They were both sitting on the huge bed on the balcony of the suite at the Desert Inn, dressed how they had left the club.

He was still prim and proper in his slacks and shirt, although he had removed his shoes, and was sitting at the head of the bed, peering over the pair of expensive half-glasses, he wore to impress clients. At no time since they had left had she covered herself up, either in the taxi or as she had walked proudly and to his embarrassment through the hotel to the suite. It was after all Las Vegas. She was now sitting cross-legged facing him, still dressed in those red stockings, suspenders and the tiny G-string. Laid out between them were piles of various denominations of dollars and sundry foreign currency, large numbers of coins, all sorts of business and other cards and assorted papers and oddments.

'What's the total?' He was asking Lucinda, who was writing it all in a little notepad, she had taken from the bedside table.

'We've got over four thousand dollars, unfortunately mostly in ones and fives!' She placed them to one side. 'Umpteen million Mexican pesos, which are better value as toilet paper, quite a few five and ten pound notes, several forged twenties, some francs and marks. Oh! And I think this is a rouble note.' She gave it to him to check. 'About half a bucket of small change, of which most are quarters...'

'I suppose we could put those in fruit machines.'

'Yes, but we might win more of the ruddy stuff!' She nudged him across the bed with her foot. 'Then it gets interesting.' She held up a selection of credit and business cards. 'What do we do with these? I've even got a Gold AMEX card!'

'It's not mine is it?' She shook her head. 'Suppose we just have to send them back to the companies. We could use the business cards for a mailing list to develop your career!'

'How about these then?' She held up a packet of condoms. 'From what I've seen, they would be far too large for you!'

'I hope they haven't been used.' He started putting the folding money into a plastic bag, intended for any laundry. 'What are you doing with all this money?'

'It was a charity performance, so it'll be going to a refuge for battered wives.' She paused. 'Is that alright by you?'

'Of course, you earned it. I was just an unwilling spectator and participant!' She threw one her shoes at him and missed.

***

'I don't know about you, Lucinda, but I'm getting a bit tired. And I'm hungry. Would you like to have a picnic?'

'A picnic!' She was doing a bad impersonation of Edith Evans and Lady Bracknell. 'A picnic at this hour in Las Vegas! It's dark and cold outside.'

'All we need is some smoked salmon, perhaps a crab or two, some salads, champagne, fresh strawberries and anything else we fancy! This is Las Vegas isn't it, where anything and everything you want is available at any time of the day.' He got off the bed and walked the few steps to where she was sitting, and bowed and took her hand in the true manner of the English gentleman. 'Lucinda, my dear. I'm formally inviting you to my special indoor picnic for two. Do you accept?'

Lucinda turned towards him and stretched her legs, so that she was kneeling on the bed and kissing him hard and deeply, probing every recess of his mouth with her tongue. As she drew back she spoke. 'I would be honoured! That would be lovely!'

***

'I've been thinking about how little, I know about you, compared to what's in your computer about me!' The best Laurent Perrier rose champagne had arrived and they were sitting sipping it together on the bed. 'All I know, is that you came from Canterbury, where you lost your virginity at Pony Club. You work for an unusual company in Las Vegas and like me you lost your partner in an accident. Not much is it!' He thought further. 'And where did you perfect that amazing act?'

She turned and kissed him. 'You liked it! Did it excite you? Did it frighten you?'

'Yes, I loved it and I would have loved to have been up there with you! It must be wonderful to have everything in your life hanging by a thread. And all that power.' She cuddled in towards him, resting her head on his shoulder. 'But, when you fell at the beginning, I thought you were one very stupid young lady, trying to have one over on an arrogant boss and his friends!' He smiled, as he realised like everybody else he had been totally fooled. 'You frightened me rigid and took me in completely!'

'It never fails to frighten, when they think you're an amateur!' She reached up and kissed him again. 'You hear of kids, who run away to the circus, wanting to be clowns, wild animal trainers or trapeze artists, but you seldom ever meet one. Well you have now! I was sixteen, when I ran away from Felixstowe Ladies College, A-levels and a possible place at Oxford and joined Chipperfields Circus. Remember them?'

'A-levels or Chipperfields?'

She ignored him and continued. 'I had always been a very good gymnast and I always loved to show off. Add to that the fact that I think I have a slight masochistic streak and a death-wish. So the romance, spectacle and thrill of the circus was a very strong magnet that drew me to the danger of the trapeze. I was always going to at least try it once!'

'What did your parents think?'

She shrugged. 'My father was in the Army and I hadn't seen him since I was four! Mother as mother's do went berserk and hairless!'

'Parents are always the curse of the children! Or is it the other way round!' He laughed cynically. 'I take it you were spectacularly good on the trapeze, otherwise she wouldn't come ten thousand miles to baby-sit.'

'I was good, but not that good!' She continued. 'I'd started too late to be really great, but I earned a living and I enjoyed Chipperfields. But then I got approached by an agent, who said they needed a trapeze artist for six months at Circus Circus, here in Las Vegas.'

'I take it he was a crook and you found yourself chained in a brothel working for table scraps or trapped in the house of some evil sex-maniac.'

She hit him playfully, with one of the many pillows. 'No, neither! Alan is a very nice man, who's incidentally a friend of Russ' father.' He started to interrupt, but she stopped him. 'Anyway, to cut a long story short, I did two and a half years on the trapeze in the casino with no upsets and then one night getting out of bed, I tripped and badly broke my arm.' He laughed.

