I Lost the Five Grand and Much More – by PAUL BECKMAN

I Lost the Five Grand and Much More

Large high-rise office building—huge bank of elevators. I bet myself five grand on number 3. Number 6 opened up but since it was going down to the basement it didn’t count. My game—my rules. Number 3 opened and I walked in and punched 14 to take me to my lawyer’s office. A hand stopped the door from closing and a vision walked in—upscale business dressed, pencil skirt, double breasted jacket and a yellow fedora. “Fourteen”, she said as if I was the operator.

She looked over at the buttons and the elevator started to zoom up. “Quick! Stop the elevator,” she said and when I didn’t she took a step forward and threw the stop switch.

“I have an important sales meeting and my bra is twisted” she said taking off her double breasted. She began unbuttoning her white blouse and she said, “Shit. I forgot to put on my bra. Do you think this’ll be okay?”

She stood there, shamelessly showing me her gorgeous rack and took off her hat.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Do they look alright?”

“Gorgeous,” I said. “Simply gorgeous.”

“Feel them,” she said. “Let me know how they feel?”

“What kind of interview are you going for?” I asked.

She answered by pulling my head down to her breasts and they felt good and they were softly perfumed and her nipples grew in my mouth and I felt her hands on my crotch. She pushed me away without so much as a thank you and got dressed, threw the switch back on and in no time we were moving and she pressed twelve and exited without a word.

My lawyer’s secretary came out and took me to the conference room, closed the blinds and said my lawyer would be there momentarily. He was, not looking happy and said, “Your wife and her attorney will be here shortly. We had everything worked out and I just got a call saying we may have to renegotiate.”

They walked in, hostility trailed them and my soon to be former wife’s attorney opened her lap top and played a silent scene of me and the vision in the elevator from minutes ago looking down at us from a ceiling camera.

There was a renegotiation after her lawyer explained that the woman I was groping was the judge’s daughter.

***

Paul Beckman’s story, “Healing Time” was one of the winners in the 2016 The Best Small Fictions and his 100 word story, “Mom’s Goodbye” was chosen as the winner of the 2016  Fiction Southeast Editor’s Prize. His stories are widely published in print and online in the following magazines amongst others: Connecticut Review, Raleigh Review, Litro, Playboy, Pank, Blue Fifth Review, Flash Frontier, Matter Press, Metazen, Pure Slush, Jellyfish Magazine, Thrice Fiction and Literary Orphans. His latest collection, “Peek”, weighed in at 65 stories and 120 pages. Paul lives in Connecticut and earned his MFA from Bennington College. His published story website is  www.paulbeckmanstories.com and  blog is www.pincusb.com