hello? == Is this Richard Temple? == yes == okay .. um .. my name is Sally .. you may think this is kind of silly, but I picked your name at random from the phone book == okay == there's this thing I like to do .. I make videos of myself and I send them to guys == videos? == yeah == and you send them to strangers you pick in the phone book? == yeah == what kind of videos? == (giggling) dirty videos, silly == .. == Richard? .. are you still there? == um hmm == don't hang up .. I've already called, oh let's see, fourteen guys .. a lot of them just hang up on me, or they get rude ..you don't seem rude Richard == I try not to be == good .. can I send you a video? == I'm not sure .. how old are you? == twenty four == what do you mean dirty videos? I don't think I get what this is all about == there's nothing to get .. it's just me .. I lay on the floor, turn on my video camera and, do things == okay == okay? == yeah .. I'd like to see you do things, I suppose == good .. I think you'll like it.

It happened so fast that Richard had trouble believing both that it had happened and that he had said yes. It arrived the next day, in a simple brown wrapper, addressed to Richard at his address, exactly as it appeared in the phone book. There was no return address. The post mark was from the same city.

All last night and at the office that day, the strangeness of the phone call had bothered him. He had seen those 900 number commercials where you could talk dirty to naked women. A couple nights he had dialed all but the last digit, afraid to cross over that boundary. There were many times he had walked past the large yellow sign with simple black letters: Adult Books. So many times he had shuffled his feet at the last second, fighting the curiosity, the need to know, to see. What kept him away was the fear that someone would think that he was too young and would try to throw him out. He was twenty three, but his wide cheeks and curly red hair made him look more like a jolly high school kid.

He began to shake a little as his heart began beating excitedly. He tore back the flap of the brown envelope. After dating Mary Catherine for five whole months his senior year in High School, the most he ever saw was her left nipple. And she refused to french kiss him. This three frustrated attempts at relationships in college left him with three just-friends, in their words. Now here in his hands was not just some voice on the phone or some picture in a magazine, but a video, secrets revealed. A strange gift of fate.

As he put the tape in the machine, he tried to convince himself that he had been duped, that someone from the office was yanking his chain. He swung between hope that it was actually real to a dull acceptance that it was really just a gag. The screen flickered. He sat down on the floor and only then noticed that he was breathing fast.

A chair. The camera seemed to be fixed on a tripod pointing at a recliner chair. The picture fluttered as the tracking adjusted itself. In a moment a woman wearing a tee shirt, jeans, and sandals walked into frame and sat down in the chair. The scene cropped her just at the shoulders. With no introduction, no ceremony, she unzipped the pants and pushed them down to her thighs and put her hand inside her blue, cotton, Hanes Her Way. Soon the pants came off, the knickers came down, the tee shirt was pulled off and the headless woman proceeded to do what normally is done only in the privacy of one's own room. After a long episode of repeated demonstrations, compelling both audibly and visually, she stood up and walked out of the camera frame.

There were a few seconds of black. Next the camera was focused on the carpet. A blur of flesh tone filled the screen and when the auto focus engaged, Richard saw the jerky, mechanical zoom of the home recorder move closer and closer to the woman's belly button. She scooted up in the frame, zoomed a little bit more, and then gave Richard a close up vantage point for her next tricks. For the next forty minutes, Richard received a detailed education on the capabilities of the woman's body and the extent of her imagination which found unconventional uses for a ken doll, grapes, Pepsi, shoe laces, and a bright red lipstick.

It was terribly personal, disturbing. It was more shocking and foul and explicit than anything he could have imagined. He rewound it and watched it again.

hello == hello, Richard == hello .. uh ..Sally == did you see me on the video? == yeah == did you like it? == it was pretty nasty == (laughing hard) well yeah, I guess so == it was okay == Richard? Did you join me? == what do you mean? == was I able to help you give yourself pleasure? == I don't do that == liar == it's a sin == well, I'll bet I made it damn hard not to == you made it damn hard, that's for sure == (giggling) oh, Richie, you're precious - hey, listen == what? == this is just a thought - sometimes, if I like the guy - well, there's another game we can play == a game? == have you ever seen a pretty girl walking alone in the mall? .....

Later that night, he sat on a wooden bench outside Sears. Showered, freshly shaved, and self consciously wearing some Old Spice that he bought at the drug store, he sat trying to keep from shivering from the nervous tension. He almost hoped he wouldn't see her. He felt that the eyes of the world were upon him and that they all knew what he intended to do.

