Mailgirl Number Thirteen: Day 01

Seven smiled resignedly. "That's when it gets fun."

Pick-up was scheduled for the office of Craig Nagle, whom Thirteen was led to believe had been Fourteen's direct supervisor. Prior to Mistress Zero, that is. Based on Barrow's earlier comments to Gillian, and the body art Fourteen had been graced with before arriving in the locker room, Thirteen knew that there was a story here, but a story that she'd have to draw out of Fourteen at some later date. For now, she just wanted to retrieve Fourteen's things and get back to the relative safety of the locker room.

Seven launched into a light jog as they exited the service corridor, and Thirteen dutifully followed behind. She was in okay shape, speaking in terms of cardio, and had visited the gym more in the past few weeks than she had in entire life up to that point. She knew that, on a typical day, she'd be dashing from one corner of the building to another at top speed, working hard to meet her deadlines and avoid demerits. This -- here, now -- was a comfortable pace, one that she felt she could handle. But, she wondered what it would feel like the first time she was given a "rush" or "premium rush" job.

With the deadline they'd been given to pick up Fourteen's clothes, and the time they had remaining, Thirteen wasn't sure, however, that jogging was really necessary. Her breasts bounced uncomfortably, and she fought the urge the secure them with her hands. But, as they made their way through the cubicle farm between here and there, Thirteen appreciated the fact that they didn't linger. Anyone who caught sight of her streaking through the 27th Floor caught sight of her only for a quick second or two; she was nothing more than a flesh-colored blur. She realized that Seven was doing this intentionally, speed -- in this case -- working in their favor, allowing them to hurry past the onlookers without good, long looks or any sustained commentary.

Which wasn't to say that there wasn't commentary.

"Look, it's another new one!"

"Oh my god, look at her!"

"Hey, come back! I've got a package for you right here!"

"Is that Mckenzie Clark? From Clearing? Did you see? Is that her? Mckenzie! Mckenzie!"

"Jesus. Where do they find these exhibitionist bitches?"

"I think I'm love, Pete..."

"You're a whore!"

This last one, hurled in her direction in a woman's voice. Thirteen glanced this way and that, trying in vain to identify where it had come from. She regretted it instantly. After locking eyes with a man to her right, another to his right, and with an overweight woman behind them, she hadn't found the culprit. But, it had been better when she'd kept her head down, her eyes on the floor, and stayed focused on her destination. Tunnel vision, in this case, was virtue.

Seven, to her credit, never slowed, never adjusted her pace.

When they arrived at Craig Nagle's office, the countdown on Thirteen's smartphone blinked twice, and then reset to zero. They'd arrived. Seven rapped gently on the door, and the pair was beckoned inside.

Craig Nagle was a tall, slender man in late forties. He was balding, but had leaned in, and had trimmed what remained of his hair tight against his head. He took both naked girls in from the far side of his glasses. If this had been a cartoon, they would have fogged up instantaneously. He wasn't good-looking. But nor was he unattractive, per se. He just wasn't the sort of man Thirteen had ever expected to wind up naked with, naked behind closed doors in a confined space.

Seven got into "Feet," and Thirteen mimicked her. Hands behind her back, chest out, legs shoulder-width apart, eyes down.

"We're here for a pick-up, sir," Seven announced.

"Right, right," Nagle stumbled. It took him a moment to remember where he was, and what they had come for. Two girls, dressed as they were, could do that to a man. "Just over there, behind you, on the hutch."

Behind her, Thirteen saw the pile of clothes. Sheer bra, stockings, white blouse, suit jacket, skirt. A pair of dangerous-looking heels arranged neatly beside it, with earrings and a few other pieces of jewelry tucked into the shoe on the right. The skin that Fourteen had shed as part of her metamorphosis into a mailgirl. She didn't see any sign of the girl's panties, and didn't expect to find them here. Barrow would have taken these as a trophy.

"Is she...is she okay?" Nagle asked, unsure of himself. "Joe?"

It took a moment, but Thirteen realized he was saying "Jo" and not "Joe." Josephine. Or Johanna. Or something along those lines. Mailgirl Number Fourteen.

"Sir, per Human Capital, she is to be called by her mail room number," Seven pointed out.

Nagle looked surprised by the reprimand. Confused. A beat. A second one. And then he nodded, understanding. "Right, right. Mailgirl Number Fourteen. Is she...is she...I don't know...is she okay?"

Guilt. Nagle was feeling guilt. Whatever part he'd played in this morning's conversation with Jo Whatever-her-name, he was feeling guilt over it.

