by Tina Folsom
Sabrina wore her hair shorter than she had in law school, and she’d recently had it trimmed so that it barely grazed her shoulders. It was what her enthusiastic hairstylist called darkest brown. He’d also begged her to allow him to lighten it up with highlights, but she’d refused each time and only let him layer it so it framed her face with a softer style.
“You’ll need to rephrase this paragraph,” Hannigan suggested as he leaned even closer and moved his arm past her shoulder to point at the screen. A whiff of body odor accompanied his movement. “You need to convey intent.”
“I understand.”
She knew all about intent. His intent. The day she was introduced to Jon Hannigan, she knew he’d be trouble. The sleazy look he’d given her had told her everything she needed to know: to be on guard. He’d squeezed her hand with his sausage fingers for far too long, and Sabrina had to keep all her cool not to yank it out from his grip, causing an unpleasant scene.
His pasty face was accentuated by an often slightly red nose, which could have been either caused by too much exposure to the sun or too much imbibing of alcohol. She suspected the latter. Hannigan wasn’t handsome, but he wasn’t particularly ugly either, even though this personality made him ugly from the inside.
If she had to describe him to anybody, she would have said he was average: just an average asshole.
“Sabrina, I’ll let you in on a little secret. You want to move up here, you just stick with me.”
Sabrina shuddered inwardly. Moving up wasn’t what he had in mind, she was certain. Moving down was much more likely, down his body. She’d heard enough from the secretaries who’d been harassed by him. The mere recollection of what she’d heard made the hair on her neck stand up in high alert. The man was a pig.
“I can revise the brief first thing tomorrow. It’ll be on your desk before you get in.”
“How about you’ll be on my desk first thing in the morning?”
Sabrina sucked in a quick breath. Yes, she’d heard all right. Hannigan was getting more brazen. She had to get away, now.
“I’d better finish off for today,” she said cautiously and powered down her computer.
Hannigan didn’t make a move, but remained standing behind her chair, preventing her from pushing it back.
Turning her head slightly in his direction, she made another attempt. “Excuse me, please.”
He moved back only a foot, enough for her to get out of her chair, but it brought her far too close to his body. She sucked in air and tried to squeeze past him. He had a sick grin pasted on his face. Did he really think he looked seductive like that? The homeless guy at the bus station had a better chance at getting into her pants than Hannigan.
“Why in such a hurry?”
“Doctor’s appointment. Excuse me.”
After giving her boobs another palpable glance, he moved aside and let her pass. Sabrina felt nauseous from the mix of his overwhelming cologne and his body odor. Without turning, she snatched her handbag off the desk and headed for the door.
“See you tomorrow, Sabrina.”
His voice, too close behind her, made her speed up. She had to get out of there.
Even though it was barely four in the afternoon, and normally she worked at least past six o’clock, she couldn’t stand it any longer. The doctor’s appointment had been an excuse to escape Hannigan. Another minute in his presence and she would have puked or passed out.
How she was supposed to stick it out in this job for at least a full year, with him heavily breathing down her neck, or rather her blouse, she had no idea.
“Gone for the day?” Caroline, the receptionist asked as Sabrina passed through the foyer.
Sabrina answered with a look that said more than she could have imparted in a ten minute conversation.
“Hannigan again?”
She nodded and leaned over the counter to whisper to Caroline. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this.”
“You know what happened to Amy. If you complain, they’ll just find a reason to get rid of you.” The receptionist gave her a pitiful look. It was true. Apparently the partners valued Hannigan’s achievements enough to overlook his indiscretions.
Old boys club, that’s all it was. Like swimming against the current. The question was, how long was she going to struggle, or was she going to get out of the river?
“Doesn’t leave me many options, does it? See you tomorrow.”
Despite the fact that it was a warm summer day, Sabrina found the air refreshing when she stepped out of the building. She hadn’t been able to breathe in her office at all, not with Hannigan around.