'Yes, I know!' She was laughing with him. 'Still it was the only and best break I ever had.' They both laughed together at a joke she had told many times and kissed again. 'Now, now! Do you want to hear the rest of my life story.' He indicated for her to continue. 'The manager didn't have a problem in the show, as there are always spare acts floating around in Vegas hoping for the main chance!' More laughter. 'But he was desperately short of a personable lady to escort a very important foreign high-roller and his wife around the town. You know the sort of thing. Organise trips and shows. Nothing too taxing or difficult!'

'He obviously felt that someone as beautiful as you, was an asset that should be exploited.'

'Absolutely! Being English and good-looking didn't hurt at all!' She knelt up, fluffed her hair and preened herself to display all of those perfect assets, before settling back on his shoulder. 'Within a year, I was running the visitors and hospitality at another casino, and as they say the rest is history. When Russ was putting Zyzzx together, his father, Jim, who I'd met and obviously impressed a few times, suggested that I do for Zyzzx, what I'd done for the casino and keep the customers happy. I've been with them since they started, a Director and shareholder for almost three and I can honestly say, I've enjoyed every minute.'

***

'So you gave up the trapeze and settled down?'

'Not completely, as you saw. Once you've flown, it's part of your blood, so I have a complete setup in the garden at home, like others have pools and gymnasia and I use it to keep fit.' She pinched her body and moved his hands up and down her leg to show it did not carry excess weight in any of the wrong places. 'As you saw, I still do the occasional show for charity. All bookings are gratefully accepted, as Zyzzx might go bust!'

'Not much chance of that! So when's the next performance?'

'In three months, there's a load of company lawyers and their wives having a convention at Caesar's Palace and to finish the week off, they're holding a big charity ball. Now an organiser's wife, who I've known for some years back, can't come, so I'll go as his pneumatic bimbotic escort and act absolutely appallingly, getting very drunk.'

'Isn't that dangerous?' He was concerned for her.

'No, don't worry about me! When I do this, I always sit at the top table and the waiters watch like hawks and only give me a special fruit concoction, that looks like wine, but tastes terrible. So hopefully there's no way, I can make a mistake!' He pulled her in tight in a gesture of protection and kissed her. 'A friend I work with starts the show, by doing a few swings and then falling badly into the net, which of course breaks spectacularly and drops her apparently injured to the floor.'

'I've seen so many variants of this, clowns with cars and I even saw an onion seller and a light aircraft.'

'You're getting it! It's a very old circus routine' She gave him a sip of her champagne and then took one herself. 'I usually swear and say what a bunch of fucking idiots they all are and while they're trying to repair the net, I climb up in a very sexy, sequinned, long dress slashed up both sides and down the front to the waist and start swinging wildly in circles. You saw the start of the first trick tonight. Normally, I complete it by fighting the dress as it comes over my head and stripping it off!'

'Do you do it very often?'

'Perhaps, two maybe three times a year, as I don't want too many to see it more than once.' She cuddled tight up to him. 'I'll arrange so that you can see the full show, one day. You might even like to come to my farewell performance?

'When's that?'

'New Year's Day in two thousand and twenty-three!' He gasped. 'Alan, my agent, has already booked Caesar's Palace for me and he'll be there come what may. He'll be ninety-one!'

***

'But what about Russ? And the undressing for shows such as COMDEX?' He thought for a moment. 'Not that I object too much about the latter! But then I'm getting that extra special personal service!'

She hit him again with the pillow, before continuing. 'I'll admit Russ is a problem. He creates a company, where togetherness and efficiency are watchwords, with loads of happy people, who work hard together to build something they believe in, then his behaviour starts to destroy it. We've lost some good people, because they didn't like his attitude, the sexist remarks and the constant invitations to his bed. He's married you know, and I think he treats her abominably and much worse than my deceased ever treated me! And he was awful!'

'I can't say I like the man!' He was thinking about his future relationships with Zyzzx. 'What's the father like?'

'Jim's a superb old man, fit as a flea and sharp as a nut! Trouble is he's got the major shareholding and he lets Russ, who's his only son and the apple of his eye, have virtually a free hand.'

'Don't you feel sometimes you want to get rid of Russ?' The question was direct and he knew that if the answer was what he expected, then he had the beginnings of a plan to maximise the price of his software and Medusa.

'Of course, most of us would. He's got his good points; finance and perhaps the odd idea, but the company runs itself now and quite frankly he's out of his depth and we don't need him any more. Sad, but he's got much worse as there's been less and less for him to do. But as we're all only small shareholders, who can muster only about twenty-five percent, we really can't do much, while he still has his father's ear and protection.'

He smiled at the better than expected answer and also as he realised the depth of her talents. 'So as well as being beautiful, gorgeous, red-haired, perfect, a brilliant trapeze artist, a superb business woman, you're also at least a dollar millionairess! So why do you bother to follow Russ' whims and undress for the punters at this Exhibition.'

'Who said it was his idea?' She was almost angry. 'Remember, I run Customer Support. My background is show business, entertainment and giving the customer what he wants. All the sexy dressing and the shows on the stand are my ideas and we refine and develop them year by year. Remember too, I have a rule, never to ask any of my staff to do anything, that I wouldn't do!'

Copyright 1999 by Ewart Higgins