Terms of Affection

The radiator under my office window clicks on at seven forty-three, same as it has every weekday morning for three years. I count the ticks while I wait for the coffee to finish brewing: four short, one long, then the low hum that means the pipes have settled into their work. Outside, February has turned the buildings East Fifty-Third Street the same color as the wet cement. The sleet started sometime before dawn and hasn’t let up. I pour the coffee into my favorite pink mug and carry it to my desk. No sugar, no milk, and a coaster so there are no rings on the client files. The first rule I wrote for this agency wasn’t about confidentiality or consent or any of the boundaries Imani would later help me formalize. It was about coffee. Keep it away from the paperwork. Everything else followed from there. The office is quiet this early. Through the wall that separates my office from the reception area, I hear the building’s morning sounds drifting up from the lobby: the elevator bell, someone’s wet boots on the marble, a door that needs its hinges oiled. The Girlfriend Department occupies the fourth floor of a building that used to house a dental practice, and sometimes I still find traces of its previous life. A faded sign in the storage closet. The ghost of mint-scented antiseptic in the hallway after a rain. I keep meaning to have the walls repainted but never quite get around to it. They are still hospital green. I pull the day’s first file from the stack on my desk. Client 47: a tech founder who needs to appear romantically settled before his Series B pitch. Three dinner dates, one gallery opening, a carefully staged coffee run that will land on Page Six if I time it right. His preferences are unremarkable. He wants someone who laughs at his jokes and doesn’t check her phone during the entree. I make a note in the margin: remind him this is a simulation, not a subscription. The coffee has cooled enough to drink when I hear the outer door open and close. Two quick steps, the rustle of a coat being hung on the rack, the snap of a planner’s elastic band. Imani. “You’re early,” I call through the open door. “You’re earlier.” She appears in my doorway, bright frames already perched on her nose, her planner open to the week’s spread. Today’s suit is navy with a sharp collar. Her earrings are small gold knots. “The forecast said freezing rain. I budgeted an extra twenty minutes for the train and didn’t need any of them.” “Coffee’s fresh.” “Bless you.” She disappears toward the kitchenette and returns a minute later with a mug that reads WORLD’S OKAYEST BUSINESS PARTNER. I bought it for her two Christmases ago. She uses it every day. Imani settles into the chair across from my desk and sets her planner on the corner where my files don’t reach. “Ready for the numbers?” “Let me finish this one.” I close Client 47’s file and slide it into the out-box. “Go ahead.” She flips to a tab marked with a strip of yellow washi tape. “Three active contracts this week. The Keller anniversary dinner went smoothly, no complaints from the aunt, no questions from the rest of the family. The Rosen engagement brunch is Sunday, and I’ve confirmed the florist and the photographer. And Client 52’s corporate spouse package wraps Friday.” “The CFO who needs to look stable for the board meeting.” “That’s the one. His father’s flight lands at LaGuardia at four. I’ve got Lena on the airport pickup and Marco handling the dinner reservation.” She taps the page with one short nail. “We’re within budget on all three.” I nod and take another sip of coffee. This is the rhythm I built: the morning review, the numbers, the careful accounting of every promise we’ve made and every promise we’re keeping. Imani and I have been doing this together for two years now, and the shorthand between us has become its own kind of architecture. She knows which clients will try to push the boundaries. I know which ones will forget to pay on time. “I want to review the standards,” I say. Imani doesn’t blink. She flips to a laminated card tucked into the back of her planner and reads aloud without needing to look at the words. “Written consent before any simulation begins. Full confidentiality for all client information and interactions. No s****l services, no romantic demands outside the contracted simulation, no criminal fabrication, no breach of confidentiality under any circumstances. Professional boundaries maintained at all times between consultant and client.” She looks up. “Did I miss one?” “No.” “Then why are we reviewing them?” I turn my mug in my hands. The ceramic is warm but not hot anymore. “Because we haven’t looked at them in six months, and six months ago we weren’t operating at a deficit.” Imani closes her planner. Not with a snap, just a careful press of