consider the pictures you thought you were looking at, you’re an exact match! I mean, exact!”

“I never actually took the survey myself, before yesterday,” I said weakly, and looked up again. “How is this even possible?” I couldn’t dispute the facts, even if I couldn’t explain them.

“Maybe it’s mind control!” giggled Susan, and she made vaguely threatening gestures with her arms.

“Oh, come on!” My headache felt like it was coming back again. “I really wish you wouldn’t mention that to anybody,” I told her, dreading the thought of Alexandra hearing that hypothesis.

“Let’s find out! Let’s do the survey again!” Susan was like some kid who’d had too much sugar to eat.

I shook my head. “That won’t work. Alexandra’s right; we both know the survey data too well.” I could help laughing faintly as I poked my response sheet, which proved the point.

“Well, make me do something,” Susan suggested.

“Bark like a dog,” I offered.

“I’m serious!” she snapped at me.

I sighed and considered her. She really did look much better with her hair down, although the bulky sweater she was wearing didn’t do her figure any favors. It was a pretty nice figure, when I thought about it. What I did next I chalked up solely to being a man who’d gone too long without getting any satisfaction.

“Show me your tits,” I commanded, trying on my best vampire-like hypnotic gaze.

“Lloyd!”

I think we both blushed as I stammered an apology. “I’m really sorry, Susan; I shouldn’t have said that.” At least she wasn’t running out of the room or screaming. “I guess I just let my hormones get the better of me.” Just for good luck, I added, “I wanted to try something you wouldn’t do normally, just for a test.”

Susan looked only slightly mollified, but she nodded.

I was thankful that Susan didn’t say anything about the incident to Alexandra, but it was curious that she didn’t bring up her research breakthrough either. More curiously, I didn’t mention it, although my original survey was buried in my briefcase now. I told myself I just wanted to think things over before getting Alexandra all excited, but I wasn’t really sure that was it. There was no way Susan’s wild suggestion could be true, right?

That night, I jerked off before going to sleep, trying my best to keep the squeaking of the old bedsprings to a minimum. The mental picture of a tranced Susan slowly unfastening her nightgown had me cumming like a fire hose.



Wednesday started off bright and early with a status conference with Dr. Reynolds, which maybe boosted his spirits but nobody else’s. After that, we went our own ways for the rest of the morning. Following lunch, I finally gathered my courage and pulled out my survey sheet.

“Hey,” I told Alexandra, “you should see what Susan found.” I figured it wouldn’t hurt to skip over the delay in sharing the information, and I was giving credit where it was due.

“My gosh, Susan,” gasped the blonde, but she wasn’t looking at the paper. “Are you going out somewhere?”

The brunette had just removed her sweater, revealing a very tight top that showcased all of her curves and was cut low enough that it really should have been left for summer. I wouldn’t have complained in any circumstances, but just then my mind was racing. Did I have anything to do with this? That it was just coincidence seemed extremely unlikely, but the alternative was totally unbelievable.

“No, why?” Susan asked. “But, Alexandra, look!” she continued, bending over the table to point. Alexandra’s eyes followed the finger; mine followed the breasts that swayed to reveal even more cleavage between them. If she hadn’t been wearing a bra, I don’t know what would have happened.

“I don’t believe it!” Alexandra gasped, as quick on the uptake as I had been. She turned accusing eyes on me. “How did you do this, Lloyd?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, thinking I was starting to sound like a broken record. “Honestly! You were right beside me the entire time.” I could see the wheels turning in her mind.

“You know,” Alexandra mused, “if you accept this is happening at all, it’s a lot more likely they’re somehow being influenced than it is that all these people just coincidentally have nearly identical opinions.”

“That’s just what I think!” burst out Susan, as if hearing the words had released something inside her.

For my part, I wanted to pound my head against the wall. Even if any of this was true, the last thing I wanted was to be poked and studied and commented on like some exotic bug in a jar. “Look,” I said heavily, “I don’t know what’s going on, either. But can we please not go talking to people about this; at least until we understand what’s really happening?” I put on my best pleading, hangdog expression and strained to convey my sincerity and desire. “Ow!”

“What’s wrong?” Susan asked, while Alexandra eyed me warily.

“A headache,” I explained. “Do either of you have any aspirin? I think this entire line of conversation is hurting my brain.” I’d always seemed to be prone to stress headaches, and this qualified as a stressful situation in my book. Susan turned and started rummaging in her desk.

Alexandra sighed. “Believe me; it’s hurting my brain, too. We’ll stay quiet, for now.” Susan nodded her agreement and handed me a few pills, which I gulped dry. “This is still my research project, and I have no greater desire to become a laughingstock than do you. The question is, what do we do now?”

We all stared at each other silently. “Can you put on your sweater, Susan?” Alexandra asked after watching my eyes slide sideways for the second or third time.

Susan shrugged, delightfully, and pulled on the cardigan. She didn’t say anything, but I had the impression she knew I was watching and liked it. I wasn’t a dork or anything, but it had been awhile since a girl had flirted with me. “What now, indeed?”

“Don’t look at me!” Alexandra held her head in her hands. “I’m supposed to be writing a psychology dissertation, not…”

“Science Fiction?” I suggested, wryly.

“Um. Human physiology or neurology might be better, but we’re all equally unqualified for any of them, anyway. This is really stupid, you know — what are we going to do, test on each other?”

In retrospect, of course, it was amazing we were even having the conversation. We were all suspicious I was somehow influencing people, and Alexandra at least had to be wondering why Susan had decided to wear that top. If I were some coed, the last thing I’d do was invite some boy to experiment on me, no matter how well-behaved he’d been up to that point.

I could only hypothesize that I’d always tried to be a trustworthy person, and that without knowing I was even doing anything, I’d influenced people to trust me rather than simply demonstrating I was trustworthy, as I’d thought. It hurt to think about, but I wasn’t thinking about it then. My cock was thinking about all the things I could do, and my conscience was thinking about all the things I shouldn’t even be thinking about.

