Are You Tiffani Caine? Ch. 02

She was subdued the rest of the way until they pulled up at her building. Isaac walked her to her door, reminded her that her family was in the hands of God the same as everyone and everything else, and gave her a proper Christian kiss goodnight. She spent little time in her apartment. Almost as soon as he had driven away she was back out the door and into her own car, heading for Target.

Sara didn't normally shop at Target, because the owners were liberals and activists in many causes she disapproved of; Walmart suited her better. But Walmart was further away and she just wanted this errand done with, so she went into the closest Target and came back out 15 minutes later with a rechargeable shaver of the same brand she used to use when she was a teen; she knew they fit her hand well and did a good job. If she was going to be forced to shave down there then at least she didn't want something that was going to slip or cut.

Corralling her pubic hair for the first time in seven long years was a surreal experience. She had never expected to do this again, but once she started she discovered that her hands quickly remembered every movement and the hair fell away with rapid, sure strokes. She didn't enjoy it a bit and she was obscurely disappointed that it wasn't a more difficult process, but it was almost as if she had never stopped doing it. The problem she faced was not in taking it off but rather in deciding how much to keep. First she trimmed everything down to barely more than fuzz and then she started working on getting rid of what she needed to get rid of and not a hair more. Shaving her pubes felt like an obscene travesty before the Lord, even though few Pentecostal preachers would go nearly that far in condemning it. Still it was important to her to keep as much as she could, but the panties she had purchased were brief indeed. In the end she was forced to make sure no hair protruded around the sides or top of the skimpiest pair she had, which meant that she wound up with a strip two inches wide that ran only a couple of inches above the top of her slit; she even had to trim the sides of her labia to keep things in check. By the time she was finished she was left with a nearly-square patch that looked almost like a large postage stamp.

She stood staring at her naked reflection in the full-length mirror, face twisted into a disgusted frown. "It would be easier if I just shaved the stupid thing completely," she muttered, but she knew she wouldn't do that unless forced. She had to leave something there for dignity's sake.

But she did like the feeling of bare skin on her groin - she had forgotten how much she liked it, in fact. Even the feeling of air against freshly-shaven flesh was pleasant to her, and when she ran fingers across it, the dormant nerves that had been covered awoke with a pleasant tingle . It would take no effort to clean the rest of the hair away and then it would be easier to maintain -

"Ugh! No!" With a disgusted shake of her head she cleaned the razor and then cleaned the tub. She didn't want it to be easy to maintain, she didn't want it to feel good, and she definitely didn't want to get used to this! Once this nightmare was over she was growing it out again and that was that!

Still, she couldn't help sighing in a small sort of defeat when she slipped back into the silk panties she'd worn that day and felt the bliss of the soft, cool fabric on the denuded skin...

She was miserable when she went to sleep that night.

Monday, April 5

The day came warm and sunny with a steady wind that thawed frozen earth and pulled moisture from the soil. Word was that there would be a cold front coming through that night - April blizzards could be brutal - but Sara had more pressing worries than tomorrow's possibility of snow. She was still mostly asleep when she took a shower, but when she slipped into her sports panties for her trip to the gym she was forcibly reminded that she had a lot less "protection" down there than she did yesterday. The weave of her Under Armors wasn't nearly as exquisitely soft as the silk underwear she'd recently acquired, but that made the contrast in sensation that much sharper: she could feel so much more with shaved skin than she could with pubic hair. It was actually distracting as she worked out - she could feel the fabric moving against her mound and her lips in a way that she had forgotten over the past seven years! If she were in a different mindset, the sort of mindset she'd left behind, then it would have made her horny as hell instead of aggravated.

Outwardly she was just the same as always when she walked into work that day, but under her long dress she was dressed to cause a scandal, including a black gosh-darned garter belt. It was the first time in her life she'd ever worn one, and she'd actually had to look up a YouTube video to get the thing comfortable, and to answer the bedeviling question of whether to wear panties over or under the stupid thing. In the end she wore them over the garters for ease of using the bathroom and because she didn't care how she looked (none of her clothes were tight enough that anyone would ever be able to tell by looking). The ridiculous things just felt so weird.

