Pushing the Envelope: A Prequel from "The Barter System" World (7 page)

After a year of planning and months of labor-intensive sorting through thousands of pages of data, there was nothing left to be done.

Riya was ready.

When the hard copies of her files were packed away, Riya stored them in her office closet.  Glancing around her space, she made sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. 

This had been her home for the past two years and she’d never been away from it for more than a day or two.  She’d bought the little duplex on the water in Deerfield Beach after finishing her master’s degree.  With six years of higher education under her belt, she decided to take a break before she went after her PhD. 

Stepping out the back door, beach sand was a few feet away.  You couldn’t get much more of a break than that, in her opinion.

Archer often told her she was
slumming
and offered to buy her a high-rise condominium instead.  He didn’t like the lack of security, the proximity to tourist hot spots, or her strange mix of neighbors.  Whenever he brought it up, she rolled her eyes and ignored him. 

He
loved
when she did that.

She called him one more time to say goodnight and deflected his not-so-subtle prying.  “I’ll be fine, Dad.  I’ll be back safe and sound in two months.”

“Riya.  I get that you have a damn school
project
.”

She internally bristled at his dismissive tone but held her tongue.  To spar with her father would invite an unexpected visit no matter the time of night.  She’d once argued with him the entire way from his house to her front door. 

The man was wonderful but
tenacious
.

“What I do
not
get is why you can’t call me in the evenings when you return to your hotel.  That doesn’t make the least bit of sense.”

“I have to
immerse
myself in my research, Dad.”  She sighed.  “It isn’t just you.  I’m not calling Tawny or Maggie either.  I have to focus.”

“Hmm.  You come back with so much as a
scratch
and I will put you over my knee like you’re four years old again.”

She couldn’t help it, she laughed.  “You never spanked me even
once
.  Mom was the one who did a drive-by butt smack if she thought I wasn’t listening.  She called you a softy.”

Her father grunted on the other end of the line.  “The point is that you are my only child.  You are the last link I have to your mother and if you do not come back here in the same condition that you’re leaving in, I’m going to be livid. 
Livid
, Riya.”

“I hear you, Dad.  You’re going to have to trust me.”  They talked for a few minutes and she started the process of ending their call. 

“Be safe and don’t do anything crazy, princess.  I don’t have much company when you’re not around.”

Would sex with eight virtual strangers over two months be considered crazy?

“I’ll see you soon.  The time will fly by and you won’t even notice I’m gone, Dad.”  Twirling her hair around her finger, she mentally rolled her eyes.  “Don’t you have Summer…Autumn…
somebody
there this week?  I saw her a couple of days ago.”

“Her name was Solstice and no, she’s not here.  That guitar of hers was too much to handle.”  He
humphed
.  “Your Aunt Maggie helped her pack. 
That
was interesting.”

“You know how she feels about the young
ladies
you tend to date.”

“I’m not hurting anyone and those women know I’m not interested in long term.  We’re all consenting adults.  It’s all out in the open from the beginning.”

This was
not
a topic she was touching right now.  “I know.  I’ve got to get some sleep, Dad.  If there’s a true emergency, Tawny can get me.”

“Why can Tawny call and I can’t?”

“Not going there, Dad.  I love you.  Don’t worry about me.”

“I love you, too and fat chance of that, Riya.”

After she finally got her father off the phone, she turned off the lights, and left an envelope containing her few valuables on the kitchen counter for Tawny, who would lock them up until she got back.  Her regular cell phone was also inside. 

She’d paid her basic bills for the next several months and stored her trusty 1998 Toyota Corolla in her dad’s garage.  A rental car sat in her driveway, gassed up and ready to leave. 

In her backpack, she had one credit card and access to cash if she needed it.  She wouldn’t, or rather, she
shouldn’t
need it – with the exception of one subject – if everything went as planned. 

If she used her own money, a large chunk of her project was pointless.  It was called
bartering
for a reason.  It was a trade – something
she
wanted for something each of her
subjects
wanted.

