by Jamie Knight
When he does finally speak, it’s only to say, “She’s someone I work with. Another model.”
“I bet she is someone you work with,” I seethe.
“Stop.”
I stop, not sure what I’m feeling at the moment. Heartless or breathless.
“This is why I can’t do this long-distance thing with you anymore, Melissa.”
The grip on my phone shifts.
Can’t do this long-distance thing?
What the hell?
Where the hell is this coming from?
Though my mind is rattled by this admission, my heart isn’t. It’s been expecting something like this, even wanting it, ever since I met Tommy, at least, but it didn’t completely know it until he said something.
“This is why I can’t keep doing this kind of relationship. Because you get out of your mind the minute I’m not exactly where you expect me to be exactly when you expect me.”
His words flow over me like treacherous, dark water, but I don’t move. I just let it wash over me and make me numb.
“You’re breaking up with me? Is that it?” These words come out of me with no emotion. No energy, despite how angry I’ve been.
“If it means I don’t have to put up with you doing this to me when I try to make it right with you,” he says.
“Put up with me? What about you? What about me putting up with you? What about all of that? What about all the time I’ve made things work for you, hm?” I’m back to shouting at him. “None of that matters. None of that means anything to you?”
I pause, searching for some sensible thing to say. Something to make him take back how much he’s just said he hates being in this kind of relationship. Unfortunately for me, I can’t find anything. More unfortunately for me, more and more people are staring. Isabella among them. I move away.
“It must not, since you can’t be bothered to put forward any effort. You can’t show any bit of sympathy for my feelings, even though I have a damn good reason for feeling this way.”
Dennis doesn’t answer me. Instead, he speaks to someone away from the phone. Someone I recognize instantly as the other voice I heard before. And it definitely does belong to another woman. No question in my mind.
“I’ll talk to you later, Melissa,” he says as if he didn’t just partially break up with me.
At least, I think he did.
“No, you won’t,” I say. “You’ve just said you hate having to talk to me long-distance. You’ve just said you don’t want to do it anymore, so why would you do it anymore after this?” My words are blistering and bitter.
“Fine,” answers Dennis, “no, I won’t talk to you later. I won’t talk to you anymore if you’re going to be like that. Consider us done.”
More tears flood my eyes and down my cheeks.
“Fine. Happy now? Free of me? So you can spend more time with that someone you work with, that someone who hasn’t nearly spent as much time with you, or parted with as much for you and because of you. Fine.”
My voice shutters, and I know I’m not fine.
“Fine. I guess we are done. You were done during our last video chat, weren’t you, and don’t say you weren’t. I heard how eager you were to get off the call with me,” I growl, letting the words rise in my throat and my chest.
“I was,” he answers flatly. “I was going to try to hold out a little longer. Wait to let you down easier than this. Maybe wait until you came to Paris for a visit or something, so I could discuss this with you in person, but seeing as you don’t have any plans to come to Paris, I figured it was now or never.”
What a cruel way to think about breaking up with someone. I’m as speechless as a human being can be. I don’t even have the wherewithal to breathe.
But my speechless state doesn’t matter to Dennis in the least. He continues with,
“You were supposed to come to visit me after a month, Melissa, not five or six months out or never.”
When I don’t say anything, because I’m too disgusted at what an asshole he’s being, he continues.
“That was our original agreement. As far as I’m concerned, if you have plans to stay on with that company, and stay in the States, I’ve got no reason to stay with you. When I thought of having a girlfriend, it wasn’t having someone thousands of miles away.”
I nod, though I know he can’t see me. I take a breath.
“Then why not break up with me then? Why not break up with me the day you left? Why wait a whole fucking year?”
“Because I thought I could do it! I thought I could do this, but I can’t! I won’t,” says Dennis, and this is the first real honest thing he’s ever said to me. “I won’t be made unavailable for anyone else because my girlfriend is in the US.”
After that, I let the phone drop from my ear.
