I had to call Daphne on the carpet. She had fucked up and the client was refusing to pay. We were already barely in the black and nowhere near making our quarterly projections. So I made her come to the office at the end of the day and now she was sitting on the edge of my guest chair, waiting for the ax to fall.

I was surprised by how old and frumpy she looked. Granted, I hadn’t seen her for decades. We had stayed connected on LinkedIn, but she had been happily employed every time I tried to recruit her.

When I hired her the first time, she was fresh out of Community College, so probably twenty. She had learned COBOL and graduated just in time for Y2K. Young and cute and terribly shy. But she was a good programmer and learned fast. I remember thinking she was a bit odd; she always seemed a little too eager, too agreeable, too quick to make assurances that all was well with her project.

I studied her surreptitiously as I steeled myself to deliver the bad news. Her hair, still thick and straight, was shorter and its warm brown had turned a dark grey with streaks of white. Her oval face had become round, fleshy. So had her figure. She had possessed a trim body with enough of the zig and zag to advertise her healthy femininity. Now all that nubility was gone, despite an ass and tits that had grown large and soft.

She sat, waiting nervously, her hands in her lap. The skirt of her hausfrau-dowdy summer dress was just short enough to display her fat knees tightly pressed together. She was watching me too, but averted her eyes every time I looked her way.

“So, what happened, Daphne?” I began at last. She already knew that her client had terminated her contract. “Kumar said you missed your deadline twice and that there’s virtually nothing to show for the last two weeks.”

“I’m really sorry, Mr. Peabody, I guess I just got behind...” She was twisting her fingers in her lap and looking miserable.

What the hell, I thought. Nobody calls me by my last name; she had been calling me ‘Pete’ for thirty fucking years!

“Well, they’ve terminated you and backfilled with someone from another agency. And they’re not paying the last two invoices. That includes seventy-two hours we’ve already paid you for!” I was sounding pretty angry there at the end, which I had promised myself I wouldn’t do.

She stared at me dumbly, shrinking into herself. She looked pitiful. I felt sorry for her, but I had a duty to perform.

“What do you propose we do about this?” I asked, allowing my sympathy to show despite my better judgement.

“I don’t know!” she cried plaintively. She leaned forward, opening her hands, palms-up on her knees. She somehow found the wherewithal to look me in the eye. She did it pleadingly.

I sat in stony silence. I wasn’t going to let her off that easily, no matter how sorry I felt for her. So I let the silence weigh on her.

She clasped her hands together again. With brows knitted, her anxious expression became even more troubled. She dabbed at her left eye - they were both wet and luminous. She sighed, her breath catching a little.

Then, she took a deep breath. “My husband says you should punish me,” she said in a small voice, but clear and distinct.

I would not have believed what I heard, but my ears perceived her words perfectly.

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying not to betray an unavoidable prurience.

“I’ve been bad. Bad girls get punished,” she said, her voice a little stronger.