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Innuendo
by The Common Loon

The late-morning sunlight cracked through his barely-open eyelids, and Mike immediately buried his face in a pillow. A chorus of clanging bells pealed in his hazy brain, echoing from ear to ear. He massaged his temples wearily in an attempt to soothe the buzzing, ringing ache behind his tired eyes. Slowly he ran his tongue across his parched lips and took a deep breath to make sure his lungs still worked.

Something was different about this hangover, and as his mind gradually came to life again, Mike wished desperately that he knew what it was. Lazily turning onto his side and reaching a limp arm across his body, he groped for, and found, his nightstand and alarm clock, which he decided not to read. At least he was home. He searched the other side of the queen bed with his foot, and found it was vacant. Mike smirked at his presumptiveness, and exhaled slowly while relaxing his tired, stiff neck and back. As he sank into his pillow, snippets of memories, fragments of emotions, and all-too-vague remembrances filtered back through his mental fog, their lack of coherence and order making them frustratingly useless.

Pulling the rumpled bedsheets, mostly relegated to the floor after a night of tossing and turning, back over himself, he reclined with his hands behind the cage of chattering squirrels that had replaced his head and thought long and hard. The harder he thought, the more his mind began to cloud over again, and each time he reached out to grasp a glimmering hint of recollection, it vanished into the void like a mirage in the shimmer of the summer sun. He had just decided to give up thinking about it when he slipped back into the blissful sleep from which he had come...

The nightclub had been Mike's dream for as long as he could remember, and watching it come together over the last six months, Mike felt a thrilling rush of anticipation not unlike that which expecting fathers must feel, he thought. Restored and beautifully refinished maple floors stretched far and wide under foot, newly reupholstered leather-and-brass stools sat behind an intricately inlaid bar counter with a top so well lacquered it rivaled the mirror behind the back wall, an elegant dining area sat adjacent to a checkerboard dance floor and small elevated stage... this place was Mike's baby. And its due date was Friday, which Mike couldn't believe was tomorrow!

Mike had just finished taking delivery of the last of the supplies they'd need to start business. He and his chef lugged cartons of vegetables and fresh cuts of meat and fish into the industrial-size refrigerator of the professionally appointed kitchen, and heaved oversized jars of condiments and spices onto shelves above the brand-new stainless-steel counters. The beverages, having been the first order of business long ago, had been set up in and behind the bar since before its lacquer was even dry. Mike collapsed into an old overstuffed, metal-riveted leather chair by the entryway and took stock. Everything was behind schedule, but he had stopped worrying about that. There'd be lots of time tomorrow afternoon before they opened their doors to iron out last-minute details. The important pieces - food, drinks, a live jazz combo, and the staff - were in place, and everything else could be micromanaged hours before the grand opening.

Grand opening? Mike snapped to attention suddenly as he realized that, despite his radio and newspaper advertisements, his new club might be too nondescript to capture the eyes of passersby! He'd been so busy with the essentials that he hadn't even considered opening-night promotions: searchlights, banners, special discounts - he hadn't thought any of that through! He jumped to his feet and found his business partner in the kitchen seasoning an iron skillet.

"Mike, you've gotta have a drink or something," Brian calmly assured him. "So we don't have a big banner hanging out front. So what? We're not that kind of place, remember? We barely even need to advertise - you know we'll be the only upscale club in town. We'll be turning people away tomorrow, promotion or no promotion."

"Yeah, you're right," Mike conceded. Maybe he was being too anxious. Then again... "I tell you what: I'll just stop by that decorating shop on my way home and see what I can do."

"All right, but keep it understated. We're not a strip club," laughed Brian. Anything to soothe Mike's cold feet, he thought. "Just go ahead and leave, go home, and get some rest. I've got everything under control here tonight."

"They're only open a little while longer... all right. I'll be in tomorrow morning, Brian." Mike retrieved his overcoat from the coat rack in the corner and threw it on as he burst out the front door to his silver Mercedes, the payments for which would depend largely on the success of his club, he fretted, and pulled out onto the busy avenue bathed in the glow of streetlights. A dozen blocks later he drove into the parking lot of a long eyesore strip-mall, parked directly in front of PartyPro, turned off his engine and took a deep breath as he stared inside at the bright fluorescent lights of the party shop. He felt a bead of sweat run down the back of his neck. What was he doing? What was he about to do?

Mike never discussed it with anyone anymore, but ever since his youth he'd never felt normal: he had something that nobody else had as far as he could tell, and he would give anything to get rid of it. That thing was a persistent and, he knew, irrational, fear of balloons. His childhood was full of painful memories of birthday parties that he either had to leave or skip altogether; school dances spent largely in the men's room; New Year's Eve celebrations where he never stayed until midnight; things nobody should ever have to deal with, much less at a young, carefree age. Fortunately, some of the fear lessened as he grew older, but enough of it remained that Mike was still self-conscious and nervous whenever he was around balloons, especially if there was any chance that they might pop. But there was another side to Mike's anxiety, and that was the strange feeling that had gradually replaced his fear in his adolescence...

It was right about the time he learned about the birds and the bees that Mike noticed that the exhilarating fight-or-flight response he knew all too well when he was around balloons was not only scary but also exciting at the same time. Paradoxically, he eventually began to experiment with balloons on his own, just to feel that heart-pounding rush; and finally, he developed a private fascination and attraction to his latex toys. His earliest sexual fantasy had been to see cute girls he knew playing with balloons, even though he admitted to himself that he'd probably be too frightened to enjoy it. Still...

Mike shook his head and snapped out of his reverie long enough to notice that it was five minutes till nine. He jumped out of his car and marched purposefully through the double glass doors of the shop. As he swung the doors open briskly, the breeze they whipped up stirred several bouquets of balloons on either side to rustle, sway, and bounce against each other. A dozen crystal-colored helium balloons, 11" by design but nearly two inches larger the way they were filled, tugged at their ribbons and slowly swung back into the position they had before Mike had disturbed them. The hollow bumping noises they made against each other make Mike cringe inwardly and lose some of his resolve. He stood stock-still for a few seconds and surveyed the rest of the store. A few helium balloons tethered to the cash register had obviously been filled that morning, and now drifted slowly up and down, dancing just inches from the floor after losing much of their helium. Some air-filled 16" balloons, still quite tight but looking old and oxidized, were tied into clusters attached to the wall behind the counter, and a helium tank covered with a bright blue-and-white striped apron was chained to that same wall, next to a strange plastic bucket-like device with three nozzles pointing upwards on top. The store was eerily quiet, too quiet for Mike, who expected one of those balloons to pop any second. He was about to turn and leave when he heard a swishing sound coming from one of the aisles.

"Hello?" He offered timidly.

She emerged from the aisle holding a carpet sweeper, but Mike wouldn't have noticed if it were an assault rifle.

"Sorry, I know it's almost closing time, but I..." His speech drifted off as he rapidly lost his train of thought, his eyes taking over for his mouth for the moment. She was a stunning young woman - Mike started with her face, marked with tiny innocent and sympathetic creases on her otherwise smooth forehead and cheek, a pair of deep green eyes and thin, smiling lips, all framed by a glistening shock of dark brown hair that barely reached her shoulders and reflected in the light to look reddish. It just got better from there: her tall frame was very lean and svelte, with impossibly long legs hidden behind a snug, well-worn pair of light-blue jeans and a gracefully shaped and curved upper body which was nestled in a lightweight ribbed pink scoop-neck shirt that, had Mike been looking there, would have showed him her long, toned arms emerging from the short sleeves. Instead, he kept his eyes facing forward to take in her young C-cup breasts, coated in a thin layer of cotton whose ribbing was strained and stretched much wider to accommodate their round shape, unlike the part which mostly covered her flat stomach closely and loosely, leaving a stripe of fair skin just above the waistline of her jeans. She couldn't have been less than four years younger than Mike, who was just 26 himself.

"What I mean to say is..." Mike faltered again, then decided that this wouldn't be an ordinary trip to the store. After all, he was here to ask for balloons, something he had never asked anyone for in his life! And who better to ask than this young vixen that was now, he noticed, inspecting him in turn?

"Can... I help you?" She ventured after an awkward pause.

"My name's Mike," he blurted out, "and I'm getting ready to open a new club downtown tomorrow."

"You mean McMichael's," she said. So she knew about it! That didn't mean much, but Mike's heart did a flip nonetheless.

"Yeah, that's the place. Anyway, we open tomorrow and I just realized that we don't have any decorations for our grand opening. Would you be able to..."

But she cut him off, throwing up her hands and laughing grimly. "Hold on a second, Mike, that'd be real tough to fit into the schedule. We normally work on at least two weeks' advance notice."

"Oh," Mike said dejectedly. "It's just that we're really in a bind and we haven't even got a streamer to our name." He was preparing to pour on a flirty guilt trip to this woman whose name he didn't even know yet when she beat him to it.

"Well, Mike, I tell you what: tell me what you need, and I'll tell you what it'll take for you to get it." She raised one eyebrow and peered at him expectantly.

"Um, okay..." Mike started, still registering the double entendre. "Well, nothing major. I just want to go a little understated, not presumptuous. New customers are hard enough to come by, you know."

"Understated, huh? I can appreciate that. So what does understated mean to you?"

"Well, just a few..." He indicated the balloon bouquets with an absent-minded, nervous flick of the wrist.

She caught his anxiety, and decided to play around with him a little. "A few... what?" She smiled broadly, leaning toward Mike on the edge of the counter and sweeping her cascading hair behind her ear with one hand.

"Well, you know..." Mike had not even uttered the word for years, and it sounded unnatural to him as he said it, as if he were speaking a foreign language: "...balloons."

"Oh, right. Bal-loons," she smirked, lingering on the last syllable. It couldn't have been just the fact that his club was behind schedule that made him so anxious, she thought. But what were the odds...

"Yeah, that. Just some of those, and maybe some streamers for over the dance floor and the stage."

"You have a dance floor? I love to dance," she lied. Actually, she couldn't dance her way out of a paper bag, but she enjoyed telling people she could. It just sounded cool.

"Yep, and live music tomorrow," Mike volunteered. "I expect it to be jam-packed."

"Wow, sounds like fun. I'll have to come just for that," she half-inquired.

