Coming of Age

"Yes, I'm sure Ms Amphlett would have taught you schoolboys a thing or two," she said loosely.

"Maybe," said Paul guardedly.

"Maybe? As a teacher I'm sure you'd know something about discipline." She was sitting on a bar stool and slowly crossed her legs. Paul glimpsed a bare thigh under her uniform.

"I'm sure your husband ..." Paul let fall.

"My husband is busy screwing his ex-wife and has no mind for his current spouse," she declared hotly.

"Right," he said awkwardly.

"I'm looking to widen my skills base and I need some ... let's call it coaching," she ventured. Paul started to swell in his trousers and he knew she would notice. He politely made some moves to leave.

"I'll walk you to your car," she said. Paul noticed Miranda's wayward gait and thought she had probably drunk too much to drive.

"Are you catching a cab?" he asked.

"Yes, if I can get one at this hour. Can you drop me at North Sydney station, there's a taxi rank there."

Miranda slid into his black leather interior as if it was her natural habitat. Paul was feeling a strange mixture of anxiety and arousal. Once the car was moving, Miranda started rifling through her handbag for peppermints, somehow dropping her house keys into the small gap between the console and the passenger seat.

"Stop! I dropped my keys," she said suddenly. Paul pulled up alongside North Sydney Oval. Miranda tried with her slender fingers to reach the key ring.

"No, I can't get them. Have you got a long metal rod or something I can hook onto the ring?"

"I'll get the crank for the jack," said Paul. While he was at the boot of the car getting the tool, Miranda came around.

"Find it?" she asked as Paul laid his hands on it.

"Great," she said, taking it from him. Paul approached the passenger side to find Miranda sitting on her knees on the seat with her short tunic barely covering her naked backside as she clumsily worked with the rod.

"I've almost got them," she said. "Can you hold the rod and ease it up and I'll grab the keys when they get close to my hand." That, of course, would involve him pressing against her from behind and she was wearing no underwear. Somehow laughing nervously was not an option. He tentatively moved in. He had half of his bulky frame in the foot well and the other half firmly pressing her into the back rest of the seat. He manoeuvred the rod as best he could given the angle, poor light and the lump in his trousers.

"Got it!" she jerked, jolting Paul towards her. Suddenly the passenger seat went travelling back on its tracks and the backrest hit the rear seat. Miranda fell onto her side fully exposing her bare nether regions. Paul fell on top of her. The next thing Paul was aware of was Miranda opening her thighs to accommodate his bulky frame.

"Mmm, you're hard - and big," she purred. Paul was frozen.

"No need to say a thing," she said as she dexterously unzipped his fly. Paul was breathing heavily now and Miranda kissed his lips with a boozy breath that somehow gave him licence to continue. It was all happening very fast as she now had his extended member in her hand and was teasing herself with it. There was a lot of wetness between them and she slowly inserted him into her. She rotated her pelvis and grinded it upwards to take more of him inside her. Paul began to move with her jagged rhythm and heard Miranda's breath get shorter as he drove himself into her. He could feel himself rising and Miranda devouring every entry he made. She sounded lusty as if he was hurting her and he moved further into her with each thrust. Her breath became thicker with each move he made.

"You're a bad boy who is teaching me a lesson for drinking too much," she whispered, and with that he came as she moaned into his thick neck.

"So this is how you discipline naughty school girls who drink underage," said Miranda as she withdrew herself from him. Paul realised he was no longer a virgin. There was a weird silence.

"How did that happen? I don't know how that happened," Miranda said in a different voice.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I don't know how it happened either," Paul offered, turning away from her and fumbling with his trousers. "I'll drive you home."

"No, it's okay. Actually my car is in the carpark back at the club," said Miranda.

Paul was silent and deeply embarrassed. It was hard to tell how Miranda was feeling, thought Paul. She was chattering on about Paul's friend Lachlan and how she had met with him socially and introduced a friend of hers to him with a view to matching them up, and how the friend had wondered whether Lachlan was gay or not. Paul found this funny and forgot how embarrassed he was. He and Lachlan had an ongoing joke about Paul's long term single status being read as real or latent homosexuality. This new bit of gossip would give him some retaliatory action against Lachlan. He pulled into the carpark smiling broadly and parked next to Miranda's coupe.

