The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Before I get on with a partial history of everybody’s favorite year, I am reminded that, in our story, there is still a need to relate the occurrences of the last ten days of 2019. That should be a pretty easy task. But a lot happened in that short period of time.

It’s easy to describe things at work, especially considering that only four or five of those ten days were actually spent in the office. I met twice with the CEO, defining his vision of the sales department. I made only one demand: that “Clause Eighteen” be revoked. It was obviously only put into place to enrich the head-of-department, and it stifled company growth. I was told that was a task that could only be accomplished by the Board of Directors. I, in turn, told him that I would be happy to present my case to the board personally. And further, that if they refused, I’d quit. Of course, I’d probably be singing a different tune if I actually needed the money, but I didn’t tell him that.

A team of three men from some department or other helped move us up to the eighth floor. The men were more than happy to do it, if, for no other reason, than just to be around Polly for a couple days.

One of the things I had failed to mention to my new sex slave was that secretaries in our company were paid according to the salary of the man or woman they worked for. In other words, a secretary for a VP was paid much more than a secretary for an account executive or some other manager. I had been the company’s most highly-paid sales rep. There were other contractual pay scales involved after that, but I never really gave a shit. What I’m trying to explain here is that Polly’s first paycheck represented more money than she had ever possessed in her entire life. I had established a bank account and direct deposit plan for her, and when she was given her first pay slip, she was absolutely flabbergasted.

The first thing she tried to do was give it to me. After all, she argued, slaves shouldn’t have any money at all. But I nipped that idea in the bud. She’d just have to figure out what to do with it, I told her flatly. And, of course, she decided to give most of it away. I don’t know why I’d never anticipated that. Still, there were a few selfish little indulgences on her part.

On Saturday, December 21st, I answered a knock on the door, and the two porters entered carrying a fresh Christmas tree. Polly followed them, pushing a wheeled cart that was obviously something that belonged to the apartment building. It was loaded with lights, decorations, a tree stand, and other paraphernalia peculiar to the season; and it all made itself at home in the form of a pile of bric-a-brac in the center of our living room. I had never celebrated Christmas. I had never celebrated anything, at all, period.

She, on the other hand, was so excited and so utterly happy that I decided it wasn’t worth my while to argue with this insanity; and I went back to my computer desk and left her to her own devices while she set the thing up, strung the lights and decorated it, all the time humming Christmas tunes and oohing and aahing over cute little knickknacks before hanging them up. When it was done, she found some Christmas music on the internet, called me Scrooge until I finally got up, and she danced me around the room, laughing and singing at the top of her lungs.

Monday, she elicited my help in finding a bicycle shop, and she purchased two new lower-end, assembled “cruiser bikes” to have delivered to her niece and nephew the following day. The kids had always wanted bicycles, she explained to me; and she also knew that there were none in store for them again this year, at least from their parents.

But the worst part of the damn holiday was finding a present for me under the tree on Tuesday. At least she had the decency to let me see it on the 24th. One day’s notice is better than none, I suppose. We went to the office that day, still moving in and getting to know our major duties; and so, I had time during lunch to make my way to a jewelry store and get something for her, in exchange.

She still wasn’t done with me, however, and demanded we swing by a grocery store on the way home, where she purchased a spiral-cut ham, a smoked turkey breast, baking potatoes … she had a whole list! Two hundred bucks worth!

Christmas Day itself was a rather lazy affair, with her doing almost all of the work, and that included the hour-long session in bed that morning. Slow. Sensuous. Erotic. She knew me well by now, and she kept me on the edge of ultimate passion for a long, long time; milking me with her inner muscles, teasing me with her moans and exclamations of passion. I think that her own orgasm was a gift to me; she knew that submitting to it was something I desired of her. It was one of the more satisfying sexual experiences I can remember; and I was reluctant to rise when it was over, even though it was almost ten o’clock.

She had purchased a Mont Blanc fountain pen for me; and while I realized that it was their cheapest model, I knew that she had spent a significant portion of her wealth on it. I hope I expressed my gratitude sufficiently. I, in turn, gave her a pair of diamond earrings. She cried and proclaimed her love. After that day, I never saw her without them … well, not for three months, anyway.

Just like she had at Thanksgiving, she insisted on taking a portion of our meal down to the two porters. She put them in two boxes that she’d acquired with that purpose in mind. And, at our dinner table, she told me that she was working with those two men to plan a New Year’s Eve party in the lobby. I thought about it for a moment, and I couldn’t really think of any reason to oppose the idea.

But it ballooned, of course, taking on a life of its own. There was no real prior planning involved. It was just going to be a pot-luck, BYOB type of thing. A few flyers went up here and there. But six days later, it was all anybody could talk about.

It was a huge affair, and the entire lobby was packed with singing, dancing, loud people. There were only about fifty of us in all, but it seemed like twice that number. As I do with all parties, I found the darkest corner of the room and tried to pretend I was part of the walls. That worked, for the most part, but Polly always found me and tried to cheer me up; and, wherever Polly went, others followed along.

The worst part of the evening was when someone (if I knew exactly who, I’d probably plot his demise) suggested we form an “organization,” and the obvious choice of leader should be everyone’s favorite new acquaintance: Polly. I was about to draw the line. No way. Absolutely not. But Polly never even glanced my way. She smiled that disarming smile of hers, thanked them most kindly, and refused. The suggestion died unresolved, and the party went on.

At midnight, twenty-three people kissed my sex slave. I counted them. Twenty-one men and two women. She refused none of them, but kept the smooches brief until she could finally make her way over to me. Ours lasted for a while.

And that was the end of 2019.

By now, I’m sure you’ve figured out where my little tale is headed. Let me preface this by saying that it is NOT my intention here to make a political statement. I think I’ve mentioned previously that I thought everything during that timeframe seemed to be measured in political terms; and it was not at all odd (in my opinion) that this “something” would be included in that “everything.”

Part of the politicization process is the durability of facts. The facts I am about to relate might not align with your recollection. You, having lived through this, might remember things differently. Once again, I just don’t give a shit. Look it up if you don’t believe me. Our individual belief systems don’t really matter. But, as it all turned out, these facts DID matter to me; I just didn’t know it at the time.

On January 21st, the Chinese government acknowledged something that the World Health Organization had first addressed in a memo written on the same day as our apartment building’s New Year’s Eve party: that a “pneumonia of unknown etiology” had been detected in Wuhan that was highly transmissible. It was later revealed that the Chinese government knew about (and had actively been trying to suppress) the virus since about mid-December. The WHO itself released a formal statement on January 9th. The CDC confirmed the first case in the U.S., also on January 21st.

It had been almost immediately determined to be a SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) type of virus. One of those had been responsible for the last “pandemic” scare, seventeen years before. That had resulted in about 900 deaths, worldwide. Following that, substantial sums of money had been allocated in the U.S. to produce large stockpiles of medical supplies that could be used to combat a large-scale nation-wide medical emergency. However, almost immediately, those programs were defunded in favor of more politically lucrative initiatives, and the vast majority of those stockpiles never materialized.

That put the present government in a very uncomfortable position. On the one hand, they needed money and resources to fight this. Fast. And nothing happens fast in government circles, where things often take decades to accomplish. Secondly, they felt they needed to alleviate panic among the citizenry to head off any economic repercussions. And so, a national health emergency was declared on February 3rd to get the funding started; but at the same time, the disease was being downplayed, with officials often comparing it to common influenza.

