Iknew something was wrong the
second I walked up to my front door.
Call it intuition. Call it a
sixth sense. But I just knew.
I blame the shoes. The shoes
were undoubtedly the cause of all the
problems that day. It was the
shoes’ fault that I came home early, and
the shoes’ fault I was fired.
I suppose I
can’t blame the shoes for making me late, though—
that was the alarm clock’s
fault for rudely deciding not to do its
job.
And when I finally realized,
through the thick haze of sleepiness,
that it hadn’t gone off, it was
too late. I was already late for work.
And when I say work, I mean my
brand-new job—job of my
dreams—as a fashion assistant
at Glamorous Girl mag.
I’d just
made a total career change, leaving behind a successful job
as a stylist in advertising to
pursue a job in the magazine industry. It
was early days, so I was still
desperately trying to impress by being
perfect, polite, and oh so
obliging. Whether it was the request for
the latte to be served at 97.7
degrees with no sugar, soy milk froth,
and a sprinkling of organic
cocoa powder flown in directly from
the foothills of the Andes. Or
whether it was for the jasmine-and-lavender-
scented candles to be burned in
the office for exactly ten
minutes before my boss arrived—that
was me.
Little Miss
Annie Obliging.
Because
let’s face it, the word assistant is just a
glammed-up euphemism
for slave. But I was
ambitious and determined, so when I
realized I wouldn’t be able to
attend to the scented candles, or fetch
the latte, I panicked. So much
so, that I left the house without the
said troublemaking,
life-ruining, world-annihilating shoes.
Let’s take a
moment to talk about the shoes. They weren’t
ordinary shoes, oh
no,
they were none other than the just-off-the-
Paris-catwalk-and-not-for-sale-to-mere-mortals-yet
Christian Louboutins.
They also happened to be the
centerpieces for that day’s
shoot.
The same
rushed panic that had caused me to forget the shoes in
the first place had also left
me with barely enough time to scrape my
hair back into a casual bun and
slip on a creased T-shirt and pair of
jeans from my floor.
The latter
is a bigger sin than you think. Because where I
work, wearing anything other
than the most fashionable apparel
is sacrilege. People practically
throw holy water at you and start
wailing in Latin for fear that
you’ve been possessed by the demon
of bad fashion. In
fact,
a real demon possession, complete with a
backward-rolling head and the
ability to speak in tongues, would
be preferable to the demon of
last season’s handbag and Crocs
sandals.
So when I
finally got to work, underdressed, out of breath, without
the shoes, and over an hour
late, I was in serious trouble.
My boss was throwing a hissy
fit, due to lack of flowery scents in
her office, and her personal
assistant Cedric was in the throes of an
overly dramatic caffeine
withdrawal, due to lack of latte.
And it kept
getting worse.
Two hours
later the panicky fashion director summoned the
Louboutins. Those shoes had
been troublemakers from the start. It
had been an absolute trauma
getting them in the first place. They’d
been flown into South Africa
late the previous night, and I’d been
tasked with collecting them.
Everyone was holding their collective
breath for the grand arrival.
So when I was forced to confess to their
absence…well, you can
only imagine.
When lunch
finally arrived, I jumped into my car and sped home.
I had
exactly one hour to get in and out before the photo shoot, more
than enough time.
I pulled
into my driveway at breakneck speed, ran for the front
door, slipped my house keys
into the lock, and turned—
But…
Something
made me stop.
Something
told me not to go inside.
Something
was very wrong.
I looked
around nervously. Everything seemed normal. Peter
across the road was blasting
his TV as usual, the ratbag Chihuahua
from number 45 was running up
and down the garden perimeter
yapping at an unseen force, and
Mildred, my neighbor, was outside
watering her hydrangeas.
So why was I
hesitating?
I took a
deep breath and inched the door open.
Nothing
looked out of place.
Everything
was exactly the way I’d left it.
Yet everything
felt
wrong.
I slunk down
the hallway toward the kitchen, where I knew I’d
find the shoes perched next to
the coffeepot. But once inside, I was
hit by a terribly eerie
sensation…someone was in the house. A shiver
licked the length of my spine
when my suspicions were confirmed.
Creeeeaaakkk…A noise was
coming from my bedroom directly
above me.
Shit,
shit, shit, there was an intruder in the house!
I launched myself
at the cutlery drawer, grabbing the largest knife
I could find while
simultaneously dialing the police and still managing
to hold on to the shoes for
dear life.
“Police!
Help, there’s an intruder in my house. Forty-Seven Mendelssohn
Road, Oaklands. Quick.”
Now what?
I’d never been in a situation like this before. What
was the correct protocol?
Should I hide, evacuate the house, attack
the intruder, scream loudly? Or
perhaps a combination of the above?
I thought for a second before
deciding to get the fuck out of
there!