Just then he saw Bernadette carrying a large box from the carpark to the club. His heart started to thump. He couldn't turn the car around, he would have to see this out. His thoughts raced and fretted over whether Bernadette knew about his new red car.

"Oh, shit, there's Bernadette. What the fuck is she doing here at this hour!" hissed Miranda. "Doesn't she have a life?"

"It's okay, I'll handle it," Paul said, not really sure what he was going to do.

Miranda was trying to straighten her messy hair and tidy her crumpled tunic, all the while maintaining that Bernadette hadn't seen them.

Bernadette returned to her car and drove off into the night, seemingly oblivious to Paul's new car sitting in a virtually deserted carpark with two people in it.

And the sun blazed over Paul Nicholson's coming of age.

4.

Paul was not convinced that Bernadette had overlooked them in the carpark. He knew she was sharp and observant and would be piecing things together. He slept little that night and wrestled with paranoia amongst a host of other demons none the less of which was the unease he felt about his unceremonious deflowering. By morning he had resolved to contact Bernadette with a pretext of asking about the former club's archive. Presumably, that was what was in the box she was carrying.

He was concerned that if word got around that he had left the club with a very drunk Miranda in his car and returned some time later in a less than open manner the club executive would demote him for unprofessional conduct with a contractor. More importantly, it would eventually get back to his school. It would be the end of a great career on which he had built his adult life.

Ordinarily, Paul would never call a woman such as Bernadette. However, his present circumstances and recent actions showed that his life was anything but normal or ordinary. He had never felt his libido as a palpable force in his life before. He would have to call her, and under a false pretence. It wasn't going to be easy.

So he procrastinated for a day or so. Then one afternoon at the club Bernadette walked in unannounced looking for El Presidente. Paul was alone, feeling bashful and defensive, but he saw that his career was at stake in this woman.

"Hi!" he forced out.

"Hello Paul," Bernadette smiled shyly.

"How have you been over the last three months?" Paul offered. Bernadette seemed taken aback at such a question but she played a neutral hand.

"Very well thanks, yourself?"

"Good. The new club is increasing its membership."

"Yes, I heard. Miranda told me she got the PR contract." Paul was already feeling cagey but the mention of Miranda heightened his tension. He was scrutinising her features and body language and trying to read something into them but Bernadette seemed relaxed, unbothered.

"Anyway, I'll leave a note on the President's desk. It's not urgent, tell him it's about the archive if he rings. Thanks, Paul, see you." Bernadette walked out whistling Dolly Parton's 'Joelene'.

"What kind of a explosive non-statement is that," thought Paul. "She's obviously heard about the Famous Faces night, so how much does she know? She's probably spoken to Miranda. Women get together and tell everything to each other. She knows. Perhaps I can explain my way out of this." Paul was panicking.

Bernadette was just getting into her car when Paul approached her. She got back out of the car to talk to him.

"What is it, Paul, you look worried?" she said smiling quizzically.

"I suppose you heard about the Famous Faces night," he said carefully.

"Yes, I heard it went well and that you're a natural." Paul found the statement ambiguous and didn't know what to make of it. Bernadette was playing her cards close to her chest. He would just have to throw out for her to show.

"No, I mean Miranda, she was very drunk," Paul tested.

"Miranda? That's how PR chicks in Sydney do biz. It's all part of their bag of tricks. If she knows that you trust her, an outsider, with the organisation's secrets, she holds the power in the relationship. Once she's got hold of that she trades in the currency of trust. Journalists, publicists, researchers, they open doors for her, do her favours and so on because she is privy to their secrets. Personal, business, commercial, whatever. She's ruthless. Of course, she rarely betrays their trust, that would be a loss of currency. What exists is the threat that she could."

"What secrets?" thought Paul. He was still unsure whether Bernadette was referring to his peccadillo with Miranda, or perhaps the President's dally with her earlier in the night. Perhaps she was simply referring to his drag impersonation of Dolly Parton, or secrets in general as a potential trading stock. Bernadette's analytical style in full steam was something to behold, he noted, and he felt matched by her.

"You know what PR stands for? Preternaturally Randy," Paul quipped. Bernadette laughed deeply. Something of their previous intimacy briefly passed between them. Paul loved the sound of her laugh. Still, he couldn't read how much she knew, and every return she made seemed loaded with import. Paul became uncharacteristically direct.