“Well, if we’re keeping it private, we don’t have too many options,” opined Susan, heedless of my private musings. “If you’re the principal investigator, Alexandra, and obviously Lloyd can’t be the subject, then I guess that leaves me.” She turned her attention to me. “We just need to be methodical and only try things we all agree to.”

“Of course,” Alexandra agreed, ignorant of the subtext of Susan’s warning. “But first, Lloyd, I’d like to know everything that was going through your head on Monday.”

The remainder of the afternoon was rather dull, as the girls peppered me with questions I couldn’t answer about things I’d never even thought about before. I had to admire the way Alexandra’s mind worked; several of her questions were extremely insightful and bore thinking on, even when I couldn’t answer them satisfactorily.

I did some of that thinking later that evening, between stroke sessions. Apparently, my track record as an upstanding young man was due to lack of opportunity rather than moral character. I would tell myself I shouldn’t be doing this, feel guilty for a minute, and then resume working the angles while my cock got hard again. It got even harder when I remembered that I’d be alone with Susan the next morning.



Feeling remarkably chipper, and glad my coat concealed my erection as well as keeping me warm, I took the stairs two at a time the next morning, speeding past slower or less awake students. The office door was closed, but I could see the light was on inside, suggesting Susan was there before me.

“Hi, Lloyd,” Susan greeted me. “Does it seem like the radiator is working better today?” She’d already taken off her sweater and turned around as I closed the door behind me. The radiator definitely wasn’t any warmer than usual, but Susan was looking pretty hot. Her top was as tight as the previous day, but she’d obviously gone without a bra and her nipples were threatening to poke holes in the knit fabric.

I swallowed twice before answering. “I don’t think it’s that warm, Susan; you should put your sweater on before you catch cold.” Or somebody else saw her, I thought to myself.

One thing we’d all agreed on was that whatever I did, it didn’t have anything to do with verbalization; I’d never said a single word beyond “hello” and “goodbye” to Robert. So, while I fumbled with my coat and Susan reluctantly pulled on her cardigan, I thought furiously about how great her breasts looked, how much I wanted to see them, and how much my aching penis needed relief.

“I think I’m having trouble with this button,” Susan announced with a crooked smile. The cardigan was fastened up to the bottom of her bust, but gaped at the top — emphasizing rather than obscuring her breasts. “Can you look at it for me?”

I nodded breathlessly. Fantasizing about it was one thing, but I guess subconsciously I still didn’t believe any of this was real, and I hadn’t thought ahead to what would happen if my suggestions worked. It looked like I’d have to approach it like any other normal guy, and just make things up as I went along.

Susan walked over to me, although it wasn’t exactly a normal walk, until her chest was nearly touching mine. “See?”

I certainly did. My hands were trembling slightly as I reached out and pulled the top of the sweater tight against the swell of her breasts. The button looked okay, but surprisingly the sweater looked too small to reach. I could feel Susan’s body moving slightly as she breathed. My cock was pressing hard against my slacks, but we were so close together there was no way she could see it, even if she hadn’t been looking at my hands.

Holding my breath, I made another attempt to tug the cardigan into place. Not only did I fail again, the change in tension apparently popped the second button on her top — when it came loose, the buttons on either side did too, suddenly revealing a scandalous amount of pale skin.

“Oh!” Susan shrieked. Her hands flew up to cover herself, but bounced off mine and failed to catch the edges of the top. She ended up pressing her tits together, revealing dark nipples peeking out between spread fingers.

“Jesus, Susan!” It had all happened so quickly I was still frozen in position, hands grasping at thin air. I might have had a heart attack, except I could see the safely closed office door over her shoulder.

She giggled softly. “They’re kind of a handful, aren’t they?” Susan leaned forward into me, dropping her hands, until I could feel her nubs pressing against my chest. “So are you,” she sighed, her voice husky, and I jumped as she suddenly squeezed my rigid organ through my trousers.

I reached for her wrist, but Susan intercepted my hand and routed it to her tit. It was warm and silky smooth beneath my fingers, and she moaned entrancingly when I caressed it. I kissed her, both to muffle the moan and because I could. Unlike my fantasies, we groped each other for only a minute or two before her firm grip coaxed me into firing a big load in my underwear.

We grinned at each other. I hadn’t made it to home base today, but I was pretty confident I’d be getting there sooner rather than later, and enjoying the trip. What Susan was thinking I didn’t know, but it was clear she’d enjoyed the experience, too.

“I think I ruined Yelena’s blouse,” Susan said, looking at the button dangling literally by a thread and apparently uncaring of her exposed state.

She was a sight worth looking at, but I was more worried about my trousers. “I don’t think I’ve ruined my pants, yet. I’m going to go visit the restroom and clean up, okay?”

“You can’t open the door while I’m like this — people might see!” exclaimed Susan, wide-eyed.

I couldn’t help laughing. “What about me?”

“It’s not funny, Lloyd. I wanted to show off for you, not the whole world.”

“I appreciate the thought,” I said, suddenly distracted. “But what made you decide to show me today? You seemed a little angry about it a couple days ago.”

“You didn’t ask very nicely. I’m a lady, not some piece of meat you just order around.” Susan shrugged, making her breasts jiggle in interesting ways. “I thought about it, and it seemed exciting, especially since I knew you’d be receptive and I could trust you not to handle it badly.”

Part of me didn’t want to ask the next question, but Susan was a nice girl, and I was genuinely curious to hear her answer. “Do you think I — you know — made you do it?”

She considered it. “I don’t think so.” Susan pursed her lips. “I know I thought about it last night, and planned what I was going to do. I didn’t feel compelled, or anything like that.” Her face showed a faint blush, which was interesting. “But really, how would I know for sure?”

Susan continued, more thoughtfully. “I’ve never done anything like this before” — she laughed — “but a girl can’t be prim and proper all the time. Except maybe Alexandra! If you did have something to do with it, you wouldn’t make me do anything bad, would you?”

