HOOKED

There's a financial newspaper on my desk and it says that Georgie Kalvos is dead. I'm half wishing he's doing a stint in hell and half hoping he's got plenty of good looking women down there to keep him company - yes, and an occasional bottle of ouzo to slake his thirst too. It's been many years since I last saw him and if I'm going to remember him I'll remember him as he was. A middle aged man with the smile of a boy, the build of a gorilla, the manners of a courtier and the morals of a shark.
 
 Talking of sharks, I wonder if Collette at her ranch in Nevada is remembering Georgie and the first girl who ever turned a trick for her? For a long time I resented Collette and Georgie because they made a fool out of me. Yet if Collette was here now I'd gladly share a toast with her to our Greek lover's memory. Collette runs a brothel and I run a bank, and still I think that Georgie was one of the few real man that either one of us has ever known.
 
 Slowly, I rub my palms over my desk, thinking back to that other manager's office, that other desk, the one that creaked underneath my weight as the bars of sunlight leaking through the blinds fell onto the dollar bills jammed into the tops of my bank-uniform nylons. I remember the roughness of Georgie's hands between my opened thighs and Collette's excited voice jeering at me: "Hey, Yvonne, I think he wants to make a deposit in you!"
 
 It was when I'd first joined the bank, as a teenage junior teller. It was a time when all the world loved the Beatles, when computers were still out of sight and out of mind, and when I was terribly excited about living away from home for the first time. Not that the branch I'd started in was located anywhere at all exciting. Just a small fishing town where the fresh sea breeze was often tainted with the smell of drying nets and diesel fumes from the trawlers.
 
 The bank had arranged accommodation in the local YWCA, and it was Collette who showed me around it for the first time. She was a plump, cheerful girl with a bubbly personality who had the room next to mine and also worked at the bank. In fact the bank was such a small one that Collette and I were the sole full time staff, plus the manager. The only other employee was a local married woman who came in during the mornings to help with the bookwork.
 
 Though everything seemed fine at first I soon had an vague impression that Collette had something on her mind that she wanted to talk about. One afternoon she invited me into her room to share some beer she'd smuggled in and to have a little chat. It turned out to be a little chat with some big surprises in it.
 
 "Listen, Yvonne, I've got a private arrangement at the bank. The thing is, I need your help to keep it going. The girl who had your job before was happy to help out and I'm hoping you'll do the same."
 
 My first reaction was a horrible fear that I was being invited to help cook the books.
 
 "God, no," Collette had answered, laughing. "No, it's nothing like that at all. It's to do with Georgie Kalvos."
 
 As new as I was in town I already knew something about Georgie, a classic immigrant success story. He'd arrived in town as a teenager with only the clothes on his back and hardly able to speak a word of English. A lot of people thought that originally he'd jumped ship. If so, it had been the first of many smart moves: now he owned four fishing boats, a processing plant and even the trucks that took his catch off to the markets had his name on their sides. But what he and Collette could have in common I couldn't imagine. So I asked her.
 
 "Well . . ," Collette seemed rather coy. "Before I go back to the city I'd like to make as much spare cash as I can. And what Georgie wants is some fun on the side. He's certainly got the money to pay for it. The problem is that this is a small town and his wife is a Greek as well. You know how jealous these foreign wives can be about every little thing."
 
 I hardly knew anything at all about marriage or marriages, whether foreign or domestic. But I just nodded.
 
 "So, we've got this arrangement. Every Thursday afternoon our boss goes off to the weekly managers' meeting upstate. Which just leaves me and the other teller in the branch. Which also means that from now on you'll be the other teller, right?"
 
 Yes, I said, I supposed so. Of course this was a small town back in an era when people went on holiday without bothering to lock their doors and bank robberies only happened in Westerns.
 
 "So what?" I asked.
 
 "So on Thursday afternoons Georgie comes in to collect the payroll for his workers."
 
 "What about it?"
 
 Collette sighed in frustration and looking back I can't blame her. I must have led an incredibly sheltered life.
 
 "Yvonne, what I'm trying to tell you is that when he arrives I take him into the manager's office to get the money out of the safe. He'll arrive just before closing time and we'll be in there for about an hour. So I'd be really grateful if you'd cash up and keep look-out for us until I let him out of the back door. And please don't come knocking on the office door unless you have to."
 
 I nearly dropped my glass in surprise when I finally understood what she was talking about: "In the bank! You're doing it with a customer in the bank!"
 
 "I told you, he has to be very careful about his wife not finding out. So going to the bank for the payroll is a perfect alibi. Who's ever going to suspect that anything would be going on there?"
 
 "But, Collette, why do you do it?"
 
 "For money, that's why. He leaves me a hundred dollar tip from the wages afterwards."
 
 I was astonished all over again. In those days fifty dollars was a good wage for a week's work. For a woman, anyway.
 