But just as I had one foot
safely installed outside the front door, I
heard another noise. This time
it was different. It was…
It sounded
like…
My blood ran
cold.
But it
couldn’t be. Trevv was at work. Trevv had a very important
day in court, he told me. His
client’s final hearing was today. Right
now, in fact. I’d called him
from my office about an hour ago and
he’d told me he was in court.
He
was in court, dammit!
I started
climbing the stairs.
More noises.
Two
voices?
But that was
impossible…wasn’t it?
The noises
grew louder and louder the farther up the stairs I
went. I’m not really sure at
what point I knew what the noises were
or knew what I was going to see
when I opened the door. But I just
knew.
It’s one
thing walking in on your boyfriend having sex with another
woman, but it’s another thing
entirely walking in on him the
second the other woman is
coming. She was facing the door but was
bouncing up and down so
vigorously that her face was a blur. And
then suddenly her body stiffened,
she threw her head back, opened
her mouth, and let out a
high-pitched wail. As if that wasn’t self explanatory
enough, she decided to toss in
a few words for good
measure.
“Yes,
Trevvy, yes. Oh my God, oh my God, oh Trevvy. Harder!
Ah, ah, ah.” *Pant,
pant, pant* “I’m coming!” *Long high-pitched
scream*
Now…there
were several things wrong with this picture, aside
from the obvious. Firstly, who the
hell screams like that in bed? No
one does! Sex is not so
good
that you have to break the sound barrier
with your squealing dolphin
sounds. Secondly, what the hell was
she wearing? She was clad in
some kind of leathery studded number
that looked like it had been
worn by one of the Village People. And
to make matters worse, Trevv
was blindfolded with the tie that I had
bought him two Christmases ago
and…OH MY GOD…were those,
were those…nipple
clamps?
I felt sick
to my stomach.
And
thirdly, who was this mystery woman without an ounce of cellulite,
without the slightest smidge of
fat, and with boobs that seemed
to defy all known natural laws
of gravity and motion? Which
woman can be that damn perfect…
…and then her features came
into focus and the answer dawned
on me.
Tess.
Tess
Blackman.
My
boyfriend’s “coworker.” The woman I’d invited into
my home on several occasions
for dinner. The woman that I always
phoned when I couldn’t get hold
of Trevv, because I knew they
were probably together working
on a case, tired and exhausted and
burning the midnight oil when
they’d rather be at home with their
significant others. She had a
fiancé after all.
Poor
overworked Trevv and Tess.
God, I was
naive.
But the show
didn’t end there. Tess’s eyes were still closed when
Trevv started making some
delightful grunting-moaning-squeaking
sounds. He’d
never made sounds like that with me before. His sweaty
hands reached up and grabbed at
her hungrily.
Faster.
Harder.
Loud, long
moan.
I was
frozen. It’s hard to know what to do when you watch your
partner of two years with his
penis somewhere you wouldn’t even
like to imagine, let alone witness
in full blinding daylight.
Once all
their postcoital panting had tapered off, Tess opened her
eyes and saw me standing in the
doorway. The look on her face was
indescribable. Shock and horror
and fear all at the same time. And
then she opened her mouth and
screamed.
Trevv then
turned his head toward the door and whipped off his
blindfold. Our eyes locked and
then he did something truly bizarre.
Unexpected. He grabbed Tess by
the hand and dragged her to the
other side of the bed.
“Anne,
please…you don’t want to do this.” Trevv threw his hands
in the air defensively. He
looked terrified. She was bleating hysterically
by this stage.
What was
going on? Wasn’t I the jilted one? Wasn’t I
the
one
that was supposed to be upset?
I started walking toward them, which
seemed to only make matters
worse.
“Anne,
please. Please.” He seemed to be begging now. “Think
about what you’re doing. I know
this is bad, but this isn’t the way to
handle it. Please don’t do
this.”
Things
happened pretty quickly after that. Suddenly, the room
was filled with armed police
officers. I was about to tell them they
could all go home, when Trevv
cut me off.
“She has a
knife. She’s going to kill us!” he shouted, pointing at me.
What
knife? I glanced at my hands, and that’s when I realized I
was still holding the large
knife, and it was pointed in their direction.
I quickly
turned to explain. “I wasn’t going to—”
“Ma’am…” One
of the police officers cut me off and started creeping
toward me as if I was a feral
pit bull that hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Put down
your weapon.”
“I swear,
this isn’t what you think, I was just trying to—”
BAM!
Face
on floor, handcuffs around wrists.
Three really
painful things happened at that point: One, the knife
slipped and cut the entire
length of my palm. Two, some of my
newly acquired, gorgeous nails
snapped off. And three, the crystal-encrusted,
six-inch heel of the priceless
Louboutin snapped off,
rolled across the floor
lifelessly, and disappeared under the bed.
