The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Bob wasn’t back by the time Pete and Bobbi arrived at the dorm room. Pete was able to reach him by way of his cell phone, though, and urged him to return with Renee. “I think the less these girls are seen around campus, the better it’ll probably be for all of us.” Considering what he’d set up to happen in Dean Fredericks’ office, he felt hypocritical giving that advice—but what his friend didn’t know wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Presently, the missing pair showed up. They were carrying several bags.

“What’s all this?” Pete inquired.

“Clothes for the girls,” Bob explained. “Regular clothes, I mean.”

“Who paid? I thought they didn’t have any money.”

Bob reddened. “I did.” He looked away. “Look, we don’t know how long they’re going to be here, and unless we want to keep them stashed here and never go out until this is all over, they’re going to need something more than stripper outfits and coats.”

“I suppose.” From Bob’s reaction, Pete suspected it hadn’t been his idea. Renee was probably as good at getting guys to do things for her as Bobbi was.

The dark blonde spoke. “If you boys want us to actually wear the stuff, you need to clear out so we can put it on. I’ll help Bobbi.”

She stopped and looked more carefully at her friend. “Bobbi! You’re awake!”

“Yeah,” the lighter-haired girl answered, laughing. “Finally!”

“Okay, then, boys—out!” Renee gave an imperious shooing wave. “Out, out!”

Pete and Bob got out.

They came back a half-hour later to find both blondes dressed in what Renee had gotten Bob to buy. Both had on high heels, sheer pantyhose, short skirts, and open-necked blouses which revealed a good deal of cleavage. Bobbi was fluffing her halo of pale hair and Renee was combing out her shoulder-length wave as the guys entered.

“Very nice,” Bob said approvingly. Pete nodded. “Not exactly inconspicuous, but, well, you two’d be eye-catching in gunny sacks.”

Both girls laughed. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t gotten lots of similar compliments from guys before, but there was a refreshing innocence to the college boys’ admiration. And it helped that they were both cute guys; under other circumstances, the dancers might even have dated them.

Pete cleared his throat. “Now it’s your turn to clear out, girls,” he announced. “We still have studying to do, and, ahem, it’ll be easier if you’re not here.”

Renee chuckled. “Okay, hon.” Turning to Bobbi, she said, “C’mon, Cottonhead. There’s a nice coffee shop Bob showed me—and after that, maybe we can go over and watch the track and field guys work out!”

“Try and be back by five-thirty,” Bob called out. “We can go out to dinner then.”

“Sure thing, hon,” Renee answered as she opened the door. She looked back over her shoulder and blew Bob a kiss. He turned beet red.

Laughing, the fugitive strippers left.

Pete raised an eyebrow. “Coffee shop?” he repeated. “And clothes too? What’d you do, Bob, stuff your credit cards down her cleavage?”

His friend blushed. “Well, no,” he answered, sounding sheepish, “but she’s, well, pretty hard to say no to.” Defensively: “Besides, they did need the clothes.”

Pete chortled. “She’s not the only one who’s, let’s say, persuasive.” He filled his friend in on what had happened at Dean Fredericks’ office. “So you see, thanks to Bobbi, my worries are over.”

Bob laughed. “Sounds like it—though I do wonder if she’d have been so helpful if she hadn’t been hypnotized.”

“Probably not,” Pete admitted. “But it’s done.” Reminded, he took the camera out of his inside jacket pocket, where he’d stashed it after confronting the dean, and slid it into the top left drawer of his desk. “I’ll have to get these pictures developed sometime soon, just in case.”

“All right,” Bob agreed. “But right now, let’s get cracking. You may have your grad school deal sewn up, but I still have to worry about the grades I’ll get on my final exams.”

Pete nodded. “Really, so do I. I may have things ‘sewn up,’ the way you say, but I’d still like to get decent grades if I can.”

“Have it your way,” Bob said, and turned toward the desk on his side of the room. Silently, Pete moved to the desk on the opposite side.

The next several hours passed mostly in silence as Pete Nunnally and Bob Johnson went through their books and notes diligently. After awhile, they were all but oblivious to the world around them, their attention entirely focused on their work. When a sharp knock suddenly interrupted them, it came as a jolt.

“Hey, it’s us!” came Bobbi’s voice. “We’re back! Let us in!”

