Another Friday done, dance floor empty and sticky with the occasional shards of glass. We cross it, I nod to the Peruvian cleaning crew who are just getting started. 3:45 AM, one of them told me once that they got up at 2:30 AM to get to work. That’s dedication I suppose. Or lack of other opportunities more likely. Whatever the reason they are super efficient and we watch them work while we sit at the downstairs bar pooling our tips, handing some to the bus boys, some to the sous chef who comes up the back stairs, grabs the money and an unopened bottle of house red and disappears. The rest we split amongst ourselves. Bar staff has had a good night and are heading off somewhere, an after party. One of those I avoid. Never pleasant, always more people with a history of violence than people worth talking too. The waiters linger behind, it’s always like this, I guess it’s a side effect of all the walking on nights like this, endless walking and running on marble and granite. It doesn’t matter how good your shoes are, and trust me, our shoes are good or we wouldn’t make it through a shift alive. When we finally finish our beers and head out, John grabs my arm. “Did she talk to you?” “Who?” “The woman, she sat on 12, came in just after 10.” “Not that I can recall anyway, but you know.” I try to remember, not my station but when the going gets rough everyone helps out everywhere but I draw a blank. Mostly. “Eating alone? Thirties, bob, red wine and a full ashtray?” “That’s the one.” “No, not a word.” He grins and disappears towards a waiting taxi. I zip my jacket up, shove my hands into my pockets and put my head down as I walk home in the biting winter cold. Mis-en-place. The 2 hours of napkins and knives and forks and setting tables and replacing candles and refilling salt and pepper shakers, ketchup bottles and yelling at the bus boy who for some reason thinks that it’s a great idea to drop 24 high stem Bordeaux glasses onto the marble floor. It’s a great big glittering mess and the maitre’d, an asshole even on the best of nights, ensures that the bus boy knows that he will have to pay for every single one of those glasses. And the wait staff silently calculates the total and makes a note. Fuck the maitre’d. We’ve all been there, on the receiving end of his spiteful little acts of meanness. A bus boy makes little enough as it is. And while you can be certain that the glasses we use are cheaper than they look, 24 of them still costs more than he makes in a night, even with the night club bonus. And then there’s the usual gossip but none of it really interests me, I just want to be over and done with tonight. Then I have four days of doing nothing at all, four days of staying in a warm bath and letting my feet heal. Just hours away now. And then all hell breaks loose in the form of the usual Saturday guests. First the families, easy enough to deal with as long as the patriarch doesn’t have too many weird ideas about how you can treat the staff. This is still play time though. We swap words out, “Did you enjoy your anal?”. No, meal and anal doesn’t sound the same but they don’t sound different enough, especially not in a restaurant, where the background noise is making normal conversation a hassle at the best of times. And there is a small victory in that, small and petty, but so what, we work for tips and we play nice except when we are petty and stupid. Besides, we are even worse on Friday nights, the after work crowd is louder and drunker and we are generally more annoyed because drunk dinner guests are a ton of work. Come sober, have a drink, a bottle of wine, something to go with the coffee and get out of my station, welcome back if you leave a decent tip. You know what that means. The families start leaving and the party dinners take their place. And this is a reason more than any other to hate Saturdays. This is all party people, restaurant staff, semi celebrities and hang arounds and they are all the most important person in the world right now. But time flies and I don’t even notice the woman at my station, eating alone which makes her unique on a night like this, until after I’ve taken her order. Don’t misinterpret me, I am just on auto pilot. I don’t see people, I see tables, tabs, orders and not people. Not until after I’ve taken the order. She looks at me and smiles, a wide grin that seems mildly out of place. “Oh grandma, what a wide grin you have”, I think but not because she’s old but because of a feeling at the back of my neck. “I’ll be right back with your drink”, I manage and head off to the bar to put her order in. The bartender hands me the glass of champagne instantly and I head back to her table. “Your champagne, Mademoiselle”, I say, trying to go for some sort of odd flair thing that I imagine could be interpreted as flirty and French. Women who eat alone can be great tippers. She winks