Tea, Coffee, and Me Ch. 03

"One more thing: The nature of our business at Harper's Conference Catering being what it is; or, more particularly, your male-worker roles within it, prospects for promotional advancement for you and your friend Edward are zero - but not so, financial furtherance.

"If my four junior partners and I are still happy with you and Edward at the end of your first - in all likelihood defining, make-or-break - month, as a well-earned bonus and a lucrative incentive to maintain your early standards, I will begin awarding you a quarter of one per cent share of net profits.

"On the same basis, at the end of six months, I will increase your share of net profits to a half of one per cent. And at the completion of a full year, I will award you both a full one per cent.

"I will cap your and Edward's portion at one per cent. But, of course, if company profits continue to grow, then so will your shares in them.

"This supplementary income is not, instead of, but is additional to your periodic pay rises. And, what's more, as it falls within the guidelines of the AFP-approved Compliant Employee Subsidy Scheme, you will earn these proceeds not at the standard sixty per cent male citizen income tax rate but completely tax-free."

I couldn't believe it. Wait till Edds heard about this!

Mrs Harper then looked at her wristwatch, and exclaimed, "My goodness; it's two minutes to two! Sarah, the commis chef, will be expecting your presence in the chefs' changing room."

"Yes, Mrs Harper - I'm on my way!" I said, hurrying to the door of the Pavilion Lounge.

I felt boosted; as if Mrs Harper had just injected me with half a litre of adrenalin.

Just as I got to the door, Amanda and Zoe entered, having returned from their lunch break in town.

"David! What on earth's the panic?" demanded Amanda.

"Miss Amanda, I—"

"Yes, where's the fire, David?" chipped in Zoe, smiling.

"Miss Zoe, I—"

"And you'd better hurry, David," interjected Mrs Harper.

Evidently, my employer did not want me getting waylaid by the returning Amanda and Zoe, who were perhaps thinking of availing themselves of a secondary-function at-work fringe benefit "quickie" from me before I went about my primary function, male-worker role something-for-something reciprocal arrangement commitments.

"You wouldn't want Miss Delia Dilmot to get to hear of your unpunctuality from the commis chef Sarah!"

*

"I was beginning to think you'd forgotten all about me, David," said the commis chef Sarah in what passed for greeting when I arrived at the wedged-open door of the otherwise unoccupied chefs' changing room.

"Oh, no, Miss Sarah - I wouldn't forget!" I assured her, slightly breathless from my mad dash from the Pavilion Lounge to be here on time as arranged.

Mrs Harper had told me I would have a hectic, jam-packed afternoon ahead of me. And it started here.

I was slightly surprised but inexpressibly relieved to find the chefs' changing room free of staff but for Sarah.

The last thing I needed was to have fresh-out-of-college pre/post-shift chefs de cuisine and chefs de partie tittering in amusement, snickering in mockery, or even merely looking on indifferently at my summoned servitude to one of their colleagues while they changed into or out of their civvies.

Standing at the open doorway waiting to be called into the small utilitarian room, I wondered if Sarah had told her kitchen colleagues to make themselves scarce before I reported to do her bidding at two o'clock.

It would have been kind and considerate of Sarah, a thoughtful and generous touch. But unlikely; why would she bother? Why would she take my feelings into account; the sensitivities of a Serviceable Age male citizen?

It appeared as though Sarah had only just got here herself. She was still wearing her chef's white jacket and loose fitting blue-and-white-checked pants, putting some of her things away in her locker against the far wall.

Looking over her shoulder at me, Sarah slid back her white socked right foot on the smooth once-pale wood of her white leather chef's clog and turned her foot sole upward, resting the tops of her toes upon the heel of her backless shoe. "That's good, David," she told me, fixing me with a look. "Because I've been looking forward to this, ever since we spoke this morning."

I stared down at Sarah's upturned sole, and noticed the dark-grey creases of her thin white cotton sock, evidencing the sweaty toil of the day-shift she'd just worked in the hot steamy conditions in the kitchen of the Brighton City-Break Hotel and Spa.

Standing with her back turned to me, her right leg bent at the knee, Sarah maintained her insouciant stance; somehow, such an attention-grabbing pose.

I looked up, caught Sarah's eye - saw her speculative, appraising look.

But, I couldn't help but look down again, at that somehow enrapturing image.

