My name's Clare. I'm 24 and single, I work in the finance department of a legal firm, and a mystery couple keep phoning me at random times to hear me masturbate to orgasm while I listen to them having kinky sex.
The calls always start the same way: a woman's voice saying "he's fucking me again." And she tells me what he's doing to her, as he does it. They're into bondage, so she tells me how he's tied her up or tied her down or whatever, and what she's wearing, so that I can visualise it.
I don't know who they are, or why they picked me. After a while, I gave them names: Mia and Guy. Mia, because "he's fucking ME A-gain," and Guy because she always refers to him as "my guy". Mia sounds American to me, but I'm terrible with accidents, so I could be wrong. Guy's never said a word.
Usually, they call in the evening, which works for me because I'm almost always home, and almost always alone: aside from being single, I'm also barely making rent, and I'm not good in social situations with new people - hence the "single" part. That means it's not usually a problem for me to talk to Mia and ask her questions, or to strip naked and break out a vibrator or a wand and go to town (they really get off on hearing me come - it usually pushes one or both of them over the edge).
But they don't always call in the evening. Sometimes, their calls are....well, let's say they can be
unfortunate
in their timing.
I'm walking through a shopping mall: "He's fucking me again. I'm strapped down over the coffee table..."
I'm waiting for my coffee at Starbucks': "He's fucking me again. I'm on my back on the swing..."
On the bus on the way home: "He's fucking me again. I'm spreadeagled on the square frame..."
I've taken to carrying a bullet vibrator in my purse. It was an expensive one - more than I could really afford - but it was listed as "really quiet" which is something you need when you're diving into a public toilet in desperate need of a wank.
The most recent call came while I was still at work. It was approaching the end of the financial quarter, and department heads always get jumpy around that time, worrying about hitting their targets and setting budgets for the next quarter, so we're always very busy. All of us in my team - Lucy, Mitesh, Martin, Tariq and me - had been working late into the evening every day that week.
"Right, that's me," Lucy said, eventually, closing her laptop with a snap. "Andrew and I drew the evening shift tonight." She put on her coat, and grabbed her bag.
"Evening shift?" Martin asked, looking up from his screen.
"With Andrew's mum."
Martin looked blank.
"After her hip operation?" Lucy said, slightly exasperated. "The family have drawn up a rota for who visits her at home while she's convalescing. It's us tonight."
"Ah, right." Martin nodded, turning back to his screen.
Lucy glared dramatically at the back of his head. They'd had this conversation - or something like it - several times, now. If it didn't affect him, Martin didn't care, and it didn't stick. She stuck out her tongue at him, then grinned at me, before giving me a wave and escaping to an evening that, if not better, was at least different.
I should perhaps explain the team, here. If you looked at the org chart, we all reported to the Finance Director, but Tariq was team leader. Martin should have been, as Martin had been with the department since the last Ice Age (or perhaps the one before), but Martin was, well, Martin. Competent enough at what he did, but with zero understanding of how people worked, as a concept or in reality.
Martin was mid-forties. He wore glasses over his bearded, somewhat ruddy face, both badges of honour in his obsession for real ale. He covered his growing beer belly with worn-out jumpers that should have been reclassified as bio-hazards, and then burned from a distance under controlled circumstances. And he smoked; you couldn't get near him without hitting the cloud of nicotine fumes that seeped out of his clothing and every fibre of his being.
Such
a catch, as they say.
"Screw it," Tariq said. "We're not going to get this wrapped up in the next two hours. I say we take a break for food."
Tariq was a considerable improvement on Martin. Early-to-mid-thirties, with a handsome face, neatly trimmed beard and smart dress sense, Tariq's main hobby was fitness. His suit jacket hung on the coat stand. He'd loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves hours ago. As he stood and stretched, his crisp white shirt and well-pressed trousers showed the outline of the muscular frame that he had honed through nightly gym sessions. He cycled to work daily, and each morning his cycling shorts showed that his physical attributes weren't
all
the result of working out. He and his girlfriend Divya from Marketing went running each lunchtime, and watching the pair of them bounce lithely past the windows in lycra, all taut quads, solid glutes and eye-catching chests, was like being present for the filming of a Nike commercial.
Tariq was a good team leader - he could at least treat people as human, and he had an easy, confident manner - but his fitness obsession could be deadly if you were caught alone with him for a while. No matter the topic of conversation, he'd turn the focus to working out somehow. Not in a boastful manner - it just genuinely appeared to be all that he thought about. He and Divya were made for each other, in that respect.
"I'd love to get an hour alone with him," Lucy had said once, when we were hanging out at my place, "if only I could figure out a way to stop him talking." And then she'd said, "Hmm. Actually, I can think of several ways," and cackled to herself.
Martin spun lazily in his chair to face Tariq. "I could murder a curry," he said.
Tariq grabbed a pile of takeaway menus from the top of a filing cabinet and sat down again, interrupting my contemplation of his fabulous butt. "You can always murder a curry. We had curry last night. How about something different?"
"There are different
curries
," Martin noted. "And you
like
curry."