She looked at me with a stunned horror. Our voices were low, but I imagine no one (except maybe Bill Arnold) had ever talked to her in such a tone, especially no one from the great unwashed masses, like me.

She was beginning to realize that I had her and I knew it.

She looked down at her expensive leather shoes. "Um, no. I guess I don't. OK, OK, I'm sorry." She was silent for a moment. "What is this all about?"

"That's better. Now, I have the negatives to those photos and I can make all the prints I want. What can you offer me to make it worth my while not to do that? I mean, imagine how fun it would be to see a fucking little princess like you get dragged through the shit." She looked up at this, her eyes sad and shocked, but her face as lovely as always. "If I'm going to deny myself that pleasure, I have to have something to replace it."

"What kind of something?" Her voice was a whisper, her eyes locked onto mine.

"A better something. Something very, very pleasant. Something like you gave Bill Arnold."

She bit her lip and shook her head.

"Something even better, perhaps." I smiled the smile of the cat who ate the canary.

She closed her eyes for a moment, then suddenly opened them and smiled.

The smile was the sort of familar, cosy smile she usually reserved for her fellow elite, and she beamed it at me with all the energy she could muster. "Oh, come on, be a sweetheart. You saw what that slime made me do. Haven't I been through enough? Besides, you look like a nice guy – you don't want it like that, you know, forcing me to, do you?"

She batted her eyes and tilted her head. A curl of honey brown hair drifted over one eye and her face assumed a look that was at once innocent, friendly, sexy, and strong. Looking back, it is of course obvious that she was trying to manipulate me through those same charms that had kept her on top of the pyramid for four years. But at the time I was only 16, and very suceptible.