October 10 - The Slide

He was well into his PowerPoint presentation when the panic hit him: The slide he'd put in as a joke to himself--he hadn't taken it out.
Had he?
He didn't have a specific memory of hitting 'delete slide.'
Crap.
It was still in there, he was sure of it: An outlandishly inappropriate slide of a morbidly obese woman, nude, beckoning to the viewer with the caption 'Lick my butt!!!', along with a sound effect of a really juicy fart. He'd been bored the night before. He'd put it in because it cracked him up. Of course he was going to take it out.
Only he didn't.
Now, not only was it in his presentation; he wasn't sure where in his presentation it was. Every click of the mouse was like Russian Roulette in front of an audience of the nation's top pediatricians.
But he was such a seasoned and experienced public speaker that he could project confidence and competence, even while he was practically throwing up in his mouth from anxiety every time he advanced to the next slide.
But other than his queasy awareness of the fragmentation mine that was hidden somewhere in his PowerPoint, his talk was going well. Exceedingly well. He'd given enough presentations in his day to know when he really had the audience, and on that day he did. There was that almost tangible charge in the air. The laughs were coming easily. He felt loose, at home. He was even getting vibes from the attractive woman in the front row whom he told himself was Argentinian.
And yet there was that slide, the one that could pop up at any time and derail his whole talk and send him--
BRAPP!
He clicked to the next slide and Lick my butt!!! was gone just as quickly as it had come. Less than half a second of screen time. If it hadn't been for the sound effect, most of the attendees probably wouldn't have noticed it at all.
He didn't skip a beat, didn't acknowledge it in any way. Just continued on through the sentence he'd started on the slide before it and if anybody had heard something, it must have been their imagination.
A few people shifted in their seats, but that was it. He got through the rest of the presentation and the Q & A that followed without incident, and the applause was enthusiastic.
Afterwards, as most of the room broke for lunch, he waded through the self-indulgent follow-up questions of a smattering of overweight male pediatricians from Iowa. It was a chore made both more tolerable and more aggravating by the fact that he could see the (Argentinian?) woman from the front row waiting to ask him questions as well.
The guys from Iowa finally thanked him and left, and then there she was.
Introductions, compliments, cut to the chase: She (Dr. Silva (Brazilian as it turned out)) was very interested in his talk and could she have a copy of his PowerPoint?
Sure, just give me your email address. I'd be happy to send it to you.
Actually, I have my USB drive on me right now.
Oh.
Great.
And then seconds later it was on her drive.
As soon as he removed her drive from his laptop, all the excuses he should have used hit him: Hold on, my phone's ringing; Oh, somebody left their wallet--wait here!; Actually, I need to tweak it a bit first, but I'd be happy to send it to you later; I just remembered I'm meeting a colleague for lunch; Fire!
But no. Just Oh. Great. Here you go. Enjoy!
Dr. Silva getting to see the slide was out of the question. He had to get it back from her.
But how?
He would have to seduce her, of course. Invite her to dinner, charm the hell out of her, get an invite back to her room, make sweet, exhausting love to her, lull her to sleep, sneak the USB drive out of her bag while she slept, take it back to his room, delete the slide, re save the SFW version, and slip it back into her bag before she woke up. No problem. He'd done that kind of thing before, he could do it again.
And yet, no. She was returning to Brazil that day. In fact, she was leaving for the airport right then.
Funny you should mention Brazil. I'm on my way to Rio today too. Isn't that something?
Actually, I'm going to Sao Paulo.
What'd I say, Rio? I meant Sao Paulo. Of course.
His plan was to lift it out of her bag at some point between the conference center and the check in gate, but he couldn't get her separated from her bag. She even took it with her to the bathroom, and then through passport control and then through security, with him following her every step of the way. By then, the mission to get the USB drive back had become exactly that, a mission. And he was going to see it through to the end.
And so he would go to Brazil. He could swing it. He was a doctor. Being rich enough to take trips to the Southern Hemisphere at the drop of a hat was why he'd become a doctor in the first place. Well, that and the opportunity to help people.
Arrival in Sao Paulo. A faked phone call to the hotel. Bad news. They lost my reservations. Can you believe that?
An offer to stay at hers. Sex, showers, sleep--in that order and then once more but not in that order. And yet he never managed to get the USB drive.
He was forced to to join her on a trip out to the Amazon Rainforest to administer smallpox vaccinations to a group of indigenous tribes people who had been displaced by logging concerns. What the hell. He'd always wanted to see the rainforest.
And so finally, a week into the vaccination gig, he did it. He got his PowerPoint presentation off of her drive and replaced it with a clean version.
The task completed, he told her he had to get back to the States earlier than expected. Something had suddenly come up at his clinic. He apologized and promised to call. Yeah right, she said.
No, really, he said, mostly meaning it.
And then he left.
And after a two-day trek through the Amazon Rainforest followed by a 24-hour trip back to his native Denver, he arrived at his home office, deleted the slide from his own hard drive, promised himself he would never put another joke slide into a PowerPoint presentation like that again, and collapsed into his bed.
Moments before he fell asleep, he was seized with panic: He had replaced the original PowerPoint on Dr. Silva's USB drive with the clean version, right?
Yes. Of course he had.
Right?