“Holy shit!” Bob gasped, glancing at the wall clock. “Five-thirty already?“

It was. Pete got up and let Bobbi and Renee in. “We’ll take you over to the cafeteria for dinner now, if you’re hungry.”

Renee shook her head. “The track guys invited us to this bash they’re having over at the Gamma Pi Alpha house. There’s supposed to be all kinds of food there, and they said we could bring guests if we want. Want to come?”

Pete answered, “Yeah, why not?” Privately, he was fuming. The Gamma Pi guys were notorious for the bashes they put on at the end of every semester. He didn’t want them getting their paws on Bobbi. Or Renee either. But Renee plainly had her mind made up.

Once again he was tempted to pull out the pocket watch and settle things that way. But he didn’t. Hypnotism might not be the root of all evil, but it had caused enough trouble lately that he didn’t want to add to it.

“When is this shindig they’re putting on supposed to start?” he asked instead.

“Around six,” Renee replied.

“Then we might as well get going,” observed Bob. He glanced over at Pete and went on, “Oh, knock it off, pal. I know the Gamma Pi house’s rep as well as you do, but with Bobbi back to normal, what’s the harm?” Pete had no answer—only an ominous feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong.

It was after six-thirty when they finally arrived. The late May evening was warm, and the still-small crowd of partiers was outside. Several tables had been set up to hold drinks. None of the liquid refreshments were supposed to be alcoholic, but a number of people seemed to have brought along beer. Burgers and hot dogs were already sizzling on a couple of grills outside the frat house.

“There’s fancier stuff for later,” one of the fraternity brothers assured the partiers. “Until it’s ready, dig right in here; there’s plenty!”

And so there seemed to be. With the promise of that “fancier stuff” dangling before him, Pete held back on the burgers and dogs. Bobbi, he noted with amusement, didn’t; she ate as if starved. Either she had the metabolism of a hummingbird, he thought, or she was destined to weigh three hundred pounds someday.

There was a band tuning up in the background, running through the notes of some slow-paced old-fashioned music. Evidently dancing was part of the program. It looked like it would work out, since there seemed to be roughly equal numbers of guys and girls in attendance. Caught up in the spirit of the occasion, Pete put his arms around Bobbi and began turning her through the opening steps of a leisurely dance.‘

“Hey,” she said faintly. For a moment, she looked as if she might pull away; then her arms went around his neck.

Off in the distance, a bell clanged. Once. Twice. Three times. . . .

At the seventh and final ring, Bobbi gasped and stopped moving with Pete.

“No,” he whispered. “No!”

But it was true. Looking into Bobbi’s eyes, he saw them change, from bright and lively to blank and unaware.

“C’mon, Bobbi,” Pete pleaded. “Please! Come back! Come back to me!” For just an instant, he thought he was getting through to her: a spark of something appeared in those wide blue orbs, and the beautiful babe sighed. Then it was gone.

“Bob!” Pete yelled. “Renee! Get over here now! I need help!”

The other couple heard him. They had been dancing too, but at his shout, they stopped and came over. “Oh, no,” gasped Renee. “Is she—!”

Pete nodded. “That goddamn bell,” he gritted out. “Everything was going fine, and then, as soon as she heard it, whammo!”

“But you brought her out of it before, right? Why not just do it again?”

“No,” Pete corrected. “I didn’t bring her out of it. She woke up on her own, after falling into a natural sleep.”

“This is my fault,” Renee mourned. “I shouldn’t have brought her here. I shouldn’t have said yes to that invite!”

“No,” Pete disagreed again. “It’s my fault. None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t been screwing around with hypnosis. And I should have guessed she might hear the tower bell and go off, and insisted that we stay in. But I didn’t think of it!”

“So now what?” Renee was nothing if not practical. “Back to the room?”

“In a little while,” Pete sighed. “But maybe we could go inside for just a few minutes first?”

“I guess so,” the dark blonde agreed. “My feet hurt. A few minutes sitting down wouldn’t be a bad idea. And besides, what else could go wrong?”

Pete sighed and nodded. The foursome entered the Gamma Pi Alpha house, Pete gently guiding a nodding, smiling Bobbi.

Inside, a large room had been set up with tables and metal folding chairs. Some of the tables already held punch bowls and large bottles of soda; several others bore large platters of cold meats and salads along with elevated metal steam trays from which enticing smells wafted. Overhead, balloons presses against the ceiling and gaily-colored banners celebrated the end of the school year.

