Cheating Life – 9.1

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TRUE TO HER WORD, Jane had a pair of shears waiting when I emerged from the shower; she cut each leash down to about six inches and tucked in the loose on my ankles to keep me from tripping. The wrists she left dangling for “easy handling”. She had changed into a flower print sundress – nothing naughty, just pleasant, sunny, and comfortable. She had picked out a change of clothes for me, too – but nothing from my bag, which still sat just inside her door. I now wore pressed khaki jeans, sandals, and a white linen shirt embroidered with the hotel’s monogram over the pocket. Before we left the room, she produced my ohm pendant from her pocket and hung it almost ceremonially around my neck, then tucked it beneath my shirt.

We went up in the elevator, I think. The unnumbered, unlit button she pressed was far from the one she’d hit last night, but we seemed to go only a few floors before emerging directly into a room that smelled like a bakery. Inside were scattered clusters of equally mismatched and luxurious chairs and loveseats facing short, round tables. Many of the furniture groups were empty, and none of them had another ender in them – certainly no-one was dressed like me, or even male. The girls were clustered into small groups of two or three, each enjoying luxuries as mismatched as their furnishings, from conversations over steaming cup to hot wraps to each other’s more personal attentions.

Jane led me to the other side of the room through the middle; as we went, she introduced me to each girl we passed by name and polite details, and gave them only my name in return. I got the sense that she was friendly with most of them but in none of their cliques, which congregated and joined and disappeared like soap bubbles on dishwater. None of the girls appeared surprised to see me, and they feigned varying amounts of interest in me personally. None of them went back to their previous conversations until we were out of earshot.

Jane settled us into a loveseat in the back corner of the room, from which we could see the others but not be overheard ourselves. She told me a few embarrassing details about some of them.

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