I tried for a poker face and hoped the heat I felt wasn’t showing. “Alexandra said yesterday we’d only try things we all agreed to,” I answered, and then changed the subject. “I really need to clean up.”

“Oh, just a minute.” She showed me a devilish grin, and Susan’s suddenly dexterous fingers quickly unfastened the remaining buttons. She removed her top, giving me a full-frontal view of her body from the waist up, and pulled on her cardigan. “You can’t see anything now, can you?” she asked, as she fastened the sweater.

“Well, no,” I admitted, “but my imagination is running wild.”

“That’s the idea. Now go run along so we can get back to work.”

My briefs were a sticky mess. After some internal debate, I finally ended up removing them in one of the bathroom stalls. I wasn’t really comfortable going bare beneath my trousers, but I didn’t want to risk the moisture soaking through. I made a mental note to start packing a spare pair, too.

I made my way back to the office, only to discover Susan was talking with a student. I belatedly remembered she had office hours, and suffered a panic attack thinking of what could have happened if the guy had showed up earlier. I quickly changed my plans, and wandered down the hallway to dump my paper towel-wrapped underwear discreetly in a trash can before returning. There had to be a better way of handling this.

It took Susan a few more minutes to sooth her student’s angst regarding expected workload for the semester while I doodled on a notepad and thought. Afterwards, we had time to agree that we couldn’t afford to get caught messing around in the office, but nothing else of interest occurred before Alexandra arrived.



Coming off her early recitation section, she looked more frazzled than usual as she dumped a stack of homework assignments on her desk and collapsed in her chair. “I think this wedding is going to kill me,” she moaned, pushing a stray blonde tendril back behind her ear.

“What’s wrong?” asked Susan, who was always ready to hear details.

“What isn’t?” Alexandra asked the ceiling. “There’s some problem with the invitations, the hall wants a bigger deposit than we can really afford, and the outfits for the groomsmen are still up in the air.” She sighed and looked down again. “At least Jonathan is coming up this weekend and we’ll hopefully get everything squared away.”

I knew Jonathan — never just “Jon,” Heaven forbid — was her fiance. “That’s nice, but wouldn’t it be easier for you to go home instead?” I asked, trying to sound helpful.

Both women turned disdainful looks upon me. “With Connie and Danny both here too?” Susan asked, demonstrating she was on top of things.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, feeling like an idiot. Connie, Alexandra’s best friend and her maid of honor, was also enrolled in the graduate program. Her younger brother, Danny, was in his senior year and one of the groomsmen. Obviously I hadn’t been paying enough attention to their earlier conversations; that would have to change. “Sorry for putting my foot in it.”

Alexandra waved off the apology. “Don’t worry. I hear stupider questions in class, from people that are paying to ask them.” She shook her head and leaned back. “So — let’s talk about our other interesting problem, shall we?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” I replied. I was thinking about it then, in fact; I was concentrating hard about trusting me. It was difficult, trying to do that and talk at the same time, but I hoped the women would just think I was choosing my words carefully.

I continued, “I see several issues with the experimental protocol. First, Susan and I were discussing this and there’s a fundamental problem with measuring impact, if any, on a knowing subject. It’ll be hard enough to figure out if there’s any influence in the first place, right?” The girls nodded, but Alexandra was frowning. “If we tell Susan what we’re going to try, how do any of us really know if she’s responding to what we told her instead of, um, other influences?”

Alexandra spoke up immediately. “Granted. But, Lloyd, testing on unsuspecting subjects is completely unethical — that’s why we’re not going to try anything all of us — especially Susan — haven’t agreed to!”

“I know,” I said, holding up my hands, “I know. I didn’t mean going behind her back. I just think that telling her exactly what I’m supposed to be trying to do will be counterproductive.”

“I have a suggestion,” Susan chimed in. “We can all agree on some general areas that are okay to explore, but I’ll give Alexandra my proxy to approve specific tests. That way I won’t know what exactly is supposed to happen.”

“That could work,” nodded Alexandra.

“I suppose I should start keeping a journal,” Susan mused. “That might make it easier to see if anything is happening, too.” I mumbled something approving.

“Excellent!” Alexandra smiled, and loosened up enough to attempt a small joke. “Where shall we start first? I swear, Susan, if you had worn that top again, I would have asked Lloyd to make you take it off — Yelena can wear what she likes, but I think it made you look cheap.” All of us smiled, and Alexandra, ignorant of the real joke, looked pleased at her success.

We spent the rest of the morning debating strategy and blocking out the high level steps we’d pursue next. All of us exerted a significant amount of intellectual effort and I found the session surprisingly engaging. We were reluctant to break up at lunchtime, but agreed Alexandra and I would meet privately the next day to plan our first experiment. It was disconcerting to feel the unexpected freedom of my penis when I stood up and recalled how the morning had started.

I was far from satisfied, but decided it made a lot of sense to stick largely to the plan we’d devised together until I knew more. A misstep would be embarrassing at best, and possibly far worse. Besides, I was in it for the long haul, not just a short-term fling.

It was about that point I realized, somewhat to my surprise, that I wanted Alexandra and intended to get her — even if I had to cheat. Sure, she was drop-dead gorgeous, but looks weren’t everything and she had that ice queen personality going on. Somewhere in the last month she’d kind of snuck up on me and I realized there was a first-class mind beneath those blonde locks, and an engaging personality if you got past her defenses.

Normally, the fact she was engaged to a guy who, judging by her ring, was a heck of a lot richer than I’d ever be would be considered an insurmountable obstacle. I told myself that women had changed their minds before, even without the sort of help I intended to provide. The trick would be to not screw up a good thing with a stupid mistake.

If there was anything to our guesses and it came to light, I could see myself locked up in some government lab for the rest of my life. If Alexandra realized anything like what I planned was happening, she’d leave and I’d be out of luck. Bumbling might leave me with a compliant body, bereft of the mind I admired. I could see already this wouldn’t just be science; it would be art, too. My cock lengthened in anticipation.



