I trudge off of the street and through the revolving door of my building early Friday evening, interested in nothing but a shower to get the subway off of me and then maybe a drink at the ground floor bar afterward.
"Hello Miss Ellis. How was your day?"
"It's over, Phillipe. That's about the best thing that can be said for it." I can't help but smile at the beaming lobby attendant's beatific grin. Proud of his teeth, is our Phillipe. They are very large, very white, and one of his incisors is missing (lost in a gunfight, ala the old west, according to no one but him). He's the most relentlessly cheerful person I know, which I try to keep in mind for the purpose of perspective, especially when I've had a "hard" day at the office like today. From what little I and the other residents have garnered about Phillipe's actual, non-high-noon-gunfighter past over the years, well, lets just say the man deserves the pleasure he gets out of his job. I think the residents would torch the place if the owner ever tried to get rid of him. If I catch him peeking at my tits when I'm walking out in my jogging outfit, well, everyone's got flaws. Sometimes I consider turning and giving him a shimmy, just to see what would happen.
"Miss Ellis, the postman asked me to let you know your box is full again."
I sigh. "Thanks Phillipe. Can I get a bag?"
I'm scared to ask him if he keeps the wad of plastic shopping bags in his lower drawer just because of me. I have some sort of mental block about the mail, I hate checking it. People don't write letters anymore, so it's either junk, bills, or bad news. I cross my fingers every time some nutjob in congress proposes shutting the postal service down.
Flapping the bag Phillipe gave me to expand it, I pop the door on my mail slot and shovel the pile inside of it. There's enough heft to it to threaten the structural integrity of the bag, and at first blush most of it is those stupid coupon-newspapers you can never get them to stop sending you. Cutting down all those trees just to make this crap, don't they know they're killing Flipper?
"Thanks a million, Phillipe. I'll see you later."
"Of course, Miss. Enjoy your evening."
I lug the bag along with my work bag over to the elevator, sitting open on the first floor by default, and bump my elbow against the button for 18. As the elevator ascends, I rest my forehead against the cool metal of the door. Maybe a bath is in order, instead of a shower. Maybe a bath with bubbles, and candles, and a bottle of wine in easy reach. Yeah.
The elevator starts to brake, shaking me out of my daydream, and when the doors open I step off and make a beeline for my door at the end of the corridor, passing the other three condos on this floor and turning the corner to get to mine. My work heels click on the marble until I reach the door, which is wood with the surface carved into some raised abstract geometrical patterns. I let my work bag thump to the floor as I rummage in my coat pocket for my keys. Sliding then home, I grab my bag and shove my way inside with a knee with a knee.
Lemme talk about my door for a minute. I might have bought this condo (which was admittedly outside of my responsible price range when I got it a few years ago) just for the door. It's inches thick and hardwood and incredibly heavy. On the back there's an honest to god metal crossbar, etched with a design to match the pattern on the door, which lays across it settled into two hooks welded to the similarly patterned door frame.
It's totally ridiculous, almost siege-worthy, and I love it, because when it closes, no matter how gently, it closes with
authority
. You can feel the air pressure in the apartment change. It gives me this immense sense of security and safety, although, truth be told, if there was an emergency the fire department probably wouldn't be able to chop through it quickly enough to save me. Que sera, sera.
I drop my work bag by the door and the sack full of junk mail on the kitchen counter. Returning the foyer, I perform my coming-home ritual of leaning most of my weight against the wood to get the door to click shut, and then lifting the crossbar (the most strength training I get in a day) and carefully laying it home in its cradle with a clunk.
Safe from the world and the world safe from me, I decide to deal with the mail before getting undressed for that bath. That way I can justify the bottle of wine I'm taking with me as a reward for doing my grown-up chores. Upending the plastic bag (which is already disintegrating) that holds the pile of federally delivered garbage, I start going through it in order of size, chunking coupon-newspapers, catalogs, and unasked-for newsletters from various local concerns into the recycling bin. Then it's down to the obvious credit card/home equity offers, life insurance ads that threaten your (wholly theoretical) children with death by starvation when mommy/daddy inevitably dies in a car accident, and copies of bills I already get through e-mail.