at me, holds a finger up and takes a sip, her lipstick marking the spot. “Very good, James. Very good.” Here’s the thing. We. Don’t. Have. Name. Tags. This isn’t a diner and while we do the “my name is such and such and I will be your waiter this evening”, that goes out the window after the first sitting. “Oh, don’t worry”, she says and smiles, not the wolf smile but a kind smile, warm. “Maybe John told me your name? What do you think?” I mumble something, off balance and a bit caught by surprise in the middle of my not very suave attempt at being interesting and wander off, aimlessly until one of the busboys bumps into me and I land back in reality again. I serve her meal, bring more champagne, and then wine and finally coffee and by now the tables around her are empty and wiped down, there’s a couple of stragglers here and there but the night, for the wait staff, is done. She is my only open tab and only makes the little scribble sign when closing time is a couple of minutes away. I hurry out with the bill and she basically takes a quick look at it, writes something on the back with a pen and leaves it together with a significant tip. As in ridiculous. And leaves, without looking back at me and I know she doesn’t because I stand staring at her until she disappears down the stairs. I fold the bill and put it in my pocket and clear the table. Later, at the bar, after the tip has been split and my windfall has been distributed and marvelled at — it doesn’t make a huge difference in the total but the percentage is impressive — I pick up her bill and read what she has written. And everything turns completely unreal. I start sweating and leave, I hear someone yelling something after me but I don’t understand it, don’t care, can’t process it because I need to get home and read this again and make sure it isn’t a dream. The weather outside isn’t helping, a slow snow fall, with big snow flakes that lazily seem to float down towards the ground, makes the already dreamlike situation even more so. I pinch myself all the way home. But there’s no waking up. There are secrets you have. Everyone has secrets. Something you did, something your friend did. Something you did with a friend. Some of those secrets are well kept and some of them are just secret as far as your parents are concerned, and truth be told, they probably know more than they let on. Then there are things that aren’t even secret because only you know them. Most the things only you know are uninteresting trivial and utterly pointless. Why you still buy the same toothpaste even though you think another one tastes better for example. Pointless. You do it because you can never remember which version of the other toothpaste it was and at least you know how the old one tastes. Completely pointless. And then there’s some that are decidedly pointy. And I don’t mean to make it sound like I have done something bad because there were no victims. “Let’s play Twelfth Night, I’ll be Olivia and you’ll be Viola.” And then a phone number. Nothing more. That is all that is required for me to wonder how the hell this woman could read my mind. I didn’t sleep much that night, slumbered after dawn at some point, only to wake up and read what she had written again. Was it just coincidence? How could it be? How could she know? The obvious answer was right there in front of me. She couldn’t. Unless I had accidentally been super drunk — and that hadn’t happened since I was fifteen and threw up in the bushes behind the bus station close to the girl I thought I would be madly and desperately in love with forever. Let’s say that the love lasted only marginally longer than the hangover. And my odd reactions when I, as a very, very precocious 12 year old, read Shakespeare’s play hadn’t entered my mind in years. As soon as I figured he’d be awaked I called John. He swore that he hadn’t mentioned my name or anything else and hung up since he had company. Ilasted until Monday noon before I called her, and I could hear her smile over the phone line. “What to you so long James? I hope I didn’t scare you?” “Scare me? Why? Not the first phone number I’ve been handed.” “Oh tsk tsk, don’t you want to know how I knew?” “Knew what?” She went silent for a few seconds, I thought I could hear the crackling from the cigarette she had to be smoking. “Listen. No games James. If you aren’t wondering how I know or if what I wrote means nothing then hang up now and don’t call me again.” Silence again. “I see, ok, fine.” “Much better. Now, I think we should meet, my hotel is not far from your apartment, a five minute walk maybe. So I will meet you in the lobby of the Adlon in, say seven minutes. Don’t be late.” The line went dead and I stared at the handset. Six minutes later I walked up the stairs to the reception, the huge chandelier glittering above me, late checkout or early check in seemed to be