Office Subjugation

Chapter 15 - The Secretaries' Entrance

Sunday. 7:04am. She had been awake for over an hour, lying on the cracked leather of the couch in the negligee, the blanket pulled up to her chin, the clock on the side table holding the time in red bars.

The corridor outside her door remained unchanged since four o'clock the day before, when the doors of the lift had hushed shut on him in his oatmeal sweater with his coat across his arm. No lift chime since. No footsteps. No key. He had left with her bedroom door unlocked on the Saturday afternoon. She had used it to go to bed. She had not used it for anything beyond that. No trips to the toilet during the night - that had been trained out of her. No late-night trips, because where would she go?

She got up.

Walked the side-corridor on her bare feet to the bathroom, used it, showered. Lavender soap from the dispenser, hot water for as long as it took to warm the cold of the leather out of her shoulders, the white towel from the department store dropped over the rail to dry. She brushed her teeth at the corridor sink, rinsed, did not look in the mirror for longer than the length of the rinse.

In her room she dressed in the small space between the couch and the side table.

Cup-less bra, settled. Crotchless panty over her hipbones. The thong was still hung like the others and she had not picked that option in over a week. The crotchless was what he had said he preferred, and she had been wearing them most days since. Garter belt. Stockings, one and the other, clipped front and back. Heels. Lipstick. The thin black line at each upper lash. Blush.

She did not put the dress on yet.

The trust he had given her on the Saturday afternoon was valuable, and the cost was perfection, the cost was her in the lingerie, on her knees, the moment he came through the doors. The dress came after. The dress was what she stepped into when an inspection had finished. She did not want him to see the cream on her body before he had seen the rest of her on her knees, because otherwise his trust might be taken away from her.

She lifted the dress off the rack and folded it once over her arm.

-

She walked the side-corridor through the outer office and into his inner office with her cheeks bare and her heels accentuating her walk, the lace bands of the crotchless along the outsides of her thighs, the welts from previous sessions having all faded now, her ass a pale white unblemished canvas.

She laid the cream over the back of the visitor chair near the inner door.

She walked to the center of the rug.

She knelt.

The wool of the Persian was cool on her bare knees and warm where the heels of her shoes pressed up against the back of her thighs. Hands in her lap. Chin to her chest. The position she held every weekday before inspection.

She held it.

The minutes moved.

He came through the inner door from the outer office every weekday morning, and from the center of the rug she had been angled at his desk for five weeks, her front toward the desk and the inner door at her back. Her back was what he had been seeing of her at the kneel. Maybe what he wanted today, the day after he had said trusting, was her front. Her front, on her knees, the moment he came through the door.

For weeks every morning he would unlock her door and continue on to his desk, while she would get ready, then present herself for inspection in his office, kneeling before his desk. Her front to him... What if that's what he'd want. What if the very day after he'd given her this trust, the day after he had left the door unlocked, he comes into his office to find her facing away from him, her back to the door... That seemed wrong.

She shifted on her knees. Pivoted one-eighty degrees. The inner door sat in front of her now.

She held it.

Then she thought about the glass doors at the end of the outer office.

He came through the glass before he came through the inner door. Maybe what he wanted today was for her to be at the threshold of the suite, on her knees, on the carpet inside the front doors of his floor.

She stood.

Walked through the inner door into the outer office. Two of its walls were glass. The city-window side, broken in the middle by the half-wall of the kitchenette and the run of cabinetry below it. And the public-corridor side, where the glass front doors of the suite sat in the middle of floor-to-ceiling panels of glass that ran the length of the wall. The inner door was behind her. The meeting-room doors and the side-corridor opening were along the wall to her left. The corridor outside the front doors was on its day dimmer because it was Sunday, and the dim grey light of the corridor fell across the carpet at the threshold.

She knelt beside the doors, just inside the glass, her body parallel to the wall of panels. Knees together, hands in her lap, head down. Her shoulder, her hip, and her bare cheeks ran the length of the panel on her right, a hand's-width from it.

She held it.