her palm against the cover. “We’re not operating at a deficit.” “Not yet.” “Sloane.” “I’m not being dramatic. I’m being prepared.” I set the mug down and lean back in my chair. The leather creaks. “We’ve been running lean since November. The holiday season was slower than projected, and the two corporate contracts we picked up in January are covering costs but not much else. If we lose either of them, or if another client decides to pay thirty days late...” “We have reserves.” “We have two months of reserves. Maybe three if we cut the marketing budget.” Imani’s jaw tightens. She doesn’t like being reminded of the thin margins any more than I do. But she also doesn’t argue with the math. That’s one of the reasons I hired her: she can read a spreadsheet faster than I can and she never pretends the numbers say something they don’t. “The Delacroix payment,” she says. I nod. Client 49: a luxury branding consultant who hired us for a three-month girlfriend simulation to improve his image with investors. The contract was signed in early January. The first invoice was due two weeks ago. The money hasn’t arrived. “I called his office yesterday,” Imani says. “His assistant said the check was ‘in processing.’” “That’s what she said last week.” “I know.” Imani opens her planner again, flips to a page covered in her neat, color-coded handwriting. Green for completed tasks, blue for pending, red for urgent. The Delacroix entry is underlined in red twice. “If the payment doesn’t clear by Friday, we’ll need to move money from the operating account to cover payroll. That leaves us with about five weeks of runway before things get tight.” “And if it doesn’t clear by next Friday?” “Then we start making choices we don’t want to make.” She says it flat, without flinching. I appreciate that about her. Imani doesn’t dress bad news in euphemisms. “We could reduce the contractor pool. Cut back to two active simulations at a time instead of three. Or we could raise our rates, but that risks pricing out the mid-tier clients who keep us steady between the big contracts.” “Or we could find a big contract.” She looks at me over the top of her frames. “What kind of big?” “The kind that solves the cash-flow problem for the next six months. A single high-value account. Someone who needs more than a dinner date and a photo op.” Imani doesn’t answer right away. She reaches for her coffee and takes a slow sip, and I watch her think. The radiator ticks again. Outside, the sleet has turned to rain, and it taps against the window like someone trying to get my attention. “A high-value account means high-value complications,” she says finally. “The kind of client who can write a check that size is also the kind of client who thinks the rules don’t apply to them.” “Then we make the rules clear from the start.” “We always make the rules clear from the start. That doesn’t stop them from trying to rewrite them later.” She sets her mug down and taps the laminated standards card still sitting on top of her planner. “These aren’t decorative, Sloane. They’re the only thing between us and a lawsuit. Or worse.” I know what she means by worse. She doesn’t say it out loud. She never does. But Imani was with me when I rebuilt this agency from the wreckage of the scandal, and she knows exactly how much worse things can get when someone decides that confidential information is worth more than a contract. “I’m not suggesting we compromise the standards,” I say. “I’m suggesting we find a client who doesn’t need us to.” “And if that client doesn’t exist?” “Then we figure out a different plan.” Imani studies me for a long moment. Her expression is unreadable, but I know her well enough to recognize the calculation happening behind it: risk versus reward, short-term relief versus long-term stability. She’s running the same equations I ran in my head at three o’clock this morning when I couldn’t sleep. “If we’re going to do this,” she says, “we map the safeguards before we take a single meeting. I want every boundary in writing. I want the consent protocols reviewed by the lawyer. And I want veto power if the client gives me even a hint of the wrong kind of trouble.” “You already have veto power.” “I want it in writing.” “It’s in the operating agreement.” “Then I want it reaffirmed.” She picks up her pen and clicks it once. “Out loud.” I almost smile. “You have veto power over any client engagement that you reasonably believe poses a risk to the agency’s ethical standards or legal standing. Satisfied?” “Marginally.” She makes a note in her planner anyway. Blue ink, which means pending but acknowledged. “Now. Where exactly are we finding this hypothetical high-value client who respects boundaries and pays on time?” My phone buzzes before I can answer. The screen lights up with a number I don’t