The phone is still in my hand, but I hear Dennis say, “Goodbye, Melissa.”
For the first time in the year since he’s been gone, and the months since we started going out, Dennis sounds legitimately sad or heartbroken. And go figure. On the day he breaks up with me.
He leaves me, when we promised to be together.
Not that I was that into that promise anymore, either.
I know deep down this is a good thing, and that I should have been the one dumping him. He’s a douche and Tommy is so much better. I’m mad at myself for continuing the status quo this long out of inertia or some stupid misguided fear that I would have wasted the last year of my life if we didn’t somehow make it longer term.
I hang up the phone, drop it mindlessly into my pants pocket, and wander off toward my car. I’m not sure what I’m going to do now, but I know I’m not going to finish up the day.
I’ll stay out of the office. I’ll call Isabella and let her know whenever I get where I’m going and stay there.
Chapter Twenty-Four - Tommy
I’m not going to lie. When Melissa left me unexpectedly at lunch because of a phone call (even though I can tell it’s important and emotionally charged), I can’t help it. I feel sad and frustrated.
I was just beginning to enjoy my time with her. I was just beginning to hope that we might be able to finish out the whole lunch hour together.
But as I watch Melissa leave in a hurry with her cell phone pressed diligently to her ear, I’ve got bigger things to feel worried about. Vanacore appears in the doorway, looking suspicious and irritated as Melissa gives her a wide berth, and retreats down an opposite hallway, chattering angrily into the phone.
Vanacore spies me, her look of suspicion deepening and transforming into something like still, cold rage at being “lied to.” She strolls right over to the table I’m sitting at, which still has Melissa’s tray of food sitting across from me. Her glass of wine as well.
She sits right down in the chair, not bothering to bullshit with me.
“Already had plans, huh?” She looks down at the tray of food, malicious joy in her eyes. “That must be her food then, those other plans of yours, huh, Tommy?”
Vanacore’s really trying for a light, friendly tone, but it’s just coming over as darker and mean than anything. I shrink away from it, lowering my eyes. Whatever bit of happiness and power I felt around Melissa, that’s quickly gone around my boss — around her choking, commanding aura and the way she’s looking at me, like someone is toying with her. Deceiving her. Playing games with her.
Although I never agreed to play any game with her. Just be her trustworthy employee, but it seems part of that role means taking her up on her lunch offers. No matter who else I may have promised time to.
When I don’t answer, Vanacore breaks into the food Melissa left behind, with no compunction. No reservation. No idea that she is overstepping any boundaries, least of all mine or Melissa’s.
She finishes off the plate of neatly arranged pink meat like it’s nothing. She sucks it off the fork suggestively, before diving into the bread and cheese, which she spreads on with heavy, measured strokes. I fee
l disgusted when I see it because it makes me remember what she was doing to herself in front of me in her office just a few days earlier.
For a good long while, all Vanacore does is eat. She stuffs her face and watches me.
When she finishes all of the food, drinks all of Melissa’s wine, and sees my grimace, my frown, she says, “What? I’m hungry and based on the look of your precious secretary’s face over there, I don’t think she’s going to be back to finish the job.”
Saying this, she goes to work on the chocolate cake. Which she finishes in a few large, uncaring bites.
On the other side of this gluttony she adds, “And since your other plans had other places to be, Tommy, I thought I would join you. I thought I would do you the kind thing, and give you some company.”
I’m shivering under her words. Quaking.
I’m not sure how this can be the same woman who was being so flirtatious with me a few days before, who seemed so delighted to masturbate to me, but she is. She’s just a completely different version of herself. A darker side of herself that seems to just get switched on to spite Melissa. Too thwart our connection.
As if her personalities (I’m quite sure there are two distinct ones after a week of working with her) really do just get turned off and on with a switch flipping, she’s suddenly back to being nice. Gentle. Kind. Legitimately so.
