“Go on, then,” he says disappointedly and takes a deep sigh.
“Who is she?” I ask. “Where do I find her?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Bryce. I can only tell you two things about her. She is a blonde, or was a blonde when you last saw her, and you never had sex with her, which I believe I have already told you. Apart from that, I can’t say anything with certainty but guess.”
“Your guess is more than the expert opinion of any other psychologist.” Jeremy tries to convince Professor Able on my behalf in a way which only he could.
“Well, I cannot disagree with that.” I can feel the smugness through the phone. Professor Able is proud of himself. “All right. Listen, Mr. Bryce, I can’t say with surety, but I believe you have known her for a very small period. Perhaps, a day or two, an hour, a minute. But despite that, her personality was so magnetic that it left an ever-lasting impression on you. If you ask me, she could be anybody from a random stranger you glanced when you were walking by the street, someone you saw in a coffee shop, someone you went on a date with, or someone you hired a few days before your accident.”
“That would make it very difficult to find her,” Jeremy says.
“I know!” he says.
We heard a loud voice of something shattering.
“What was that?” Todd says, looking around in the apartment.
“That I believe was my vase. I’ll add that to your bill. I got to go now before she blows the roof of our house.” Professor Able hangs up the phone in a hurry.
Yep—he is pussy-whipped like me.
If Professor Able were here, I would have kissed his mouth. I can still hear his words ‘She is real’ with a harmonic beat. The blonde who got away is real, but I don’t know how to get her back.
Chapter 15
“TO THE BLONDE WHO GOT away. Cheers!”
Yep, that’s me celebrating with Jeremy and Todd. I am not drinking, it’s just sparkling water. I tasted what they were having—25-year-old scotch—and my tongue is still burning. The knack of my drinking hasn’t returned yet.
“Do you guys think if I had told my parents about Patty Lawrence, my life would have been better?”
“I don’t know about that. But I would have been your friend either way.” Todd raises his glass for me, and I nod.
I now know why he is my best friend. When I met him a couple of hours ago, I thought he was just a poser. He couldn’t be my friend. But that six-hour-long therapy session not only proved that she is real, but also that Todd is my best friend. He remembers everything about me. Even my power ranger lunch box and the egg sandwich inside it.
Todd was right. We are the chocolate-vanilla ice-cream. Inseparable.
“Brandon, life in all is nothing but a wonderful accident,” Jeremy says. “It would get bumpy along the way, but it has a way of working. Think of it this way . . . if Patty Lawrence had not popped your cherry, maybe you were not rich right now, maybe you grew out to be a single nerd, and the series of events that led you to the blonde who got away would have never happened.”
Jeremy has a point. He has a way of making sense of everything even if it sounds absurd in the head.
“Now that you put this way, I am glad that Patty molested me.”
“At least she got what she deserved,” Todd says, looking at his phone, reading today’s evening news.
Patty Lawrence, 35, high-school teacher, was arrested by the Kansas PD today for raping a student of her class. So far, seven students have come forward with the allegation, and more are expected to come. So far, no comments are made by the school authorities.
“To the arrest of Patty Lawrence!” Jeremy says with his glass raised high. “May she get at least 15 years!”
“Amen!” Todd and I cling our glasses with Jeremy’s glass.
Todd stuffs his face with a mouthful of nuts. “The dirty blonde was really dirty. I guess old habit dies hard.”
“Speaking of dying, if I don’t find ‘the blonde who got away,’ I will very well die of heartache.”
We are calling her ‘the blonde who got away’ now. It’s so much better than calling her tall blonde all the time, and Jeremy agrees with me.
“Don’t worry. We will find her eventually. We are only progressing forward. Until this afternoon, we didn’t know anything about her. But at least now, we know she is real, and have something to work with.”
“Jeremy is right. We have money—the biggest resource in the world. We will find her in no time. But if we find her and she turns out to be married?”
“Way to ruin the mood, Todd! Thank you very much.” I put my glass down, and so does Jeremy.
The evening was going fabulous, but he had to spoil our mood by saying the worst. I want to wipe the floor with his ass just for saying this.
But I can’t completely ignore that there is still a chance of that happening. I don’t remember how long ago I met her. It could have been ages.
“Don’t think too much into it, Brandon.” Jeremy pats my back when he sees me quiet and gloomy. “At least, find her first. Even if she is married, remember, it’s not always about winning in love. If you really love her, put her happiness before yours. Lord Tennyson, a famous poet of the 18th century Great Britain, once said, and I quote, ‘tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’”
“So, where should we start looking for her?” I clap and try to ignore that I imagined killing her husband with a baseball bat when Jeremy was quoting the poet.
Maybe it’s better that way ‘tis better to have loved and married, even if you had to kill the competition out of your way.’
Wow! I have some serious dark side.
“We should start at the office. There are plenty of blondes there.”
“Excellent idea, Todd,” Jeremy says. “Brandon, it has been fifteen days since you step foot out of the apartment. It would be good for you to take an interest in your business again.”
“The office it is. I am excited to see what type of business I am in.”
“We are—”
Todd wants to tell me all about my business. But I stop him. I want to be surprised and see with my own two eyes what I build from the ground up. How I became a self-made millionaire?
