My Only Talent Ch. 18

My Only Talent Ch. 18

Thanks for Thanksgiving

My old high school nemesis, Alley Shitty, drove the big Suburban steadily north on the interstate, and I watched her progress as Jay and Nora slumbered. By the time we got as far north as Round Rock, all of Nora's defenses were completely down, and I had located her Suzie 'flight data recorder' and began to scan her sexual history. It was one with a few high spots but mostly disappointment. She had already told me that thanks to her parents instilling in her an abject fear of 'talent' males, and fear of sex in general, she got the same kind of indoctrination that I did about remaining celibate, and took it to heart just like I did. She had skipped so many grades that she did sixth form at Charterhouse being much younger than any other student there, but still she excelled. Probably due to her mega IQ, she found most of her so called elite classmates boring. There were a few incidents of sexually charged hazing, but she found none of them exciting in the least; they were merely something to endure and survive.

She did seem to have a tendency to attract the attention of what she had once told Suzanne she called the 'high born lout': a male from a storied family who seemed destined to not only disappoint academically but to be an embarrassment socially for many years to come. They seemed to believe they might somehow do her a favor by forcing themselves on her. She took classes in Krav Maga and actually had to use it on one pushy toff who had a very tenuous and probably false claim to royal lineage as a descendant of Eggbert of Wessex. She was happy to leave her so-called social circle behind in choosing to go 'across the pond' to ESU, where she encountered a few students with intellects that were comparable to hers, and some others that were on the complete opposite end of the bell curve. She did develop crushes on one male and one female peer, and as a seventeen year old rising junior, she had her first two sexual experiences. I located the entries in her 'flight log' and began to drill down for the details and the effects the experiences had on her.

Nora almost woke up when an Ill considered lane change by a big truck caused Alley to lean on her horn for a while, but then she settled back down into my shoulder and continued her unprotected slumber. I resumed my Suzie snooping.

A female classmate named Hannah flirted with Nora, and in one passionate encounter, confirmed Nora's potential for attraction to and satisfaction with another woman, but the classmate's next day denial that it even happened had ultimately made Nora even more fearful and suspicious and too scared of taking the risk of another such relationship. In her history, Suzanne was linked to this other girl, because as near as I could tell, she was the only other woman that Nora trusted and was also attracted to. She just didn't want to risk having a sexual adventure that ruined their friendship, especially since Suzanne, as her supervising TA, was officially her 'boss' from the ESU point of view.

Before meeting Suzanne, she also developed a major crush on an ESU incoming freshman football player, who was just about as much an opposite from her former British plonker pursuers as one could possibly imagine. Jalen was big, black, and smart, almost as smart as she was, and he must have had good taste, because he fell pretty hard for Nora, pursued her avidly, and he caught her. The sex was great for them both. But his judgment was suspect; perhaps he was spoiled because of the Texas football culture that a good player can do no wrong. Nora was deeply offended by him wasting his potential by taking easy classes for a dead end sports marketing degree, since he was sure he would make it in the NFL. He also desperately wanted to be another kind of 'player' to be seen in clubs and be photographed with rap stars, hardly Nora's goal for him. But the straw that broke the camel's back was his announcement that he could no longer have an exclusive relationship with Nora as his only girlfriend, because she was now just one of his 'string'. Her distrust of the male of the species was now just as strongly reinforced as it was for the female.

Since those two ultimately unsatisfying relationships, Nora had been throwing herself into her studies, sublimating her desires. She had certainly excelled academically, and was about to finish two degrees in three years, but she was horny as hell, just like Suzanne had been. She wanted Suzanne, and she wanted me, and the prospect of having both of us at once was galvanically exciting for her, and in fact it was the central image in all her masturbatory activities since the current semester began. But her fear and distrust, plus her parent's early indoctrination, was enough to keep her from actually taking advantage of the opportunity. There was some other connection to all this that I could not tease out, another signal akin to the others but different. It was linked to all the sexual images I was deciphering, but I couldn't pin down what it was.

