Red-blooded American

"Ms DuPont?" echoed the woman from the phone through the graveyard silence of the executive lobby.

"Yes?"

"Mr Methuselah will see you now."

"I'll be right there!" Fawn replied with a well-practiced smile; climbing to her feet to smooth the creases in her crimson skirt, and spilling her papers onto the floor in the process. "Shit!" she whispered, "just a sec!" Not off to a good start, she thought as she crouched down to collect her things.

Fawn DuPont looked to be in her mid-twenties with red hair, red lips, and soft Irish skin the colour of moonlight. She was dressed to kill in a figure-hugging skirt suit that echoed the fire of her hair while it held her tightly in a lover's embrace. But even her fine clothes, carefully chosen to highlight her finer features, could do little to distract from the shaking of her hands or the quiver in her voice.

"I'll tell him you're running late," said the woman from the phone, turning on her heel and clacking out a funeral march toward the leering, silver-handled doors at the end of the hall.

"I..." Fawn looked down at the spill of printed resumes. I'll get them on the way back, she thought, abandoning her meticulously fabricated files, and stalking off after the secretary. "Coming!"

The lobby itself was oppressively old-fashioned, and haunted by the glowering stares of ashen-faced executives peering out from their acrylic portrait prisons, reflected ad nauseam in the gallows sheen of the black marble floor. Fawn threaded the gauntlet carefully, each face more naked than the last in its intrusion, as they gawked at her from above and below. But as much anguish as her watchers inspired, Fawn was far more concerned with the man she was soon to meet.

The woman from the phone, Jacqui Turner, had called her in just after dark. It was quite last minute, and goodness knows Fawn would've liked a few days more to prepare. But apparently Mr Methuselah was just desperate for a new PA to handle the cold, lonely nights at the office.

"You look young. Pretty too. Do you have much experience?" asked the secretary without turning back. Hers the only countenance in this hall of watchful faces yet to look her in the eye. Jacqui looked older than Fawn by at least a decade. Her curled black hair was long out of fashion, and Fawn could pick out the greys she hadn't in her last dance with the bottle.

"Well, I'm more experienced than I look, if that's what you're asking."

"Oh, I don't doubt that," the secretary replied. "But, would you say you've lived a good life?"

"Have I lived a..? "Fawn stumbled. "Excuse me?"

"Have you lived a good life?" she asked again flatly.

"I'm not sure what you mean." Fawn had been careful to fill her resume with trite yarns about a quiet upbringing out in the suburbs. Nothing that would rouse suspicion. So who was this woman to ask such personal questions?

The secretary stopped at the silver-handled doors and turned, fixing Fawn with a mournful stare that traced uncomfortably up the porcelain contours of her naked legs. For all their imagined lust, her blue-blooded watchers had failed to get under her skin the way Jacqui Turner had just then.

"I should tell you..." Jacqui confessed, "Mr Methuselah might seem like a teddy bear. But you should know, he's much more than he appears."

Despite what was written amongst the litter of papers now staining the marble floor, Fawn had been around the block more times than most. But the distance in Jacqui's voice, and the way her weary eyes finally met her own, filled her with unease.