in full swing and I was busy trying to locate her among the people when she came up from behind, put her arm under mine and without a word led me into the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor. Now, this was the Adlon. Not the fanciest of the hotels in the city but still far from being cheap. And top floor meant suites, I knew that much. But there seemed to be no opening for conversation and I felt uncomfortable in a way I hadn’t felt for quite some time. Working in the service industry either makes you pretty good at making small talk or it shoves you right out the door and back into unemployment. But there was nothing that seemed appropriate at this particular moment. I could feel her watching me. She had a fairly short bob and razor sharp bangs, a straight line curving from temple to temple. Not a lot of make up, eyeliner and quite a bit of it, mascara and a very dark red lipstick. That was it. At least as far as I could tell. I knew enough women to know that looking like you wear very little make up sometimes takes a lot of makeup. She was significantly shorter than me, even in heels she only reached up to my shoulder. A glance in the mirror told me that she was curvy, the dress she wore was loose fitting but followed her body in a very flattering way, a corn flower blue. The elevator came to a shuddering halt and we exited and she opened the door to the suite on the left. “Welcome James, make yourself at home.” I took one step inside and stopped. Shoes off? Yes, winter outside meant shoes off and I was suddenly violently aware that I had a large hole on one of my socks. I sat down and unlaced my boots and tried to reposition the hole so that it wouldn’t be noticeable. She just passed me by and disappeared into another room. I stod around for a minute or two before I decided to sit down on the sofa. It faced the huge windows looking down on the nearby houses. After another couple of minutes she came back, cigarettes and a lighter in one hand and a big notebook in the other. And she sat down next to me on the sofa and started telling me the story of my life with the warm kind voice of a woman reading a fairy tale to frightened child. “How?” It sounded hollow, my voice not quite my own. “That’s an even longer story but I know you, I think in some ways I know you better than you know yourself. For example, I know you could use some champagne now, correct?” I nodded. “Good boy. It’s in an ice bucket along with two glasses in the bedroom. Go fetch it for us, will you.” I stod up and the room felt like it was spinning. Low blood pressure and I managed to stay upright but noticed that she had grabbed hold of my hand. “Easy does it James, next time go slower.” She let go and I walked into the bedroom, the ice bucket on the bedside table contained an unopened bottle of champagne, draped with a hand towel, I lifted it and almost whistled. Not a cheap one, I knew that much. I put it back and carried the bucket and glasses back to her, opened the bottle and poured her small amount, just as if I was working. She nodded appreciatively and tasted it and gestured for me to fill her glass up. I put the bottle back in the bucket and sat down and she smiled, the wolf smile and again that tingle. “You need some too, believe me. You’re not working tonight anyway.” I poured myself a glass, we raised them and I realised I still had no idea what her name was. “You have to excuse me, this is a lot of, you know, stuff. And I don’t even know your name.” She laughed, not one of those fake laughs you hear so often but a true laughter that made her nose twitch and her eyes twinkle. “Right you are. Well, for now you can call me Em. That should do it.” “Em as in Emma?” “Em as in something.” She had moved closer and asked me about my life, complex questions about how I viewed myself and other people. I answered as best I could and refilled our glasses when needed. At some point she must have ordered another bottle because after a discreet knock on the door a fresh one was delivered. I fetched and opened it up and this time she stopped me from filling my own glass. “No, you’ve had enough for now.” I must have made a face because she gave me a stern look. “Maybe later. Sit.” But when I tried to sit down on the sofa again she shook her head and pointed to the floor. And confused I simply sat down on the soft carpet next to her. “You are very good at taking instructions, have you noticed that?” I blushed and immediately felt stupid and scrambled to get back up but she was faster and put a hand on my shoulder, not squeezing or pinching, just pushing down. “That’s better. It was a compliment. I like that in you. Always did. Now come closer.” She sat right next to me, ran her fingers through my hair, long and curly and with quite a few complicated entangled messes to play around with and straighten out. While her fingers did