A New Chapter Begins

Anna wakes up at five in the morning to a knock on her door. She gets up and wonders who could be waking her up at this hour. Suddenly everything that happened yesterday hits her. It could be Munya…or even worse..it could be his wife…

Anna looks through the peephole on the door and sees an Indian man that she has never met before. She opens the door. 

“Hello?” She says to him. The Indian man smiles at her.

“Good morning Ms.Moyo. Henry sent me to pick you up and escort you to London,” He tells her. “We’re meant to leave in an hour. Is that enough time for you? Your flight to Johannesburg is going to leave at seven thirty,”

Anna looks at him. “Um, okay and you are?”

“David, a friend of Henry’s,” he tells her. 

Anna nods and tells him she’ll be ready in an hour. Could this Henry be a trafficker, she doubts that a trafficker would invest these many resources into her and she wasn’t a virgin…maybe before Munya when her pussy had practically refreshed its virgin status but after Munya… not. They’d make a definition loss…

Anna takes a shower and dresses up. She’s actually done in thirty minutes and David helps her check out and carry her bags. There’s an SUV waiting for them at the entrance. Getting to the airport doesn’t take long and they are there an hour early so they have the opportunity to have breakfast at the airport. David is an easy companion talking to her about the news and current events. Anna wonders if he knows what she’s there for or if he’s just a decent guy who treats everyone as humans. But she’s glad he’s around because otherwise, her heart would pound out of her chest. 

They board the plane and arrive in Johannesburg in an hour and a half. David leads her through the airport to a section that Anna has never seen before. She thinks that they’re going to the check-in place but they go straight to where the planes land without checking in. There is a private plane that Anna is led to. 

“This is my personal plane, I hope that it is comfortable enough for you,” David tells her. Anna nods. A private plane? Anna has only ever flown commercial before. They take off by nine am and Anna can’t believe that this is actually happening. She’s going to the UK…

An air hostess comes and makes sure that Anna is comfortable in her seat and offers her a selection of beverages and food. The air hostess is a pretty and pleasant young lady. Someone with dignified employment that doesn’t involve sleeping with married men…Anna shakes her head. What has happened happened. She has to keep moving forward. Anna decides that she needs a Champagne to calm her nerves. David decides to join her. 

After three glasses, Anna is feeling good. “You know the world is a big adventure,” she tells David. David nods. Only half a glass in and still in control of his senses. Anna downs another glass. “I have lived playing it safe for too long. Like let’s be adventurous. Being a girl can suck, everyone says that they’re protecting you but in reality they just want to control you,” 

“Ah, yes, there is still a lot of misogyny in the world” David tell her. Anna puts her hand on his shoulder.

“Yes, there is and it fucking sucks. Girls end up being desperate for freedom and willing to do anything to get it. Do you know Maya Angelou?”

David nods and restrains a laugh. 

“I know why the caged bird sings,” Anna quotes

“It sings because it’s crying for freedom,” David continues. Anna nods. “Do you feel like a caged bird?’ He asks her. Anna cocks her head and sighs loudly.

“Not anymore…but I feel like a baby eagle that’s been kicked out of the nest by the mother and is free falling still not knowing how to spread its wings,” Anna says.

“Why is that,” David asks. Anna yawns loudly and stretches. 

“You woke me up early, I need to sleep,” she says. She lays back and knocks out in seconds. David examines her for a moment. Quite a character, but supposedly well-read. David wonders what Henry wants with this girl. She sleeps with her mouth open and drool is coming out. David laughs. It’s sort of refreshing to meet a girl that is not so well put together and polished. Perhaps she’s the sense of humanness that Henry lacks so much. 

Anna is out cold for six hours. When she wakes up. They are just over Ethiopia. Anna wakes up, jolting at the feel of her own saliva. She wipes her mouth and looks around in confusion for a moment. 

“We’re still on our way to the UK,” David tells her. Anna nods. She suddenly seems very sad. Anna sighs. Thoughts of Munya are running through her mind and her mother finding out that she had been having an illicit affair with him. The reality is beginning to hit her hard. And now she has a bit of a headache and is still a bit drunk from drinking too much. 

David offers her a banana. “It helps with hangovers,” he tells her. Anna shakes her head.

“I hate bananas,” She tells him so he orders her some soda water. Anna hates the taste of it but it does help with the hangover. 

“How many hours until we arrive?” Anna asks David. 

“Four” he tells her. Anna nods and nods off to sleep again. She wakes up to the air hostess gently shaking her.

“Excuse me Ms. Moyo, we’re about to arrive at St. Benedict’s Airport,” she tells Anna. Anna’s eyes widen and she looks over at David.

“It’s a private airport,” David informs her. “Heathrow can be a bit of a pain when you’re flying privately and also we still need to sort out your paperwork so it’ll be easier to get you through a smaller airport,” Anna nods. She had forgotten about that. It take thirty minutes for the plane to land and they disembark. David leads her through the airport that is really quite small and only serves private planes. There’s a lady with dark hair in a tight bun and a suit waiting for them.

“You must be Ms. Moyo,” The lady says and shakes Anna’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you. I’ll be taking over from David for now. We’ve booked you at the Ritz-Carlton. Is that to your taste?” 

“Anywhere with a comfy bed is to my taste at the moment,” Anna says. They don’t need to know that until recently she hadn’t been sleeping in beds for a very long time. 