"Hopefully, we'll have live music regularly, so you'll have to come every weekend," Mike insinuated. "So, what's it going to take to get you into my club for this job?"

"How about putting me on the guest list for the evening?"

"Well, we weren't planning on having one, but I could give you a seat in our VIP lounge if you want."

"Ooh, VIP," she mocked, another grin spreading across her face that made her eyes narrow to accommodate her rose-tinted cheeks. "You're on. Put me down at eight o'clock."

"Put... who down?" Mike played coy, returning the favor. She hadn't told him her name was Shannon yet. "All right, Shannon, eight o'clock it is. " Mike swallowed hard and ventured the question he really wanted to ask, as obliquely as possible: "Plus one?"

She didn't even seem to think about it. "Yeah." It hit Mike like a ton of bricks. Of course she had a boyfriend. How could someone that gorgeous not be spoken for? He had been leaning on the front counter, but he pushed away from it and stood straight again, feeling his shoulders fall. This was a mistake...

"All right, then," he said nervously before turning on his heel and heading for the door briskly.

"Wait, Mike," Shannon called after him softly and liltingly, stopping him two paces from the front door. Mike knew that tone of voice well. He stopped and turned back around, expecting to either be asked out or turned down right then. Instead: "We need to discuss color schemes and prices."

"Oh, right, of course," he fake-laughed. He re-joined her at the counter as she pulled out a color chart that read "Metallics and Pastels" on top.

"What color are your walls, fixtures, floors, that kind of thing?" Shannon asked, turning more businesslike. Mike told her. "Sounds classy," she said. "Do you have any dartboards?"

"Dartboards?" Mike asked nervously.

"Relax, just a joke. Darts and balloons... you know, they don't get along very well." She could see Mike grimace and squirm, and she found it highly amusing. "Anyway, with lots of wood and leather, I think we'll go with black, copper, and crystal clear," she said, pointing out each color in the chart to Mike, who was staring distantly out the window. "How does that sound? Understated enough?"

"Sounds good to me," he said half-heartedly. He no longer cared about anything other than leaving this bad idea behind him.

"Sounds good? You didn't even look at the colors! Maybe I'd better show you what they look like first." Before Mike could say anything, she reached over into a rack of plastic fishbowls full of uninflated balloons and produced one each of black, copper, and crystal-clear. Just as quickly, she had the black one wrapped around one nozzle of the plastic bucket device, and it began to fill with air rapidly.

Mike instinctively put his hands up to his ears, then caught himself and nonchalantly pretended to scratch one earlobe while smothering the other in the shoulder of his wool overcoat. The black balloon between her fingers grew upwards, rounded, and developed a neck within the span of two seconds. She was standing over the bucket so that the balloon pointed out at an angle, one side pressed up against her tight stomach. The neck grew for a split second and just as Mike was about to plug his ears, Shannon stopped the airflow and, to Mike's confused surprise, let the balloon deflate between her fingers. She placed the balloon over the nozzle of the helium tank this time and filled it again. It grew to the same size as before, but she kept going until it had developed a neck and its body was even wider and longer than before. She took it off the tank and tied a ribbon into a knot in its neck expertly, holding it under her arm to squash it gingerly (but too rough for Mike) against her plump breast as she did so. The balloon squeaked and screeched as she did so, and Mike nearly ran out of the store, but she successfully completed her task, and was rewarded with a tight, overinflated, necked-up 11" black balloon glistening in the light and tugging at the end of a black ribbon which she clipped on the edge of the counter.

Mike's heart was in his throat. A thin haze of sweat formed on his brow, and he dried his palms against his coat. Shannon regarded him bemusedly. "So... that's the black," she said after another awkward pause.

"Very nice," Mike lied. It wasn't very nice. It was torture, and he probably had to stand there while she did it two more times! It might have been different if she didn't have a boyfriend...

"You okay?" She asked. "You look a little pale."

"No, I'm all right," he lied again. "So... what about this one?" He picked up the clear balloon in spite of himself. So what if she's not available? He was getting a private balloon show!

Once more, she quickly inflated the clear balloon first with air, until it nearly burst, then deflated it slowly and filled it with helium to a size that was larger even than the black one. The balloon was ethereal, nearly invisible, as it bobbed at the end of its ribbon, bumping with hollow ringing noises against the black balloon. Both balloons were impossibly tight and glassy, and after she performed the same ritual with the metallic copper balloon it was too, although its shiny metallic latex made it the smallest balloon of the three.

Mike's nerves were ragged, having expected each of the three balloons to pop and not yet persuaded that they still wouldn't, spontaneously, as he stood there. "Looks good to me," he said wearily, looking back and forth from her eyes to the time-bombs floating above her head.

"I know," she smiled and squinted. "So, how many?"

"Oh," he was caught off-guard. The fewer the better, he thought, at this point. "Just a dozen or so."

"What?" Shannon blanched and shook her head. "Your place is too big for 'just a dozen or so,' even a dozen of each color!" She cocked her head to one side and leaned further still across the counter, well aware that the collar of her shirt now hung down a little too loosely, and she could feel the warm breeze from the ceiling heating vent tickling down the front of her shirt and across the skin of her breasts and stomach. She dropped her voice a shade. "Besides, if I'm going to take this job, it has to be worth my while..." She smirked again, but Mike was oblivious to the entire show she was trying so hard to put on.

"Okay, then, whatever you think is best," he deferred, distractedly. "We're opening at six o'clock tomorrow, so come any time before then."

Shannon was a little miffed. Was this guy blind? She tried to catch his eyeline, but his gaze was distant and uninterested. "I'll need a couple hours to get everything set up. See you at three," she said finally. "We'll decide on quantities then, and go from there."

"Great," he said, not meaning it. "See you tomorrow. Thanks for being so accommodating." He turned to leave again.

Once again she stopped him. "Mike?" She asked in that sweet, innocent tone of voice she'd used before. Now it was coming, Mike thought. He turned to see her standing in front of the counter, her beautiful body in full view again, holding the ribbons of the balloons she'd just inflated to such an enormous size. "You can take these home with you if you want," she suggested, unconsciously arching her back to fill out her chest even more. "Compliments of the house."

Mike took the ribbons from her, oblivious to her final attempt at flirtation, thanked her politely, and carefully walked out the door to his Mercedes, making sure the balloons didn't graze the door jamb. He reached into the back seat of his car, ran his hand across the ceiling to make sure there were no sharp points, and loaded the three tight globes inside. They spread across the ceiling, sitting horizontally and dangling their ribbons down to obstruct his rearward vision. He drove the whole way home hunched over the steering wheel, expecting a random pop at any moment that never came.

Back at his house, Mike tied the tight balloons to one of his kitchen chairs, as far away from where he'd have to sleep as possible, poured himself a short glass of Irish cream on ice, and finished it before he reached the bedroom.

The balloons were fogged over and sitting on the floor, shriveled, the next morning when Mike got out of the shower and went to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. He sat in the chair to which he'd tied their ribbons and with a spoon in his right hand, he pulled the crystal-clear balloon off the floor by its knot with his left. He held it at arm's length, still half-expecting it to pop despite its soft, cloudy, shrunken shape, and admired it. These balloons were high quality, he thought to himself, bigger and with better colors than the ones he got at the drug store every so often.

He noticed that the knots she'd tied in the three balloons weren't very tight, and the ribbon through them was situated so that... Mike put down the spoon and grabbed a length of ribbon on each side of the knot, pulling it to open up and undo the tie. He let the balloon deflate, feeling the cool helium breeze on his face. The breeze slowed down, leaving a pale, distended and wrinkled bag of rubber. Mike had never seen an uninflated balloon that thin and stretched from tip to top before, mainly because he'd never had the courage to blow one up that big himself. He held the balloon up to the light and inspected it, took a deep breath, and blew long and hard into the...

A sudden noise made Mike jump and put his hands to his ears instinctively. The balloon he was blowing up flew away with a raspberry noise, and the phone rang again. Mike caught his breath, felt his heart leaping out of his chest, and retrieved the limp balloon, putting it on the kitchen table.

It was Brian at the club. Fifteen minutes later, Mike joined him.

The place was chaotic, but nothing Mike hadn't anticipated. Chefs, busboys, and waitstaff ran around, straightening and cleaning and arranging; the bartender checked his inventory; and sound techs ran checks on the sound boards and speakers on either side of the stage. Mike stood back and drank it in a few seconds at a time, the rest being occupied with watching the clock tick closer and closer to 3:00 when the balloon girl would arrive. Mike wasn't sure whether to be eagerly anticipating or dreading her--she was a goddess to be sure, but the rubber decorations she would bring with her held god-like sway over Mike as well. And who knows how many balloons she'd decide she needed to blow up while she was here? It might be different if she didn't blow them up so big and tight, Mike thought, but then again, it might be different if he had any chance of seeing the voluptuous body underneath those clothes...

He snapped to just in time to have a crate of salt-and-pepper shakers shoved into his chest. "C'mon Mike, make yourself useful," Brian scolded. Mike found the stores of spices in the kitchen and spent the next half-hour meticulously loading shakers and trying not to sneeze. Finally he took as many shakers in his hands as he could and made his way toward the dining room.

He had his back to the swinging door when he felt its edge hit him squarely between the shoulder blades. He lurched forward and a pepper-shaker he was holding shattered on the tile floor of the kitchen. Mike swore and spun around.

"Say, Mike, there's someone here for you," Rick the brawny maitre d' (don't call him a bouncer, he says) told him. Mike's heart skipped a beat. His nose tickled as he set down his armload of salt and pepper and made for the door.

"Mike!"

Finally he sneezed.

"Well, good to see you again too." He looked up at Shannon, then at the clock. It was only 2:30! She had a curious raised-eyebrow smirk on her face, as you'd expect from someone who'd just been nearly sneezed on.

Today she was dressed down: her dark hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail and she wore no jewelry other than a thin silver necklace. A faded pair of pink sweatpants hung loosely around her long legs but held her thighs and butt snugly, making a beautifully round fuzzy bulge in back that was half-covered by her too-small grey T-shirt with an athletic logo on the front which was tight around her firm breasts but hung loosely around her stomach. It, too, was well-worn, and the cuffs on the sleeves and collar were obviously cut off with scissors and ragged. The wide collar threatened to slide off her shoulder and down her arm, and afforded Mike a glimpse of a red bra strap that disappeared down below the collar and over her shoulder to her back. Pink was definitely her color; Mike's eyes felt numb from her sheer beauty.