After the repeated strangeness of the weekend, the workweek was settling. Humiliating, debasing, and chastising, but settling. Ken sat in on their morning meeting and praised Josh effusively, specifically mentioning how good he'd been doing with Ingers while specifically not mentioning that Sara had done literally every bit of the work that Josh was getting praised for. Sara felt her anger rising once more, even felt her mouth forming sarcastic words, but she swallowed them and remained in silence with downcast eyes. This was a test and a scourging for her deeds. She would endure all that the Lord deemed righteous to give her. Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

It wasn't supposed to be easy.

After the meeting she took 20 minutes to check her emails for fires that urgently needed to be extinguished, but the benefit of having small and unimportant clients was that their crises were generally just as small and unimportant. Before long she was doing Josh's work for him, knowing that the little fink would get all the credit and all the praise, the Lord's will be done. Josh was flying high from morning meeting, doing his best impression of a peacock's asshole or cloaca or whatever peacocks had, giving Sara more and more work to do as though he were the CEO and she was an intern; she didn't complain and she only spoke when necessary. She did her two obligated hours as his slave and returned to her own work.

Her first task was, unsurprisingly, CSS SouthEastAsia, the most problematic of the clients Josh had dumped upon her. They were an investment and trade house specializing in industrial and natural resource opportunities in rural regions of Asia, and their structure was a baffling mess. The company had been founded by three college friends, and after a decade of slow but steady growth they had just topped 70 employees. Unfortunately each of the three owners seemed to want a piece of every employee and everyone else who worked there seemed to be kingdom-building as well, so that now their org chart looked like a street map of central London - some poor slob named Yuri Tranh had daily direct reports to no fewer than six people! - and everyone was fighting simplification.

She was still at it at 11:40 when her cell rang with an UNKNOWN NUMBER. As always it could have been a client, but she seemed to be developing a sixth sense about when the Caller was on the line. She took her customary deep breath to steady herself and made sure her voice was flat and dead when she said, "Hello."

"Are you Tiffani Caine?" came the expected disguised voice.

"No, I'm Melania Trump. Of course I am and you know it."

"How are you, Tiffani?"

"Oh, like you care."

"I do care, actually. Does that surprise you?"

"Lies from someone like you aren't surprising."

A chuckle. "You think I'm lying to you?"

"Obviously."

"Why would I? I can tell you to do whatever I want you to do. Why would I bother to deceive?"

"Why do you bother to breathe?"

"Why does anyone? Regardless of what you may believe, I do care how you're doing."

Sara sighed and shook her head, even though the gesture was obviously invisible to the Caller. "Do you really expect me to think you, what, have my best interests at heart?"

There was one of those chilling electronically-disguised laughs. "I never said that. I have a lot riding on you, Tiffani. So I ask again, how are you?"

"I'm stressed. I have work to do and I'm wasting time on you."

"Don't think of it as a waste, Tiffani. Think of it as an investment in your future."

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgh."

"This isn't one of those statements of mine that you're required to believe. Just bear it in mind."

"I'm sure I will. Did you just call to tell me you love me?"

"As much as I enjoy chatting with you, I do have a purpose. You made a shopping trip this weekend."

"Yes. I made a stupid, pointless, insanely expensive shopping trip this weekend. I already owned underwear, you know."

"No you didn't, you owned rags. I gave you an upgrade."

"You gave me heartburn about how I'm going to pay off over four thousand dollars worth of underwear without my fiance noticing!" she hissed. "I paid for everything else!"

"Semantics. If it wasn't for me you'd still be wearing that cheap garbage."

"I liked my cheap garbage. And why do you care?" Sara demanded. "You said you'd answer questions, so answer this one. Why does it matter to you?"

"Fair enough. I'll answer the question, but first you have to answer it. Why do you think it matters to me?"

"I think you have a collection of women's underwear, probably used, and you sit and stare at it for hours and think pervy things. Probably do pervy things too. And you like to think of me dressed that way. Am I close?"