The four found seats and watched as more people came in. After a few minutes Renee announced, “I’m hungry. I’m going to get some food.”

“Me too,” said Bob.

“I’ll stay here with Bobbi, then,” Pete decided. “When you two come back, I’ll go up and get food for the two of us.”

And that was how it worked out. Renee and Bob cruised the food tables and returned after a few minutes with full plates. When they sat down again, Pete went up for food, coming back with a plate in each hand. He offered one to Bobbi, who took it with a whispered ”Thank you” and immediately began to eat.

It didn’t take long for their food to disappear. They went up to the refreshment tables in shifts again.

The band was playing a slow dance tune as the foursome finished off their second helping. Renee looked speculatively at Bob.

Pete leaned back in his chair, smiling, and licked his lips. “Man, that hit the spot. The salami was especially good.”

Bobbi sat up straight and her eyes opened wide. “Salome?” she asked in a dazed tone. “Salome?”

Pete gasped and responded, “No, Bobbi. Salami. Not Salome—salami!“

It was as if he hadn’t spoken. Bobbi murmured, “Sa-lo-me dan-ces!” She got up and moved out onto the dance floor.

Renee realized what was happening. “No, Bobbi! No!”

Bobbi paid no more attention to her longtime friend than she had to her recent acquaintance Pete Nunnally. She pranced away and began languorously unbuttoning her blouse, undulating her hips as she did so.

“Ohhh, boy,” Bob groaned. He jumped up to grab the hypnotized stripper, but found his way blocked by a milling crowd. To make matters worse, the band had noticed what was happening and shifted into a spirited rendition of the fifties song “Shake, Rattle and Roll”—and Bobbi, cued by the music, had sped up her gyrations. She jumped up onto one of the refreshment tables and peeled out of her blouse, waving it high over her head as she danced nimbly among the bowls and bottles. Bob breathed a silent prayer of thanks that at least she wasn’t dancing through the hot platters.

She shimmied out of her short skirt next, standing revealed in tiny thong panties, bra, stockings and pumps. “Sa-lo-me dances at the Pal-ace,” she announced gaily.

“She sure does, honey,” a male voice called out from somewhere among the onlookers. “Go, baby, go!”

Pete had just time to be annoyed at Renee for buying underwear that looked as if it belonged to one of the girls’ costumes—and at Bob for being weak-willed enough to let her—before he heard a soft voice.

“At the Pal-ace,” Renee said, so softly he wouldn’t have heard her if he hadn’t been standing right next to her. ”Danc-ing . . . at the Pal-ace.” A dreamy smile on her face, the honey-haired honey moved away from her escort, into the crowd.

“Oh, no,” Pete moaned. He remembered how easily she had gone into trance before, when he’d been trying to wake up Bobbi—and how Bob had taken advantage of it. Evidently Bobbi’s dancing and her brainwashed babble about being “at the Palace” had combined with the raucous music to plunge the highly suggestible Renee right back under and into the role Bob had programmed into her. Now both blondes were bumping and grinding away! Pictures or no pictures, I am so dead, he thought grimly.

Renee had used his momentary shock to glide away into the crowd. He tried to follow, but it was too late: already he heard a fresh round of gleeful shouts from the partiers. Renee rose into view above the throng; she had found a table of her own, and already her nimble fingers were plucking at her blouse’s buttons as she shimmied to the music.

Bobbi, meanwhile, had peeled down to nothing but tiny thong panties and heels. Someone in the crowd had laid hold of a pair of pom-poms from somewhere and tossed them to her, and she was now waving them overhead as she pranced and wriggled through a mock cheerleading routine. A ring of happily howling guys surrounded the table she was dancing on, keeping Pete from reaching her. He couldn’t even call to her; he couldn’t make himself heard above the clamor.

Not all of the noise was applause. Some of it was girls yelling at their dates for cheering and whistling at the show. A lot of the coeds clearly felt threatened by the beautiful blonde babes working away on their tabletops. Female voices could be heard shouting, “Stop it!” and, more ominously, “Somebody call the cops!”

Suddenly the music stopped. Someone had pulled the plug on the band.