The funny thing was that the secretaries had been happy that the firm had finally hired a female junior associate. Now she knew why: Hannigan wasn’t bothering the secretaries much anymore. Sabrina had become their lightning rod. As much as she felt for the secretaries, she had to look after herself and make a decision about what to do. Could she risk filing a formal complaint? How would this impact her career?
Remembering that the fridge at home was nearly empty, Sabrina decided to use the extra time to go grocery shopping on her way home. The supermarket was incredibly busy, and only one of the checkouts was staffed. Apparently some computer glitch had shut down all remaining checkouts.
While she made sure she could keep her place in line, she went back to the freezer aisle and picked up a pint of ice cream. She hoped Holly, her roommate and childhood friend, was home. Then they could devour Ben and Jerry's together while bitching about men in general and Hannigan in particular.
By the time Sabrina finally entered their shared flat, it was past six, the time she usually came home.
“Holly, you home?” she called out and headed for the kitchen, placing the bags of groceries onto the counter. Before the ice cream could melt, she put it in the freezer and turned when she heard a sound coming from the bathroom down the hall.
“Holly, you ok?”
The bathroom door was ajar. Holly was crouching on the floor in front of the toilet. She was in her pink bathrobe and throwing up.
“What’s wrong, sweetie? Did you eat something bad?”
Sabrina squatted down and pulled her friend’s long blonde hair back. Her face was ashen.
“Don’t know. I was fine a couple of hours ago. But then …”
Holly’s head veered toward the porcelain throne again, and she lost yet more of the contents of her stomach. Sabrina rose and seized a washcloth from the linen closet, soaking it in cold water before she sat next to her friend again.
“Here you go, sweetie.” She pressed the cold cloth against Holly’s neck while she continued holding her friend’s hair back. “Just get it all out.”
“You look stressed. Bad day?” Holly tried to make conversation, evidently hoping to distract herself from her nausea.
Sabrina smiled gently. “Obviously not at bad as yours.”
“Hannigan again?” Holly gave her a knowing look as she clutched her stomach again and held her head over the bowl.
“Not any worse than before,” Sabrina lied. It was getting worse. He’d started making distinctly sexual suggestions and she’d run out of excuses to get out of his way. But she wasn’t going to burden Holly with this right now.
“You should really do something about it.” Holly was adamant.
“Well, let’s take care of you first before we make any plans on how to deal with Hannigan, shall we?”
She helped Holly up and sensed how wobbly she was. Sabrina supported her weight while Holly cleaned her face and rinsed her mouth with mouthwash.
“Do you want to stretch out on the couch or your bed?”
“The couch, please.”
While Sabrina helped her to the living room, the phone rang.
“Let the machine get it. I can imagine who that is.”
Sabrina only raised her eyebrow, but didn’t question her. Since she herself rarely ever got phone calls on their landline, she was pretty sure the call was for Holl
y anyway.
As soon as the beep sounded, an irritated female voice came through the answering machine. “Holly, it’s Misty. I know you’re there, so pick up the damn phone. Do you hear me? If you think you can just leave me a message to say you’re not taking tonight’s booking, you’ve got it coming. After what you did with the Japanese client last week, I have no more patience with you.”
Sabrina sent her a questioning look, but Holly just scowled and shrugged.
“All the other girls are booked, so there’s nobody to take your place. You’ll work tonight, no matter how sick you are, or you won’t work for me anymore. Do you hear me? And I’ll make sure nobody else in town will hire you either. I hope we understand each other. I want you at the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental, Room 2307 tonight at 7pm, or you’re fired.”
The machine stopped.
“Old hag!” Holly croaked, her voice hoarse from throwing up.
“What was that with the Japanese client?” Sabrina looked at her friend, who made a telling hand movement.
“Pervert.” At first it looked like Holly didn’t want to give any more information, but Sabrina knew her friend well and knew that eventually she’d tell her what she wanted to know. Holly wasn’t one to keep secrets.