He saw her. It had to be her. She walked down the middle of the mall. As she had said, she had curly blond hair and was wearing a thigh length skirt, sheer white blouse, heels and large dark sun glasses. She carried a shopping bag from Jacobson's. He watched her. She had told him not to look away, but to let himself gaze at her the way he had always wanted to be able to look at girls, without having to glance away if they turned their head. As she got closer, he could see the lace of her bra through the flimsy fabric of her top. She walked past him, paused just a moment for him to give the proper sign.

He held out a folded piece of paper on which was written the phrase, "I'm looking for a handout."

She took it, smiled and dropped it to the floor. He followed her into the store. She led him around as she shopped. He continued to watch at her closely, following the outline of her body, imagining the shapes unrevealed. In housewares, she stopped to look at towels. It was late and they were alone in the section. She bent over at the waist and adjusted her shoe. That was his cue.

For a moment he paused. He had begged her three times to assure him that it was okay to do what she was suggesting. As she stood up straight, he was drawn forward by desire that gave not a damn for fear, reason, or God. He stepped up and put his arm around in front of her, pressed his sweat dampened palm flat and slid it down into her skirt. He fumbled around, pushing her shirt tails aside, but finally moved his fingers past the elastic. She turned her head and leaned back into him, brushing her bottom on his bulging bugle boys, size 42/32. He moved his hand between the kitten soft mane and her silk foundation and finally fumbled his middle finger into the position he had seen on the tape.

Suddenly she pulled at his hand, gasped and moved away from him. His hand caught in her skirt and she pulled him out from behind the towel display until he could free himself. She ran off, leaving him embarrassed and stunned.

He watched her run to the escalator without looking back. With a cloud of confusion and filthy shame, he turned and walked the other way, saw the hallway to the elevator and took it to the ground floor by the catalog department.

He forced himself to drive slowly and carefully and spent most of the way along back roads with his eyes pasted to the rear view mirror. As soon as he got home, he took the tape out of the machine, broke it apart, pulled the tape out and cut it into small pieces with his kitchen scissors. He stayed up until 1:30 waiting for someone to knock on his door and arrest him. Finally he fell asleep in his chair watching an infomercial for Nordic Track and silently praying that Jesus pull his awful lust from him.

* * *

"Are you okay, Richard?"

"Oh, sure. I'm fine. A little tired, maybe."

"Did you get Carla's email? Donuts at the counter. When you settle in, come by. I want you to show me the account tracking demo before the morning meeting."

It didn't happen. He didn't probe some strange woman's privates. There was no video tape. He stepped out of his cubicle and around to the coffee counter. He selected a chocolate covered chocolate donut and poured himself a cup of jitters.

"Hi, Richard."

"Morning, Carla."

She was wearing her long skirt again, the one that made her look like a pretty school teacher from the twenties. He imagined what it would feel like to put his hand under her shirt, to slip his palm past that wide waste band, to feel the curve of her ...

"What?"

"I said do you mind if I come see your demo."

"Oh, sure. I mean no. I mean, come on by."

"It sounds pretty neat. Also, I need to go over the network init handshake data. I think I'm going to need the size of the description buffer passed as a short int instead of char."

"Okay. We'll be in Tom's office in about five minutes."

"Good. Let me get my notes."

He watched her walk away, took a bite of his donut and then heard himself say, "Carla."

She turned around.

"I like that skirt. It looks nice."

As soon as he said it, he knew it was wrong. You weren't supposed to notice that women were pretty in the office.

"Thank you, Richard."

But she didn't seem to mind much. She was actually smiling.

In a few minutes he was settled in front of Tom's computer. He brought up his new Windows application, waited for it to wind its way through the WinSock layer and the ODBC protocols. Finally the interface was presented.

"You can get the list of stolen card numbers here. The customer service agent can update the database with this dialog box. Once a number's in the system, it polls the validation master system and reports the store address, time of day, and amount."

Tom asked, "So you didn't have to add anything to the system?"

"No. What I did was add this client layer over the other separate systems. The database group has been proposing for the past six months that the system be rewritten and better integrated. But that's not necessary. This let's us add value to the legacy systems without disrupting them or forcing anyone to mess with the old COBOL."

"Can they also set the no-approve flag?"

"If they want. But this let's us track the stolen card to catch them, rather than encouraging them to steal another card number. It can turn off any accepts of the number that don't use the physical plate, like for something off TV."

"What's that one?" Carla asked as she pointed at one of the icons on the screen, letting her auburn hair fall for a moment against Richard's cheek. He wanted to freeze the moment, to nuzzle into the softness of her sweet smelling curls. Instead he answered, "That prints a report of the activity and lets us email it to our security division or directly to the FBI."

By the end of the day, Richard was able spend almost an entire minute without worrying about last night. There was even a moment at lunch when he forgot about it entirely.