"Have you seen my new car before," he said.

"The red Alpha sports? Everyone's talking about it", said Bernadette.

"I asked you whether you'd seen it," said Paul steadily.

"I'm looking at it! Ok, show me." Bernadette walked over and bent down to view the interior.

"The black leather will hide a multitude of sins," she said drily.

Paul almost choked. She knows, he thought, and she's enjoying playing this situation for all its worth. She's also toying with my sheepish attempts to figure out what she knows.

Suddenly Bernadette said, "Did you hear about Miranda's car? It was stolen outside her house about a month ago." This was the statement Paul wanted to hear. Bernadette couldn't have noticed Paul's car drive into the carpark that night and pull up next to Miranda's coupe. Paul figured that Miranda must have fed Bernadette this falsehood as a precaution.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Paul Nicholson was absent-mindedly driving in Mosman in smooth traffic when the car ahead of him slowed down and put its hazard lights on. His mobile phone rang.

"Hi, it's Miranda, I'm in the car in front of you. I've got some good news. Follow me to Daddy's house." Paul was curious: he was hoping it was about Bernadette and what she didn't know, but it could have something to do with the club's inroads into live online lunchtime tournaments which Miranda had been promoting. He had about fifteen minutes up his sleeve so he turned off Spoforth Street and followed Miranda up a long leafy drive. He sat in his car and watched Miranda get out of her coupe by swinging both legs round together.

She was wearing a long, sandy brown wig and wore impossibly high heels with black ankle straps and a dark, narrow, tapered pencil line skirt. It was so tight it restricted her strides to a foot at a time. She wore a tight white shirt. She was smiling as she approached the front of Paul's car and she slowed down, extending her arms generously towards him. She stopped, which was a cue, Paul assumed, for him to get out and greet her.

"Lovely to see you, Paul," she said in a sugary tone and kissed him on his unready lips.

"How have you been since we last met?" Paul thought he may as well ramble a little since she was nodding appreciatively at every clause he made. She began tousling her long hair while listening to him chat and she took the liberty of sitting on the red fender, loosely laughing at every comments. Paul was feeling pretty flattered by the attention.

"Your father keeps a tidy pile," he said. Did you grow up in this house?"

"Father? No, this is my Daddy's house, you know, my boyfriend's," said Miranda.

"What?" Paul jumped.

"Relax, he's in Europe -- unwisely leaving his mistress unattended," said Miranda with a careless laugh. She began unbuttoning her shirt while talking about 'Jimsey's' Jag sports in which he had taught her to drive on some back country road in the Southern Highlands, but Paul wasn't listening owing to the preponderance of black lace brassiere overflowing with breast which she was revealing with each slowly unfastened button. He was going hard involuntarily and Miranda met his gaze with a private girls' school smile. She slid off the car and was on her knees in front of him before he knew it.

"I want to see this hero by the light of day," she said with a camped-up tone. Her bare knees were in the dirt as she worked her way into his fly and took him into her mouth. Paul was shocked and utterly overcome. He was swept away in a wave of pure lust. Miranda had her arms behind her back as she took all his thick shaft into her mouth and excited its head with quick movements of her tongue. Just when Paul felt he couldn't know anything wetter and more forceful she withdrew.

"Help me up," she said, trying to stand up in the stilettos with her arms still clasped behind her back. Paul bent to help her.

"Lay me over the bonnet and roll up my skirt," she ordered quietly. Paul obeyed her, his weeping member jutting out from his trousers.

"Now, turn me over, face down, take my ass in both your hands, feel your way and ease yourself in." Miranda still had her hands in an invisible shackle. Paul fumbled a little with where his rod might enter her.

"Lift my ass towards you," she said. Her soft body was malleable around his hardness. His large hands could direct his entrance into her at his will. He held her hips in his palms and slowly slid his stiff python into and through her. She started to sigh heavily and Paul penetrated her deeply. His thrusts became more rapid and she moaned. The only moves she made were from the thrusts he was giving to her and they became increasingly forceful and she groaned as if he was causing her pain. She came. He felt something burst in him. Paul saw his semen seeping out of her.

"Pull my skirt back down," said Miranda as Paul gently withdrew from her.

