Shin-barking at 6:47

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRing!!!

I turn over. It's 6:47am.

Shit! I overslept!

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRing!!!

When I first wake up in the morning, my body reboots like a computer: Nothing works for 2 or 3 minutes, and when you finally CAN initiate any kind of meaningful activity, things start slowly, as if moving in wet cement.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRing!!!

I grope to my right and grab my cell phone off the nightstand. It's off.

"RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRing!!!"

Shit! It's my home phone!

I only have one land line in my whole house, believe it or not. There are jacks everywhere, but I use my cell phone for regular calls almost all the time. I don't spend much time on the telephone anyway, though.

I run downstairs.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRing!!!

Why isn't the answering machine picking up?

I grab the phone and hit the "talk" button. "Hel-"

The receiver slips out of my hand and flies across the room.

I run over to get it and whack my shin on the coffee table. "OWW!" I yell. I fall to the floor.

I really hope I don't have to do anything hard today. Like zip my fly.

I crawl to the phone and put it to my ear. "Hello?"

"My God! What's going on over there?" A woman's voice asks. It's a pretty voice, sweet and melodic. She sounds beautiful. But my experience is, girls with "nice voices" sometimes turn out to look like truck drivers.

She sounds familiar. But you guys know my rule: I never ask who it is. It's too much fun to figure it out.

"Hopefully, you're calling to tell me I won something," I say.

"HeHeHeHeHe!" She has a hearty laugh, in which you can hear the H in every "ha". She sounds like a girl at a party who is having a really great time.

It's Christie. We broke up over a year ago.

"No, Steven. I actually wanted to call and offer you my condolences. I read about your mom in the paper."

"I appreciate the call, Christie."

"So you DO know who this is!"

"How could I forget?"

"How did she die, Steven?"

Christie ALWAYS called me Steven. I don't think she ever called me Steve, not even once. She is one of these proper girls, who says "going to" instead of "gonna", and who pronounces the "t" in "exactly". She used to write down big words that I used so she could look them up later and memorize them.

But Christie liked to have fun. She was pretty fucking dirty, as I remember. Liked it in the ass. And she liked me to call her "bitch" and "slut" while I fucked her. But no matter how horny she got, she still always called me Steven. "Fuck me, Steven, FUCK me!" She used to say. Sometimes, when it got really crazy, she used to call me by my FULL name, first, middle and last. I'd be fucking away at her and thinking, What's next? My social security number?

"Steven? Steven? Are you there?"

Huh? WTF? Oh, yeah! I was daydreaming.

"Yeah, I'm here. Mom had a stroke."

"Oh, God, that's terrible, Steven. Are you ok?"

Yep, same heartless bastard as always. Ask my blog readers!

"Ya, I'm ok."

Christie is a corporate trainer. I met her while she was doing sexual harrassment training at my office. That training manual was the hottest thing I've ever read: "Hey, baby, let's do page 45!"

"Are you still doing that training thing?" I ask.

"Yes, and I love it. You?"

"I got promoted. Remember Ross?"

"UGH. Yes."

"I got his job."

"You're KIDDING! You're the BOSS?"

"Miracles never cease, I know."

"No. I'm very proud of you, Steven. I always knew you had great potential."

"Thanks."

"Oh. And I got married!" she shreiks.

"WHAT?"

"Yeah! I'm so excited," she says.

"Who'd you marry?"

"No one you know," she says.

"Well, it's good to talk to you," I say.

"I'm doing training all week right down the street from you," she says. "We should have lunch."

"Definitely," I say, without thinking.

Is she flirting with me?

**********

Monday morning, 8:30. Dom walks into my office.

"Soooo?" he says softly, smiling at me.

"So what?" I say.

"Don't you kiss and tell," he says. "Come on, what happened with Stephanie?!"

"Not much, man, nothing."

There is NO fucking way I am spilling the beans to Dom. I don't tell anyone when I get something from a girl. Once you let someone know that, you are at his mercy. He can tell anyone, and next thing you know, it gets back to her, and you are shut off.

"I saw the way she was looking at you, Steve. You got something!"

"Nope."

"Well, let me tell you, Megan is a horny girl," he says.

"Oh yeah? Nail her?"

"Yeah! She was WILD. She sucked my dick," he smiles, nodding slowly, as if he were the only guy in the world who's ever had a blow job.

"Most impressive."

"She likes porn, so we put on some porn, and..."

Lila walks into the office. "Dom, fax for you," she says, handing him a small stack of papers. She glares at me. I think she heard what Dom said.

"Morning," I say. She turns and storms out.

"Wonder what crawled up HER ass," Dom says.

"Not sure."

"So did you at least get a blowjob?" Dom says.

"No."

"Handjob?"

"No."

"Kiss her goodnight?"

"Nope."

"So you just dropped her off at home and left?"

Ya, that's right. Right after blowing a load in her eye. I'm going for her nose next time, then I'll work on the ears.

"Yes."

"What happened, Steve? I think maybe you need a few lessons. That looked very good for you. I thought you were better with the girls than that."

He's smiling. He's breaking my balls. He wants me to tell him what happened, so he's trying to bruise my ego.

"I don't feel like getting a tracking device implanted in my ass. The guy's FBI, remember?"

This is just a cop-out. I knew a guy years ago who was in the FBI, and he said it was very boring work, mostly paperwork and meetings. Not all the cool shit you see on The X Files. And certainly nothing to be afraid of.

"Oh, yeah," he says.

Lila is back in my doorway. She looks horrible. She is pale; there are bags under her eyes and she appears unusually thin.

"Steve, I need to speak to you," she says.