When he got home, and found another brown envelope in the mailbox, the day behind him vanished into a distant, artificial dream world. He pretended for a moment that he would just throw it away. He held on to this little fantasy as he turned on the VCR, fed it the tape, and picked up the remote. The fantasy that he could walk away from it granted him a lapse of an entire seven seconds before he hit the play button.

This one was black and white, a store security camera from Sears. Richard watched himself leering and following the blond woman who looked as if she were interested only in picking up a few housewares. He watched the splice of various cameras showing them as they walked though various departments. Even in the grainy black and white, he could see the lecherous gaze with which he followed her. When she bent over and disappeared behind a shelf, he pounced. From this angle, he could see the shock and fear that came to her face. He watched himself thrusting his hand into her skirt while she tried to find her voice to call for help. When she ran away, it looked as if he tried to pull her back. The tape went to black. Ten minutes later, the phone rang.

hello? == did you see it? == who is this? == it's Sally .. who else? == why? == shut up and listen. == you bitch! == -click-

After two horrible minutes of helpless fury, the phone rang again.

hello? == don't piss me off, pervert .. unless you want to watch your little show on Hard Copy .. they've already offered me twenty five hundred for the Sears Stalker tapes == what do you want? == now you're getting smart .. I understand you can track credit card numbers, find out who spends what and where == how do you know that? == -click-

As Richard paced back and forth, he decided that his next free moment, he would get caller ID, or at least the callback service.

hello? == I don't like questions except my own .. remember that .. on the inside of the envelope is written a card number .. I want you to go to work tomorrow, track that number, and send one of your reports to sally at iquest dot net .. if you try to find out who that account belongs to, I'll sell the tape .. if you don't do this little favor for me, I'll sell the tape .. if you do anything to piss me off, I'll sell the tape, send a copy to your boss, one to your mother, and one to your minister .. and one more thing. .. when you go to feel up a woman, have the decency to wipe the sweat off your flabby hand -click-

* * *

The next morning he pulled the source of the database application from the revision control system and built a new executable that would let his username set the tracking flags but not write an audit record. To install it, he used a hack that was still left over from the testing days. He sent a messages to the process's UDP port which instructed it to flush and restart itself, this time starting the doctored version of the program from his local directory.

When he launched his tracking program, he set it to track the number. He then switched to his telnet session and ran a SQL query to verify that the audit record of his activity had not been written. Still, he would have to make sure to reset the system before the batch audit programs found the discrepancy that night.

He reviewed the past charges on that account. There were two charges for gas, an expensive meal at some restaurant, and four charges for rental cars.

During the day, his tracking system showed him another charge for The Rise And Shine Bed And Breakfast $1600, a charge for flowers $97.69, and one for office supplies for $57.13." The name on the account was Bob Skully. At 4:30, Richard deleted the tracking record, switched back to the proper version of the program, and sent the email.

He hurried home that night to wait for the phone call that would tell him it was all over. While he waited, he went to his computer and put in the national telephone directory. He found three Bob Skullys. Two were in California and one was from his own state. Next he started NetScape, using his second phone line, opened yahoo.com and typed the name Bob Skully.

The first page on the hit list was titled "Credits and Acknowledgments." He noticed the domain of the page: iquest.net, the same as Sally's email address. The page listed several people for their hard work and contributions. Bob Skully was being thanked for his exceptional work above and beyond his position as executive secretary of the Governor. There was a link to the main page which turned out to be a promotion for the re-election of Governor Nathan Nickleson. The second hit was Bob Skully's home page, again at iquest. When he went to Bob's Links section, Richard began to laugh quietly. One of the links was to his boss Tom's page.

Of course Tom couldn't have run the tracking program himself. It was compiled on Richard's hard drive. He couldn't have switched the program because he wasn't there when Richard came up with the re-run hack for testing. He didn't know where in the schema he would need to look to pull together the information, and it's not the kind of thing he could ask for without raising suspicions.

But why would they care about this Bob Skully's card, unless it was the Governor making the charges. If the card belonged to Skully, why would he need to get his friend to frame some programmer to track the charges that would show up on bill at the end of the month? Someone was going to a lot of trouble to catch the Governor in the act, and whatever that was had something to do with the three purchases made today. He went back to the telephone CD and searched the yellow pages section for The Rise And Shine Bed And Breakfast.

good evening .. rise and shine b&b == hello, I'd like a room for this Saturday, tomorrow == let's see, do you want the presidential suite? == oh, sure == okay, what time will you be coming? == is 8:00 okay, pm? == we can have a room ready for you .. that will be sixteen hundred dollars == very good == and your name, sir? == John Smith == do you have any special requests, mister Smith? == no, nothing too extravagant == and who referred us to you, mister Smith? == Bob Skully == I see .. just a moment .. You'll be in room number 12 with two attendants in the presidential suite for this Saturday == thank you.

