“Very smart. Very Jean Seberg,” the nice man at the vintage video shop had told her on seeing her thus shorn, while remembering having seen her earlier in the week with a gloriously full head of blonde hair. While on a clear day she would have walked the mile into the village or ridden Laura’s bike, the threatening storm called for more protection and Amanda drove Hugo’s old bottle green Jag into town.
Once she got to the shop she had to unlock the doors and put on all the lights, play the answering machine back and return any business related calls. There were none. Then she went back into Hugo’s office and stroked on his Mac to view any emails from customers relating to both his antiques business and his sideline publishing business, which was responsible for the New Rod Quarterly, a spanking magazine originally co-edited by her mother with Hugo approximately twenty years before. The mode of publication of the journal had changed over twenty years, but the content was still concerned with high quality corporal punishment fiction, photography and art, augmented by articles and letters, advice and reviews, referrals and the type of ads which could only be of interest to spanking enthusiasts. Hugo had instructed her to reply to none of the antiques related queries and all of the spanking ones, trusting to her instincts as a self confessed practitioner of the spanking arts to provide the right answers even to questions she had never considered before. She was “into it” and she was his daughter. She already had spanking boyfriends, had written, shot and directed spanking video scenes, had done professional spanking sessions. As far as Hugo was concerned, Amanda was as qualified to handle his spanking business in his absence as anyone could have been. He had always been an active booster of female initiative in the scene, discovering new artists and writers and helping them to get their work in print and in Amanda’s modern case, on video.
It had been through Hugo’s offices on her behalf that she had worked out a deal with Ambrose Bartlett to shoot her video spanking scenes at Bartlett’s department store the previous Christmas Day. Amanda’s new best friend Pamela knew nothing about the subsequent consequences of this privilege granted Amanda by Bartlett, which had been to submit to a hard, nude, tear-provoking corporal punishment session at his hands, in his executive office at the store. As far as Pamela knew, Bartlett had only permitted Amanda and some of her college friends to shoot some video footage at the store as a favor to his friend Hugo Sands.
Amanda had a phone number to contact Hugo in Italy and ask him any questions she couldn’t figure out the answers to herself. So far she had not called him. His computer files were meticulously organized and she was fully capable of doing searches and digging up information for readers and subscribers by herself. And if she couldn’t figure something out for herself, she called Susan Ross or Marguerite Alexander for advice, as these two friends of hers and long time protégées of Hugo were immensely conversant with scene minutia, from professional referrals to the various availabilities of books, movies and supplementary erotic publications, along with support groups, party hosts world wide and related websites. Hugo had told her to make herself as helpful and useful to the scene as she possibly could and the scene in turn was sure to make itself helpful and useful to her.
Amanda saw there were several orders for subscriptions to the New Rod Quarterly to process. Hugo had quickly taught her how to put through a charge card order and how to postage envelopes using his postage machine and she had agreed to fulfill the important duty of shipping out new and back issues to readers during the month of Hugo’s absence. This process involved packaging, postaging and taking the orders into the post office to be mailed. Amanda had an excellent memory for routines and with a little help from Sloan Taylor, the co-owner of Marguerite Alexander’s bookshop across the street, she got everything to work and managed to start processing orders almost immediately. Just as she was printing out address labels, the doorbell tinkled on the outer door of the shop.
Amanda rushed out to the floor to greet the first customer of the day and to her surprise she found herself confronting Raphael Price at ten twenty am. He was dressed in a black long sleeved shirt and black jeans. His long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he had a sexy two days’ growth of hair on his chin and upper lip. Amanda now noticed that his eyes were nut brown and his hands long and graceful as he put one out to shake hers.
“Hello Amanda. Remember me from last night, Raphael?” he asked, holding her slim hand between both of his for a long moment as he smiled at her.
“Of course I do,” she replied, self consciously pulling her hand away to run it through her half inch of hair.
“Not used to the haircut yet?” he smiled.
Amanda shook her head abstractly, suddenly happier to gaze into his kind, friendly eyes than to worry about her hair.
“It suits you. Gives you even greater power.”
“Thank you. But why would you think I wouldn’t remember you? I practically propositioned you!” she exclaimed, because it was a warm, wet June day, she was almost nineteen and the blood was coursing through her veins.
“You did proposition me. It gave me chills.”
“I think you get propositioned all the time,” Amanda accused him, daring to survey him from the golden chest vee emerging from his open collared shirt to the smart shine on his black urban walkers.
Raphael shook his head and lied, “No, of course I don’t.”
“May I bring you some coffee?” she asked.
“I get coffee too? Thank you,” he smiled, and began to cast a practiced buyer’s eye around the shop. She left him to browse in the front room while she made her way to the galley next to Hugo’s office to start the coffee. When she returned to him she found that he had moved a large, ornate, gilt mirror away from the wall against which it had been leaning and dragged it towards the main counter.
“I definitely want this,” he said.
“Oh, how nice!” Amanda cried. People who spent money in the shop were rare. Then she remembered the rich, fancy customer she had brought Raphael the previous night and realized that she was receiving quid pro quo! This was classic economics in action. Colby would appreciate this anecdote, she thought gleefully, then pulled herself up short and realized that the magnetic Raphael Price ought never to be introduced into a conversation she might hold with her distant sweetheart, but should be in fact a closely kept summer secret. The first really loud clap of thunder sounded above them and Amanda gave a start. “How do you like your coffee?” she asked, noting that he had pulled a perfectly preserved walnut telephone table and matching upholstered chair from the 1950’s away from the wall.
“With a little milk, thank you. And you might as well get your tape, I’m seeing a lot of things I need for my house,” Raphael delighted her by saying. She ran behind the counter and got a roll of pink tape out to mark the pieces he picked out.
“Did you say that you just recently moved into the area?” she asked.
“Just this year. And my house is half empty. Maybe you can point out some of the nicest things? I know you have excellent taste.”
“Well, I just started working here, so I’m not exactly familiar with the stock, but let’s stroll up and down the aisles together and see what there is,” she suggested.
“That sounds great.”
Amanda