Travel restrictions were implemented in several countries. Beginning February 2nd, the U.S. began establishing restrictions on travelers coming into this country; but those restrictions were inconsistent among departure points, and they almost always had exceptions. (More on that later in our story.) It’s foolish to underestimate the human spirit. If a person really, really wants to get somewhere, then (barring incarceration), he or she will eventually find a way to do it. Often, it simply meant adding two or three legs to an itinerary, working your way to a country that hadn’t yet been added to various lists. For example, all travel was restricted from China to the U.S., but that did not apply to U.S. citizens. Also, anyone could still travel to dozens of European and Asian countries from China, and they could then travel on from any of those countries to the United States.

Also, the U.S. has two extremely long boarders that people can literally walk across (illegally), if they can just find someone willing to guide them to an unguarded place to do it.

But then, inexplicably, after the first week in February, very little occurred for the next month and a half. Well, that’s not true, of course. In medical laboratories the world over, hundreds of thousands of scientists were working around the clock on this thing; but news programs could only show so many videos of eyedroppers putting something into test tubes. Science is slow. It was going to take months to come up with something. And we didn’t have months left.

Also, to be perfectly fair, inaction is an action, too. There were a few things that MIGHT happen all by themselves (and without government intervention) that would save us from facing this thing. The virus might disappear as quickly as it had cropped up. Or, a “miracle drug” that was already common might prove effective. Perhaps prayer would stop it. Many people felt we ought to be able to buy our way out of danger. After all, the world had acquired more wealth than it had in its entire history.

For most of us, it was like an accident unfolding in slow motion; and it was increasingly apparent that there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Health organizations around the world gave virtually the same dire projections every single day; the statistics rising slowly, slowly … and then not so slowly any longer, but more and more quickly. Here it comes, they all told us. Here it comes. And then, suddenly, here it was.

The big shift came right around the middle of March. Up until then, it had only been the national government that was (or wasn’t) doing anything. A couple state governments, New York and California, started investigating the use of mandates to slow the spread, even though that spread hadn’t quite gotten there yet. But by mid-March, it was here … and that “here” was just about everywhere. The WHO declared it officially a pandemic on March 11th. The president declared it a National Emergency on March 13th. On March 14th, we got our first two cases of Covid here in Allegany County.

And now (finally!), it’s time to get back to our story.

In those first couple of months on the eighth floor, my biggest question was: Why did I keep her? I mean, she had already served her purpose. My whole plan was devised to get me where I was now. Plans are like that. Sometimes, they fall flat, right out of the starting gate. Sometimes, it takes them twice as long as they should to reach a successful conclusion. And sometimes they put you right where you wanted to be sooner than you ever expected.

Oh, I still had a couple steps to go to the top, but I could easily do that on my own. I didn’t really need her anymore. Months before, I had even scouted out two other prospective clients that I intended to woo using her charms. But there was no need to do that now; Rodriquez’s quarter billion-dollar contract had accomplished my goal in one fell swoop.

The biggest reason to hang onto her, of course, was that I had more or less promised to keep and protect her … until she voiced a desire to leave me. And THAT was the contractual stipulation that would allow me to be rid of her, if I so wanted. I still hypnotized her every night; I had done so since the beginning of all this. And thus, I could easily make her fall in love with just about any person I chose. I mean, hell; all it took was one night with Rodriquez, and she fell in love with HIM. There was little doubt that I could have her married and pregnant in a house with a white picket fence by year’s end. There were about a hundred guys in this company alone who would jump at the chance.

Rodriquez was the only sound reason to keep her around so far. He had requested to see her again in January, and they had spent the allotted twenty-four hours in the exact same hotel room. Polly came home from that excursion in much the same state of mind as she had on the previous assignation: stary-eyed, almost dimwitted with excess love, as well as resolved to help him reunite with his wife so those two could continue their life together within the boundaries of holy matrimony.

On second thought, there was one little difference with the second rendezvous. I suppose that they were just getting to know each other that first night in December. But after a month of separation, fantasies obviously started to play on our Spaniard’s mind. Polly had no secrets from me. (Well, actually, she did. Sort of. I’ll get to that soon.) And so, after she came home to the apartment following their January tryst, when I asked what he had done to her, she never hesitated to tell me … or show me. She reached into her purse and extracted a pair of steel handcuffs. When I asked her what he had done with them, she put her hands behind her back, I heard a ratcheting sound, and she was suddenly bound and helpless. Since she had just taken off her clothes (I still insisted she be naked in our apartment), she made quite a sight.

“How do I get these things off of you?” I asked her.

“The key is on a string around my neck,” she replied, meekly.

The string had become entangled with her other necklace, and it took me a minute to get the two apart. That other necklace was part of the secret I mentioned. Well, sort of a secret.

Alright, alright. I’ll tell you about the secret. Well, sort of a secret. Polly apparently kept a journal, which she’d purchased with her second paycheck. The journal was locked with a tiny key. The tiny key was kept in a locket. And the locket was on that gold chain around her neck. The gold matched the earrings I’d given her for Christmas. The locket rattled whenever she was riding me, female-on-top, during sex. The rattling sound reminded me of two things: Number One: that she had a secret; and Number Two: that all I really had to do was tell her to give me the little key, and she’d do it (just as she’d do anything I demanded). But, so far, I hadn’t told her to do that. And so far, her secret was still a secret. It was an odd little wrinkle in our relationship.

So, anyway, I had to untangle the string from the necklace; and eventually, I put the string around my own neck instead. She was standing before me with bowed head, looking at her bare feet. She often did that, so the posture wasn’t really new; but the cuffs certainly added a peculiar dynamic. I reached out and put the palm of my right hand on her bare side, just below her left breast; and she inhaled intensely, raggedly, and shivered in my light grasp.

“Do you like the way the handcuffs make you feel?” I asked her.

She took several deep breaths, and she spoke so softly that I had to strain to hear. “Yes, sir.”

I led her over to the couch, sat her down and joined her. “And what else did he do to you during your twenty-four-hour enslavement?”

She leaned heavily against me, then she drew her legs up and tucked them underneath her, the way we always sat together. “He used some soft rope to hold me in different positions. Sometimes, he’d blindfold me. And then … oh, sir … and then, he’d touch me.”

I shifted on the couch, the front of my trousers suddenly uncomfortable. “How did he touch you?”

“Every way. Any way he wanted. Usually, I didn’t know what was coming. Soft touches that made me gasp. Or, he’d maul my breasts. Or, he’d tickle me … my feet or my sides. Or my nipples. Or between my legs. Sometimes, without any warning at all, he’d just shove his cock all the way into me. All at once. And then … he’d make me beg.”

I cleared my throat. “Beg for what?”

“To come inside me. I’d beg him … oh, how I’d beg him … to please, please, please come inside me. Fill me up. Use me. Use my body for his pleasure. I needed … oh, how I needed … to feel his pleasure inside me.”

I had to swallow a lump in my throat. “And I suppose you want to feel that way with me.”

That made her look up and into my eyes. “Sir, I feel that way with you all the time. Well, not helpless. Not physically. Like this. Like the way I feel now. But I constantly need to please you. All the time. Every minute.” She tried to find the words. “That’s one of the reasons I love you. When you want pleasure from me, you take it. But yesterday, last night, he denied me that. He made me beg.”

I nodded. “And what else do you need from me?”

“Can you put me to sleep, sir?”

“Not now. After dinner. I think I’ll leave the cuffs on. I’ll feed you. Before bed, I’ll bathe you. I think I’ll let you make me hard with your mouth, but I’ll leave you handcuffed. I’d like to see how hard you’ll work at it. I’ll take the pleasure I want from your helpless body. And then, maybe then, I’ll let you beg me to put you to sleep.”

She writhed against me, trying to get closer. “Oh, sir. It’s so good to be home.”

February was a month of growth. Once again, the economy was a runaway train, and the only thing that could possibly slow it down was something no one wanted to think about. There were deals to be struck, contracts to be signed, commissions to be earned.

The Board of Directors didn’t even blink at my demand to void Clause Eighteen. They all raised their hands when it was time for a vote, and it was done. Just like that. Since I was there, they had other questions for me: policy questions, operational questions, payroll and transportation and accounting questions. Questions that were not rightly mine to answer. And it finally struck me: They’re testing me. They’re grooming me. They’re preparing me to join them. VP-Sales was not eligible for a seat on the board. But … VP-Operations was; and old man Bukowski didn’t have very many years left in him. Whatever test they thought they’d given, I seemed to have passed. They weren’t smiling. (Nobody ever smiles at me.) But they were obviously satisfied.

Everybody on my sales “team” was down on the sixth floor. Once again, it was not a very efficient operation; it’s just the way it had always been. When I went down there for some reason (which should have been about four times a day), all work stopped, and the temperature seemed to drop about thirty degrees. I scared them. I didn’t want them to hate me … I wanted them to respect me. But I just didn’t seem to have the capacity to make that happen.

So instead, I sent Polly. She had the exact opposite effect on the temperature. I’m not sure she demanded the respect I sought; but I had to admit, love was better than hate in a work environment. And eventually, she started getting things done. I found out later that they’d nicknamed us “The Angel” and “The Troll.” I’ll let you figure out which was which. Soon, it became common knowledge: if you didn’t do what The Angel said, you could expect a visit from The Troll. And I soon stopped having to go down there at all.

One afternoon, near the end of the month, I saw a secretary from the third floor giving Polly some money. When I inquired, it turned out that my executive assistant had loaned a friend money in an hour of need. That, as it turned out, was happening more and more often. I asked her to explain the operation to me, and she did so; showing me a locked metal box inside a locked bottom desk drawer, and a ledger with neat entries. It was a truly insane way to do business. She made no interest, and she forgave almost a third of the loans due to “hardship.” By rights, she should have nothing left.

“Where is the money coming from?” I asked.

“People donate to the fund,” she answered. “I put in a hundred every paycheck. Others who have been helped pay back a little extra when they can. It adds up.”

I called her crazy. Then, the next day, I gave her twenty fifty-dollar-bills to add to her little “fund,” with the stipulation that no one ever know I’d done so. It earned me the best blowjob of my whole life. It also added to her reputation. She was becoming “The Angel” to the entire company.

Rodriquez next visited us on February 19th, which was a Wednesday. We actually had business that had to be done before he whisked Polly off to the same hotel. Their days together were starting to be routine, at least in my mind. I suppose clandestine love affairs, no matter how unorthodox, tend to take on that sort of persona in most people’s minds.

Two days later, on Friday, sometime a little after noon, I heard a loud moan that I recognized as Polly in the grip of intense pleasure. I got up and walked to her desk, where she was frantically looking around. She was shaking all over, and beet-red in complexion. I laughed. “What in the hell are you doing?”

She was still glancing everywhere, obviously panic-stricken. “Oh, sir! Do you think anybody else heard that?”

I looked around, too. It appeared that everyone had gone to lunch.

“What’s going on?” I pressed, still bemused.

“Please, sir! Please don’t make me show you! I’ll let you see it as soon as we get home, I promise! Please?!”

Disgruntled but mystified, I allowed her to get back to work. But the poor girl never did regain her natural coloring. She blushed (and blushed hard) for the rest of the day. I’d never seen her so distracted.

As soon as we arrived back in the apartment, I demanded to see whatever she was so nervous about. I rather thought that Rodriquez had made her wear something that had somehow given her an orgasm. If that was the case, I was going to really lay down the law! I had given him my girl for a day only. He should have no influence over her the rest of the time!

She disrobed, just as she disrobed every time she came home. It was one of my rules, after all. But instead of revealing something hidden on her person, she walked to the dining table and opened the laptop that was always there. It took about a minute to completely boot up. I watched as she opened her personal email program, and she then clicked a message from Rodriquez. In it, there was a link at the top, and some text underneath. I didn’t have time to read it. She clicked the link.

It was a porn site. Immediately, a video started. It took me a long time to figure out what I was looking at; but finally, the perspective snapped into focus in my mind. It was a woman’s vagina. Her butt was resting on a bed, and her legs were raised. Ropes had been tied at her knee joints, spreading her wide. I could see more rope higher up on her body, and it dawned on me that her entire body was being restrained in that position. However, almost the whole frame of the video was that shaved vagina. At first, nothing at all seemed to be happening. But then, slowly, slowly, a large dollop of oily moisture formed at the top, all around the clitoris; and it oozed downward, coating the labia and outer lips, then disappeared into the bedding below. Just as slowly, another large droplet formed and worked its way to the bottom of the frame.

The fingers of a man’s hand suddenly appeared and began playing with the labia, stroking and tugging and pulling. Fingertips spread the lips wide, then let them close, then spread them again. Two fingers together probed into and out of the orifice; and the exercise was repeated; spreading, petting, stroking, plunging in, pulling out. Eventually, the entire vagina seemed to relax, seemed to accept, seemed to settle into this natural state of wet, glistening arousal and openness.

The fingers disappeared for a moment, and then they were back, holding a small white plastic vibrator. It started circling the clitoris. Almost immediately, the vaginal opening flared wide, gaping, cavernous; then it clinched tightly closed; then dilated wide again; then clenched shut. And then, finally, through the laptop’s speakers, Polly’s voice moaned loudly, hesitated, and moaned again. The video ended. It had been running three minutes fifty-two seconds.

“Oh, sir,” Polly whispered. “What am I going to do?” She was shaking.

I stood her up and took her into my arms. She clutched me desperately. “I assume you didn’t know you were being recorded.”

“No, sir! I was tied up! Blindfolded! And I was SO turned on! I couldn’t even think!”

“Do you want to press charges against him?”

“Good heavens, no! I’d die, sir! I’d just die!” She tried to get control of herself. “He says that this is the most popular porn site on the internet. He says that it’s almost a certainty that someone in our company has seen this. So … when a man walks up to me, I can’t be sure; he might have seen me like that. I’ll never know.”

I held her tighter. “Polly, only Rodriquez and I have ever heard you make a sound like that. We are the only people who can appreciate the fact that this is you. No one else is ever going to know. You realize that’s true, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” She shivered again. “But still, if a man ….”

“I know of several women who would get exceedingly aroused by this, too.”

She sighed deeply and shivered once more. “Oh, my God.”

I laughed. “Do you want to stop seeing Rodriquez?”

She thought about that. “No. I want to keep going until I can figure out how to get him back together with his wife.”

“Then what else is there to do?”

“You could fuck me, sir! Hard! Right now! I think I’m going to go crazy if you don’t!”

And so, I did.

On March 13th, two things happened. First: Rodriquez contacted our office and said he wanted to spend a day here the following week. As you might guess, that was sort of a code we used. Polly let me know that he would be using her on Friday, the 20th. It went pretty much as planned. What we hadn’t known at the time was that he was visiting his parents in Seville. He flew out of Madrid on the morning of the 20th on a flight that was mostly empty. That was because of the second thing that happened on the 13th: The president had banned all passengers from Europe (except the U.K. and Republic of Ireland). Oh, yes … and except for U.S. citizens. Rodriquez was born in New York, and had a U.S. passport, so he got to fly. (Most of the Non-U.S. citizens bound for this country still got here; but they rode a train to France, took the Chunnel to England, and flew out of Heathrow.)

