Devil lures with Desire

“Take the leap.” That was Sara encouraging Christine to hit the dance floor, with the most handsome man at the club. The women duo were out for a drink that evening to flush some of the unpleasant experiences of their professional lives during the day, while celebrating their virtually non-existent personal and social time. They can be described as successful workaholics, enjoying the pressures of the corporate world and the high-flying life that it rewarded with, in return.

They were regulars in the club, settled at a table that afforded them a view of almost the entire place – the dance floor, the music console, the bar counter and the people. The staff in the club knew the women enjoyed their drink and dance, were generous with the tip and were respectful in their behavior towards them.

Christine was leaving the table when her phone rang. While the tone was barely audible amidst the loud music, the phone’s vibrator reverberated on the table perceptibly. “How does my husband remember to call me at just the wrong time?” she mutters to Sara, who sighs in response. Christine is in a marriage less successful than her career. Her husband is a jet-setting corporate executive who displays his trophy wife in his social circles, especially if it meant it would help him close a business deal or coerce a partner to sign up to his terms.

Leaving the phone unanswered, Christine walks up to the tall and enigmatic stranger who had asked to dance with her minutes ago. After a brief conversation, they are on the dance floor grooving to the music of the day, with Sara looking on with an almost victorious grin writ all over her perfectly sculpted face. The club staff who noticed Christine on the dance floor were surprised. This was a first – for either of the women to entertain interaction outside of the group they were accompanied by.

With a drink in hand, Sara calls her all-weather companion, Jeff to join her that night. A single attractive woman in her early 30s, Sara had no qualms about pre, extra marital or any other kind of sex – with people, of course. Her scruples and beliefs were defined around living a full life, fulfilling every desire and pursuing today’s pleasure without the compulsions of virtues and redemption for her soul.

Sara sought the loving and simple Christine out at work, not just to befriend a kind-hearted colleague. She was well aware of Christine’s husband’s renown as the corporate Casanova, having met him at his wooing best in a party.  She was also well-informed about Christine’s family values – word gets around in office! Sara was keen to guide Christine out of her outdated monogamous, staid and uneventful life to that of a contemporary and more fun one. It was almost as if she was hoping that Christine’s idealism would give her a hope for relationships beyond physical intimacy.

Two years thence, Christine was open to the idea of dancing with a good-looking stranger in a club!

After about a half hour, when Sara rises to leave the table, the couple are indulging in much more than dancing. She walks up to them, whispers an apology for interrupting, hands Christine her phone and bids them a great evening together before leaving the club to welcome Jeff at her plush apartment.  

The following morning Sara is rustling up data for her presentation at the management team meeting. Until ten minutes to the meeting, Christine is not in. Generally, she would have been amongst the first at her desk on such important days at work. Sara’s phone rings, breaking her out of her minute-long reverie about Christine’s whereabouts. Sara hears a yet hoarse Christine at the other end stating that she had resigned earlier in the morning and that she is expected to visit the office mid-morning to hand over her corporate assets like identity card, laptop etc. Too stunned to react with extra questions, Sara tries to get her attention back to the presentation because Christine had already hung up. Promptly thereafter, she receives an all-organisation email communication announcing Christine’s departure.

The buzz at the management team meet – of which Christine would have been a part on any other day – was their colleague’s rather unceremonious departure. Given Sara’s proximity to Christine, her colleagues go into a hushed silence as she enters the boardroom. Her Finance colleague takes the seat next to her with a nod and a greeting as the meeting begins.

Sara’s day passes in a whirlwind of meetings and her management presentation, with her mind not leaving Christine for more than a minute. She is closeted in customer meetings even when Christine visits office one last time. Her phone was unusually silent all day.

At the end of the day, drained from balancing the emotional with the professional, she was packing her bag to leave for the day when her HR colleague walks in coffee mugs in hand, requesting a conversation. Under usual circumstances, she would have declined the unscheduled meeting, but not today. She was keen to elicit as much as she could from him about Christine’s departure, not realizing that her HR colleague was in the mood for answers and not questions.

Sara narrates the previous evening’s happenings. He offers to sketch the rest of Christine’s evening to Sara, leading up to her resignation earlier in the day.

Christine had decided to accompany her dancefloor companion to his hotel room for ‘coffee’. Her husband who was then travelling overseas on work informed her parents living in the city that Christine was not to be reached after over a dozen calls went unanswered. Her parents after further unsuccessful attempts at reaching her phone, approached the police, who with phone tracking zeroed in on the hotel as her location. With the help of hotel staff, they not just identify the couple and their hotel room, but find an inebriated and half-dressed Christine responding to the doorbell, with her dancing companion motionless in bed!

Taken aback by the presence of her parents and local police officers, Christine raises an alarm about being held hostage by the dancing stranger in his hotel room. The hotel staff – and later the CCTV footage – reveal a willing Christine on the stranger’s arm headed to the elevator. The police divulge to the shocked onlookers that the man on the bed had overdosed on cocaine and that Christine would have to be taken into custody.

Her husband was flying back to India, her parents had hired the best criminal attorney in the city and Christine had resigned this morning, making her last call at office accompanied by a woman constable.

Sara scurries into her belongings to fish her phone out, to see several calls from unknown numbers. Her phone had been on silent since last night. Her preoccupations this morning didn’t allow her to notice this detail. She knew she was not too far away from a visit from the local law enforcement.

At the organization level, the PR machinery was in action averting a media scandal around one of their top executives, as the reportage around this incident is unlikely to temper down any time soon.

All it took was just one leap, with the Devil taking care of the spiral down to the bottomless pit of agony, shame and loss. Exciting enough?