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CHAPTER FOUR
Max
I look down at this little lollypop girl sleeping naked on the bed next to me and try to figure out how in the world it all happened. I mean, I guess I’m used to women throwing themselves at me. When you hold a seminar with a bunch of professional women far from home in hotel rooms, a number of them are looking for consequence-free fun. I never expect it here, though.
And I never expect it from someone like Daisy.
Nothing I do that makes me desirable to the women who usually want me appeals to her. I mean, she’s not blown away by my business knowledge or operational wisdom. I don’t even think she knows about that unless for some strange reason I’m a topic of conversation for her and Gwen. More to the point, the girls who like me when they aren’t professionals are usually attracted to my wealth or power or because they know my watch costs twelve-thousand dollars or my suit is bespoke tailoring.
Something like five hours after, I can still feel her. I don’t understand that at all, but I don’t mind still feeling her. I look over her petite frame. I look at how her waist slopes up to her hip and then… Well, this girl is perfect. I guess one of the most incredible things about her, what I really find unbelievable, is the complete look of innocence on her face.
I don’t mean childlike innocence, although I guess someone could say it’s like that. What I mean is, this girl has absolutely no… guile. That’s the word. She sees things plainly and simply and doesn’t read into anything. She experiences whatever is right in front of her and doesn’t appear interested at all in doing anything other than that. It’s really breathtaking.
She doesn’t care.
I mean, that makes her seem callous and I don’t mean that.
A better way to put it is that I think she’s sleeping happily and peacefully and she won’t do anything like what I’m doing. She enjoys what she enjoys. She enjoyed me. She doesn’t need to analyze it, figure it out, or try to determine whether or not there’s a tomorrow. I imagine she’s had a number of morning after experiences but I’m willing to bet that not a single damned one of them has ever been awkward. I glance at my cell phone. Too early to get up and too late to sleep.
I sleep anyway.
When I wake, my lollypop girl is gone. She’s arranged the lollipops, though. They spell out, SEE YOU LATER and she’s arranged a big heart around the words. I stare at them there on the floor and laugh a long, hard, good laugh. I don’t stop laughing for a while and then I finally get up, sidestep the lollipops, and make my way to the shower to jumpstart my day. As the water flows over me, Daisy’s face fills my mind. Hell, I’m still seeing her face and mind an hour later as I make my way to the little temporary office space I’m using.
Today is another light day since my next consulting gig doesn’t start until next Monday. I have only a few more emails to check, so when I finish, I decide to spend the rest of the day working on my process management book.
It’s a pet project of mine that I hope to publish within the next few years. I’m not really in any rush, though. I’m more interested in making the book accurate and helpful than publishing it quickly and that desire, along with the fact that I must do most of the writing in my spare time, means it will be a while before it’s prepared for publishing.
I work on a chapter entitled, The Red Bead Experiment: How Focusing on the Process can Improve Results. It’s not a particularly exciting name and I make a mental note to ask the editor to help me with that when I get to that point.
The chapter itself is exciting, at least if you’re involved in business or operations. It talks about an illustrative experiment created by W. Edwards Deming—the father of Total Quality Management and by far my most revered business icon. The experiment is designed to illustrate the ineffectiveness of management that is focused on results and not process and it’s an example I use in all of my consulting gigs.
It's counterintuitive to operate by treating results as variable and not completely predictable. In fact, part of what I love about the experiment is that it fascinates me that what I and most others would assume is the most important indicator of a successful operation must be treated as essentially unpredictable.
I wonder if that’s what attracts me to Daisy—that unpredictable nature of hers that refuses to live in a box no matter how much I want it to. For sure, her free spirit engages my analytical mind as much as her body engages my physical desire. Could that be why I can’t stop thinking about her, even though she’s nothing at all like the kind of little girl I thought I would be attracted to?
I wrap up work on the chapter and decide to have a couple of drinks before heading back to the hotel. I head to a bar near the temporary office and order an old-fashioned. As I sip the drink, my phone buzzes. It’s my friend Cliff. I smile and answer with, “Hello, butthead.”
“Hello… What’s the other guy’s name again?”
I laugh. “I don’t know. I was just thinking about you and that’s the word that came to my mind.”
“Ha ha,” he says. “So, how’s life in a small town treating you? Have you ripped all of your hair off out of frustration at the laid-back country lifestyle?”
I chuckle and reply, “No, actually, I’m enjoying it a lot.”
“Really!” he says. “Has some pretty little flower child stolen your heart and changed your worldview?”
I smile. “I have a story to tell you about that, later.”
“Later? What’s wrong with now?”
“Later,” I say. “How have you been?”
We engage in some small talk and I resist his repeated attempts to ask about my mysterious flower child. When we hang up, I pay my bill and head back to the hotel.
My flower child is waiting for me in my room. She wears short cutoff jean shorts and a t-shirt that seems specially designed to remind me how perfect her breasts are. She smiles at me and says, “How about round two, Daddy?”