I eventually learned that he hadn’t been tested for Covid, either in Spain before departure or at Dulles Airport, where he went through customs and then connected to PIT. That made sense, too. Covid tests were pretty scarce back then; and, after cases started mounting, most test kits were sent to hospitals for use there. If there was any airport “testing” at all, they simply used a digital thermometer to take your temperature. But in this case, they hadn’t even done that.

Rodriquez was pretty wiped out after the long trip over, but he was still able to please, and be pleased by, my lovely sex slave.

Polly got sick on March 27th.

One of the places on a sociopath’s “Least Favorite” list is anyplace medical. And, if you wanted to follow that list to its unmitigated pinnacle, it would be the emergency room. Any emergency room in the world on March 29th was unadulterated, utter bedlam. I kept her at home for two days, until she had begun having trouble breathing, before I took her in. That’s what they were urging us to do. So, that’s what I did. I waited until I couldn’t wait any longer.

Less than a week before (on the 17th) doctors had stopped seeing patients in person. It was the beginning of “Telehealth,” and since there was no actual “National Healthcare System” in the U.S., it had to be implemented by literally thousands of different private healthcare providers. It was, however, mandated by the federal government. All “elected surgeries” had been cancelled. And by that, they meant: all surgeries that were not absolute emergencies. Cancer surgeries, heart surgeries … all canceled. That was to clear space in “Intensive Care Units,” or ICU’s. And that, of course, was where Polly was bound. Or, at least, that is where she should have gone, if only there had been room for her.

Before that, we got to spend eight fun-filled hours in a waiting room filled to overflowing with people who were scared to death. Polly was one of those. And she was one of the lucky ones. She had insurance. I shudder to think what it was like for the poor bastards who didn’t.

Every breath she took was a gasp. She had a splitting headache, and she couldn’t control the shaking muscles in her body, which had a temperature of 101 F. She cried because she was somehow certain that she would never see me again, once they finally found a bed for her. And yes, everybody else felt exactly the same way. I “put her to sleep” after a long time, simply because I could no longer witness her mental anguish; and it was then that somebody or other thought she had lost consciousness and took her back to whatever the next step in the process was. I was not invited, but I was told to stay there until somebody came to talk to me.

After they paged me, a nurse met me at a large double-door that she wouldn’t let me through. She seemed like a nice lady, but she looked like she was about to drop dead from exhaustion. Polly had awakened for her, though; and as a result, the nurse was now firmly under my secretary’s spell. She had joined the long, long list of individuals who were in love with Polly. She told me that she would do absolutely everything that could be done to return her to me, alive and healthy. I nodded. She’d given this little speech before. She’d give it again. Soon.

She handed me a clear plastic bag. It was a big bag, and it held mostly small items. Polly’s clothes were in it, her shoes and blouse and pants. A smaller clear bag held something else, and when I recognized it, my heart almost stopped. Her earrings, her locket necklace … and her nipple rings, twisted and bent after being cut and removed. In case she has to be resuscitated, the nurse said. She couldn’t be wearing anything metallic.

The sight of those mangled little gold rings did something to me, though. I couldn’t just take this lying down. I had to be part of the solution. I just didn’t know enough about the problem yet. “Tell me what you lack,” I ordered.

“Ventilators,” she answered immediately.

I blinked. “What are those?”

“I don’t have time to explain. Look it up.”

I nodded. Fair enough. “Who’s in charge?” I asked.

“Of the place she’s going?” the nurse asked. “Doctor Griswold is the head of Intensive Care, but he can’t ….”

But I was already walking away. “Many thanks,” I said loudly, waving over my shoulder.

Anything can be had for a price. Well … almost anything. When things are scarce, they get expensive. And, when they’re really, really scarce, they get illegal. That’s what I always thought, anyway. But this was turning out to be a whole new shade of both scarce and illegal. I didn’t have any problems with the legal part. Like I’ve said, differences between right and wrong hold little sway in my mind. Money might not be a problem, either. It all depended on the consequences I was willing to face.

I’ve mentioned that before in the opening paragraphs of this little diatribe. Those words might have been misinterpreted. Just because I have the presence of mind to consider consequences doesn’t mean that I’ve always chosen the legal option when faced with that choice. I have broken the law before in the field of business when I felt confident that I could get away with it. I believe a pretty large percentage of successful businessmen (and women) have done the same.

There are many rules when it comes to dealing with illegal business entities, none of them written down, but all firmly inscribed in my mind. Chief among them are: Always remember the names of people you have dealt with; and, Hope nobody remembers yours. Also: Always assume that second one won’t happen. It’s an interesting branch of business that ought to be taught in college, but obviously never will be. Rules of normal business are intended to be broken; everybody expects loopholes. But in illegal business, it’s assumed that your word is your bond. Often, your very life depends on it.

I am not going to go into what illegal business dealings I have undertaken in the past. I mean … I’m still around, and I don’t want those things to come to light. I will say, however, that I had never dealt in the clandestine area of illegal medical supplies. But … I knew a guy who knew a guy. Back in our apartment, I set the wheels in motion. Time was of the essence, but I recognized that it WOULD take time; so, as soon as my first round of phone calls were made, I had to exercise patience.

The one thing I was incapable of doing was sitting around worrying about Polly. In my mind, she was out of my control. I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t hold her hand and comfort her. There was literally nothing else I COULD do on her behalf that I was not already attempting. I don’t know why the idea suddenly popped into my head. I got up and walked over to where I’d put her personal effects, and I rooted around until I found the locket. Inside, I was surprised to find it contained a small picture of me. And, of course, the little key. I knew where the journal was kept: in the middle drawer of the dresser, under her panties. I’d seen her put it there.

It’s much harder to shock a sociopath than a normal human being. But what that small volume contained shook me to my very core. I have never been so utterly, thoroughly, devastated by any written words; and I doubt … no, I sincerely hope … that I will never be again.

I won’t directly quote anything that was written there. It’s quite frankly hard for me to even paraphrase it. The journal was written for me, and me alone. It contained a list of instructions that I should accomplish in the event of her death. It was exceedingly well written and exceptionally well thought-out, itemizing and listing each action in exacting detail. But it was split into two parts based on dramatically different circumstances, which must not be confused. Pick the proper contingency, she urged. And, if it was the first assumption, her directions must be followed explicitly, exactly, in order and to the letter.

The question that I had to answer before I started my tasks was: Had I been responsible for her death?

There followed an excruciating list of procedures that, if followed, would hopefully turn her murder into the perfect, undetectable crime. She had gone so far as to pack a large box in our storage area in the basement, which contained rolls of sheet plastic, plastic bags, detergents, a bone saw (what the fuck is a bone saw?), caustic acids, rolls of duct tape, and on and on and on. There were horribly gruesome illustrations on proper methods of dismemberment, knocking out identifiable dental work, removing fingertips, and other incredible topics. There was a diagram of commercial dumpsters around the city where small parcels could effectively disappear.

And then came the second part of the journal; the one that assumed that her death had been caused by an accident or illness. It read like the codicil of a will. Please put the balance of her bank account in a college fund for the niece and nephew, please give her earrings to her friend Suzie, in Accounting. And, lastly, there was a love letter to me, telling me that, one way or the other, I had been the most important thing in her life; she loved me; and yada yada yada.