Mike came to, and apologized profusely. "I wasn't expecting you till three," he explained.

"I always come early," she said. "It takes longer than you think to do it right. You can't just do it fast and expect it to be satisfying."

Was she talking about decorating? "Oh, I see," Mike said suspiciously. "All right, where should we begin?"

"You want to give me a hand?" She motioned out the door, and Mike followed her to a delivery van. She unchained a tall helium tank on a hand cart and rolled it down a ramp and into the club. Mike, seeing nothing else left in the back of the van, decided to check the passenger seat, where he found a shopping bag. He squeezed its side and felt rubber, so he grabbed it and walked back inside, setting it on the bar. Shannon passed him on his way in the door and returned with a canvas bag that looked quite heavy. She set it on the floor next to the helium tank with a thud. Mike took a bar stool, and Shannon produced a clipboard and pencil from the canvas bag, sitting down on the stool next to him. She placed the clipboard on the bar and leaned forward toward Mike, sliding her hands between her knees.

"So, what are you thinking?" Her voice was playful, not very businesslike.

An awkward pause. Mike needed a safe reply. "Um... what?"

"You know, what did you have in mind?"

Mike felt another sweat beginning to creep up on his forehead. "Well, I mean, you tell me. You're the expert," he suggested. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking balloons," she said, leaning closer to Mike, lowering her voice and doing the opposite with her eyebrows. "Lots of 'em."

Mike swallowed hard. "How many is a lot?" His voice nearly wavered, and he could feel a nervous lump deep in his throat.

Shannon finally took her eyes off his, only to quickly scan the surroundings. "You've got a big one here," she said. "It'll take at least a half-gross..."

Mike took a slow, deep breath. That wasn't too bad.

"...per color."

Mike grimaced, apparently visibly, since Shannon's smile disappeared momentarily. "What, no good?" She asked innocently.

"Sorry, I'm just not feeling very well," Mike said, and this was the truth. He didn't want to negotiate her down - she might feel like he was going cheap on her. Besides, it was a huge favor for her to be here on such short notice. "Whatever you think is best."

"Well," she breathed, "personally I think twice that much is 'best,' but then again, I love going over the top." She grabbed the paper bag Mike had brought in and hefted out three large poly bags, containing one gross each of black, copper, and crystal clear balloons, and plunked them in front of Mike on the bar. "Tell you what we'll do: we'll go to 72 each, and then we can decide whether or not to go all the way."

Mike's eyes furiously scanned the plastic bags. "Decorator balloons... helium quality... 12 inches..." He'd seen those words on bags of balloons before, but he knew that these would be so much bigger and better than any he'd bought before that their promise intoxicated him in a way no spirit underneath the counter on which they sat could hope to match.

It wasn't long before Shannon had sketched out a floor plan of the club and was plotting out arrangements. "A centerpiece bouquet at each table, that's 25 tables times six each, what - that's 50 of each color already. Then we could do some columns at the corners of the dance floor, and an arch over the stage. Figure two dozen for each column and another two dozen for a good string-of-pearls... 20 more of each color. That leaves only six more balloons if that's all we're doing. We could use those outside on either side of the entryway."

Mike's head was swimming at the thought of more than two hundred potential popping hazards floating around his club with patrons holding cigarettes and emboldened by alcohol never more than a couple feet away. At least no unruly children would be present, but children had nothing on drunken young adults, he reminded himself. What could he do? He couldn't very well leave his own grand opening, or spend it in the corner of the kitchen peeling potatoes! He had to be front and center, the owner of the establishment, meeting and greeting and pretending not to be notice when a balloon exploded and echoed off the hardwood floors two feet away! What was he thinking?

"Excuse me a minute," he said hurriedly and made for the restroom, Shannon's bemused gaze following him all the way.

Mike got to know the nearest sink very well, and after washing his face in as cold a water as he could stand, he looked himself in the mirror, trembling with anxiety, and decided not to go through with it. He'd thank her kindly, pay her for her time, and ask her if she could please take her equipment away.

Meanwhile, he heard the bustle of the staff continue. Dishes were clanking, the chef was whisking some vinaigrette, someone ran a vacuum cleaner for a few seconds... Mike regained his composure, dried off, straightened the collar of his open-necked dress shirt, and walked back towards the bar.

He stopped after one step. Shannon had already torn open the bag of black balloons and was holding one of them, inflated tightly down its neck, having just taken it off the nozzle of a paint-can-sized air inflator that, Mike realized, wasn't a vacuum cleaner after all.

Now, you don't put a ravishing woman in tight clothes in a bar full of middle-aged male waitstaff without attracting immediate attention, and those who were too preoccupied to notice before had now turned to see what the fuss was about. Rick the bounc-- err, maitre d'-- was now leaning behind the bar, apparently asking her questions about her "equipment"; Eduardo the experienced waiter was lifting the bags of balloons, admiring their deceptive weight; and Chef Emile had gone up front for a splash of white wine but had now forgotten why he'd left the kitchen. Mike couldn't take his eyes off the balloon whose neck she pinched, holding it upwards at waist-level as the guys marveled at it. Shannon noticed him emerge from the bathroom, and the three men flanking her caught her stare. Mike squirmed; now he had to get closer. He began to walk in exaggeratedly slow motion toward the group.

"I hope you don't mind me starting without you," she laughed, which elicited a knowing chuckle from Rick. She turned to Eduardo and Emile. "I always blow them up with air first to stretch them out. That way, they get bigger the next time and I can weed out any defective ones," she explained. She held the balloon up to the light by way of example and stretched what was left of the uninflated neck a couple times.

"Bigger the next time?" Emile asked. He was amused, and Shannon was clearly enjoying the attention. "How much bigger?"

A smile suddenly shot across Shannon's face as if she had been waiting for that question all her career. "Well, see for yourself." She tied the black balloon in its maximally tight state, a feat nearly impossible for most people but simple given her expertise, and handed the straining 13" globe to Emile, who held it between his palms, admiring its tightness. Shannon pulled another black balloon out of the bag and had it up to the air-inflator before Mike had even taken three more steps. He had overheard the conversation, though, so he took three more slow steps, this time in the opposite direction.

The new black balloon filled its round bulb within seconds, then began to lift upwards as the neck inflated. Eduardo nervously leaned away from it, and Emile shielded his eyes with the other balloon, but Shannon stopped when the inflated neck pushed on her fingers that were holding it onto the nozzle. The balloon swayed back and forth tautly, and she pulled it off the inflator, pinching its neck as she did so. "See, this one's about the same size as the one you're holding," she said to Emile, holding it up next to his for comparison. "Say, Mike, come look at..." She turned to invite Mike over again, but he was nowhere to be found. She shrugged.

Mike had heard the whir of the inflator subside, and opened the door of the restroom a crack to peer out. She was now deflating the balloon, and Mike knew what came next. A busboy came in, and Mike busied himself with washing his hands and straightening his collar.

"Now watch what happens the second time," Shannon said suspensefully. She placed the well-stretched black balloon back on the inflator and began anew. As the balloon became full and the neck began to grow again, she loosened her press on the nozzle and the airflow slowed. The balloon continued to grow until its neck once again pressed against her fingers. The neck was shorter than before, but the globe of the balloon seemed larger and more transparent. She didn't stop here, letting a slow flow of air into the shimmering black balloon for a couple seconds more as it appeared not to grow larger at all. Finally she took it off the inflator and just barely managed to tie a loose half-knot in its neck, there not being enough unstretched rubber for a full knot. The balloon was nearly gray in color now and had a pale sheen to it. It wavered back and forth as she held it by its knot.

Eduardo now had his fingers in his ears, with a wide grin underneath his thin mustache. Even Rick took a step back. Shannon held out her hand to Emile, who gave her the tight balloon he had been holding, and she held both balloons upside-down by their knots to compare.

"It does look bigger!" Emile exulted. Indeed, while the neck was a half-inch shorter, the body of the huge balloon she had just blown up was a good inch larger in diameter and length than the one directly from the bag. It also had a somewhat lighter color.

"Neat, huh?" Shannon gloated. "They can get even bigger than this if you stretch them more. Sometimes my co-workers and I have contests when business is slow."

"So who usually wins?" Asked Rick, for no other reason than to get her to turn towards him again and give him something to look at.

She looked out the top of her eyes at him as if it were a silly question. "Do I look like I would let anyone else win?"

"They can't get much bigger than that," Rick scoffed, but he hadn't meant for her to hear that. Nonetheless, she did, and Shannon had to accept this challenge.

It had been almost a minute since Mike had heard the inflator shut off, and he figured it was safe to return. He swung open the door to the restroom and was another step toward the bar when he saw it.

Shannon had the black balloon re-untied and had just put her lips up to the balloon to blow another breath. She got half a lungful into the trembling, squealing balloon, holding its neck like a megaphone between her cupped hands, when BANG! it suddenly popped, echoing off the walls and ceiling, making all three men jump and sending splinters of black latex flying everywhere. Shannon seemed completely unfazed, and she managed to say as innocently and coolly as possible, "Well, they get _that_ much bigger, anyway," and was rewarded with nervous laughter from Eduardo and Emile. The burst had momentarily distracted Rick, who resumed clandestinely staring at Shannon's rack.

Then everyone noticed Mike, who was walking unsteadily towards them. "Mike, you just missed it," Emile said as if to make him jealous.

"Yeah... too bad," Mike said quietly, trying desperately but failing to keep up appearances. He walked behind the bar, braced his hands against the counter and, avoiding eye contact with the group, took out a shot glass and a fifth of vodka. He had downed two ounces before he looked up. Moist palmprints beaded on the lacquer where his hands had been.

Mike felt a hand on his shoulder. "Boss, you all right?" It was Eduardo, who got no response. The party broke up, Emile finally remembering and taking a bottle of Gewürtztraminer back to the kitchen with him, leaving his black balloon on the bar and Mike and Shannon by themselves again.

Playtime was over. "I guess I should get on with it," Shannon said, and picked up the tight black balloon Emile had left behind, holding it between the long, unpainted fingernails of both hands, each one making a small indentation in the glistening latex that got deeper and deeper as she pressed, the balloon squealing desperately the whole time...

