Chapter One
“I don’t understand,” she said for perhaps the fifth
time.
Jeremy sighed. “It’s very simple. Your house is a mess.”
Judith couldn’t argue with that. As she looked around in
hopes of making some excuse, she saw dirty dishes piled on the counter, stacks
of unsorted papers on the table, and she knew that the other rooms were even
worse. Mercifully, he hadn’t gone into her bedroom where piles of dirty laundry
banked up in the corners.
“Judging by the mail piled up on the counter, I suspect
your bills aren’t up to date.”
Bingo again.
“And your work is slipping. That’s what brought me here,
of course, but now that I see the condition of your house I can understand why
you can’t focus.”
There was some truth to that as well. She was glad he
didn’t know that underneath those unpaid bills were unopened envelopes from
clients with information she should be reading every day.
“I know you’ve been having some problems,” he continued, “but
I can’t have my clients suffering because of them.”
“I know,” she began, a rush of glib assurances at the tip
of her tongue. “I’m going to get organized today, and I’ll contact…”
“It’s not that simple,” he cut in.
She barely dared ask what he meant. Was he going to
“If I’m going to keep you on, your work is going to be
closely monitored.”
“I see. Of course,” she said, feigning humility. Her work
was the best, when she did it. If she just kicked it into high gear for a few
days, she’d dazzle him right back into believing that she could do anything,
and then she’d get a little slack again.
“You might not want to agree so quickly,” he suggested. “The
terms are pretty strict.”
And subject to change as soon as you start getting
positive reviews from my clients again. Whatever.
“Like?”
“Like you clean your house.”
She stepped backward. “What in the hell business is that
of yours?”
“Maybe none,” he conceded, “but it’s one of my conditions.
I happen to believe that it’s hard to work productively amid chaos, so as of
today, a clean, organized workspace is a job requirement.”
“Okay. What else?”
“You submit a report to me by fax at the end of every day
accounting for your time.”
A pain in the ass, perhaps, but not so unreasonable. A
lot of people did daily time sheets. It would help me keep her billing
organized, too, which would be a good thing. It did seem like hours had been
slipping through the cracks recently.
“Okay, so you want clean workspace and my hours submitted
every day instead of once a week?”
He shook his head. “Not just your hours. An accounting of
your time.”
“I don’t understand.”
Impatience flashed across his face. “There seems to be a
great deal that you don’t understand. Perhaps I put too much faith in you.”
She bit back the flood of angry retorts, knowing that she
needed to keep the job and certain that this would all blow over in a few days
once she was back in full swing, turning out good product and getting good
feedback from her clients.
“Your time will be accounted for from morning until
night,” he continued. Not just your work hours, but every hour of every day,
starting with what time you get up in the morning. If you go to the grocery
store, I want to know how long you were gone. If you talk on the phone to a
friend, I want to see the name written down, and I want to know what time you
called and what time you hung up. Beginning to get the picture?”
“You can’t do that!”
He shrugged. “You’re quite right. Refuse, if you like,
and I’ll find someone else to do this work. You’ve given me more than enough
reason to fire you.” He tapped an envelope against his hand, the same one he’d
opened when he’d first arrived. It was filled with emails and phone messages
from Judith’s clients wanting to know why they couldn’t reach her.
“We’re going to make a list,” he continued, “of
everything that needs to be done in your life. Clients you need to catch up
with, bills you need to pay, counters you need to wash…everything that you’ve
neglected.”
Her face flushed scarlet. This whole experience would
have been far less humiliating if she hadn’t known that his concerns were valid.
Even as he pointed out the things that she’d let slide, she was thinking about
ways to shortcut, to avoid doing quite all the work. It
wouldn’t to make a list. It might even help to know that someone was going to
be checking up on her. She might even be glad, in the long run, that it had
gotten done, though she hated it with all her heart at this moment.
