Mailgirls: Three on One

Three's remembrances of that morning's confrontation were interrupted by a loud, furious pounding at Hoblitzel's door. Hoblitzel was, in fact, still seated as his desk behind her, as she heard him clear his throat. But Debbie Truesdale didn't wait for a response, or an invitation in. Instead, she barged in angrily, slamming the door wide open with enough force that Three winced involuntarily. Behind her, Alexis Fisk continued to voice her objections, but Debbie just ignored the secretary and focused her rage on Joe Hoblitzel.

"Are you kidding me?!!" she screeched.

Three didn't budge from her corner. Her back was to Debbie, to Hoblitzel, and she remained frozen in place, blindfold firmly affixed over her eyes and the world around her black. Still, she could imagine the jowls of the heavy-set portfolio manager shaking with rage.

"Are you kidding me?!! Are you kidding me?" Debbie repeated. "What is this?"

"Debbie-" Hoblitzel began, but was shouted over.

"This can't be real! It can't be! This isn't us."

"She volunteered," Hoblitzel offered calmly. Which was true. Three had, in fact, volunteered, even if there'd been some coercion involved. She'd signed on the dotted line, attesting as much, and inked a thumbprint at the bottom of Barrow's contract to further signify that she was doing this of her own volition.

"I don't care if she opened her legs and begged for it. This is the real world, Joe. This is a place of business. This isn't some fantasy titty flick."

"She's a consenting adult," Hoblitzel answered. He growled, accusingly, "We're all adults."

"Are we?" Debbie mocked. "There's a naked girl in your office, Joe, with – seriously?!! – a dog collar and a blindfold. Do we all get a turn with her? Is that how this works? Or is it just the men?"

"No," Hoblitzel responded. He was getting angry, but he kept himself composed. "This isn't that. She's not a sex slave. She's not a prostitute."

Three certainly felt like a prostitute.

"So what is it then?"

"There's a memo coming from management at noon. This is a trial balloon, to see if there's an appetite for mailgirls at USF."

"Are you serious? Are you really serious right now? Cambridge & Caine? Dumpster Dog? Finder-Spyder and all of those idiot dot.coms out there? That's who we're looking to for how to run USF?"

"I wasn't on board at first, either," Hoblitzel said. "But Human Capital showed me the financials."

"Financials?!!" Debbie shrieked. "What about right and wrong, Joe? We can't seriously be treating women this way. This is the twenty-first century!"

"It's a trial balloon," Hoblitzel repeated. "A pilot. Maybe it'll take. Maybe it won't. We'll know in a month, once they've tested it and compiled some data."

"Right and wrong."

"Senior Management has decided that this is something they're looking at. Right or wrong. This is the world we're living in now. We've got competitors in Tokyo and Frankfurt who've launched this, too – two, three, four years ago. They learned what worked, they learned what didn't. The metrics are there. This is more than just somebody's kink, Debbie. And, like it or not, you and I don't get a lot of say in it."

"Right and wrong."

"Right or wrong," Hoblitzel growled. His frustration with the portfolio manager was becoming more apparent. "You're on board or you're not. HR's bracing for the reaction, and is prepared for a mass exit if our employees aren't willing accept this. So the choice is yours. Just like Amanda. You can accept this. You can look past it. You can come to terms with it. Otherwise, draft a resignation and put it on my desk."

Stunned silence. And then Alexis Fisk, who'd apparently stayed half-in and half-out of Hoblitzel's office all along, coughed, and asked meekly, "Should I go?"

Three groaned to herself. Hoblitzel's secretary was a bit of a bitch, even on her best days. Most of the administrative assistants who supported executives at Hoblitzel's level were, confusing the power and influence of their boss's position as their own. Three's fall, and the degrading position she now found herself in, must have been delicious to the little cupcake.

Hoblitzel ignored the question. Silence lasted another beat or two. And then Debbie responded.

"You'll have it in an hour."

"Fine," Hoblitzel huffed.

"And you," Debbie began, with Three now sensing the woman was talking to her. "You're an absolute disgrace. You had promise. But if this is what you'd rather do, if what we do here in Asset Management was too hard for you, then you deserve everything coming your way."

Three stifled a sob.

Angry footsteps stormed away, and Three guessed that she was now alone again with Hoblitzel. Hoblitzel and his secretary.

"Do you need anything?" the secretary asked her boss.

"No," Hoblitzel barked back tersely. But then he hesitated, and answered. "I'm not supposed to let her out of that corner, until the dominatrix-woman comes back to get her. But it's been an hour. Amanda, do you need a break? Water? The ladies' room?"

It was a kindness, in its way. Even if Three dreaded the idea of leaving the relative privacy of Hoblitzel's office and facing all of her colleagues.

Three swallowed. "Sir, per Human Capital, I am to be called by mailroom number." Mistress Zero, the "dominatrix-woman" who'd accompanied Barrow that morning and to whom Hoblitzel had referred, had made her repeat the line back a good dozen times before she and Barrow had left to find their next victim.

The secretary laughed. Hoblitzel sighed.

"Right, right," he said. He began again, annoyance in his voice, and asked, "Mailgirl Number Three, do you need to use the ladies' room?"

"Yes, sir," Three answered meekly. It had been since that morning in the women's locker room that she'd had a chance to pee.

"You have to take her, Lex," Hoblitzel explained. "There's more coming with the memo, I think, but they apparently need escorts or chaperones or supervisors or something to be allowed to tinkle."

"Sure," the secretary replied. "Gross. But, sure, okay."

"She can't make eye contact with anyone, she can't speak unless spoken to, and she's supposed to call you ma'am or 'Ms. Fisk' or whatever."

"Miss Fisk is fine," the girl said.

"Good. Take her. Go, and come right back." To Three, he instructed, "Take the mask off. You can put it back on when you get back."

"Yes, sir," Three croaked, her mouth dry. "Thank you, sir." She felt like a moron calling him "sir." But she did as instructed all the same, standing and removing the blindfold. And punishing herself with one fleeting, longing look at the pile of clothes on the corner of Hoblitzel's desk.

"Come right back when you're done," Hoblitzel called out behind them. "She's supposed to leave the stall door open – no privacy. Follow the rules. I don't want to lose my secretary and my star analyst in the same day."

Three hadn't had more than a few minutes to peruse the dense contract Barrow had given her, scanning it as best as she could, as quickly as she could, while blinking back tears. She'd read the bit about asking for permission and requiring a chaperone when using the restrooms, as well as the bit about giving up all expectations around any privacy. She hadn't realized it would mean peeing with the stall door open; she wondered if that was in the contract and if she'd skipped over it. And, if she had skipped over that, what else didn't she know?

There was an audience waiting for the naked girl the moment she exited Hoblitzel's office. There were no hoots or hollers, no wolf whistles, no catcalls – not yet. Instead, Three was greeted with stunned silence, the 26th Floor enveloped by an eerie hush in the immediate vicinity beyond the desk of "Miss Fisk." But Three felt their eyes upon her nakedness, and she fought the urge to run and hide back in her corner. In that moment, the rule against making eye contact with any of her "superiors" felt like a blessing in disguise, as it allowed her to avoid having to see any of their faces. Instead, head down, she dutifully followed a step behind Hoblitzel's secretary.

Three wanted desperately to cover herself, though. Instinctually, her right arm twitched, and moved towards covering her naked breasts as if it had made the decision to do so on its own. Higher brain functions prevailed, and Three resisted the urge. "A mailgirl feels no embarrassment at her nudity, and knows exposing herself is for the benefit of the company." Mistress Zero had instilled that little nugget into her already. It was a line, and a line that had zero truth to it. But Three kept her arms at her sides all the same.

More embarrassing, as if that were possible, was the wild, untamed patch of pubic hair between Three's legs. Three had been working so hard over the last few months that grooming of the intimate variety had fallen by the wayside. She worked until nine or ten every night. She was at the Plaza regularly on Saturdays. She resisted the urge to dial-in over VPN on Sundays usually only until about two or three. There was simply no time in her life for a boyfriend, and therefore no need to worry about the chances of anyone outside the women's locker room catching a glimpse of Three's overgrown snatch. Besides, it was April – bikini season was still weeks away. If she'd known ahead of time that she'd be streaking naked out in front of all her coworkers, she might have cleaned up and been able to present herself at her best.

