Little Bee by Chris Cleave Read Free Book Online

grown?
    I
was interested in how this new kind of orgasm was meant to work. I looked up
from texting.
    “How
come you can only have it with your boss?”
    “It’s
a forbidden-fruit thing, isn’t it? You get an extra frisson from breaking the
office taboo. From hormones and neurotransmitters and so
forth. You know. Science.”
    “Um. Have scientists actually proved this?”
    “Don’t
get empirical with me, Sarah. We’re talking about a whole new realm of sexual
pleasure. We’re calling it the B-spot. B, as in boss. See what we did there?”
    “Ingenious.”
    “Thank
you darling. We do try.”
    I
wept inwardly at the thought of women up and down the country being pleasured
by middle managers in shiny-bottomed suits. On the flatscreen, News 24 had panned
from the Middle East to Africa. Different landscape, same
column of thick black smoke. A pair of jaundiced eyes looking out with
the same impassivity Andrew had shown, just before I turned away to leave for
work. The hairs on my arms went up again. I looked away, and took the three
steps to the window that gave out onto Commercial Street. I put my forehead
against the glass, which is something I do when I’m trying to think.
    “Are
you all right, Sarah?”
    “I’m
fine. Listen, be a doll and go and grab us a couple of coffees, would you?”
    Clarissa
went off to our idiosyncratic coffee machine, the one that would have been an
in-house salon de thé in Vogue ’s
offices. Down on Commercial Street, a police patrol car pulled up and parked at
the curb in front of our building. A uniformed officer got out on each side.
They looked at each other over the patrol-car roof. One of them had blond,
cropped hair and the other had a bald patch as round and neat as a monk’s. I
watched him tilt his head to listen to the radio on his lapel. I smiled,
thinking absently about a project Charlie was doing at his nursery. The Police: People Who Help Us , it was called. My son—it goes without saying—was magnificently unconvinced. At
constant high alert in his bat cape and mask, Charlie believed a proud
citizenry should be ready to help itself.
    Clarissa
came back with two plasticky lattes. In one of them the coffee machine had
deposited a clear acrylic stirrer. In the other, it had elected not to do so. Clarissa
hesitated over which to give me.
    “First
big editorial decision of the day,” she said.
    “Easy.
I’m the boss. Give me the one with the stirrer.”
    “What
if I don’t?”
    “Then
we may never get around to locating your B-spot, Clarissa. I’m warning you.”
    Clarissa
blanched, and passed me the coffee with the stirrer.
    I
said, “I like the Baghdad piece.”
    Clarissa
sighed, and slumped her shoulders.
    “So
do I , Sarah, of course I do. It’s a great article.”
    “Five
years ago, that’s the one we’d have run with. No question.”
    “Five
years ago our circulation was so low we had to take those risks.”
    “And
that’s how we got big—by being different. That’s us. ”
    Clarissa
shook her head. “Getting big’s different from staying big. You know as well as
I do, we can’t be serving up morality tales while the other majors are selling
sex.”
    “But
why do you think our readers got dumber?”
    “It’s
not that. I think our original readers aren’t reading magazines anymore, that’s
all. They moved on to greater things, the same way you could if you’d just play
the bloody game. Maybe you don’t realize just how big you are now, Sarah. Your
next job could be editing a national newspaper.”
    I
sighed. “How thrilling. I could put topless girls on
every page.”
    My
missing finger itched. I looked back down at the police patrol car. The two
officers were putting on their uniform caps. I tapped my mobile against my
front teeth.
    “Let’s
go for a drink after work, Clarissa. Bring your new man if you like. I’m
bringing Andrew.”
    “Seriously? Out in public? With your husband ? Isn’t that terribly last