"Incredibly distant. I forced you to provide yourself with necessary foundation garments."

Sara wrinkled her nose and would have been dismayed to see how cute she was at that moment. "I don't think you know what a foundation garment is."

"No? Explain it to me."

"They're like... Spanx, corsets, girdles, things that shove you into a new shape. The stuff I got is so skimpy it couldn't reshape a feather."

"One small part of what you just said is true."

"Which part?"

"I've always called you smart. You can figure it out yourself."

A variety of sharp replies trotted through her mind, but none of them were fit for a Christian lady so she let them pass unspoken. "So what now? Where do I go? Who do I humiliate myself for now?"

"Time will tell, Tiffani. I have another question for you before I leave you for the day: do you like your new purchases?"

She sighed and wanted to lash out, but she took a moment to keep herself under control. She had a feeling that showing weakness to the Caller was never a good idea. Finally she said, "They're incredibly pretty. They're incredibly comfortable. They're incredibly well made. I hate them. I hate how much debt I took on to buy them. I never want anyone to see me in them. I wish I didn't even know that store existed because if I didn't then I wouldn't keep thinking about the stuff there that's even more expensive."

"That's a very honest assessment."

"Lying is a sin. And lying wouldn't have changed a thing that's about to happen, would it?"

"Not a thing, no. Events will unfold either way."

"Are you running all this off a script or something?"

"If I were you'd be following it to the letter."

That malignant little... "Maybe I should do something to shake it up."

"You can end it in a second if you want to accept the consequences."

Someday I'll probably have to. "I guess I can."

"But not yet?"

"Not yet."

"You'll hear from someone soon. Goodbye, Tiffani."

Sara turned off her phone and shoved it back into her purse. The call left her agitated and unsettled, and she didn't settle down enough to work before it was time to meet Rhonda and Diane for lunch. The work she had wanted to complete that morning went, for the moment, uncompleted.

She met the girls in the lobby. Diane Anderson was a secretary for another division of the company and close to Sara's age, while Rhonda Yoshioka was a marketing analyst and 20 years older. Sara had met both of them during her first days at Danforth, and since there were few Pentecostal Christians at the company the three of them had bonded over their shared faith and remained close ever since. They met for lunch practically every week, viewing each other as a sort of lifeline in a company that wasn't much interested in spiritual values as part of their corporate culture.

Today the three women were bound for Corinth Grill, a gyro place in an office building just a block away. They chatted as they talked - Diane and her husband were talking about trying for a baby, Rhonda's youngest son was finishing 12th grade at a Pentecostal school - but Sara was uncharacteristically quiet, chipping in only occasionally. They got their food, found a spot in the building's atrium, and sat down to eat, and it was only then that Rhonda asked if she needed to talk about something.

"No, I'm OK," Sara said with a shrug.

"You don't want to talk about Josh Coover?" Diane asked. "Everybody else is talking about it."

"They are, huh?" Sara should have expected that; Danforth wasn't the world's biggest company so everyone knew everyone else, and besides it had a well developed grapevine. "I got my biggest account taken away from me and have been made the PA of the person the account was given to. I don't know what else there is to say."

"It's ridiculous," Diane said. "I don't want to speak ill of him, but Josh is...unimpressive."

"Ken Sanderson disagrees," Sara pointed out as she wiped a dollop of tzatziki off her hand. "He spent morning meeting praising every hair on Josh's pointy little head."

"Well we all know what Mr. Sanderson thinks," Rhonda sniffed, and it was true. Ken's reputation for being a chauvinistic jerk was well established, just as much as his reputation for holding back the careers of the women who worked for him, inappropriate advances as office parties, and generally being a 1950s-style pig where gender relations were concerned. "You ought to file a complaint with human resources."

"It would be a slam-dunk," Diane agreed. "No company wants a scandal like that. You could have Ingers-Stevens back in a heartbeat."