In her small bathroom, she took a long look at herself in the mirror above the sink.  She was pretty but didn’t consider herself beautiful.  Long brown hair that tended to curl fell past the center of her back.  Her greenish hazel eyes were set in a heart-shaped face.  Her body was well-proportioned, fit, and golden thanks to her mother’s Brazilian roots. 

Her ex-boyfriend during her first year of college had described her as “just right.”  Enough curves to please without becoming a caricature.  Considering he barely showed a physical interest in her over the time they dated, she’d honestly been surprised he noticed. 

She was neither tall nor short, standing five-six in bare feet.  According to her research, she generically appealed to a broad range of men, symbolizing the typical
girl next door
. 

That would work to her advantage over the next couple of months. 

Riya was confident about her ability to complete her research but she wasn’t arrogant.  There was a nervous knot in her stomach.  Her dissertation and her fictional writing had been her primary focus for so long.  She wasn’t a virgin but she wasn’t promiscuous either. 

For her age, she didn’t have much experience so she worried about basic chemistry between herself and the men participating.  She was breaking a long stretch of celibacy and isolation in one fell swoop. 

If she thought about it too long, the nervousness turned to terror. 

Shutting down that train of thought, she focused on the fact that after years of work and months of planning, she was finally getting on with it.

She brushed her teeth and pulled her hair into a loose braid.  Thoughts of the next day and everything it symbolized overwhelmed her as she laid down. 

It seemed she stared at the ceiling for hours until she was able to sleep.  The sound of the ocean behind the house was soothing and the night was surprisingly dreamless. 

Her subconscious must have known that a blank slate was necessary. 

Dawn arrived warm and humid.  She ran as she did every morning and watched the sun come up over the ocean.  Five miles up the beach and back had her soaked with sweat as she stretched on her little porch facing the water.  Focused meditation as she stared at the waves coming in helped her center before she walked inside to shower and dress. 

Today was the beginning of the last phase.  In a few months, if the pieces fell into place as she hoped, she would have her PhD and her true path would stretch out in front of her. 

The nerves this morning were from excitement and she welcomed them.

Her best friend showed up as she was blow-drying her hair.  Tawny talked about anything but what was about to happen and Riya hugged her hard before she walked to her bedroom to grab her stuff.

It was already ninety degrees when she loaded her duffle bag and backpack into the car.  Her father had insisted she rent it for the drive to Orlando when she originally told him she was taking a bus.  She knew his face
could
have gotten redder but was glad she’d learned long ago how to pick her battles with Archer O’Connell.

Tawny stood beside the driver’s side door, doing her best not to show the stress she was feeling. 

“Is there
anything
I can say to convince you to call me every couple of days?”  Her accent was a singsong of her mother’s gentle Irish brogue and her late father’s Georgia drawl.  “Just so I know you’re okay?” 

The pleading look in her bright green eyes almost convinced Riya to reconsider but she hugged her friend again instead. 

“You know I can’t.  No matter how much I want to.  It would influence my research results if I had an outside opinion…and you know you can’t keep from giving your opinion.”  She squeezed her again before letting go.  “I’ll miss you so much.  This will officially be the longest time we’ve been apart.  Remember our disastrous attempt at separate summer camps when we were thirteen?” 

The friends smiled as they remembered begging their parents to switch them to each other’s camps.  Though it had been an attempt to have their girls “branch out” and meet new people, they liked things exactly as they were and weren’t having it. 

Eventually, their frustrated parents brought them home.  They spent the rest of the summer swimming and laughing like idiots at the beach. 

Tawny grinned.  “I thought our moms were going to flip
out
when you threatened to hitchhike from Georgia to North Carolina to be with me.” 

Their moms had been best friends for more than thirty years.  They grew up together in New York City.  After Tawny’s father died of a heart attack when she was six, it was Archer and Dalia who helped Maggie raise her daughter. 