Dr. Reynolds was all smiles Friday morning after Alexandra told him, in suitably vague terms, that she was following some promising leads. I said little but tried different approaches to convey disinterest in Alexandra’s project; I didn’t want any more oversight if I could help it.

After our meeting was over, the two of us bundled up and trudged around the quad to the new annex, and then downstairs to the basement. “You live in a cave,” Alexandra commented when I showed her into my office and turned on the light.

“Yes, but it’s a warm cave,” I rejoined, hanging my coat and jacket on the rack appropriated from an office upstairs. The ceiling was a little low and there were no windows, but it was a little larger than her office and I didn’t have to share it with anybody. “I like it.” Brushing off my manners, I helped Alexandra remove her coat and hung it up, too. As usual, she was tastefully, if conservatively, dressed.

“Well, it might be more comfortable to work here during the winter,” admitted Alexandra, “but you conducted all the surveys in the Evans Building, right? I don’t want to introduce any more variables, at least at first.”

I nodded agreement. Alexandra’s original study was focused on basically emotional response — “do you like this more or less than that?” — and we strongly suspected I’d been able to affect those responses. What we didn’t know, and wanted to find out, was whether that was the limit of my alleged capabilities or not.

Consequently, we’d decided to try a sequence of trials to test my capability for emotional influence, intellectual influence, and physical influence. Susan wouldn’t know the specific tests, which Alexandra and I were about to discuss, or even the order in which I’d try them. When we met this afternoon, I’d try each for 10 minutes or until it was clear something had happened.

“Well, easy stuff first,” I said. “Write a word on a piece of paper, show it to me, and put it in your purse. I’ll try to communicate it to Susan.”

Alexandra grinned. “Easy?”

“Well, easy to think about and confirm,” I countered.

She produced a small address book, thought a moment, wrote something, and tore out the page to hand to me.

“Cyan?” I asked, returning it to her.

“It’s short and abstract,” said Alexandra, as she folded the paper and slipped it back into the address book. “You can’t cheat by sending a mental image of an object, and if you manage to project the color, Susan’s as likely to say ‘teal’ or ‘turquoise’ — which would tell us something, too.”

I was impressed again, and said so. “Do you have any equally clever suggestions for the other tests?”

“Of course,” she replied. I had enough familiarity now to recognize her extremely dry and understated sense of humor, rather than confusing it for self-superiority. “I thought we’d go out to Nino’s again tonight — Jonathan wants to meet my school friends.”

I’m sure I looked blank as I processed the non-sequitur, my apparent promotion to “friend,” and Alexandra’s unconscious assumption that of course we’d be free on a Friday night. Not that she wasn’t right, at least in my case, but it was a little annoying.

“You remember the fry conversation from last time?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” I answered, smiling now. Susan had been mock-horrified when Alexandra and I had “tainted” our fries by putting ketchup on them. She’d steadfastly refused to put anything on hers, insisting that ketchup was solely for burgers and meatloaf.

“Well, try to convince her she likes ketchup on French fries, and we’ll see what happens.”

I matched her wicked grin. “And Susan agreed to this?”

“In principle. It’s harmless — she likes fries, and she likes ketchup; just not together. Besides, she won’t be expecting it then, and it will be interesting to see both if she puts any ketchup on them in the first place, and what she does if she eats one.”

There was no question Alexandra had a twisty mind, and I reminded myself to tread extremely carefully before trying anything with her. “Won’t Susan be expecting something this afternoon?”

“I brought in some new lipsticks. I’ll ask her which one she likes best. It doesn’t matter which one she picks; just look disappointed and tell her it didn’t work. We can tell her about the real test after dinner.”

“I can do that,” I agreed. “You’re going to try them on, right?”

“Well, of course. How else would anybody know what the color really looks like?”

“Excuse me, I’m a guy.” I smiled. “How about if you have Susan try them on too, and I’ll see if I can make her hand jerk while she’s applying one? That should be easy to spot, and easy to clean up, too.”

“Great thought, Lloyd!” Alexandra flashed a brief smile that would have warmed me even if we’d been in her office rather than mine. “Now we just have to choose an order.”

“No problem,” I assured her, and fished a penny out of my pocket. “Heads, we do the lipstick first; tails, we try the word first.” I flipped it and it came up tails. “Anything else?”

“Just that it will be really important for you to note anything you can think of about what you try or any sensations you have.”

I nodded again. “Certainly. I think I’ll start keeping a journal, too.”

“We’ll see you about 4:00, then.” Alexandra rose and pulled on her coat before I could get there to help, and exited without any further conversation.



I know I did useful things that day, and even attended a lecture, but nothing stuck in my mind. All I could think of was my afternoon appointment.

Exactly on time, I strolled into their office and hung up my coat. Both of the girls looked a little nervous, but I couldn’t blame them because I felt the same way, too. “Hey, calm down, ladies. I think I’m the one on trial here.”

“Right,” Alexandra said, and settled herself in her chair.

Susan followed suit. She was looking good in another cardigan, more form-fitting than others I remembered but not tight. What, if anything, might be beneath it I couldn’t tell.

“If you’re ready, Lloyd?”

I pulled a composition book and pen out of my briefcase, and leaned back in my chair. I was tenser than I’d expected, and took a deep breath to try and calm myself. “Go ahead.”

Alexandra briefly consulted the notes in front of her. I saw the folded page torn from her address book sitting on the tabletop, but she didn’t refer to it or glance at it. “Okay, Susan, we’re going to start now.”

That was the last thing any of us said for ten minutes. We all looked at each other, occasionally scribbling a brief note, while I thought “CYAN” as hard as I could and stared at Susan.

“Time,” Alexandra spoke softly into the silence. I had a bit of a headache from concentrating so hard, but nothing seemed to have happened. Susan opened her mouth, but Alexandra cut her off, saying, “Afterwards.”