Shannon felt a warm, wet hand slap onto her arm. She looked over to see Mike, his head still hanging and his other hand still clutching a shot glass. She spared the balloon, releasing it to drift down to the floor behind the bar. She took his hand in both hers, and motioned with her head toward the other side of the room. He followed her, not bothering to look up until they were both in the women's restroom. She locked the door with a clack that make Mike jump. She backed him up against the tiled wall and leaned against it, bracing her hand right by his ear and leaning into him, her breasts brushing his chest as she did so. He didn't even notice, or if he did, he didn't seem to care.

"Mike, why didn't you say something?" She started, her voice low and sympathetic as she looked deeply into his eyes. Her face was an inch from his as her other hand held his chin to maintain eye contact.

A long pause. "About what?"

"You know what," she said dryly.

Mike opened his mouth to play dumb again, but her knowing look stopped him, and his shoulders drooped even further. He tried to look away, but her hand underneath his chin pulled him back.

"Listen, it's nothing to be ashamed about; I used to be the same way myself." Mike managed a skeptical look. "Yeah - I wouldn't go near balloons until I was in high school."

Mike was unconvinced. "Then what happened?"

"Well, let's just say I... grew out of it." This was not what Mike wanted to hear. "But I understand totally. Listen," she said, moving her hand fron under his chin to his cheek. "I'm sorry about what happened just now, I really am. But I promise it won't happen again. Can you trust me?"

Mike wanted desperately to trust her, but couldn't bring himself to say so.

"You know, it's harder to do than you think it is," she pressed, knowing which words to avoid. "The best quality ones almost never go by accident, either." Mike didn't like that "almost," and dropped his eyes from hers again. Her hand moved to his shoulder, and patted him once reassuringly. "Come on, let's get cracking. We've only got a couple hours."

Mike finally searched her eyes with his, and decided to trust her. He stood up off the wall, and to his surprise, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him briefly. He placed his palms on her firm back gently and felt her soft flesh behind her thin shirt press into him. She made for the door, the looked back over her shoulder at him with a playful smirk and narrowed eyes. "Come on. I'll let you watch for starters, but I bet you'll want to get in on the action yourself before too long."

He followed Shannon back to the bar and took a seat on a bar stool five spots away from where she sat, tearing open the remaining bags of balloons and spilling them out onto the bar.

"Is anyone going to be working behind the bar anytime soon?" She asked, mysteriously. Mike shook his head - the bartender had had everything set up weeks ago, and was now helping the kitchen staff organize. She seemed pleased with this answer, and proceeded to run her hand through the pile of crystal-clear balloons on the bar, spreading them out and counting out 72 of them, two by two. She dumped the rest into the canvas bag sitting at her feet, and repeated the exercise with the black and copper balloons.

Suddenly she shifted into work mode, and became a flash of speed working on the air inflator. Balloon after balloon was slapped onto the nozzle on top of the coffee-can-shaped device, and each sprang to life and filled up to its neck in less than five seconds. Gone was the care with which she had appeared to work before; now she was almost reckless, on auto-pilot. She took each one off the inflator and swung it under her arm and tied a quick knot in it that she didn't appear to pull tight. She tossed each tight, shiny balloon behind the bar and immediately began on the next one.

Mike watched with pure morbid fascination, expecting a pop at any second. He began slouched over the bar leaning away from her, but as one dozen went by, then two, then four, he began to realize that she may have been right, and he sat up straighter, watching her more closely with each balloon she expertly blew up. His every instinct, ingrained since he was a toddler, told him to excuse himself and go somewhere - anywhere but here - but something else kept him there. He knew she would understand if he left, but he found that he didn't even want to anymore...

She was automatic - grab a balloon, three seconds of whirring on the inflator, a quick tie, toss it behind the bar, repeat. Her ponytail flopped from shoulder to shoulder and her breasts rose and sagged bouncily as she turned back and forth from balloon pile to inflator, and underneath her thin sweatpants her round butt alternatingly tensed and relaxed, lifting and falling in a rhythm that positively entranced Mike, who couldn't decide which part of her to watch.

The pile of overfull balloons behind the bar was spreading. After three dozen the floor was invisible; after six dozen the pile was knee-deep, and she had finished with the pile of black balloons. She took a break and turned to face Mike. She was beginning to sweat a little, and her shirt was now doing its best to show off her perky pair of nipples. "How is it?" She asked Mike, with one hand on her chest, temporarily covering the inch-long slit of cleavage she had been proudly displaying all day.

Mike had to shake the sexual haze from his brain before answering positively. She excused herself to the women's bathroom, and in her absence Mike became even more curious. He walked over to the inflator she had been working for the last ten minutes and placed a hand on top of it. Several copper balloons were strewn on top of the canister. It, like Shannon, was warm from its efforts. Mike pressed down on the rubber nozzle on top, and the machine suddenly whizzed to life. He took his hand away startled, as if he'd just touched a hot stove, and turned to sit back down when he found Shannon standing over his shoulder.

"I knew you'd want in on this," she scolded, smiling. "It works better when you actually insert the nozzle, though. Want me to show you?"

Mike couldn't say no, and she turned him back around. He felt her arms slide underneath his armpits, then felt her warm, light breasts squash into his back. She took his hands in hers, and picked up a new crystal-clear balloon with his fingers as if she were giving him a golf lesson. She placed it over the nozzle.

"Now hold it tight down here," she indicated the rolled lip near the base of the nozzle, "and just press down gently. The harder you press, the faster it goes."

She began to lightly press his fingers down on the nozzle, when he tensed up. "Wait," he stopped suddenly. She didn't expect him to blow this balloon up as tight as she had done with all the others, did she? On his own, he never blew up any balloon more than half-full and still squishy. "How do I know when to stop?"

Shannon shook her head. "Haven't you been watching? Just do it like I showed you." Mike hadn't been watching the balloons very closely, but he couldn't tell her that.

He felt her press his fingers down, and the inflator sprang the balloon to life. It was going slower than when she was doing the work, but still too quickly for Mike. Emboldened by six dozen successes, though, he pressed harder and the inflating sped up. The balloon was still cloudy as reached full inflation. Mike could feel his heart beating in his throat, as well as in his crotch, as he was surrounded by a sexy woman pressed into him on one side and a tightening balloon on the other. The balloon quickly went from cloudy to transparent as the neck began to fill. Mike let up on the nozzle the instant a neck began to form. His fingers met resistance from hers as he did so.

"You're almost there," Shannon whispered in his ear. "Just a little further."

He swallowed hard and pressed the inflator nozzle gently. The nearly-invisible balloon wavered back and forth, its body inching upwards as its neck began to fill out. Mike felt inflated neck touch the tips of his fingers, and pulled up to stop the airflow. He leaned his head backwards, certain the balloon would pop. But no; it stood there impudently on the nozzle of the inflator, glistening brightly under the track lighting above the bar, swaying back and forth in the slight breeze blowing in through the open front door. Mike caught his reflection in the mirror behind the bar counter, and he could see himself with Shannon's head leaning on his shoulder and arms tucked under his, behind the clear balloon in the mirror's perspective but clearly visible. He also saw that Rick was pretending to be busy behind the maitre d' stand but was clearly watching him bemusedly, grinning and shaking his head jealously.

"You know how to tie?" Shannon inquired.

Mike shook his head. "I'm not very good at it."

"Well, we'll have to fix that," she said, and took the balloon off the inflator, tying it in front of him with what looked to Mike like an incomplete knot. "It's called a half-knot," she explained, and expertly untied it, pinching off the balloon's neck and handing it to Mike. "Your turn."

Mike stretched the neck gingerly and clumsily repeated her half-knot.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?" Shannon said as Mike threw the balloon onto the sea of black balloons behind the bar, a globe of nothing but reflected spots of light and a small knot.

She didn't pull away from Mike before she patted his chest with her palms a couple times, feeling his tight pecs. Mike blushed bright red.

"I'll let you get back to it," he stammered, and took a seat one stool closer to her than he had been. The temperature felt to him like it had risen ten degrees since she had given him his balloon lesson, and he got up to get himself a club soda when he remembered the fridge underneath the bar would be nearly inaccessible behind an ocean of black balloons that were now being rapidly joined by glassy, crystal-clear balloons on top. He sat back down to resume ogling Shannon as she dispatched with the pile of crystal-clear balloons in another ten minutes.

The pile of balloons behind the bar was now waist-high to Mike and almost that high to Shannon, whose long legs seemed almost disproportionate to her slender frame. She began on the metallic copper balloons, and by the time they were blown up tight they shone nearly as brightly as the metal itself.

By now, cooks were sticking their heads out of the kitchen to witness the gigantic pile of balloons forming behind the bar. As Shannon picked up the last limp copper balloon from the bar, she turned back to Mike.

"Last chance," she offered. "Don't let me finish by myself."

This time Mike practically jumped at the chance. He snatched the copper balloon from her hands and had it on the inflator in a flash. It grew quickly, and as the neck began to grow, pushing the globe higher and bigger, he slowed the airflow until by the time the neck reached his fingers it was barely a trickle. He took the balloon off the inflator and gingerly hugged one side of it to his stomach. It felt stiff and hard, almost like a basketball, but still had a tiny bit of stretch left, which comforted him slightly as he half-knotted it after some wrangling and tossed it behind the bar. Some of the balloons underneath it shifted and spilled onto the bar top, over which the pile now towered.

"Now what?" Mike asked. It was only 90 minutes until they opened for business, and Rick had already had to tell some antsy customers to come back at five.

"We've got four columns, an arch, and twenty-five bouquets to finish," she said. Blowing them all up with air first gave them a better stretch than the rapid-fire method she had used back at the party shop, she explained. "Let's do the arch and columns first, since they'll need to be the most color-coordinated."

She rummaged in the canvas bag beneath the layers of balloons she had dumped in it, and produced a reel of what looked to Mike like 5-pound-test fishing line. She set it on the bar, and went to the dining room to fetch two chairs. After tying a 10-foot length of fishing line to each chair and setting them 10 feet apart to stretch it out, she bounded over to Mike, jiggling in all the right places.

