Save The Slow Dances for Me

Author's Note: Any and all persons engaging in any sexual activity are at least eighteen years of age.

*Disclaimers: This story has been edited by myself, utilizing Microsoft Spell-Check. You have been forewarned; expect to find mistakes.

**.**

Dennis Ourbe & the Benders had the crowd at Vermillion on their feet, dancing to the lively Zydeco music. Laci Boudreaux laughed happily when Michael Brookes twirled her round; she knew he was just trying to make her skirt flare up. And her short skirt did flare up, revealing her lightly tanned legs, lightly tanned buttocks, and red silk thong panties.

The band launched into a second jitterbug and again, Michael spun the attractive blonde around. Again, her sleek thighs and well-rounded buttocks and silky thong panties came into view.

"My husband is sitting right there," Laci laughed as they danced.

"Uh huh, and?" Michael smirked. "We're just dancing."

Laci didn't answer, just continued to dance to the jaunty music. A slow song started and Michael moved to pull her in close. The blonde beauty pushed Michael away and suggested that he go and get the table some drinks.

"Carl likes that, oh, what is it, gin, gin gimlet," Laci said as she walked toward their table.

"Ready, Sweetheart?" Carl forced a smile to his face.

"I, look, I been dancing since we got here; let me sit a minute, all right?" Laci snapped as she flopped into the soft leather bench.

"I uh, I thought, you dance the fast ones with you know, whoever, and you and I do the slow ones," Carl said, fighting hard against the irritation he felt.

He had sat and watched that slime-ball lawyer and his wife dance. He had seen the man's sleazy smirk, had seen the man intentionally spinning his wife, exposing her sexy panties to everyone within sight. Carl had seen the arrogant bastard attempt to pull Laci close when a slow song, a song that should have been for her husband began to play.

"Next one, all right?" Laci said dismissively, patting Carl's hand as if he were a child.

Butch Everhart and his wife, Yvette looked very uncomfortable, looked away from Carl and his wife. Michael's date, Cheyenne Whitehead, a heavily tattooed older woman was on the dance floor, plastered to a young man. The moment they'd arrived, Cheyenne had abandoned them; Carl did notice that Michael had not looked all that upset.

"Here we are..." Michael said, putting five glasses onto the table. "Butch, you and Yvette are drinking that Pellegrino stuff, right?"

"Breast feeding," Yvette admitted, smiling happily.

"Driving," Butch smiled, accepting the sparkling water with a nod.

"Cheyenne's drinking that, anyone seen Cheyenne?" Michael continued, putting a tequila sunrise on the table next to her empty glass. "And, Laci, you wanted a Long Island Ice Tea, right?"

"Uh, and Carl drinks..." Laci said.

"Oh. That's right," Michael smirked. "Knew there was something I was forgetting."

"Don't worry about it," Carl snapped, his displeasure evident.

"Carl! That's, don't be rude," Laci glared angrily at her husband.

"Rude? Oh. Oh no, I certainly wouldn't want to be rude," Carl snarled.

Cheyenne came back, her dance partner in tow. The bleached blonde guzzled her drink in one swallow, demanded a third one, then pulled her conquest back onto the dance floor. Laci drank her drink quickly, then followed Michael onto the dance floor as the band started a two-step.

"How's your back healing?" Butch politely asked Carl.

"Quicker than my lawyer would like, but not as quickly as my doctor wants," Carl tried to joke.

Butch and Yvette went onto the dancefloor and were soon swallowed by the stomping, bouncing and twirling bodies. Carl shook his head, seeing Cheyenne and her partner being very touchy-feely as they danced. During their dinner at Acapulco Grande Mexican restaurant, Carl had been polite to the loud, vulgar woman and her date, Laci's coworker and supervisor, Michael Brooks, but he had not liked either person. He worked with Butch in the IT Department of Thibodaux Investments and knew Yvette from Administration and had spent much of the meal chatting quietly with Butch and Yvette.

It had been Cheyenne's idea to go from the restaurant to Vermillion night club for dancing. Laci's hopeful look made Carl agree, so long as she promised every slow dance was his. She happily agreed and the six of them left, each couple in their own cars.

"Listen; we're going," Butch said, yelling to be heard over the music. "We've been away from our babies for more than three minutes and Yvette's feeling guilty."

"Oh, shut up," Yvette laughed happily. "Like you don't miss them?"

"Miss them? Miss who?" Butch feigned indifference.