I was thunderstruck. However, as I contemplated this horrendous document, my phone rang. It was the beginning of phase two in my “illegal acquisition” scheme. I flipped an imaginary switch, and the journal no longer existed in my mind. I wrote down names and phone numbers, gave thanks and promises that I might or might not keep, made other calls, gave more promises, found a map and started calculating driving times, called bankers, and checked stock market options and broker fees.

I was not surprised by my destination. The state of Kentucky is home to two huge Army bases: Fort Campbell, which houses an Airborne Division and a Special Operations Regiment, and Fort Knox, home of the Armored Cavalry school and numerous supply depots (including, of course, the national gold reserve). There are dozens of National Guard bases in the state, as well.

An hour later, another choice had to be made. There was simply no other option. I was going to have to steal the money from the company. I didn’t have enough of my own that I could lay my hands on at such short notice. I shrugged. That’s another benefit of my condition. Once an inevitable conclusion has been reached, there’s no use obsessing over it. I’d weighed all the options; and in the end, consequences would have to be faced. Before this was all over, the job I had worked so hard for would most likely be forfeit. I might be in prison. I shrugged. It was my only logical course of action. My conclusion was final, and there was no turning back now.

By the time my “decision” had been made, it was after midnight. Remember, the vast majority of my day had been spent with Polly in the emergency waiting room. I did not sleep well that night, and not for the reason you might think. Compartmentalization is an extremely reliable tool for those of my emotional ilk. I had put the journal out of my mind, back under a different lock that had a different key. The reason I didn’t sleep was that I was not feeling well. Physically well, that is. There was one very obvious potential reason for this, but I put that thought into its own locked compartment.

Most banks had closed for Covid because the CDC had come out with a rule that demanded “six feet of separation,” and they were afraid of liability. The U.S. president had established a “council” to address this and other issues, but each televised meeting had turned into an almost pathetic circus of contradictory advice, leaving individual businesses to pick and choose their own rules until state governments could step in with THEIR mandates. I finally contacted a bank president that would meet me at 4:00 and cash the huge check that I actually had the authorization to write. Once again, I’d face the repercussions later. I was prepared for that.

I had no idea how much a portable ventilator was worth. Online (when they had been available, only a month before), they had sold for anywhere from $600 to $8,000 depending on the model. In the U.S., due to its weird healthcare structure, Medicare paid far less for just about anything. The military paid far more. The actual cost of just about everything “medical” was wildly disparate. That’s just the way things are here.

For almost ANY illegal commodity, you would expect to pay about half the market price (max) for an item you knew was stolen. I was going to pay $10,000 per unit for ten of them. They had to be purchased as a “lot.” And, this was all I could find at such short notice.

With a bag of cash in hand, I signed for a small rental truck and finally hit the road about seven in the evening; destination: Lexington, Kentucky. At this point, I should probably apologize to non-U.S. readers (and some who are from this country) about listing place names. Geography sort of gets jumbled up in this portion of the nation. Due to mountains and other little impediments to direct travel, there is no easy way to get between some cities. Going south to Charleston, West Virginia, and then west to my destination was one option. But the quickest route (and the one I chose) was via Interstate Highways 70 and 71 to Cincinnati, Ohio, and then south on I-75. Any way you looked at it, I was going to spend six to seven hours each way, after you threw in fuel stops. And to make matters worse, about an hour west of Columbus, it started to rain.

The damned truck had a governor that kept my speed at sixty-five. I cursed it mightily, hour after hour. I phoned my prospective seller four times, keeping him updated on my progress. The truck got about seven miles per gallon, but it had a twenty-nine-gallon tank, which was of little comfort when I had to stop twice on the way there. At least the damned thing took regular unleaded gas. I went inside the little store (the one that was still open) to stock up on snacks, coffee and sodas, and I was surprised to find that it was selling face masks. That had turned into another hot-button political issue. The previous month (February), the CDC had actually asked people NOT to buy personal masks until they could fully replenish stockpiles in medical facilities. But that was past now, and wearing one had sort of become a fashion statement for many. Doing your part, protecting your fellow Americans, and all that. I bought one for the hell of it. As it eventually turned out, I was glad I did.

It was about one o’clock in the morning when I finally followed my cell phone’s directions into what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse complex. My phone rang, and the man I’d been talking to all evening directed me to one large structure that looked more like an aircraft hangar. Huge doors were gaping open at one end, and I drove the little panel truck right into it. A flashlight signaled me at the far side. Very clandestine, I thought; but I drove over to it and parked. I got out and stretched. I also considered throwing up, but I held it back.

“You sick, man?” the guy inquired.

“I’m not feeling very how,” I commented, but he obviously was not a Winnie-the-Pooh fan. “Yes, I might be sick.”

“You got a mask?”

“Sure.” I rooted around in the front seat and found the one I’d just purchased. When I turned back, I saw that there were two of them. One was a woman. They both wore surgical masks, as well.

“You got the money?”

I sighed and turned yet again to the truck. I’d put the money in a blue athletic bag. I started walking toward them.

“Don’t come near me, dude!” the guy barked. He had actually backed up several steps as I approached. “Put it down! If you got Covid, I don’t wanna’ touch you!”

I set the bag down and walked back to the truck again. “I really need to get back on the road,” I told him.

The guy felt the need to take control. “Oh, yeah? Well, you seem a little too anxious to me, dude! Things are about to change!”

Suddenly, my temper flared. “Change? Let me tell you … dude. If you change this deal now, I’ll make sure you ….”

“Shut up!” the woman barked. Her voice carried authority. She walked past the man and up to the bag.

“Don’t touch that!” the man cautioned. “He might have ….”

“I said shut up, Charlie,” the woman screeched. She picked up the bag and tested its weight in her hand. “Is it all here?”

“I always follow MY end of a business deal,” I stated flatly.

She nodded. “We got your stuff, mister. We’re not goin’ back on the deal, I promise. But, you see, the thing is, these items have suddenly gotten really hot. Too hot for us. If one of us screws something up …” her eyes rolled toward her partner, but only I could see that “… we could wind up in prison real soon.”

“So?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

“So, instead of the ten we promised you, I want you to take them all. There are twenty-one of them. No extra charge. I just want them gone. I’d dump them in a swamp somewhere; but to tell you the truth, I’d rather know that they were being used by someone that needed them. I just want to make good and sure that they’ll never, ever be traced back to us.”

I contemplated this. “Do you have any connection to this building?” I asked, gesturing to the structure around us.

“Nope. We got nothing to do with this place.”

“So, a week from now, if I tell the feds this is where I got them, would that be a problem?”

She considered that for a moment. “That would be acceptable.”

I nodded. “Where are they?”

She pointed across the crumbling asphalt floor toward a pile of indistinguishable objects. I nodded and got back in the truck without another glance or word.

On the road, heading north toward Cincinnati, I began to wonder if I was going to make it. I really felt like crap. Going in this direction, I was now headed the same direction as the warm front I’d driven into when I was coming the other way. That meant the rain was going to be with me the rest of my trip. Six hours. Six more hours.

I worried about hitting morning rush hour traffic in Columbus, but I discovered something that was to be new to most people this year: rush hour no longer existed. People had started staying home. It was the dawn of a new era that everyone hoped would end very soon. (The president had declared that we would be back to “business as usual” by Easter.)

I stopped for gas one last time and picked up a hamburger from a steam rack inside the store area. Back on the road again, I considered spitting out my first mouthful; but, after experimenting with my soda and bag of chips, I concluded that the problem was not that it was spoiled. The truth of the thing was: I had apparently lost my sense of taste. Well, shit. I filed that thought in yet another compartment, and I drove on.