When Riya’s mother died in a car accident her senior year of high school, it almost killed Maggie along with the rest of them.  The woman she’d always considered her “other” mother stepped in to fill as much of the void as possible.  She loved and looked after her best friend’s daughter as if she was her own and Archer had always been a father figure to Tawny. 

“Mom keeps questioning me about where you’re going. 
Will she have enough to eat?  Will she be around people she doesn’t know?
  That kind of thing and it’s escalating.  While you’re here, she isn’t being too persistent, but I shudder to think about how bad things will get before you resurface.”  She paused, watching two elderly women power walk down the beach.  “What if she gets it out of me?”

“Simple.  If you tell her what I’m really doing, I tell Aunt Maggie about those piercings to your kitty and your nipples that I held your hand through a few months ago.” 

Riya grinned mischievously.  Tawny would find herself subjected to withering glares and subtle
are you on drugs
questions from her old-school mom if she ever found out what Tawny was really like. 

The redhead laughed despite herself.  “I’m worried myself, of course.  I’m going to ask once more and then I won’t be a mother hen anymore…
much
.  Are you
sure
you’re going to be okay?”

She placed her hands on Tawny’s shoulders, only slightly lower than her own. 

“I promise to be careful.  The phones have a built-in GPS so if I go too long without uploading files, you’re allowed to check on me, but
please
don’t worry.  I’ll see you in New York for our celebratory chick weekend in early November and we’ll road trip back together.” 

She hugged her one more time, glanced at her little beach place, and got in the car.  Rolling the windows down to remove some of the sweltering humidity, the full blast air conditioning made it bearable to breathe. 

When she turned on the stereo, the CD player blasted what could only be one of Tawny’s mixes.  Riya smiled.  “You made me a compilation.” 

Tawny nodded and both of them ignored the tears shimmering in her eyes.

She leaned out the window.  “I’m a clever girl and I won’t let anything happen to my best friend’s best friend.”  Putting the car in reverse, she blew her a kiss.  “See ya, Tee.”

As she pulled away, Riya allowed herself one final glance in the rearview mirror, immediately wishing she hadn’t.  Tawny dropped her face in her hands and cried as she drove away.  Her best friend was
not
a crier, not ever, so when she disappeared from sight, Riya was almost relieved. 

If they’d spent much more time strolling down memory lane, she might have begun to question her dissertation, her subjects, and worse – herself.

As much as she loved her friend like a sister, she
needed
to do this. 

She didn’t know how everything would play out, if the research would balance against her own sense of self-worth in the end, but one thing was certain - it was the experience of a
lifetime
and she was on the road, heading toward it. 

She got on the interstate and headed north toward Orlando.  Tawny’s mix was a selection of hits popular in Florida to remind her of home.  Flo Rida, T-Pain, the
Bad Boys
soundtrack, and Will Smith’s
Miami
thumped through the speakers and had her singing along. 

Songs they’d danced to a hundred times in one of their living rooms pumped her up instead of making her homesick for what she was getting further from with every mile.

Over the last several years, Riya had fallen into a deep rut of schoolwork and writing that found her sitting alone in her house for days at a time.  A friendly, positive person by nature, she realized the year before that she needed something to shake her up – to bring her back into the world again.

It wasn’t that she was bitter or that she hated men; nothing could be further from the truth.  She simply didn’t even bother putting herself out there anymore. 

Though she didn’t know, it had been Aunt Maggie who shocked her to her core two years prior.  Introspective after the departure of another of Archer’s flavors of the month, she’d been staring through her living room window at the Intracoastal Waterway behind her building. 

“I don’t know where the days went.  It seems like just yesterday, I was laughing with your mom.  Dalia was pregnant with you; I was pregnant with Tawny and married to the only man who ever loved me.  Now I’m past fifty, barreling at breakneck speed toward sixty, and I’m terrified because I think
that
was the best it is ever going to be for me.” 

With a sad smile, she added, “I guess I’ll live through yours and Tawny’s happiness and that will have to be enough.”

