Frankie Freebase.
Doc put his thumb and pinkie finger to the side of hishead pantomiming a telephone, ‘Do these ribbons go out to your attention?’
I played the game, snarling, ‘Bob, I am fully price protected!’
‘First two weeks, right?’
‘Right. First week on the phone,’ I said.
Playfully, Doc snatched my pay vouchers from my hand. After seeing the amounts, he thrust his palm in the air to be high-fived. I slapped skin. ‘My man!’ he roared. ‘Only one week on that horn! Almost fifteen hundred bucks! Twenty-six new accounts! Outstanding!’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Feels good.’
‘You’re sober too, right?’
An odd question. ‘Four months,’ I said. ‘Why? Does it show?’
Doc laughed, then reached up to give his helmet propeller a spin. ‘Just a guess. Around here, we’re all ex-juicers, junkies, and crack heads. I figured you for a member of the club.’
I smiled back. ‘I’ve joined an AA cult, right?’
‘More like a sober success machine. Around here, it’s white flags or toe tags. Eddy calls it, “sur-fuckin’-render”!’
Tilly handed Doc his sealed pay envelope. After signing the voucher he tore the flap open, then passed the check to me. He hadn’t looked at the amount inside. I read the numbers in disbelief: $7,099. One week’s commissions.
I handed it back. ‘Hey,’ I said laughing, reaching out to check the amount again, playing the sales pitch game, ‘that really is the price protection. ’
Franklin shook my hand. ‘Keep it up, my man! You’re on your way. Orbit’s a million dollar deal. Problem is, we shove it up your ass fifty cents at a time.’
We laughed.
When I got back to the Incubator, Jimmi was gone. The room was deserted, the lights out. I was about to leave when something drew me to her desk. A queer need to be where she had been, to be intimate, to feel her presence.
Looking around to make sure I was alone, I pulled her chair out and sat down. Jimmi’s heat, her perfume, the pulse of her, was everywhere. I could feel her.
On the desk pad next to her computer was her office stuff: a freshly washed coffee mug, a row of sharpened pencils, a calculator, a scratch pad, paper clips, brochures to be envelope-stuffed and mailed out, and a stack of order blanks. A Barbie Doll in a Harley Davidson outfit rested against her phone. Everything was neat, ready for the morning. I began touching and handling each thing, wanting to experience what she experienced.
The Incubator door hissed open. Toxic Bob, another trainee, came in. I stayed motionless in the semi-darkness. Without looking around or turning on the overhead lights, he went to his desk, grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair, then left the room.
Alone again, my fingers found one of Jimmi’s pencils, a short one. I handled it, then wrote my name on a scrap of paper, then rolled the wooden-ribbed sides against my lips. The same fingers that had written with this pencil had also visited the magic place between her legs. I licked the yellow covering until its salty taste was gone.
Pulling open her top drawer, I continued my tour. At first, there wasn’t much: a pack of Kleenex and more office paraphernalia, a cheap stapler, erasers, paper clips, a glue stick, a lined box of 3x5 cards, and two Baby Ruth candy bars. But lifting the cards, I discovered a small treasure: Jimmi’s lipstick. The dark red that touched her mouth. Sacred.
Sliding the gold tip off I drew a thick line on my tongue.The taste filled me, shocking my mouth. Jimmi’s taste. Wondrous. Intense.
I was seized by a perversion. For a moment, before acting, I listened for footsteps in the hall. There were none. Then, unzipping my fly, I pulled out my cock. Taking my time, I painted the head of my dick with the gooey red stick. With each smudge my cock got thicker, more swollen. The fear that another late Incubator straggler might re-enter the room intensified the trip.
Lowering my pants to the floor, I began to jerk off.