Amanda's Young Men (27 page)

‘I’d really appreciate it if you’d protect Meg,’ Amanda stressed, though she needn’t have.

‘Anything for you.’ Trevor chuckled. ‘How’s that tasty pink-haired pet of yours?’

‘More slavish than ever, thanks to you. Would you like her again?’

Trevor’s answer surprised her. ‘Not right away.’

‘Oh?’ Amanda was a little disappointed; it was if he’d made a fuss over a watch she’d picked out for him, but subsequently never worn it. ‘Not your type?’

‘All women are my type,’ he replied. ‘Some more than others, of course. It’s just …’

He was interrupted by a clipped shout, the word foreign, and delivered by a foreign tongue.

‘I’m disrupting your class, Trevor. Sorry. Thank you for helping me.’

‘My pleasure,’ he replied, and hung up.

Nola came racing into her office, her ribbons askew. ‘Oh. My. God.’ She skidded to a stop at Amanda’s desk.

‘What’s going on?’ Amanda turned her attention away from
her
conversation with Trevor and on to the flushed girl twisting to and fro in front of her.

‘You know what, Ms Amanda. Whenever you’re involved, there’s always enough lust around for everyone to share.’ She giggled. ‘Like, you shared me with Trevor and you shared Rupert with me, and me and Paul and Rupert with you. I’ve been thinking about it. You’re like a – a love-catalyst. You make everyone around you hotter without being changed yourself.’

Amanda didn’t know about ‘not being changed herself’, but she said, ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, but what’s going on? Is there something you want to tell me?’

Nola leant closer. ‘Talking about people that you’ve brought together – guess why Paul and Rupert aren’t answering their phone.’

‘Do tell.’ Again Amanda’s tummy did a little flip.

‘Well …’ said Nola, obviously basking in the sun of Amanda’s attention and eager to keep it for as long as possible. ‘The storage room used to be part of Purchasing’s main office. Then it got partitioned off, just a frame and wall-board, with cork tiles covering it on Purchasing’s side.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Only Paul and Rupert ever go in there any more. And there’s a spot where you can see right through.’

‘Go on.’

‘When I saw they weren’t where they were supposed to be, I peeped through the little peephole and sure enough Paul and Rupert are in there and they’re – they’re kissing.’

Amanda nodded. ‘On company time.’

‘Oh!’ Nola’s face fell. She’d been so sure Amanda would enjoy her story she hadn’t thought it through.

‘I’m not sure that’s a very good idea. What else were they doing?’

‘Nothing else. Nothing much. Oh, Ms Amanda, I didn’t mean to get them in trouble.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Amanda. She stood, smoothing her skirt down in front. ‘I’ll be right back. You get to work.’

With Nola’s reluctant instructions, Amanda found the peephole with no problem. She peered into the darkness of the unlit storage room. Yes, there was Paul. He was the taller of the two, by a couple of inches. Now Rupert came into view. He was shaking his head. She couldn’t hear what he was saying but, even though he seemed to be saying no, he just came closer until he was kissing Paul.

They stood like that, their arms at their sides, kissing hungrily. Amanda wondered how long they could continue ravishing each other’s mouth without reaching out to touch.

Paul raised his hand first, to stroke Rupert’s cheek. Rupert’s entire body shuddered.

Then, surprisingly, his hands flew to Paul’s belt and began flailing at it, clumsily trying to get it unbuckled.

God. Her first impulse had been irritation, but she already recognised it as jealousy. When she’d had them at her mercy, strapped into chairs and blindfolded, she’d purposely not made either boy actually perform any sort of sexual service on the other, though it might have been possible to substitute her dildo, or Nola’s, with a real live cock. She’d held back for fear of pushing them into something they weren’t ready for. And look at them. They were dying for it!

Paul stayed Rupert’s hand. Instead, he stepped back and unbuckled his own pants, indicating that Rupert should do the same. Although their white shirts obscured the view, Amanda could tell that both boys were erect. Once again they stood, close but apart, facing each other, like opponents almost, equal opponents or, at least, equals.

This must be what it was like for the ancient Greeks, a sense of same-on-same being, not perverted or bad, just equal. Like her and Meg.

She blinked. Rupert and Paul were kissing again, as sweetly as girls. But their hands were on the move, each reaching for the waistband to the other’s underwear, slipping inside now, grasping each other in a moment so tender, so private, that Amanda backed away from her spyhole.

