4.
He sat up breathing heavily, immediately closing the buttons on his shirt, pulling and a handkerchief from the pocket of his pants and cleaning himself. He closed his pants and stood up.
Linda lay on the couch in turmoil as the array of heated emotions rapidly wound down, and her common sense started to hit home. Tears drifted down her cheeks, increasing in time with her guilt and shame. She covered her face with her hands and cried, wanting so badly to be reassured by Jonathan and for him to comfort and hold her. Her clothes tangled in a creased mess about her; her blouse still unbuttoned exposing her naked chest. With one arm, she lamely closed up.
‘Be at work at six o’clock tomorrow, don’t be late.’ Jonathan stood up, brushed his hair with his comb and left.
Linda was devastated and sobbed trying at the same time to re-dress herself. She hurriedly went to the en-suite bathroom of the guest lounge and locked the door behind her.
‘Oh, what have I done, oh no what did I do. How could I?’ She hollered to herself in pain and utter anguish.
She sat on the seat of the toilet and rocked herself to and fro trying to squeeze out the disgust that was sweeping through her veins.
After a long and harrowing half an hour, she stood up and cleaned herself at the wash basin, but just looking at her body brought on the guilty act and was released through a welt of sobbing jerks.
Another hour and with someone knocking on the other side of the door, Linda washed her face, ran her fingers through her hair, opened the door and ran from the building, holding her breath, not looking at anyone on her way out. When she reached the fresh air on the sidewalk to the car park, she yelled out to the sky ‘Nooo.’ and leant against a lamp pole, hugging onto to it for support.
A security officer on observing her extreme distress came to her aid, but she refused it. He would not budge and insisted he helped her to her car. Not wanting to draw any more attention to her evil and disgusting self she allowed him to lead her to her car.
Once inside and with legs that shook almost uncontrollably she slowly pulled away and at a speed similar to that of a snail she edged her way home.
‘Thank you for joining us tonight, till next week take care and goodnight.’ Jonathan bowed and reversed off the stage to a rapturous applause.
‘So how did the interview go? Do you have an assistant as of tomorrow?’ Suzette asked with a vivid scowl on her face.
Jonathan returned her scowl with a dirty smirk of arrogance ‘Yes I do. She will do just fine for me.’
‘You’re a pig.’ Suzette spat at him.
‘How about I fire you!’
‘The graveyard is full of indispensable people you piece of filth.’ Suzette stormed off to wrap up her work for the day.
Jonathan stared after her contemplating in puzzlement at her statement.
Linda dived onto her bed and cried and cried and cried for hours curled into a ball of dirty indignity.
Drenched with her tears and weak; she slouched to the bathroom and began to run a hot bath in an attempt to wash the deed off her body. She knelt beside the bath and automatically began to pray ‘Oh Lord, Oh please Lord I am in shame, I have sinned in the worst way Lord, please, please, please forgive me, Lord. I beg of you Lord, please forgive my weakness. In Jesus name please Lord, Amen.’
After so many tears had poured out of her soul, she still found more to shed.
Once she felt a smidgen refreshed and could no longer feel Jonathan on her skin, she drove to her church, the Church of Christ, three blocks away from her flat, and prayed all the way that Minister Clyde would be in his office.
Standing at the door to Minister Clyde’s office, Linda’s limbs refused to co-operate and knock or take another step into the office. Minister Clyde sensing someone was behind him turned around and was shocked to see a phantom of the woman he knew as Linda.
‘Linda! Good gravy! What has happened? Sit down before you faint.’
She poured out her soul to minister Clyde, taunted that she had ruined herself in such a cheap and dirty manner. Horrified that her faith and her will to do God’s will had been so weak. She wanted rather to kill herself than have the reminder every second of every day of what a sinful and undeserving servant she was.
With a lot of consoling and comforting minister Clyde had finally managed to bring Linda to a state of normality and to speak of how to move forward from that point. They would study together every day for the next two weeks and after that once a week until Minister Clyde was satisfied Linda was able to move on from this disastrous act.
Linda would completely and utterly give herself back to her Creator and her King, but to do that the first thing she did was make a phone call ‘Hello Suzette, it’s Linda. I will not be taking the job.’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘I think you know. Goodbye.’ When that call ended the first tiniest piece of string started to knit Linda’s life back together.