Her words had resonated with Riya.  All her life, she’d taken time for granted.  It was an affliction of the young and she knew that. 

That conversation changed everything.  At the time, she was twenty-five and all she thought about was earning her degrees and settling into a career routine. 

As a hard-core A-type personality, Riya had withdrawn into herself and her work to a point that truly wasn’t healthy.  There was “always time later” for dating, for a life, for happiness.  She had her dad, Tawny, Maggie, and a few friends she studied with but no one else. 

Running, working, eating, and sleeping defined her existence.

In that moment, she realized she’d slipped past being
alone
to being
lonely
.  The interactions with her subscribers were no longer filling the void, the writing wasn’t as satisfying, and she knew it was time to step fully back into the real world again before she went too far to go back.

What she had, what she’d made for herself, was no longer enough. 

She purposely bought her duplex in an area that had shitty parking so her father couldn’t drop by without a production. 

Riya’s first night in her own place, she started setting up a website.  It remained unnamed and unpublished because she wasn’t sure
what
she was going to do with it.  She simply knew she would need it when one of the many ideas in her head solidified. 

It would signify a way of bridging her career goals with her personal ones.  Forcing her to interact outside the virtual world with people beyond her little family and enabling her to roar back into the world in such a way that she would never allow such self-imposed isolation to happen again.

When her father installed another too young, too hyper, too cosmetically enhanced woman in their house
days
after she’d left – a mere
three weeks
since the last one was packed up and moved out – the focus of her research came to her.

The differences between women and men appeared extreme but perhaps the base causes were so similar as to go unnoticed.

Both Maggie and Archer had lost spouses they loved deeply.  Maggie responded by throwing herself into bringing up her daughter as well as Riya.  Archer threw himself into his business for the first couple of years then switched to picking up and rapidly discarding women who were young and foolish. 

The fact that he couldn’t see how deeply Dalia’s best friend had grown to love him in the last few years was heartbreaking for the girls to watch.  It was never spoken of but it was impossible to miss by anyone paying attention.

As a woman, Riya certainly understood the emotional attachment Maggie had always held for Archer.  That it would transform into romantic love after years alone made sense.  There was also their shared connection to Dalia O’Connell – something that made those emotions so much stronger.

It was her
father’s
reaction that confused her. 

As the years wore on, his personal choices made very little sense in the grand scheme of his life.  He didn’t want a long-term relationship but moved women in and out of his home several times each year. 

He complained of his girlfriends’ vapid immaturity but continued to choose the same ones repeatedly.

Initially, she was determined to get demographic research.  After receiving the first few dozen survey responses, she knew male participants were responding as if by memory – not with the depth she was searching for. 

The first launch was not gender-specific so she also received answers from women bashing men as a species.  Responses too often started with “men can’t” or “men won’t” and their frustration wasn’t going to get her questions answered. 

Riya felt she had a strong grasp on women and their views after those first few tries…it was time to talk directly to men. 

She pulled down the first survey and spent two weeks creating an introductory application for male participants only.  Offering free downloads of her most popular erotic stories – read by a currently well-known porn star who once dated her father – men
poured
into her site. 

Analytics of the data and download times confirmed that most of her bogus applications came from that particular attempt. 

Using the results as a separate project, she changed direction yet again, targeting private clubs and organizations.  Places off the grid that no one simply
found
without a specific search. 

Swingers, men and women in the BDSM lifestyle, alternative magazines, and retreats geared toward sexual pursuits provided her greatest influx of viable applicants. 

Chat rooms for men’s hobbies, financial papers, and law enforcement clubs were also excellent sources.

Each of her final participants came from one of her focused searches.  She’d also gathered many valuable contacts all over the country that she planned to use for future projects.

Riya wanted to know
why
men and women did the things they did.  The real truth, the deep dark most people hid from other people and even themselves. 

There were few things that could give you a true glimpse behind the mask people wore out of habit.  That offered the connection necessary to cut through the bullshit to the meat of a person’s psyche.