The carpet pressed a wool pattern into the front of each kneecap. Her chin was tucked to her chest where it belonged, her eyes on the wool of the carpet between her knees. Anyone stepping off the lift would round the corner of the corridor and walk toward the doors and see her through the glass long before she lifted her head to see them - a girl on her knees beside the front doors of a law office, head bowed, in a cup-less bra and a crotchless panty and four garter clips at the back of her thighs, framed for them through the glass on a Sunday morning.

The lift did not come.

She thought again. He had not told her where to wait. The choice was hers and she had taken the most exposed of the choices because she had not known which one he would want. She had picked it for him without him there to tell her whether she had picked right.

Part of the trust was being where he wanted her.

She did not know where he wanted her.

But she knew where he wanted her every other day.

She stood.

Walked back through the outer office and through the inner door and into his inner office, back to the center of the rug facing his desk.

She knelt.

By half past nine her stomach had reminded her that he had not given her dinner on the Saturday night. By a quarter to ten the front of each thigh had gone numb above the knee. By ten her calves had pins-and-needles where the heel of the shoe pressed against the back of her thigh. She shifted her weight a fraction. The tingling moved a fraction with it. She did not stand.

She held it.

By ten-fifteen she stood.

Two flat patterns from the wool of the rug sat printed into the front of each kneecap. They would lift. The numb in her thighs would lift. Her body had been holding positions for five weeks and she had learned which of her body's complaints were temporary.

She walked the rug to her own desk in the outer office, on legs that did not quite belong to her, and she sat down in her chair with her hands in her lap and her back straight, ready to drop the half-second to her knees the moment the lift chimed in the public corridor.

The lift did not chime.

She made herself a long black at his espresso machine in the kitchen, one scoop, coarse grind, the way she had pulled it for him five days a week for five weeks and had never pulled for herself. The grinder ran loud in the empty office and she flinched at the sound of it. The pull tasted off, slightly bitter at the back of her tongue, the way the third cup on a long Tuesday tasted when he had told her she had over-extracted. She did not know what she had done wrong. She did not throw it. She would not waste it.

She carried it back to her desk.

The Morrison file was three folders to the left of her keyboard from the Friday close, the top folder cocked an inch forward where she had not finished cross-indexing it. She opened it because reading it was something to do.

She read.

By half past eleven her ears had begun to compose lift chimes from nothing. The hum of the strip-light at the kitchenette would resolve, for a half-second, into a chime in the public corridor. She would lift her head. The corridor would be empty. The hum would settle back into a hum.

By twelve she had cross-indexed twenty pages, and the question in her had moved fromwhen does he come intodoes he come in at all on a Sundaytohow long do I wait if he does not. She did not have an answer. He came in every previous Sunday, but now her door was unlocked, maybe he expected her to go out. It didn't matter, he had given her his trust, so she would be ready, for as long as it took him to come through the doors. Afternoon if it took the afternoon. Evening if it took the evening. He had said trusting and she would not let him down on the day after he had said it.

The phone rang. She jumped.

His phone, on his desk, the private-line ring a fraction lower than her own. She had picked it up twice in five weeks, both times because he had told her to.

She looked at it.

It rang again.

She stood. Walked the rug on her bare legs and her heels, the lingerie cool on her skin in the air-conditioning of his office. Lifted the receiver between the third ring and the fourth.

"Alexander Williams' office."

"Lemongrass. One o'clock. The address is on the credenza. Don't be late."

The line went.

She set the receiver back in its cradle and the small click of plastic on plastic was the loudest sound her body had registered all morning, and she stood at the edge of his desk and looked at the credenza.

The folded sticky note was beside the decanter, on the corner of the leather pad, in his clean small handwriting.Lemongrass. Anson Street, corner of 7th.Four blocks east. He had set it there before he had left.

---

She had a one o'clock.

She lifted the cream off the back of the visitor chair where it had been folded since the morning. Stepped into it on the rug she had been kneeling on. Pulled the straps over her shoulders, reached behind for the zip, ran it up between her shoulder blades, smoothed the hem at her thighs.

She stopped.

The cream was nice but not great, its paleness a poor contrast to her own, the cream dress was a work-day dress, they all were, but the cream especially, and the lunch he had just rung her about was not a workday.