How would she have liked it if someone had spied, unseen, while she and Meg had made love? And if that person had been her boss?

On her way back into her office, she beckoned to Nola to join her. It looked as if the silly girl had been crying.

‘Stop snivelling. They’re not in trouble.’

‘Really? I thought you –’

‘I’m not paying you to think,’ said Amanda. She hastily amended the remark. ‘Well, yes of course I pay you to think, but you needn’t anticipate my actions. Those boys – those
young men
– work hard enough for me. If they want a couple of moments alone, so what.’

‘That’s what I thought. I mean – what I would’ve thought, if I were supposed to think.’

‘You are supposed to think, Nola. I misspoke. Get back to work and don’t say anything about this to either of them. If they want us to know about it, they’ll tell us. OK?’

‘Yes, Ms Amanda. I’m just a little surprised that Rupert never told me.’

‘Oh? The two of you talk a lot, do you?’

‘Uh huh. Some.’ Nola started twisting in her skirts again, afraid she’d once more said too much. ‘I’ll go to my desk now.’

‘You do that,’ said Amanda. ‘And shut the door behind you.’

When she was alone, Amanda gave herself a mental shake. What difference did it make how her young playmates interacted when she wasn’t around? All three were hers for
the
taking. If she wanted something more, she always had Trevor, to take her, and Meg, to be her equal. Maybe everyone needed to be equal once in a while. It made sense. So why did it hurt?

24

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
, Amanda thought, everything was fitting together like the precision-made parts of a well-designed machine. Forsythe Footwear’s shoe shop Number Twenty-two was performing the best in the drastic chain-wide sale. After just a couple of weeks, its manager had started to beg for more inventory, any inventory. The shop was blessed by being located in a rundown shopping precinct that was surrounded by towering blocks of cheap flats, with two hospitals plus an old people’s retirement home close by.

Nurses from the hospitals came in droves for the cut-price duty shoes and often walked out with a couple of pairs of dress shoes as well, all for the price they usually paid for a single pair of flat duty whites. The old ladies from the home devoured every pair of the orthopaedic and ‘sensible’ styles and demanded more. Single moms from the flats were delighted to be able to buy ‘for best’ dress shoes at sneaker prices and, surprisingly at first, snatched up the sexier, more dressy, styles as well. It made sense, when Amanda thought about it. As a whole, the single young women with kids had more reason to want to look sexy and catch partners than the childless ones did.

When four more of their shops, one at a time, reduced their inventories to below thirty per cent, Amanda closed them, temporarily, as she would do all the shops when they got their stocks down to that level. The staff of each shop had stayed on for a couple of days to pack everything they had left into
cartons
and ship the stock en masse to Number Twenty-two. The full-time staff had then been given time off with pay until their shops were ready to be restocked and reopen.

Today, Meg’s shop was scheduled to close temporarily. Amanda had intended to talk to her about it, make sure she was comfortable with the arrangement and that she’d be back when it was time to reopen for business. She hadn’t heard a word from Meg since the girl had called for protection from Sophie Sharpe. But Amanda wasn’t particularly worried – Trevor was more than a match for Sophie, even if she was a true battleaxe.

Amanda had tracked down some old friends from her amateur-theatrical days. She’d found an electrician and a set designer who were happy to work after their day jobs, fixing up the empty shops. She’d kept the costs down. Mainly, in the shops’ interiors, she’d had them install rows of mirrors around the walls at ceiling height, to give the illusion that the premises were much bigger, and again at floor level, to encourage customers to concentrate on their feet and shoes. The tacky old backdrops in the windows were being ripped out and replaced with swathes of burgundy velveteen. The cheap fluorescent strip-lighting was being replaced by recessed spotlights and laser lights, for drama. The finished effects would be similar to club lighting. It was to wear in dance clubs and bars that young women bought their sexiest shoes, after all.

The first container of new styles would arrive in ten days. Paul had flown to Bonne and then on to Paris to oversee its packing so that a quarter of its cargo could be unloaded at each of the four shops that had been emptied, in order. More containers would follow, coordinated to supply the other shops as soon as they were ready.

There were still decisions to be made. Paul wanted the shops
to
start carrying hosiery at loss-leader prices, just to bring the young working women in. Amanda hadn’t decided whether to close Number Twenty-two once everything was reorganised throughout the chain or to keep it open as their discount outlet.