“So, we’re in his hotel room, and I think he just wants what most of these guys want. But no, that man had to go all kinky on me. He brought with him these little steel balls on a chain, and you really don’t want to know what he wanted me to do with them …”
Sabrina gave her a look, confirming that no details were necessary. She’d already received more information than she cared for.
“So, anyway, I bolted, and when Misty found out, she basically put me on probation. Said if I walked out on a client again, she’d fry my ass. Pardon my French.”
Holly’s French was never the problem. In fact, most of her clients liked her French and anything else she could do with her tongue. Sabrina shook her head and laughed.
“Let me make you some chamomile tea.”
While she busied herself in the large eat-in kitchen and tried to find some dry crackers to go with the tea, Sabrina wondered whether any of her colleagues would find it strange that she shared a flat with a professional escort.
She and Holly had grown up together in a small town on the East Bay. They’d been best friends back then and had reconnected after college when they’d found out that they both had decided to move to San Francisco. Nothing had been more natural than sharing a flat.
While Sabrina went on to go to law school, Holly had bounced from one job to the next until she’d realized that there was an easier way to make money.
Blonde and blue-eyed, she was quite a beauty. In the right clothes, she was a stunner. So why go out on dates with guys, who’d just buy her dinner and then expected her to sleep with them, when she could actually get paid for what she was going to do anyway?
Of course, there were always clients like the Japanese businessman from the previous week, but according to Holly most of the guys were normal men, mostly businessmen from out of town feeling lonely.
At first, Sabrina had been shocked at Holly’s choice to become an escort, but when she saw that Holly enjoyed her job, at least most of the time, and had remained the same kind of person, who she was before her odd career choice, she’d stopped trying to change her friend.
In any case, Holly’s large income had come in handy when Sabrina hadn’t been able to maintain her part-time waitress job during the last year of law school due to the demands of her studies. Holly had taken over paying the entire rent for the flat and always made sure the fridge was stocked.
Her friend had never let her pay anything back, not even now when Sabrina had gotten a job that paid her well enough to put a few hundred dollars aside every month. What were friends for, Holly had insisted. She was more a sister to her than a friend, and she knew Holly felt the same about her.
Holly was still as pale as Snow White when Sabrina brought her the tea and made her sip some of it. She was propped up on a couple of cushions.
“You can’t possibly work tonight. She’ll have to understand that.”
Holly frowned. “That’s what I told her, but you heard what she said. If I don’t get my ass over there, I’m fired. And this time she means it.”
Holly tried to sit up, but instantly dropped back into the cushions. “Oh, damn. So dizzy.”
“You can’t go. I’ll call her and explain it.” Sabrina got up but felt herself be pulled back by Holly’s hand.
“You’re not my mother, so don’t. There’s no use. She’s about as understanding as Scrooge.”
“Can’t you find anybody to sub for you?” Surely there were other girls, who could take this call for her? There wasn’t any convention in town at the moment, so business should be slow.
“I’m not a teacher, Sabrina, I’m an escort. We don’t have a central system that we call when we need a substitute.”
“There must be some independents out there. Don’t you know anybody?” There was no way she’d let Holly work tonight. She needed her rest to recover from whatever bug she’d picked up. What if she had salmonella poisoning? No, she wouldn’t let Holly exhaust herself today.
“What? You wanna do it?” Holly laughed and then stared at Sabrina’s shocked face.
“Oh, come on, I wouldn’t know what to do,” Sabrina waved her off instantly. She and sex weren’t exactly on speaking terms right now. She’d barely dated in years, and hadn’t … Well, never mind. It wasn’t an option. The closest she’d gotten to sex in the last three years was listening to Holly’s stories about her clients.
“It would be perfect. Just look at it like a date.”
“Out of the question.” Was Holly completely out of her mind? She probably had a fever. Maybe Sabrina should get the thermometer and check. Or better yet, drive her to the hospital to make sure she wasn’t delirious. She put a hand on Holly’s forehead to feel if she was hot.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking if you’re feverish.”