For the next three hours Judith’s anguish and humiliation
grew constantly, as Jeremy walked from room to room poking into every corner of
every closet and every nook in every alcove, listing work she needed to do. Then
he handed her the list and told her to type it up, with a place next to each
item for the date and the starting and ending time. She took the list from him
and tried to agree cheerfully, but he gestured toward the computer. “Now.”
By the time she had finished, the list covered nearly
five pages. She couldn’t believe that she was this far behind.
“This list will be submitted with your accounting of time
every evening,” he informed her. “Until it is complete, there will be some
other . . . restrictions.”
“Like?” She asked in a tone of cultivated boredom, as if
she had no concern over his restrictions. In reality, she was feeling quite
trapped, almost frightened. No one had ever spoken to her this way in her life,
and she did not know how to respond. Her strong instinct was to tell him to go
to hell, but necessity prevented that.
“You will not engage in any leisure activities until your
work and your housework are up to date.”
“No vacations, hm?”
“No vacations indeed. There will also be no television,
no leaving the house except for work or necessary errands, no visitors, no
social telephone calls, and no reading not related to work except for one half
hour at bedtime. Which, incidentally, from now on is 10:00 p.m. You’ll get up
at 5:30. And no internet, unless it’s necessary for work. Since your
She stared at him open-mouthed. “This is insane.”
“Indeed,” he said again. “One would think that a capable,
educated woman of your age and qualifications could conduct her affairs without
such rules.”
Judith couldn’t respond.
“One other point,” he added. “Everything that I have
described thus far is to help you to get your life organized and to provide
quality service to my clients. This is the future. However, we cannot leave
your past laziness unaddressed. There must be punishment as well.”
After a moment of stunned silence she said quietly, “You’ve
gone too far. You’ve lost your mind. Get out of my house.”
He nodded once. “Gladly. I’ll be back in two hours to
pick up your files. Unless, of course, you’ve changed your mind by then and
decided to accept the punishment that you know you deserve.”
For the first half-hour after he left, Judith paced and
ranted. Bastard! How dare he come into her house and try to tell her…?! Well,
fine. She’d gather up his files and good luck to him in finding someone else to
handle them as well as she had. The fact that, of late, she hadn’t been handling them all that well was quickly pushed
to the back of her mind. The second half-hour she fretted and cried, worrying
over how she would find another job that suited her so well. Finally, after an
hour, she began to gather her files. It turned out to be more difficult than
she’d anticipated, and she wished that she’d begun right away. The
disorganization was so complete that she didn’t even know where some of the files were, let alone incoming documents that should be in
them. She really did need to get things cleaned up
around there. Still, she told herself indignantly, she was a professional. She
could get that done. He had no reason to think that he couldn’t just tell her
what needed to be done.
Except he did have a reason, and she couldn’t quite
convince herself that he didn’t. He’d talked to her before about the customer
complaints that were beginning to come in. He’d talked and she’d responded with
promises, but thus far those promises hadn’t been carried out. Not one. She
gave a short, bitter laugh in her empty house. She probably did deserve to be punished. But it wouldn’t change anything.
Or would it? She looked at the neat list he’d made her
prepare, at the restrictions he’d placed all around her. With someone watching,
maybe she could pull it all together. Maybe she could even be the star employee
that she’d been just a short time earlier, before…
Well, there was no use thinking about how she’d gotten to
this point. Not now. She had very little time to get her files in order. Not
enough time, as it turned out. When he rang the doorbell precisely two hours
after he’d left, she had not found all the files, and the ones she had
uncovered, were in embarrassing disarray.
“You’re right,” she said as she opened the door. The
words surprised her more than they did him.
“Yes,” he said. “So what are we going to do about it?”
She swallowed hard. “I’ll do what you say. Make the list,
keep on top of everything, report to you every day.”
He said nothing.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” she finally blurted.
“It’s most of what I want,” he said. “You know there’s
more.”
