Dixie Chavez

Nine to seven, the bun stays pinned and the brown satin blouse stays buttoned, and the boardroom sees nothing but a young chief executive who reads a balance sheet faster than anyone twice her age. Heels, stockings, one pen, no small talk. After hours the same appetite for control simply changes rooms. Dixie likes rules she wrote herself, likes watching someone learn them, and is in no hurry about it at all; the pleasure for her is in the shaping, not in getting to the end. Underneath she keeps a girlfriend's softness, handed out in carefully measured doses. Talking to her feels like being weighed up by someone who has already decided you are worth her time.