I Have No Idea
Chapter 10
by Redsliver
* * *I walked tall in my tuxedo. I had laughed aloud when I had first seen it. A tuxedo? What kind of preppy, self indulgent, cartoon had I become? I was surprised, and then angry with myself, that I knew how to tie a bowtie by muscle memory. I clipped on the cufflinks without thinking. Larry and I, getting ready for his wedding, had been confounded trying to get on the pair that had come with our rented suits. It had taken more than a reasonable number of attempts to set them without stabbing ourselves in the ulnar arteries. I picked up the shoes, making a face that Shani couldn’t help but mock. The surprise was welcome. There was one bright light at the end of the tunnel. I was much richer than I used to be. Dress shoes that were wide enough for a grown man’s foot apparently did exist for billionaires.
“How do I look?” I had asked, giving the girls a slow spin and James Bond pose. Did I own a gun? Better yet, did I own any swords?
“I prefer you naked.” Ellie had purred with a jungle cat’s hunger in her eyes.
“I’d fuck you.” Rena the lesbian said. I didn’t know if that translated as complimentary. I mean I wanted to look like a good looking man, not… I didn’t even know what Rena found hot in a chick. I turned back to the girls at Bethany’s workstation. Bethany murmured something inaudible, blushing and looking away, as Shani scrunched her nose and tilted her hand side to side.
“Thirteen out of twenty eight.” She was doing a piss poor job of holding back her laughter.
“And you’re looking like a ten.” I ratcheted up my smirk. I hooked out my arm and Rena joined me on my right. She was a in a deep maroon gown with her hair done up and falling in gorgeous curls down to her neck. Ellie yanked out my left arm and hooked hers through it. She wore white and showed off nearly all of her black stockinged legs. Her strawberry waves were held out of her face by a gold tiara glittering with rubies. She seemed to like rubies as they dangled from her ears and sat in net of gold over her chest.
“C’mon, it’ll be forever if we wait for Shani to get ready,” Ellie tugged. “Don’t you want to see Olivia?”
I didn’t. I wanted to run. I all but literally shook in my ostentatious shoes. I grinned, turned, and stepped forward. Rena managed to hang on, smile supportively, and lead the way, all at once. Our golf cart had been sent away. A dark black limousine waited for us. The Valkyrie, from the wave pool in The Castle, a blonde as tall as she was striking, stood outside the opened back door. She was dressed in a dark leggings, a short skirt, and a chauffeur’s jacket and coat. Chauffeuse? I wondered. It’s masseur and masseuse, right? For man and woman. But do you say, for example, saboteur and saboteuse, amateur and amateuse? I think it comes from French. It’s an interesting—
“We’re here, get out of the damned vehicle.” Ellie kicked me for the second time. The Strip was basically the size of a small city intersection. The limousine was more than overkill. The door was open. Valkyrie was lending Rena a hand to step out. I was about to follow. I turned back. Ellie excelled at making impatience look adorable.
“Is she expecting a tip?” I think I had left my key card, lanyard and the rest up in Bethany’s studio.
“I don’t think there’s any cash on the island.” Ellie flicked the meat of my neck. “I want to eat the ass of a cow. Go.”
I took Valkyrie’s offered hand. I stood up, there were several well dressed ladies coming, going, crisscrossing, escorting, tempting, and flirting. The men had claimed one, two, six, or were trading girls amongst the available ones and each other. I felt curious and I saw one man, awkward in an autistic tech teenaged millionaire kind of way, examining my driver. I wasn’t having that. I grabbed the back of The Valkyrie’s neck and kissed her deeply. I hardly had to lift my heels of the ground to reach her mouth. It was a bit unsettling. She looked starry eyed and goofy when I pulled back. That surprised me. I imagined I had that look on my face after my first kiss.
“Nice lipstick, Brian,” Rena edged me aside so Valkyrie could help Ellie out. Rena wiped a handkerchief across my mouth.
“Is she working a double shift?” I asked Rena. The Valkyrie was leaning down for Ellie to whisper in her ear. The tall woman blushed.
“No, she’s got a niche as one of the drivers or a stewardess, if we’re sending the island plane to pick you up.” The island plane. The modifier told me I had multiple planes.
“I saw her at The Castle today,” I recalled her fit body and bikini and the little Asian girl she had swung around and dunked.
“Oh, yeah, well, there’s nothing against the girls going anywhere on their off time. There’s always the risk that they’ll get fucked. That having fun would become,” Rena turned her voice all spooky and disgusted, “customer service... I get the Globe. But the Castle? Waterslides wouldn’t do it for me.”
