Hidden Away From Danger; In Indiana

Hidden Away From Danger; In Indianapolis

She was hidden away, and safe, until she was not

**

This was my chance, and I was determined not to blow it. I had a new job, in a new city, and I knew almost nobody. In fact, the only person I knew in Indianapolis from my previous life was Kayley, and it didn't seem that our paths would cross much. She didn't know I was in town. I had a new name. I called myself Susie Southern. I liked the alliteration, and the name was nondescript. I had tabula rasa. Time to start my life over; it was time to begin afresh.

I dressed in stylish, correct, clothes for work, with a strong tendency to the conservative, modest style. Never wanting to call attention to myself, I nevertheless couldn't help that I had a body that men seemed to like, and it seemed impossible, with today's styles, to hide it much. I did what I could.

I kept my hair pulled back tight, and I'm sure I looked like a woman who was either virginal, or had married her childhood sweetheart and had never strayed. The only flaw in the second interpretation was that I was single. Some people might have thought my sexual proclivities were female, but I wasn't worried about such people, as long as they left me alone.

Luck was with me, and everyone did in fact leave me alone, and for a little over a year. Nobody hit on me, nobody asked me out, and nobody tried to get me drunk at a party. No, nothing happened, I was truly left alone. I still went to the gym, watched what I ate, and only rarely poisoned my body with booze or drugs. Basically, I kept my body pure.

I did bake, of course. I made all sorts of yummy goodies: cakes, cookies, apple pies, apple tarts, apple crumbles, apple compote. I had been -- in my secret, previous life -- a pastry chef for a fancy restaurant in New York, and I loved to bake and to experiment. The world of pastry chefs is a small world, however, and if I were to get a job as one in Indianapolis, it would only be a matter of months, or more likely weeks, or possibly even days, before people would learn who I actually was, and then the secrets would all be out. I'd be fired, harassed, and the game would be over. My life might be over, too.

No, this was my chance for a quiet life, and I was not going to throw it away, just to pursue my passion of delighting the sweet tooth of strangers. I wanted to fly under the radar, so my job was as a level one secretary at a medium sized corporation, based in Indianapolis. It's a ridiculous job for a professional pastry chef with a B.A. in Comparative Literature, but it did a good job of keeping me hidden, and under the radar, so to speak. I led a quiet, happy life.

I made friends with the other low-level staff at the corporation. I had too much talent, however, to stay as a level one secretary, and I kept getting promotions. I didn't want to rise too far in the company, for fear of visibility and thereby exposure. One can't, however, easily turn down a promotion. People do not understand, and it calls attention to you. Anything strange would call attention to me, so I graciously accepted all promotions, and tried to appear happy. I did get some more money with each promotion, and that was nice, since it allowed a slightly higher standard of living. I had simple needs, and I never wanted to touch my secret stash of money in the Cayman Islands.

I rose pretty high. I became the executive secretary to Kyle Mansart, the deputy CFO. I didn't care for Kyle, he was sleazy, but he never sexually harassed me, so I just kept everything to myself. When the chance came to go one step higher on the ladder, though, I jumped on it. I became Executive Secretary to the Chief Financial Officer, a Mr. Henry Jones, whom everyone called Hank, except for two people.

His wife Jane called him Henry, for her own reasons, to which I was not privy. I was the other exception. To me, he was always Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones had a #MeToo problem. Well, he had a lot of #MeToo problems, to be perfectly frank. That's why the CEO, Sam Miguet, thought an asexual secretary like myself might be the perfect choice for him. I'm sure the CEO made bigger mistakes in his career, but thinking I was a harmless asexual secretary was not one of his smaller mistakes.

The first thing I noticed was that the company was cheating. It was making its bottom line look good, by hiding its losses. This led to nice raises for the executives, whose compensation was tied to the price of the company's stock, and that price, given the 'profitability' of the company, kept going up. The company was, on paper, and only on paper, relentlessly profitable.

It wasn't shocking, because the company was in a profitable sector of the economy. The CEO Sam Miguet, along with the deputy CFO Kyle Mansart, bribed the accountants to keep the fraud going. It's surprising how long one can keep such a fraud going. When I joined, it had been going on for three years. I stayed quiet. I'm an ethical person, but not to a fault, and I needed to stay under the radar. Exposing a fraud is not a good way to do that.