I marched right past the huge line of people in the emergency room and up to the desk, where I announced loudly that I had a special delivery for Doctor Griswold. Wrong entrance, they informed me. Go this way, down that hall, turn right, through a double-door, down another hall, talk to the nurse.

The place was a madhouse.

The nurse refused to let me see him. I countered that I had to get his signature in person, no exceptions. We argued. I threatened. She threatened back. I finally showed her what I had to deliver, and things changed immediately. I found myself in an office, concentrating only on remaining upright until he came in. And finally, finally, he was there.

“This is for a patient of yours,” I told him. “Polly Pike.”

He was so shocked, he had to sit down. “This … this has a military serial number,” he stammered. “Where did you get it?”

I’d prepared for this. I prepared for everything. “It was sold to me as obsolete army surplus. I bought it because I thought you could use it. Now … put Polly on the ventilator.”

He shook his head slowly, then went to the door and opened it. “Nurse Johnson!” he bellowed. The woman was there in four seconds flat. “Do we have any nurses in the unit that are military trained?”

“Sarah Jackson,” she answered.

“Take her and have her set this thing up in room six for Mrs. Randolph, ASAP!”

I walked over and rested my hand on top of the box. “Nope,” I told him flatly. “I brought this for Polly. Period.” I ignored the alliteration.

The doctor gave me that “doctor look.” I gave him one of mine in return. I won, and he staggered back a step, clearly shaken. He decided to change tactics. “Please, look, Mister ….”

He let the title hang for a long time. I decided that playing word games wasn’t worth it, so I caved. “Baxter.”

“Mister Baxter. Miss Pike doesn’t need this. But I have ten patients that do. Desperately!”

I shook my head. “Nope. I got this for her.”

“She’s not even intubated!” he screamed at me.

See? That’s the problem with medical people! Why do they always do that?! Every profession has its own language. But only medical experts automatically expect other people to understand theirs!

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I screamed back at him in exactly the same tone of voice he had used with me.

He sobered immediately and looked slightly chastised. “Mrs. Randolph, in room six, is in an induced coma. We’ve inserted a tube down her throat and directly into her esophagus. All of her breathing is being done through that tube. Miss Pike is not in an induced coma because she doesn’t NEED to be. We haven’t intubated her because she can still breathe without it. Mrs. Randolph, on the other hand, is going to be dead in about fifteen minutes unless we hook that tube of hers up to the machine you just brought us.”

I felt stupid and placated. That’s the way they want you to feel in hospitals. I sighed and removed my hand so that Nurse Johnson could take away my bargaining chip. Maybe I could still get my way. I turned back to the doc.

“I have twenty more.”

Well, if I’d been looking for a reaction, I certainly succeeded. The problem here was that we were both wearing those damned masks. I couldn’t really judge him. He couldn’t really judge me. I imagined his mouth opening and closing like a fish, and that’s very probably the reaction I had elicited. He seemed incapable of speech, so I carried on.

“This is the point where I tell you that I’ll give them to you when, and only when, Polly walks out of your hospital happy and healthy. But you’re going to start spouting a bunch of ten-dollar words that I’ll need a medical encyclopedia to understand; and you’re going to try to appeal to a certain level of humane and compassionate benevolence that will allow you take possession of my only influence in this transaction.”

He blinked. “Transaction?”

“You have what I need,” I implored. “All I want is Miss Pike. I’d give you all that I have to get her. Forgive me if I can only speak in terms of business instead of medicine. The truth of the matter is that I don’t give a flying fuck about Mrs. Randolph or anyone else here.” I put my hand to my head, which was pounding.

He cleared his throat. “Please give me a second. Just wait here.” And he was gone.

Three minutes later, a nurse was there. I assumed it was Nurse Johnson, but her voice was muffled by a different kind of mask and a face shield. She was wearing some sort of garment that covered her from head to toe. She had another of these suits, and she began dressing me in it. Baggy yellow fabric-like paper pants covered my bottom half, and a top garment wrapped around my upper body and tied. There were paper foot coverings that went over my shoes, blue rubber gloves, and a shower-cap looking thing that covered my head. There were even goggles.

I was led out and down a hallway, through a set of doors and down another hall. This one was very narrow because a row of wheeled beds lined one entire side, one after another, each with an assortment of IV drip bags hanging from a tall metal rod with crosspieces at the top. Halfway down this passageway, the nurse stopped and checked the occupant. “We’ve gotten to know her very well,” the nurse told me. “We all love her. We’ll take good care of her, I promise.” She pulled me over.

Polly looked up, uncomprehending at first, and then her eyes flashed with recognition and filled with tears. “Mr. Baxter! Oh, my gosh, sir! I never thought I’d see you again!”

Her voice and sobs were muffled by a hissing oxygen mask that covered her nose and mouth. I held her while she cried, but the bulky garment I was wearing was like a barricade between us. She was gasping for breath, like she’d been when I brought her in, and she paused once to cough; but she held my hand to her breast like a cherished possession. I was worried that the snaking IV tubes would become entangled in our clutching, fumbling embrace. Eventually, she controlled herself.

“You read my journal?”

I nodded mutely.

“Poor Mister Baxter. You mustn’t dwell on my ramblings.”

“You really think that I could …?”

“Accidents happen,” she replied with a shrug. “I love you. I don’t want anything to happen to you, even after I’m dead.”

“Nobody’s dying,” I told her sternly. “You are going to come home to me; and after I get out of prison, we’re going to live happily ever after.”

She smiled. “What are you going to prison for?”

“Embezzlement.”

She nodded. “For the ventilators. How much?”

“A hundred thousand. I can probably pay it back; so, with a good lawyer, I might not be gone too long.”

“Tell me, sir. Tell me everything.”

And, I did. I left off the part where I was feeling sick. And, I left off the names of those I had called and the one name I’d overheard during the exchange. But I told her everything else. She listened intently.

Finally, she sighed and nodded yet again. “Give me your cell phone.”

“Why?”

“Remember our first day together?” she asked. “Remember when you told me to give you my shoes?”

Somehow, I knew she could see my smile, even through the mask I wore. I stood, fumbled underneath the paper suit, and produced my phone. She took it.

“Now,” she said. “Go give Doctor Griswold his ventilators.”

“HIS ventilators?”

“Yes,” she told me. “Go. I’ll see you soon.”

Griswold was in his office when I got there. We faced each other for a long moment without speaking. “Where do I take them?” I asked.

“I’ll have someone go with you. He’ll show you how to get to the loading dock. I’ll pick them up there.”

I heaved a sigh and tore the paper suit from my body. “Isn’t there anything else you can do for her? How about that Hydroxy-whatzit they’ve been talking about?”

He shook his head savagely. “The government has ordered testing be done, but there is no WAY hydroxychloroquine is going to prove to be any more effective than orange juice.”

“Why not? If it works on malaria ….”

“Covid is viral! Malaria is parasitic!” He heaved a sigh. “Look. There’s another drug that’s been around for a while. Remdesivir. Used to treat Ebola, and a few other viruses. We … Everybody … started doing trials on it almost immediately, starting in January; though I have to stress that it’s still being tested and that it might have no effect at all on Polly. But I’ll see if I can get her a dose. That’s truly all I can do unless her situation worsens. And, if it does, we finally have the ventilators that can ease her suffering. She has an excellent shot without one, anyway. She’s young and in fairly good shape. Please, stay hopeful.”

I simply nodded and walked out. I never saw the man again.

In another ten minutes, my financial leverage was all gone. I drove the empty truck back to the rental place, picked up my car, and I somehow navigated it to my apartment building and into its assigned space; then, I rode the elevator non-stop to my floor. I never bothered to undress, but sprawled onto the bed and immediately passed out.