“I like the wave pool and the shooting games,” The Valkyrie waved and blew a kiss. She stopped at the driver’s door. “Send for me at the end of your meal. You know my number.”
I was certain I did not. I outsourced that datum to Rena.
Ellie cleared her throat. I looked down and she pulled my arm out again to take it. I offered my other side for Rena. She smirked and rested her palm down on my elbow. We climbed the front steps into the northwest tower.
The lobby was a small room with four glass elevators and large doors under a silver Chez Shan-Marie sign that matched the one outside. Two girls, neither I had seen today, rushed forward to open the doors for the three of us. Rena and Ellie stood more imperious. I made sure to smile at both door holders.
Chez Shan-Marie opened with luxurious bar. In addition to the amazing setpieces of beautiful women was elegance in pristine mahogany, purple velvet, and silver trimming. Olivia sat at the bar. She was in excellent shape. She stood out with a comfort and regality that none of the teenagers and twenty-somethings hoped to pull off. A tall man, nearing sixty, eschewed the younger flesh for her company. She saw me over his shoulder and whispered to him a good night with her hand on his elbow. He followed her ass as she came to me for a genuine heartfelt hug.
“Hello Prince Dashing.” She whispered.
“Seems you just broke a heart.” I nodded to the toasted glass of the business man. Soon young women filled the stools next to him and he was healed.
“It happens often.” She pulled back and cocked a conspiratorious grin. “Do I have you back for good?”
“I’m told I’m out of the black out. Woken up as Rena said. To know for sure, it looks like you’d need to ask Amanda.” I replied. Olivia smiled so hard that I wasn’t aware I was about to be kissed. She was heat and home. She pulled me down and I felt myself impaled on a tongue. There was something young, innocent, and excited by the action. I almost kept my smile and my laugh when we pulled apart.
“Mr Tanner!” The maitre d’ called us. Maitresse d’? I wondered—
“Get your heads out of the clouds, Brian,” Olivia snapped me back. Her voice was stern but welcoming. “Am I sharing you with more than these two lovely creatures tonight?”
“Shani’s still getting ready.” Ellie interjected. Olivia nodded.
“And your sister?” Olivia didn’t need an answer seeing it plain as day on Ellie and my faces. We hadn’t talked to Mel since I left Casa de Tanner with Ellie. Olivia turned. “For eight,” she called over to the girl.
“Whenever you’re ready.” was the reply. Rena offered my arm to Olivia who took it. Ellie attached herself to Rena and they followed several paces behind. We entered a beautiful dining room with high walled private enclaves for the diners. It could hold twenty or so parties of four. We were led to a winding staircase up to a second floor where we were seated at a round table with booth seating and access from two sides. A bottle of wine chilled in an ice bucket. A young woman in a black and red dress waited demurely. I followed Olivia in on the left. Rena and Ellie capstoned both entrances.
“You look dapper tonight.” Olivia grinned. She made a discreet gesture and the server in the wings rapidly filled two glasses of white wine for Olivia and myself. The hostess who led us to the table returned with bubbling drinks for our two pregnant guests.
“You look amazing.” I smiled. She did. In my head, Olivia was a nice looking woman, not perfect but I was proud of my dad. In my memory, she had kept herself in shape, but hadn’t overcome an addiction to ice cream. She wore her hair utilitarian and short. She had a hurried motion to her, a nervous energy that had since dissolved. I remembered her big smile, her misaligned bottom teeth. I loved her dark green eyes, crow’s feet and all.
Every woman I know had stepped up their self care during my black out. Olivia had slimmed down another fifteen or twenty pounds. She wore nicer clothing that accentuated her small breasts and slim hips. She was sedate with the makeup, or at least it seemed to me, her eyes really popped and her lips were gorgeous around her orthodontia. She had braces. She had no fear about showing them off. Her skin looked fantastic. She didn’t compete with Ellie’s 18 year old advantages but she was certainly a match for Rena who might’ve been a decade younger. I touched her hand. I smiled. She saw the fear.
“We never agreed to this while you were blacked out.” She told me. “Everytime we talked about our family was during the couple hours of flicker you spent with Garth and me.”
“What?” I shook my head.
“I don’t want some autonomous subroutine of the man I care for. I want Brian Tanner. I want my family.” She stroked my cheek. “Of course, you’d soon drown back into your hyper-confident grab the world by its balls superman self. He never forgot. He never hesitated. He never had to accept a no out of my mouth. I’m glad your back.”