Hank Jones was probably too busy chasing skirts to notice the fraud his second in command was orchestrating. I noticed it though, right away, but I said nothing since I needed to remain unnoticed. Besides, I was just an executive secretary, not the SEC.

**

Fridays were casual days, and one day I wore jeans and a light, figure hugging sweatshirt, and I brought an apple pie to work. Everyone raved about it, and it disappeared in seconds, so the next Friday I brought in four apple pies. They too vanished quickly. I switched to French apple tarts, but that just made the half-lives of the desserts even shorter.

Nancy, another secretary, asked me where I got the delicious desserts. They did have that professional look, as if they had come from a bakery. I didn't have an answer, so I confessed that I had made them. "Cooking and, especially, baking, calms me down," I told her. She asked for chocolate the next week, and my chocolate cakes and brownies were big hits, and when I did some French chocolate tarts, pandemonium erupted.

I wasn't nervous. I was sure nobody would connect my homemade, but professional-looking, desserts to my having been a pastry chef for one of the best restaurants in New York. No, the upshot was more that two groups of people became interested in me: Nancy and the secretarial pool, and the executives, with Hank Jones first and foremost. Men like food, and they like good food a lot, and some men, such as (to pick a random example) Hank Jones, simply love a good dessert.

**

Nancy invited me to a party. I naturally asked if I could bring something, and of course I ended up bringing dessert. I was kind of lonely, and pleased to have been invited, so I went a little overboard with the dessert. I even used Nancy's kitchen to make Grand Marnier dessert soufflés for everyone. There were six women and their five husbands there. There was one single man, Victor. I was the only single woman. That made twelve people in total.

You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to look into Nancy's mind and to see her thinking. She needed the same number of women as men. I was single, so she needed to invite s single man. And she did: Victor. This didn't mean I had to pair up with Victor, and both Victor and I understood that. It was just to achieve gender parity.

I did end up talking and casually flirting with Victor somewhat, nevertheless. He seemed nice enough, but there was clearly no chemistry between us. I think Victor had the same reaction, although I'm sure if I wanted to take him to a bedroom and fuck his brains out, he would not have objected. Men tend to be like that, and Victor was indubitably a man. Nevertheless, it was not a problem, for me, that Victor was there.

Nancy had a small swimming pool in her back yard, and we had all been warned to bring swimming suits, and I wore a modest one-piece swimsuit, trying to hide my body that New York men had enjoyed with a certain enthusiasm, you might say. If you have a seriously curvy body, however, even a one piece bathing suit that shows the minimal amount of skin does not really hide your body, and every single one of the five husbands was trying to hide their drool over my body. Victor was, too. I think Victor might have even gotten an erection when he saw me in my suit. You've got to like that in a guy, right? All five of the husbands, plus Victor, now knew: Nancy had a friend with a sexy body, who made fabulous desserts.

Luckily, all five husbands, and Victor, behaved, and nobody tried to hit on me. I had a great time! The husbands all did flirt with me a bit, but it was just harmless, social flirting, and there was never any danger. It's often the way men and women interact, anyway. I exchanged recipes with some of the other women, and we all discussed the fashion of swimwear, and then other more interesting topics, such as which were the best nail salons, and where to get a good massage. For the first time since I moved to Indiana, I was relaxed in the company of friends, and having fun.

Nevertheless, I knew my new friends felt that there was something about me that didn't compute. Why wasn't I married? I was pretty, I had a sexy body as every husband told his wife later that evening, I was gregarious and sweet, and why did I move to Indiana, anyway? Every other secretary there had been raised working class in the Hoosier state, and none of them had the sophistication and talents that I had. Something was wrong.

When that happens, one becomes an object of gossip. Gossip has its own life force, and it's one that snakes its way into the heads and souls of men and women. Theories are born, explanations are given, and the theories gradually become facts, even if they originally came from whole cloth. Nancy and her friends decided that I was born into money, but fell in with a man of whom my parents did not approve, and I was disinherited. Moreover, said man turned out to be a wife beater, and I divorced him and was now hiding from him in Indy, and probably even changed my name.