I rocked back and forth in my chair a few times, and cracked my knuckles, then nodded.

“This should be a little more entertaining,” Alexandra smiled. “I have a few new shades of lipstick, and I thought we might try them on.” She leaned back to her desk and grabbed first a box of tissues, and then several tubes. A compact mirror came out of a drawer.

Susan started by looking at the color chips on the ends of the tubes and writing a few notes. She and Alexandra then began alternating, each girl wiping off her current color and applying a new one while the other watched.

I focused on Susan, dutifully concentrating on how great fries with ketchup tasted while Alexandra was applying lipstick, and trying to make Susan’s hand bounce when she was doing her own lips. I generally ignored the lipstick, until they came to a deep vivid red. It was the sort of thing a girl might wear to a party, vibrant and eye-catching, and too flashy for regular clothes. It made me think of sex.

Without really thinking about the merits or my earlier caution, I concentrated on that color, and how beautiful and attractive and sexy lips that shade were. I still had no idea what I was doing, but I focused hard on each girl as she examined herself in the mirror.

Whether by chance or planning — I would have bet on the latter — the last color was pretty close to the muted rose that Alexandra normally wore. As had been the case with each application before it, Susan’s hand never wavered.

Alexandra called time and everybody scribbled a few more notes in their logs. My headache had diminished slightly; I didn’t know if it was because I had been alternating between two different things, or due to the first attempt being harder than the others. I duly recorded those thoughts without mentioning my unplanned detour.

“Well?” Alexandra asked, providing only the bare minimum prompting.

“Midnight Siren, obviously,” answered Susan with a wide smile.

I worked at maintaining a neutral expression. I was surprised, not so much that she’d identified the red that I liked, but at her level of confidence.

Alexandra looked a little startled, too. “What makes you say that?”

“Oh, come on,” Susan laughed. “I had Autumn Rose down on my initial list; Midnight Siren was maybe number three. Now I just love it!” Both girls looked at me.

Clearly Susan was no idiot, either. “I was concentrating on that browny-looking one,” I protested, trying to look disappointed. “That red did look nice, though — speaking off the clock, if you will.”

Susan suddenly looked uncertain. “Drat! I was so sure.” She sighed and continued, “I guess that’s why we don’t just go by the colors on the tubes.”

Alexandra was studying the lipsticks again. “Yes, it did look better than I expected. Although you couldn’t wear it with just anything…” She visibly shook herself and refocused her attention on Susan. “Anything else?” I breathed a silent sigh of relief.

“What? That’s it?” Susan asked.

“We doubled up,” I broke in. “I was trying to make you smear yourself, but your hand was steady as a rock the whole time. I didn’t have the slightest sense anything was happening.”

Susan stuck out her tongue at me. “What about the third test? Or the first, I guess?”

“Does this mean anything to you?” Alexandra asked, holding up the folded slip of paper.

“Noooo,” Susan answered hesitantly. She paused a moment longer and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” Alexandra handed over the paper; Susan unfolded and read it. “Cyan? Honestly, it’s still drawing a blank.”

“I was trying to communicate that word to you,” I explained. “It gave me more of a headache than anything else did, for whatever that’s worth.”

Alexandra jotted down a few more thoughts in her log before closing it. “Well; zero for three on our first try. Just remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day — we’ll try again next week. In the meantime, if you’d care to accompany me to Nino’s?”

All of us were happy to abandon the gloom of the office for the warmer and more convivial atmosphere of the pub. Once inside, Alexandra made straight for one of the large round tables, which was occupied by a mismatched couple. They rose as we approached.

Introductions were made all around, and I found myself sitting between Susan on one side and Alexandra’s friend, Connie, on the other. Beyond Susan, Alexandra’s brother, Danny, was holding forth on his final undergrad semester. We had an empty chair, presumably for Jonathan, between Connie and Alexandra.

“What’s he majoring in?” I leaned over to ask Connie. Danny was clearly the youngest of us, and also the most voluble. He was talking to Susan too quickly for me to follow.

“Women,” she said with a laugh, and corrected herself. “I think the diploma will say ‘Business’ but it’s a minor miracle if he graduates in four years without getting expelled first.” Connie winked at me. “If you were a girl, I’d tell you to watch yourself around him, but you aren’t his type.” She waited a beat, and continued, “no offense, but I wouldn’t have thought you were Alexandra’s type, either.”

“None taken,” I assured her. “Dr. Reynolds assigned me and Susan to help Alexandra with her research.” I started projecting a reassuring sense of trustworthiness and likeability.

“Oh, no!” she laughed. “You’re that ham-handed idiot?” Connie put a hand on my arm before I could take offense. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that. Really, Alexandra has had nothing but good things to say about you, Lloyd. The ‘ham-handed’ comment was from last year when she was feeling frustrated; I’m sure she didn’t mean it then, and she surely doesn’t mean it now.”

We talked easily for a few minutes more until Jonathan arrived. I might have been tempted to ask for her phone number if I hadn’t already had my sights set on Alexandra. If Danny stood out from the rest of us because of his relative youth, Jonathan did too. He looked like an up-and-coming executive, and we looked like rumpled academics. Danny and I did, anyway; the girls probably would have looked attractive, no matter what.

Jonathan greeted his fiancee with a kiss, and she introduced him around. I smiled through a bone-crushing handshake and did my usual best to appear trustworthy and nonthreatening.

After ordering, Jonathan produced a proof of the wedding invitations and showed it to Alexandra. Naturally, everybody else wanted to see it too, and it ended up getting passed around the table. It looked fine to me, properly elegant, but apparently I lacked the discernment to note that the wrong typeface had been used and that the vertical spacing wasn’t perfectly balanced.

I guessed Alexandra was upset, less by the expression on her face than by Connie’s. All of us praised the invitation, and Alexandra finally said it would be good enough, if nobody else could tell the difference.