At first, she believed written data would be enough. 

It wasn’t until she was reading their essays that she understood the extremely personal role she’d have to take to complete her dissertation. 

After battling with self-doubt for days, she sent private emails to each of the dozen men she had remaining and outlined her unusual requests.

Some applicants expressed concerns over her physically infiltrating their real world daily lives.  Their hesitation was understandable – her proposal was certainly unorthodox – and she thanked them for the incredible information they’d already given her. 

Nine men were willing to participate on a far more personal level – although some didn’t believe it would get that far.  Two respectfully withdrew within a few weeks – after careful consideration – on the grounds of her well-being.  Another man was chosen from the last batch of essays and her course was set.

Riya admitted to herself that she’d been discriminating about looks when she realized her interactions with these men would be more complex than she originally thought.  Otherwise, she didn’t care about race, religion, income, or anything else but the information they could provide.

Sex would be her way through the labyrinth adult males slowly constructed around their inner selves as they matured.  She would give each man the use of her body for approximately one week and devour every scrap of information she could from their time together. 

Today was the start of something that would change the course of her life.  Only time would tell if it would be for the better. 

No matter what, she’d certainly have a lot to tell Tawny.

The drive to Orlando took three hours, counting the stop on the turnpike for gas, a shake, and a bathroom break.  Riya purposely scheduled the first leg of her journey close to home.  This was her first face-to-face exposure to one of her subjects and she didn’t want to be too far away to turn back. 

She kicked herself for the lack of confidence that necessitated a safety net, but felt she’d made the right decision all the same. 

Her final selection of project participants signed releases for her to use their anonymous input for her dissertation.  Along with their original application, questionnaire, and essay, they would be required to fill out three additional surveys.  One before her arrival, one during, and one they would complete by the end of November about their experience.  They also agreed to voice-recorded interviews while she was with them.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a one-way street.  They would get what they wanted or needed from Riya as well.  This was the first experiment of its’ kind to her knowledge. 

Entering Orlando around noon, she took her time finding the house of her first subject.  Traffic here was heavily congested due to the various theme parks, but most of the houses were lovely and the locals were genuinely friendly.

Riya found the address but didn’t stop.  Instead, she drove to a nearby convenience store to freshen up and settle her nerves.  It wouldn’t do to arrive looking like a wayward traveler.  She brushed her hair and teeth before adding fresh deodorant. 

Once she was certain she was ready, she got back in the rental car. 

Taking her laptop from her bag, she sat in the air-conditioned vehicle for a few minutes, breathing deeply.  Opening her “Subject One – Sean” folder, she took her time re-reading his application and essay as well as the correspondence between them. 

Every subject recently received her standard acceptance email – with a few important reminders – and the approximate date of her arrival.

Good afternoon, Sean:

Your application to participate in my dissertation has been accepted.  My itinerary is attached in pdf format.  Please remember the following terms, as outlined in our signed agreement:

• I will arrive on a Friday morning and stay a minimum of one (1) week.
  
• You are expected to cover all expenses during my time with you, up to and including non-typical clothing for occasions requiring more than casual attire.
  
• You must have internet access in your home throughout the duration of my stay.
  
• You will provide safe transportation, of your choosing, to my next destination.
  
• Sexual intercourse must include the use of condoms at all times.  There are no exceptions. 
  
• A current physical with blood work – dated no more than three days prior to my arrival and confirming a clean bill of health – must be emailed to me. 
  
• Your personal sexual preferences will be accommodated as long as my health or safety is not at risk at any time.
  
• You agree to complete three surveys.  The first before my arrival.  The second at the halfway point of my time with you (which will be audio recorded).  The third will be completed after my departure and submitted no later than November 30
  th
  .
  

Let me know if you have any additional questions.  I’m sure our time together will be mutually beneficial.  I’ve attached the first of the surveys to this email. 

Please return it to me by Thursday of next week.

Kind regards,

Riya

She read his response right behind it and smiled.

Hi, Riya: