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step down on the mess I’ve made, enjoying the sound of shattered glass crunching beneath my sensible shoes.
    *     *     *
    I T’S LATE NOW. I’ve taken a shower, tried to rinse away the embarrassment and anger with a cheap shampoo. I went too far, that’s all. Like the corporations I work with, I am multifaceted, complicated. And like the corporations, there are some departments of my soul that just need to be shut down.
    But I do have my strengths. I’m good at my job. I can recognize untapped potential, see strength where others see nothing, and I can find ways to optimize those strengths until all anyone else sees is power.
    I sit down at my computer, my hair wet and hanging over the white cotton of a short Donna Karan robe. The terrycloth lining soaks up the moisture from my body and adds a softness that the night has lacked so far.
    I send Mr. Dade an e-mail: “I need to meet with the director of your mobile phone security software division. Can we set up a meeting for Monday?”
    It’s an obvious area for growth. Already there’s been buzz about some of the products they’ve introduced. It addresses a need, feeds into a society’s fears . . . there is always so much profit in fear. Insurance companies, Hollywood thrillers, cars with more airbags than cup-holders—they all bank on it.
    My Mac chimes as a message pops up: an invitation from Mr. Dade for video conferencing.
    My fingers hover over the keyboard, then move to the belt of my robe, pulling it a little tighter. I could ignore this. It’s eleven o’clock on a Friday night.
    I should have waited until I was dressed to send that e-mail.
    I could dress now, put on a suit, pin up my hair, but who wears a suit while at home at eleven on a Friday night? He’ll know I made an effort for him, not an effort to please but an effort nonetheless. He’ll know the affect he’s had on me, and that simply is not an acceptable option.
    For some reason, rejecting the invitation doesn’t feel like an option, either. And part of me knows that my thinking, my compulsion to press Accept, is no good. But I don’t listen to that part of me. Not tonight. It’s speaking with too soft a voice for me to feel the weight of its wisdom.
    I press Accept.
    Mr. Dade appears on my screen like an apparition I summoned from some dark imaginings. He’s composed as he watches me from the comfort of his home. In the background I can see his bed. The duvet is a light, glowing orange that reminds me of flames.
    “I didn’t expect to hear from you,” he says. “Do you always work this late on Friday nights?”
    “It was just an e-mail,” I say, trying to keep my expression cool, lofty, compensating for the intimacy of the white robe. “I wasn’t expecting to conference. It was your invitation that was out of place.”
    “Ah, but it was a working e-mail. I assume you’ll bill me for the time it took you to write it, and probably for the extra minutes it took you to think of it, and even to turn your computer on, probably. You choose your own schedule, Kasie. You chose this as a working hour, and right now you’re working for me. It’s my expectation that during the hours that you work for me, you make yourself fully available . . . to me.”
    The words excite me but I press my lips into a hard line that I hope will help me draw the line in the sand that is necessary here. “I’m always available to talk about work, Mr. Dade.”
    “You can call me Robert.”
    “If we were friends, I would call you Robert.”
    “And we’re not friends?”
    He leans back and for the first time, I can see the graceful curves of the chair he sits in. An antique, perhaps from the eighteenth century. It’s a chair that speaks of domination and royalty, but mostly it speaks of money.
    I understand money. I can handle it, manipulate it. I can handle this man in his ridiculously expensive chair.
    “No,” I say firmly. “We’re not friends.”
    “Lovers then? What do you call