Just the same, when Jonathan announced, “I thought you’d say that, so I told them to go ahead, and print and mail them,” I caught a glimpse of white knuckles before she put her hands in her lap. I thought hard about how irritating Jonathan was.

Alexandra might have said something, but the waitress chose that time to return with our food — Nino’s wasn’t fancy, but service wasn’t slow, either. I met Alexandra’s gaze, and we both covertly watched Susan as the waitress deposited a plate in front of her.

Once we’d all been served, Alexandra was quick to snatch the ketchup bottle in the center of the table and pour some on her fries and another dollop on her burger. She passed the bottle to Danny, who followed suit and then handed it on to Susan. I watched carefully, trying to hide my excitement, as she hesitated after putting some on her cheeseburger, but after a moment she passed it on to me without doing anything more.

The remainder of the meal passed with casual conversation. Alexandra groused about her thesis in general terms, without impressing Jonathan much as far as I could see. The wedding seemed a more popular topic, as everybody except Susan and I were more involved in it and Jonathan could intimate how great a catch he was. His attitude annoyed me, so I retaliated, to unknown effect, with a general broadcast of my negative impressions.

Our plates were nearly cleared when Susan surprised me by stabbing her last fry into the puddle of ketchup on my plate. She stuck it in her mouth, then made a face, but ate it anyway. It wasn’t out of line with some of the other joking and clowning around that had been going on, so only Alexandra and I froze momentarily.

A few minutes later, the ladies made one of those group pilgrimages to the restroom. “Can’t we do the penguin suit thing tomorrow?” Danny asked Jonathan as soon as the others were out of hearing distance. “This is prime time for window shopping!” The hourglass he sketched in the air made it clear what he meant.

Jonathan looked intrigued but sighed. “No such luck, kid. The shop already arranged to stay open late just for us, and officially I’m off the market.” He could have just been playing to Danny, who’d been eying all of the women in the room all evening, but it didn’t exactly feel that way to me; he’d put an unusual stress on “officially.” “How about you, Lloyd? Are you off the market?”

A little surprised, I replied, “I guess I’d say not so much off the market, as not really in it to begin with. I’m here to get my doctorate, not have a good time.”

“What a waste!” exclaimed Danny. “I bet Susan would show you a good time, if you know what I mean,” he added speculatively.

I stifled a cringe, uncertain if he was just making an inflammatory barb, or had sensed something from her, or just made a lucky guess. Luckily for me, the girls made a prompt return and saved me from having to continue the conversation.

Unless I was hallucinating, they’d redone their lipstick and the ruby red of Midnight Siren now graced two pairs of lips. It was a bit over the top, but I still thought it looked very becoming, especially in the softer light of the pub. Susan was giving me a calculating look that was, frankly, unnerving.

“We should be going,” Alexandra said. The comment was punctuated by the snap of Jonathan’s fingers as he got the waitress’ attention and gestured for the bill. “Lloyd, you can see Susan home, can’t you?”

“Certainly, I’d be delighted,” I assured her. Even if there’d been no ulterior motive, as the two odd people out, I would have offered if she hadn’t asked first. Perhaps I was no social butterfly, but my parents hadn’t raised a complete idiot.

Jonathan dispensed with the bill almost negligently, hugely overtipping the waitress. It wasn’t that she didn’t deserve a tip, but I sensed the point was more to make sure we all knew it didn’t bother him to spend money like water than because of any real sense of largess.

November 2010

Our day at the store was blissfully uneventful. Perhaps the would-be shoplifters had watched the evening news and decided they didn’t want to mess with security that could take out armed robbers bare-handed.

Angela endured a fair amount of good-natured teasing, and some wags constructed a “bulletproof vest” from inventory in the lingerie department; she looked at it round-eyed and claimed it wouldn’t fit beneath her uniform. Both of us told anyone who’d listen that if we’d known the perp had a gun, we would have held the doors open for him.

We had to take a break during the morning to pose for a picture that was promised for a write-up in the next company newsletter. The writer was dutifully impressed by Angela’s history and efforts to improve herself, and by my, um, longevity. There was no media presence to worry about, as the company detailed a flack to intercept all inquiries and make sure no prospective customers were scared off by thoughts of gun-wielding bandits.

It was sobering to look at the young woman standing next to me and worry, not for the first time, what would happen to her if something happened to me. We were both single now, but I’d enjoyed 42 years of marriage — and effectively foreclosed that option for her. Any man who tried to enter into a relationship with Angela would be in for a real surprise; although between both jobs that possibility was remote.

A laughing Angela punched me in the shoulder. “Why so glum? Cheer up, Lloyd! Did you buy a lottery ticket while we’re still lucky?”



I was still feeling a touch morose when I clocked out at the end of the afternoon. My mood darkened when a young woman approached me just after I left the store. She was a looker, but I was already looking forward to Angel and didn’t need another disruption to my schedule. I hoped she wasn’t press; I’d already forgotten everything the company handler had told us about responding to queries.

“Are you Lloyd?” she asked, unexpectedly hesitant for whatever reason.

I was tempted to blow her off, but my parents had raised me not to lie. “Maybe,” was the best I could do.

“Lloyd? Can I talk to you about Angela?”

Drat. “No comment,” I mumbled, trying to look as forbidding as possible.

“What?” She looked confused.

“I said, ‘no comment.’ You have to talk to media relations if you want a story.”

The girl shook her head. “No, that wasn’t what I meant. You’re Angela’s friend Lloyd, right? I think she’s in trouble — can you help?”

“You have my attention,” I said, stopping abruptly.

She took a step or two more alone, before realizing I wasn’t there and doubling back. “Look, can we talk somewhere? Maybe get dinner?”

We ended up at Applebee’s. Or Chili’s. Or something; I don’t know, they were all the same to me. I ordered coffee and a burger; she, iced tea and some high-concept salad.

“Talk,” I suggested as soon as the waitress had left. “Start with your name.”