"I'll go much quicker with an extra pair of hands," she offered. Mike's job was to take two balloons from behind the bar, untie their necks and re-tie them to each other. He tried not to let any air escape as he did so, but occasionally a puff leaked out, and he replaced it with his own breath carefully. The balloons were pretty difficult to blow into, so he didn't force it. Shannon took each pair he handed her and lock-twisted them into clusters on the taut fishing line. The balloons rustled and squeaked against each other as she did so, making Mike edgy, but nothing more. After six clusters, the fishing line was crowded. She carefully slid each cluster down the line until they were all nestled and intermeshed into a column. Mike had always wondered how they did that.

Shannon tied a large knot in one end of the fishing line, and untied it from the chairs, standing it up on the floor. It teetered, threatening to fall over. "That doesn't look very stable," Mike noted.

"We're not done yet, silly," Shannon quipped, and reached back into the canvas bag. What did she have up her sleeve?

She produced a ziploc bag full of yellowish rubber, reached two long fingers inside, and pulled out the largest balloon Mike had ever seen in person. His eyes widened and his heart sank. He wasn't sure he was ready for a balloon this size.

Shannon caught his look, and giggled. "It's 36 inches," she said matter-of-factly, anticipating his question. It was the same color, just a little darker, as the other crystal-clear balloons had been uninflated. "It's got enough power to support the whole column."

She went over to the helium tank this time, and placed the huge, floppy balloon over the nozzle. A high-pitched hiss rang out in the club, attracting attention once again, attention that only intensified as the staff noticed the size of the balloon.

The balloon was nearly spherical and cloudy as it passed the size of a basketball quickly. The hiss of the tank became quieter and deeper as the balloon continued to fill, its hazy color slowly dissipating. Finally it cleared up and became transparent like its smaller cousins had, but Shannon showed no signs of stopping. The hiss continued as the balloon continued to grow outwards in every direction. Finally a bulge developed at the balloon's neck, and Shannon stopped. It was gigantic, swaying back and forth on the tank's nozzle, towering two feet above Shannon's head. She took it off the tank carefully, avoiding the metal edges of the wall sconces that lit up the wall beside the bar, and twisted its neck to seal off the air flow temporarily. She held it in front of her, her arm span barely reaching halfway around it. Mike could see her behind the balloon, her breasts pressed flat into the clear latex, deepening the cleavage peering above her too-low collar.

"Okay, Mike, bring me the free end of that column."

He obliged, and she tied the balloon onto the fishing line as close to the top cluster as she could, and wrapped the excess line down into the cluster. She held the top cluster of 12" balloons - it happened to be two clear and two black - tightly between her hands. "This needs to go in its place right away," she said. "If we let it go, it floats straight to the ceiling." With 20-foot ceilings complete with sharp metal fire-sprinklers, Mike certainly didn't want to take that chance. He took the bottom end and they carried it to one corner of the dance floor, where Mike used a staple gun to affix the bottom of the line to the floor.

The whole arrangement looked like a giant gumball machine, and was stunning. Mike and Shannon made three more columns, and soon they stood at every corner of the dance floor. The pile of balloons behind the bar dwindled rapidly.

"Okay," Shannon remarked, standing back and admiring their work while dusting off her hands. "One hour left. We've got to get moving. How wide is your stage?"

Mike didn't have to think about it. "Twenty feet, six inches." Shannon produced the fishing line again and measured out five arm span-lengths. She again tethered each end to a chair.

This time Mike's job was to take a balloon out of the pile, untie it, and deflate it. He handed each thin, limp, shriveled sack to Shannon, who brought it back to life, bigger and tighter than it had been before, with helium. She tied each one onto the line in twelve-inch intervals, alternating black-clear-black-copper. They carried the finished arch over to the stage; Mike marveled at the force with which it pulled upwards as he held it. He hadn't had very many helium balloons in his life that weren't weak and made of mylar.

They started in on the table centerpieces: six balloons, two of each color, on varying lengths of ribbon to form a stacked effect. Soon half of the tables had shiny balloons tethered to their stainless-steel salt-pepper-silverware holders.

"Half an hour till we open!" Announced Rick from the doorway, glancing at his watch.

Then it happened. Shannon whirled her head around to see who had called just as the crystal-clear balloon she had had on the helium tank began to inflate down its neck. Mike looked up just in time to see the balloon stop growing for a half-second, but didn't have time to react before BANG! the balloon disappeared with a deafening pop. Mike jumped, shielding his ears after the fact with his hands and dropping the balloon he had just untied, which deflated with an obscene sputter that attracted even more attention. Stunned, Mike leaned his back against the nearest wall and felt his heart racing.

Even Shannon, the steeled professional, had jumped slightly. Her eyes darted first to the helium tank, then to Mike, who was now stooping to pick up the balloon that had just deflated. She put a hand on his shoulder.

"Mike, you okay?"

He took a second to think about it. His heart was still racing and his face felt flushed, but as the adrenaline coursing through his body began to subside, he realized he wasn't as shaken up as he'd expected to be. He smiled weakly, but said nothing.

"Listen, I'm sorry - I promised that wouldn't happen again. I'll make it up to you, okay?"

Mike's smile broadened. "Whatever," he shrugged, and handed her the black balloon he'd retrieved. He watched her every move as she turned her back to him and walked slowly back to the helium tank to resume work.

Finally every table was ballooned, and there were several left over that would be tied by the front door. Mike picked up the last balloon to untie it, but found it was knotted tight. He batted it towards Shannon, who caught it with a puzzled look on her face until she remembered it had been the one she blew up to show the staff how the inflator worked. "Oh," she remembered. "We'll have to take care of this." She walked to a corkboard near the front entrance and produced a pushpin. Mike's heart jumped as she held the pushpin up to the neck of the balloon, and she glanced back at him before pinning the balloon to the bulletin board. Mike breathed a heavy sigh.

The evening sun cast a flaming red swath across the parking lot as Mike helped Shannon load the last of her equipment into the delivery van and secure the helium tank with chains. They stood face-to-face. Shannon's eyes searched the ground, then Mike's face, then the ground again as she subconsciously brushed her hair behind her ears, only to find it was already there.

Mike finally broke the silence. "So, see you again at eight?"

Shannon smiled. "Yeah," she said brightly. "Eight." Mike offered his hand to shake hers, but instead she stepped into him and hugged him briefly but

snugly. Mike's nerves tingled excitedly everywhere her flesh pressed into his, which was almost everywhere - especially where her breasts tickled his chest and her hips bounced into his. They both laughed nervously as she backed away and climbed into the van. Mike rearranged his stance to hide a growing embarrassment in his crotch as he watched her drive away, not turning to go back inside until the van disappeared over the horizon.

The line of customers stretched for nearly a half-block, so Mike used the kitchen entrance. He found his four-button suit coat and tie in his back office and had just finished putting them on when Rick poked his head in the door.

"Say, I'm just about to unlock the doors, boss. You ready?"

Mike nodded. "Thanks, Rick. Ready if you are."

Rick took a step back out of the room, then turned back around. He lowered his voice. "Say, that girl with the balloons?" He began. "She's a looker, ain't she?"

Mike grunted. "You could say that." But he couldn't.

"She seemed pretty sweet on you," Rick continued, his eyebrows raised. "What's going on there?"

Mike wished he could tell him otherwise. "Ahh," he scoffed. "Nothing. She's got a boyfriend."

"Yeah, I'll say she does," Rick laughed, looking sideways at Mike. "Too bad, Mike. She's got some body on her."

"Well, I'm glad you noticed," Mike said dryly. "She's coming back with him at eight tonight. I promised her a VIP seat." One of Rick's eyebrows elevated. "Look, I don't think she would've come on such short notice if I hadn't."

"Whatever you say, boss," Rick concluded, still unconvinced. "I'm opening up. Good luck tonight," he said suggestively as he disappeared back into the bar. Mike shook his head, took a deep breath, and followed him into the balloon-filled room.

Between the trumpet and saxophone of the jazz combo on stage and the constant buzz of the capacity crowd that danced, ate, and hovered near the bar to order drinks, Mike could barely hear his own voice as he milled around, meeting and greeting the customers - his customers. They were all fascinating, even the ones who weren't illuminati: CEOs, fashion models... was that the mayor? Mike straightened his tie and felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to find Jack, his red-headed bartender. "Say, Mikey, got a second?"

Mike joined him behind the bar, where Jack stooped to pick up a canvas bag. "Any idea who belongs to this? It's been under my feet since we opened." Mike knew, and all he had to do was open the bag and produce a handful of balloons to convince Jack.

"She must've forgotten it," Mike said, stating the obvious. "I'll put it in the back office." He began to worm his way through the crowd, but it was slow going. He skirted the dance floor gingerly, and was just about to step around the column of balloons in the far corner when he felt a jarring impact to his right shoulder. He tripped and the contents of the bag spilled onto the hardwood floor. Mike began to scoop up the balloons and stuff them into his suit pockets. The culprit, a too-reckless dancer, began to apologize until his date noticed. "Hey, cool!" She knelt down and picked up three balloons. "Do you mind?" She asked Mike.

He opened his mouth to mind indeed, but emboldened by how well he'd handled himself earlier, he nodded instead. "Knock yourself out," he added.

She searched herself for a pocket, but finding none, she tucked two of the balloons into her bra, down the front of her purple dress. "Thanks, pal," she offered, and with her White Russian in one hand and a black balloon in the other, danced back onto the floor.

But now the cat was out of the bag. Two more women were now flashing Mike innocent little smiles, looking barely old enough to be in the club to begin with. Mike sighed, and told them to wait just a minute. A minute later he returned from the kitchen with a large glass salad bowl, which he placed on the bar next to the peanuts and filled with a pile of balloons. Each grabbed a handful, thanked Mike with a flip of their hair, and returned to the dance floor.

It wasn't very long before balloons started appearing in the hands of the three dozen dancers on the floor. First a copper balloon being held in the air by its knot as its owner, the blonde in the tight purple dress, swing danced with her date. Then a crowd of people in the center of the floor stepped back to form a circle around one young brunette wearing a loose white blouse and dark red miniskirt as she blew puff after puff into a diamond-clear balloon. Its neck inflated slightly, and she stopped, tied it, and batted it towards the ceiling. It floated back down slowly, and the dancers managed to keep it airborne for the next minute before it drifted to the floor. Mike walked purposefully for the kitchen, and heard a faint hollow bang on his way that he assumed rightly was the clear balloon being stomped on. Having barely heard it over the din of the crowd, he began to relax.

