"I have to use the restroom. Ali, come with me?" Julia said, interrupting the girl's work.
Ali winced for a moment but lovingly set down the feet of the woman she was massaging and scurried after Julia into the bathroom. Erin gave her a sympathetic glance as the Asian girl blushed. In other places it'd be normal for two girls to go to the bathroom together, but here it was just another way for Julia to put her employees in their place.
Because the employees in Romm's Coffee all wore shoes, Julia deliberately went barefoot so she would stand out from the others and customers would know not to order her around. The tile in the bathroom was unheated, though, and was always cool to the touch. Julia quickly came up with a solution to her problem. Each time that she had to use the bathroom, she would have one of the girls follow her in. The girl's purpose was to kneel in front of Julia as she used the toilet, and offer her lap as a footrest for the woman to make her more comfortable.
On longer visits, Julia might ask the girl to read her news articles, or to think of general ways to improve the cafe. It was almost like a business meeting except for the absurd nature of it, and Julia often counted it as the girl's 10 minute break. With Erin in particular, she seemed to pull her away whenever she was trying to eat something and insist she bring it into the bathroom with her. She nearly wretched each time she had to eat on the bathroom floor at Julia's feet, but it still wasn't as bad as Ali or Cami had it.
According to Ali (although it was harder and harder to understand what she said), whenever Julia had to pee she would make Ali lick her clean afterwards. Sometimes, she would have the girl linger for much longer than necessary, and Erin would see Ali come out of the bathroom, her face wet in a very suggestive way. Julia would be glowing for the next few hours, of course. As for Cami, Julia usually wanted the girl to suck on her toes while she used the toilet. She never said why, although it seemed like the perfect way to humiliate Erin's formerly straightlaced friend.
The cafe, its patrons and its customers had changed so much over the past few months.
Since that night Julia had fucked Erin's boyfriend in front of her, she no longer had the confidence to stand up to the woman. She was meek and submissive every time Julia made a demand, and quickly gave in to anything the woman had asked her to do. This included renovations to the cafe which took more than $100,000 to complete, although Erin was sure that Julia had deliberately overcharged so she could keep the excess money. Its look was quite different now, more to the taste of its new clientele.
The floor was made of white Calcatta marble flaked with actual gold, heated by an expensive network of coils installed beneath its surface. The eclectic furniture was long gone, replaced with the kinds of things featured in a luxury Fashion and Design magazine. There were chairs made of the softest leather (each with a matching footrest, for the employees to sit as they worked on their guests' feet), dining tables made of rare Ebony wood, and stylish Japense partition panels installed throughout the place to give certain booths a 'private' feel.
Even the silverware had changed. Every utensil was now made of silver, and Julia required one of the girls to polish each piece by hand at the end of every day, since it created the brightest shine. Their ceramic coffee cups now were each a masterwork object d'art, made of delicate porcelain and rimmed with gold trim around the lip. These too had to be washed by hand, and washed very carefully because they were so fragile. One time Cami had accidentally broken a cup in a hurry washing it, and Julia took her into the break room for a 'talk.' Cami never spoke of what went on in that room, but from that day on whenever Julia looked at her she would bow her head and look down at the woman's feet.
The renovations also added new features to the cafe, moving it in an entirely new direction. Now, in one corner of the dining room, there was a walled-off area with a massage table. Here, customers would receive luxurious massages as a thanks for patronizing Romm's Coffee. The massages, although of the highest quality, were always free. Usually it was Ali who did the massages, and she was constantly studying from her Reflexology and Massage handbook printed in Chinese. Sometimes, though, the customers would ask for Cami or Annie to do the massage.
For the most part, it was the wealthy men and women who Cami had opposed in her campaigns to help the poor that requested her services. Each time, Erin would notice the burning anger in Cami's eyes as she deferentially waited outside the massage room while her customer stripped down and settled beneath a sheet. Still, Cami always smiled and was excessively polite to the array of trophy wives, spoiled brats, and boorish businessmen that took advantage of her services. The men in particular would sometimes swagger out of the massage room, looking dumbly pleased with themselves with Cami coming out a few minutes later, looking flushed and appaled, adjusting her skirt before meeting her next appointment with a vacuous smile. Sometimes she would use the restroom between clients, bringing a towel with her for some unknown reason.
The businessmen would then put $20, $50, and even $100 in the tip jar, a smug grin on their faces before they went out to greet the day. Occasionally, Cami would pull a bill out of her bra and put it into the tip jar as a guy watched on with obvious pleasure. It seemed like Cami was patronized by the same men, usually old enough to be her father, and they all enjoyed being addressed as "Sir," or "Mr. Soandso." Although the men would get Cami gifts of cheap jewelery that just made her look like a tart, Julia kept nearly all of the tip money they contributed. She awarded only a few dollars to her employees.
Julia had also moved in with Erin, much to her dread.