“Oh!” A comical look of dismay flitted across her face. “I’m sorry; I’m Rose. I’m Angela’s friend from high school, and now I live in the same building she does. I’ve heard so much about you, I forgot you might not know me.”

It sounded worse and worse the more I heard. I’d done a bit of a check a few years back when Angel was born, so to speak, but I’d neglected to consider Angela might reconnect with older acquaintances.

“I’m pleased to meet another friend of Angela’s,” I assured her. “I apologize for the rocky reception; I’m just a crotchety old man. Now — what’s happening with Angela?”

“I think she’s joined a cult,” Rose whispered, looking around us as if she suspected cultists might be lurking nearby.

That wasn’t what I’d expected to hear, but the good news was it sounded more like my problem rather than Angela’s problem. “Really?” I asked, aiming for a tone of curiosity rather than disbelief.

“You know she’s going to school in the evenings?” I nodded. “Well, I think she’s lying about it. Look, her birthday was last month, right?”

“Yes; the fifteenth, wasn’t it?” I asked. That was disingenuous; I knew it was. I had vivid memories of the wild party at Home Run where Angel had fucked 27 different guys — one for each year. She’d been a tousled, creamy mess when all of them, including two who’d earned their Home Run pins that night, finished with her. I’d been first, of course. I could feel myself stiffening slightly just thinking about it. Shaking off the distraction, I returned my focus to the girl sitting across from me. “Did something happen?”

“Yes! I mean, no!” Rose’s eyes sparked as my failure to dismiss her fears out of hand apparently buoyed her confidence. “Wait.” She took a breath. “Okay, I was going to surprise her and take her out for a little party, just the two of us, so I dropped by the University that evening. She wasn’t there at all!”

I already knew where she was going, but I couldn’t tell how much Rose knew and I needed time to think. I needed to do some damage control, at the very least. “Did she just skip class that night?” I asked, playing dumb, and started pushing. I want to help my friends alternated with I want to be discreet and I trust Lloyd.

“I don’t think so,” Rose reflected, unaware of the thoughts racing through my head. “I asked several of her classmates, and not one of them knew her — or recognized her when I described her. I mean, how likely is that?” I had to smile at her indignant outrage. “I don’t think she ever attended that class.”

“Could you just have gotten the wrong room?” I wondered. I hate nosy people.

She nodded. “I thought about that, too.” A trifle sheepishly, Rose admitted, “I started paying a lot closer attention to what she did. You remember that big flap with the electrical main at the end of the month?”

“The one where the worker accidentally blew the building transformer and blacked out the campus?” Something that colorful had made all the papers and news programs, of course; they’d had to cancel classes Friday and work all weekend to get the electricity working again.

“Exactly! Well, when I asked that weekend, she said she’d attended class as usual; she even made up details about the lecture. There was no way she could have been there. I know Angela lied to me about it!”

I stopped pushing and tried to work it out in my head. “I thought Angela didn’t have any classes on Friday,” I said slowly.

“She doesn’t,” Rose agreed. “That’s not my point. The power went out Thursday night. Right after dinner. Before her class. There was no way they could have held it, in the dark with no light or heat!”

Damn, what a sloppy mistake. I’d skimmed the news coverage and gotten the impression — obviously incorrect — it had happened later in the evening. The problem was, Angela didn’t believe she was lying, because the memory would be as clear as that of every other class she’d “attended” during the past two years, and Rose would never believe her friend hadn’t lied. “That seems pretty suspicious,” I belatedly commented after realizing Rose was waiting for my reaction.

“I thought so, too. So I’ve been trying to follow her.”

My blood froze, and then rethawed. If Rose had succeeded, she’d hardly be sitting here talking to me now, would she? I trust Lloyd. I’d do anything to help Angela.

“I didn’t have much luck,” Rose continued, unwittingly mirroring my thought. “There’s almost always this unmarked sedan that picks her up around the corner, and the few times I tried tailing it, I always lost it. All I know is that she goes somewhere in the direction of downtown.”

I made a mental note to ask the driver if he’d ever noticed anything — and if he had, why nobody had mentioned it to me.

Rose’s voice dropped to just above a whisper. “I even thought she might be moonlighting as a call girl,” she admitted with uncanny accuracy. She blushed faintly and added, “I sneaked a peek in her room once and she doesn’t seem to have any, you know, outfits.” I nodded, knowing Angel kept her wardrobe entirely at Home Run.

Throwing up her hands in exasperation, Rose concluded, “She’s too straight-laced for that, anyway; that much hasn’t changed. But there’s something not right about Angela, and I can’t figure out what it is. Please help me.”

There was an unhappy silence while the waitress returned with our food, and I pushed another round of I trust Lloyd and I’d do anything to help Angela at Rose for good measure.

“I want to help you, Rose,” I assured her when we were alone again. “I want to help Angela. But I need to think about this. Can I sleep on it, and contact you in a day or so? I promise not to leave you hanging.”

“Certainly,” she gushed, obviously relieved to have somebody she trusted helping her. “Let me give you my number!” Rose extracted a business card from her purse, scribbled a number on the back of it, and pushed it across the table to me. “That’s my private cell on the back, or you can call me at the office number if you need to.”

I tucked the card into a jacket pocket and we both addressed our meals in a more cheerful mood. Rose and I traded a few light-hearted Angela stories, and she was better company than I’d expected; it was easy to see why the two were friends. I was surprised to find myself tempted to fiddle more than I already had, but really, I knew next to nothing about this girl and I’d just had a refresher course on the perils of poor execution.

We parted later than I planned, and I headed home as fast as I could. I didn’t need dinner, but I’d have to pass on the music and study this evening to have a hope of staying on schedule. Luckily, it sounded like Angela unwittingly was a lecture ahead of where she should have been anyway; I made a mental note to have Danny’s contact at the University procure an updated lesson plan, if there was one.



