Wormholes by Dennis Meredith Read Free Book Online Page B

dusk, and the buses and cars were rolling up and down the hills on their way to wherever. He caught sight of a cable car slowly making for Nob Hill. He looked over to the other buildings, to the windows about level with his twenty-third-floor office. They were almost all empty. He reminded himself that he had a good office, third one down from the president’s corner suite. Last year, his office had been fifth from the corner and hadn’t had room for the sofa and easy chair that he’d had the designer select. Before that, he’d worked on a lower floor in one of those cubicles. He congratulated himself again on his progress.
    He became bored with the view and picked up the phone and punched in her number. It began to ring. She would tell him if everybody had left. It was probably that damned Huston holding things up. Huston sat in his little office with no room for a sofa until all hours reading all the fine print on the goddamned IPO prospectuses to find out whether some pissant little stock might make a little surge when it went public. Huston was a damned sardine fisherman. Looking for lots of sardines to make a damned sandwich.
    Finally, she answered in a cool, efficient, but very feminine voice.
    “Anybody around?” he asked.
    “Well, Carl’s still in his office. He’s about to leave.”
    “When he does, you’ll come in?”
    “If I have time.”
    “It’s on my calendar. Don’t be late.” With an impatient flick of his wrist, he snapped the receiver back onto its cradle and leaned back in his chair to watch more lights come on in the city, peering to his right to see the bobbing gleam of the boats plying the slate gray waters just off Fisherman’s Wharf. His clock’s numerals now glowed with seven- one-eight . Eighteen minutes late! He turned on the desk lamp, which cast a nice soft kind of glow over the office, without spoiling the view of the city lights. He watched the view for a moment.
    The door opened and the New Accounts Officer came in. She wore a conservative burgundy skirt with a matching jacket over a silk blouse. Her medium blonde hair was done up in a twirly bun with a bow that matched the skirt. She always dressed well. She also wore high heels, which accented the shape of her slim calves. Most women wore more comfortable low heels, which he thought looked dowdy. She approached his desk and the line-of-sight clock read seven-two-zero. Plenty of time.
    “You wanted to see me?” She smiled, the smooth skin around her green eyes crinkling. Her straight, white teeth contrasted with the nice red of her carefully applied lipstick.
    “Everybody gone?”
    “Yes. You wanted me?”
    “Yeah. Something’s come up.” He pushed back the chair and stood, adjusting his Countess Mara tie and straightening his vest. Below the vest his shirt tail hung down like stage curtains, and below that extended only his bare white legs decorated with sparse black hairs. His interest in her was becoming rapidly evident, peeking cyclopean and bald from between the shirt-tail curtains like an old nearsighted actor.
    He leered, bright-eyed and smooth-jawed and raised his eyebrows. She gasped and brought her manicured hand to her open mouth and backed toward the door, wide-eyed. He came out from behind the desk in his stocking feet and advanced toward her, the bald actor leading the way.
    “God, what are you doing?”
    “I want you!” He continued his advance.
    “Are you nuts?”
    “I know you want me.”
    “Well, not here!”
    “We’ve done it here.”
    “Well, … not now. God, there’s people …”
    “Fuck ’em. No, actually … fuck you.”
    “God, you are terrible!” She laughed, showing the white perfect teeth and slammed the door, leaning back against it, her smile becoming vixenish. As her hands fumbled behind her to lock the door, he had already begun working on her clothes. She immediately returned the favor. In a lustful confusion of unbuttoning, unzipping, unsnapping, disrobing, they quickly