Rupert wanted to open a speciality shop for more extreme styles, four-inch platforms and eight-inch heels, thigh-high skin-fit latex boots and kinky padlocked ankle strap pumps, for example, to cater to strippers and fetishists. If he could find a supplier or two, he’d like to add wider lasts in sizes up to fourteen, for transvestites and transsexuals. That would all be lots of fun, but it would have to make financial sense before Amanda gave his more extreme ideas green lights. The right location would be vital, and likely very expensive.

Of course, if Sophie Sharpe got her way at the shareholders’ meeting, all this would be for nothing. Or would it? It would be small consolation, but Amanda had to smile at the thought of the nasty bitch finding herself dropped into the middle of a maelstrom of drastic changes, none of which she’d understand. Amanda was sure that the sour cow’s first move, if she took over, would be to fire Rupert, Paul and Nola, thus ensuring that she’d have no one left to explain to her what was going on.

Amanda left her office and went to Nola’s desk. ‘It’s time to make that special call,’ she said. ‘You’ve got everything straight?’

‘Trust me,’ Nola assured her. She picked up her phone and carefully punched each number. When the call was answered she said, ‘Ms Sharpe? It’s me, Nola, from Forsythe Footwear?’ The girl gave Amanda a lop-sided grin. ‘Nola the receptionist – you remember – pink hair, pretty, very short skirts that you didn’t approve of?’

She nodded at Sophie’s response. ‘Your name isn’t on the
list
, Ms Sharpe, and it ought to be, oughtn’t it?’ She paused. ‘What list? Oh, the one Ms Garland gave me to call everyone from.’

She frowned and rolled her eyes at Amanda. ‘The list of shareholders, of course, Ms Sharpe.’ Pause. ‘What am I calling the shareholders for? Well, are you sure you should have been put on the list? I wouldn’t want to …’ She mouthed at Amanda, ‘She’s sure, fucking well sure, come to that.’

Amanda smiled and waited with Nola for Sophie’s foul stream of invective to slow to a stop.

Nola continued, ‘Well, about the shareholders’ meeting, Ms Sharpe? The time’s been, like, changed, and I’m supposed to tell everyone when it’s been changed to. I can’t think why your name isn’t on the list. You being a major shareholder and all.’

She nodded and winked at Amanda. ‘
You
can think why? Really? Ms Amanda is a what?’ Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Well, if you’re sure …’ She mouthed at Amanda, ‘Fucking well sure,’ and almost laughed.

Amanda gave her a warning look.

Nola sat up straight. ‘OK. Well, the meeting’s in the same place, of course, but it’s like, an hour earlier? One thirty instead of half-past two? No, I’m not asking you a question, I’m answering your question.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, I’m sure, oh, and, Ms Sharpe, may I say that it just hasn’t been the same around here since you left us so very suddenly.’

Sophie Sharpe’s hang-up was so violent that Amanda heard it and Nola winced.

‘How did I do?’ she asked.

‘Perfectly,’ Amanda congratulated her.

‘It’s the advantage of me being so young and looking sort of ditzy, right? No one suspects me when I’m being a bit crafty.’

‘I’ll never underestimate you, Nola,’ Amanda promised her.

‘No, you’re good like that, sizing people up. That’s what makes you such a great boss – that and how damn hot you are.’ She licked her lips. ‘Where’s the party, after the shareholders’ meeting?’

‘I hadn’t thought that far. Besides, you must prepare for the possibility that it won’t be a party so much as a wake.’

‘No chance of that,’ Nola said. ‘You’re way too smart for that evil bitch, Ms Amanda.’

‘Thanks. And now,’ Amanda announced, ‘I have some important calls of my own to make.’

So, on what might be her last night as President of Forsythe Footwear, Amanda Garland was once again alone and working late, scheming and dreaming, though more of the former than the latter for once.

Eventually, she packed up most of her desk, making sure to leave nothing that might be of use to Sophie Sharpe, should the latter be victorious the next day.

She hadn’t consciously been waiting for Trevor but, when she heard the jangle of his keys as they bounced against his muscular thigh, her heart lifted and she realised she’d been dawdling so he’d come by before she left. There was no real need to see him as all their plans for the following day were made. But he’d been here the first night she stayed late, so it was only fitting he be here on what might be the last.