Chapter 7: The List Grows Longer
The office was a tomb. Fluorescent light buzzed overhead, bleaching the color from everything. Aidan shut the door, leaning against it. The silence was a physical relief after the hotel suite’s lingering echoes. Here, there was only the hum of the air conditioner and the faint smell of dust and old paper.
He’d come straight from the Dhara Dhevi, showered in his own bathroom, trying to scrub the scent of tequila and other people from his skin. He’d put on a crisp shirt, khakis. The uniform of Professor Walters. It felt like a costume now, threadbare and ill-fitting.
He saw them immediately. A small, neat stack of creamy envelopes, fanned out on the linoleum where they’d been slipped under the door.
His stomach tightened. He didn’t move for a full minute.
Finally, he walked over, knelt, and gathered them. They were unmarked, sealed with simple adhesive flaps. He carried them to his desk, the cracked lamp casting a yellowed circle of light. He sat. The framed photo of Sarah smiled at him from the corner, frozen in a Brighton sunset from a lifetime ago. He turned it face down.
The first envelope contained a single sheet of expensive linen paper. The handwriting was elegant, looping.
Professor Walters, it began. Thursday, 9 PM. The Riverside Bar. I will be wearing a red dress. I wish to be taken in the bathroom. Do not speak to me beforehand. - K.
The second was on simpler paper, the script rushed.
Aidan. Saturday afternoon. My apartment. Soi 3. I have ropes. I want to see if you can get free. - Jin
The third. The fourth. The fifth.
Each one was a different handwriting, a different paper, a different fantasy. A hotel room. The back of a parked car. A private garden. Some were blunt, others poetic. All were directives. Appointment slips for a very specific service.
Twelve envelopes.
He spread them out like a tarot reading predicting a month of sheer, exhausting fornication. The hollow feeling from the hotel crystallized into a sharp, cold knot behind his sternum. This was the list. Vit’s list. It wasn’t just a concept anymore. It was paper and ink, dates and times. It was a curriculum.
He picked up his phone. His thumb hovered, then hit her name.
She answered on the second ring. “Back among the living, Professor?” Prae’s voice was bright, edged with the usual smoky amusement.
“There are envelopes. In my office.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Vit’s assistant. Discreet. It’s better than texts, no? More romantic.” He could hear the smile in her voice.
“It’s a fucking schedule, Prae.”
“It’s a menu,” she corrected, her tone shifting, becoming pragmatic. “And you’re the special. Now, be quiet. I’m outside.”
A knock at the office door, soft and firm.
He hung up, stunned, and opened it. She slipped in, a folder tucked under her arm. She was dressed for her bar job—black jeans, a tight black tank top, her hair a sleek waterfall. She brought in a wave of warmth and the faint smell of street food and jasmine.
“You came here?” he said, glancing nervously into the empty hallway.
“Why not? It’s a university. People have meetings.” She closed the door and locked it. The click was definitive. She surveyed his desk, the scattered envelopes. “Good. They all found you.” She approached, placed the folder next to the chaos, and opened it.
Inside was a printed spreadsheet. Days of the week ran down the left. Timeslots were blocked out in different colors. Names were neatly typed. K. Jin. Lina. May. It was a symphony of logistics.
“I’ve cross-referenced their requests with your teaching schedule and your… recovery time,” she said, her finger tracing the grid. “The surgeon, Nok, asked for a follow-up on the 18th. I put her in the evening, after your seminar. The businesswoman from the hotel wants a repeat, but at her house. That’s a weekend, see? Saturday night. More time.”
Aidan stared at her, at the meticulous planner. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I never kid about scheduling. It’s the key to happiness.” She looked up, met his eyes. “Vit is impressed. The feedback from the first three has been… exuberant. He says if you complete the full list of twelve by the end of the month, there’s a bonus. A big one. Cash. Enough for a new motorbike. Or a very long vacation.”
“I don’t want a motorbike.”
“What do you want, Aidan?” she asked, not unkindly, but with a probing directness. “You wanted adventure. You wanted to feel desired. You have it. This is the logical conclusion. You’re a resource in high demand. This is how you manage that demand.” She tapped the spreadsheet. “This is how you avoid drowning in it.”
He looked from her face to the pinned equations on his whiteboard, the symbols of a world of pure, clean logic. Then to the envelopes, the handwritten dreams of strangers. Then to Prae’s schedule, the bridge between the two. It was monstrous. It was genius.
He was a prized stallion. A theorem to be proven again and again.
“And what’s in it for you?” he asked, the question now a worn-out refrain.
“I get a cut of the bonus,” she said bluntly, her business face on. “Manager’s fee. And I get to keep my favourite toy in working order.” Her hand reached out, smoothed the front of his shirt. “And I get this. The look on your face right now. The moment you give in.”
His resistance, what was left of it, was a thin wire. It snapped. He felt his shoulders drop. A sigh escaped him, part surrender, part exhaustion. “Fine.”
“Good.” Prae’s smile was victorious. She plucked a pushpin from his corkboard, turned, and fixed the spreadsheet to the center, right over a faded notice about faculty pensions. It hung there, a new calendar, a new scripture.
She turned back to him. The professional mask melted away, replaced by something hotter, more intimate. “The first one is tomorrow. K. The red dress. Bathroom scene. You’ll be good for her?”
“I’m always good.”
“I know.” She closed the distance between them. Her body was a compact line of heat against his. She looked up at him, her dark eyes searching his. “That’s why I picked you.”
She kissed him. It wasn’t like the kisses in the hotel, all theatre and possession. This was different. Softer. A whisper against his mouth, a promise and an apology tangled together. It tasted of mint and the bitter coffee she must have drunk on the way over. It felt, for a terrifying second, real.
Then she broke away, patted his chest, and stepped back. The moment fractured.
“Don’t be late,” she said, her voice returning to its normal, playful cadence. She unlocked the door, slipped into the hallway, and was gone.
The office hummed. Aidan didn’t move. He stared at the spreadsheet pinned to his board, the colored blocks a mosaic of his impending nights. He looked at the face-down photo of his wife. He looked at the equations, unsolved.
He picked up a dry-erase marker from his desk. Walking to the whiteboard, he stared at a complex, half-finished proof. In the margin, in clean, precise script, he wrote a single line, unrelated to the mathematics.
K. Red dress. Riverside Bar. 9 PM.
He capped the marker. The sound was final. He had just written his own reality over the top of everything else. The story was his now, even if he wasn't sure he was the one telling it. The month stretched ahead, a tunnel of flesh and whispers, with Prae’s kiss still burning on his lips and her schedule mapping the only way through.