Save The Slow Dances for Me

Monday morning, Billy Stevens, the IT manager nodded somberly when Carl informed him he would be taking some time off to deal with some personal issues. A snafu in the Collections Department kept Carl and Butch busy until almost three o'clock in the afternoon. Billy let Carl know he'd received no less than ten phone calls from his wife while he and Butch were working to fix the problem. After eating his lunch, Carl called Nicole Banks, who was handling his law suit against Brandon Prejean's insurance company and asked who she would recommend for a divorce.

"When would you like her served?" Nicole asked. "And where?"

"ASAP, and, her place of work. Maximum exposure," Carl snapped.

The furniture was scheduled to arrive on Wednesday; Billy just nodded when Carl informed him on Wednesday morning that he would be leaving work at two thirty. Butch entered a few minutes later and Carl let his coworker know he'd be leaving work early that afternoon.

"So, see if you can somehow manage without me, huh?" Carl smiled tightly.

"Please get that; I am tired of talking to your wife," Billy said when the phone on Carl's desk rang.

"So, you over your little pity party yet?" Carl's wife asked nastily.

"Don't call here again," Carl snarled and ended the call.

"Collection's down again; Boudreaux, get in a good mood before you go in there," Billy ordered.

"I'll get on it right now," Butch said, grabbing his tool bag.

"I'm in a good mood. Hell, I'm in a great fucking mood," Carl snarled, grabbing his own tool bag and grabbing the hardware they'd used to correct the previous problem.

"I'm serious, Carl. Nina calls me, telling me you blasted one of her employees..." Billy warned.

While Butch and Carl were again trying to isolate the source of the latest crash, Laci sat at her desk in the Surewill Group Building and seethed. Last night, she'd ordered a pizza; cooking was not her favorite chore in the world, and the Brick's Pizzeria employee had informed Laci that the card on their record showed as cancelled. Laci had to scramble to find another card, and the employee again told her that the joint credit card was likewise cancelled.

"That little mother fucker," Laci snarled, digging out her American Express charge card.

A check on-line showed her that her husband had withdrawn half of their savings and half of their checking accounts. Thankfully, she'd been too smart for him to find out about her two secret accounts.

"All because I danced a couple of times with Michael? Jesus, would think you'd be man enough..." Laci snapped and looked up as an attractive blonde woman entered the small front office.

"Hi, I, I mean, I've seen the pictures; Kelli Breaux? God, she was just so beautiful; I still can't get over her dying like that, and that Tiffany? Makes me hate myself," the woman gushed.

"Yes ma'am?" Laci asked, fighting down her irritation.

"Anyway, you, you're Laci, right? Laci Boudreaux?" Theresa White asked, head still swiveling as she looked around.

"Yes, yes, I'm Laci," Laci agreed.

"And you've been served," Theresa said, handing Laci an envelope.

"I, what?" Laci asked, mouth opened in disbelief as Theresa snapped a digital picture of Laci holding the large envelope.

"Huh, well what you think about that?" Michael smirked, reading the petition for the dissolution of the marriage over Laci's shoulder.

"I, just over, just because I danced with you a couple times?" Laci stammered.

"I'm not sure 'shitty taste' is a reason for a divorce," Dianne Pratt, Bonnie Valasko's executive assistant quipped from the doorway of the outer office. "Today's mail; why is your phone on 'Do Not Disturb' again?"

"Where's Stacy?" Michael asked, naming the girl that usually handled the mail cart.

"Oh shit," Laci said, seeing that she'd not taken the phone off of 'DND' this morning.

"Out. Sick. Again," Dianne said, in a voice that let Michael and Laci know she did not believe that Stacy was out because of any illness.

"Well, don't worry; I'll handle your divorce for you," Michael said smugly to Laci.

"No thanks; if he's crazy enough to go through with this, I want to win," Laci said and Dianne burst into peals of laughter as she exited the room.

A moment later, Laci again put their phone on DND and went to the break room. Dot Amandi, the footwear designer of the Surewill Group and her administrative assistant, Aymee Winn were arguing over splitting a banana nut muffin. Each was claiming they could not possibly eat even half of the muffin.

"What you got there?" Aymee asked, seeing the sheaf of papers Laci clutched in her free hand.

"Fine, fine, I'll take half if you'll take the other half," Dot sighed as she expertly divided the large muffin into two equal halves.

Laci showed the attractive Asian-American girl and the very short designer the petition for divorce. Aymee and Dot listened as Laci angrily recounted the past weekend's events.

