by Kyanna Skye
A warm bath with scented candles, her favorite jasmine bath salts, soothing music, and her favorite book had been employed to relax and calm her nerves before she had gone to bed. She had even dared a luxury that she usually did not indulge in, a glass of red wine. Together they formed the perfect recipe for a calm and soothing night’s sleep.
The bath had been perfect and relaxing, the salts had caressed her skin, the candles had filled her nostrils with pleasant memories that danced across her other senses as well, and the music had lulled her into a perfect calm. And the wine too had done its job and brought her to a relaxation that she had not known in quite some time.
Despite all of this, sleep had not come easily to her.
At least I slept a little. She pondered a moment if perhaps last night would have been the perfect opportunity to employ her favorite tactic for finding a restful night.
Temporary companionship had never been hard for her to find, not even here in New York where the woman-to-man ratio was 10 to 1. She had never had any difficulty in filling her bed for a night… a week… or even a year if she wished it. Boyfriends came and went, but men looking for only a single diversion had only ever been her truest interest apart from her work. Her career would always come first and she had known that from the beginning. And a man in her life that would fill a more permanent role was something that she had no care to have.
There’s never been one worth it, she thought.
Men had their uses, yes, and some of them definitely rare enough to warrant having one around. But to keep them around forever in her life seemed as pointless as trying to put a leash on a shark. They were diversions at best, something that she needed when she wanted to relax, just like a bath. But that was all.
But no, she had decided. She had lost enough sleep as it was. And having a man in her bed would have only caused her to lose more sleep. It was better that she had skipped such a thing altogether and done as she had. It was better that way, and she needed as much of her rest as she had gotten.
She looked back at her clock, 5:38 AM it now read. Her alarm would be going off in less than an hour. It would serve no purpose to just stay in bed, she realized. I might as well make use of the time while I have it.
Rising up she stretched her back, her muscles feeling better after a short night of half-sleep. Pulling off her covers she stood barefoot on the floor wiggled her toes, the plush carpet under her feet was warm and soothing and the resulting tickle was enough to dispel some of the lingering fatigue.
Standing up she began to unbutton her silken pajama top. Finishing it, she set it aside on her bed and began to pull off her matching pajama bottoms. Standing naked in her bedroom she mechanically folded her sleeping clothes and set them back into the top drawer of her vanity before moving to the bathroom.
The cold tile underneath her feet sent a shiver through her body that made her dance for a moment as she moved to the wide and gaping corner shower that she owned. Turning it on, the jets of water that issued forth were cold as a river in winter and squealing lightly from their temperature she stepped back, allowing the water to warm itself before she got under it.
Taking a shower the morning after taking a bath seemed redundant, she knew. But today was too important to risk even the slightest mishap. What was more, her baths were less about actual bathing and more about relaxing when she had knots that needed untying. A shower served the opposite purpose and was more for preparations than for relaxing.
While she waited for the water to warm up she turned and looked at herself in the full-length mirror opposite the shower. Seeing her nude twin standing there she gave herself an appraising look.
An olive-skinned girl of twenty-six stood there, staring back at her. She put her hands on her hips and turned to look at herself. Her legs were strong, but not overly so and they were a result of her favorite exercise of jogging. Her hips were a bit wide, but not overly so. Her belly was flat and had just enough muscle to look appealing, she thought. Her breasts were shapely and full and her shoulders were proportionate to the rest of her body. Her hair was jet black with natural curls that reached down to the middle of her shoulder blades, a holdover from her Italian roots.
Not too bad, she thought. She could stand to lose a few pounds, maybe work on toning the rest of her body as she had always thought that her legs were her best feature. And she had toyed with the idea of getting a haircut, maybe even making it as short as her jawline. Maybe she would, but not today.
The steam that began to flood the bathroom pulled her from her assessment of her body and she hastily stepped under the jets of water. She let the water gently hammer at the skin at her neck and back, watching as her dark hair turned into a soaked mass of tendrils that dripped down in narrow rivulets over her breasts. She took up her body wash and cleaned up her skin and followed it up with her shampoo, conditioner, and face wash. The whole process took less than fifteen minutes before she was done and she shut off the warm shower, savoring the lingering steam for a few moments.
She dried herself and wrapped her head in a towel as she moved back to her bedroom. From inside her wardrobe, she pulled out the best of what she had to wear. A new business suit, a gift from her father now that she had landed this new job, hung ready and waiting for her. The suit was custom made by the hands of one of the best tailors in town and had not been cheap for her father to have made, she was sure.
The suit would wait for a while longer; she had other things to tend to first. She picked up a pair of comfortable panties and a bra to match as she moved back to the bathroom where the steam still hung in the air. She slipped on the panties and bra and felt comfortable in them, walking around the room just to let the garments find a comfortable seam line on her body.
Still clad in her underwear she went to the kitchen and arranged breakfast. She quickly scrambled a couple of eggs, made some toast, and fried a few strips of bacon. The latter had been her mother’s influence.
