Demi stood in the doorway of Jason’s, squinting, trying to make out form in the low level light. It was early and the lunchtime crowd hadn’t filed in yet. The bartender was serving beer to the guys at the bar and further down the side wall, three more men with a brief case open on the table in front, were ordering drinks.

She was the lone woman in the place.

Demi’s favorite table was in a back corner and provided a sense of privacy and security, and that’s where she was headed. She stepped into the alcove but was disappointed to see a guy seated nearby, crowding her space.

He was beefy, wearing a shirt that looked three sizes too small and he was engrossed in a heap of linguine soaked in clam sauce, forking it between loose jowls. A heart attack just waiting to happen, she thought as she moved forward. He took an immediate interest in her slim legs and Demi felt a pang of self-conscientiousness, as if a spotlight had suddenly been turned her way.

She had been mentally undressed many times in thirty-two years but still felt the dread brought on by the experience of standing, emotionally naked, in front of a man. It had started early on. Before she had even entered her teens, older men started looking at her differently, their eyes drifting away from her face, downward. And there was a greater interest in touching her– a hand pressing in the arch of her back, or worse, fingertips lingering on a hip.

As she passed the man’s table, he glanced to catch her eye. She saw his fat fingers flinch and instinctively, she sidestepped. Demi went over on a heel and felt the heat rise in her chest as he came up with his wine glass. The heads of the three men seated opposite fell together. Words were exchanged and with a smirk one of them started to laugh. It wasn’t hard to guess the source of their amusement.

Demi straightened and, with a sense of relief she reached her private enclave and got seated with the table shielding her body.

Some people came to Jason’s for the food. Demi came for the floor-length table cloths.

Working at the Agency, the unwritten rule of law was you had to be attractive, slim, and fashionably dressed. Wedding rings were frowned upon, as were pants in favor of short business skirts. You are, as the management was fond of reminding the staff, working with some of the most glamorous men and women in the City. Jackets were only deemed acceptable if you didn’t possess a set of superb breasts.

None of the women at the agency wore a jacket.

Most all of the secretaries and executive assistants had done some modeling, amateur or otherwise, at one time or another throughout their careers and were not shy about displaying boudoir-style photos of themselves on office walls or propped on desktops. The clients loved it and management encouraged the practice...

Demi had never done it. Never had the nerve. But then someone complained and the memo came down from upstairs. She was put on notice and told that an Agency photographer would be waiting for her in ‘Studio C’ the next morning. Demi thought long and hard about how much her salary meant to her but that night, she showered and shaved and hoped her husband wouldn’t decide that tonight would be the night for once-in-a-year sex.

The next morning, she left her bra in the drawer and pulled a tight white sweater down over sassy breasts.

In ‘Studio C’ she was relieved to see a woman snapping a lens onto a Nikon. Demi unzipped her skirt, pulled her panties off and in four-inch heels walked to the sofa. In a barrage of strobe lights, she lay back and under the woman’s direction, she cupped her breasts through the sweater then let a hand

drop lower. She placed fingers between the lips of her vagina and momentarily touched her clit.

It was quickly over. The woman tossed her a robe and invited Demi to her private studio if she ever wanted a more intense session. That’s what she called it: intense.

“Ma’am?”

Demi was jolted from her thoughts.

The young waiter stood at the side of her table. “What happened to your friend?”

Demi’s eyes clouded. “Sorry?”

A crease appeared between her server’s eyes. “The woman who was seated at your table. Wasn’t she waiting for you?”

“I didn’t come here to meet a woman.”

“Oh-h.” He looked down and Demi followed his gaze. There was a crystal glass, half empty, with a smudge of lipstick. A twenty dollar bill was tucked under it. “That’s strange,” he picked up the glass, turning it in his hand, “and stranger still– she left a whole twenty for a diet Coke.” He shrugged. “I’ll bring clean linens...”

Demi glanced across at the salesmen. “No. Don’t bother,” she said, re-crossing her ankles and tugging at the hem of her skirt. “These are perfectly fine.” She checked her watch. “I’m a little early for lunch but a glass of Pinot Grigio and celery sticks with the blue cheese dressing would be nice to start.”

“Of course ma’am. I’ll be right back.” And he scooped up the twenty and turned toward the kitchen.

Nice kid, Demi thought as she watched him go. Working his way through college, no doubt.

Her sexy photograph arrived in an interoffice envelope two days later. It was displayed in a walnut frame, suitable for propping up on her desktop, where clients could enjoy an unobstructed view of the slickly oiled mound between her legs. Demi took one look at the gaping lips of her vagina squeezing up between splayed fingers, and horrified, tossed the offending photo into her handbag. It was professional work, but even so...