Couldn't prevent my eyes from staring downward and homing in to refocus upon that somehow captivating sight; the seemingly affected pose, which for some reason Sarah was continuing to display.

Sarah finally slid her right foot back into her comfy kitchen-wear chef's clog, and nodded to herself, as though convinced now that she'd confirmed beyond doubt something she'd previously strongly suspected.

Sarah then walked across the austere room's dark-red tiled floor, to where two meanly padded straight-backed wooden chairs were situated.

'Situated', because it appeared that Sarah had pre-placed the two seats, positioning them opposite each other in the centre of the chefs' changing room, ready for our appointment.

Sarah sat down in the seat that faced towards the wedged-open door and slid both feet back to rest her toes upon her backless shoes' low heels. Sarah looked at me for another moment, and then said, "I honestly don't know who wants this the most."

Sarah pointed to the seat opposite her, the one facing away from the door. And now I took my cue, entering the chefs' changing room at last and sitting as instructed by Sarah in the utilitarian room's only other chair.

Sitting so close to Sarah set off in me a frisson of nervous excitement.

Sarah looked even more beautiful than I remembered her from this morning in the kitchen, where at Mrs Harper's instruction I'd gone to be of whatever help I could to Amanda and Zoe and then to trundle the heaviest of our three refreshments trollies through to our set-aside work area, the Pavilion Lounge.

Sarah had sensed someone behind her and, upon seeing me standing there admiring her culinary skills, she'd broken off from her onion-dicing at the chopping board to tell me to report to the chefs' changing room at two o'clock because she would require my services after finishing her Breakfast-through-Lunch 06:00 - 14:00 shift. And that, so would the two Lunch-shift waitresses, a bit later, when they got off work.

Sarah's chef's white jacket had been splotched, smeared, smattered and spattered with foodstuffs both recognisable and indeterminate. But she'd looked good in it.

And, now that we were all alone together in this tiny private space, Sarah's body language was discernibly different, from then.

Sitting so close that our knees almost touched, her whole demeanour was more relaxed. She was letting her hair down a bit and allowing more of her vibrant personality to shine through - allowing me, while no one else was present, to see the real Sarah.

I could almost feel the magnetism between us, the age-old, irresistible pull of attraction. Could all but hear, the crackle of electricity at our almost-touching nearness.

I wondered if it was just me, or if Sarah sensed it, too; if she was getting the same vibe.

But I told myself to park all of that to one side; I had a something-for-something agreement reciprocal arrangement service to provide.

Sarah had positioned our two chairs the optimum distance apart for the purpose at hand. For now, at the end of her chef's blue-and-white-checked pants clad outstretched right leg, it was to her comfort and convenience that she placed her ankle-socked foot into my compliantly receptive hands.

I can barely describe the thrill, at that moment; the ecstatic excitement that tingled right through me.

At the thought, of being of such service - no: it was more, of being put - to such a service.

With a pang of guilt and a stab of remorse, I realised that it was not ire and resentment but a debt of immense gratitude I should feel towards my eighteen-year-old school-leaver's Career Assessment Interviewer and now Probational Case Worker at the Job Centre, Miss Tonya Tomkin's, who I'd irreverently thought of as the She-Devil of Desk 5.

Was this another, clear and definite sign that I was learning to adapt?

Because holding Sarah's foot; her post-work foot, in my hands and administering relieving, relaxing, and reinvigorating ministrations - performing foot service - was the most incredible feeling.

Just a few hours ago in the set-aside Pavilion Lounge, notwithstanding the albeit non-deliberate and therefore not maliciously imposed but merely incidental and inadvertent olfactory intake of those single-footed postured ladies' faint and not so faint foot-scent fragrances, I had found that I had not in the least been put out at being required for the first time in my male-worker principal role capacity to serve as the luxury refreshments-break little-something-extra to six of the SPOILT! Boutique manageresses as, during their holding-forth, centre-of-attention tenure they monopolised their facial footrest.

And, shortly after that, in her office, as she'd presided at her hour-long Heads of Department meeting, I'd found that I'd been similarly far from unhappy to serve under the dark-nyloned feet of the hotel manageress, Miss Helen Honeywell, as her under-the-conference-table facial footrest.

But, holding Sarah's post-work foot in my hands, was something else.