“I—” looked at the girls I had brought with me, “They said, tonight was planned, you were getting pregnant tonight. No one knew who I was going to be tonight.”
“We didn’t know he had flashed at all, you didn’t tell us!” Ellie was ashamed at how petty and hurt she sounded. Rena drummed her fingers on the table.
“You used Amanda,” she accused. “You knew he’d be free by now.”
“No, not Amanda, the rest of her team though. She’s a lot like you.” She turned back to me. “The moment she delegates anything, it’s out of her head. She’s amazingly naive for someone who should have been getting screwed out of her future. Still, that let me prepare as most of her R&D team don’t even bother reporting to her big things.”
“I’m confused.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have been here tonight if you still had your psychopathic certainty.” She smiled and leaned herself in on my side. “Now, how’s your first day been?”
“I’ve never been more terrified or amused in my life.” I tried to pick my words well but I was talking too fast. I wasn’t happy with terrified and I was near kicking myself over amused.
“Garth figured you’d be drunk as you’ve ever been. He even tried to get you started.” Olivia laughed. “I told him, he’s got those perfect little twins of his. He doesn’t need a drop anymore and he’s learned it.”
“How have I learned anything? I can’t recall a second of it.”
“We’re not perfect!” Ellie huffed. She realized she had crossed her arms and shot them onto the table where she could fold them and look composed.
“Oh please,” Olivia rolled her eyes. “Ellie, if you had to pick the perfect girl for Brian, out of all the women you’ve ever known, who is it?”
“Oh, that’s impossible.” Ellie lowered head. “There’s not enough in any one woman.”
“Idiot.” Olivia said as if it were the most endearing pet name ever given. She looked across the table. “And you Rena?”
“Mel.” Rena flinched from Ellie’s shock.
“Yeah, and Rena doesn’t know shit about you.” Olivia put down her empty glass. “Ellie, you and Mel are my daughters-in-law. More so than Shani at the very least.”
“But—” Rena was offended. Ellie was not sure if she could ever stop smiling. Olivia grabbed my chin and turned her head towards me.
“Two and a half years.” She rounded my blackout. “I was in your power and wideawake for nineteen months. Do you know how often we fucked?”
I blanched. I ran a tally in my head, assuming thirty day months and ten Sisyphos erections a day. I rounded up 19 months to 20, I was trained on sig figs after all. That’s three hundred fucks a month for twenty months. They didn’t all go to Olivia, I had myself a pregnant harem and an island paradise. Olivia was special; she mattered to me. Unleashed, I had to have seen her at least every couple of days or so. “Three hundred times?”
She burst out laughing. Sidesplitting roars that turned our private corner of the restaurant into a bullhorn of comedy. Out hostess reappeared with Amanda and Garth in tow. My dad made lewd and affectionate gestures at my young pregnant chemist. She had dressed in dark green and white jewels. Her hair was definitely longer than had been in the penthouse this morning.
“What’s going on?” Amanda edged Ellie into my hip. Dad kissed Rena’s hand as she stood up and let him slide down across from his wife.
“He upped the guess again, Livvie?” Garth chuckled.
“Three hundred!” She cackled. “I could see the little hamster running the wheel behind his eyes and everything.” She snorted. The waitress, appearing from the opposite side of the booth, slid another full glass in front of Olivia. She made to sip but started laughing again and put the glass down.
I looked to Rena. “Have we ever had a threesome? You, me and Olivia.”
“No,” Rena smiled. “We’ve had our own moments or two.” She was bashful and blushing as she caught Olivia’s confident grin. It was the first thing that calmed my stepmother down. “With you there, we’ve only ever shared a meal or a bottle of wine.”
“Ellie?” I asked.
“Um, no.” She offered no more details and shut up hard.
“Amanda?” And all I got was wide eyes and a head shake. I squeezed Olivia’s hand.
“I not just a piece of shit!” I threw my hands in the air. “I was so afraid! After seeing how I clusterfucked things with Shani and Larry, I didn’t do everything stupid! I never fucked my mom!” I realized I was cheering to a bunch of disappointed faces. “That’s what you’re trying to say, right? This would’ve been our first time together?”
“Would’ve been?” She stabbed her finger right to my face. There may have been one atom between my nose and her immaculate nail. “I’ve been waiting my fucking tits off for eight months and you think you’re going to sweep anything away because of some juvenile inexcusable hang up?”
“Inexcusable? It’s—”
She slammed me in a hug. “God, you don’t know how long I’ve waited for you to call me Mom!”
* * *