That night she pried the photo from behind the glass, re-cropped it so you couldn’t see where she held her hand and placed it back in its frame. In the photo, she had a knee cocked and you could see the length of her leg, from leather pump all the way to up to a bare hip. She hoped it would be sufficient.

The next morning, she placed the frame on top of a filing cabinet and tried to forget it existed. A couple of the office guys came by to gawk, but apparently an exposed milky, inner thigh muscle didn’t raise the anticipated excitement and, disappointed, they quickly left. Good riddance.

Demi took a sidelong look across the restaurant. The three salesmen seated at the table opposite had gone back to shuffling papers between themselves. With a sense of relief she noticed fatso, still stuffing his face, looked close to finishing his linguine. Once he was done, she’d have her small corner of the restaurant all to herself.

Something brushed against her leg.

Demi’s eyes flew up.

Rats in restaurants were not unheard of and her imagination ran wild. With a shriek, she jumped, cracked her knee painfully on the underside of the tabletop and fell back into her chair. The fat guy turned to leer at her tits. A dribble of clam sauce escaped his lower lip and fell to stain the front of his shirt. He glanced up to meet her eyes, licked his mouth, and then returned his attention to the front of her blouse.

Demi tried to calm herself and gave him a dirty scowl. He shrugged and, lifting his glass, guzzled red wine like it was tap water.

Once he had diverted his eyes to his plate, Demi screwed up her courage and, lifting the tablecloth, looked beneath. A woman returned her gaze with startled green eyes. She was kneeling on the floor, hidden by the cloth and had a finger pressed to her lips. “Please ... Please don’t give me away,” she cried in a plaintive whisper.

Demi gaped, dropped the tablecloth and nervously looked about the room again. Everything appeared normal but her heart was pounding against her breastbone and the sound of blood rushed in her ears. There’s a woman hiding under my table!

“Your appetizer, ma’am.”

Her young man was back, holding a silver tray and a sweating goblet of chilled white.

“W-what...”

The waiter gave her a queer look. “Your appetizer, ma’am. Remember?”

Demi couldn’t rid herself of the image of the woman kneeling on the floor at her feet. She swallowed hard. “Yes, yes of course. T-thank you.”

“Are you all right, ma’am. If you don’t mind my saying, you look a bit pale.”

Demi waved a hand in front of her face. “I’m okay. Just hungry. I haven’t eaten since yesterday and it just caught up with me. I’ll be fine once I get something on my stomach.”

“Very good, ma’am,” and still puzzled, the waiter set the tray down, “but let me know if you need ice-water or anything.”

“Thank you. I’m fine. Really.” Except for this strange woman hiding under my fuckin’ table! Demi screamed at the inside of her skull.

“Call when you’re ready to order.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Demi watched until the waiter was safely across the room before lifting the tablecloth again. “Look, I don’t know who you are but you had better get out from under there, I mean, right now. Or I’ll be forced to call the manager.”

The woman seemed to crumble. “Please, I’m begging you. Let me stay a few minutes. At least until those guys at the bar leave.”

“The guys at the bar?”

“Yes. They’re cops.”

Demi nodded. “Yes, I...”

“ ... and they’re looking for me. Please. You have to help.”

Demi dropped the tablecloth. She didn’t have a clue about what to do but one thing was very clear, the woman was frightened, to the point of sounding desperate. Demi gulped cold wine to restore her courage then lifted the tablecloth once again.

“What did you do,” she asked the woman, “that the police are after you?”

The woman settled back on her haunches. “Prostitution. That’s all, I swear. I’m a sex-worker.”

Demi gawked. She lived in a big metropolitan city and had watched prostitutes trolling the streets. Women with cold eyes and even colder hearts. No amount of makeup or fashionable hair styling could hide the fact they had lived hardscrabble lives. And that selling themselves was the only option left open to them and it allowed them the food, alcohol and drugs necessary to face each new day.

But this woman wasn’t anything like that.

The woman cowering under her table had several years on Demi but she looked clean and fit. And there could be no denying she was pretty, beautiful in fact. And meticulously made-up. Christ, Demi thought, if this woman was a hooker, she was certainly high-end stuff. Guys would have to put out a couple of grand just to get the woman’s attention, let alone get into her pants.

Demi was relived to see the fat man wipe his face with a linen napkin and struggle from his chair. He shot her a passing glance as he made his way over to the cash resister.

“Rita,” the woman said.

Demi looked down between her knees. “W-what?”