It would be foolish to delude myself that our assignation and prearranged interaction at Sarah's instigation was anything other or anything more meaningful than thousands of other AFP protocol observant female-citizen-Mistress/male-citizen-servant liaisons taking place throughout the UK at that very moment.

But I felt the active, participant nature of this, hands-on, service - as compared to the inherently passive, facial-footrest service - to be intensely intimate and profoundly personal.

I observed the creases that had formed in the sole of the thin white cotton material of Sarah's ankle sock.

And so it was, that as with my first timid touches I ministered with exaggerated care between those creases in the soft damp material, thrilling to the feel of the pliant warm flesh of Sarah's sole yielding beneath my novice's fingers, I experienced my first hands-on foot-massage moments.

Throughout her day shift, I thought, those edges; those now, dark-grey creases, would have rubbed, would have chafed, causing increasing discomfort and irritation to Sarah, worsening as her workday wore on.

Perhaps she adjusted her socks now and again to relieve the ongoing pesky problem, only for those thin folds to reform repeatedly.

Gently, with the tips of my forefinger and thumb, one by one I took hold of the damp creases of compressed thin white cotton and carefully pulled them away, allowing her sole to breathe.

"Now, that's what I call proper female-friendly service, David: Doing something like that unprompted. Neville, your absconded predecessor, never did that."

When Sarah spoke the word 'service', coming from her lips, the elemental profundity of it was such that she caused a resonation of something within me. Rumbling right through me like shock waves, the shuddering, quaking impacts seemed to loosen and dislodge - to further, shift aside - some obstructive barrier deep within me.

Like aftershocks, Sarah had added to the tumultuous mental rockfall precipitated earlier by Amanda during our "little chat": Amanda's mind-shattering all-seeing assertions, soul-searing insights, and perspicacious predictions as to the eventual exploitable extents of my female-friendly usefulnesses - of my 'compatibility'.

As I'd neared my eighteenth birthday and drew inexorably closer to what, for a male citizen, Prime Minister Caroline Flynt's Authoritarian Female Party government termed Serviceable Age, it had been with the inherent anxiety of a pessimistic glass-half-empty outlook and the trepidation of an overactive imagination that I'd speculated upon the female-friendly fortunes awaiting me.

But nothing - no imagined scenarios, no envisioned encounters, no dreamed-up female-citizen-Mistress/male-citizen-servant situations - had prepared me for this, tumultuous turn of events.

As I sat there, entirely focused upon the task in hand, as it were; firmly rotating the pad of one thumb into the bottom of Sarah's right white socked heel while my other thumb circled deep into the ball of her foot, something occurred to me.

"Miss Sarah ... I was wondering: Would you like me to take off your sock? I mean ... well, I was thinking, you might like it better, and—"

"There you go again, David! That's what I mean: Using your initiative; offering what is required, without needing to be told. Never once, did Neville offer to take off my sock - I always had to tell him."

I was starting to get a bit fed up of hearing about my latest runaway predecessor, Neville.

And anyway, what was wrong with the man? What was wrong, too, with all of my other absconded previous incumbents?

Sitting here, now, providing a post-work foot massage for the commis chef Sarah - performing not just a passive but a participant, hands-on, personal service - I felt not only the first stirrings of a sense of purpose but something yet more profound: an intuition of place.

"Miss Sarah, I am most happy to do this for you," I told her as I peeled off her thin white cotton ankle sock.

I can only describe as awe, the power of the emotions that flooded through me as I held the relaxing physical weight and beheld the heart-stirring vision of the sole of Sarah's freshly unsocked after-work right foot.

I saw now that the bottom of Sarah's heel and the ball of her foot were workaday-rubbed a reddish pink. And I could see where she'd been walking on the repeatedly forming folds of her sock: three on the ball of her foot and two on her heel were the five standouts, while some less vivid red lines traversed her arch.

Though I had been careful to massage between the folds and creases, concernedly I wondered now if I had been working my thumbs too firmly through the thin material of her white ankle sock and doing more harm than good; though I thought it highly unlikely that Sarah would have suffered such pain-occasioning maladroitness in silence.

Nonetheless, although I knew that it went directly against protocol and risked censure to speak unless spoken to first, I thought it best to address the issue by voicing my concern.

"Miss Sarah, I'm sorry if I've been rubbing my thumbs too hard; if I've caused you any discomfort through my clumsiness. But this is the first time I've done a foot massage."