“I’m Sophia by the way, whenever you need something you can contact me. I’ll send you my number in just a moment. We had your phone put on roaming so you can use the number that you were using in South Africa,” 

So they know that she was in South Africa. This Henry must be a communicative person despite his bad communication on Seeking Arrangements. There’s a Mercedes Benz waiting for them at the entrance of the airport. The airport was a bit out of London in the countryside so there are a lot fo fields and country style houses that they pass by. Anna’s eyes widen as they enter London. It’s been awhile since she’s been in a proper metropolitan city. Melbourne was a great city, but just like any beach city, it had the breezy, take-it-easy feel that cities by the water have in general. But this is a proper metropolitan city. With people of different races everywhere and millions of people walking up and down. Anna takes a picture when they pass by the Big Ben. The only thing that could be better than this would be to visit New York and sing “Down in New York, this is what dreams are made of, you’ll feel like you’re brand new,” Anna feels the magic of the city begin to fill her up.

They reach the Ritz Carlton and Anna realises that she might be way in over her head. The people that are walking into that hotel are of another league. She can even tell that the material that their clothing is made from is not just the stuff that you get in the regular stores. She suddenly feels very plain and insignificant. Sophia takes her to the reception. The lady at the reception smiles at Sophia but barely manages to not show that she examined Anna from top to bottom and found her lacking. They booked her into the presidential suite. The receptionist can barely manage to contain her surprise that someone like Anna has the presidential suite booked for her. They are led up to the top floor of the hotel where there is no hallway or anything and you need a card access it. That’s when Anna realises that the presidential suite is an entire floor to herself. She steps into it and finds that there is a bedroom with a huge king-sized bed, a kitchen and a lounge area. She didn’t know that hotels offered entire apartment suites. 

“Your private chef will have your meals ready at nine in the mornings, one in the afternoons, and seven in the evenings. We have made sure that your suite is well-stocked with snacks in case you feel hungry between meals. All the food we offer is healthy and nutritious, but please let us know if you have any dietary requirements that we should cater to,”

“I’m fine,” Anna says looking at everything with wide eyes. She goes to her bed and jumps onto it. It’s the softest thing that she has ever felt in her life. “Can I sleep?” She asks Sophia. Sophia nods and puts a business card at the side of her table. 

“Call me when you need me,” she tells Anna. Anna nods and sinks further into the bed. Once she’s alone she gets out of bed and ventures to the kitchen. She finds organic, baked potato chips and dips. She takes those and a bottle of pure fruit juice and heads back to her bed. There’s a television there so she switches it on. There’s N*****x, YouTube TV, and other streaming sites available. She chooses to watch YouTube TV. She listens to stories of people narrating the time that their mothers threw them out of the house. She comes across a channel called Kenneth Senegal formerly known as HeFlawless. He does a story-time about the time that he was a teen and needed some money so he stole his mother’s jewelry and pawned it. The mother found out and kicked him out and he would still go to school even though he had no place to stay. When he tried to go back home , she had called the police on him. Since he was a minor, the police had come and actually been the ones to convince the mother to let him move back into the house. Anna felt that one much too acutely. But she was of the class that was no longer a minor. She checked out other videos of him. Another video that caught her attention is when he did a storytime about the time that he met a Splenda daddy. That was when Anna learned that a Splenda daddy is basically a man who wants to be a sugar daddy but does not have the sugar daddy sort of resources so they are like a lean version of a sugar daddy. The Splenda daddy had been a taxi driver who had dropped him off and complimented him non-stop during the ride. Anna guessed that in one way she was very fortunate. She had attracted the men with actual money from the word go even though everything had pretty much backfired on her..wait a moment…Anna looked around at her presidential suite and decided that for the moment she wasn’t so badly off. She needed to withdraw money from her pre-loaded card though.

She takes her access card and gets up. She went to the elevator and swiped. By the time that she reached the bottom floor her phone was ringing. She answered it.

“Where are you going?” Sophia asked from the other end.

“I needed to withdraw money from my card,” Anna told her. 

“Oh, my apologies. I had not given you any money. Please wait there and return to the suite. I’ll be there in a moment,” 

Anna sighed and headed back the presidential suite. She entered the bed again, began to eat her chips and fell asleep watching ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ , it had been one of her favorite novels as a child. She’s soon asleep and doesn’t hear when Sophia arrives in her room thirty minutes later with a black AMEX card. Sophia leaves a note besides the card with the pin code and other things that Anna will need to know. 

****

Anna dreams that she is a Queen of her own kingdom…wait a minute, why must she call it a kingdom? She is Queen of her own Queendom. And in her Queendom, girls are free to live how they like and anyone who tries to restrict or slut-shame them is sentenced to the guillotine. Anna’s right hand man is her father who often gives her excellent advice and calls her ‘Scout’ like the little girl in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. 

He comes to her every morning with a platter of chocolate chip cookies. “Scout wake up,” he tells her. 

****

Anna jolts awake. That was a childish dream… but very pleasant. She felt a little depressed. She had loved interacting with her dad in the dream. She wondered what her father would think of her current profession. She wakes up and stretches then notices the black Amex card on her side table. There’s a note besides it.

“Good day Anna,

You were asleep when I arrived. Sorry for forgetting to cater to your monetary needs. We have provided you with a black Amex card which we have set at a daily limit of five thousand dollars per day. We shall increase the limit if you are chosen for the task that you were informed of by Henry. For the moment please remain in the presidential suite and we finalize everything for you. As you know right now you are an undocumented person within the country and to make sure that that situation does not escalate out of our control we need you in one place for now. You’ll be meeting Henry in two days. Unfortunately he was called away to business rather suddenly or else he would have been meeting you tomorrow. Thank you for your patience and understanding thus far.

Regards,

Sophia

Anna reads and re-reads the letter many times. At least she knew that that person who had messaged her on Seeking Arrangements had not been Sophia, she wrote much better and was much more articulate. What if this Henry was an ugly Neanderthal of a man? That would explain why a man of his resources would do something like this. But honestly, with his amount of money, looks would be of no consequence to many girls. And of all the girls on Seeking Arrangements, why her?