"I know how that happened," he choked.

"Yes, it's all because of your generous horn," said Miranda, fixing her blouse. Paul put himself back into his trousers and again felt embarrassed but also light-headed and relieved of a burden. He was silent.

"Would you like to see the room where Daddy instructs his mistress, or perhaps take a cup of tea?" asked Miranda.

"No, I have a meeting that I'm scheduled to be at right now," he mumbled. "You said you had something to tell me," Paul said as he made for the driver's seat.

"I forgot," said Miranda carelessly. Paul shot her a look of annoyance.

"Oh yeah, that's right," she said, "Bernadette is totally in the dark about ..." she trailed off. Paul wasn't so sure about that.

"Ok, see you later," he said.

"Until next time," said Miranda, as Paul reversed his car down the driveway.

Paul drove down Military Road in the winter sunshine with a body awareness he had never experienced before. He felt so relaxed and complete even his incessant mind took a backseat to bathe in the exuberance.

"So this is what it's like," he thought simply.

And a golden afternoon basked upon Paul Nicholson's coming of age.

5.

He was just pulling into the carpark off Falcon Street when his mobile rang.

"Hi Paul, it's Miranda, we've got a problem," she sounded agitated.

"Can it wait? I'm already late for this meeting."

"It's the housekeeper," she continued. "She's taken the security camera video from the driveway this morning and threatened to make trouble for me."

"I'll call you in two hours," Paul rang off.

As Paul sat through the committee meeting he could feel his shickered member through his trousers and it constantly reminded him of the looming storm. Afterwards he couldn't remember what had been discussed about the school's funding budget for his beloved secondary school chess programme. He returned to his car, made sure the windows were up and did something he had never done in his life before. He phoned a woman for coffee.

Paul secured a corner table inside and sat with his back to the wall. A few minutes later Miranda arrived. She was wearing the same pencil line skirt and stilettos but had taken off the wig and had changed into a striped sweater. She looked sexy in a showy, extrovert way and people noticed her in public. Paul could see she was worried.

"This housekeeper, who has always disliked me, threatened to show the video footage to Jim when he returns. I thought it was her day off but she was in there watching us from the laundry. Jim is a really jealous man, and powerful, you know, influential. He's a QC. My career would be in tatters if he found out." She was shaking.

Paul, however, was thinking about his own position. He reasoned that if her lover was jealous, he would set out to ruin Paul.

"Could she be bought off?" he asked.

"Probably, but we may not need to go there. When she first confronted me I flatly denied it. We argued and she showed me what evidence she had. Some parts of the driveway are obscured by trees so the footage only shows me draped over your car with my hands apparently tied behind my back, and you having your way with me until you are satisfied, then leaving abruptly. And, yes, your number plate is visible," she added.

"So it appears ..." Paul began -

"That it was not mutually consenting sex," she finished. "I told her you raped me so she'd get off my case," she said flatly. "I told her you were a work colleague that I'd known for a long time and had arranged that morning to give you some documents when you were passing through the area. I cried as I told her that you'd pursued me for years and had sexually harassed me several times. I said that I would handle it all but that it would really hurt Jim if he saw this footage.

I think she bought my story because then she told me that when she was growing up in Manila her only prospect for work was to leave school at 14 and become a housekeeper for a wealthy Philippino family. Even today it is expected that young female housekeepers perform sexual duties for their male employers. There is no union or protection or act of parliament regarding sexual harassment there. She shared her story with me and I think she saw me for the first time as a victim like her and she felt sorry for me."

"Except that it is a complete fabrication," Paul retorted.

"That's a bit harsh," said Miranda softly, "for someone who gives you pleasure."

"I'll be in touch," said Paul guardedly, and they said goodbye.

And the late afternoon sun began to fade on Paul Nicholson's coming of age.

6.

He certainly didn't want Miranda offside, however he felt no loyalty towards her. She had just made an allegation of sexual assault against him to an unknown third party. Paul thought that she played way too close to the edge and he was unconvinced that she had the situation under control. There was indeed a perverse irony in that it was in Paul's best interests to let Miranda make this allegation so the affair would never get past her and the housekeeper. He reasoned that unless Miranda was in some way threatened by him she had as much interest in keeping mum as he.