Before I start, I want to give Credit where credit is due:
First, I want to thank my editor - HentaiKitten - for her help on our very first collaboration.
Second, my thanks for the inspiration for this story by Will_The_Thrill and tescaline as we conversed in "younger women for older men" on a quiet Sunday morning.
*****
Karen Martinez started her presentation. The topic: the acquisition of the Inverness Building on third street. She had negotiated the right of first refusal for her real estate company but the timing was very short. Thomas Crawford, the fifth-generation owner of the company, sat impatiently at the head of the conference room table. His mood was dark as he said,
"Well, Miss Martinez, what the hell are you waiting for, we all have a lot of business to do, to make this month and you've said nothing since the opening slide. What the hell are we here for?"
She cleared her throat, then she looked at her phone with horror.
That's when it started. It was commotion in motion and no one can truly say how it all happened. Her cell phone rang: A complete violation of meeting etiquette at Crawford and Associates. No meetings, with partners or with clients, are to be interrupted by phone calls, ever!
The ringtone was, sadly, La Marseillaise - the French National Anthem - with the first few words:
Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivΓ©!
It repeated, over and over again: "Arise, children of our country, the day of glory has arrived!" and the room fell even more silent. The last words spoken by Thomas Crawford "...
What the hell are we here for
..." seemed to be answered.
He stood tall, at over six feet with a sculptured, athletic build, weighing in at under two hundred pounds, dressed in a perfectly tailored dark suit. He walked, in no more than two long strides, around the table to Karen Martinez's end of the table, picked up the phone, turned one hundred and eighty degrees towards the open window and threw the brand new iPhone7 out the tenth story window of the late nineteenth-century historical building Marcus Atilius Crawford had built at the apex of the company's early success, Back in 1892.
Karen watched in horror. "But..." is all she got out, as she watched her new phone sail out into space like a poorly thrown curve ball. It wobbled, turned and cleared the open window by only a fraction of an inch but - sadly for her - it cleared it and was hanging, like Wile E. Coyote in the old cartoon, above the void. Then it fell out of sight.
"You are fired Ms. Martinez." began Crawford, "I did not want any retort for your unprofessional behavior. You know the rules. You violated them all. You have wasted my time. You have wasted the time of your colleagues and you brought a phone into the inner sanctum, our sanctum sanctorum - the holy of holies in our business - where we plan our strategy, our takeovers and our mergers and now you add 'but...' to this imbecilic activity. No more." He said, pointing to the door. "Please leave."
Karen Martinez got up, humiliated beyond words, tossed the computer controls to Megan Reyes and without a word, moved out of the room and was never seen again. Megan, up 'til now Karen Martinez's assistant, was shoved into the center of attention. Megan, a very capable real estate analyst, aspired to this moment; but not necessarily in this particular way and at this particular time. She fidgeted just a bit as she started to gather her thoughts.
"Megan?" Asked Thomas Crawford. "Are you ready to do a bit better?"
"Yes."
She stumbled over her words just a bit and quickly added, "Yes, Sir."
It was at that very moment she noticed it. Her heart sank. Under the wireless keyboard, lay her iPhone. She was not sure if it was on or off. She was not sure if it was on vibrate or full volume. Her job was very important to her and to her three children. Megan was a single mom and could not afford to miss this opportunity.
She took the keyboard from the conference table. She slid it just well enough that the phone, under it, was dragged off the table and she caught it with her thighs. Her miniskirt allowed her to quickly push it higher between her thighs to ensure that if there was any sound, it would be muffled.
"Mr. Crawford," she started, "the Inverness building on third street is severely run down but the structure is in excellent condition and we believe we can turn the first three floors into commercial business space, the next seven floors into office space and the top ten stories into single floor condos that - in this market - could sell for $1.5 to $3 million dollars. The first five condos we sell will cover the cost of the buildings and..."
That's when it happened for the first time. Megan coughed. The phone, fortunately, was on vibrate. It hummed once, twice and a third time - the option she had put for e-mail messages. She coughed again, reached for some water and continued "...and the rest of the condos will pay for all the construction and upgrades, leaving us with the monthly income from the commercial spaces and our maintenance fees, plus any mortgage income we handle.
It happened again. It was not more than a minute or two and the phone vibrated again and again and each time, her now sweaty thighs allowed the vibrating phone to move. It moved upward, in her thighs. She was mortified.
"Miss Reyes, do you have the zoning requirements included in your analysis?" Thomas Crawford asked.