I have no idea what time it was when I awoke, but it was very dark. I was painfully thirsty. I drank directly from the faucet in the kitchen, then returned to the bedroom. This time, I stripped out of my clothing and pulled back the covers before crawling into bed.

It was still dark when hunger drove from my rest again, but I didn’t think I could keep anything down. I drank half a quart of grapefruit juice that tasted like water and stumbled back to bed.

Incessant pounding made me get up. I ignored it long enough to use the bathroom and drink three glasses of water, but the banging at the door wouldn’t cease. I was dizzy. I opened it.

“Alexander Baxter?” a man said, very loudly. He held up a badge in a leather wallet.

“Go away,” I told him.

He pushed his way forward, shoving me to make me back up.

“I need to talk to you,” the man said sternly.

I threw up on him.

“Jesus Fuckin’ Christ!” the guy screamed, backing away and looking down at the mess I’d made all over the front of his grey suit. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

“I’m sick,” I told him calmly. “Covid. Got it bad.”

“Fuck!” the man yelled. He started taking off his jacket while he backed out into the hall. “Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!”

He backed into Pickening, the porter, then careened around him and sprinted toward the elevator while loosening his necktie.

Pickening walked into the apartment while I was down on my hands and knees, wiping up my puke from the tile floor with a bath towel. There wasn’t much of it. My stomach had been empty, save for the water I’d consumed; and most of it seemed to have stayed with the cop, or agent, or whatever he was. I finished and wandered back into the kitchen, where I got another glass of water.

“I told him he couldn’t come up here without a warrant,” the porter told me. “He insisted on coming, anyway.”

“He sure left in a hurry,” I commented offhand.

“That he did. Oh, by the way, Mr. Baxter, I brought you a copy of yesterday’s newspaper. Thought you might like to keep one.” He set it on the kitchen table.

Yesterday’s newspaper. One of the most worthless items on earth. Shit, most kids didn’t even know what a newspaper was anymore. “Thanks. I’m going back to bed now.”

“Pleasant dreams.” He turned and left.

I lay awake in bed, thinking. Was it still night? It must be, since Pickening was on duty. This night was starting to seem as long as the day had been. I awoke to extreme thirst yet again. In the dark kitchen, I drank glass after glass of tap water before going back to bed. I was shivering with cold, so I pulled the covers up, wishing Polly was there. She was always warm. I decided to close my eyes again, and when I opened them, she was there, sitting on the side of the bed, looking down at me.

“I’m hot,” I told her, peeling back the blankets.

“That’s a good sign, I think,” she said. “Your fever has broken.”

I frowned and tried to concentrate. That was her voice, no doubt about it. I looked toward the window, and it was still dark. Nothing made sense, unless ….

“You’re going to tell me that it’s not Tuesday, aren’t you?”

She smiled and shook her head. She must have just done her hair, because it looked shiny and fresh as it bounced and settled on her naked shoulders. “It’s six thirty, and it’s Sunday evening. It’s been five days since you held my hand in the hospital. They released me about noon today. They told me that they needed the hospital bed for someone who was actually sick.”

I propped myself up on an elbow and studied her. She looked radiant. The earrings were in her ears again, but that sort of made sense. I’d left all of that on the table after I’d retrieved the locket with the key. Her nipples sported the old gold studs that she’d worn that week or so before we went to get the rings.

I reached up and stroked the side of her face. “Polly, I ….”

“I love you, too, sir.”

She slid under the covers, stretched out beside me, and we lay there for a long time. I think I dozed. Finally, she stood and pulled until I sat up.

“You really stink, sir. And now, so do I. Come on. Let’s go.”

We have a large, walk-in shower that has a bench at one end. She uses it to shave herself. This time, I sat on it because I doubted I had the strength to make it through an entire wash cycle. She did most of the scrubbing for both of us; but eventually, we emerged. I studied the growth of beard in the bathroom mirror, but decided I’d let it go one more day.

I sat at the kitchen table, drinking water and waiting for her to cook an omelet at three in the morning; and I picked up that newspaper, which had been folded and left on the table where I’d put it. To say it was a shock would be a wee underestimation. The main front page story above the fold featured my picture. “Local Savior Delivers Vital Med Equipment.” It was all extremely vague, and featured nothing specific at all except that our company had donated the money, and that I had gone myself to get the ventilators, which I had been told were “obsolete Army surplus.” The story quoted Dr. Griswold, who had given half the devices to other area hospitals. There was also a quote from the truck rental dealer, who said he had refunded my money just as soon as he realized his agency (which was located on the corner of Dinwiddle Street and Centre Avenue) had furnished the vehicle used by the area’s “Angel of Mercy.”

“Who did you contact at our company?” I asked her. I practically inhaled the omelet.

“Wendy, the CEO’s secretary. I told her that I just had to let her in on the Public Relations coup of the decade. I explained it all … or at least most of what you had told me. And about how much our small hundred-thousand-dollar investment was going to mean to the entire community. I wanted to know if she and the boss could take care of the press release, since both of us had contracted Covid while working on that project, and we were therefore unable to do that.”

I shook my head in wonder. “Well, there’s still the small matter of those ventilators actually being the property of the U.S. government.”

She shrugged. “That’s a problem being studied from several different angles. Wendy knows someone working as an aide to the governor, in Harrisburg. She let her friend know that the feds might be trying to take away ventilators from local hospitals in Pittsburgh, when they are desperately needed right here in Pennsylvania. The mayor’s office is involved here, as well. The military procurement folks know that heads are going to roll for this, and they’re frantically trying to shift blame from one organization to another. Storage depots are being monitored and inventoried by outside agencies, but they have no people available because of the virus. All the way up and down the chains of command, everybody is very anxious for this problem to just go away.”

I tore into my second omelet. “And what do you think you and I should be doing now?”

She sipped a cup of coffee. “Now that we’ve had breakfast, I think I should change the sheets and we should both go back to bed.”

I thought about that long and hard. But, by the time I’d finished my second helping of eggs, I couldn’t think of a better course of action.

From the very beginning of the pandemic, medical scientists made a prediction; and from Fauci to the lowest lab assistant, they pretty much stuck to it: If the CDC and FDA shortened some of the most time-consuming test periods, they could have a vaccine on the streets in about a year. That, as it was proven, was spot-on. Don’t let that statement fool you. Those vaccines were some of the most-tested drugs ever produced. The only shortcut was the five or six years-long length of time many of the tests normally ran.

A year after my little road-trip adventure, a lot of things had changed and lot of things hadn’t. Many mandates were still in effect. Many parts of our population were still huddled in their homes. But the advent of the first vaccines in December were touted as “the beginning of the end.” By April 2021, they were generally available to everyone, and there were rumors of boosters by fall. The scientists now said that, without forcible immunizations (which nobody even considered), the virus was here to stay. But the death rate plummeted, at least among the inoculated. In the coming years, variants would be even more contagious, but not as deadly. At long last, comparisons between Covid and the flu were actually somewhat valid.

Old Man Bukowski retired in the middle of all that mess, and I moved up to VP-Operations, as well as taking a seat on the Board of Directors. In March 2021, I was appointed Senior VP of the company, number two behind the CEO. Polly, in turn, was the second most highly-paid secretary in the firm. Most of her wealth, she gives away. That’s Polly for you.

