"After work today I am taking you out for dinner. There is someone I would like you to meet." Carl was beaming at her as he spoke. Kate was dumbstruck. She had been half expecting him to kick her out, but instead he was taking her out to dinner! Her boss was taking her out to dinner! My God, Debs was so right about him, he was so understanding and all her doubts from yesterday evaporated. She hardly knew how to respond.
"Thank you very much. I'd love that."
"That's settled then. I'll pick you up from your apartment about 6:30." He turned and walked off and that was it. The arrangements had been made; she would be ready and waiting for him.
Sitting there in the bar of the restaurant sipping at their drinks, Kate could see there was something on Carl's mind. She glowed with pleasure that he should take her out and even allowed her to call him Carl. The impossible risks we take when we reveal our most hidden secrets never knowing how they will be received, but the utmost pleasure when shared and accepted. Katie, as he liked to call her, wondered about this friend he wanted to introduce her to, what did that signify? Was he really so interested in her?
Afterwards she was to spend many long moments trying to recall that precise moment when her world seemed to slip sideways in front of her: all the realities and sureties she took for granted evaporating; space and time clattering over a set of points and onto a new and alternate future. She would torture herself endlessly on whether she could have done anything, whether she had allowed it all to happen, been complicit. Had she secretly known what Carl had meant, but pretended to herself not to? She would forever recall her fantasies lying in her bed the night before that signified to her she was not so innocent or so naΓ―ve as she would afterwards like to think.
Striding purposefully across the bar directly towards her was her trainer from the sow farm. Ricky oozed with self assurance, a hard look of intent upon his face, even his tall build made Katie shrink inside. As her thoughts scrambled in confusion, her willpower drained away leaving an empty shell waiting for him to fill. She stared into his eyes, a little lost girl, having run away and been found. She belonged to this man in ways that her conscious mind could no longer comprehend: it was instinctual.
Ricky was staring straight at her as he crossed the floor, moving effortlessly through the crowd. A tightness gripped Katie's throat, her palms were sticky and her leg was shaking under her skirt that hung in long folds about the stool. Something was yelling inside her to run but she was glued firmly to the stool, the power over her limbs already surrendered to this approaching man. Vaguely, Katie's mind was rebelling: "No. No! This cannot be happening. Not now. Not after all this time. I ran away from him. I escaped. He can't come back now."
Carl looked up and then smiling he stood. He offered his hand to the newcomers, "Glad to meet you, and here's Katie," he added holding out his arm towards her. Ricky smiled as he looked down, it was a smile of possession.
"Hello Katie. I have found you again."
The touch of Ricky's hand upon her arm sent an electric arc of delight sweeping across her body. How often she had yearned for that touch and now as his firm grip grasped her a few inches above her elbow something melted inside. It had seemed such a long time, but the desire for him came careering back like an old favourite song. Once more she felt that familiar need for him to treat her as the sow she had desired to be, all the barriers and her resolutions swept aside like paper swirling in a gust of wind.
"I can feel you tremble, my errant sow. We have a lot of catching up to do. Shall we sit over there at our table?" He nodded towards a table near the back of the restaurant. It was in a little alcove. Katie heard the familiar ring of the word 'sow' rattle inside her mind tearing at her self-confidence, diminishing her. It was as if an echo had been lodged inside her mind, a magic incantation that would transform her back into Ricky's sow; one of the herd. Still speechless, unable to open her mouth, compliant in his hands, Katie allowed Ricky to steer her through the restaurant to the table at the back. Carl followed. Was she unable or just unwilling to resist, she couldn't tell. She felt confused, lost in a trauma that mixed genuine fear with a powerful lust for all Ricky represented to her. Her old self had been swept aside by a tsunami of emotions as Ricky entered her life once again and was steering her, manipulating her, getting her where he wanted her, and that was just what she wanted too she thought in horror.
Carl slid in around the table next to Katie and Ricky sat opposite her. Katie was acutely aware that between Carl and Ricky she had no means of escape. She was trapped, and that was very familiar too.