The path from Hoblitzel's office to the ladies' room was a circuitous one, and one that took Miss Fisk and the naked girl behind her past the offices of a good half-dozen portfolio managers, through a maze of cubicles occupied by support people and junior staff, and along the closet-sized offices where Three and her peers worked. All along the way, Three never once dared to look up, never once let her eyes wander off of Miss Fisk's calves. She pretended as if none of colleagues were there.

There were gasps and whispers. A few quiet, uncomfortable laughs. A cough. More than one hushed "hey..." as someone nudged someone else to get his or her attention, and alert him or her to Three's presence and her state of dress. The memo Hoblitzel had promised Debbie hadn't yet been sent out, and so everyone on the 26th Floor was in the dark as to why Three was strutting through the office in her birthday suit.

Her birthday suit, a bit of ink on her hip designating her as Mailgirl Number "3," and a sadistic looking metal collar fastened tightly and securely around her neck. As she stepped into the ladies' room, and padded barefoot across the cool, tiled floor, Three couldn't help but glance in the direction of the mirror. Naively, she'd wanted to get a better look at the collar, as Mistress Zero had slipped it around her neck only after Three was already naked and in the corner. It had been slowly strangling her since then. No - maybe not strangling her, exactly. But tighter than Three felt it needed to be, a choker that choked a bit too much. It was just on this side of being too tight, and would undoubtedly leave an impression behind once it was finally removed.

The collar itself was, as expected, awful. It was some sort of black metal composite, three inches wide, and affixed with a series of D-rings in the front, the back, and on either side – suggesting that a leash or some worse horror awaited Mailgirl Number Three in the near future. To drive home the point that she was now little more than a naked, subhuman animal, a silver number "3" dangled from the ring at her throat like a dog tag. In stark contrast to the ugliness of the collar itself, Three's silver number was girlish and pretty, an elegant pendant that nonetheless signified the price Three had paid in giving up even her name.

But the collar wasn't the worst of it. Staring back at Three in the mirror was a naked slave girl, tits out and pussy exposed. Her shoulders were slumped and her eyes puffy from the crying. She looked as beaten and owned as she felt. Horrified, Three turned away as fast as she could, unwilling to acknowledge that the naked girl in the mirror could possibly be her.

"The door needs to stay open," Miss Fisk instructed as Three stepped into one of the stalls.

Three had heard Hoblitzel's orders, same as the other girl. And while maybe she'd had some hope Miss Fisk might have ignored them, she hadn't expected her to. She gloomily cheeped out a, "Yes, Miss Fisk."

The secretary remained around the corner, thankfully, and out of sight. But she made her presence felt all the same, as Three sat down onto the toilet.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

Three hesitated. "I volunteered," she offered in response.

"Right, right," Miss Fisk shot back. "But why?"

Hesitation again, as Three searched for a good answer. Why had she volunteered? Why was she doing this? Why was she allowing USF to subject her to this? "The money," Three ultimately answered, finding the answer to be mostly true. She didn't need to get into the threats or the coercion – Miss Fisk was neither her confidante nor her confessor.

Miss Fisk clucked her tongue, and hissed through her teeth. "Jesus," she remarked. "There's no amount of money that could get me to do what you're doing."

Three didn't respond.

Miss Fisk seemed to reconsider her position on her own, however. "Okay, maybe. Maybe. How much was it? How much are they giving you?"

Not enough, Three thought to herself.

"Enough," she replied.

"So, more than you were making as an analyst, at least," Miss Fisk said. She didn't press for the specific dollar figure. Instead, she asked, "Is this your first time doing something like this? I mean, obviously, this is your first time doing this. But is this sort of thing...your...I don't know...is this sort of thing your thing? Are you, like, an exhibitionist or something like that?"

"First time." Mailgirl Number Three was no exhibitionist. She'd never gone streaking. The Nude Olympics out in the Holder Courtyard were done and gone by the time she'd gotten to Princeton, and she doubted she'd have had the balls to actually participate, regardless. No nude beaches. No sunbathing. No wet T-shirt contests or strip poker. She wasn't a prude; she was probably more comfortable in her own skin than most women; she was one of the few female USF employees unfazed by the open shower block in the new gym on the first floor. She knew she was pretty. She knew she was attractive. It had taken her into her early twenties to get there, to get as comfortable with her body as she was now – but not so comfortable that she didn't shudder at the thought of having to walk back to Hoblitzel's office in the nude. She had always liked sleeping naked, but refrained from doing so regularly out of an irrational fear that someone might break into her apartment in the middle of the night. About as far down the exhibitionist path as Three had ever dared to go was having sex with Greg Burke with the lights on; even that had been something Three hadn't been bold enough to suggest more than two or three times, despite the general naughtiness and awfulness that had otherwise defined the affair.