Reacting as if the sudden silence signaled the finale to their act, both showgirls stopped dancing and bowed deeply to their audience, giving those closest to them a point-blank view of their marvelous bosoms. More than one guy suddenly shuddered and groaned in helpless, spurting release. Then, with a roar, the onlookers swarmed the performers’ makeshift stages and lifted the girls off, hoisting them high and parading them around the room.

Pete and Bob finally managed to squeeze through the mob and were just about to reclaim their dates when a shrill whistle cut through the air. An amplified voice called out, “All right, nobody try to leave! This is the police!”

The two college boys groaned. So did a lot of the other partiers. Evidently someone had made the call some of the girls had demanded. “So much for keeping a low profile,” muttered Bob. If they had been aware of what was going on, Renee and Bobbi would have been similarly upset—but they were both still deep in trance. It took all the functioning brainpower they had just to walk and giggle witlessly at the same time without orders.

The cops were efficient, going over the students carefully and inspecting the party scene. Several people were led away protesting after officers found illicit substances in their possession. Bob and Pete tried to look inconspicuous, hoping they would be ignored.

It didn’t work. It couldn’t have worked, even if the cops had been less professional; the two guys couldn’t possibly do “inconspicuous” while accompanied by a pair of stunning blondes who happened to be practically naked. All too soon, a pair of blue-uniformed men came over to the foursome.

“Who are you all?” one of them—his badge said NOONAN—demanded.

“I’m Bob Johnson,” Bob answered, “and this is my friend and roommate Pete Nunnally. We’re seniors here.” Waving at the girls, he went on, “These are our dates, Bobbi and Renee.”

Officer Noonan’s partner, an older man whose badge identified him as SYKES, scowled. “You babes look a little old to be with these guys,” he growled. “And way too pretty, too. You working girls? What’re your real names?”

Cued, Bobbi bubbled, “My name is Bob-bi Bub-bles. I’m a dan-cer!”

Officer Sykes looked at her more carefully. “You all right, honey?” He waved his hand in front of Bobbi, who didn’t blink or follow it with her eyes. “Hey, what’s wrong with her?”

“It isn’t drugs,” volunteered his partner. “At least, neither of these guys is holding. It doesn’t look right for dope, either—and look, her girlfriend’s just the same. See? Listen.” He addressed Renee: “What’s your name, miss?”

“My name is Renee Storm,” the other girl said drowsily.

“You a dancer too?”

“Yes,” Renee answered in the same sleepy voice. “Dancer . . . too.”

Officer Noonan blinked. There was something about those names. “Wait here, Frank,” he said. “I need to get something from the car.”

Muttering, Officer Sykes kept his eye on the little group while his partner disappeared. A few minutes later, Officer Noonan came back, a battered tabloid newspaper clutched in one hand. “I was right,” Noonan said.

“About what?” Sykes raised his eyebrows. “What’s that rag got to do with anything?”

“Look,” Noonan said, pointing to a pair of grainy pictures on the front page next to a huge headline reading STRIPPER SUSPECTS IN SHOWGIRL SLAYING STILL SOUGHT. Craning his neck, Pete confirmed that the photos were of Bobbi and Renee. He wasn’t sure where the paper had gotten them—publicity pictures? The girls seemed to be in costume—but they were clearly recognizable despite the paper’s poor-quality reproduction of their images.

Sykes looked, and nodded. “Yeah, that’s them.” He turned back to the foursome and announced: “All right, all of you, we’re going down to the precinct for a little talk.”

His scowl deepened. Addressing Pete, he growled, “Get those dolls dressed first, pal. I don’t care if they do take their clothes off for a living; the station house ain’t a strip joint.” He could just imagine the fun the reporters always hanging around there would have with this. Well, not if he could help it.

Pete complied; it was simple enough to order the blondes to dress themselves. In a few minutes, they looked as respectable as they had when they’d entered the Gamma Pi house. Then, under the watchful gaze of Officers Noonan and Sykes, the foursome piled into the cops’ waiting blue-and-white.

Presently they arrived at the station house. Two or three of the other guests from the frat-house party were still there, being booked for what officers had found on them there. The four were taken into a small room for questioning.

The boys held back nothing—well, almost nothing; Pete wasn’t about to admit what he’d had Bobbi do with the dean. Things were bad enough already.

When they were done, Officer Noonan stared at them. “You really mean these girls are hypnotized? For real?”