I did find that my newly developed and improved Suzie signal receiving capabilities allowed me to delve into her recorded fantasies in detail, and I was just about to tap into and enjoy playing them back in chronological order when Alley Shitty's voice broke my concentration, and what's worse, startled Nora fully awake.

"Salado, Texas, everyone! Shopping stop in progress! This is a great place to get an early start on Christmas shopping, with stores full of unique stuff nobody else will find to give to any of your friends and family."

Suddenly Nora and Alley were best buds, sharing Christmas gift lists and suggestions. Alley parked on the south end of a strip of stores east of the interstate, and they announced they were going to work their way north for an hour or so. Jay and I realized we should probably look for few gifts too, and we sheepishly tagged along. Nora took charge of making me choose appropriate gifts for my mother, grandmother, older sister, and Lara and Suzanne, tapping out my gift budget and all the money I had made on Kevin's bets at the fraternity and sorority mixers. Alley did the same for Jay in searching for gifts for the females of the Kincaid clan. Two hours later we were back on the road, but Nora was now energized and never got even close to going back to sleep.

.....

Sarah Stevens Susskind was on a mission. She told her parents she was going to visit a new friend in Dallas first, then drive on to Texarkana to meet them at her grandmother's for Thanksgiving dinner. She actually planned to spend every minute until early Thanksgiving morning following Robbie. She was devastated that he had not wanted to spend Thanksgiving with her, and she was never going to let that happen again. She was going to find out what he was doing, who he doing it was with, and see where his family lived. Robbie had never seen her car, and it was well suited to her surveillance mission: an average looking grey Jetta TDI that got great mileage and could go over 600 miles on a tank of diesel.

She had no trouble following the big Suburban on the interstate, and she stayed close to their car while Robbie and the others went shopping at Salado. She took advantage of the break to go to the bathroom and fill up her fuel tank. But not long after they left Salado and went north again, she was foiled when they went through a private gate where she could not follow. She found a place to park that was shielded from view by some trees, and waited, watching that gate, and accessing Google Earth on her smart phone to try to see where that gate might lead.

.....

After the shopping excursion broke the ice, we had a lively conversation on the road, talking about the gifts and which family members would be home for Thanksgiving, which naturally led to some family stories. Alley actually seemed nice and almost charming, and I was getting used to her voice; it didn't grate on me quite as much. After we passed through Hillsborough, Jay gave Alley some directions and we headed east toward Ennis, though some winding county roads, and then through a gate that Jay had the code for and then onto a very well maintained private road that traveled for several miles. We arrived at a big ranch entrance, the kind that you usually only see in Texas and parts west. A huge metal frame was festooned with hundreds of antlers: not just whitetail, but also elk, ibex, and several species I could not easily identify, plus a few longhorn skulls thrown in for good measure. These ranch entrances had symbolism like totem poles, and this one said big ranch, big money. There was a big stylish "W" atop the arch, not a "K" for Kincaid, massive concrete barricades around it, and two substantial motorized metal gates, spaced far apart, like the entrances to some military bases I had seen. There was also high game fence on either side, running as far as I could see, plus some amazingly thorny and strong looking bushes just outside the game fence.

But both sets of gates were wide open when we got to them, presumably in anticipation of Jay's arrival. As we passed through, I noticed that numerous video cameras were secreted inside the antlers, facing in almost every direction, plus some other stuff that didn't look like cameras to me. The gates closed immediately after we went through them. We drove about a mile on a paved road, then topped a little hill, behind which was a big stone house that would have fit in well in any tony subdivision in North Dallas. Jay directed Alley to pull up near the six car garage.

The first thing I saw approaching us was a pack of black and white dogs. They were moving so fast that I could not be sure, but it was either four very fast Border Collies, or five merely quick ones. Jay got out of the Suburban, and the dogs raced around him like a dust devil on a hot prairie day. Jay reached down and managed to playfully cuff each dog on the head a few times, and the contact seemed to settle them down a bit. A passel of children followed close behind: two boys under five years old, running for all they were worth, a pair of blonde twin girls about ten, and two teenagers; a blonde boy that looked like a younger version of Jay, and raven haired girl. The smaller of the two boys reached him first, and Jay put him up on his shoulders, and then he was surrounded by the rest of them, hugging and tousling hair. Jay retained the shopping bag from Salado, but the twins carried his backpack, and a big duffel bag that I suspected was full of dirty laundry. Mine was.