“I’m not. Listen, you might not even have to sleep with him. Some of the guys just want company.”
“Like they pay that kind of money just to talk to somebody, puh-lease!” Sabrina huffed indignantly. Not even she was that naïve. She knew exactly what an escort was expected to do, at least she knew enough from the stories Holly had told her. There was no need to find out first hand.
“And besides, I have enough trouble just fending off Hannigan every day.”
“Well, that guy’s a jerk,” Holly commented. “I don’t know why you haven’t kicked him in the balls yet. I’ll do it for you, if you let me.” Holly’s grin turned truly wicked. Sabrina knew her friend would thoroughly enjoy kicking the crap out of Hannigan. She knew all places where guys hurt the most—intimately. And she’d make full use of her knowledge.
“Maybe I’ll let you do that one day. In the meantime, I still need my job.” Sabrina tried not to think of the predicament she was in. She wanted her career to flourish, but she didn’t want to do it at the expense of her integrity. Giving in to Hannigan would mean plum assignments to interesting cases, but nothing disgusted her more than the thought of Hannigan touching her. She’d rather have leeches put on her skin.
“And I need mine. We’re in the same boat.” Holly’s voice sounded resigned.
Sabrina gave her a long look. What her friend was suggesting was too much of a stretch for her. “I can’t. I can’t just sleep with some guy I don’t know.”
Holly took her hand. “When did you last have sex?”
“You mean sex other than with a battery operated device made in China?”
“Yes, sex with a man.”
“You know that as well as I do, so what’s that got to do with anything?”
“When?” Even though Holly’s voice was still weak, she wouldn’t give up.
“First year of law school. As if you didn’t know the story—hell, everybody watching YouTube sur
e had a good look at my ass.” Sabrina shuddered at the memory of it. Without her knowledge, Brian had videotaped them having sex and then posted it on YouTube for everybody to see.
“That was quite unfortunate, I admit. However, you shouldn’t let one bad experience like that hold you back. You need to let loose, pretend to be somebody else and just let yourself go. You can’t wallow in those bad memories and be afraid of what the next guy is going to do. You’ve got to take charge of your life. If you assert yourself in your sex life, you’ll get what you want. So, don’t sit around like a wallflower. You’re pretty, you’re charming, you’re smart. You could be anything. And you could get any guy you wanted.”
Sabrina looked at her friend as if she’d lost her mind. She couldn’t do what Holly suggested. “I could never pull it off.” She could come up with a hundred reasons why she couldn’t do it. “I’m not like you, Holly. I don’t jump into bed with guys on the first date. Hell, I barely kiss on the first date. I’m so not a candidate for this.”
“Bull! You took drama in college. Don’t tell me you can’t playact a little. Just pretend you’re me. In fact, that’s what you’ll have to do anyway, so the whole thing doesn’t blow up in your face, or in mine. You just go there and tell him you’re Holly Foster, and then you’ll behave like Holly Foster. Just pretend you’re going on a blind date.”
Strangely, the more Holly marketed the idea, the less unreasonable it sounded.
“A blind date? He’ll buy me dinner, and then he’ll expect to have sex with me. Like that?” Sabrina tried it on for size. It sounded strange in her ears. “Ridiculous. I’m not the type for this. You’ve known me all my life. What in my history makes you think I could even pull this off? The guy will see straight through me.”
“Don’t be so paranoid. All he’ll see is your pretty face, and nothing else will matter. It’ll be like a date, only that he paid for it in advance. And you know exactly what’s coming. In fact, you’ll be in charge. Most guys let me take the lead. They want to be seduced. It’ll give you some practice. I tell you, you sure need it.”
That jab hurt. She’d put herself on the shelf after the disaster with her fellow student Brian, who’d obviously just wanted to see if he could get her into bed so he could post a sex video on the internet. The humiliation was something she never wanted to feel again.
