It was just a job. Like a billion other jobs smeared across the want ads every day, scoured by the bored, the desperate and the luckless.
Well, I WAS a little bored. But I wasn't desperate. And, hokey-smokes Bullwinkle, I sure wasn't luckless...though I thought at first that I was.
I wasn't real sure about working for a woman younger than myself. Lisa was only 27, and I am...well, I am older than that. Oh, no walkers, no being led gently back to my room by Nursie...but I am older than 27.
My first mistake, if it was one, was to wear my favorite sweater set to work on my second day there. A sleeveless wool turtleneck with a matching sweatercoat. I felt so sensual, just sitting there at my computer, so wrapped up in warm softness. No sense of urgency. No striving to achieve corporate goals. Sweater Slacker Queen rides again!
Not to say that I am not a good employee. It is just that, well, I have this thing about sweaters. So, there I was, feeling rather languorous when Lisa walked into my cubicle, my wretched little cell.
She bent to look over my shoulder at my computer screen. Oh, I was so glad it was not showing Collapse or Bounce Out or Bash the Bouncing Muskrat or something. Oh no, my computer, at least, was hard at work, a busy little beaver of a good machine.
And Lisa saw this as she leaned close to look.
As her hand rested on the back of my neck.
As her perfectly manicured index finger ran almost imperceptibly just above the neck of my sweater, like the kiss of a breeze. Oh my.
It was certainly an accident, I thought. Of course.
But no...
Her finger deliberately stroked my neck as she leaned close and I could smell Hugo Deep Red. I started to shift in my chair.
Lisa said quickly, peremptorily, "Don't move." There was a long moment, a bizarre shift from reality, and I thought this is inappropriate, this is insane, illegal, this is...her hand held my throat gently..this is oh, something, something...
I didn't move. And my nipples stood up. I was sure Lisa could see them through my sweater. So disobedient they were! Such tattle tales! This won't do, I thought breathlessly. How dare she, I thought happily. Hmm.
"There's an eyelash, just about to fall in your eye," she said softly. "Hold still and let me get it." Her right hand held me still as her left hand plucked the offending lash out of harm's way. I blinked. Her fingertips had touched my skin, my face, just below my eye. So light. So...personal.
And then, she stroked my cheek--the rogue eyelash may have been there, who knows?--and turned and left, smiling at me like Mama Cat trotting off with a fat mouse in her jaws.
"Thank you," I said after her, involuntarily admiring her tailored blouse and houndstooth skirt. I wanted to run my hands over that skirt. With her in it. Would that make me Employee of the Month or a jobseeker, I wondered vacantly as she rounded out of sight.
I exhaled deeply. I fumbled for my mouse. It may as well have been an astrolabe for all I knew what to do with it at that moment. I bit my lip. I raised my eyebrow. I smiled to myself. Ohhhhh my.
I may have been just the tiniest bit flustered by her after that. I would do things like drop my pen while we were standing together discussing a project, and then I would drop down in ladylike fashion to fetch it and there I would be, looking up at her gray slacks and up, further to her matching gray cashmere sweater. She was like a topographical map of gently curved Heaven. She would toss her hair and look down at me, amused, and I would flush, and stand back up. And discuss sales demographics or the price of dates in Istanbul or God knows what, and it was at one of these times that she said, in her dripping honey voice, "Meet me after work." Again, it was way out of line. She was my boss and I was her employee, and it was rude as well, not a question, but a command.
I nodded, imagining my cheek against her soft gray shoulder. Ohmygod.
This is where I have to apologize. You see, we went to eat, or bungee jumped off the Arc de Triomphe or something, what difference does it make, what matters is that after we did whatever thing it was we did, she made me go to the mall with her.
Hardly shocking? Oh but wait. She steered me gently but firmly with her hand in the small of my back...caressing me through my deep red lambswool sweater...she made it clear where I was to go. She told me that I liked the gray and pink striped cashmere turtleneck we found. She informed me that I adored the deep green merino wool vee neck that would be huge on me. She helped me realize that I had to have the light blue mohair. I bought them all, in a trance.