This leaves the worst set of mail: plain white letters. These are mostly unscrupulously camouflaged advertisements of all the previous varieties, more bills I already get through e-mail, and, once in a blue moon, something like jury duty or IRS forms, which is the only reason I check the mail at all.
Neither of those this time, it's all ads and bills, although one is a reminder note from my dentist that it's almost time for a cleaning, and includes a free spool of floss and a toothbrush, both of which I set to one side. The only other odd letter is an ad for some new artificial sweetener, which includes a few sample packets. I usually just take my coffee with sugar, because the pink stuff is too sickly sweet, the blue stuff gives me headaches, and stevia has an aftertaste like metal shavings. Still, a few less calories wouldn't go amiss, so I toss the packets in the drawer by the coffeemaker on the off chance they aren't vile.
So, fifteen pounds of mail yields a toothbrush, some floss, and some sample packets of sweetener. I bet if you worked the math out on how much gas it took to move that fifteen pounds of paper across the country, it would turn out my pile of mail from this week represents five acres of clearcut forest. I need to write my congressman. Maybe they could give everyone a government issued email address that the IRS and courts could send you stuff to, and we could finally take the USPS pony express out behind the barn and go all Ol' Yeller on it.
Job done, I open a bottle of wine and pour it into a decanter to breathe (I'm so fancy) and I head into the bedroom to and strip down to my underwear, putting my blouse in the pile for the dry-cleaners and the rest of it in the hamper for the building's housekeeping staff to launder Thursday (did I mention I spend too much money on this place?).
With that out of the way, I walk into the bathroom in my underwear and start the water, pouring a little bath oil into the water and lighting a few candles. While the tub is filling, I make a quick trip into the kitchen to retrieve my wine. Setting it with a glass on the edge of the tub, it's finally time for my very favorite daily ritual: Taking Off My Goddamned Bra.
Seriously, I've had orgasms that weren't as pleasant as releasing the girls from a day of bondage. I'm not sporting G-Cups or anything, but I have a pretty good rack, and I don't think God really had 14 hours of prison a day in mind when He created tits. With a happy sigh I rub them and stretch, then slip out of my panties and step into the steaming, sweet-smelling bath water. First I lower the dimmer until most of the light in the bathroom is from the candles, and then I lower myself, almost groaning in pleasure as the hot, oily water slides over my skin, until there's nothing of me above the surface except knees, nipples, and nose.
Coming back up for air, I use a wash cloth to clear my face and eyes, and then reach over to pour myself a glass. I'm not a wine snob, but I know what I like, and this fifty-dollars-a-bottle red is something I really, really like right now. I take sips while I allow the heat from the water to slowly soak into my bones, drawing the tension from my muscles while the wine draws the tension from my brain. Work thoughts begin to fade until the office becomes an abstraction, a place from the not-bath, which is almost inconceivable at the moment.
Well, mostly inconceivable. There is that intern, the journalism major. What's his name? Scott. Oh yeah, Scott. Scott is pretty. Tall, with sandy hair that's never quite in order. Thin, with delicate hands and long, clever looking fingers. Scott is about as low on the totem pole as it's possible to be, in terms of office power. It's a paid internship, and it's with a company known to either hire their interns or get them hired elsewhere, so they're expected to be grateful and diligent. I wonder how grateful and diligent Scott is. He doesn't work directly for me, but the people he does work for report to people who report to me. I might as well be Zeus for all little Scott is concerned.
I smile into my wine glass and let the fantasy continue. Say I arrange it so that Scott has too much work to go home on time, and being the diligent worker I know him to be, he doesn't skip out, but stays long after all of the other offices have gone dark. Say Scott's boss's boss's boss,
c'est moi
, knocks on the door of the closet he calls an office and asks what he's doing there so late. I'm all smiles while Scott explains some task or other I don't really care about, and I indicate approval at his work ethic, and ask him to follow me to my office to talk about his future career plans.
In the real world, my hand slips under the water and between my thighs as I continue the fantasy. Of course he follows along like a puppy, perhaps with a cute nervous stammer as he speaks to me. We get to my office and I pour one drink, not two, and take it for myself. I lean against my desk without inviting him to sit down and explain how truly valued employees are expected to go the extra mile, blah blah blah. I ask him if he's willing to go the extra mile, and of
