Eddie stepped into only the second Barnes and Nobel bookstore of his life. Before Candy’s death, the closest he came to bookstores had been the small, mall based booksellers. Even then, he only went in to get calendars for Christmas, or pick up soft-core porn magazines when he couldn’t sneak out to the adult bookstore. Going with what he knew Eddie had tried the mall stores, but he didn’t find much more than sci-fi and romance. He didn’t need either; he needed real books, because he was on a mission for the first time in years.He needed advice on how to thrive on the insurance and guarantee that he wouldn’t have to be an LPN again.

Eddie realized that he needed a plan after he had a short spending spree on useless toys. A call from the bank, with a customer service person who suggested funds transfers from an investment accounts into his spending account to avoid overages, had scared Eddie. Eddie had been furious when the bank bastard had suggested he needed to realize that the more than half a million dollars still wasn’t going to allow him to take a break forever.

After hanging up and cussing, Eddie had carefully looked for options. He found himself confused. He looked back at his spending and had to admit to himself that this wasn’t going to work for long. His first big spend had been a new car, quickly followed by a drinking binge, a few trips to the local massage parlor and a healthy stock of porn. New clothes didn’t instantly get him girls but the money at least had bought him some topnotch sex. It was after leaving the hooker’s he realized he could fuck through this money and not end up with anything other than good videos of his past sex life. Those videos had, of course, cost him extra.

Eddie decided to stop paying to get laid and quickly thereafter he decided to find something he could do with the least effort and most return possible. Return on Investment, ROI was one of the new phrases he had learned from his reading. He still didn’t know fuck about it, but it sounded good to him. He supposed he could take college business classes, but he was not that motivated. Eddie’s choice had been a trip to the newest version of the American library, Barnes and Nobel, and let some business guru solve the question for twenty nine dollars and change.

Doing his best to fit in with the snoozing and shopping crowd, Eddie spent the better part of the morning drinking fancy coffee and cruising the aisles of the bookstore. The business section was huge, confusing and damned boring. He scanned some business plan books, but realized he couldn’t make a business of anything he knew how to do. He checked out the new career books; but he wasn’t career material. He wondered how someone could make a career out of porn at home? It was an interesting thought. He slurped down the dregs of his coffee and considered finding inspiration by going home and clearing his mind through staring at his new pay porn sites.

Those had a pretty good, what was it, oh, ROI? It felt like he was paying a small amount of money a month and got all the naked women he could want It was a solid investment. Eddie basked in his fiscal sense, when the tickle of an idea reached him. He had wandered into the erotica section, and found himself staring at a thick book on internet sex. Eddie tucked his sex book into his stack and headed for the internet book section. Between the internet sex book and a business book, he was immersed in the possibilities of running some form of internet business from his own home, in or out of his very own new underwear.

Since he was going to have to face paying for a sex book, he decided to suck it up and buy a ‘how to fuck’ book. He was going to have to brush up his screwing skills. The sex efforts he had made with Candy would never satisfy his soon to be friends with benefits. He had come to this idea during one poor performance with that Asian hooker. He could see the disapproval in her eyes and feel it in her mechanical motions. If only he had been a chick, he could have been happy being a hooker. He gazed at the books feeling and looking like a pervert. None of the books explained specifically how to make money in the sex industry, but buying them together, would help him figure it all out. He tucked the sex on the internet book between the other internet books and tried to pretend that is was all just business. The checkout girl behind the counter rang him up, shivered like she had suffered a suitably large case of the heebee jeebees before she wished him a good day. Her eyes said that she hoped he would have his good day on the other side of town. Eddie’s eyes said, he didn’t fucking care what some bookstore bitch thought. As he walked out it occurred to him that he really didn’t care. That put a spring in his step.