TODD GIVES ME A STINK eye as we walk the hallway of the seventh floor of my office building. He is not happy that I bring Jeremy along to the office. But it has to be done. It’s not like Jeremy left me any choice.
I think Professor Able praised him a little too much last night—so much that he went out early in the morning and bought himself $300 worth of books on psychology. Seeing him with those books gave me chills. I don’t want him to turn into Sigmund Freud. I read some pretty disturbing things about him last night.
“I still don’t understand why you have to bring him here.” Todd finally breaks his silence. Must be feeling the strain on his eyes. I have to give it to him though, he is pretty consistent. He scowled at me all the way from home until now.
“Oedipus complex,” I say. “Look it up!”
In case some of you luckily don’t know what ‘Oedipus complex’ is, be prepared to be shocked and get your buckets ready because you may very well throw up. It’s a theory by Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, which describes a child’s feeling to procreate with the opposite-sex parent and eliminate the other one.
I hope you haven’t spilled too much on the floor.
First, ‘Father of the Bride’ is ruined by my former self, and now, a vicious attack on my sanity by a theory coined by a doctor who was obviously a die-hard fan of Greek mythology.
Damn you, ‘the blonde who got away.’ Which world did you pull me into?
“Aaah!” Todd shrieks. “Why you made me look it up? How can I ever get it out of my mind?”
“I looked it up on the internet this morning. And I thought . . . huh . . . Todd knows everything about me, even my mom’s cup size, so he should also know about this too.”
Yep—that was my vengeance. He
still hasn’t told me how he knows my mom’s cup size, and as a son not suffering from an extreme case of Oedipus complex, I didn’t ask.
“What in the world made you look that up?”
“Jeremy was reading a book on this this morning. He was already halfway through it. The name Oedipus sounds quite mystic and appealing, so I looked it up . . . and burned the book later.”
“It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a theory.” Jeremy tries to defend himself, but Todd poke him right on the chest.
“Jeremy, you pervert! You are never getting near my mother.”
“Mine too!” I say. “And I am taking a break from cooking; I don’t want to give you any free time to dunk your heads in those books.”
“Whatever!” Jeremy is acting like a bratty teenager girl whose iPhone just got taken away, but she knows very well that she can get by because she still has her iPad. Yeah—I know all about iPhone and iPad. I own Apple stocks.
That’s it, Jeremy. I am going to make a pyre of all your books tonight. You will see.
We are here.
There’s my office door. Tainted glass. Looks shady.
Three bold metallic letters on the wall spell ‘BBB.’ The name says it all. I am in the business of providing roadside assistance.
On the way over to the office, I saw a tow truck of company ‘AAA.’ Jeremy told me that they provide roadside assistance, but I am not their member. Why would I? I own my own roadside assistance company.
‘AAA’—watch out for ‘BBB.’
Come on, let’s meet my bearded employees with beer bellies.
I open the door to my office. Very loud chatters grace my ears. That’s good, my loyal employees are working. I take a step in, look around, and in my horrified state, closes it back again.
It’s not a roadside assistance company. I am running an underground sex club, except it's on the 7th floor. There are some thirty-odd blondes in there wearing skimpy outfits.
I look at the name of my company again
‘BBB.’ What could it possibly stand for?
Brandon Bryce Brothel—What’s this? Victorian era? No, this can’t be it.
Bandon Bryce Babes—Now that’s something I would go for. Modern, chic, and has a nice ring to it.
“That’s what I do?” I ask. “That’s how I became a self-made millionaire?”
“Yep. BBB—the first step in our million-dollar journey. We branched out into other businesses later.”
Of course, we have. Apart from a high-end pimp, I am also a fucking drug dealer. The weed, oxy, meth, and cocaine in my library were nothing but the sample of our products.
“How much is our cut?”
“20%.”
That seems reasonable. Maybe we are offering our girls protection.
“Do we provide protection?”
“Of course, we do.” Todd scoffs. “What are we, living in the Stone Age? We provide protection and full disclosure of our products.”
How casually he said we provide full disclosure? I cannot believe it.
Imagine, giving me a sale pitch to a client. Sir, let me introduce to you, Brandy. Her usual rate is $1,000, but full disclosure, she has chlamydia, and her price has dropped to an unbelievable $500. We’ll also give you a complementary snort of our high-end cocaine. Fair warning—if you try to kill or kidnap her, we will chop your dick off. At BBB, we take the protection of our girls very seriously.
“Aren’t you proud of your accomplishments?” Jeremy asks.
“Yes, Jeremy, I am very proud,” I say, mockingly, and then whisper-yell at him. “I am a fucking pimp. What’s there to be proud of?”
“What?!” Jeremy says with surprise. I believe he doesn’t know much about my business either.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Todd says.
“You shut your mouth, Todd,” I say, almost yelling at his face. “Jeremy, did you know about this?”
“No! God, no. I always thought you were in some legit business. It’s the first time I am coming to your office.”
“Go see for yourself.”
