Kyra knew that the Chanel skirt-suit didn't fit as well as it had when she'd bought it. It was tight around her hips and breasts. Still, she didn't have anything half as good from the last few years. Not since the business had gotten into trouble. As she stood in front of the reception desk in Manhattan, though, she knew that she looked good. She'd spent her last $100 on a hair cut. Her legs were still toned from the last few months of the gym subscription, when she had nothing to do except exercise. This was her first interview of the month and she was desperate to get this job. It was a real comedown, for someone like her, applying to manage a chain of sleazy bars, but the money was great and it would just be a stepping stone.
The receptionist behind the desk looked her up and down dismissively and then said. "Mr Cohen says he'll see you now. Take the elevator up to the fifth floor."
There were already two men in expensive suits in the elevator. The shameless way they, too, looked her up and down confirmed what she already knew. She looked good. As she got out at the fifth floor she wiggled her ass a little in her tight skirt. Just to tease them.
Mr Cohen was sitting behind a desk in an open plan office at the end of the corridor. He was just a little guy. The kind of person she once would have employed to take out her trash. He had short black hair, round spectacles and a nervous manner. As soon as she walked up to him he glanced at her tits and then quickly looked away, like a kid stealing a lick at an ice-cream. "Miss Florence? Thanks for coming in. Shall we go somewhere a little more private."
He put his hand in the small of her back as he led her to another office and gestured to a black leather seat in front of a long sofa. "Now then," he said, sprawling on the sofa, "I must say you have a much more impressive resume than most of the people we've had come in."
"Thank you," she sat down on the chair and crossed her legs, her skirt riding up to her thighs.
"So why do you want to run a chain of titty bars?"
She gulped. She hadn't expected him to be so crude about it. "Well I think my business experience speaks for itself. . ."
"It sure does. How much were you worth?"
"Over a million dollars."
"But you lost everything?"
"Not everything," she uncrossed her legs and crossed them again. "We ran into difficulties. . ."
"My difficulty," he said. "Is that I can see that you've achieved a lot but you ran your last company into the ground. You screwed up big time. We don't like failures here. We can't afford failure. How do I know you won't do the same thing to us?"
Kyra's heart was sinking. It was the same story at every company she'd been to. She'd been so confident but they just wouldn't let her forget what had happened. "It's different. . .I mean I'm different."
"You've changed? How. . ."
"Well, I guess that, erm, I've learned from my mistakes and. . ."
He was looking at her without a trace of emotion as she struggled to get the words out.
At last he seemed to take pity on her. "Look Miss Florence, I think maybe you need to take a long vacation. Bankruptcy on that scale must have hit you pretty hard."
"I don't need a vacation! I need money!" she blurted out.
He raised his eyebrows. "Well, I'm sorry. I really am. But we can't help you."
For a brief moment she thought she was going to cry.
"I mean. . .I guess," he smiled. "But no, that's stupid. . ."
"What?"
"Stand up."
Slowly she did as he said. He looked at her with a whole new confidence as though he'd beaten her in some game she didn't even know they'd been playing.
"Turn around."
She turned around without thinking about it. It was only when she was facing away from the sofa that she realised what he'd asked her to do. He was looking at her ass. He was inspecting her ass.
When she turned back, blushing bright red, he was holding a card out in his hand. "Go and see this guy," he said. "I'm pretty sure he'll give you a job."
Even as Kyra left the office building and walked along the Manhattan street her cheeks were still scarlet, she felt humiliated, but the card was clutched in her hand. She had no idea what this "guy" did but it was obviously some job where the shape of her ass was at least as important as her experience.
Still, the next week she was walking along a street on the other side of town. It wasn't hard to spot the place. It had a purple sign outside of a naked woman in high heels holding on to a pole. Had it really come to this? It was one thing to run a business managing strip clubs but another to manage an actual "titty bar" as the guy had put it. And the way he'd looked at her it was clear that it was the way she looked, just as much as her management skills, that would get her the job. If she got the job. That was why, to her shame, she'd put her shortest skirt on and a top that was tight against her big tits. She went in. It was dark and there was a middle aged Latina woman mopping the floor. A bar ran all the way round the back wall and there were three silver poles in the middle of the room. "Hi," she asked. "I'm looking for Mr Michaels?"
The woman gave her the briefest of looks, before jerking her head towards a door in the corner. Kyra blushed. The woman obviously thought that she was a new stripper. How embarrassing. She walked quickly across the room, her heels clicking on the parquet floor. She was just about to knock when a girl came out. She looked about eighteen years old, big breasted and wearing a skirt that barely covered her ass. It looked like she'd been crying. She almost pushed past Kyra in her rush to get out.
Kyra walked inside, into a dingy hallway, but there was a door open into a small office with half-open Persian blinds throwing a shadow across the room. A black man was in there with his feet up on the desk. He was massive, with a shaven head and a face that looked battered out of shape. "Hi," she called. "I'm Kyra, I'm looking for Mr Michaels?"
His expression didn't change. "That's me."
"Mr Cohen sent me. He said that you might have some work for me."
"Cohen sent you?"
"Yes? Didn't he tell you?" she clicked forward, taking her resume out of her pink shoulder bag and holding it out to him.
He took it and put it down on the desk in front of him, looking at her through heavy-lidded eyes. "Cohen's never sent me no one before."
"Well I applied for a job in central office but he seemed to think. . ." she hesitated, standing awkwardly in front of him, wishing her skirt wasn't so short. "He seemed to think you might have something more suitable for me here. I've got a lot of management experience and. . ."
"Management experience?" he laughed with a low, almost silent rumble. "I don't think we need anybody with 'management experience'. I'm the manager and you ain't taking my job, baby."
"But what. . ." her face turned bright red as she suddenly realised why Cohen had sent her here.
"We do need strippers. We always need a new pair of tits but, honey, you's a little old."
"I'm not a stripper! He must have been having a joke. I mean what a bastard. Sending me here."