"Wasn't your husband in some kind of accident?" Aymee interrupted Laci's tirade.

"Automobile," Dot affirmed. "Messed his back up something bad. Y'all wanted Mexican, why y'all didn't just go to Manny's? Their salsa..."

"And he took you to Vermillion's? I've been to Acapulco Grande; those chairs suck," Aymee said.

"The whole place sucks," Dot agreed. "That fresh out the microwave cuisine? Sucks. And they are mighty proud of that suck ass food too."

"His back must have been killing him," Aymee continued. "But he was still willing to go dancing? Wow, I need me a Marine."

"No, he, he only wanted to dance the slow..." Laci faltered.

"And did y'all snuggle all up?" Dot teased.

"No, remember? She said she danced a bunch with Michael," Aymee reminded Dot.

"Michael. Michael Brookes? Who is NOT your husband? You danced with that sleaze?" Dot asked. "While your husband, y'all just left him at the table while you danced..."

"But you did dance with Carl when..." Aymee asked.

Laci abruptly left the break room, leaving her half empty cup of green tea. Aymee and Dot continued to argue over the banana nut muffin. Both women wished they were alone; they would have eaten an entire chocolate chip muffin instead of just half of the banana nut muffin.

"Daddy, lawyers; who's a good lawyer?" Laci asked when her father answered his cell phone.

"Aw Jesus Laci, what? What did you do?" Chris demanded. "Carl, Carl can't take care of this?"

"I, no, he uh he can't," Laci sniffled.

Chris refused to give Laci any information until she told him what had happened. Laci attempted to give a sanitized version of the evening's events. Chris asked Laci why she was dancing with a man that wasn't her husband. He demanded to know why she danced more than one dance with a man she was not married to, especially when, by her own admissions, the man wasn't a very good dancer. Laci couldn't give an explanation, just sniffled in self-pity.

"God damn, just God damn, Laci, Jesus, when? When do you plan to grow up?" Chris sighed heavily. "Penny um Penny Jones. She's with Richards Pellichet and Jones."

Laci was able to get an appointment with Penny Jones for the following afternoon. At three thirty, Dianne Pratt again came into Laci's office and reminded the flighty blonde to take her phone off of DND.

While his wife was sitting at her desk, feeling sorry for herself, Carl was sweating profusely as his physical therapist put him through his paces. Finally, Tori Webster nodded with satisfaction and Carl fell back onto the mat.

"Been keeping up with your exercises," Tori stated, brushing an errant hank of brown hair out of her warm brown eyes. "Remember, ice it down, take a couple of Ibuprofen..."

Carl wondered if the diminutive woman realized, when she brushed the hair out of her eyes, her 36DD breasts tended to thrust out. And, not for the first time, Carl wondered if those breasts were real or store-bought. Tori's choice of leotard tops with scoop necklines always put those boobs on display; the stretchy material and the low cut naturally drew the eyes to her chest.

"Yeah, yes I have," Carl grunted, pulling himself upright again.

"Don't worry, Mr. Boudreaux; we'll have you running a five with full pack in no time," Tori promised.

Carl laughed; he had no plans to run five miles with a full pack on his back any time soon. When Tori bent over to check her computer for the next session available, Carl took a moment to admire the attractive woman's fleshy buttocks. The semi-translucent yoga pants showed Carl that the leotard top was a thong style; the dark material bisected her nice, jiggly globes beautifully.

His wife had a cute butt. For her build, her buttocks were just the right size, but like most women, his wife felt her ass was too big. And, she strictly forbade any ass play; her ass was 'Exit only' as far as she was concerned.

"Bet she would dare me to try to hurt it," Carl thought as Tori absently shuffled from one foot to the other, making her buttocks flex and strain.

"Monday? Two thirty?" Tori asked, turning and affording Carl a good look down her leotard top.

"Sounds good; oh, we need to update your records. I've got a new address," Carl said.

"Guess who managed to crash their system again?" Billy greeted Carl when Carl dragged his tired, sore body into the IT office the next morning.

"You and Pretty Boy Floyd handle it," Carl said even as he reached for his tool bag. "Today? Today I'll be the manager and pretend to be busy."

"Bite me," Billy laughed. "Pretty Boy Floyd, AKA Butch is out sick. His wife managed to give him her cold."

"Women. Can't live with them and it's against the law to shoot them," Carl sighed as Billy also grabbed a tool bag.

"Yeah, but they are kind of cute," Billy agreed.

"And they do smell nice," Carl said as they reached the elevator.

