Page 4 of Audacity

Heavenly Father, what the hell am I doing?

I collapse on the bed, flinging my forearm over my face to keep the dratted overhead lights out of my eyes. She left them on—smart woman. Probably knew I’d pass straight back out if she turned them off again.

At least there’s no sign of the person I fucked earlier this evening. Waking up with her would have been arguably more horrifying than waking up to a traumatised cleaner—especially because I no longer recall her name.

(My fuck, that is.)

Wait—did I finish? I did, didn’t I?

The low-grade chafing of my dick confirms for me that no, I did not fall asleep on the job and I remember that yes, I did indeed acquit myself with honours before I passed out. She liked it when I got her on her hands and knees.

Shereallyliked it.

I summon the energy to move my arm and drag my hand down over my face. If forsaking one’s vows and leaving thepriesthood to assume the management of eight billion crisp British pounds of assets was a common enough occurrence to warrant being a cliché, I would indeed be a cliché.

As it is, I’m simply a laughingstock.

I’m also stiff—not in a good way—and fucking freezing. These beds have satin fitted sheets but no actual coverings—an attempt to prevent dipshits like me getting too comfortable, presumably.

I groan aloud and haul myself off the bed. A glance at my watch tells me it’s just after four in the morning.

I am a joke.

The winter sun is a small comfort, I suppose. It’s streaming through the windows of my office, hitting my monitor in exactly the wrong place, but I welcome it.

I ended up coming straight into the office when I left Alchemy this morning. God knows, I needed a shower, but I wasn’t about to use the room’s ensuite when the poor cleaners were waiting to purge the scene of my sins of the flesh. I have a large bathroom and shower here—it’s useful when I jog into work—so I washed myself and proceeded to lie wakefully on the sofa opposite my desk for a couple of hours before yielding to the inevitable.

I’d had my sleep for the night.

My Alchemy membership was supposed to be a stopgap for me. An interim measure. My mate Anton Wolff suggested it a few months ago, when I may as well have still been a priest. Casting aside my vow of poverty was inevitable for a man in my position. A necessary evil.

Casting aside my vow of celibacy sat far less well with me… until it didn’t. But, much like the money and the whisky and every other numbing technique I’ve abused since assuming this role, the blessed lustre of my orgasms has faded and now I simply feel grubby. Shame-filled.

It’s not exactly a surprise. One of Christianity’s foundational concepts is that base, fleeting pleasures will never bring the kind of everlasting peace and joy that spiritual pleasures do. Still, I find myself in some kind of joyless vicious circle where the overwhelm of this new version of my life necessitates constant, aggressive numbing. I’m drowning in this toxic whirlpool of materially-driven stress, and until I find my flippers, I need regular life-aids.

Which brings me to the move I know I need to make. The move that, of all the sins I’ve committed in the past twelve months, feels grubbier, more exploitative, more transgressive, than the rest.

I reach into my desk drawer and pull out a small rectangle of card, pressing my finger and thumb to diagonally opposing sides and spinning it. It’s pale pink and made from heavy card stock. On the front, a pair of intricate gold angel wings and a single debossed word.

Seraph.

Anton passed me this card last week at Alchemy when I was just as exhausted as I was last night. Even more convenient than sex on tap at a club, he argued, was having sex on tap at work. An MBA-qualified executive assistant from Seraph, an agency he founded, would apparently sort me out on every front. She’d service me whenever I needed it, particularly during office hours, and keep me sated enough that eight hours’ sleep might become a reality.

The level of fatalism with which I’ve been approaching many of life’s decisions these past few months is frankly terrifying. I’mon a rickety rollercoaster with very little, if any, sense of control over this path along which I’m hurtling. But nothing saysabject moral decaylike picking up the phone to employ a prostitute in my place of work.

I pick up the phone.

My conversation with Anton leaves me jittery. He’s promised to put in a call to Athena, his own former EA and the woman whose praises he and his successor, Max, sang that night at Alchemy. According to them, Athena is a walking epiphany: physically sensational and terrifyingly competent on every front.

If she can’t or won’t entertain the notion of jumping ship from her current employer, a guy Anton quotes as being “a total fucking waste of her body and her personality”, he will call the Seraph CEO and have her meet with me to find me the right candidate, a process so daunting that I’m already shitting myself.

It’s with fatigue and a growing sense of self-loathing that I drag myself from my desk and over to one of the small rooms adjoining my office. Dad used it as a store room when he ran this place, but a spontaneous and horrifyingly expensive trip to Sotheby’s auction house shortly after I took over the running of this financial behemoth had me anointing his store room with a new function.

There it is.

On a table in the dimly lit space sits an illuminated glass case, its contents more nourishing for my soul than any amount of sex or scotch.

Above it, a simple crucifix hangs on the wall.

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