He went on. "I didn't know. I mean, what Susan did. I found out afterwards. I would have stopped her."

Seven was confused, and looked to Thirteen. The veteran mailgirl had been out in the building when Fourteen had joined Thirteen and Fifteen in the locker room.

Thirteen glanced at Seven, and then at Nagle. Was she allowed to speak? If so, was it "sir, this..." and "sir, that..."? Was it, "this mailgirl saw that mailgirl..." and all that?

She swallowed, and then chose to speak to Seven directly. "Someone wrote 'slut' on her forehead."

Seven grimaced, but recovered. She shrugged it off. "We've been called worse."

"That someone was Susan Irvine," Nagle offered, as if both Seven and Thirteen would recognize her by name. Maybe Seven did. Thirteen certainly didn't, aside from having the context that Susan Irvine was someone higher up the food chain.

"It's just...I had a call with a client. And this office...this office...it's small. If I'd known what was going to happen, of course Jo...er, Mailgirl Number Fourteen...of course she could have, should have, stayed in here. It just felt...I don't know...better to have her wait out at reception."

Thirteen had waited for Seven to fetch her outside Barrow's office. Fourteen, apparently, had been sent to a mailgirl mat by the reception desk. And that, from what Thirteen could piece together, was when Susan Irvine had tagged the dark-haired girl with the insult.

"I mean, I heard rumors about Jo," Nagle went on. "She was flirty. But she was flirty with everyone. Me, included. It's just how she is. It's who she is. It's...it's...it's part of the job, when you're managing clients. I had no idea about her and Don Irvine. Not really, I mean. You've seen her. Like, really seen her. Really, really. She's a knockout. A centerfold. She could have anyone she wanted...

"Not that you two aren't...that's not what I'm saying. You two? Wow. Just...just...wow!" At this point, Nagle took off his glasses, absentmindedly polished them on his shirtsleeves, and put them back on. Maybe they were fogging up, after all.

"I just mean...Don Irvine? Don Irvine? Don Irvine, of all people? And then, to have it used against her?"

"She volunteered," Seven offered. She was trying to assuage his guilt.

"Right, she volunteered," Nagle answered, but Thirteen could hear the air quotes around that last word. "I had no idea that was what it was. I've seen you girls around. I've seen you all down in the locker room. It seemed like harmless fun. Really. Consenting adults and all that. I didn't know what went in to it. I didn't know how much we leaned on you all. Not until today."

"She volunteered," Seven repeated, more insistently this time. "She had a choice. She could have walked out. She could have quit. She chose this, the same as the two of us."

Nagle was skeptical. "He...Will Barrow...he would have ruined her."

"Maybe," was all Seven allowed. "But the girls here at USF? The young ones, the attractive ones? You're kidding yourself if you think they haven't played out that conversation and weighed that decision a hundred times over in the last two months. She volunteered. Maybe the girls back in April didn't know what they were getting themselves into, but Fourteen did. I did. Thirteen, here, did."

Thirteen wasn't sure why Seven was working so hard to calm Nagle down. It seemed beyond the scope of her duties. They were here to retrieve Fourteen's clothes, and then hurry back down to the locker room. Seven, though, seemed to be counseling Craig Nagle through his regret and his remorse. Maybe it was just who she was?

It seemed to sink in -- at least, a bit -- and Nagle began to nod. Absentmindedly, he turned away from Seven, and stared directly at Thirteen's breasts.

Thirteen couldn't help but to blush.

"I have...I have chits," he began. Thirteen wasn't sure what he was working up to. "Do you want a break? Do you want to hide in here a little while?"

God, yes. As uncomfortable as Thirteen was being naked in front of Nagle, it beat running the floor. If she could just run out the clock (and she wasn't sure just how many chits Nagle had, or how much time they'd buy her), and start again tomorrow, that had to be better than exposing herself to countless more strangers.

"Thank you, sir," Seven answered. "But we do have to get Fourteen's clothes back down to the locker room."

"Oh, okay," Nagle said, addressing Thirteen's naked tits. "I can call you back, though, if you want a break?"

"Thank you, sir," Seven repeated. "But I'm just coming off my break, and this is Mailgirl Number Thirteen's first assignment."

Nagle caught himself, realized what he was doing, and then looked Thirteen in the eye sheepishly. He wanted to apologize, but then seemed to think better of it. She was naked, after all, for his benefit and his enjoyment, for the benefit and enjoyment of everyone at the Plaza. She was meant to be ogled.

