“Don’t blame you,” I muttered.
“Put your hands on me.”
“They are on you.”
“They’re on my shoulders,” KC said.
“It’s a start,” I said.
She pushed against me more insistently. I would have said more insistent was not possible, but she managed. She bent her head back and looked up at me, and her lips brushed mine as she spoke.
“Have you ever made love in this office?” she said.
“No,” I said, “I was waiting to get a couch.”
“You could take me now, here, on the floor.”
“I think we’ve gone through this,” I said.
“Come on, you want to.”
“Of course I want to,” I said. “But I’m not going to.”
“You have to,” she said. “You have to.”
“You left your husband for a guy and didn’t end up with the guy,” I said. “You’re being stalked. You’re feeling shaky. You need affirmation, and here I am, the guy who’s going to rescue you from the stalker.”
“That’s just talk,” she said. “You’re a man and I’m a woman.”
There wasn’t much room to maneuver around that, so I left it alone. I didn’t have a lot of experience fighting for my virtue.
“You ever fuck Susan here?” she said, her face almost touching mine.
“I’m impressed,” I said. “The question is intrusive, annoying, coarse, and voyeuristic, that’s quite a lot to get into a simple question.”
“Well, did you? I’ll bet you didn’t. I’ll bet she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t want to do it in a chair,” KC’s voice got very flutey, “because it wouldn’t be ladylike. And she wouldn’t want to do it on the floor because she’d be afraid she’d mess her clothes.”
“Enough,” I said.
I took a somewhat firmer grip on her shoulders and walked her backward toward one of my client chairs. She thought I was succumbing. I could feel her shoulders relax. I sat her down in my client chair and held her there. She raised her face with her eyes closed and her mouth open.
“You and I are not going to have sex,” I said. “I don’t like that much better than you do, but it’s a fact.”
She reached out and began to rub my thigh. I slapped her hand. The action was involuntary, but effective. She pulled her hand away and burst into tears. I went around my desk feeling completely idiotic and sat down, and breathed in and out as quietly as I could. She cried for a little while and rubbed her hand where I’d slapped it.
“You hit me,” she said.
“Not very hard,” I said.
“It was too hard,” she said.
“Hard is in the eye of the beholder, I guess,” I said, and wished I hadn’t said it quite that way.
KC rubbed her hand some more, and sniveled a little. It didn’t seem to me like a good time to tell her that Louis Vincent was almost certainly the guy who was stalking her. Or that she was but one of a fairly long list of women he stalked. Perhaps there was another way to approach that problem.
Then she said, “I don’t understand you, most men would jump at the chance to fuck me.”
“Of course they would.”
“Don’t you think I’m beautiful?” KC said.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“As beautiful as poopie old Susan?”
“No less,” I said.
“You’re not even married to her.”
“I know,” I said.
“I need a man to hold me.”
“Maybe you just want one and think it’s need.”
“What’s that mean?”
I shrugged.
“Just a thing to say.”
“Well, I’ve been through hell,” KC said with a breathy sorrowful catch in her voice.
I nodded.