Next he returned to the Governor's web page and dialed their number.

* * *

Richard followed the bell boy into the room, tipped him five dollars and sat on the bed. It was a very nice room overlooking a lake. It had taken him three hours to drive here, an entire month's salary at the check-in desk, but like the compulsion that moved him forward in the Sears store, he felt unable to control his need to resolve this. He watched himself behaving so differently than he had ever expected himself to behave. He was almost amazed at how simple it all was. So many things for so long had been within his grasp but he had always chosen to pull himself short. He started Saturday morning by buying a nice off the rack suit and found that he looked more confident and grown up with the air of dignity that he felt it gave him. He went to the bank and signed a check for two thousand dollars cash. He watched the teller count out an entire third of his checking account. Before driving out of town, he stopped at the adult book store, walked in, looked around at the magazines, examined their covers showing skin, boobs, buttocks, and full frontal females. He walked past the aisle of videos and marital aids, laughed quietly to himself and left. For lunch he stopped at the most expensive steak restaurant he could find, spent sixty dollars on porterhouse and wine.

Now, sitting in the room, having laid one thousand six hundred dollars cash on the check-in counter and watching the clerk pick it up without batting an eye, he felt a new kind of freedom and calm. He dialed the phone.

yeah? == I'm in room 12 == I'll be right there.

As he hung up, there was a knock on the door. He was greeted by his two attendants who were here to spend the night with him.

"Come in, girls. Why don't you go get my bath ready."

They smiled and entered. Richard found himself enjoying the sense of power that had been waiting in him to be discovered. "Loose the robes," he commanded.

Without hesitation, they both dropped their terry-cloth robes to the floor. They were wearing silk teddies, one black, the other red.

"Very nice, girls. Run along."

They went to the bathroom and Richard heard the water start to run. Then the one in the red came out and helped him off with his jacket and started massaging his shoulders. Richard let himself sit back and enjoy it, amazed that he wasn't nervous with the close touch of the beautiful woman.

Soon the mood was broken by another knock on the door.

"Run and hide, sweet heart."

As she climbed off the bed, Richard patted her on the behind and then had to smile at how comfortable his new found assertiveness felt.

He let in the state trooper.

"Mister Temple?"

"Yes."

"Are the girls here?"

"They're in the bathroom."

He went in and told them he was going to arrest them for soliciting. He led them out in handcuffs.

"You bastard! You're supposed to leave us alone."

"Call the front desk."

"He said he'd protect us."

"Call the front desk, damn it."

They finally quieted down and in a few minutes, Governor Nickleson let himself in. He was wearing the same comfortable smile and charm that had allowed him to endure for the past three administrations despite so many difficulties.

"Good evening Melissa, Janet."

"Nathan, make him take these things off."

He ignored the girls and turned his attention to Richard and listened to his story.

"I'm sure you understand, Richard, how important it is that we were able to head this little difficulty off at the pass. I'm glad you were able to get in touch with me as soon as you did. We'll deal with Tom and this Sally. You did the right thing by calling us. Blackmail is such a dirty thing, don't you think?"

Richard smiled at the Governor's veiled reference to their own arrangement. His assistance, after all, was not without its own price.

"I just don't want anyone to see that tape."

"We all do things, from time to time, that would be somewhat of an embarrassment to us. I understand that. We're kind of alike in that regard, aren't we. You know something about me, and I know about your tape."

The governor stood up and said, "Tonight's on me."

He tossed an envelope filled with Richard's money from the front desk plus an extra five thousand dollars.

"Thank you, but the girls can go. All I wanted was to get this taken care of."

"It's taken care of."

* * *

"Richard, have you seen Tom?"

"No, Carla, is he late?"

"Someone said he was arrested yesterday for drunk driving and that he ran into some woman's car."

"Oh my gosh, that's terrible."

"I wonder if it's true."

"Oh, I doubt it. But I have a feeling the conviction will stick. Maybe I should try for his job."

"That's kind of cold, Richard."

"Oh, come on. He was a jerk."

"Well, I don't know about that, but he couldn't code worth a damn. I wonder how he ever got the job."

"Friends in high places, I suppose."

"Hey Richard, my church is having a spring dance. You know how it is. Everybody expects us to bring somebody. It's not like a date, or anything. I'd just rather go there with someone I know."

"What if I'd like it to be a date?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I'll bring you flowers, take you to the dance, and kiss you good night. And maybe we'll go out again sometime. You're smart, pretty, and I love how your hair smells when you're close to me. So, it's a date?"

"Cool! It's a date."

:^D