Are You Tiffani Caine? Ch. 02

Tuesday was relatively uneventful at work, with nothing rising above the new norm of awfulness. Of course, that level of mindlessness gave Sara all the time she needed to dwell on what she had done with Rachel. She didn't know which was worse, the drug use, the sex, or how much she had enjoyed the feelings that both of those things had produced. There was no doubt that her evening at Rachel's was the best time she had had in years, which made her all the more miserable. By the end of the day she hadn't finished her own work (it was the first afternoon she would have described as "busy" with her new duties) so she ended up taking her work home with her. The tasks were time consuming but not intellectually stimulating, the sort of bookkeeping and drudge work that took up most of the time of everyone at her level. She continued her brooding meditation on sin that evening, broken only by a brief chat with Isaac that neither relieved the stress of work nor eased the tension between them. He should be over here screwing me stupid, but oh no, that wouldn't be proper...she shoved the bitter thoughts aside and finished her work before an early bedtime.

Her sleep, when finally it came, was broken by dreams of brownie-born euphoria, sex with Rachel and Isaac (individually, not at the same time), and quitting her job. She woke several times, and each time she was hornier than the last and it was all the harder to get back to sleep.

Her Wednesday shower was bitterly cold, but it only kept the erotic thoughts away until her workout warmed her up again. There was an enhanced, statuesque blonde in the gym shower with her, and in spite of the fact that the inside of a slaughterhouse is a more erotic setting than a gym shower, she found her mind drifting toward a naughty fantasy with the girl. Ugh, this was intolerable. She knew she was going to have to find someone to spill all the beans to, someone she could trust. The pastor of another church, or...

The workday was dreadful. Without enough warning for her to think up an excuse, Ken "invited" her and Josh out to lunch. Not only did she have to spend all morning wiping Josh's nose, but then she had to spend a long lunch "brainstorming" with the two jackasses about how she could work better and more closely with Josh to facilitate his success on Ingers; mostly this boiled down to her thinking of ways to further humiliate and enrage herself. She didn't want to play the game, but Ken insisted and so she was forced to grovel like a dog (at least in her own mind). When lunch was done, Ken pronounced himself satisfied and actually told Josh that now the pressure was on him to perform; because she knew he would never be able to, whivh was the sole bright moment of the whole day for Sara.

Isaac picked her up from work that night and they went out to dinner at Il Pappagallo, a new Tuscan place on Hennepin Avenue that was getting rave reviews. They started with acquacotta maremmana (delicious), and she got the pappardelle alla lepre (delightful even after she learned it was made from bunnies) and he ordered the bistecca alla Fiorentina (perfect, but then how far wrong could you go with a nice bloody steak?). The food was simple, spectacular, and robust, and they barely had room for dessert (a piece of torta mantovana far too big for either of them to handle alone, and even after splitting it, Isaac ended up taking most of it home). The food put Sara in her first good mood since Saturday morning, and the company was good because they avoided talking about the elephant in the room. But the ride home got tenser the closer they got to Sara's house however, given that she knew what disappointment awaited her; when he went to kiss her at the end, she couldn't bear the thought of being worked up any more without resolution and so she stopped him with a gentle hand to his chest and a shake of her head. He drove off feeling as frustrated as she was, a fact that secretly pleased her more than it should have pleased a good Christian woman engaged to a good Christian man.

She was growing upsettingly familiar with the mixture of arousal and guilt that kept her from getting a good night's sleep, and that morning was spent engaged in her new methods of humiliation on behalf of Josh. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, though, because he had a top-of-the-day meeting with Ingers which he totally botched in a way that he couldn't blame on her; seeing him miserable was worth the rage he tried to take out on her for the rest of the morning.

It was the day for lunch with the Muskatrixes, and Sara desperately needed to see her girls. She listened while Amy talked about an argument with Vic over repeated dinner dates with a couple whom Vic thought it important to cultivate socially but whom Amy found to be boors, and while Kait talked about her worries over losing her studio space to redevelopment, and all the while a conviction was growing inside of her about what she needed to do to retain her sanity. Finally she piped up with, "Is there any chance the four of us can get together Saturday for lunch at my place? There's something huge I need to talk about and I can't do it here."

Kait's eyes got wide. "Are you breaking up with Isaac?"

"What? No!"

"Are you pregnant?" Emma asked.

"Of course not. How could I be pregnant?"

"There's one usual way it works," Emma said.

"No, I have no way of being pregnant."

"Is it...what we talked about the other night?" Amy asked delicately.

"Yes, and more," Sara sighed. "You and Emma each know different parts. Kait, sorry for keeping you out of the loop until now, but some stuff just kind of came out at different points. The thing is, I need you all to know what's going on with me because I kind of think I'm going crazy and I need all the help I can get."

Amy and Kait immediately said they could make it, while Emma had to find someone to cover her shift at the tattoo parlor, something she had accomplished by the end of lunch. They all spent the rest of lunch prying at Sara for more information, but she managed to avoid divulging any more until finally the girls split up to head back to work.

five months

As usual she walked most of the way back with Amy, who kept up the pressure until finally Sara was forced to admit, "Yes, there was along those lines, a lot more. But there's a ton of stuff you don't know and I don't want to tell it more often than I have to, so please, let's just wait until Saturday." Amy accepted that.

She had just settled at her desk when her personal phone rang with an unlisted number, sending Sara's heart plunging down into the pit of her stomach and erasing the good feelings she had leftover from lunch. I don't want to deal with this now, she told herself, but when was she given a choice? She let it ring as long as it could without going to voice mail, then answered with a stoic, "Hello."

"Are you Tiffani Caine?" came the Caller's voice.

With a soul-deep sigh of resignation, Sara said, "Yes I am."