She never spent another night with Rodriquez. He, as it all turned out, was a recipient of something that would eventually be dubbed “Silent Covid.” In other words, he was a person who had contracted and transmitted the disease without ever showing symptoms himself. He obviously gave it to Polly. And afterwards, he gave it to his wife and his little daughter. The daughter’s nanny eventually contracted it, as well. Forced to care for his sick spouse, they somehow fell in love all over again. And, as sole caregiver for his toddler (who only suffered the sniffles for a couple days), he formed a strong bond. With a new frame of relational perspective, he decided that he wanted to be a “family man” first and foremost; and so, instead of traveling the world in search of ever-greater wealth, he stayed home, played with his kid, and put a great deal of effort into making more of them, an endeavor in which he was eventually successful.

Polly gave her niece and nephew iPads next Christmas. I pointed out that they’d never thanked her for the bicycles, but she just smiled and shrugged. True humanitarians, it seems, don’t expect recognition.

She still wore the diamond earrings wherever she went. Hidden about twelve inches below them, a new set of gold rings permanently reminded her of her devotion. And, she still wore the locket with my picture in it, though it didn’t rattle anymore. The ledger was still there in her underwear drawer, but it wasn’t locked, and I would never need its instructions, from either the first section or the second. It was my silent reminder of a pledge that I would never break. Polly, it seemed, prevented my molehills from morphing. She isn’t a cure, but she is the only one who can treat my symptoms.

As it turns out, the Senior VP in our company is in charge of corporate charitable donations. If the quality of a literary work could be judged by its degree of irony, then you would now be reading a masterpiece. “Altruistic sociopath” has got to rank very high on the list of contradictory terms. But, of course, I let Polly handle all of that. Our firm has rocketed to the top of regional businesses where philanthropy is concerned. We have spokesmen from the ranks of both the Pirates and the Steelers guiding one cause or another. Also, the top five businesses in the Greater Pittsburgh area (PNC, PPG, Hownet, Wesco and U.S. Steel) all doubled their giving last year in an attempt to keep up with us. Directly and indirectly, Polly has made a huge difference here; even if, deep down, I personally just don’t give a shit.

She’s always looking for some new way of giving. And so, it probably shouldn’t have been a huge surprise when she knocked on my office door late one Friday afternoon in February 2022. Almost everyone else had gone home for the weekend, but I often work late; and since we’re a team (inside the company and out), she stays late, too.

There was a girl with her, a smallish girl of about twenty, though that was hard to tell. At first, I considered the term “waif,” but I reassessed that, because she actually possessed the characteristics of a nice figure; or, at least, her breasts and hips suggested she ought to have one. I settled on the least attractive moniker. She was skinny. And unhealthy. I wondered if perhaps she was anorexic.

“Mr. Baxter, this is Ellen,” Polly said politely. “She works in receiving. Part time.”

I nodded to the girl and scowled. “Hello, Ellen.”

The girl began to back up away from me, but Polly reached down and took her hand, holding her in place.

I waited for something else to happen. Finally, I said: “It’s after hours. Shouldn’t you be heading home, Ellen?”

The girl looked frantic. She tried to pull away, but Polly turned them both so that they faced each other, and she hugged her tightly, whispering in the smaller woman’s ear. That went on for a minute. Curious, I stayed out of the interaction. Finally, they both turned to face me again.

“Now, Ellen,” Polly ordered, “tell my Master why you haven’t gone home.”

Well, THIS was interesting. The girl took a moment to get up her courage, but she only said: “I don’t have a home, sir.”

There was another pregnant pause. If Polly wanted me to act in some bizarre play, the least she could have done was give me some lines. “Where did you stay last night?” I asked.

“At the Homeless Mission on Crawford Street.” When I hadn’t said anything else for a long moment, she added: “You can only stay there five nights at a time. There’s a waiting list because of the cold weather that blew in on Monday.”

I nodded. “And how, exactly, did you meet Polly?”

She looked up at my secretary as if she was a cross between a movie star and Mother Teresa. “She ... she bought me lunch. I still can’t believe it. She was sitting at a table with all the most powerful women in the company; and she saw me picking through a trashcan across the room. She left them and came to me. And then, she walked me through the cafeteria line and filled up a plate for me. It was one of the most amazing things that’s ever happened to me. And she’s the most amazing ….”

“Yes,” I interrupted. “Isn’t she just?” I turned my attention to my secretary. “What the fuck are you doing, Polly? You’re suggesting that we take Ellen home with us, but I am not going to start collecting women like they’re stray cats!”

Polly laughed, put an arm around the slight girl, and marched her up to the front of my desk. Ellen looked shocked and disoriented, but allowed herself to be led. “Don’t think of her as a ‘stray,’ sir, think of her as a valued employee that can serve a tremendous benefit to the overall morale of this company.”

I sat back in my chair and shook my head, giving her a look that let her know that I knew I was being had. She graced me with one of her laughs.

“And just what is this benefit?” I asked, deadpan.

“Lamont Jones, in Shipping.”

I sighed. “I do not know Lamont Jones, in Shipping. Is Mr. Jones the benefit, or is your plan to benefit Mr. Jones?”

“Both,” Polly announced happily. “Lamont has saved for three years to buy a home; and three months ago, when the housing market was in the toilet because of the pandemic, he bought a small place in Mount Washington. But his girlfriend dumped him just before Christmas and ran home and married her old high school sweetheart in Mississippi. So, he’s all alone and sad. But on Monday morning, I’m going to introduce him to Ellen, here.”

“What?” Ellen and I spoke simultaneously.

“Sir, would you please excuse me for just a minute?” Polly asked. Then she turned toward Ellen, reached up and grasped her chin between thumb and forefinger, tilting it slightly upward; and she bent forward and kissed the girl on the lips.

It was a nice kiss, by anybody’s standard, if perhaps a bit long. In point of fact, it seemed to go on forever. After a while, Ellen reached up with her right hand and grasped my secretary’s upper arm in an effort to steady herself. But eventually, Polly pulled away, leaving the smaller woman breathless and dizzy.

“I need to talk to our Master for a moment, Ellen,” she said succinctly. “When we’re through, we’re going to take you home and sexually enslave you. But for right now, I need you to be quiet and let me speak. Alright?”

The girl stared up at Polly as if she was looking at the face of God. “I … I … Okay.”

“Polly ….” I began sternly.

“It’s just for a few days, sir,” she interrupted. “After lunch, I took her across the street to the medical lab our company uses, and I had them do a full blood panel. She’s clean and she’s healthy, except for some anemia, probably caused by malnutrition. There are no STD’s, thankfully. She’s been selling herself for food for the past few weeks, though not often enough, apparently.”

When I seemed unconvinced, she continued. “She’s like me, sir. Like I was when you enslaved me. So submissive. So obedient and passive and compliant and in need of guidance. We’re going to take her home, and you’re going to hypnotize her, and we’re going to train her together; and she’s going to learn how to give us more types of sexual pleasure than she ever dreamed existed.

“Monday, I’ll introduce her to Lamont; and, after a whole weekend of hypnotic conditioning, she’s going to fall ass-over-teakettle in love with him. And he’s going to love her, too; because she’s going to give him everything he wants in life. She’s going to give him the love and affection and loyalty he craves. And she’s going to give him the emotional and physical pleasure he deserves. And she’s going to bear him the children he’s always wanted. And our company is going to be a happier place because of it.”

I sagged back in my chair. “Aw, Polly. On top of all the charitable crap we do, you’re going to get into matchmaking now?”

She gave me the grin she uses when she knows she’s gotten her way. “You are the great, award-winning humanitarian, sir. You have been ever since you made that famous all-night drive to save our city.”

“I was only protecting my personal property!” I bellowed, exasperated.

“Whatever you say, sir.”