Soon there were half a dozen balloons being batted about by the dancing crowd, and a dozen more were being held by their knots by dancers - mostly women, Mike noticed. Why did guys avoid balloons? He wondered, then felt foolish as he had spent the last twenty years doing exactly that.

Mike was standing behind the bar chatting with Jack and taking occasional drink orders when Rick abandoned his post at the door for a minute and approached him.

"Mike, she's back," he gushed. "And you won't believe the little number she's wearing..." Rick panted like a puppy for emphasis, but Mike pushed him away.

"You're cruising for a seltzer shower, my friend," Mike laughed. "I'd better go say hi to her and her boyfriend." He straightened his tie for the eighth time tonight, and made for the front door.

"Go get 'er, boss," Rick called after him.

Mike took a deep breath and allowed himself one last fantasy of what he would do if she had been single. After conjuring up a mentally-undressed picture of her, he sighed dejectedly, put on a smile, and found her face in the crowd. What he saw next would obliterate even his latest fantasy.

There she was - at least, he thought he recognized the face he hadn't seen wearing makeup before - her hair was neatly coiffed and fell in gentle reddish-brown curls on her shoulders. At first glance he couldn't tell she was wearing anything other than earrings, but as his gaze continued past her bare, tanned shoulders, he found what had made his bounc-- no, maitre d'-- salivate. It was a skimpy black strapless dress that looked like it was a size too small for her lanky body. It hugged her bouncy breasts tightly, lifting them upwards and showing off nearly two inches of round cleavage. The dress wrapped around her back and to her hips, which it coated thinly before it ended in a tantalizingly short wave of black that ended not halfway down her soft thigh, which was as tan as the rest of the skin she was so expertly showing off. The dress was open in the front, as if it had forgotten to conceal a bare patch of tight, tanned stomach, narrow, sexy bellybutton, and curvy hips. Her long legs stretched endlessly down to a pair of five-inch black patent leather heels.

"Good to see you again, too," Shannon smirked after what Mike realized was an altogether too-long eye trip up and down every curve of her perfect body. He riveted his eyes to hers, if for no other reason than to give them a rest.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he began coyly, "but I'll have to ask you to leave; I'm afraid you're in violation of the fire code." He shot her a playful smile, and she giggled.

"I've been just waiting for the opportunity to wear this dress. You like it?"

"You look stunning," he gaped. "Come in - I've got your 'very important' table all set up for you." He seated her at a table marked "Reserved" behind a frosted glass wall in the back corner, pulling out her chair like the perfect host he tried to be. He glanced around the room furtively. "Did I miss your guest?"

She shook her head quickly, a little too quickly. "No, my 'guest' just went to the restroom," she said. "Why don't you have a seat?"

Mike obliged, then motioned to stand up again. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Nonsense. You just sat down; stay and chat a while." Mike didn't have to be asked twice. "I see you found my leftover balloons," she smiled, indicating the dance floor with a flip of her head. More and more balloons had been blown up by the clientele, and were now either bobbing back and forth in their hands or floating above the crowd which tried its best to keep them airborne. "I figured someone would. They could use some blowing lessons though." Some of the balloons were poorly underinflated, too round and dull colored.

"Yeah, that was an accident," Mike explained.

"Hey, accidents can be fun, right?" She dropped one elbow to the table, resting her head on her hand. "It's always more exciting when it's unexpected."

"I guess so," Mike laughed nervously. He scooted forward in his chair. "Let me go grab you a drink. What're you having?"

Shannon frowned briefly. "Strawberry daiquiri," she said faintly, and Mike pressed further.

"And what for your guest?"

Shannon thought for a second, then shrugged. "Make it a surprise."

Mike smiled weakly. "More exciting when it's unexpected, right?"

"Yeah," she said, and Mike disappeared. Shannon studied the ceiling, then watched the frantic bouncing of balloons on the dance floor for what felt like several minutes without blinking, let alone smiling.

Mike returned with her daiquiri and a frosty pint of Guinness with a shamrock on top. "We don't really have a specialty yet, so I made one up," he apologized as he set the drinks on the table. The beer went in front of a still-empty chair. "Is he still in the restroom?"

Shannon sensed an opening, and leaned back in her chair, folding her arms underneath her breasts. "He? Who?"

"You know, your..."

"My... what?" She couldn't explain why, but she enjoyed making Mike squirm.

Mike swallowed hard. "Your... date?"

Shannon got up from her chair slowly, a wicked smile spreading across her face. She stood across the empty chair from Mike in all her curvaceous glory, and reached a long, bare arm across to take a hold of Mike's tie and pull it gently toward her and down, coaxing him to sit in the chair. His eyes widened and his pulse quickened as he stared up into her sultry face as it said the words he never thought he'd hear.

"Who says I brought a date?"

Mike blinked hard, unable to believe his ears. This simply wasn't possible. He racked his brain and found the one puzzle piece which would dash this fantasy to pieces. "But... you told me to reserve one more spot, remember?"

She smiled broader still and shook her head gently. "I don't need to bring a date to have a date," she purred.

Mike's heart threatened to leap out of his chest. It had jumped to conclusions, but his brain wasn't ready to just yet. "You--" His throat caught on his next word, until a sip of Guinness eased the tickle. "You mean..."

Shannon heaved a sigh, her breasts nearly rising out of her dress like helium balloons reaching for the stratosphere. Did she have to draw him a picture? She took her seat at the opposite end of the two-place table, and Mike reached for his tie, not to straighten it, but to loosen it, as Shannon went on. "I knew you'd be busy tonight, so I thought I'd give you a warm spot to stay a while." She sipped her daiquiri and licked her lips a little too slowly.

Mike remained utterly speechless until his brain finally came around. "I... don't know what to say," he stammered.

Shannon leaned across the table, giving Mike a clear view down the front of her dress once again. "Just say yes,"  she whispered. Mike leaned across the table until his face was an inch from hers, and did. She leaned even further to cover the last remaining inch, and their lips met for the first time.

What a tease! Here Mike was, sitting across from a drop-dead gorgeous woman wearing next to nothing, who had let him believe she was out of his reach for the last twenty-four hours. Put that way it didn't seem like much, but to Mike it had been an eternity. Now he could barely contain himself as the two of them began to explore each other intellectually, at the same time fantasizing about doing so physically.

It came out that Shannon was twenty-two, had just finished college, and was working full-time at PartyPro, at the first and only job she'd ever had, having started there in high school. She'd had several boyfriends in college, but most of them had been too rough and boorish for her taste. Besides, they were only interested in one thing. It had been nearly six months since she'd broken off her last relationship with the last in a string of too-anxious, sexually frustrated fraternity types. She was looking for something deeper, more meaningful, she told Mike, and he was not a little flattered. For his part, he related to her the story of McMichael's, and how it had been his lifelong dream to own and operate a sophisticated club with jazz music and upscale clientele. Not as an elitist thing, he assured her, but because too few such places existed in town, and he would constantly go to local bars and think of so many ways he could improve on the way they operated. His last girlfriend had been a two-year relationship which had ended when she left him to pursue an acting career -- or, more probably, an actor -- on the west coast. That was more than a year ago.

Both were cautious to dance around the subject that both of them were interested in talking about, but neither knew how to break the ice. Shannon could tell that Mike was skittish to say the least around balloons, yet she wondered in the back of her mind whether they had taken hold of him they way they had her when she began to desensitize herself to them in high school. Mike, on the other hand, had convinced himself that she was perfectly comfortable with balloons and her interest in them was purely professional. Of course, he had convinced himself of bigger untruths lately...

Her daiquiri was now half-melted and the frost had dissipated from the now-warm beer mug in front of Mike, the drinks having been neglected in favor of a much more intoxicating subject across the table.

Rick poked his head around the glass wall. "Oh, boss, there you are," he emoted, knowing full well where Mike had been. "How're you doing?"

Mike looked back at Rick, nearly busting at the seams. "Not so bad," he allowed, but the look on his face corrected the understatement. "How are the crowds?"

"Line just keeps getting longer," Rick said, then pretended to notice Shannon, whom he had been ogling out of the corner of his eye all night. "Hi! Good to see you again," he said, extending a muscled arm to shake her hand, looking for any excuse to press her flesh.

"You'd better go back to your post," Mike hinted. "See if we can't get the line moving." Rick paused, still gazing at Shannon, then nodded and walked off.

Shannon snorted. "He's a piece of work, isn't he?"

"You have no idea," Mike laughed. He was doing a lot more of that recently. He noticed her melted daiquiri. "Can I freshen your drink?"

"Sure," she said and had Mike fetch her a margarita.

Jack stopped him as he searched the bar for lime juice. "I was wondering where you got to, Mikey," he said coyly. "Thought maybe you'd left or something."

"Yeah, well," Mike beamed, "part of me has, Jacko. Part of me has." He finished blending the margarita in silence, then delivered it to Shannon. An hour of chatting later, she finally finished it.

Another hollow, muffled pop echoed from the dance floor. Mike flinched and quickly looked around the room, then settled back into his chair. Shannon watched bemused, then leaned a couple feet closer across the table, again giving Mike the best view in the house. It was time to broach the most delicate subject of all.

"Mike," she lilted sweetly and innocently, the tone of voice every woman uses before a personal question. Better to start slow. "How're you doing tonight?"

"Are you kidding?" Mike smiled nervously. "Better than ever, thanks to you."

"Are you sure?" She pressed. "You want to talk about it?"

Mike was caught off guard, and began to sweat. He hadn't breathed a word about balloons to anyone in years, but if ever there was the right person, it was Shannon. How much could he say? She already figured out he wasn't exactly comfortable around balloons, so how much more was she waiting to hear? He had to start slow. "What can I say?"

Shannon smirked. "Just tell me what you know I want to hear."

This made Mike swallow hard. She didn't mean... "And what is that?"

She dug deeper. "If you're the way I think you are, you'll know what I'm looking for." Shannon knew this was dangerous turf, and didn't expect Mike to be exactly forthcoming.

Mike sat up straighter. He had to reflect some of her spotlight. "Okay, but you've got to do the same to me," he insinuated.