She forced herself to comply, “Whatever you want.”
“What do you want?” he asked.
She shook her head impatiently. “To keep my job.”
He waited.
“Is that all?” he finally asked.
“No, of course not,” she admitted. “I want to get this
under control.” She made a wide sweeping gesture with one hand, encompassing
the chaos of the room.
He nodded. “So, you know you need to make some changes.”
“Yes,” she conceded, hating him for continuing the
conversation. They both knew what her problems were. She’d already humiliated
herself by agreeing to have him looking over her shoulder every day, giving her
assignments like a schoolchild. The least he could have done was accepted
victory gracefully rather than rubbing her nose in it.
He seemed to read her mind. “You don’t want to talk about
it, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” she snapped.
“And why is that?” He asked the question as if he already
knew the answer, but he kept looking steadily at her, waiting for her to speak.
“It’s embarrassing.”
“What’s embarrassing,
Judith?”
She shook her head, exasperated and humiliated at the
same time. “Having to answer to you like this. Having you watch my every move. It’s
degrading. Like I’m a child.”
His face darkened. “Why do I have to do that, Judith?”
She didn’t speak.
He waited, staring implacably at her, not moving.
“Because I didn’t do it on my own,” she finally admitted
reluctantly.
“And that is what’s
humiliating, isn’t it Judith? The fact that you know you deserve to be treated
this way, that you need it?”
She just looked at him. He was right, but she wasn’t
going to admit it.
“There’s another matter we have to discuss, Judith.”
Unconsciously, she began shaking her head. She’d
convinced herself somehow that he’d let that part go, that if she agreed to all
of his terms and kept up with her work he would forget about punishing her.
“Well, then,” he said abruptly, “we have nothing further
to discuss. Where are the files?”
Tears came to her eyes. “Please,” she whispered.
“The choice is yours,” he said perfunctorily.
“But…”
He shook his head. “No buts. You know my terms. You’re
fortunate to be getting a second chance at all. If you don’t realize at this
point that you deserve to be punished for the way you’ve handled things the
past few months, then there isn’t much hope in my mind that things will
improve.”
On some level she didn’t want to acknowledge, she knew
that he was right.
“I’m an adult, for God’s sake,” she stormed. It came out
a strange mixture of retort and plea.
“You haven’t acted like one,” he said.
After a moment he said, “It’s very simple, Judith. Accept
the new rules
She had no idea how much time passed. She stood there
looking at him for what felt like a lifetime. Finally she said softly, “Okay.”
He shook his head.
“Not good enough.”
“Okay,” she tried again, her voice cracking, “I’ll accept
your terms.”
He shook his head and said nothing.
“I’ll accept your terms and the
punishment.”
He didn’t respond.
Her face crimson, she tried to take a deep breath and
found that she could barely get the air in. “I’ll accept your terms and the
punishment I deserve,” she choked out. “And I’m grateful for the second chance.”
Oddly, she was. Although she hated his terms and felt
them wildly unreasonable, she knew that he would have been well within his
rights to fire her without discussion and move on.
“Very well.” He nodded curtly. “Your punishment will be
as follows: you’ll be either paddled or strapped with my belt today and each
day for the next month. You’ll also spend one hour each day standing in the
corner with your nose pressed against the wall and your hands clasped behind
your back. Since you like to waste time so much, perhaps you’ll learn its
value.”
Her head was shaking violently, but he paid no attention.
“That is your punishment for your lapses over the past
few months. In addition, there will be daily standards that must be met. If
your lists are not completed or any time is wasted during the day, there will
be additional punishments for the fresh violations. I’m sure I don’t need to
tell you that the second punishment, should one be necessary, will be much more
unpleasant than the first.”
Judith was still shaking her head, not so much arguing as
in denial, unable to accept what she was hearing.
“We’ll begin now,” he said curtly. “Lift your skirt, pull
down your panties, and lean over the back of the couch.”