I Wouldn't Call Her a Hooker Until Ch. 01

Note: Two parts. Inferential sex only. A satirical response to the women at coffee break. To the half dozen who read and enjoy my work, I extend my appreciation. My apologies to those who are offended by my style and communicative eccentricities.

*****

In the distance the wail of the siren warned that the ambulance was coming. No doubt the police would arrive simultaneously.

Distraught men and women, famed only on the medias' presumption that they were rich, had scrambled out of the new Palazzo Motor Home. Parked in the middle of the empty University Center Parking lot, the massive machine begged the question.

Obviously panic stricken and resisting hysteria the anthropoid gaggle babbled incoherently. They stood on the hot asphalt gathered close knit, all solemnly staring at the front entry to the $3 million recreation vehicle.

"We can't be found here with a bloody dead whore!" someone whined. "Where did all that blood come from all of a sudden?"

Most university offices had closed for the holiday and almost all parking lots were devoid of the normally heavy traffic. Otherwise, the luxury sex machine wouldn't be there; I would be in my office administering university business, and my wife would not be insanely selling sex to win a Mercedes.

For six hours I had surreptitiously observed the most incredible display of insane lust, ludicrous greed, and manifest stupidity. I had hidden in the recesses of the shadowy doorway, having followed the covey of enterprising hedonistic morons from the Fourth of July picnic half a block away.

Nonchalantly, I moved from the dark doorway of the closed university maintenance center to join the group on the fringe.

"Is she dead?" asked a dumpy woman who seemed overburdened with thick black hair.

"I don't think so," answered a man standing beside me on the fringe. "Fortunately, Audrey was with us today, and she has taken charge."

Audrey was an ER nurse at the University Medical Center, someone explained.

"Does anyone know?" asked a man wearing only boxers. "Did Vernon win the Mercedes?"

"Who cares about the damn Mercedes," exclaimed a woman who obviously was from Vernon's law firm. "If Vernon is dead, the cops will give all of us a hard time and might even file charges."

"What happened?" asked a short wrestler type. "When all that blood started pouring out of her hole, I lost it and ran like hell."

"Did she win the Mercedes?" persisted the tall, pale man wearing only boxers.

"I think so," answered one of the women. "Someone said my pledge of $50,000 put her over the $5 million pledge mark."

"Yeah! I think that had to make her the winner," said a mole-like individual with watery eyes. "She really wants that damn car."

"Well, apparently she now owns a green Mercedes!" the woman who kept the books interrupted. "But that's not the motivation for Vernon."

Vernon must win! Winning! That's all that matters to Vernon. Some how that inanity seemed sufficient to mitigate the guilt of the motley crew of conversationalists; but I smiled as the woman, obviously a close friend of Vernon's, began a strained discourse in an attempt to give a tint of reason to my wife's depravity.

"Damn! I wanted another go!" said a stout young Scot with red hair. "I was here when she started and never had better."

Incredibly, the Scot sniped that he would pledge another $100,000 "for another go with Vernon's assets."

Vile profanity sluiced from the Nigerian diamond smuggler. He was outraged that he had signed the charity pledge for $25,000 but didn't "get his rocks off."

"This was phenomenal!" said a disheveled woman just joining the scrum from the RV. "Would you have believed she could do 28 in six hours if you hadn't been part of it?"

"How many?" asked the red haired Scot. "How many did she do?"

Another round of their myth making began. Vernon had boffed her way into her university's lore and legend. If the banter were decipherable, moreover, she also had won the sparkling green new Mercedes.

"By my count," said the woman who kept the books, "she did 12 men and six women."

"It was Homeric!" one of the lawyer types declared.

At that moment the ambulance turned into the parking lot followed closely by the campus police and a sheriff's patrol. I eased into the shrubbery at the edge of the parking lot.

Pausing to collect my sanity, I realized I would need both strength and cunning. My obvious destination now, after a strategic delay, was the University Medical Center. As the long suffering dutiful husband, I would be expected.

For the record, I am Professor Solon Franklin Trafficant. Vernon, the woman selling her sex on a heroic scale, was my wife and the general counsel for the Provost of the university.

My watch indicated 6:35. I would plan to arrive at the emergency room at 9:00, explaining my ignorance of Vernon's bloody "incident" by saying I was at the Fourth of July Festivities searching for my wife.