that, she talked about herself almost absent minded, about the part of the city where she grew up and what she enjoyed reading and music and I relaxed and leaned my head against her thigh and her dress seemed to almost unnoticeable shift upwards so that my skin was against hers and I could smell her. “Do you want to kiss my thigh James?” Her voice lower, hoarser somehow. I didn’t move. “Yes? Maybe? Is that weird?” “No, it is just as it should be but you need to answer clearly.” “Yes.” “Yes Em.” “Yes. Em.” And I kissed her thigh. Once, lightly, then once more and then I looked up at her and she bent forward and cupped my cheek in her hand and nodded. And so I kissed the inside of her thigh, looking up at her to see if she was going to stop me but it wasn’t until I could feel the warmth from her on my skin that she said stop and told me to undress. “Put your clothes next to me please.” Her tone of voice was different again. Like the voice of a doctor who asks you to take off your shirt. Clinical. Clear. No room for discussion. So I undressed. When I was done she told me to sit down again. Then she looked through my clothes. “Useless”, she said and threw my sweater over her shoulder. “Horrid”, she said and the t-shirt disappeared. “Really?”, when finding the socks with the big hole. “Not your style”, and so the jeans, my favourite pair, having a 37" inseam made life miserable for someone like me, disappeared. And finally she picked up my underwear. A pair of boxer briefs. Black. I bought them in packs of three because they were cheap and comfortable and I didn’t really care. “James. I have the perfect underwear for you. But you need a shower first.” She led me into the shower and surprised me by slipping out of her dress and into the warm water with me, washing me and washing away any doubts I had that I could find any reasonable explanation for this. In the midst of washing she took a firm grip on my half erect cock, right where shaft met pubic bone, encircling the scrotum and squeezed. Then, with a smile she brandished a razor and proceeded to shave of every single hair from my belly button to my toes. Had I been a hairier person it would have take quite some time, my legs were long after all, but she seemed to have done it before and I was too surprised to do more than utter a mild “uuuh” in protest. Which she obviously ignored and I stepped out of the shower, clean shaven from the tip of the nose down except for my armpits. She stepped back and watched me as I grew more and more self conscious but when I tried to turn away she told me not to and I didn’t. Finally she handed me a towel, swept herself in a bathrobe and walked out, I followed after a minute or two, expecting her to perhaps need a little privacy. Or perhaps I was trying to put two and two together. Either way she was waiting for me by the bed. Without ceremony I was handed my new underwear. A pair of baby pink lacy panties. I must have stared, slack jawed, at them for a bit longer than was appreciated because she suddenly slapped me on the ass and told me to put them on. Why didn’t I resist? The question kept coming back to me. The answer was the same every single time. “Because you don’t want to.” She approved of the underwear and gave me a very short bathrobe in pink satin. “There. As pretty as ever.” And she pushed me back on the bed, climbed on top of me and kissed me deeper than I had ever been kissed before. There was just something about her, how she touched me, whispered to me, that made me relax and just follow her lead. So when I ended up across her knee, my legs pinned by one hers and with her left hand holding my hair in a steady grip I knew that she apparently could read my mind. “Don’t worry. You will still be able to sit comfortably tomorrow. But give me a week and we shall see, won’t we?” Hand, hairbrush, nails, pain and soft caresses. A maze of sensory input and a view straight into my own abyss. Her finger circling my asshole while she whispers “I so look forward to fucking you Ja…”. She interrupted herself and seemed lost in thought for a minute before she told me to lay down on my stomach and spread my legs. Most of my conscious thought at this point was just random signals but it was hard to miss when she spread my cheeks apart and gingerly licked me, softly and gently at first and then with much more enthusiasm, as if she was afraid to scare me. But what surprised me was not her actions but my reactions. A couple of minutes of that and I was practically begging her to fuck me. Which she did. Repeatedly. And this could be all about the sordid details of that. How we both cried and how I learned the truth. Em stands for Mistress. She came for me. I can’t even imagine what it must have entailed for her. But I am hers. Again? Or will I be again? I don’t know. I am Jane again. I will be Jane again. She remains my Mistress.