CONTRACTED
by Anastasia
Devereaux
CHAPTER ONE:
LUNETTE
The message on the
card was simple. “The usual coffee shop. 1 p.m. tomorrow. Arrive drag.”
As he entered the
coffee shop, Stewart fingered the card and flipped over the other side. He knew
what was written there — it was his own business card, after all — but it
always made him smile a bit.
“Anastasia
Devereaux Household Services: old-fashioned service, old-world respect,” it
read. It sounded so pretentious when phrased that way, but then, a certain
amount of formality was inherent to the game. “Sounds like a stripper name, or
maybe a drag queen,” Lunette had told him years ago, when he first made the
proposal.
In three years, he
had not yet come up with a phrase to genuinely describe what he was doing. He
didn’t consider himself transgender, not really — when not dressed up, he felt
quite male — nor did he think of himself exactly as a crossdresser. “I’m a drag
queen who does housework rather than perform onstage,” he’d once said, and that
felt as accurate as anything else. “Sissy maid” was a term he’d encountered,
but it felt … inadequate … to describe what this was. He wasn’t in this for humiliation;
he genuinely liked living as a servant. He called Ana “my other face,” and that
was as good as anything.