I walked the half block to University Park where the celebrities were preparing to take their seats before the TV cameras and describe the fireworks extravaganza. As I approached, Grace, my personal assistant, led me to the grand stand.

"All of the dignitaries sit in the grand stand," she said. "And you are still one of the university deans."

"Have you seen my wife?" I asked Grace with shameful craftiness.

"Not since she left about noon with her obnoxious friends," Grace answered resentfully. "But you were there."

Approaching the grand stand with her usual grim determination was the Provost. Police Chief Royce of the campus security force grasped the Provost's left elbow. Assorted administration functionaries, apparatchiks and sycophants surrounded the university's status leader.

As the Provost paused three feet from me obscenely wiggling her large hooked nose, I involuntarily cringed. All present knew that she detested me, and I insisted she had only recently arrived from hell.

"Where is Vernon!" the Provost demanded.

To restrain myself from slamming my fist into the Provost's bulbous snout, I seized Grace's hand and squeezed. Grace smiled her personal assistant's stretch of the lips that is at once a shield and a weapon. When Grace declared that we had not seen Vernon since morning, the Provost attempted to pierce my soul with her patented facial contortion. Her achievement was a combination of demeaning smirk, profound threat to my existence and politician gangster's mocking promise of pain.

"She scares me boss," Grace said as she shuddered. "What's her game, anyway?"

"She wants the foundation money," I said. "But she's frustrated as long as I am the Dean of The New School of Social Sciences and Chairman of the seminar studying The New World Order for Authoritarian Alignments."

At that moment, the law firm's senior partner resumed his role as host and mounted the podium calling for quiet. He was ready to announce the winner of the subscription contest."

"May I have your attention!" he said into the microphone with admirable dignity. Within two minutes, he had reported the results of the fund raiser contest.

"We have achieved our goal and more," he said. "Some time next week our law firm's accountants will deliver checks to seven charities totaling $44 million."

Now everyone awaited the award of the grand prize, the sparkling green Mercedes. It would go to the first person who had presented confirmed pledges of $4 million or more.

Perversely, I found myself hoping that the senior partner would call a name other than my wife's. Her brute force whoring would then have been for naught.

"Our winner of the grand prize," he intoned, pausing to point to the Mercedes Coupe, "is none other than the most beautiful of all our firm's junior partners."

Apparently, the master of ceremonies held Vernon in high esteem; for he extolled her virtues during what seemed an endless oration. At length he paused and studied an abstract of her pledges.

Yes! Vernon Trafficant has won the Mercedes! His firm's own rising star, Vernon Trafficant, had won the Mercedes!

Now the representative of the globally renowned accounting firm, TollyTownTessence, a bean pole of a woman with salt and pepper wiry hair, stepped to the microphone. She waved a cluster of papers while declaring that Vernon had astounded the world of finance and defied reason.

"This phenomenal woman has raised an incredible $22 million in charity pledges in less than a day," the certified public accountant shouted. "We are in shock in the tech world of charity finance, though we also are ecstatically happy to witness such a feat."

Now Vernon's victory stood irrevocably "Certified." Our supreme auditing authority spoke in distraction, to be sure. True! Incredulity, a state of being that auditors feared and hated, was becoming seated in her bean counter's brain. Her black beady eyes once again scanned the page of numbers as if hoping to find a reason to doubt.

"Well done, Vernon!" the senior partner shouted. "Would our most beautiful and brilliant associate come forward and receive her prize?"

To be sure, would the incredible Vernon present herself for praise and adulation?

"Where is our wonder woman?" thundered the throng, mostly the attorneys who composed the body of the law firm.

Yes! Indubitably! That was a very good question.

"In the face of such miraculous success," the senior partner enthused into the speaker system, "we are surely entitled to hear the incredible details of Vernon's approach to the project and her strategies for execution."

As the giddy throng pondered the mystery of Vernon's whereabouts, I collected Grace and made for the nearest McDonald's. We would just have time to savor the delight of two Big Mac's and three milk jugs. I think I loved Grace because she loved Big Mac's as much as I.

**********

As if my day had not already been a monstrous catastrophe, my cell brought more heat from hell. We were leaving the McDonald's parking lot enroute to the hospital when Thurgood Manning threw gas on the flames.