Still, his offer seemed sincere and heartfelt. There were no ulterior motives behind it, no truly lecherous intentions. Rather, it struck Thirteen that he was simply trying to be nice to them, to make up for whatever role he'd played in Fourteen's ensnarement earlier that day.

"Right, right," Nagle replied. "I met your professor earlier today. She was with Will Barrow. You're the grad student?"

Thirteen winced. She'd wanted to be the one who told the other girls what she was doing here, how she'd ended up joining their ranks. Nagle had just clumsily stolen that opportunity from her, at least in regards to Mailgirl Number Seven. She wished, in her heart of hearts, that she could go back to being mistaken from Mckenzie Clark in Clearing.

"Yes, sir," Thirteen answered weakly, her voice getting caught in her throat.

Nagle turned white. He looked even more nervous than he had a moment ago. "This isn't going to be part of some big expose, is it? 'Me Too' and Grace Burgmeier and sexual harassment and all that?"

He was worried that he'd end up being exposed as part of that morning's conversations with Mailgirl Number Fourteen. Now it was Thirteen's turn to calm him down.

"No, sir. I'm not a journalist. I'm not an investigative reporter. I'm an anthropologist." Catching herself, she amended her statement. "This girl is...was...this girl is studying anthropology."

She ignored a look from Seven.

"It's academic. This mailgirl is studying mailgirls. Social bonds. Cultural sorts of things. No names." She smiled weakly, and nodded in the direction of her hip. "Just numbers."

It was a joke, and a weak one at that. But the panicked look on Nagle's face dissipated a little.

"So, like 'life among the gorillas'?" Seven asked, finally, when the pair was safely back on the elevator. Thirteen was carrying Fourteen's clothes, while the other girl had Fourteen's shoes and an oversized pocketbook. "So you're Jane Gooddall?"

"Dian Fossy."

"What?"

"Sigourney Weaver," Thirteen said. "Jane Gooddall was chimps. I think maybe you're thinking 'Gorillas in the Mist.'"

The distinction wasn't important. Thirteen wasn't sure why she'd felt it necessary to correct Seven.

They'd collected Fourteen's things, assured Nagle that they'd convey his sympathies and apologies to Fourteen when they saw her again, and darted back through the 27th Floor to the service elevator. Thirteen had avoided any temptation of making eye contact with the various spectators along the way, and ignored the well wishes, the derogatory remarks, and the cat calls her naked presence elicited. Only when the doors had closed and they had begun their descent did Seven say a word.

"'Social bonds' and 'cultural sorts of things'?"

"I'm sorry," Thirteen apologized. "I'm a sociocultural anthropologist. Or, I'm a PhD candidate, at least. I'm here as part of a field study. I'm here for my thesis. I'm sorry. I didn't want it to come out that way, so soon. I wanted to be the one to tell the other girls. I just...I just haven't had a chance yet."

Seven laughed it off. "They'll get a hoot out of it, for sure."

"Do you think...do you think they're going to have an issue with it? With me?"

"I...." Seven began, but trailed off. She paused a moment to think it over, and then gave a more thoughtful answer. "No. Not if you explain it right. I'm assuming that was the truth? No names? Just numbers?"

"Just numbers," Thirteen answered.

"Even if you used names, though," Seven went on. "What with cell phone cameras and social media and 'Mailgirls Exposed' and the 'Post Office' and all that, it's not like anyone can keep what they're doing here a secret. You just can't make it worse for them. Just make sure you're on our side, with whatever you're doing."

"Of course," Thirteen said.

"And it'll help that you're right in the middle of it with them. However you got here, you're a mailgirl now. Just like the rest of us."

Thirteen sighed. "Can you...do you think...can you let me tell them? When there's a good opportunity?"

Seven smiled, and nodded her head. She had a nervous look on her face. "I'll tell you what...I'll keep your secret if you keep mine."

"What's your secret?"

"Promise first."

"Okay. This mailgirl promises..."

"I wrote the contracts," she blurted out.

"Wait...what contracts? THE contracts?"

"The mailgirl contracts, yeah. It's what USF transferred me down here to do last Fall. From Boston. I'm an employment lawyer. Sort of. I mean, when I have my clothes on. My career's taken sort of an unexpected detour over the last week."

Thirteen had a thousand questions. Now, even more than before, she was entertaining the idea of getting drinks with Mailgirl Number Seven. There was so much she wanted to know, so much that Seven could potentially help her with.

"I just assumed...I guess I didn't think about it...I just assumed they were written by..."