"See you on Monday," Carl smiled, accepting a light kiss on the cheek from Yvette.

"That mother fucker ain't got me another drink yet?" Cheyenne snapped, seeing her two empty glasses on the table.

"Don't look like it," Carl said.

With a shrug, Cheyenne pulled her boy toy toward the bar. She had not asked Carl if he wanted anything, and Carl had not expected her to ask.

"That's enough of that," Carl said, watching his wife's panties flashing into view as a smirking Michael spun her again.

A slow song started. But instead of returning to their table to fetch him, Laci melded against Michael. The satisfied smirk Michael shot Carl was egregious enough, but Laci's look of contentment stabbed Carl to the core.

Loud, brash, overbearing or not, Cheyenne Whitehead had done nothing deliberate to hurt Carl. Carl's wife was a different matter altogether, though. Carl grabbed Cheyenne's purse and his wife's purse. Removing Laci's keys and her cell phone from the purse, Carl grabbed his cane and limped his way to the front door.

"Here. Hang on to these, hear?" Carl said, thrusting the two handbags to a burly bouncer.

"I, hey, sir, I, this, you can't just..." the man objected as Carl pushed his way outside.

Inside the club, Laci and Michael continued to dance; Dennis Ourbe and the benders launched into his latest hit, 'Sharing the Moon.' The shouts of approval from the dancers made Dennis smile. The sight of several skirts whipping about also made him smile.

Carl drove home. The house had been a wedding gift from his father-in-law, Chris Fontenot. It was a two story monstrosity; Carl and his bride had enjoyed two good years living in the behemoth before the automobile accident had severely damaged Carl's back. Now, he and his wife lived on the ground floor, although, lately, she had been spending more and more time upstairs in what used to be their bedroom. She claimed Carl's snoring kept her awake.

Entering the home through the garage, Carl made sure the deadbolts were securely fastened on the front and rear doors before going into their ground floor bedroom. Despite the spasms in his back, Carl worked quickly, efficiently to pack his clothing and toiletries. He soon realized he would need another suitcase. The suitcases, and his duffel bag were upstairs, in one of the three guest bedrooms.

"You can do it; you're a Marine, boy," Carl barked out loud. "On the double; let's go!"

By the time he reached the second floor of the home, Carl was bathed in sweat. He slumped down against a wall and sat, laboring to catch his breath.

The master bedroom was a mess. His wife could not be bothered to make a bed; she'd always had a live-in maid to do that for her. And, after their marriage, Carl made the bed; she did not do it properly. She certainly did not make the bed as well as his sergeant would have expected the bed to be made.

Locating the luggage, Carl first thought to simply take the largest one of the suitcases. Then the thought hit him; supposed he needed a second and third one? Would he be able to make it up the stairs again?

The small suitcase downstairs was downstairs because he'd needed it after that drunk had rear-ended him. His wife had packed a few pair of underwear, a pair of pajamas, some tee shirts and some loose sweat pants.

"What I don't take, she can bring them back upstairs," Carl muttered and threw the suitcases down the stairs.

Finding more of his clothing upstairs, Carl loaded up his trusty duffel bag and threw the bag down the stairs.

Seeing nothing else he wanted on the second floor, Carl ground his teeth and began the laborious task of limping down the stairs.

"Oh dear God," Carl gasped and wheezed as waves of pain engulfed him. "Jesus, please lift me into your arms."

Carl was nearly finished with his packing when the pounding on the door began. Carl looked at his watch; he'd left the Vermillion at twenty hundred hours; it was now twenty two hundred thirty. It had taken his wife two and a half hours to come home.

Carl's grabbed his laptop computer, made sure to disable the desktop computer, and walked through the kitchen into the garage. His last act before closing the door was to put her cell phone and her set of keys, minus the key fob for his automobile onto the kitchen table. He put his laptop computer onto the passenger seat of the car, locked the door that went from kitchen to garage, then started the car. His wife had the bright idea to jump in front of the car when she saw the garage door going up.

His wife also had the wherewithal to leap out of the way when Carl left a strip of rubber as he drove out of the garage. Carl did laugh at the stunned look on her face. He also laughed that she'd not been smart enough to punch in the code to raise the garage door, instead of pounding on the front door and screaming for him to open the door.