A troop of adults met us and Jay insisted we come into the house for a minute. From the family resemblance, I tentatively identified Jay's mom, and grandmother, but my real surprise was Jay's grandfather, because I recognized him, and that explained the "W" on the gate. John Jacobin Warner, also known as "Cactus Jake", was one of the wealthiest and most influential oil men in the state. I knew the Phi Iota Gamma's were supposed to be the frat of choice for big money families, but this guy could probably write a check for the entire net worth of every other family with a son in the frat, and not just the ESU chapter, either. I had been assigned a 'compare and contrast' paper on him and "Cactus Jack" Garner in high school. Warner had a lot more money, and hated publicity, so had no catchy quotes. I had found one of the very few recent pictures of him for my report. The last six of eight Texas Governors had been his choices for backing, and it was said that he could handicap politicians the way some folks could pick horse races. If he made a donation to a candidate's campaign, literally thousands of other donations would immediately follow, and nobody was ever appointed to the board of regents of ESU or any other state funded school without his blessing.

After introductions all around, Jake's grandmother took Nora and Alley further into the house for a chance to 'freshen up' and the kids dragged Jay to the stables to see a new foal.

"Cactus Jake" made an attempt at conversation with me. "So are you in the frat with Jay?"

"No sir, but I did meet him there. We were introduced by Theo Cadwallader. I know Alley from high school, and I think Jay met her at a KKG mixer."

"You don't sound like you are from the East, like Theo."

"No, sir, I was born in Highland Park, but my folks live in Prosperous now."

He made an abrupt change of subject. "You sure cut yourself a fine filly out of the herd with that Nora. She is classy as hell and hot as a depot stove! I wish Jay would bring somebody like her home instead of the bubbleheads and bimbos he has taken up with so far!"

I wasn't sure what to say to that, but he continued so quickly that I didn't have to.

"In the old days, the purpose of the fraternities and sororities was to make sure if a girl did get knocked up at college the families would be compatible when the lucky couple got married. Now everybody apparently knows how to fuck their brains out without getting pregnant, but I was hoping he would at least meet some nice long term prospects, in addition to the tattooed banging bimbos. How long have you been with Nora?"

Now I did have to say something. "Well, Nora and I are just friends. She lives in the same dorm that I do, and is also good friends with the girl that I am dating. She is from England, and my girlfriend is traveling elsewhere over the holidays, so I asked Nora to come to Thanksgiving with my family. " I didn't think it necessary to tell him that Suzanne and I were actively plotting to try to get Nora into bed with both of us.

"Robbie, if I may, I have learned to read people pretty well over the years, and just by observing her for one minute I can tell you three things about Nora: she is smart as hell, she is hot for you, and she is the marrying kind, not the sleep around kind. Those are all real good things in my book, and I think you are very lucky."

By this time the females were 'freshed and back, and we said our goodbyes and got back into the Suburban. Nora sat in the front so Alley wouldn't suffer from 'chauffeur syndrome' and I felt like a lonely little puppy in the back seat. We headed back to the main road, and the gates opened as we went through and closed them immediately behind us. Alley cranked in the cruise control, checked that her phone was getting 4G, and then put on Pandora radio through the stereo system, and the big land yacht cruised toward North Dallas, fully supplied with some tunes.

.....

Sarah had pulled up the photos she had taken in Salado, and was trying to match them to Facebook pages of ESU first year Greeks as a starting point. She had located Alley right away and a name search pulled up lots of KKG party photos of her, but none with Robbie. A further search revealed that they had both graduated from the same high school, in Prosperous, Texas. Was she an old girlfriend only, or still in the running? Jay Kincaid was pretty easy too, a PIG pledge supposedly from Waxahachie, which was not far from this still mysterious and impassable gate, and for some reason when she tried to trace the road, Google Maps said "we don't have imagery at this zoom level for this region". The other platinum haired girl did not turn up on any of the Pan Hellenic pages, nor in any search using Alley or Robbie's name, and a brute force search of all the possible images take too long. Maybe she wasn't a freshman, so her picture might be in last year's Cactus yearbook, but that was a lot of faces to search through, too. Her concentration was interrupted when the unmarked gates opened and the big Suburban passed through it and back onto the highway, again heading north. Sarah pulled in behind and then let two other cars interpose themselves, like the articles she had found with Google said she should do when tailing someone.