The theory of me as a wealthy victim, of choosing a bad man, one of those ugly New Yorkers, took around six weeks to fully develop, and as far as Nancy and her cohort were concerned, it was the truth itself. They decided what I needed was to be matched to a good man. They had some candidates.

I dutifully went through the motions. First up was Stan, and he took me to a lovely meal, albeit with a mediocre dessert. It's tough to be a pastry chef! All restaurant desserts seem trite, compared to my own creations. They're also typically overly sweet, and there's way too much emphasis on chocolate. Stan kissed me goodnight at my door, and asked if he could see me again. I told him no, I was just getting over a breakup, and it was too soon. I was lying, of course.

Next up was Pete, and for him, I invited him in. He actually got to see and to play with my breasts, before I told him I needed my beauty sleep. Alone. He got the message, and as a consolation prize he had gotten to enjoy my boobs.

The third man was Oscar, and he was the most appealing, for my taste. As with Pete, I invited him in for a drink when he took me home. We were having fun, and after some time I was wearing only a bra and panties, and then only panties. It was time to send him home. I rose from the couch, about to announce that my bedtime had arrived and that I sleep alone, when before I even spoke, Oscar slipped my panties down to my ankles. He had misinterpreted why I had stood.

I was naked in front of a man for the first time in over a year. I started nervously tripping over my words, and Oscar stood and kissed me, shutting me up. His hands ran all over my back side. They were good, strong, masculine hands, and I loved the way they felt on my skin. Oscar then kissed my neck, and while there was no way he could know, it was as if he had sucker punched me. I melt when a man kisses my neck. I forgot all about the idea of sending him home.

Then minutes later we were locked in passionate groping on the floor. Well, Oscar was groping; I was simply groped. He got his fingers inside me, and the game was up: He had to know how wet I was, revealing my state of arousal. He began to get himself into position, and I tried to formulate a nice way to say no, and as I began to speak, he entered me.

Well, I thought, he's fucking me. This was not in my plans, and I didn't want it, but it's happening. It's a fact on the ground, or rather, on my thick, oriental rug. What do you do when a man is fucking you, against your will, but he doesn't know that it's against your will? It's a frequent problem for women, and the usual response is to give up, and to fuck him back. That's exactly what I did.

Two things about men: They're bigger and stronger than you are, and they don't have to fake a climax. If a man fucks you, he's going to climax. I didn't climax, but Oscar certainly did. I felt him squirt inside me, and I confess, feeling a man squirt inside you is really a treat. I didn't fake a climax, but Oscar didn't care. He got his rocks off, and he was happy.

I felt obliged to continue to date Oscar for a while, and of course he fucked me at the end of every date, unless it was my period, and when it was, well, I gave him a blowjob. I had been horny, I realized, and Oscar was not bad on my living room rug, and even better in my bed.

Word filtered back to Nancy and the girls, and they were thrilled. Judy was especially thrilled, because setting me up with Oscar was her doing. I suspect she would have enjoyed an affair with Oscar herself, but she was married. It wouldn't have bothered Oscar, I felt sure, but Judy was not an adulteress, so it was just never going to happen. She had sex with him vicariously, through me. She pumped me for all of the intimate details about sex with Oscar she could glean from me. I gave her the girlfriend-code-required details, but nothing more.

The executives learned of the gossip about me, and even that I was seeing someone local, but they had other ideas that would explain me. I was just too sexy to be single, and I was clearly heterosexual, which they knew from their detection abilities that they always had with them, below the waist. I must have been raped, or perhaps even gang raped, back in New York, and I wanted out, to live someplace in peace.

Where better to live in peace than in the heartland? They treated me as a survivor, and they were gentle and thoughtful with me. They were glad I now had a boyfriend. They had no idea I didn't even like Oscar that much, but was dating him, and sleeping with him, too, just to stay under the radar, and to fit in. I had realized I needed a boyfriend to be considered normal in my new peer group. A husband would have been better, but that was a nonstarter.

