The Interview
When people asked what Jonathan Strauss did for a living, he would tell them, on better days, that he was a writer. He liked to think this was true. He liked to think that all the workshops he had attended, all the pages he had submitted to frigid publishers had earned him the title, but it wasn't what paid the bills. For that, he donned a pressed white shirt and black pants, he carried a party tray and served wine and hors d'oeuvres to middle managers at corporate soirees. He arranged tables and chairs, cleaned up spills and made sure the canapés were always within reach. No one stays in this line of work for very long, which used to make him wonder why he stuck around.
His manager, Tom, was a good guy. He realized this wasn't anyone's dream job and tried to do right by his team. Tom's bosses were the owners of the company: a husband and wife power-couple who, to be fair, worked as hard as anyone else, if not harder. Jon had worked a gig directly under them once. It was a big wedding in Westchester. He had to admire their command of every detail. They kept everyone on their toes, but it brought out the best in their staff, Jon included. That's probably the night they took notice of him.
Tom took Jon out to lunch one day in late August to discuss what he called "career opportunities." After listening to his boss talk at length about his "great work ethic" and "reliability," Jon was sure an offer for full-time was coming and it made him queasy. He was going to be a writer. He did not see himself devoting his life to catering. But then the conversation went in a direction he hadn't expected.
"You're a good-looking guy," Tom said, as if he had just realized it. "You work out a lot?"
"A bit," Jon said.
"You have a girlfriend?"
"Not really."
"Really? A guy like you? I would have thought you'd be getting ass thrown at you."
"I didn't say I wasn't," he replied.
Tom chuckled. He looked around the restaurant, as if to make sure no one was listening, then leaned in. "Sean and Barb want to transfer you to another team. It's really a sister-company called Urban Select. Ever heard of it?"
Jon shook his head.
"Of course you haven't. You're not rich enough to have heard of it. The clientele is high fucking society and, trust me, the parties they like to throw are like nothing you've ever worked before."
"What kind of parties?" Jon asked with suspicion.
Tom swirled the ice around in his glass. "You hang out on porn sites much?" That was all he said about that. He waited for Jon's response until finally the silence became too uncomfortable to bare. "You understand what I'm saying, right?"
Jon furrowed his brow as much as he could. "Ok," he eventually stammered, "So... we cater... orgies?"
Tom nodded vehemently, like a boy who had just been asked if he wanted ice cream.
Jon laughed. "So... how does that work? Am I still just going around serving food, or... " His mind struggled to play out the scenarios in his head. He had never been to an orgy, but what he had gleaned from movies and porn painted a certain picture. "...or what?"
Tom took another, longer sip of his drink. "You do whatever the clients ask of you." He was dead serious now. He looked over the edge of his glass to read Jon's reaction. "So. Before I go any further, you need to tell me if this is something you'd be into. If not, you can go back to serving pigs-in-blankets to tired ol' motherfuckers at team-building retreats. But if you do take the job, you're in a whole other world. You can't talk about anything you see from here on out to anyone ever."
Jon had many questions, the answers to which were all outrageous, but in the end he said yes.
His next meeting was with Sean and Barbara, who, according to their e-mail, were "super-excited" to have him on board. They invited him to their residence in the Financial District one afternoon as a kind of "get to know you" gesture. Though all their communication was reassuring and laid-back, Jon approached the date with the same trepidation he would any high-stakes interview.
He emerged from a private elevator directly into the brightness of their penthouse, where walls of glass presented the skyline of downtown in all its grandeur. Against this backdrop stood his bosses, waiting to welcome him into their very special fold, but not before they were sure their instincts had been correct.
After a few pleasantries and a recap of his conversation with Tom, the real interview began: "Well you have a good look," Barb said, eyeing him from head to toe, "but you can't judge a book by its cover, can you? How's your cock?"
He had expected questions like this, but not so soon. "Pretty good?" was all he could come up with. They still hadn't asked him to sit down.
Barb strutted across the foyer to Jon, her thick heels clattering on the tiled floor. Both her and her husband were annoyingly fit people in their late forties, with a kind of glow that only the most expensive spa treatments can buy. She wore a tight white blouse opened just enough to tease the black lace bra that cupped her eye-popping breasts. An even tighter skirt covered her slender lower half, no more than a lampshade covers a lamp. Her long blond hair had been pulled back in a bun, though shocks of gold curled down into the ruffles of her collar.
"I'd like to see it," she said to Jon, not so much asking as informing. She undid his belt and zipped down his pants. He reluctantly pulled his underwear open for her to peer in. He was beyond nervous, and all those nerves had shriveled his cock down to about the size of an acorn.
"Cute," she said. Her husband grinned, folding his arms as he leaned against the back of a white leather sofa.