Pete sighed. “Yeah, for real.”

“And you can’t wake them up?”

“I thought I’d explained that,” responded Pete tiredly. “I can’t; I don’t know why, but it doesn’t work. They seem to come out of it on their own if they’re allowed to just fall asleep naturally.”

“And then they go under again if they get these, what did you call them, triggers?” Noonan sounded as if he were probing for inconsistencies, trying to catch Pete in a lie. But Pete was telling the truth.

“That’s right, officer,” Pete confirmed. “I’d been hoping to find a way to turn off the triggers, but I hadn’t succeeded yet.”

“You mean, if you told them to get naked right here, they’d just do it?” Noonan grinned.

His partner cleared his throat loudly and frowned. “Let’s not go there, Tommy boy. Like I said before, the precinct house ain’t no strip club.”

Noonan deflated visibly. Pete breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He’d been afraid the cop would ask for a demonstration. As much as he enjoyed the girls’ uninhibited performances in trance, he was uncomfortable with making a public spectacle of them. Not only did it draw too much attention, it just felt wrong.

Sykes spoke again. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s finish processing the guys—I don’t think we’re gonna get much out of the girls, not when they’re like this—and then all four of ‘em can spend the night here in a nice cozy holding cell. In the morning we’ll see what else has to be done.”

“You sure you want them all together like that?” Noonan asked. “I mean, two guys and two great-looking broads? Two great-looking broads who’ll do any thing they’re told?”

Sykes thought it over. “I think that horse’s probably out of the barn by now,” he decided. “Just so they remember this is a police station.”

Bob coughed. “I get the point, Officer Sykes.” He glanced over at Pete, who nodded his agreement.

“Then let’s get this over with,” the policeman said.

The college students and the befuddled blondes were escorted back to the main waiting area. All four were fingerprinted and photographed, and Pete and Bob were questioned a bit more by the desk sergeant, who was introduced by Officer Nunnally as Sgt. Fox.

Finally the sergeant said, “Okay, I’ve heard enough.” Scowling, he ordered, “Take ‘em back to the holding area.”

As Pete, Bob, Renee and Bobbi were led away again, none of them noticed a nondescript middle-aged man with a camera slung over one shoulder, who was speaking in an excited murmur into a cell phone.

The next morning, Pete was the first to wake up. He gently eased away from Bobbi, who had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, and stood up, carefully lowering the blonde until she was resting comfortably again on the cot they’d shared.

A few minutes later, as he was stretching the kinks out of his muscles, he heard a soft moan. He turned toward the sound and saw Bobbi sit up.

“Aw, crap,” she said as she took in their surroundings. She was obviously out of trance, just as Pete had expected. “What happened?”

“You went under again,” Pete answered, stating the obvious. “After that, things got a little out of hand. Renee zoned out too, triggered by something you said, and the two of you put on,” he swallowed, “quite a show. Then someone called the police, and . . . well, you can see for yourself.”

“But we can’t get involved with the cops, you know that!” the dancer exclaimed. “If they find out who we are—!”

“They already know,” a new voice said: Bob. “They found out last night. There was this big story, pictures and all, in some paper one of them had.”

“Oh, no!” wailed the blonde. “What’ll we do?”

“Deal with it,” came Renee’s voice. The last to wake up, she was nevertheless fully herself now. “Considering the way things worked out, maybe we’d have been better off not running in the first place.” She impaled Pete with a hard glance.

He winced. “Look, I can only say I’m sorry. I wish I’d never tried that silly-ass experiment with Bob. But how was I going to know Bobbi’d be out there, and would go into trance even though Bob didn’t?” He grimaced. “How was I supposed to know she’d get all fixated on the tower clock’s bell?”

For a moment, he returned Renee’s harsh look with one of his own. “And how was I supposed to guess that you’d be so easily hypnotized? None of this was anything I planned on, for God’s sake!”

Suddenly Bob grinned. “You know, I never guessed the day’d come that we’d hypnotize two beautiful, sexy girls—and wish we hadn’t done it!”

Everyone laughed at that, even Renee.

Pete thought of something and glanced at his watch. “Hey!” he called out. “It’s just past seven!” Three pairs of eyes turned toward Bobbi.

One pair of open, clear, alert eyes looked back. “Why are you all looking at me like that?” the dancer demanded.