recognize, a Manhattan area code. I let it go to voicemail. The caller doesn’t leave one, but thirty seconds later, an email notification appears on my laptop. I open it. The subject line reads: Proposal for Consultation Services. The sender is a corporate address at Vale Luxury Property Group. The body of the email is three sentences long, and it’s signed by an executive assistant requesting a meeting to discuss a “confidential personal engagement” on behalf of a senior principal. I read it twice. Then I turn the laptop toward Imani. She leans forward, scans the screen, and her eyebrows lift half an inch. “Vale Group. That’s not a mid-tier client.” “No.” “That’s a Fortune 500 real estate conglomerate with a family office that probably employs more people than we’ve ever had clients.” She sits back and folds her arms. “What does a Vale need with a relationship consultancy?” “The email doesn’t say.” “Of course it doesn’t.” She taps her pen against the planner. “Confidential personal engagement. That could mean anything from a dinner date to a full-scale reputation rehabilitation.” “Which is exactly the kind of contract we’re looking for.” “Or exactly the kind of contract that comes with strings we can’t see yet.” I turn the laptop back toward me and read the email a third time. The assistant’s name is Margaret Chen. The meeting is proposed for this afternoon at two o’clock at Vale Group headquarters. The tone is polite but not deferential. They expect a yes. “I’ll take the meeting,” I say. Imani doesn’t argue. She pulls a fresh sheet of paper from her planner and starts writing. “Ground rules. You don’t agree to anything in the room. You don’t sign anything. You don’t share any proprietary information about how we operate until we’ve vetted them as thoroughly as they’re going to vet us.” “Agreed.” “You take notes. Detailed notes. I want a full debrief the minute you get back.” “Agreed.” “And if they ask for something that crosses a line...” “I walk.” She caps her pen and looks at me. The rain has picked up outside, streaking the window with gray. The office feels smaller than it did an hour ago, or maybe I’m just more aware of the walls. “I mean it, Sloane. If this is the wrong client, no amount of money is worth it.” I know she means it. I also know that in five weeks, if the Delacroix payment doesn’t clear and we haven’t found another revenue stream, we won’t be having this conversation in this office. We’ll be having it in whatever coffee shop we can afford while we figure out how to tell our contractors they don’t have jobs anymore. But I don’t say that. Imani already knows. “I’ll be careful,” I say instead. “I always am.” She holds my gaze for a beat longer than necessary. Then she nods, tucks her planner under her arm, and stands. “I’ll clear your afternoon. And I’ll pull together a preliminary risk assessment on Vale Group before you leave. Corporate structure, recent press, any red flags in the public record.” “Thank you.” She pauses in the doorway. “Sloane. One more thing.” “What?” “Don’t let them think they’re doing you a favor. You’re the one with something they need. Remember that.” I nod. She disappears into the reception area, and a moment later I hear her on the phone with Margaret Chen, confirming the meeting with a crisp professionalism that makes me grateful all over again that I hired her. I turn back to my laptop and stare at the email. Vale Luxury Property Group. The name sits in my chest like a stone I can’t quite swallow. Not because of anything Imani’s risk assessment will find in the public record. Because of something that isn’t in any record at all. Three years ago, when the scandal broke and my name was dragged through every gossip column in the city, the Vale family was mentioned exactly once. A single paragraph in a longer piece about the PR fallout, noting that the firm representing Vivienne Vale had declined to comment. I read it at the time and filed it away as irrelevant. The scandal wasn’t about the Vales. It was about Julian, and the information he stole from me, and the way he made sure I took the blame for it. But the connection exists. It’s thin, and it’s old, and it probably means nothing. But it exists. I close the email and open a new document. At the top, I type: Vale Group Meeting, Terms Assessment. Below it, I list every boundary Imani and I just reaffirmed. Consent. Confidentiality. Professional limits. No exceptions, no gray areas, no room for reinterpretation. The rules are the only thing that keep this work safe. I learned that the hard way. I won’t unlearn it just because the rent is due. Outside, the rain keeps falling. The radiator hums its steady hum. And I start preparing for a meeting that might save my agency, or might bring me closer to a past I’ve spent three years trying to outrun.