"Ooh, mutual," she breathed. "You're on, boy." She paused expectantly. "So, give it to me."

Mike searched his brain frantically for where to start. After what seemed like a minute, he stood up quickly. "I'll do it, but I need another drink. How about you?"

Part of Shannon's smile disappeared, and she sat back. "Okay, but hurry back," she admonished playfully, and had Mike fetch her a glass of cabernet. He returned quickly with her wine and a martini for himself. After a generous sip, they both leaned over the table and started the bidding.

"It all started when I was in grade school," Mike began. "I used to leave the room if I spotted one."

Shannon frowned. "Is that all you got? Come on, you can do better than that."

Mike took another deep draw off his martini. "I was terrified as a kid, all right. Now it's your turn."

Shannon nodded in acknowledgement. "I had to leave my own fifth birthday party," she said. "They were having a blowing race, and I couldn't take it."

Mike was taken aback. "I've never been to a New Year's party," he said, emboldened.

Shannon leaned closer. "The kids used to call me Shakin' Shannon," she said, ironically smiling as if recalling a fond memory.

That was parry, this was thrust: "I spent most of my junior prom in the men's room," Mike finished.

This was too much for Shannon to listen to. Her brow lifted into a sympathetic smile, and she reached an arm across the table to lay her hand on his shoulder and rub his arm slowly. As much pity as she felt, she had to ask the obvious question. "So why'd you come to me?"

This was another surprise for Mike. "What do you mean?"

"What would possess a guy like you to walk into my place and ask me to do something so frightening it made you miss your own prom?"

This one Mike had to think about, to no avail. His mind kept coming back to the obvious answer that he wasn't ready to tell her. Not yet. He looked away for a moment. "I... I don't... Well..." Then a light bulb went off. "What would possess a girl like you to make a living doing something so scary it made you miss your own birthday party?"

Shannon grinned, having expected that question, and not having answered it to anyone in years. "You know my reason," she suggested. "It's the same as yours."

Not wanting to take a chance that they were at cross purposes, Mike stalled. "Then you can answer your own question," he deflected.

Shannon leaned even closer, and Mike turned his head to let her whisper in his ear. Her hot breath warmed and tickled his ear as she said four short words she might not have said if it weren't for the alcohol in her:

"Balloons get me hot."

She lingered on the last word, sending a chill up and down Mike's spine. His eyes locked wide open, he sat back his chair and stared into her eyes. All he received for his efforts for now was a sultry smile and an almost imperceptible nod of her head. He scooted forward in his chair and leaned over again, this time to hide a growing erection. She couldn't be serious - but her smile and stare spoke volumes. She whispered again. "And they do you too." Mike couldn't move his mouth to answer, so he put it to better use. Their eyes locked onto each other, and Shannon drew in closer, inch by inch, until they met in a long, passionate kiss that knocked over the hurricane lamp on the table underneath them and came perilously close to knocking over Mike's almost-empty martini. Their lips still pressed together, Mike stood from his chair and walked around to her end of the table to embrace her nearly-bare body tightly, chest to foot, her every soft curve either exposed or almost so, and all held up against his body simultaneously. They didn't even breathe for nearly two minutes. Mike nearly lost it, but she stepped away just in time, leaving him to use every muscle in his hips to contain himself.

Shannon ran her hands down his chest, feeling every ripple of his body underneath his suit coat, and was on her way to his hips when her hands ran across his lumpy coat pockets. She recognized the sensation right away, and reached a hand deep into his pocket to pull out a handful of balloons. "Now how did these get down there?" She quizzed him, smiling wickedly. Mike felt an instant lump in his throat, then realized how sexy it would be to watch her play with balloons, with her body, in her outfit, and she was practically throwing herself at him!

Shannon knew what Mike must have been feeling - she remembered feeling the same way her first day on the job at PartyPro: incredibly anxious and nervous, wishing with all her might that the limp balloon she was holding wouldn't pop, yet longing at a primal, sexual level for just such a release of nervousness and energy. Her mind pleading no, her heart pounding like a jackhammer, and her groin aching for more, she had survived that first day at the balloon shop only by taking a break every two hours to relieve the tension the only way she knew how. The first pop, a citrine yellow balloon with a tiny flaw in the latex, shook her up unmercifully; the second, a 16" red balloon she took her eyes off for a second and overinflated on the helium tank, hit her like a rifle shot in the chest, but was all but forgotten after another trip to the ladies' room. Soon she was just comfortable enough to be able to overinflate balloons to their limit, and just uncomfortable enough to make her heart leap out of her chest every time a balloon grew a neck. She knew that's where Mike was right now, and she knew exactly how to tease him to his own limit.

She set the handful on the table, and picked out a diamond-clear balloon from the pile. She stretched it several times lengthwise, letting it snap back with a flop each time. She placed it up to her lips with one hand and folded the other behind her back, and took an exaggeratedly deep breath. She blew long and hard into the balloon, showing off not only the capacity of her lungs, but of the breasts on top of those lungs. The balloon grew to half-full just like that. Mike felt around for his chair and sat down, not wanting to take his eyes off this spectacle.

She took another extremely deep breath. Her breasts swelled above the bra of her strapless dress. She held the breath for two seconds, just long enough for one cup of her dress to give way and flip downwards suddenly, leaving her left breast to spill out in all its glory. And it was glorious; Mike's face flushed red at the sight of her perfectly-round breast, bigger than it had seemed behind the dress, complete with a small, light pink areola and a perky little nipple. His suit pants weren't doing much to stem the tide building in his stem, and he crossed his legs awkwardly in a futile attempt to hide it. After a too-long-to-be-modest length of time, Shannon finally exhaled, blushed and giggled before turning her back to him and stretching the dress back over her naked breast, all the while pinching the neck of the balloon. She repeated her earlier breath, slightly less so this time, and blew deeply into the balloon, which swelled to nearly full size. Tiny beads of moisture collected inside the thin skin of the balloon, giving nearly the only impression that there was a balloon there at all.

The balloon clearly wouldn't take another full breath, but she took one anyway. Jim slumped his head into his shoulders, but kept his gaze fixed on Shannon and her balloon. She began to exhale into the balloon, this time slowly, as if she herself were deflating like a balloon. The balloon swelled gradually, then a neck pushed out, which grew rather quickly until its tight latex touched the fingers with which she was holding it. She stopped and extended her arm, holding the balloon towards Mike at arm's length. The crystal-clear latex shimmered brightly in the reflected light from the lamp on the table, and it was so tight and glassy Mike could feel it without touching it. His pulse was racing, and he could feel it in every extremity of his body. His brain pleaded for her to stop, but his hips cried for more. He said nothing.

Shannon stretched the neck of the balloon several times, then put it up to her lips one more time. Mike was convinced this was it, but he was paralyzed. She took a deep breath and put the balloon's neck in her mouth, but didn't blow. Not yet. First she let the balloon deflate ever so slightly, the neck shrinking an inch. Then she began to blow, painfully slowly. The neck took another ten seconds to grow to its former size. With one hand on the far side of the balloon, she continued to blow gently, despite the fact that the balloon wasn't growing anymore. She felt its resistance increase, and stopped blowing, letting it deflate in her mouth for another brief second. Once more she blew to the limit, then backed off. And again. Mike was coming out of his suit pants, but still had not moved.

Shannon took one last deep breath, and exhaled. Mike cringed and closed his eyes but heard only a blowing sound as Shannon had pinched off the neck of the huge balloon and exhaled in Mike's direction instead. She swung the massively inflated balloon under a bare armpit, and it squealed, high-pitched and screechy, while she tied a knot in its neck and held it between the palms of her hands, which left sweat beads on the outside of the balloon to match the beads inside it. The balloon was perfectly transparent otherwise, and as she pressed the balloon against the top of her breasts, Mike could see her skin pressing down on the other side, enhancing her already-delicious cleavage and making her bulge in unnatural but altogether welcome directions. She didn't press hard, just hard enough to make Mike's head spin.

She took two slow steps toward him, holding the balloon in front of her chest the whole time, and as Mike stood up to greet her, she thrust the balloon in between their faces, planting a wet kiss on her side and making Mike do the same on his. All that separated their lips was a straining, ultra-thin, tight 12" balloon, and Mike longed, however unexpectedly, that it would pop suddenly and they would embrace again. He opened his eyes to find the rubber of the balloon was not an inch away from them. As she finally stepped away and took the lip-printed balloon by its knot, Mike stepped into her and she threw her arms around his neck once again, the balloon bouncing against the side of his head, just inches from his ear. Mike was too occupied by another never-ending kiss to notice.

She looked up into his eyes and ran her balloon-less hand through his damp hair. She then picked up the balloons she had placed on the table and stuffed them back into Mike's suit pocket. "Come on," she smiled with a head-flip in the opposite direction. "Let's dance."

Only two steps in, she had to confess to her lack of dancing prowess. Mike couldn't have cared less. He could have been tripping over his own feet and making a fool out of himself on the floor, but as long as Shannon's warm, soft body was wrapped in his arms, he couldn't have asked for anything more. The jazz combo music faded in his hearing, the room dimmed, the dance floor opened up, and it was just him and her, in each other's embrace, the only two people on the floor. In reality, there was barely elbow room and the music was loud enough to be heard across the street, and there were still a dozen or so balloons drifting up and down over the dancers' heads, which had included the one that Shannon had so mercilessly teased Mike with, but that one had been so tight and large that it met its demise during the last song to a gentle squeeze. Mike hadn't noticed. The crowd shifted, and now the couple dancing next to Mike was holding two balloons in each hand. They side-stepped, and one balloon squashed into Mike's arm. He glanced over at it lazily, decided not to care, and went back to staring longingly into the eyes of the sex kitten who was fulfilling his every fantasy. It was frightening and arousing at once, and Mike's stomach knotted up with pleasure.

Suddenly a muscled arm thrust between them, placing its hand on Mike's shoulder. He looked up beatifically into Rick's face. "Boss," he smirked, "Brian wants to see you in the back." Grudgingly, Mike released his grasp on the voluptuous Shannon, gave her a brief kiss, and made for the kitchen door. He looked back to see Rick attempting to dance with Shannon, but watching her boobs more than his own feet and failing miserably. For her part, Shannon watched Mike walk the whole way to the kitchen.