“Bobbi!” Renee burst out. “It’s after seven, and you’re not hypnotized! You’re cured!”

The lighter-haired woman squealed happily and clapped her hands. Pete, however, was more cautious. “Maybe,” he hedged. “Or maybe it’s just that she couldn’t hear the Anderson Tower bell from here.”

He looked thoughtful. “Even if that’s it, it means that all you have to do is get her away from the campus and she’ll be fine. And eventually, the hypnotic compulsion should fade on its own, so that even if she came back for,” he hesitated, “some reason, the bell wouldn’t affect her anymore.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” declared Bobbi. “As soon as it’s safe, I’m getting out of this town and never coming back!”

Pete looked disappointed, but said nothing.

There was a rattling noise at the door to their cell. “All right, boys and girls,” the voice of Officer Noonan announced, “you can come on out. There’re some people here who want to talk to you.”

When the four emerged, the found out who “some people” were. Two men in neat suits introduced themselves as detectives from Renee and Bobbi’s home city. “We’ve been wanting to talk with you girls about the murder at your club,” one of them explained. “Your boyfriends better stick around, too; we may need to chat with them after we’re done with you.”

The blondes looked unhappy, but went with the detectives anyway. After forty-five minutes or so, they came back and the plainclothesmen summoned Pete and Bob.

The two students did their best to answer the investigators’ questions honestly. By unspoken agreement, they avoided some of the more intimate details of what had happened while the girls were in trance, but they freely revealed everything else. They didn’t want anything bad to happen to the two babes, after all, and holding out on the police with a murderous maniac on the loose didn’t seem like a good way to protect them.

At last one of the out-of-town detectives glanced at the other and said tiredly, “All right, that’s it.” The other one turned to the boys and informed them, “You can go. Just don’t go far; we may need to contact you again.”

The boys rejoined the girls and they headed out of the precinct.

On the street, while Pete flagged down a cab, Renee noticed a small newspaper dispenser. The front page visible through the glass window showed a large color photograph containing four very familiar faces over a headline reading STRIPPER SLAYING SUSPECTS IN FRATERNITY FRACAS.

“Uh, guys,” she said, “Bobbi, I think you should see this.”

The dancer inserted fifty cents into the dispenser and pulled out a copy of the paper. She flipped through it to the main story and began to read. Shortly she looked up, a worried expression on her gorgeous face. “It looks like some reporter was at the precinct last night, recognized Bobbi and me from the news and decided to score a scoop by spilling where we are now.”

“Here, let me see that,” Bob said, leaning in over the paper. He scanned down, nodding and mumbling under his breath. Finally he looked up as well. “Yeah, that’s what it looks like, all right.” He brightened slightly. “One thing—he didn’t get my name, or yours either, Pete. All it says here is that the girls were arrested in the company of ‘two male students from the local college.’”

“I don’t understand,” Bobbi said. “How does that help?”

Renee smiled at her. “It does, Cottonhead. If they didn’t find out just who the boys were, then the killer doesn’t know, either. All he can find out is that they go to school here—and that’s, what, hundreds of guys?”

“A couple thousand, actually,” put in Bob. “Don’t you get it? All we have to do is lie low till graduation, and make sure we don’t get separated. Even if this nutjob you’re scared of finds us, he’ll have to go through Pete and me to get at you. After graduation, if you want, you can go anywhere and just disappear.” He looked vaguely sad at that thought. “But it might not be smart.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Pete chimed in, “wherever you go, someone might spot you—and then you’d just have to run again. At least here, you have someone looking out for you.” Unbidden, he moved closer to Bobbi. His arm stole around her waist. She didn’t seem to mind.

Several dozen miles away, a tall, thin man wearing a tan overcoat over a cheap brown suit sipped a cup of coffee as he read the morning paper, scanning it with pale eyes shadowed by the battered fedora jammed down over his naked scalp. When he finished, there was a smile on his face. From what it said, he was going to be able to take care of some unfinished business. There might be a couple of minor obstacles to deal with, but they could be handled.

He swallowed the last of his coffee and picked up the bill the waitress had left for his drink and the bacon-and-egg breakfast it had come with. He put down a tip and headed for the cashier.

After paying for his meal, he left the small restaurant. The sun was shining brightly. It was going to be a very good day.