"Mm, oh, so do you. That a new after shave?" Billy teased as the doors slid open.

"Uh, your turn to bite me," Carl laughed as they stepped into the box.

"Know what? I'm betting we got a ransomware here," Billy mused aloud.

"Butch and I checked," Carl said.

"What we need to do...there's thirty stations?" Billy asked.

"Thirty one; don't forget Ms. Crowder's computer," Carl agreed as they entered the bedlam of the Collections Department.

"Okay," Billy called out to be heard over the complaints and chatter of the large room. "Everyone, log out of your systems. Everyone, yes this means you too. Shut down your computers completely. Do a full shut down."

"What you plan to do?" Nina demanded to know, standing toe to toe with the tall IT manager.

"Carl and I? We're thinking it might be just one station affecting the entire network down here," Billy explained. "So, we're going to go, station to station, turn it on, do a diagnostic, then shut it off again."

"You can't do that after hours?" Nina spat.

"We could. But then you'd be down for the entire day," Billy patiently explained. "Ms. Crowder, we can't keep my whole crew schlepping around trying get your department up and running. Believe it or not, there's other departments here and every now and then? They need our help too."

"How long's this going to take?" Nina demanded petulantly.

"As long as it takes," Billy said calmly.

"Actually, we're done," Carl said, coming out of Nina's office.

"What? You, you went on my computer?" Nina shrilled, outraged at the breach of her privacy.

"No ma'am," Carl said, loud enough for many of the employees to hear. "I went onto Thibodaux Investments' computer. These computers? Are not your personal property; they belong to Thibodaux."

Carl nodded with his head toward Nina's office. A still outraged Nina and a smirking Billy followed Carl into the small office.

"Don't know what porn site or on-line dating site gave it to you, but you picked up a virus," Carl snapped, tapping rapidly on Nina's keyboard. "A real old one too; no wonder our diagnostics didn't pick it up. But every time you went to Thibodaux Properties..."

"I, I didn't...I wasn't..." Nina attempted to lie.

"...you brought the whole department down. And..." Carl snapped, showing Nina and Billy the computer's history. "So, if you weren't? Who was?"

"Nina? Any employee out there was doing this? They'd be terminated immediately," Billy said somberly.

"I, Brook, Brook's been wanting a baby, a baby brother or sister for Christine," Nina sniffled. "And Freddie Loomis? Christine's daddy's in a committed relationship so..."

"So Butch and I, we been jamming our dicks into empty air because you refused to let either one of us look at your computer," Carl snapped, nodding when the computer 'dinged' alerting him that the virus was now scrubbed from the system.

Carl shut the computer down. He waited for a count of ten and started it again. Nina dabbed at her eyes with a wadded up tissue and Billy avoided eye contact with the Collections Department manager. Carl nodded his head with satisfaction and vacated Nina's seat.

"So, what you think will happen to her?" Carl asked as they waited for the elevator.

"Who?" Billy asked as the elevator doors slid open.

"Nina, Ms. Crowder," Carl asked as the box lurched upward.

"Don't have a clue what you're talking about," Billy said.

Inside of the IT office, Billy explained his thinking; Nina Crowder had just had the fear of God put into her. She would not be going onto any more of the illicit sites, not on a Thibodaux computer at least. And, very little good would come from reporting the incident to Tom Thibodaux.

"Nina's too good of a manager to lose if Tom's in one of his shitty moods. So, we let this slide. She knows we know and that, my furry little friend, is money in the bank next time we need a favor," Billy shrugged. "So, you said porn? What kind of porn sites she been looking at?"

"Hmm?" Carl looked up from his text message.

"What porn, what are you doing?" Billy asked.

"Just sending Butch a text; we found the problem. All the ladies in the Collection Department were downloading naked pictures of him that Yvette's been showing them," Carl laughed.

"Dude!" Billy guffawed. "Let me know what he says."

"Fuck you very much," Carl read Butch's response. "Yvette would never share those pictures with anyone."

"I'm going call Yvette and see if she's got any," Billy chortled.

"And, the porn site was..." Carl said and pulled up the pornographic web site in a secure template. "Pregnant Lesbians."

"Hmm. Pretty hot," Billy said, glancing over Carl's shoulder at some of the images.

"Yeah well, most pregnant women are pretty hot anyway," Carl agreed, pausing for a long moment before deleting the link.

Arriving home, Carl smiled at the cute red-headed neighbor. Inside his apartment, Carl fixed himself a gin gimlet and sat in the far too plush, too soft recliner. He knew Tori, his physical therapist would have had some ugly things to say about the overstuffed furniture, but for the moment, Carl did not care.