"Thank you, David, for your consideration. Thoughtfulness is a most pleasing trait, particularly in that it is such an unusual one in a summoned male citizen. But no - keep on doing what you've been doing; this is so relaxing. It feels so much nicer, on my bare foot."

"Yes, Miss Sarah. And thank you."

"And David, by no means are you clumsy. You say you have never performed a foot massage before, but you do seem to have a natural, intuitive sense of just exactly what to do."

"Thank you, Miss Sarah."

It had not escaped my notice that in addressing me, Sarah had dropped the impersonal, protocoled rigidity of the formal 'male citizen' usage. Apparently she, but of course not we, were on first-name terms.

"Equally pleasing is your positive attitude - at least as important as ability, is adaptability."

"Yes, Miss Sarah. And thank you."

"I can see that you will have very few if any of the usual male-mindset transitioning problems and that with perhaps just one or two little tweaks you will become an excellent foot servant for your employer Mrs Hilary Harper's junior partner assistants Amanda and Zoe who, as I understand, from today you have replaced Neville as their at-work fringe benefit."

"Yes, Miss Sarah, you are correct. Miss Amanda has outlined what she and Miss Zoe expect of me. And I am committed to doing my very best for them both."

"Good; I'm sure you will. So, I think I'll leave you to it, then, unsupervised; just let you do your own thing."

"Yes, Miss Sarah. And thank you."

"I only wish you'd been here from the beginning of the week, David. Instead of that disinterested and disobliging deadbeat, Neville Norcott."

"That's very kind of you to say, Miss Sarah."

Sarah reached forward to pluck from my shirt's breast pocket my male citizen's AFP-issue mobile phone.

A female citizen was AFP-empowered to demand the immediate handover or to gain instant unfettered access to a male citizen's AFP-issue mobile phone should she wish to communicate an issue to AFP authorities by text message or, should she deem it necessary, to dial 01 to speak directly to his Controller.

"I think you deserve a special mention, David ... Okay, so I see your Probational Case Worker at the Job Centre is Miss Tonya Tomkins," said Sarah, upon apparently having searched for and quickly found Miss Tomkins in either my phone's On-System Directory or, and more likely, from my direct-dial Contacts list.

"Hmmn ... Miss Tonya Tomkins. Her name rings a bell. Ah, yes, I remember Mrs H telling me: Miss Tomkins is her sympathetic contact at the Job Centre, who has supplied most of her male workers previously and has now supplied you."

"Yes, Miss Sarah. That's right."

"Well, I'm going to send this Miss Tonya Tomkins of yours a text message."

While my untrained but, apparently, naturally adept and quick-learning fingers and thumbs ministered to the bare sole of Sarah's right foot, easing away the aches, pains and tirednesses of her on-her-feet kitchen workday, on my AFP-issue phone's keypad Sarah's own, expert fingers and thumbs composed a text message to Miss Tomkins.

I wondered what Miss Tomkins would say regarding Sarah's text message when just over two weeks from now I reported to her Desk for the first of our fortnightly Male Worker Conduct Revue interviews.

Probably, nothing; after all, my good behaviour was not to be pat-on-the-back congratulated or lauded, but standard and expected - or else.

As my Probational Case Worker, I knew that should I in any way incur her displeasure Miss Tonya Tomkins had the power to sanction me, up to and including throwing me in jail. Most probably, she would have me admitted to the nearby and notorious Greystone Prison, where she could rest assured that the infamous Jailhouse Blue female prison officers at that iniquitous institution would make my indefinite, behavioural-progress dependent stay with them a most memorable one.

Sarah had such a pretty foot, I thought, and the incredible sensations, as firmly but carefully I worked the pads of my fingers and thumbs into the bare flesh of her needful post-work sole, was proving to be the most sensually exquisite experience: more incredible, than serving the SPOILT! Boutique manageresses as their refreshments-break facial footrest; and more exquisitely sensual, than under-the-conference-table facial-footrest serving the dark-nylons wearing hotel manageress Miss Honeywell at her Heads of Department meeting.

"There, I've sent it. A good word, as it were," said Sarah as she reached forward again to return my phone to my shirt's breast pocket so that there be no need of an interruption to my hands-on service.

"Miss Tomkins will receive my formal Female Citizen's Communication with my name and AFP-membership number attached. She'll enter it into the AFP DataBase, print off the usual requisite official copies and put one of them in your file for future reference."