When K. calls, she responds.  She dresses each day with this expectation.  Today, it is a silk sleeveless fitted dress with a swirling, liquid silk skirt.  Oxblood red. She has matching stilletos ready. They hurt her feet so she doesn't wear them until she needs to.

She knows she will do what he asks, although she doesn’t admit this in words, even inside her head.  But his words are enough.  No-one else can do this, I need you. Nobody understands what needs to be done like you do.  I only trust you.  She makes up the subtext for herself.  She is flattered and easily agrees. As always.  She is sure he knows this.

When he looks at her, things change.  She imagines his eyes are wells, deep pools of clear water.  Clear, simple, committed. She does not think K. is beautiful - far from it. Short and bullet shaped, balding, running to paunch. He wears designer shirts, too closely fitting, without a vest.

But he has his good features and when she needs to, she concentrates on these. A fringe of razorsharp lashes, individual points like starlight. When she squint into the night at a star, the image breaks into splinters and shivers of darkness around the centre of light. His unblinking eyes draw her in. Clean fingernails, manicured.  White, even teeth.  She knows they are implants but they look real, and that is enough. His clothes are very expensive, as is his perfume.  She likes to think about this.

A thrill of fear, every time.  What does he see? She wonders.  And the lack of a look, the deliberate averting of his gaze, cuts her, every time. “What have I done?” she wails inside like a child. He reduces her to a child, hungry anticipation of validation with a glance.  She needs his affection, his admiration.  Instead when she slam up against the grey concrete wall of what she thinks is silent disappointment, it knocks the breath out of her. Stunned, and shocked she stands and wait for him to notice her. 

Sometimes he does, but usually not.  The waiting feels like her skin slowly dragging across rough concrete,  abrading and tearing a thousand tiny scratches that add up to a flaying. 

So when he calls, she goes. She spends the day working, there is a client, a faceless person, a man.-A meeting.   She writes notes, agrees. pretends pleasure at a successful day, she celebrates with the client, one eye on her watch.  They laugh and walk outside and admire the open sky and the city. Her feet hurt. They both pretend the client is important. She flirts, K. would want that.

In the evening the client is satisfied and leaves, and after checking her lipstick she goes to tell K., dragging her spoils to lay at his feet.  He will be pleased, she hopes. He is in his suite of rooms behind a strong wooden door, a shield against the world, like the entrance to a medieval castle.  No-one sees her knock and enter. The door is locked but she has a key.

Inside, K. sits like Einstein or Ernst Stavro Blofeld, hunched over a keyboard in front of several  window sized screens. She thinks he has been watching her.  She sits on the arm of his executive swivel chair and coos. It works, he turns to her.

K. smoothly insinuates that everyone else is incompetent, and could, should have seen myriad, complex consequences every time he has one of his brilliant ideas.  He assumes she knows what he is talking about and she is too insecure to let on that she does not.  She marvels at his intellect.  She lets him talk. They are secretly ruling the world from in here and she feels privileged to be admitted.  She strokes his arm and he smiles, she is gleeful.  K. smiles and manages to look relieved, a boyish, charming look, and she wants nothing more than this, to be useful and recognised and valued.

"Shall we?" K. smiles again, letting her in.  They move to  the couch. there is a blanket, and he is clean and soft.  She allows him to do whatever he wants, she is abandoned and happy just to be there.  

When they lie together afterwards, there is a softness, a secret recognition between them.  At least she thinks there is. He doesn't say anything.   No-one else knows they are here.  But they hear rustlings, an outside workman going heavily on stairs, trudging with his tools to repair something in the basement beneath them and they hear him on the staircase beneath the window.  "Shh," K. whispers. "You'd better go now."

He kisses her, his eyes on his desk.  She gets up and dresses, moves to the doorway, listens through the thick wooden door to see if anyone is in the large room outside.  K.'s arms are pudgy and pale, lying limply on his stomach; she thinks about his doughy face with what she thinks is affection.  His eyes are closed. 

She will be back, she is sure.  K. will need her. he will be masterminding the world and she will be his instrument, and they will fix everything together.  His screen beckons, and he is back at his desk, relaxed in a white shirt with the collar now undone, as she slips out of the room in her high red heels.