They'd talked about having babies; Carl wanted two or three, but at least two. His wife said she was a 'one and done' kind of girl and said Carl would be getting a vasectomy after their one child was conceived.

"Good luck with that," Carl had growled. "My gun's going be firing bullets until my ass gets zipped in."

"Bet she'd look hot, belly all swollen with my, our baby, our babies," Carl mused, feeling a stirring in his crotch as he thought of his sexy little wife being pregnant.

Carl poured the drink into the sink and prepared himself a light supper. Sitting at his table, Carl felt an emptiness descend over him. His wife had kept pushing the projected date of their potential conception further and further away. He had understood it when he'd been in the service. He had grudgingly accepted it the first two years after his discharge; his wife wanted to enjoy their time together. Then she wanted to wait until this goal, then until that goal had been met.

"Hello?" Carl said into the cell phone; the number looked familiar.

"Hello, Mr. Boudreaux? Hi! This is Michelle? Michelle O'Connor? From Landry's?" a squeaky voice chirped into his ear.

"Hi Michelle O'Connor from Landry's; what can I do for you?" Carl smiled, thinking of the beautiful saleswoman.

"I, Mr. Boudreaux, I..." Michelle breathed into the phone.

"Michelle, call me Carl, okay?" Carl said.

"Mister...Carl, I, so, how's the bed working out for you?" Michelle asked.

"Bed's working great; I really appreciate you suggesting that one to me," Carl admitted. "And the delivery crew? Those guys did a fantastic job setting everything up. Very professional."

"Wonderful!" Michelle said happily, then grew flustered. "I uh, so uh, um, I was wondering, I, I'd like to take you to dinner one night, uh, you know, uh for helping me uh, you know, with Jerry and Mr. Alton?"

"Michelle? I, um, you, you are a really special young lady," Carl said.

"Oh God, not the 'you are a really special young lady' talk," Michelle groaned. "God, never mind."

"But right now, I'm in the middle, actually, I'm in the very beginning stages of a divorce," Carl said. "But, minute the judge's signature is on the dotted line? I want that dinner date."

"How long's that going be?" Michelle asked, breathless again.

"Not quick enough," Carl declared. "But when I've got the papers in hand? I'm taking you to, you ever been to Hanging Gardens? It's a Thai place right by my work; I love their curry peanut pork."

"Can't wait," Michelle gushed and Carl resolved to put in an extra set of exercises that evening.

After his accident, any erections he achieved were weak, fleeting. Tori had assured Carl he would be able to regain his full function; these things just take time and patience. Carl assured Tori, he had zero patience but, unfortunately, had plenty of time.

When he was healed enough to roll onto his belly without excruciating pain, Carl had licked and fingered his wife to a few orgasms. Both he and his wife knew the orgasms were mild but she assured him, they were fine.

Carl smiled tightly, remembering he'd once held a misconception about performing oral sex on a woman. A drill sergeant had laughed and corrected Carl's ideas about eating pussy.

"Bet she's got a nice little quim," Carl said, thinking of Michelle O'Connor's pussy. "Wonder if she shaves it?"

"Bet she's got a tasty quim," Carl said, thinking of his red-headed neighbor. "You know what? I, I've never had a red head. Hmm!"

Carl was drenched in sweat when he finished his exercises that evening. The shower in his apartment did not get hot enough and the spray was weak. Carl resolved, as soon as his divorce was over, he would be finding a house, putting in a hot water tank that would really put out the hot water, and getting a spray that would cut flesh. He sat in the small chair in the cramped shower, letting the water hit him and thought of Michelle, of his unnamed neighbor, of his wife joining him in this imaginary shower he would have at some home at some time in the future.

"Your wife's retained Penny Jones," Nicole Banks informed Carl the next day.

"Good, I guess. Thank God I have the best, though," Carl said.

"They're asking for counseling," Nicole said.

"Counseling's fine; the clock still keeps ticking, right?" Carl asked.

"Clock keeps ticking; started the minute we filed," Nicole agreed. "Clock ticks until you tell me to turn it off."

Billy gave Carl a hard time when Carl informed him of the latest development in his personal life. Carl smirked, knowing Billy didn't mean any of the empty threats or complaints.

"Let me get this straight. Time off for massages," Billy said, ticking the offenses off on his fingers.

"Dude, physical therapy? Those are not massages," Carl protested.

"Time off for your bed to be delivered..." Billy continued.

"Well, yeah, you got me on that one," Carl agreed.