Jeremy takes a quick glance inside and returns with fear running on his face like I have never seen before. “They look like members of a militia group—all of them blonde, working for a common goal. Are they mercenaries for hire? Huh, Todd? How do they kill their victims? Kiss of death or smothering them with their big boobs?”
“What the hell you two bozos are talking about?” Todd says, looking at us in disbelief. “BBB—-Brandon Bryce Brokerage. We are an insurance broker.”
“Brandon, is it possible that Todd is telling the truth?” Jeremy whispers in my ear.
“Maybe!” I say, glancing at Todd, trying to ascertain if he is telling the truth. “I don’t know. You saw yourself how things are inside. Does it look like we are in the business of anything other than providing girls to rich, middle-aged men?” I whisper back to Jeremy.
“We are not pimps!” Todd shouts. I think he may have heard my whispers. “What in the world even led you to believe that we are one?”
“The cut . . . The protection . . .”
“Oh, my God! I never thought this day will come when I have to explain our business model to you. It has always been the other way round. Okay, listen. Brokerage is a source of our revenue. Every product that we sell to our clients, we receive a commission of 20%.”
“He said product, Jeremy. He said product.”
“The products that we offer—life insurance; auto insurance; health insurance; property and casualty insurance. We are a specialist in insurance and risk management and are affiliated with many insurance companies. We act as an agent of our clients and salesman of the insurance company to strike a deal between both the parties. In return, we receive a commission of 20% from the insurance companies on every policy we sell.”
Oh . . . that’s embarrassing. Not because I thought we were pimps, but because he knows so much about our business. Lackey has taken the lead, and I look like a chump before him.
“What about the protection?” I ask.
“Insurance protection insurance. We casually call it ‘the protection.’ We are providing this product in the Australian market.”
“Yep—that clears up the doubts much quicker than I thought,” Jeremy says, and just like that, leave my side.
But I still have one question left. “Why are there so many women in my office?”
“What do you mean what they are doing in your office? They are our employees. They work here.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, all of them—32 to be exact.
“Where are all the men?” I ask. “I didn’t see any single male employee in there.”
Todd gives me a wink instead of answering my question.
“What does that wink means?” Jeremy asks.
Jeremy hasn’t figured out yet what that wink meant. But I did. The grin on Todd’s face is telling me the tales. “There are no men in there,” I say with a sigh. “I have turned my office into a mini playboy mansion. We hire only women.”
“Ding-Ding-Ding.”
“That’s sexual discrimination. That’s oppression against men.” Jeremy voices my objection.
“Oh, shut up, Jeremy! We are a feminist. We even have a trophy in Brandon’s office to prove it. Last year, a local women group was so impressed with us that they gave our company ‘Feminist of the year’ award. They thought we were the fresh breath of air that feminism needed. But little did they know that we were doing this—not to liberate women but our pants.”
Todd raises his hand for a high-five, but I have no interest in high-fiving him. We have opened ourselves to a massive sex discrimination lawsuit, and he wants a high-five for a bad joke. Unbelievable! Not a single male hire—we are screwed.
While I am still processing this information, Jeremy high-fives Todd.
“What?! Is Todd your best friend now? You are giving high-five to each other from now on.”
“What?” Jeremy says, inn
ocently. “I thought liberating of the pants joke was quite funny.” He still couldn’t stop chuckling.
“You hypocrite!” I say. “You were pretty disappointed in me last night during the talk of minora and majora.”
“That was disgusting, Brandon. But this is all in good fun.”
“I can’t believe that I am saying this, but I think I sort of . . . bit of . . . like Jeremy.” And just like that, Todd, who was giving me stink eye not long ago, likes Jeremy. Fickle!
“Thank you, Todd.”
“Shut up! You two have any idea how bad this is? We could get sued. We might be the spark that could make meninism movement real. Todd, how could you let me do this? You went to UCLA for God’s sake. You can’t be so dumb. Why didn’t you stop me when I was hiring women after women?”
“Whoa!” Todd raises his hand upto his chest in defense. “Don’t try to spin this on me, buddy. That’s all on you. I tried to talk you into hiring 4-5 dudes, but you didn’t listen. You said that this is an office, not a sausage factory. Why should we hire men, our competition, and even pay them for being around hot women?”
“That does sound like you, Brandon,” Jeremy says.
Yep, that does sound like me—the past me.
“What I don’t understand then was, why all blondes? But now we all know.”
I hate you, Patty Lawrence. Because of you, my office has turned into a gold mine. There are different shades of blonde running around in my office in short skirts. It must be heaven for me once, but now it’s a fucking nightmare. How will I handle them? I am completely clueless.
“Come on, let’s get inside,” Todd says, opening the door for me.
I am nervous and hesitant to go inside. There are too many of them. All the estrogen in the room could cause a hormonal imbalance in my body.
“There is a blondie in here that you hired a week before your accident. You remember what Professor Able told you in the end last night, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. She could be ‘the blonde who got away.’”
Chapter 16
WITH JEREMY AND TODD on my either side, I look at my empire I so arousingly build. Nobody has noticed that the boss has finally arrived to his office. I can’t blame them. They are very busy doing nothing.
Dreamy Distraction (Quest for Love Book 1) Page 11