She unzipped it. Stepped out. Folded it once over her arm.

Walked the rug to the inner door, through the outer office, through the side-corridor, into her own room. The dresses he had bought her at the clothing store hung along one wall in order. Burgundy. Slate blue. The empty hanger for the cream. Forest green. Cobalt. The burgundy was the one he had picked first off the rail in the back room at the store. The saleswoman had said, with her hands clasped at her waist, that the color suited her skin tone.

She hung the cream back on its hanger. Lifted the burgundy off its hanger and stepped into it.

The bodice closed on her ribs the way it had closed in the change room on the Saturday. The hem ended an inch shorter than the cream and the neckline a finger lower. The fabric held her ass.

She lifted the hem. Ran the back of one hand over her bare mound, then back along the closed seam of her lips, then between her cheeks for any prickle of stubble. Smooth. The waxing recent. He would have nothing to correct her on.

She brushed her teeth a second time at the corridor sink. Rinsed twice. Folded the towel back over the rail.

Touched up the lipstick. Doubled the thin black line at each upper lash. Warmed the blush at her cheekbones. Touched the pale-gold to the inside of each wrist and to the soft skin behind each ear. Vanilla and honey and the white floral underneath.

Tightened the elastic in her ponytail and ran a brush through the loose strands.

Walked back through the side-corridor and the outer office and into the inner. The cup of the long black she had not finished sat where she had left it on the kitchenette counter. She walked it to the dishwasher and set it on the small white half-rack. She pushed the visitor chair half an inch further under the table where the cream had been folded all morning. Smoothed the leather pad on his desk. Set the receiver of his phone fully back in its cradle. Took the paper that had been folded on the corner of the leather pad and slid it underneath the corner of the file. The inner office looked the way it had looked on the Saturday afternoon before he had walked out of it.

She crossed the outer office. Pushed the glass doors. Stepped into the public hallway.

The lift was waiting.

Lobby. The security guard was not at his desk on Sundays. The marble was empty. The revolving door turned slow under her hand and she stepped out into the soft bright of late Sunday morning. The avenue she had crossed five mornings a week at six was almost empty. A bus rolled past on the far lane. A man at a stand on the other side of the street selling the morning papers. Two cyclists in coloured jerseys. The hum of weekday traffic was not in any of it.

Anson Street was four blocks east, and she walked them in the same heels she walked the office in.

The burgundy was tight on her. The bodice held her breasts up high and the neckline cut deep, the cleavage shifting against the fabric every other step. The body lotion she had worked into her skin an hour ago was slick now between her thighs, the inside of one smooth thigh sliding past the inside of the other with each pace. The hem at the back was riding up a fraction with every stride, the bottom of her ass and the lace bands of the crotchless beneath threatening, every few paces, to lift far enough to be seen, her bare pink folds just above them.

She had not picked the burgundy because the burgundy was a workday dress. She was outside in the city in the prettiest dress she owned, dressed for him.

A man at the lights stopped looking at his phone to watch her cross. A woman in jogging clothes on the opposite side of the avenue turned her head and tracked her until they had passed each other. Two men outside a coffee shop set down their cups together as she walked past.

The dress is wrong.

She had picked it because she had thought it was her best one, and she had not asked herself whether her best was the kind of best a city woman wore on a Sunday afternoon. The burgundy dress had been measured to his needs and the needs of his office. The hem he had picked was the hem for an inspection rug, not the hem for the avenue at noon.

I'm a farm girl playing dress-up, that's what they're seeing, that's why they're staring. A girl from Ohio who had not understood what a city woman wore on a Sunday, in an outfit a city woman would have known to leave for the workplace.

Lemongrass was on the corner.

A storefront in dark teal paint, the name across the window in gold-leaf lettering. Glass door propped open with a small iron weight. Inside, low rosewood tables in two rows along the wall, paper menus laid on bamboo placemats, a chalkboard at the back with the day's specials in a looped hand, a zinc bar along the side, an open kitchen at the rear behind a glass screen with a wok flame visible at the burner. Customers in clothes that were Sunday casual yet fashionable and trendy, the kind of customers a tabloid magazine photographed on the pavement outside the place after their meal.