Carl began to lower the garage door and his wife jumped into the garage before the door went all the way down. Carl laughed; she would very quickly find that the door into the house was locked, her car was securely locked, and the interior switch for the garage door was still inoperable from when she'd broken it last week. His wife was in for a long night in the garage, possibly even a long weekend; the maid was not scheduled to come until fourteen hundred hours on Monday.

The DeGarde Inn rented him a room and Carl arranged his padded back support and scalloped headrest on the large motel bed. The hot needle spray of the shower felt exquisite and Carl lingered under the endless hot water for a good twenty minutes before finally shutting it off and getting out.

Laying down in bed, Carl again cursed Brandon Prejean, the drunk who had plowed into the rear of his 1977 Chevy truck. The truck had belonged to Brian Boudreaux, Carl's uncle. Brian had bought the truck, brand new from Hinton Chevrolet and had maintained the vehicle until his glaucoma dictated he put the keys up. No one else wanted the old truck; the AC no longer worked and the radio was an AM radio. But Carl loved the old egg-beater and promised Uncle Brian he'd take care of the old bucket of bolts; maybe they'd get another forty five years out of the truck.

Brandon was drunk; he'd been paid earlier that day. He was also paying more attention to the sixteen year old high school football player he'd managed to lure into his car than to the traffic light that was red. He didn't even apply the brakes as he slammed into the rear of Carl's truck.

Brandon Prejean walked away from the automobile accident without a scratch. The young boy in his car suffered severe head trauma and whiplash, both caused from the air bag. And at first, Carl wondered if he'd ever walk again.

At six hundred hours on Saturday morning, Carl got up, fixed himself a cup of hotel coffee and called his wife's father. He told Chris Fontenot what the code for the garage door was, and where to find the emergency key for the front door.

"Uh? I, wait, why are you telling..." Chris groggily said, still not fully awake.

Carl ended the call, then blocked both Chris's phone number, and the phone number of his wife. On thinking about it, Carl also blocked her work phone number and the phone number of Chris Fontenot's Welding shop.

Carl used a VPN to log onto the motel's wifi and paid off their joint credit cards before canceling them. He then removed half of the money from the joint accounts he had with his wife and opened a new account in his name only. Even though he knew the numbers for his wife's personal savings accounts and strongly suspected what his wife's passcodes might be, Carl left those accounts alone. Any credit cards in her name would be her problem; he left those cards alone. The house, and the utilities was in his wife's father's name, so Carl likewise left those alone. He was no longer in a vindictive mood; he just wanted a clean break.

Venice Apartments had a one bedroom ground floor apartment available and Carl signed a six month lease for Apartment 110. The very cute redhead in Apartment #109 gave him a shy smile as he and Keisha exited the apartment and Carl returned her smile.

Bored, Carl decided to drive down to Landry's Mattress Store in Flowers. As their ad claimed, 'When it comes to bedding, no one gives you a softer landing than Landry's.'

Two salesmen were standing in a corner of the store, debating local politics and the University of Louisiana at DeGarde's dismal performance in basketball this season. Carl was invited to 'look around' and the two men went back to their discussion. Carl very nearly decided to drive out to Elgee, to O'Neil's Furniture. He was sure he'd be afforded better customer service at O'Neil's.

"And next? They'll be talking about what a loser Biden is, but at least he's better than that God damned Trump," a voice squeaked out.

Carl looked around, then looked down. A pixie smiled up at him and Carl returned her smile.

"Is there anything in particular you're looking for, sir?" she asked.

"Yeah, I, I was in a terrible automobile accident so I need a pretty firm bed," Carl said.

"Oh! How, how horrible! Oh you poor...anyway, full size? Queen? King?" she asked, scanning the store's expanse.

"Hmm, queen. It's an apartment; I doubt if there's room for a king," Carl said, giving the girl an once-over.

"Firm, firm, have you ever considered a sleep-number, a select-comfort mattress?" the girl asked, bringing him over to a display. "See, there's air pockets, air bladders throughout and you can pump it up to as hard or as soft as you need it."

Her light brown hair was done up in a bun at the back of her head and the bun was secured by two long black lacquered wooden dowels. Her dress, Carl noticed, was an Oriental design that ended just below her knee. On her feet, she wore high heeled pumps of black, which matched the black silk dress. The faux buckles of gold on her pumps matched the golden applique Asian designs of her dress.

The girl did not look Asian. She looked eastern European. When she walked toward the display model, Carl saw that she had a sweetly rounded bubble butt. As when the saleswoman faced Carl, Carl could see she had very nice breasts under her silk dress.

