El Rancho del Corazón
74 Prejudice
“HEY, WHAT ABOUT SUMMER TRAINING CAMPS for our athletes?” I asked. “You guys can’t all be working out here this summer.” The meeting had wound down and we moved outside to have a fire instead of heating the house with the fireplace. It was a little cloudy, but high temperatures had consistently been in the mid-80s the past week with a couple days getting over 90. As we moved outside, clothing became less and less of an option and was discarded. I was hugging Whitney’s bare skin to me and enjoying every moment of it.
“Mmm,” she mumbled as she rubbed herself against me. “Oh, yeah. Training. It’s different now.” Sora and Tim were nearby and she waved them over. She caught Lionel’s eye and he dragged Adam and Lamar over. “See, all the training camps I’ve been to were high school camps. Some were sponsored by a specific university, but often a group of schools that provided the elite camp.”
“Same here,” Lionel said. “They can’t force us into training when we’re playing varsity.”
“What do you mean? Isn’t there practice in the summer?”
“We start two-a-days in mid-August,” Adam said. “Until then, the coaches have no say over our training. We can make use of the facilities at the University—and believe me, they watch to make sure we are—but they can’t coach us or require us to be there. It’s an NCAA rule.”
“What about you, Sora?”
“Gymnastics isn’t a varsity sport. Coaches work their athletes year-round. The camps I went to were just extra intensive weeks of the same training I had to do every day,” she said.
“Won’t that affect your work on the exercise show?”
“Nope. Brian, I’m out now. I’ll still be working out, but I won’t be competing again. It’s too stressful on my body. And believe me, doing two exercise shows a day plus rehearsing our routines is going to keep the three of us in shape no matter what. Do you know the executive producer asked if we could do six a day so she didn’t have to move the cameras? Six?” She grinned as she shot a look at Hannah, who glanced our way and pointed innocently to herself.
“Moi?” she mouthed at us. Sora laughed and shook a finger at her.
“This fall I might be coaching at the gym,” Sora concluded. “Or I might be filming exercise shows every day. Who knows?”
“How about you, Lamar?”
“I’m no longer a student. My ID will still get me into the gym so I can work out, but I won’t know what else is happening until after the 26th.”
“What’s that?” Warren asked.
“The NBA draft. If I’m drafted, as of that day I will be a professional and no longer allowed to use the University’s facilities. I’ll have periodic practices, depending on my team’s schedule, until we move into the fulltime season. The NBA title game is this weekend. Then the season doesn’t start until the last weekend of October. Until practice starts, it’s up to the individual player to keep in shape. You show up for training fat and lazy, you’re fired. That’s it.”
“So, we need to keep you all in shape this summer,” I said. “I think we need to add an athlete training schedule to the big board.” We all laughed, but it was a serious proposal. With Adam, Tim, Whitney, and Lionel on varsity teams, and Lamar probably headed for the pros, we needed to keep them in shape. It was a clan responsibility.
Things improved between Hannah and me and she backed me up Wednesday when I went to have lunch with April and Maggie and told them that we would be doing the garden scenes no matter what. Maggie huffed a little but turned to April.
“It’s in front of the camera,” Maggie said. “It’s your call.”
“No, I don’t think it is,” April said. “It’s program content, so it’s his call. And we need to get our cameramen experience with the handhelds. It’s a win all the way around.”
“Can we at least use one of your other women? That skin tone is going to play hell with the camera… and our ratings,” Maggie said. I nearly exploded but Hannah beat me to it.
“There will be absolutely no racial prejudice and discrimination on any of my sets,” Hannah yelled at her. “None! You can’t claim to be a protected minority as a Korean and then be racist about dealing with African Americans. If you can’t handle that, get your withdrawal slip to Lonnie today.” Maggie looked defiantly at Hannah for about half a second and then lowered her eyes.
“Yes, Ms. Gordon. I’m sorry for letting my personal prejudice interfere with the good of the show. There will be no more questions about it.” She never raised her eyes and I was surprised at her submissiveness. Hannah was a hard woman when it came to her role as producer or executive producer. She reached under the table and grabbed my hand, squeezing it tightly. As firm as Hannah was with the people who reported to her, she was still scared when she exercised her authority. Her hand was shaking. Our meeting broke up and Maggie continued to apologize until she left the three of us.
“Thank you both for backing me on this,” I said.
“I’m glad that’s over. Maggie has a real problem with black people. Those two big guys that you have at the ranch scare the bejezus out of her,” April said. “I don’t know why, but I’m sure there’s a story.”
“Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure it’s over,” Hannah said. “Let me know at the first sign of another problem. Brian, I’m sorry I was short with you about it on Sunday. I should have seen this and didn’t.”
“Can we go get high for a while?” April asked.
“April, you should know that we have all agreed that aside from a small amount for medicinal purposes that Hannah needs, there will be no weed or other drugs at the ranch. We just can’t risk it. It’s not just the people, it’s the ranch, the business, and our backers,” I said.
“I have an apartment,” she answered. I could still feel Hannah’s hand shaking. I’d never tried the stuff before, but what could be the harm?
Yeah. Well, the harm was that two hours later I was eating pizza with two naked girls and wondering why every clock in April’s apartment was stopped. I was enjoying rubbing all the parts of girls that I could reach, which was pretty much all the parts of girls. I was also trying to figure out if I dropped pizza on my cock and that was why April was licking it off. I didn’t have much time to consider it, though, because I had Hannah’s pussy on my face.
An hour later, I still knew I couldn’t drive which was okay because I couldn’t find my keys. I also looked very close at April’s pussy to verify that I had not fucked her. I was a little panicked about that, but it was Hannah’s pussy that was dripping come into April’s mouth. I figured that as long as I was so close, I should give April an oral examination.
“I can’t find my keys,” I said.
“They aren’t in there,” April said. “But keep looking. Yeah!”
“You gave them to Samantha,” Hannah said.
“Samantha? How are we getting home?”
“Oh God!” April screamed.
“Oh shit! I have to call her,” Hannah said rolling off April’s face. Hannah reached for the phone and dialed our number. I didn’t really hear the conversation because April had her thighs clamped over my ears as I searched for the entire wishbone path of her clitoris and wondered at how beautiful a woman’s pussy is.
It was only twenty minutes later that Hannah and I were standing on the curb as Samantha drove up.
“What took you guys so long?” Samantha said. “I almost came to town to find you. Who lives here?”
“April,” Hannah said. “We had a post-production meeting.”
“Oh my God! You two are wasted! Get in the back. All the way in the back. I could get high just smelling your clothes.”
Sam drove us home, but instead of pulling up to the side door, she pulled up to the RV pad and the outdoor showers. She was undressing as she opened our door.
“Strip,” she commanded. “You can’t go in the house smelling like that.” Jennifer and Courtney were on their way from the horses to the house and saw us.
“What’s going on?” Jennifer asked. “Why are we using the outdoor showers?” She was stripping off her clothes as she approached us and leaned against the car to pull off her boots and jeans. Courtney was giggling as she kissed me.
“Hannah must have been really stressed,” Courtney said. “Brian’s breath smells of weed and pussy.”
“Oh God! So does Hannah’s,” Jennifer chimed in.
I was pretty well back to normal now, though I felt really relaxed and still hungry. I didn’t think it was necessary for Sam to turn the water on cold.
“It was an intense meeting with my new producer,” I said. “Hannah was really shaking when we left and April kindly invited us to come to her apartment and take the edge off.”
“I nearly fired her on the spot,” Hannah said. “I don’t really want to be responsible for ending a person’s summer camp, no matter how bitchy I sound sometimes. I want her to succeed.”
We were sitting at the table and finally had food in front of us. Our hearthmates were all digging for details.
“You yelled at Maggie? Good for you,” Samantha said. “But… What did she do?”
“She just said okay. We’ll do the segments she wanted to cut,” I said. I didn’t want to get into the reasons she wanted to cut the scenes.
“She wouldn’t just say okay. How exactly did she respond?”
“She looked at Hannah and then lowered her eyes and apologized. She asked us to please give her another chance.”
“Damn. What’s the pecking order?” Sam persisted.
“What do you mean?”
“When the four of you finished, who was the top dog, as if I didn’t know?”
“Hannah. She’s definitely the alpha female.”
“And then?”
“Um… April deferred to me.”
“Which puts Maggie on the bottom. You guys have your work cut out for you now,” Sam said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve noticed a trend with her. She either lords it over a person or she’s quiet and demure and… subservient, I guess. She’ll be on the hunt for someone lower than her, which probably means Lauren now. If she tries anything with me, I’ll smack her into next week,” Sam explained. “Maggie is just a person who needs a really clear definition of who is above and who is below her. She can’t work with equals.”
“You’re right, honey,” Hannah said softly. “I’ll work with her. If she needs clear structure, I’ll give it to her. I’ll try to keep her built up so she does her job. She’s really good at it. We’ll work it out.”
I was thinking that maybe we shouldn’t mention having messed around with April.
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