This was not the white-tablecloth Italian place from the Saturday weeks ago. Younger. Trendier. The kind of place a well-known food blog would rave about online and then the crowds of foodies would flock to.

She crossed the avenue.

The waiter at the door looked up from a stack of paper menus with the polite professional smile waiters had. "Just one?"

"I'm meeting someone. Mr Williams."

The smile changed at the name. Not a smile of recognition exactly. A smile that knew where to put her now.

"He's in the corner. This way."

He led her through the room.

The room had been at a busy Sunday-lunch volume of forks-on-plates and conversation when she had walked through the door, and the volume dropped a fraction as the waiter walked her through it. A woman at a four-top by the window stopped mid-sentence to look. Men at the bar turned on their stools as she passed. A girl her age at a corner table had her glass halfway to her mouth and held it there until they had cleared the table.

The hem is too short. The colour is wrong. They can see I do not belong in this room.

She kept her eyes on the back of the waiter's collar.

---

Williams was at a two-top against the back wall, beside a window that gave onto an alley with a small rosebush in a planter. Forest green sweater, sleeves pushed up to the forearm. A small wine glass of pale-gold riesling on the table, half-drunk. The Sunday paper folded twice on the corner of the table, the crossword corner facing up, the squares half-finished in the small clean letters of his hand. A spent espresso cup beside the wine.

He stood as she got to the table.

"Chloe."

She didn't flinch this time, not like she usually did when he said her name, the way he said it had warmth, like he was addressing her as a person not a mistake, her own name said by him the way it had not been said by him in weeks.

He took the two steps around the table and put his arms around her. Full hug, his chest against the side of her face, his chin at the crown of her head. The wool of his sweater was rough against the bare skin of her shoulder where the strap of the burgundy did not cover her. He smelled the way his office smelled. Leather. The woody amber she now knew by name. Under that, the warmth of him, his body, his strong torso.

She put her arms around his waist and held on, nestled in his arms and body for an extended beat, a length of time not out of place for a familiar hug with someone intimate, long enough for her to feel anxiety drain away. This was one of the good days, this was going to be a good lunch. She felt relief.

He let go. Pulled out her chair. She sat. He sat opposite.

"Riesling?"

"Yes please, Sir."

He raised one finger to the waiter without looking up. A second glass arrived, was poured, and Williams was poured a fraction more in his own.

"The lemongrass chicken for her, with the green papaya on the side. Steak, rare, with the green peppercorn nam jim. Roti for the table."

The waiter wrote without looking at the pad and took the menus that had not been opened.

The roti came on a small bamboo plate, three rounds of flatbread folded in halves, with a small dish of sauce beside them. She had not eaten breakfast or even dinner the evening before. She tore a piece, dipped a corner light and careful, and ate it without speaking.

He watched her eat.

"What did you do with your morning?"

"Sir?"

"Before I called."

Her face went hot at the question because in the absence of him showing up her morning seemed rather...pitiful.

"I, I made coffee, Sir. At the kitchenette. For myself. It came out wrong, the grind was the same, I don't know what I -"

"Hm."

"And then I worked on the Morrison file. The pages I had not finished on the Friday. I had thought I would finish them this morning -"

"On a Sunday."

"Yes, Sir."

She didn't mention the hours spent kneeling, waiting for his arrival.

He looked at her over the wine. The color of his eyes was the same as any other day, but there was a lightness to them, like how they lit up when he laughed once at a story she had told him about a steam wand. Not the dull grey of inspection.

"You did not go out?"

"No, Sir."

"The door was unlocked."

"I know, Sir."

He did not press. Took a slow sip. Set the glass down.

The plates came. Hers was a piece of grilled lemongrass chicken on a bed of jasmine rice, the skin charred and crusted with herb, a wedge of lime at the side of the plate. The papaya salad came on a smaller dish, shredded green, dressed, the heat of it visible in the red of the chili. His was a steak under a small ceramic pot of dark sauce flecked with peppercorn, a wedge of lemon, no rice.