“Bacon is good for you,” her mother had once told her. “It’s good for the blood and it’ll keep you alert.” Never having been one to question her mother’s wisdom, Jamie had always held that as true. She sat at her table and consumed her small meal, washing it down with a glass of chilled orange juice.
She checked the paper for anything interesting and relevant to a lawyer’s needs and found nothing there. Keeping in tradition with her childhood she perused the comics in the paper and enjoyed a few lighthearted laughs of characters that she had followed since childhood.
A glance at the clock on the wall told her that she was getting down to having roughly two hours before she needed to report in for her induction interview at the firm. Feeling a growing nervousness born of excitement she cleaned up her dishes and returned to her bathroom to complete her morning routine.
When she brushed her teeth and took a shot of mouthwash for added effect she took the towel off of her head and the mass of jet black tendrils that lived there was her next concern. She took laborious pains to dry and treat her hair, recalling that everything needed to be perfect for the first day of a new job. Next year, perhaps, she could afford to be a little more lax in her preparations. But for at least the first year, everything had to be just so. That was the way that lawyers had to work, meticulously. And that would be reflected in her appearance.
First days at a new job left lasting impressions and she intended to be certain that her impression was just that: lasting. Not for her looks or that she had an expensive suit to wear, but for her intellect. One of the first lessons that her father had taught her long ago was that a person could be remarkable for their appearance, but they could be all the more amazing for what was not visible to the eye. Intellect was certainly that and her father had proved that on more than a single occasion.
When she completed the work with her hair she turned next to her makeup. She added the usual features, a little mascara, eyelash curls, and a touch of lipstick. She debated adding rouge to her cheeks but decided against it. Rouge ha
d a tendency to rub off when she least needed it to. No, she thought that what she had done already was sufficient enough. Not perfect, but sufficient. She wanted to come across as strong today, not overbearing. Or at least she didn’t want to appear that way in matters of her appearance.
Her hair and face done she checked the clock. She still had another hour and a half before it was time for her to be at the firm. There was still plenty of time for her to finish her morning routine.
She picked out her best pair of shoes and checked to make sure that they were color coordinated with her new suit. She spared a moment to shine them, making them pristine and neat. Then she slipped into her new suit, checking every seam and button to make sure that she was perfectly dressed.
She turned to her briefcase. It was a handsome thing of brass and calfskin that sat open and waiting for her on her hall table. She double-checked everything that was inside, the usual fare for a lawyer that had yet to take on any clients. She had two notepads, three silver pens with old-style calligraphy heads, an appointment book, a contact keeper, her phone charger, a card holder with a dozen of her business cards inside of it and a small reference book to the most basic articles of law that every lawyer should have. It was that last article that she felt she did not need as she had committed every facet of law to memory. But again, her father’s influence reigned in that.
“I had something like this in my briefcase for every trial, love. I always felt safer with it and the only times I ever lost was when I was without it,” he had once told her. To that end, she made sure it was safely tucked away in her case before closing it.
She put on her best and most professional looking watch, made sure that her phone was fully charged, and gathered up her wallet and keys.
She gave herself another look in the mirror at her front door with only minutes to spare and nodded satisfactorily at it. She looked strong, proud, and even a little menacing, just as her father had taught her. But there was still a delightful womanly quality about her, which her mother had taught her. Just because she intended to be perceived as fearsome did not mean that she should sacrifice her feminine charms. She smiled at her reflected twin.
“Alright,” she said to herself, “let’s go get ‘em.”
The cab ride to Manhattan took longer than she had anticipated with morning traffic and she was thankful that she had left her apartment with time to spare. When she arrived at the lobby doors of Lester & Desoto they were already teaming with people moving in and out of the glass revolving doors like an army of worker ants foraging for food.
Her skin danced with nervousness as she walked to the door, briefcase in hand. She kept her eyes firm and strong as she walked by the others that passed her, in true New York fashion none of them paused to give her a single look as she went by.
Entering into the lobby she felt like something out of a story of Greek mythology, like a lowly hero entering into the halls of Olympus. The lobby of Lester & Desoto was everything that she had heard it to be. The floor, ceiling, and large columns that flanked both sides of the lobby were all crafted of finely polished marble. Carpets that looked as though they couldn’t have been more than a year old were set at strategic points in the lobby that partially quieted the sound of shoe leather on marble, but did nothing to hush the numerous voices that were echoing off of the expensive walls.
Everywhere she looked she saw men and women in expensive suits, either talking on their phones or to one another about this problem, that solution, or a combination of the two. Some of it, she was able to infer as nothing more than idle gossip, some of it was the oral stroking of egos, but very little of it was genuine business.
It was the standard of conversation for people in high profile legal firms like this. She had learned that in law school. Part of a lawyer’s job was not to discuss privileged information with associates unless they were consulting, which she doubted they were by the sounds of things. But some self-praise was to be expected in most cases. No one got ahead in the legal world if they appeared weak and making oneself look good in front of others was how the game was played.