Aunt Maggie took $10 million out of the investment firm's fiduciary account. Thurgood expressed fear bordering on hysteria that a client would learn of her felonious activity and send all of us to jail.

Knowing my Aunt Maggie is essential to understanding this particular mystery. Few knew her, however, making our jeopardy all the more frightening. Then, too, Aunt Maggie had made few errors in judgement in her fantasy-like life.

Formally in the world of high finance, my Aunt Maggie was hated, loved, respected and feared under the imposing appellation Matilda (Maggie) Hearthstone Gaston-Greer. To be sure, my Aunt Maggie enjoyed the financial gravitas that $200 million can bring.

Though her fortune lay in off-shore accounts from The Seychelles and Swiss Banks to The Cayman islands, she chose to siphon from the campus funds. I could not tell Thurgood, moreover, that I did not for a minuet doubt that my aunt was rational.

"She doesn't understand that these funds ceased to be part of her private discretionary capital when she set up this corporation and provided the seed money."

True! But don't bet against Aunt Maggie.

We had participated in this conversation too many times.

My aunt had endowed the history chair that I held, but the funding had not followed the orthodox pattern. Instead of a Foundation, she had created a private financial services firm. Earnings from investments were earmarked for the campus organization that the Provost and my wife mistakenly called The Foundation.

"Frank, you've got to get a collar on your aunt," Thurgood said. "Frank? What is she doing with $10 million in just one withdrawal?"

Though I was as much in the dark as Thurgood, I could not acknowledge to him or anyone else that I had no tabs on the $50 million she had taken in the past six months. I agreed, moreover, with Thurgood that she very well could go to jail and take us with her.

"And, Frank, the Provost and your wife are sniffing around," Thurgood said with a finality in his voice. "I know you're skeptical, but I'm certain they're getting ready to try to seize the Foundation under the legal theory that all endowments are the property of the university."

"I'll look into it, Thurgood," was my lame response.

What else could I say?

Aunt Maggie's game as usual appeared as a riddle in an enigma. Though I refrained from informing Thurgood, I had learned through an eerie experiential osmosis that Aunt Maggie never wasted her time or money.

Almost two years before this present time of upheaval, Aunt Maggie had cemented connections in Tijuana. Never dull or boring, she was always enigmatic.

Refusing adamantly to explain her motives, she bought property in The Baja and cultivated many links to the seemingly omnipresent power structure below the border. I could only observe her interesting behavior; for even as her only relative and most trusted advisor, I could not compel her to include me in these strange and baffling negotiations.

Upon her return home to San Francisco, however, she crated a "Think Tank." Only four persons, carefully chosen for brilliance and credentials, comprised the staff. All were recognized specialists both forensic history and social psych. They maintained low profile.

To be sure, their brief both intrigued and disturbed me. Aunt Maggie wanted them to give her a prognosis of the sociopolitical cancer eating away the fabric of Western Civilization. Specifically, she wanted a time line for the "unbundling of the North American republic."

**********

It was 9:05 o'clock when Grace and I entered the receiving room of the ER at The University Medical Center. I permitted Grace to go forward to the formidable ER counter with the electronically control gates and mysterious swinging doors.

Always conscious that Grace, standing 6-foot 1-inch and possessing beauty from Zeus, overwhelmed ordinary human kind, I deferred. She never failed me.

Believe me or not, I do not suffer from the insecurities usually found in a man who stands only five feet seven and a half inches and weighs only 155 pounds. Even on a biased playing field I have enjoyed fantastic success in pushing my peanut across the goal line.

Boiling noise of shock, frustration and anger wafted over the room as Grace reacted to the simplistic scenario playing out at the counter. Apparently, the medical center's registration staff had never heard of Vernon Trafficant.

When Grace strained to emphasize her best qualities, she was formidable. Soon the duty nurse seemed enthralled with Grace's more womanly virtues while the clerk sat intimidated by the determination in Grace's eyes.

Best of all, though, the two medical center cops, two monumental beasts from Job 40:-24, seemed to become paralyzed in Grace's presence. No doubt about it, Grace was worth her salt.

With the Medical Center factotums slavishly protecting Vernon, however, we were stymied.

What could we say? We could do nothing.