As if to make up for the day, Home Run was a progressive disaster that night. I was late despite my best efforts, and Danny himself was cooling his heels inside the back entrance — never a good sign.

“Jesus, Lloyd, why don’t you answer your fucking phone?” he burst out the moment I made it inside the door.

“I’m too old to be a slave to a chunk of electronics,” I told him. “Where’s Angel?”

“Put that thought on hold, buddy. I need you to fix a problem first. We’ve got a situation in the gold suite that needs to be addressed ASAP.”

I felt frustrated and wanted my Angel. I’m sure Danny, who knew me pretty well, sensed it.

“Lloyd!” He braced my shoulders, forcing me to look him in the face. “Don’t worry about Angel; she’s fine. Look, I switched her and Crystal, and she’s in the lesbo lounge. You can’t break in on paying customers, okay? You’ll still be first in line when she gets out.”

“Angel was okay with that?” I knew better than most she didn’t really go that way.

“Yeah, that girl’s a trooper. I told her it was a favor for me — and you. Now can you just get upstairs and talk to Shannon before the wheels come off? Good man!” He clapped me on the back and pushed me in the direction of the stairs. “And come see me later when you get a chance!”

I stumped up the stairs muttering under my breath, but after the landing managed to force my mind back to business. If I recalled the schedule correctly, Shannon was supposed to be working a grand slam package for some guy’s bachelor party. She’d done scores of them; Shannon looked younger than her age and had perfected an aura of corruptible innocence that drove the cradle-robbers wild. I couldn’t imagine what the holdup would be on this one.

Sure enough, Shannon was pacing nervously in the hall when I got there, looking scrumptious in her Catholic schoolgirl uniform. In my day, anyway, the parochial dress code never included shoes like that, but hey — I was in Loss Prevention, not Wardrobe. She looked desperately glad to see me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her, taking a quick glance through the peephole. I saw four restless, and doubtless horny, young men laughing together. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

“I know those guys,” Shannon said. “Rob — the cute one in the armchair — he’s going to be my husband.”

Oh, thanks, Danny. I would have rolled my eyes but Shannon’s nerves didn’t need it. “You’re entertaining at your own fiance’s bachelor party?” I repeated, just to make sure I had it straight. She nodded. “Does he know you work here?”

In a small voice, Shannon said, “no.”

“How about the others?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe Derrik; he’s Rob’s Best Man.”

“Which one is he?” It would be interesting to see who had booked the engagement, and if Shannon had been requested specifically or not. Either way, it wasn’t something she needed to be dealing with now.

“Derrik’s really tall and thin.”

“Okay, good. Now take a deep breath and calm down, Shannon,” I told her, “everything is going to be just fine. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She smiled hopefully at me.

“Now, don’t think about them for minute; just think about yourself. How do you feel about doing this?”

“Good, I guess,” Shannon decided. “I like fucking boys, and Rob makes me hot.” More possessively, she added, “I’m kind of glad I get to do this for him and not some other girl.”

That’s fine. She was telling the truth. “Now, how do you think Rob will feel about this?”

Her face clouded over. “I don’t know. We fuck a lot, and neither of us were virgins when we met, but he talks a lot about committing to each other and I’m worried he’ll think I’m a slut or be upset I didn’t tell him sooner.”

I added “and when were you going to tell him?” to my mental list of questions that wouldn’t get asked although I’d love to know the answers. “Don’t worry, I think everything will work out great,” I assured her. “He wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t up for this sort of thing, right?”

Shannon perked back up, overlooking the possibility that this was another “ambush” event — some people took bachelor parties as a general license to torment the groom and push his limits one last time.

“Okay, Shannon, here’s what we’re going to do. You’ve got your act worked out, right?” I got a quick nod. “I want you to go in and do your thing, just like you planned. Now, Rob might seem to get upset, but remember, he’s got to look tough for his friends, right?” I cobbled together the best approximation to I love it when Rob shares me with his friends I could manage, and pushed it into her head.

Shannon nodded again, but there was an uncertain look on her face. “Are you sure?”

“Almost positive! Look, just stay by the door when you first go in. He might shout and say things that sound hurtful, but one way or another he’ll come over to you. You’ve been around enough men, Shannon, to know if they’re turned on or faking it. Check him out; if you drive him wild like I think, have a good time! If you still have doubts, just step back out the door and I’ll be right here. Can you do that?”

“I know I can,” she asserted.

I hoped I could hold up my end of the bargain; if Rob moved quickly, I would have very little time between when he entered my effective range and when he reached Shannon. I prepared my mind, glued an eye to the peephole, and whispered, “You go, girl!”

There was a brief rustle beside me and Shannon was inside the room. “Is this the detention study hall?” she chirped in a bright voice.

Events started to play out as I’d suspected they would. “Shannon?!” Rob jerked erect in his chair, absently spilling his drink on the floor. Two of his friends were equally stunned, but the tall one, Derrik, brayed a nasal laugh and I didn’t like the look of his body language.

“What are you doing here?” stammered Rob; I put him at about 50% embarrassment and 50% anger.

Derrik was quick with the unnecessary answer. “Dude! Your girl is here to fuck all of us for money. She’s a fucking hooker, man!”

Shannon gamely soldiered on. “This is so unfair! They gave me detention because I didn’t wear their stupid white bra. I mean, you can’t even really see it, can you?”

My angle was all wrong, but I knew she was arching her back to push out her chest, and that anybody with eyes would have no problem seeing the frilly black lace — and her berry-tipped tits — through the extremely thin white blouse.

Rob stood up. “What the fuck, Shannon! What kind of slut are you?”

“I’m not a slut; I’m just misunderstood,” she simpered. “Sluts don’t wear underwear; I do. See?” At this point she’d be raising the front of her tartan skirt, displaying plain white panties just as thin as her blouse, and probably pulled tight enough to form a camel toe against her mound.

Here he came; my eyes lost focus as I concentrated on the other side of the door and found the rushing haze of his mind.