'Sophie, no!' he said, obviously alarmed that I might burst into tears. Not without foundation – I was even more alarmed than he was at the prospect.
'What then?' I managed to blurt.
'Sophie, listen to me. There aren't many people in this organisation I would retain after they had accused me of being a pimp.' He smiled self-deprecatingly. 'But you are one of them, and I want to tell you why. Now, I don't know what has happened to change you. I don't know and I don't want to know.' He gave me a very significant look. He did know. 'The quality I hired you for, and which seems to have fled lately, is joie de vivre. A certain sparkle. A swing in your walk. A sense that you would be fun to spend time with. The customers relate to that. The ladies want to share cocktails and dirty stories with you; the gentlemen want to take you to bed. It works.'
'What if I don't want the gentlemen to take me to bed?' I felt stubborn. I did not want to hear this, unless he was about to declare himself as one of those gentlemen.
'What if you do?'
He had steepled his fingers and laid his head on one side.
'What if I do? I don't understand.'
'You used to,' he said bluntly. 'And now you don't. Have you, if I might ask a personal question, Got Religion?'
I snorted. 'I think not.'
'Right. So why the Born-Again Virginity? You seemed a woman who was at one with her sexual appetites, Sophie. And now you don't. It saddens me to see it.'
'Perhaps I'm looking to direct my sexual appetites towards just one person,' I said pointedly.
'Well, perhaps you are,' said Chase without missing a beat. 'But what if that one person never materialises? Will you, as the girl in your current favourite song says, throw your life a
way on a dream that can't come true?'
I had to take a deep breath. This was all a little too close to the bone.
'Who says he'll never materialise?'
'Oh, nobody is saying that, Sophie. But sometimes people are prevented from following the path they really want to take. Sometimes there is too much standing in the way.'
He looked, for a moment, achingly sad. I thought about asking him if he was married after all, then thought better of it. Keep things cryptic, make no personal admissions, and perhaps we can maintain our fragile fantasies.
'Yes,' I said softly. 'I see what you mean. But some people want their future partners to wait for them. Or at least to be a little less . . . excessive . . . than I have been. Some people think an interesting sexual history devalues a woman.'
'A person like that would be wrong for you, Sophie,' he said. 'Some people love a confident, adventurous, experienced woman. Given half a chance.'
'Given half a chance,' I whispered an echo. Oh, Chase. Whoever she was, I hoped she was worth it.
He sat back, unclasping his hands, raising his voice a little. 'I suppose what I'm saying, Sophie, is that you should do what you like. Enjoy yourself. Get that twinkle back in your eye. I won't think any less of you, and neither will this shadowy future lover of yours.'
He stood abruptly and stalked away to his office. The rocket salad was getting limp, the small appeal it had had to begin with rapidly diminishing. I twisted the weedy strands with my fork, thinking over what Chase had said. It made sense.
Whether there was any prospect of ending up with him or not, it was likely I had a long wait ahead of me. Maybe an eternal one. What kind of waiting room would I most want to kick my heels in? An austere bunker full of copies of didactic texts? Or a pleasure garden designed to my own specifications?
I went home and put the trouser suit on eBay.
My next shift started at two the next day, but I had an hour or so to kill beforehand. I leant against the arched entrance to the bar and looked over the heads of the drinkers, searching for familiar faces. If I smoothed a hand across the front of my pencil skirt I could feel the telltale bump of a suspender snap. My ankles thought they had come home at last, back in heels that made them work their little tendons and sinews. A red-haired banker I had given head to a few times looked over and caught my eye. I fluttered my fingers in a flirtatious little wave and winked. Maybe it was his lucky day. Maybe it wasn't. I hadn't decided yet. But whatever I decided was fine. My pleasure was my business, just as it should be.
Taking Dictation
I have become quite friendly with Rachael over the months since my first taste of the tender mercies of Dr Lassiter. She has taken to catching a later train home and joining me for a drink in the bar, or a coffee behind the Reception desk if I can't get away. She revels in showing me her marks, and gives me a wince-inducing blow-by-blow account of proceedings before we move on to more general chit-chat, or sometimes more specific discussion of the fascinations of Dominance and Submission.
'How did you know?' I asked her one rainy Monday afternoon, watching the streaming smoked glass from a corner booth in the bar.
'How?'
'Yeah, how. And when? When did you know?'