.....

Pandora was never predictable, but Alley switched things around until she found a TMZ update, which mentioned Austin, so she left it on, and the first item was about the 'addicted to' party. The report played through without anyone interrupting, mentioning Julie Angel and the two reporters dancing naked, plus the entire pledge class from an ESU sorority, and the paparazzo's desperate search to find the party, getting a few pictures just as it broke up.

"It defiantly wasn't the KKG pledge class dancing naked", Alley snorted condescendingly. "But I would have liked to have been there to see the party!"

"It was the 'Bi Phi's' according to my sources at the dorm," offered Nora. I hadn't said a word about the party to anyone, and didn't plan to, but Nora knew about my 'Master' get up and Lara going to Professor Lillehammer's office with me in her costume, and Suzanne might have told her about the party.

Alley said, "That makes sense. I heard the TMZ reporter was a Bi Phi when she went to ESU. It must have been quite a thrill to know you were naked on an international video story like that!" I heard a sudden and sizzling Suzie signal from her, not focused on any particular prospective partner, but just generically horny. Did she have an unresolved exhibitionist streak? I seemed to remember some high school gossip about her losing her top on the diving board at her country club pool once, and how some girls thought she did it on purpose.

The TMZ report then teased some 'pending updates' with more details on the party, who was there and who wasn't, and the 'sexy stage show'. Robbie hoped that referred to the chorus line number, not the sexual fortune teller bit. He really didn't want to attract more attention right now. Reporters apparently now made a science of tracking private jet tail numbers, and used them to watch which celebs, politicians, sports stars, and billionaires went and when. My father said this was making business better for NetJets and other jet sharing firms, and that many of the 'swells' as he called them had private jets in their name that could be easily tracked, but often used NetJets for their trips, so that the reporters could not be sure who was in a jet that was shared by many clients. Rodney Driver told me that Julie Angel and her husband often sent their jet on decoy runs just to frustrate the paparazzi, while they took a NetJet aircraft to their real destination, and that they also said there were some tricky airports that you really wanted a highly experienced NetJet pilot to fly you into, not your personal pilot who only flew that approach once every two or three years. He said one sure sign of a B list celeb trying to get more publicity was buying a cheap but individual private plane that could be easily tracked, hoping to get some ink. My dad used to track tail numbers to have 'accidental' meetings with sales prospects, but now he had to resort to other methods.

My phone beeped, signaling an incoming text from Suzanne. The only advantage of being alone in the back seat was that I could text in private, without Nora looking over my shoulder.

SUZANNE: sad and boring in SA :(

ROBBIE: ({})

SUZANNE: have you seduced Nora yet?

ROBBIE: not yet, but she did fall asleep on my shoulder in the car :D

SUZANNE: bag that babe and bring her to bed with us ;;)

ROBBIE: may take until after xmas

SUZANNE: worth the wait :P

By this time Alley had made her way up the interstate, moving slowly through the afternoon rush hour traffic, and finally jogged right onto the Tollway, which while still crowded was moving faster than the other alternatives. We quickly crossed the LBJ and then the SRT and we were getting close to home base. My father took perverse pride in their new place having an address on a numbered Farm to Market road. Alley's family bought a big place nearby at a bargain price on a road with a real and prestigious name, as my mother used to say to tweak my father, thanks to an over-drafted Dallas Cowboy football player that bought high and had to sell low after his initial contract was not renewed. My dad had picked our new house right after I graduated because he found a nice big place far enough out of town to not have any next door neighbors and room for Grandma's garden, but from which taking the Tollway and then the SRT got him to the airport pretty quickly even during rush hour. Alley's dad picked his house as a fancy showplace, for purely business reasons.