As a parting gesture, I approached the desk and identified myself as the husband of a member of the medical center's board of directors. Immediate consternation ensued. I heard "Sir may I help you" coming from all sides. New faces appeared on bodies hustling from behind every door.

"We do not have any patients by the name of Vernon Trafficant," said a dough faced woman who wore the badge of an assistant administrator.

My obvious skepticism unnerved her.

"However, we do have an emergency meeting of the board of directors in progress, and Ms Vernon Trafficant has been present all afternoon," she added.

"Excellent!" I boomed, grinning like a birthday party clown. "I'll just go up to the board room and speak with her."

"No!" squealed the administrative apparatchik. Already made chalky by nature, the woman's face tinted blue in a spectacular quick flush.

"Did you say something?" I asked, hoping my grin and ersatz affability would rattle my mendacious adversaries.

As I moved toward the elevator with Grace, the facilitator drooped in resignation and signaled the medical center cops to stand down.

Surprise! We discovered that the official board room and adjacent office was dark. Of course, the board members and their staff were at the Fourth of July picnic.

More sensational contrasts and incongruities awaited me when I arrived home about midnight. I had dropped Grace off at her apartment and expected to retire to the peaceful darkness of my wifeless house.

There was that damned sparkling green Mercedes in my driveway. My ethos continued to spin with excitement though tending toward chaos.

On entering the foyer that provided a coat closet and reception area, I heard music from the rec room beyond the dining room. What insidious tableau awaited within these once happy precincts?

Accosting a man sitting in my living room drinking my best Scotch earned me only the knowledge that Vernon's favorite cousin had come to renew his acquaintance. This was troubling in the extreme. I had observed that Cousin Ortho, known to his MILF clientele as Dr. Ortho Antonopoulis, appeared only during Vernon's season of The Orgy.

Cousin Ortho's surgical specialty of tightening the vaginas of liberated attorneys had made him wealthy beyond compare; furthermore, he was a whoremonger known for his generosity. I had always detested Cousin Ortho and would sort him in good time.

"Cousin Vernon is upstairs resting," Cousin Ortho said. "She is suffering from a frightful episode of The Flu, a vile strain known as vaginismus indefatigabus."

Doctor Kayam, a visiting gynecologist from Mumbai, was attending her personally and supervising her recovery.

Oh, yes! Gynecological Flu, the most virulent of all strain of Influenza!

Obviously, my house had fallen to the enemy. Their campaign of perverse shock and awe had succeeded, at least in the short term.

Once I stood at the top of the stairs, I knew they had out flanked me. They once again justified my renewed respect for their tenacity and ability to recover quickly.

" Mr. Trafficant!" rasped a young man sporting carefully trimmed half inch hair as a semi beard. "We have attempted to contact you for hours."

"And why would you need to devote hours of your perfect life to contacting a deplorable dissenter like me?" I rejoined.

"Your sarcasm is misplaced, Mr. Trafficnt," shot back the arrogant stranger. "Your wife fell victim to the Semenoid California Slutticus Flu, sir, and we brought her home after calming her stomach and easing the fever."

"Well! I'll assume my matrimonial duties now," I said, hardly capable of resisting the urge to kick those offending Mumbai gonads.

As I strode along the hall toward the master bedroom, the man halted my progress. His demeanor conveyed strong professionalism. Raising his hand with his features in pure controlling physician's mode, he touched my shoulder sympathetically.

"I'm Doctor Kayam, you wife's personal physician," he said, his eyes slightly narrowed and his body tensed. "Miz Trafficant is resting and out of danger now."

"Oh! I see! And she can't be disturbed!" I said, toying with him.

"You can see her in a few days," he responded, "when she regains sufficient strength to have visitors."

At that moment two more care givers appeared from the bedroom. Goons can be millionaires, too. Interesting! Doctor Gangbanger was at least ten years younger than Vernon; but the "high net worth" goons were her age or older. Just a bit of miscellany.

They were winning every turn of the wheel. Obviously, the man with the toilet brush moustache would turn out to be a doctor. Rich turf here. From parking lot pedigreed gangbanger to medical hero and Vernon's savior in one big holiday orgasm.

Timing is everything, and I was not ready for an Armageddon. Too much was at risk. Also, too bad that Vernon had fallen below the static line and did not qualify as a value to defend.