Brian was chuckling when Mike walked in. "I don't know how you do it," Mike's business partner marveled.

"Do what?" Mike made his first and last attempt at being coy, but it was obvious Brian knew.

"Look, Mike, it's midnight. We've got everything covered here until closing time. Why don't you take the rest of the night off? I've already called for a cab."

Mike opened his mouth to object, but nodded instead. This opening night had been his dream, but there isn't a dream alive which can beat a fantasy. "See you tomorrow morning," he conceded.

"I wouldn't count on that," Brian laughed and winked as Mike took off his tie, grabbed his overcoat off a hook on the door, and made for the dance floor one last time.

Rick mumbled something about keeping the home fires warm as Mike led Shannon to the door, gave her his overcoat to keep out the nighttime chill, waited for her to button it up to avoid distracting the taxi driver, and opened the door of the cab for her to get in. They spent the duration of the ride in silence, occasionally glancing at each other with a bashful smile.

The front door had barely met its jamb when their lips met each others' again, and Mike backed up blindly until he found the fluffy black leather couch in the living room, and they both collapsed onto it. Mike wriggled out of his suit coat and draped it over the arm of the couch. Shannon kicked her high heels across the room, sending them clunking onto the hardwood floor. Their hands roamed over each other's bodies, caressing and rubbing and pulling every which way but stop. Mike's kisses moved from her lips to her cheek to her neck and shoulders. Shannon ran her fingers through his hair and kissed the top of his head, then untucked his dress shirt to run her hands up underneath it and feel his muscled stomach and chest.

Mike untied the spaghetti straps that connected the bra to the miniskirt of Shannon's dress and massaged her bare back, feeling her silky skin underneath his palms. He ran his hands down the curve of her hips, taking her short black skirt with them. He was treated to a black silk g-string which disappeared into the beautifully round, tawny skin of her ample butt. Shannon stopped for a second and took her hands out from under his shirt, kneeling up to straddle his legs. Just when Mike began to worry he'd crossed a line, she reached into his suit coat pocket instead with a wickedly sexy smile and pulled out a handful of balloons which she held over Mike's head and let them rain down onto him. She retained a diamond-clear balloon between her long fingers and with a sly look turned her head away from Mike and put the balloon to her lips. She took a deep breath, then exhaled, but not into the balloon, which flapped lifelessly between her fingers. She looked at Mike again through narrowed eyes, and leaned over him as if to kiss him on the lips. Instead, she cupped the hand that held the balloon to Mike's cheek.

"Why should I have all the fun while you just watch?" She breathed. "Tell you what: for every... balloon... I blow," she said lingering on all the right words, "you have to take something off."

Mike couldn't disagree, but he had to know: "And if I blow one?"

Shannon giggled. "Well, what do you think?" She didn't have that many items left to take off, so Mike excitedly grabbed for the nearest balloon. Shannon grabbed his hand to stop him. "One at a time, pal," she scolded playfully. "Me first." She leaned back on her knees and threw her hair back as every muscle from her hips through her stomach and chest seemed to stretch thin underneath her fair skin. The balloon was up to her lips and her chest heaved in a deep breath that nearly lifted her breasts out of the half of the dress they were stuffed into. She blew forcefully into the balloon and it sprang to life, growing quickly to the size of a grapefruit. One more breath and it doubled in size. One more and the balloon was full. She slowed down and gently hugged the balloon to her stomach, stretching out its neck several times to prepare it for its task. She blew half a breath into the balloon and the neck pushed out an inch. She hugged and stretched it again, then blew another half breath until the neck touched her lips. The balloon was nearly invisible except for the moisture accumulating on the inside of its tight, thin skin. Repeating the performance she had given him at the bar, she let a gasp of air out of the balloon, then replaced it, breathing slowly, while the balloon scarcely grew in size at all. She did this twice more, then let out a short burst of air one last time and tied the balloon, which squeaked and squealed as she ran her fingertips over its tight surface.

Mike's boxer shorts were crowded, and as she tossed the balloon onto his stomach he felt a lump in his throat. She raised her eyebrows expectantly, and he complied, unbuttoning his dress shirt and awkwardly taking it off, squirming underneath Shannon and the balloon, which wound up rolling onto the hardwood floor. Mike grabbed it hurriedly, afraid it would find a sharp point, and placed it back on his now-bare stomach. It was his turn to blow, and blow he would. He put a black balloon to his lips and blew one deep breath, then another.

He stopped suddenly and realized he hadn't blown up a balloon this big by himself in years. But melting underneath Shannon's sexy gaze, he was invincible. One more breath, and then another, and the balloon was full. He began to tie a knot in its neck, but Shannon grabbed his hand again. "No, silly," she chided, "I need it bigger than that."

Hesitantly, Mike stretched the neck of the balloon and blew a short puff of air into the balloon. Nothing seemed to happen. He tugged on the neck again, and finally the top of the neck pushed out. He blew a half breath and the neck grew another inch. His hands shaking, he knotted the balloon clumsily. Shannon sat up straight and ran her hands down her body, as if realizing she only had two pieces to take off. She stuck out her lower lip in a pouty smile, then took the bottom edge of the fabric of her top between her thumbs and fingers, and in one fluid motion pulled it off over her head. Her plump breasts, finally liberated, expanded outwards, bouncing lightly as her raised arms showed off their every round contour. Mike gripped the sofa and breathed slowly to contain his building arousal.

Shannon quickly grabbed another balloon, another diamond clear (her obvious favorite) and blew it up. With nothing to contain her heaving chest, she jiggled in all the right places as the balloon grew quickly until it was tight and its neck was full. She tied the balloon and suddenly placed it over Mike's crotch and squished. The sensation nearly sent him over the edge, but she stopped and instead unbuttoned and unzipped his suit pants. Mike took the hint and wriggled out from underneath her to stand up, his pants falling around his ankles to expose his black silk boxer shorts which did little to conceal the length of his ultra-sensitive member. Shannon grabbed all three balloons from the couch by their knots and looked around the apartment. Mike took the hint, collected as many of the still-uninflated balloons as he could, and led the way to his bedroom.

By the time they arrived, Shannon was holding four tight balloons. Mike hadn't noticed her blow up the fourth while she walked down the hallway, but nevertheless he had to obey the rules, and he stripped off his socks as quickly as he could. He was down to boxers, she to a skimpy g-string; one more balloon and one of them would be naked. Mike strew the uninflated balloons on the bed, and he and Shannon reached for one simultaneously. She dropped her tight balloons onto the bed, and the two of them climbed onto the bed, lying facing each other on opposite sides of the balloon pile, which obscured their view of each other from their stomachs down.

Shannon decided to have some fun first, dropped the uninflated balloon she was holding, and pulled the one Mike had picked up out of his grasp. "Slow down there, tiger," she laughed. "I've got an idea."

She grabbed the two clear balloons, one in each hand, and rolled over to straddle Mike's legs once again. She placed one of the clear balloons over each of Mike's ears and leaned down over his chest, dangling her breasts so they tickled his bare chest lightly. Mike jumped slightly and looked into her eyes like a frightened puppy. She gave him a soothing smile in return, and he tried to focus on the two balloons that really mattered. She began to kiss him once again. Mike could hear every sound in the room amplified through the balloons on his ears, and almost forgot how scared he should be as he arched his back into her and caressed every curve of her chest, stomach and back with the flat palms of his hands. He felt the silk of her g-string press into the silk on top of his erection and slide slickly back and forth. He breathed in forcefully to contain himself, and after what seemed like ten minutes of passionate kissing Shannon sat up again, tossing the balloons she had been holding to the side. She grinded her hips slowly up and down Mike's crotch, but stopped when he groaned and arched his back. She rolled off him, and Mike just barely held in what had been building for the last six hours.

Shannon wasn't done yet. "Just one piece left," she breathed, and grabbed two uninflated balloons, handing one to Mike. "Just you and me," she said. "Whoever blows the biggest keeps their clothes." Both balloons were diamond clear, and Shannon straddled the reclining Mike as they both began to blow recklessly into their balloons. Shannon's free hand had now disappeared up to her knuckles under her g-string. Three breaths and the shiny balloons were full; one more and the necks bulged out without any assistance. Mike blew a half-breath until the neck of his balloon tickled his lips, and shaking from head to toe with sexual energy he tied his tight, bulging balloon. Shannon compared hers to his and with a disapproving look decided to try to best him. Mike's crotch began to twitch as she blew one more ragged breath into the straining balloon, the neck swelling, then stopping, the body growing imperceptibly, waving back and forth tautly, squeaking softly until BANG! it popped between her lips with a deafening crack sending wet shards of latex spraying everywhere.

Mike's heart nearly exploded with the balloon, as did another organ of his. "You win," gasped Shannon, her heart racing, as she tore off her g-string as fast as she could, squashed Mike's balloon on top of his boxers, and leaned back over him, supporting her hips on the balloon and bouncing lightly. Mike's muscles clenched as a wave of pure ecstasy welled up in his hips. Shannon pressed her body into his and then... then...

Then the sun pierced Mike's closed eyes again as he felt his massive erection pulsing under the bedsheets. The faint whirring coming from the heating duct was the only sound in the empty room, and as Mike reached for the box of tissues he keeps on his nightstand he laughed wearily at himself again. The haze shrouding his mind slowly began to lift, and the eerie silence pierced his heart straight through as he went through the denial, anger, and depression that waking up from a wonderful dream always brings. He was at least as devastated as if a real girlfriend had just left him with no explanation or warning. He felt like crying, but instead convinced himself it had all been just a dream.

The line between fantasy and reality having been crossed in the wrong direction, he slowly brought his brain back around, and admitted to himself that he couldn't remember what he'd done the night before. In the silence of the bedroom, Mike laid staring at the ceiling wishing he could meet someone like the woman he'd just dreamt about. He shook his head, decided he would cruise the local dance club that night, and slowly rolled over onto his stomach.

Suddenly he felt a cool sensation underneath his stomach, and reached down to find out what it was. His fingers found and peeled off a thin strip of clear rubber from his skin. He whirled around and sat up bolt-straight in bed and to examine it more closely, until a new sound dashed the silence from the other end of the room.

She emerged from the bathroom holding a towel, but Mike wouldn't have noticed if it were a chainsaw.

THE END