"I mean, Jesus God, that Afghanistan mix-up?" one salesman declared.

"But of course Trump's over there saying he could have done so much better," the other salesman agreed.

"Called it," Carl said and the girl smiled, revealing an adorable dimpled smile.

"So, made up your mind?" one of the salesman ambled over.

"Hmm? This young lady's helping me just fine, thank you," Carl said.

"Hey, Michelle, why don't you go straighten up the pillow section?" the salesman smirked at the diminutive woman. "I can handle it from here."

"I said, she's helping me just fine," Carl snapped.

"No, no, I can handle it from here," the salesman smiled an easy smile.

"Thank you; good bye," Carl said, turning for the door.

"Whoa, hey now, buddy," the salesman said, startled.

"Problem?" Alton Landry, the owner and manager asked, stepping out of his office.

"No, no sir," the salesman said.

"Yes sir," Carl said, recognizing the store's owner from the numerous television commercials. "Hi, Carl Boudreaux, dissatisfied customer."

"And why is this customer dissatisfied?" Alton asked the salesman.

"Because, while those two numb nuts were over there, enjoying the sound of their own voices, this young woman took the time to do some sales. The moment it looked like I'd made a decision? Numb nuts one walked over here in an effort to screw her out of her sale," Carl said. "And when I told him I did not want his help; she was doing the job just fine, he ordered her to go straighten up the pillow section."

"Michelle?" Alton asked.

"Yes sir," Michelle confirmed Carl's statement.

"And quite frankly? If that's how he treats a coworker? I shudder to think how he would treat me, a customer," Carl concluded.

Alton watched as 'Numb Nuts Two' actively approached a family of four that entered the store. He was fairly certain his presence on the sales floor had prompted the other salesperson to act quickly. Alton then looked at Carl again.

"So, what can I do to make you a satisfied customer?" Alton asked.

"That. Right there. That is a good start," Carl agreed. "Now, this young lady, you said her name is Michelle?"

"Yes sir, Michelle O'Connor," the girl said.

"...was showing me this sleep-number bed," Carl said. "See, I was in an automobile accident and I need something firm for my back. Something Numb Nuts here never bothered to find out. She also talked me up from the full sized model to getting a queen sized; never know when I might have some company, right?"

Jerry, Numb Nuts One walked away, muttering to himself. Alton and Michelle and Carl continued to talk about the benefits of the particular select comfort bedding.

The brass bed? Yes sir; we do have it in the queen sized," Michelle said brightly, checking her IPad.

"And sir? I'll throw in the foundation and frame," Alton said as he walked over to where his other salesperson was showing the family some bunk beds.

"Thank you so much," Michelle said quietly. "Wouldn't believe how many times..."

Alton returned just as the parents were deciding on the steel tubing bunk bed in black chrome. Carl looked up and nodded his head toward the small woman.

"One other thing, Mr. Landry," Carl said.

"Oh, no sir! Call me Alton!" Alton Landry insisted.

"Alton, look at how this young lady is dressed. Look at her hair, her make up," Carl said. "She is the picture of professionalism. Now, look at the two men. Did Numb Nuts One over there sleep in that shirt? You don't pay your employees enough to get a razor? I know he didn't shave this morning. The other guy? His blazer is gray. What color are his slacks? They're brown."

Michelle looked up when Carl started to give her the address of his wife's home, then changed to his apartment's address. She said nothing, though, as Carl tightened his face for a long moment. They agreed on a delivery time and Michelle again thanked him.

"Thank you for giving Landry's a second chance," Alton said, shaking Carl's hand.

"Sir yes sir," Carl agreed.

A consignment shop in Flowers sold Carl a light brown tweed sofa and a matching recliner. He also selected a good quality kitchenette set.

Miller's Electronics sold him a television set and stand as well as the full PC Nation cable and Internet package. Short Moves agreed they could have the couch, chair, and kitchenette set delivered at the same time Landry's would be delivering his bed.

While he was in the consignment shop, a telephone number he did not recognize showed up on his cell phone. Since he did not recognize the phone number, he sent the number to voice mail.

"Really? Really? You left me in the garage all night!" his wife's voice shrilled in the voice mail.

"Could have left you there the whole weekend," Carl muttered as he blocked this new number. "Now, kind of wishing I had."

"You over your little fit yet?" his wife texted from yet another phone number.

"Not a little fit," Carl muttered as he blocked that number as well.