As Erin expected, living with Julia brought her to a deeper level of servitude. Julia was more demanding in her home life than she was in the cafe, and now Erin had no escape from the blonde goddess and her constant needs. She wasn't paying rent, of course, and she expected Erin to do all of the domestic responsibilities of the house for the both of them. Julia had the finest taste in everything: Egyptian cotton sheets, wild-caught fish, luxury beauty products that were hundreds of dollars for a small bottle. Erin quickly became familiar with Julia's beauty routine, and was always at hand in case the woman wanted help.
A typical day would go like this: Erin would drive the both of them home, and help Julia off with her shoes at the door. Usually, she wore some expensive stilletto that further emphasized her height over Erin. Then, Erin would fetch some Rose hip / Lavender oil and massage Julia's feet for a long while, as the woman decompressed from the day and played around on her phone.
Erin would always be completely focused on Julia's feet, which she now knew to be size 10, as she carefully kneaded the woman's soles and stretched her long toes. Julia especially enjoyed it when Erin would put a finger between each of her toes and use her other hand to firmly do all the strokes Julia had taught her. After so many hours at Julia's feet, Erin practically had them memorized: her high arches, the way her slender toes curved, and the look of her perfectly shaped nail beds always sported a fresh pedicure (which was Erin's doing, of course).
After an hour or so of carefully kneading Julia's tired feet, Erin would get Julia a glass of very expensive wine. For Julia, a bottle that cost less than $80 was cheap and sometimes they ran as high as $300. She was the only woman Erin knew who drank champagne regularly, which she usually had imported from France. Although Julia drank as much as a bottle a day, she never seemed really intoxicated beyond seeming giggly and a little buzzed. Usually, Julia wanted to be alone as she sipped her wine, only calling on Erin to refill her glass when it was empty.
Erin would use this time to complete the endless list of chores Julia assigned her: polishing the woman's shoes, handwashing her laundry, researching beauty products and techniques that she could use on the woman, and learning new recipes to cook. Julia took Erin's cell phone whenever they got home, so she could only use the computer to do this research. Additionally, Julia put a lot of restrictions on the wifi so that Erin could only access the sites Julia wanted her to see- usually frivolous, girly websites about home economics and beauty. One of Erin's responsibilities was to do outreach for Romm's Coffee, which entailed messaging models and conservative-leaning figures and asking them to stop by the cafe for a free cup of coffee and a massage. Very few turned her offer down.
Erin would start cooking dinner in the early evening, and the only way she could enjoy her own cooking was an occasional taste of it to make sure the seasoning was good. Otherwise, Julia kept Erin on a strict diet of bland food: unseasoned brown rice cooked to a gruellish consistency, underripe bananas, and liquid whey that had an acidic, sour taste. She wasn't permitted to use salt, sugar, or any sort of seasoning on her own food and she was always hungry from the small portions Julia allowed her.
Only rarely would Erin sit at the table with Julia as they ate. More often, she would stand at Julia's side in case she wanted anything, serving her food and refilling her drinks. Julia insisted that Erin watch her eat the food to help her be more 'mindful,' but Erin was sure that it was to torment the poor girl by seeing someone else enjoy a feast while she herself had only poor scraps. Already, Erin had lost 15 pounds. When she saw herself in the mirror, she always noticed how frail and skinny she looked.
After dinner came the exercise.
Erin dreaded each night for this reason. When Julia had her fill of delicious, healthy food, she would order Erin up to the exercise room to relax and watch the girl's gruelling fitness routine. The room had been converted from a bedroom into a mini gym: it had an exercise bike, mirrored walls, a treadmill, and other pieces of workout equipment. Erin would change into short shorts and a tank top, put on some running shoes and prepare for the night's torture.
Here Julia really showed her fiendish ingenuity. Erin, having failed so many times to live up to Julia's impossible standards of fitness, felt nauseous every time she even saw the treadmill. It was remote controlled, so Julia could set the pace. She always did it in a way that Erin couldn't keep up with - too fast, a high incline, but she was careful to dangle success just outside of the girl's reach.
For example, one time Julia told Erin that if she could run two miles, she would be excused from her tasks around the house for an entire week. The pace kept increasing, though, and Erin only made it a mile and a half before she had to step off, nauseous from overexertion and utterly disappointed in herself for her failure. That wasn't even the end of the workout session, either. Erin still had to ride the exercise bicycle and climb 30 flights on the stair machine. At the end of the night, Erin was drenched in sweat, pale, and trembling from exhaustion. She could barely walk, and felt her body eating its own muscles to get energy.
When she mentioned this to Julia, the woman opened up a can of cheap tuna (practically cat food quality) and put it onto a plate for Erin so she could have some protein. Erin nearly gagged as she ate the awful, slimy stuff, and this somehow became a ritual at the end of each night's workout. Erin would then draw a bath for Julia and help the woman bathe, rubbing expensive soap on her toned body and shampooing her hair lovingly. When Julia stepped out, Erin would apply a coat of lavender oil onto Julia's entire body to help her moisturize overnight, then fetch her a bathrobe. She then had five minutes to take a cold shower and meet Julia in her old bedroom to rub the woman's back and legs as she drifted off to sleep.