Several months after my ongoing affair with Oscar had begun, and without warning, my boss Hank Jones told me that he had to go a conference in Chicago for two days, overnight, and he wanted/needed me to come with him. I didn't want to go, and I guess it was obvious, but he saw through my excuses and I decided to take the risk. After all, I would hide mostly in the hotel where the meeting was to take place, along with a boardroom of some Chicago-based company, and therefore the chances were good nobody who might possibly recognize me, would see me.

My undoing came when Hank took me to dinner. He took me to a fancy restaurant and the dessert cart looked exactly like the desserts I had been baking for our casual Fridays. Hank looked at me, and I tried an innocent shrug, but Hank is quick, and he knew it could not be a coincidence. He went to the toilet, but en route he slipped some serious money to the restaurant host and asked if he could have the pastry chef come to our table. I saw it all.

I had, of course, trained the pastry chef, and when she saw me her whole face lit up. "Carlotta, where have you been? Everyone thought you were dead! Does Serge even know you're alive? OMG, this is such wonderful news! God, how we've missed you! I have to learn your secret for the lemon tarts. Nobody can get them to come out like yours..." she just went on and on. Never had I seen someone so excited.

I knew the jig was up. I looked at Hank and he looked, well, he looked amused. I gave him my best imitation of a Gallic shrug. I turned to the pastry chef.

"It's lovely to see you, Rhianna. I didn't know you moved to Chicago. This is my dining partner tonight, Hank Jones. Hank, this is Rhianna Washington," I said. "We knew each other in New York."

"Knew each other?? It was a bit more than that! Carlotta only taught me everything I know! She picked me up off the streets of Harlem, stuck me in a kitchen, and trained me from the ground up. I owe my life to this woman!" Rhianna said.

"You exaggerate. You have talent coming out of your ears. Teaching you was more like standing back and watching you," I said, all the time aware of Hank's eyes taking in every little detail.

"Where are you now? What restaurant had the brilliance to hire you? I've heard nothing!" Rhianna said.

"I've changed careers," I said. "We're here from out of town." Hank raised an eyebrow. He knew I didn't want Rhianna to know too much, and he figured that's why I didn't say we were from Indianapolis. The fact that Rhianna knew me as Carlotta, and not as Susie, was his first hint. Rhianna and I hugged, and she was so happy to have seen me again, she cried. I was truly moved, but resolute that she'd learn nothing about the new incarnation of me.

**

"Do you want to tell me what's going on, Susie? Or should I call you Carlotta?" Hank said, as we talked at the hotel bar.

"I'm Susie. Carlotta is dead and buried," I said.

"That lady Rhianna doesn't seem to think so," Hank said.

"Yes, that was bad luck. Pastry chefs typically don't come to the table. I assume you arranged that when you saw it was my baking style on the dessert cart? That was most unfortunate. You have done me immeasurable harm. You have also just lost an executive secretary, Hank. I think I have to move on," I said.

"I'm sorry," Hank said. He meant it, too. I don't think he took me seriously, but frankly, I didn't care, at that point.

"The irony is that I've been so happy working with you and at the company. I love everybody there! Now I have to disappear again. It's getting old," and I started to cry.

Hank could only surmise what was going on, and the damage to me he had done from his damnable curiosity. It was really my own fault for not hiding my baking skills. Lesson learned, I guess.

"Talk to me, Susie; or is it Carlotta? What's bothering you? Maybe I can help?" Hank said.

"I'm Susie, although I suppose it doesn't matter anymore. We can't talk here; there's too many ears. Somewhere private, okay?" I said.

Hank proposed his room. "Sure, I said, as long as you remember you're married."

We had room service bring us some more mixed drinks. You couldn't get a decent margarita (my drink of choice) from the minibar, and they didn't have a small bottle of 18-year-old Scotch whisky (Hank's drink of choice), either. We got settled, sitting intensely close to each other on the love seat in Hank's room, its king size bed looming ominously.

"Tell me your story," Hank said.

"No, that's not going to happen. Let's just say I have a new identity in Indy. I was starting over, and now my cover is blown," I said.

"Who are you hiding from? And why? Who are you, really?" Hank said. "Are you in the witness protection program, or something?"

I laughed. "No, nothing so dramatic. I'm just an observant girl, and I see things others don't seem to see, even if, to me, they're obvious. It gets me into trouble. I've been in trouble," I said.

"Why?"