 "Look, all I need is for you not to tell anyone. It's worth ten bucks for you to cover for me. The important thing is that you keep an eye open for the boss coming back early from the meeting and maybe dropping into the bank on his way home. He never has done yet but it might happen sometime. If it does just ring the office bell under the counter and then keep him talking as long as you can. It doesn't have to be all that long because I always keep most of my clothes on - all except the really important bits."
 
 I recall how she'd giggled in amusement at her own bravado. I'd thought she was a silly little girl who was one day going to miserably sad about how she'd sacrificed her virtue for a few dollars. Yes, I know, it sounds like a story that should have dragons and knights in shining armor in it, but the world was different then, or at least a lot of us thought it was. Anyway, if anybody wants to look for a moral in all this, Collette is now worth millions whilst I'm still looking after other peoples' money.
 
 At the time though I was as stuck up and snotty as only a young fool can be. I'd said that I didn't want her dollars and whatever she did with Mr Kalvos was her business and nothing to do with me.
 
 "Well, suit yourself," Collette had answered cheerfully. "Susie, the last girl, she had a different ideas altogether. I'd better not tell you about what the pair of us got up to though, or you'll be really shocked."
 
 Shocked! - and this was the same girl I'd seen carrying the collection plate around in church on Sunday!
 
 "But you won't tell on me?"
 
 "No, I won't say anything - but, Collette, isn't it - well, awful - to do it with an old man? An older man, anyway."
 
 That had amused her a lot: "Yvonne, Georgie is a wonderful lover. If you ever find a man half as good you'll be lucky. Anyway, always remember, the older the man is the more likely he is to be telling you the truth about his vasectomy!"
 
 It was a conversation which made me think I still had a lot to learn about life. It was also a long time before I got to sleep that night - especially as it was a Wednesday night. You could say I was gripped by a lot of conflicting emotions. But for all my brave words it was my curiosity which was most stirred. I'd always thought sex for normal women was all to do with marriage and white gowns and honeymoons and lifelong romance - not something to be bought and sold in a bank office like any other commodity. Or was it all some huge joke that Collette was playing on me? I finally decided it had to be a joke, and that she must have a very strange sense of humor.
 
 Georgie Kalvos arrived precisely when Collette said he would, and we both called him Mr Kalvos respectfully; after all, he was the bank's biggest customer. Even so, with just the three of us there, I would have expected to see some signs of the relationship Collette had told me about. I was more sure than ever that it had all been a joke.
 
 On the other hand, things continued to go exactly as Collette had predicted. They went off to the manager's office together and after I'd locked the front doors and emptied the cash registers they were still in there. Almost a quarter of an hour by then. Something more than checking the payroll had to be going on in there, but what? Where they really having sex together, or was Collette teaching him double entry book keeping or something?
 
 It was driving me crazy, not knowing. There was a way to find out though - just to slip out very quietly into the corridor and listen for a few seconds. Whatever was going on in the office, I should get a clue to it from some very discreet eavesdropping. I'd like to say I had to struggle with my conscience before I decided to do it, but the truth is that my conscience was as curious as the rest of me.
 
 When I tiptoed out into the gloomy corridor I was totally surprised to find that the manager's office door was half opened. What was more, I could hear Collette muttering softly and giggling. Like a cat being drawn towards catmint I simply couldn't help taking a few more steps down the corridor. And what I finally saw made me gasp and then clasp my hands to my mouth to belatedly stifle the sound. For Collette was bent over the desk, her back to the door. She was still wearing the white crisp blouse which, with a dark skirt, was the bank's summer uniform. But she certainly wasn't wearing her skirt, just a wispy pair of black panties, a black suspender belt and uniform issue dark stockings. It was a sight which made my heart jump, my mouth go dry and set my legs trembling.
 
 For some reason I had a sudden mental picture of Collette standing in her booth and calmly serving the customers the way she was now, perfectly normal from the waist up and practically naked below. In fact I'd never before seen panties like the ones she was wearing, of the thinnest silk and briefest cut imaginable, panties which looked as if they would float like thistle seed if somebody threw them into the air. In fact that seemed to be exactly their raison d'etre, to be dragged off their wearer and tossed carelessly aside by some lust crazed male. Even at the time I couldn't help wondering where the shop was that she'd bought them from.
 
 George appeared in the doorway, also with his back to me. In his hand were what looked like a wad of bills. I saw him take one of them in his other hand, fold it and slip it into Collette's stocking tops. Then the same hand lifted up and gently caressed the gusset of her panties. Collette giggled again, stirred around on the desk top and then hissed approvingly. Her well rounded buttocks lifted up higher in an obvious invitation to Georgie's fingers, which probed a line of blonde curls that had suddenly appeared in the panties. I found myself blushing at the sight.
 
 

...CONTINUES IN THE MEMBERS SECTION