"No, I'm not planning to do that," Sara said quietly with a slow shake of her head. "I've given this a lot of thought. I don't want Ingers back. Yeah Josh was the one who convinced Ingers that I wasn't man enough to handle the account and Ken was the one who made the call to give the client to Josh, but Ingers was willing to be convinced and they were jacka...they were jerks about it to me later. I wouldn't work with them again if I was offered the chance. They wanted Josh, they got him."

"But you're still doing all the work," Rhonda pointed out.

"Not forever," Sara said. "I don't have a career here and I know it. But right now I have to stay. There are things I need to get done before I leave. After that Josh and Ken can handle their own mess."

"Do you want us to pray with you?" Dianne asked. Sara did.

When Sara got back to her desk, she called her doctor and got an appointment to get a birth control shot. She almost choked on the words. But Emma was right, better this sin than having to explain to Isaac why she was pregnant with some other man's baby. Not that her going onto birth control meant she would accept sexual intercourse with someone of the Caller's choosing! It was just...better safe than sorry. That was all. And besides, she was going to go on birth control before the wedding - they weren't planning kids for a few years - so she might as well get used to it now. Isaac would never know that she started a little earlier than expected.

The end of the day rolled around soon enough. After concerted pressure the labyrinthine CSS SouthEastAsia structure began to yield some potential solutions that would greatly simplify things and grant tremendous efficiency increases. She'd continue to work on it, try various solutions, analyze and run numbers, and then present the optimal package to the company. Unfortunately she didn't think a company that set up the org chart she was dealing with would listen to sense, but she didn't actually care - her job was to recommend wise changes, not to implement them.

When she got home, Sara washed the remaining lingerie, barely finishing up in time for her dinner date with Isaac. They met at a little strip mall Chinese place that made the best noodles, and their time together was pleasant and relaxed. Only once did Sara think about the fact that tomorrow she would be going onto birth control so some other man wouldn't get her pregnant, and that moment of ethical crisis came when she was already in the bathroom. She stayed long enough to get herself back together and regain her composure. It was, they agreed, a much less stressful meal than the one they'd shared the night before. They kissed goodnight in the parking lot and went their separate ways. Sara made it home just as the first real snowflakes were falling, laid out her outfit for the next day, cleaned up, and went to bed.

Tuesday, April 6

She walked hand in hand with the young man. The sun was blazing down from straight above, and the humidity was so heavy that it felt like a physical weight, but the breeze coming in off the sea made it not just tolerable but actually pleasant - well, the breeze and the enormous sun hat she wore. She was a snow creature and pasty white girls like her needed to be careful so they didn't end up looking like cherries in flip-flops. Still, her arms and legs were developing a commendable tan, and so was the rest of her from the considerable amount of time she was spending in a bikini, and she looked forward to going home with bronze skin that would make the other bitches envious.

Her boyfriend was as All-American as a Chevrolet. He was tall and fit, with an unbuttoned white beach shirt showing a torso that was just barely not quite toned enough to sport a real six-pack. She still found him irresistible. His face was adorable, with clear skin, regular features, a strong jaw and chin, and a dazzling, mischievous smile. His eyes were wide, deep, and perched exactly midway between blue and gray, and he was topped by a head of short blond hair that peeked out from under a ball cap they'd picked up at some tourist pit stop. And he was already tanned more deeply than her, which she didn't think was fair at all.

"What do you want to do today?" she asked him.

"I dunno, what do you want to do?"

"Beach?" That made sense, since they were already walking on the beach, approaching a crowd of sun bums sprawled happily on the sand. In her free hand she held a couple of huge beach towels, while in his other hand was a picnic basket with snacks, drinks, suntan lotion...

"Nah, we've been on the beach too much," he replied with a shake of his head. "There's more to see here than sand and waves."

She was a little miffed at his sudden change of plans. What was she going to do with these towels - oh, they were gone, that was a relief. "What then?"

"Mmmmmmadventure?" he asked with a grin.

"Parasailing?"

"I told you I'm scared of parasailing." Had he told her that though? She knew he was, but had he ever actually admitted it to her? She didn't think he had, but then he hadn't needed to either. "Let's do something else, something more down to earth."