But...maybe? As terrifying as it had been to undress in front of Charlie and Hoblitzel and Will Barrow and Mistress Zero, there'd been a butterflies-in-the-stomach sense of excitement present all the same. She'd had the stripper fantasies, same as any girl. If she were being stripped down and turned into nothing more than a sexual object, was it wrong that it might be a turn-on for her? The idea that others were getting turned on by the sight of her?

Three shook the idea from her head. It was a dangerous line of thinking, and robbed some of the power from the "woe-is-me, innocent victim" narrative she'd been constructing in Hoblitzel's office. She was further aided in distracting herself when a light rapping came from the far side of the ladies' room door.

"Amanda?" It was Pags. "Amanda? Are you alright? What's going on? Are you okay? Can I come in?"

Three knew she was supposed to respond with the bit about Human Capital and her mailroom number, but she simply couldn't bring herself to do so. It got caught in her throat, unable and unwilling to be uttered aloud to the likes of Nick Pagliaro. Instead, she called back – with her voice breaking – "Give me a second!" She finished, flushed, and stepped from the stall.

"Can I come in?" Pags asked again. "I just want to..." He trailed off, perhaps unsure of exactly what it was that he wanted.

Three meekly looked to Miss Fisk, already playing the part of the submissive she was expected to become. The secretary simply shrugged before Three even realized what she had done. "We need to get back," was all the other girl offered, but her tone seemed to indicate she was willing to grant Three a few short seconds with Pags.

Rather than having to talk to him in the hall, she instead invited him in; it was just Three and Miss Fisk in the ladies' room.

Three was washing her hands, and avoiding eye contact with the naked girl in the mirror, when Pags stepped nervously into the bathroom. "What happened? What's going on?"

He couldn't help but eye her up and down. Three understood. She worked with almost all men – boys, really – and she knew that looking was hardwired into them, civility and etiquette be damned. She'd witnessed Parker Wertz staring as Leslie's ass more than once. And she was capable of admitting that she herself felt an ego-boost when she caught Wertz or Uehara or Moyer or Pags checking her out. She could even be a bit of a tease from time to time, bending over the conference room and watching them – in the reflection of the pane glass windows - sneak a peak behind her.

Pags realized what he'd done instantly, and then locked eyes uncomfortably with Three. Again, this was technically against the rules for Three now. "Look down," Mistress Zero had instructed her. "Eye contact is not allowed unless authorized by a superior."

"This is a joke, right?" he asked. "April Fools?"

Three shook her head glumly. "Not a joke."

"Why would you do this?" He jutted his chin towards the number scrawled on her right hip. "Are they really launching mailgirls here at USF?"

"It's a test. HR is testing it," she explained. She then corrected herself. "Human Capital, that is. It's a new group within HR. They're testing it for the next couple of weeks, to see if it'll work here at the Plaza."

Pags shook his head. "This is so, so fucked up."

Three agreed.

Pags had been one of her closest friends here on the 26th Floor since she'd started with the company the previous summer. He'd joined Charlie's team a year earlier, when Three was still in business school. Though his main area of focus was Biotech and Pharma, he'd helped cover Internet and Infrastructure as Three had gotten up to speed. They'd had shared an instant rapport, each of them finding a kindred spirit in the other. There were nights that Three was in the office until after ten, but – because of Pags – she was rarely alone. They joked and swapped stories with one another, and they enjoyed a little harmless flirting back and forth. But nothing had ever happened between them; Three had been married to her job, while Pags had just hit the one-year mark with a girl who worked for one of the major labels up in the Garment District. For the best, Three had told herself a few times, after catching herself daydreaming about what it might be like with Pags. She'd never been good at that sort of thing; she knew she'd screw it all up somehow, anyways.

"Are you serious about this?"

Three bit her lip. Miss Fisk wasn't someone in whom she could confide, but Pags was. This didn't seem to be the place or the time, however. Maybe she could give him the full story after work, or over a good, stiff drink. For now, she met his eyes, and told him, "I volunteered."