"A man?" Seven laughed. "Don't get me wrong. Most of it's boilerplate. Standard language, standard terms, standard covenants and considerations and all that. I'm not the one who dreamed up demerits and corporal punishment and all the other icky stuff. Most of it I lifted directly from the Japanese. But...I'm the one who fit it all to USF, and I'm the one who snuck all of the clawbacks and conditions into this year's bonuses."

"What?" Thirteen asked. This was the first she'd heard of clawbacks, the first she'd heard of anything to do with employee bonuses.

"Right, so..."

"So the girls who 'volunteered'...?"

"They volunteered," Seven said firmly. "They volunteered. I volunteered. You volunteered. I don't know what Susan Irvine has to do with Fourteen or anything like that, but Fourteen volunteered, too. But...I'd be lying if I told you there wasn't some 'encouragement' to volunteer. By the time Will Barrow sits down with a potential mailgirl, she's already in the hole -- financially speaking -- if she can't pay back any incentives that company has already given her this year. Regular pay, too, even, in some cases."

Thirteen gasped.

"Yeah, there's some pretty insurmountable terms, if you can't pay it back right away. Like, immediately. It balloons up pretty quickly. Not my doing, that. At least, not my idea, even if I'm the one who helped craft the language." She was speaking quickly -- partly because the floor numbers were counting down above their heads, but also partly out of nerves. Seven had been wanting to tell someone this for a while.

Thirteen felt ill. She'd known that there was some "incentivizing" when it came soliciting mailgirls. She'd have been naïve to believe otherwise. What management-track junior executive was going to willingly take off her clothes and allow herself to be demoted down to the mail room? There were a few "performance cases" among the mailgirls already selected, sure. But Thirteen had believed the others simply couldn't pass up the money and promotional opportunities that Human Capital waved in front of their faces, promises made as to what awaited them on the other side of their contracts. She'd been so single-mindedly focused on the carrot than she hadn't given much thought to the stick.

"Right, so..." Seven went on, after a deep breath. "So when they came for me -- and I knew they'd come for me eventually -- I didn't have much of a choice. Morally speaking, that is. Okay, so, I guess I didn't have much of a choice, no matter what way you're speaking -- morally or otherwise. But it's my fault. Part of it, anyways. It just...it just became something that I had to do, or I'd wouldn't have been able to look at myself in the mirror."

The elevator began to slow. They were closing in on the 2nd Floor.

"Why me?" Thirteen asked. "Why tell me?"

Seven bit her lip, and locked eyes with her own reflection in the elevator door. "You're not the only one with a secret, is all."

The elevator chimed its arrival, and the doors began to roll open.

"I'm going to tell them," Seven continued. "I'm getting drinks with a few of them this Friday. Come with us. You tell your thing. I'll tell mine."

Thirteen wasn't sure their secrets were on the same level. She wasn't sure she wanted anything to do with Seven's. She wasn't even sure she wanted to know Seven's, for fear that she might be seen as complicit in it. And was she supposed to refrain from telling the other girls what she was doing at the Plaza, herself, until Friday? Was she going to spend the entire week pretending to be someone she was not? Mckenzie from Clearing?

Seven didn't wait for a response. Instead, she exited the elevator and hurried past the line of toilets to the locker room proper, with Thirteen trailing behind her.

They weren't alone in the locker room. Mistress Zero was at her desk, with her back to them, as they rounded the corner in the direction of Fourteen's locker. Eighteen and Eleven, apparently, had come and gone; what remained of Thirteen's clothes were either hung or stacked neatly in Thirteen's own locker. But Seventeen and Six were at Eighteen's locker, with Six educating the newer girl on the petty, micromanaging way mailgirls were to expected to put their clothes away.

Seven gave Thirteen that same tutorial. Fourteen's jacket could be fitted with a clothes hanger, and hung neatly on the dowel than ran through the line of cubbies. Her blouse, as well. There was, thoughtfully, a skirt hanger with little metal clips, for that particular item. Seven emptied the jewelry out of Fourteen's shoe, and it clinked and clanged inside the tin cup she retrieved from the top shelf. She slid the cup back up top, and the shoes down below. Fourteen's bag -- an oversized purse that had likely been used to carry a laptop into work that morning -- was placed on the lower shelf to the left, but not without commentary.

"You don't need anything this big," Seven told her, in reference to Fourteen's bag. "Just a clutch, really. Phone, keys, wallet. Everything else, the company provides, and requires you to use. Lipstick, make-up, perfume, deodorant -- all of it. And, that way, you can just put it up top, behind your smartphone charger, with any jewelry you might have."