Francine took a cab to the familiar address when she left the office. As usual, on those nights, she left the office late. It was nearly seven o’clock by then, and she left in the clothes she’d worn to work that day, a pair of black jeans, a gray sweater, and her running shoes. She hadn’t brought anything fancier with her. She couldn’t see the point of dressing up. She ran a brush through her hair, and left it down because she knew he liked it that way, and he would complain if she didn’t. She didn’t bother to put on makeup, and just brushed her teeth and washed her face in the office bathroom. She looked plain and unadorned when she put on her black trench coat. She had stopped dyeing her hair and let it go gray, which aged her. And she didn’t care about that either. He had never mentioned it to her. She looked like a plain, serious woman leaving work. She used to dress up for these occasions, but now she realized it was what it was, and there was no reason to pretend it was something different. She couldn’t lie to herself.
She gave the cab driver the address on Central Park West. She had been going to the same address for ten years. The apartment belonged to people she had never met. It was a pied à terre, which no one used anymore, but they kept it. The owners lived in Montana now, a well-known actor and his wife. The actor was very old and in poor health. He hadn’t been to New York in years but kept the apartment as an investment. Dan Fletcher took care of it for him, and used it for his own purposes, with the owners’ permission. They didn’t mind, and were happy to have him go there and check on it.
He hadn’t bothered to turn on all the lights when she arrived. The apartment looked gloomy and unoccupied, as it always did. It had the feeling and the smell of a place that was seldom used. A cleaning service came to clean it once a week, but there were none of the small personal touches of a home that someone loved and lived in. It felt airless and forgotten. They used to have dinner afterwards but hadn’t bothered to in years. And she needed to get home to her kids. Dan was usually drunk and passed out by the time she left. He spent the night there twice a week and told his wife he had meetings in town. It gave her a chance to have dinner with her women friends, which she liked. And he went to the office from the apartment the next day.
Francine rang the bell and Dan Fletcher, her boss, the owner of the agency, opened the door for her. There were a few lights on behind him, and she knew her way around the apartment after ten years of meeting him there twice a week.
“You’re late,” he said as his only greeting. He had a glass in his hand with scotch and ice cubes in it. She could tell he had already had more than one drink. She knew him well. He handed her one too, after she took her coat off, and she sipped the drink. She hated scotch, but it made her visits there easier, and the effect was quick.
He didn’t bother to stop in the living room with her, and walked straight into the bedroom as she followed him, carrying her drink. She set it down on a round table. The apartment had probably been pretty once, or interesting. They had some good paintings, some Remington sculptures of cowboys with horses, and there was a view of Central Park from the bedroom windows. She stood and looked at it for a minute as Dan Fletcher watched her, wondering what she was thinking. Then he took a long pull of his drink and set his down too. He took his jacket off and threw it on a chair, unbuttoned his shirt, and when she turned around, he was standing in his boxer shorts, bare-chested, with his socks on, and lay down on the bed. She knew what she had to do. She had been doing it twice a week for ten years.
She took her clothes off quickly and left them in a heap on the chair. Her body was still in good shape. She looked her age at forty-five, and she was an attractive woman even if she no longer cared how she looked. She glanced at him once. He was lying on the bed, with his eyes closed, waiting for her to get started. He took off his boxers and threw them on the floor, but left his socks on. She did what she had promised to do so long ago, for reasons she justified to herself in the beginning, but she no longer could. He had taken her out to dinner the first time, and she was flattered, and didn’t think she should refuse. She’d had too much to drink, and later she had wondered if he put something in it. She was almost sure of it afterwards. The next thing she knew, she was at the borrowed apartment. She couldn’t remember getting there. She was thirty-five then and better-looking. Her husband had just left her with two young children and too little money to live on and support them and herself. She had taken the job at Fletcher and Benson for the salary they offered her to become an agent. She could just barely manage to live on what she made before that as an editor and support her children, living in a small cheap apartment she’d rented in Queens. The salary she’d been offered as an agent made a big difference to help pay for her children’s schools. She needed the job desperately with her ex barely able to make his child support payments then. Everything rested on her.
The next thing she knew that first time, Dan Fletcher was making love to her. She felt dizzy and sick, but she didn’t have the strength to stop him. She was too drunk or too drugged. The next morning, she felt sick at what had happened. She had left her children with the sitter all night. And he spelled it out to her. If she agreed to meet him twice a week for sex, she would get regular salary increases and promotions and her job would be secure. And she would be promoted in a short time to head up their literary department. If she wouldn’t agree, or stopped meeting him, she would be out of a job and he’d find a reason to fire her, and he’d see to it that she never worked again.
She couldn’t believe the position she was in or what he was proposing to her. But she needed the money and the job security for her kids. If he fired her and blackballed her, she’d have no way to support her children. She had no one to turn to, and no boyfriend or husband. So what difference did it make to anyone if she did what he wanted? He told her he’d see to it that her reputation would be destroyed if she didn’t agree, and who would believe her if the head of the agency lied about her? He said he’d be sure that everyone knew she was a whore if she left or he fired her. From the look on his face, she believed him. He had all the power, and she had none, and two children to support. She told herself that she was doing it for her children, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for them. How bad could it be? Terrified to lose her job and be disgraced, she had made her pact with the devil, and met him faithfully twice a week. She thought maybe she could get out of it eventually, but once she knew him better, she knew she couldn’t. He would destroy her if she tried to escape or reneged on their agreement. He reminded her regularly of what would happen if she stopped meeting him: she’d be out of a job, accused of some kind of malfeasance. She no longer cared by then. Something had gone dead inside her. She believed all his threats to ruin her and expose her as a whore. Having sex with him was the only real job security she had if he would blackball her, and she was sure he would. In exchange, he lived up to his end of the bargain and made her head of the literary department in less than a year. All she had to do was keep having sex with him. As long as she did, no one ever knew. Only she did. And she could keep her job, her salary and reputation. He controlled her by fear, threats, and blackmail. And every time he told her what would happen if she stopped coming or left, another part of her froze inside. She felt numb and half dead and did what he wanted. She couldn’t afford not to. He ruled by terror.