Chapter One

The Letter

Janice Paterson had been living in the city for over two years. She had moved from the distant heartland after college seeking sophistication, adventure, success. She believed she would find it in the fast-paced urban core of the country, New York City. After being rejected by every glamorous job she applied for, she had finally taken a job at a mid-sized advertising firm. It was either that or waitressing. When she had come to New York, Janice had looked forward to contact with writers, actors and members of the demi-monde of avant-garde society. Instead, she found herself stuck in a dull and boring job, a glorified secretary for the most part. Her only excitement came from fending off the come-ons from the older, mostly married senior and junior account executives.

She was no schoolgirl and before coming to the city had permitted a boyfriend or two the ultimate ecstasy of entry into her secret place. But lovemaking for her was not an aerobic event. She treasured the closeness and cuddly feelings and enjoyed the somewhat muted orgasms she had experienced. She performed dutifully what she considered the rather gross task of tonguing and swallowing the ardent tools of her young beaus. She thought it funny, actually, that she could so easily master their desires by a delicate caress on their thighs, a slow, deliberate drawing down of the zipper and a soft murmur in their ear. Once her lips engulfed their swollen members, they were hers to control.

When she arrived in New York, she had initially let go and partied with some of the other young girls in the office. Gradually, however, she gave up the fast life and in the last few months she had only been out on a couple of dates. She had found it hard to make real friends and the men she met were mostly married, gay or losers. She told herself that she could live without men and sex for the time being as she worked hard to learn as much as she could about the advertising business. An occasional self-administered caress was enough to keep her sexual urges on the back burner. She permitted herself these little twirky orgasms, as weak as a kitten’s sneeze and almost as quick, on a weekly basis, often on a Saturday night, usually after watching a tear jerking romance on DVD.

This Tuesday evening had begun like over a hundred Tuesdays before with her release from work and a short subway ride uptown to her small three-room apartment. She picked up her mail, as usual, and as she ascended the four flights of stairs to her lodgings, rifled through it absent-mindedly. She could have used the elevator; the building had a dingy passenger elevator in the front foyer and a larger, dingier freight elevator in the back. But Janice preferred the stairs. She was trim, had been an athlete in college. A member of the freshman and sophomore track teams, she had continued a regimen of fitness even after she decided that she needed more time to devote to her studies and gave up organized sports. Team sports such as softball and soccer did not appeal to her. She loved swimming, but her tall, thin body was not built for competitive swimming. And her hair. Long, brown with a reddish streak, she could not have sacrificed it to the demands of speed in the swimming pool.

So she walked the stairs, slowly but steadily, thumbing through the mail as she rose up the steps. Bills, circulars, a letter from her friend Denise and a sort of funny brown envelope marked “Open Immediately” in big red letters. As she entered her tiny apartment, she tossed the circulars in the circular file, placed the bills on the small table by the door and put Denise’s letter in her pocket. This she would read in her bath. She was about to toss the brown envelope with the demanding instruction in the waste can when she hesitated.Mmmmm, she thought,maybe I’ll check this out later. I’ll find out what’s so damn important in the world of junk mail. Taking a step or two into the apartment, she thought again,Nah, who needs more insurance/credit cards/ collectables or whatever they’re selling anyhow. She turned and tossed the envelope into the can.

Janice quickly microwaved a hot cup of Orange Pekoe tea and proceeded to run her bath, being careful to add in a few measur