Ahead of her, sitting behind a desk that was so highly polished it looked like it could have been made of ivory was a woman in a black business dress and a short skirt. She looked to be about Jamie’s age, maybe a bit older. Her face was framed behind a pair of thick glasses that made her look almost comical, but she seemed as no-nonsense as those around her.
The girl looked up from the papers on her desk as Jamie approached. “Can I help you?” she asked very businesslike.
“Jamie Lombardo,” she said equally plain. “I have an–”
“Appointment,” the girl finished for her. “Yes, Mr. Desoto is expecting you.” She leaned over and keyed a few numbers on the intercom on her desk. “Mr. Desoto, Jamie Lombardo is here to see you.”
“Thank you, send her up,” said a disembodied male voice on the other end of the intercom. Though Jamie could not see the face or the body of the man that owned it, something in the man’s tone was full of authority and the kind of menace that one might endow with a hungry lion.
She felt a twitch of nervousness in her heart that she took a deep breath, hoping that she covered it sufficiently.
The young girl in the glasses gave her a smile. “You’ll need to take the express elevator, it’s the only one that goes all the way to the top,” she explained as she opened the top drawer of her desk and fished out a plastic key card, passing it to Jamie. “Go around to the bank of elevators, you’ll see a set of golden doors there. Flash this at the reader and just hit the “Skyview Offices” button. They’ll direct you when you get there.”
“Thank you,” Jamie said, accepting the tendered card.
She followed the streams of people that were flowing deeper into the building, knowing that they could only be heading for the means to rise to the offices ahead of them. She saw a gathering of people attempting to fill the elevators as quickly as they could and just beyond them there was the pair of golden elevator doors that the receptionist had spoken of.
As she walked towards them she saw that a few of the people she passed in the fancy corridors finally took notice of her, some of them not for the better.
“Hot damn,” whispered one, a tall and brawny man in a gray suit with long hair that was parted neatly down the center, reminding her of an adult Alfalfa. “Someone must be throwing a party.”
“I hear you,” said his companion, a smaller man with a developing pot belly in a black suit with a bad tie. “Hey, honey… who splurged for a party and didn’t invite us?”
Jamie gave them a scathing look as they smirked wolfishly at her as if they had stumbled onto buried treasure and she was to be had for the wanting. All she could do was stare at them as she reached the golden elevator doors and waved her key card at the reader before them and the doors parted invitingly for her.
The men’s smirks vanished instantly.
Jamie allowed a moment to revel in the power that she clearly had that these two did not. It was obvious enough that the golden doors were meant for the cream of this crop and these two obviously fell short of the mark. And that they thought her some kind of a party girl bespoke as to why that was so. But doors like these surely wouldn’t open to such a creature as they thought her to be. And that realization was clear on both of their faces as the doors began to close.
In the span of a heartbeat, she considered winking at them but decided against it. She didn’t want to leave an impression on these two at all, let alone one that would make them think that they’d been right in their assumptions. No, she wanted them to think that she was someone with power… someone that could destroy them. She kept her face stoic as the doors closed.
When next they opened she could feel that she had ascended to a top level. Directly ahead of her was another desk, this one made of mahogany behind which an elderly woman sat. She was a wrinkled old thing with creases of age in her face and like the downstairs receptionist her features were cr
adled inside a pair of glasses. The woman might have been aged, but the business dress she wore was not. Jamie recognized the suit and in keeping with such things she knew that the designer label on it was not cheap and the overall design itself was not a month old and hard to get a hold of for one who didn’t have money.
They pay well here, she realized if the receptionist was dressed better than most millionaires that she was aware of. It made her wonder briefly how well-dressed the superiors of this firm were dressed and if she, Jamie, had underdressed herself.
When she reached the receptionist desk the old woman there looked up and smiled warmly at her. “Jamie Lombardo?”
Jamie wordlessly acknowledged with a nod.
“Follow this hall and turn to the right. It’s the only office at the end of the hall. Mr. Desoto is expecting you.”
“Thank you,” she said and turned to as she had been told. She wandered down the hall, noting how quiet this floor was before arriving at the aforementioned destination. This door she saw was large enough to drive a Cadillac through and mounted on swinging hinges with no sign of any locks or that the door could be at all closed for privacy.
She stopped just short of the door, took a bracing breath, and stepped inside. The office beyond the massive doors was not what she had been expecting. It was a large room, flanked on all sides by floor-to-ceiling windows with the exception of the wall on which the doors were mounted. Upon that wall, was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that was loaded with volumes of the usual texts requisite to a lawyer’s office.
At the far end of the room, there sat a lonely desk. She recognized it as being oak, trimmed with highly polished brass. Behind it, there was a small man with a balding head and a thick pair of glasses that looked like they could have gone out of style back in the 40’s. The man wearing them looked to be somewhere between seventy and eighty years old and the suit he wore looked equally as old.