She looks down at the food she’s finished as if she wasn’t in her own body until now. She looks at me, appearing truly apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Tommy. I’m just a little on edge from the phone call I had to deal with.”
She reaches over and puts her hand on top of mine. It’s suddenly heavy and handcuff-like.
“I’m sorry to be so gruff and mean. I shouldn’t do that to you. Not after all the help you’ve given me this week. What a good boy you’ve proven you can be for me,” she says, emphasizing “good boy” in a way that leaves me with no doubt about what she means. Instantly I get the picture of her masturbating to me again, much to my horror. “To reward you, I’d like to get some special work done with you back in my office.”
She pauses, and I’m not sure what she’ll to do or say.
She’s just offered to do something sexual with me up in her office.
I’m not sure what, but I know that much.
What else could she mean by “special work”?
Especially when she follows “good boy” with that.
A big part of me wants to say no, it wants to avoid the office entirely, but her eyes catch me up. They wipe away any rebellion I might have in an instant.
“You’ve got a few more hours to go before the weekend, Tommy,” she says, as if she’s reading my mind and knows my desire to avoid the office and her altogether. “I expect you to put in a few more good hours of work before then.”
I swallow thickly, not knowing, and now wanting to know what she means by that. I down my wine quickly, anxiously. As I do, I know there’s very little I’m going to be able to do. I can’t refuse to go to work for the rest of the afternoon. Not if I don’t want to end up back on the associate’s floor, or worse. Without a job, period.
Please take me out of too much thinking or being afraid of whatever she’s got in mind for “good work.”
“Come with me to my office, Tommy,” she says, “I’ve got some special instruction to give you. Instruction I hope you learn well from.”
I have no choice. I stand up from my seat at the table and follow dutifully after her. As I do, I send an agonized thought to Melissa.
I wish you hadn’t had to duck out on me like that. Maybe if you were still here, she wouldn’t be dragging me back with her like this. Maybe I wouldn’t be about to be overwhelmed by her. Dominated. Taken under her wing for more than just this job.
Back in Vanacore’s office a few short minutes later, I can barely breathe. I can barely think. The energy Vanacore’s got about her, is similar to my dad. Especially right before he was about to hand down a particularly grave or harsh punishment. The way she’s carrying herself, the way she keeps sighing and looking at me, says as much.
She leans against her desk, much the same way my dad would lean against one of the walls in the kitchen, where he would usually dole out those grave and harsh punishments. To my backside, usually. The comparison no longer surprises me. Indeed, with her white hair, leathery, wrinkled skin, Vanacore’s old enough to be my mother.
“I’ve told you about being seen with that secretary,” she says quietly. “I’ve told you what it does to your reputation and mine, but it seems you’re not taking anything I’ve said about that seriously.”
I let her scolding words hang in the air. They hang around me the same way I would with my father. I nod, wondering if I made too much out of that “special work” she had for me and her to do. Some special instruction.
She had talked about a reward too, but with the current vibe in the room, it’s not likely to happen. I’m more likely to get some kind of punishment at this point. Never mind my hard or good work.
“Do you really want this job, son?” I look at her, not sure where she’s going with this. “Do you really want this job, and I mean really, really want it?”
Fuck!
What do I do now?
Before I can even manage to nod, she jumps back in with, “I heard about the incident on the legal aids’ floor a few days ago. Don’t act like it didn’t happen, Tommy. I heard everything from the other workers. I watched the video your precious Melissa took for you in order to get those people moved out of here.”
She clears her throat, and I’m feeling anxious, sweaty, and hot, but not because of my clothes, or because of my extra weight. It’s because of what Vanacore’s eyes are doing as they sit on me.
They’re penetrating me. Digging around in my soul, polluting something in it.
“I don’t want to have to put you back in that cesspool of talentless, thoughtless and valueless people, but if you don’t start shaping up — if you don’t start listening to what I tell you, including when it comes to that secretary and being seen with her — I’ll have no problem putting you back there. Firing you and having you demoted, and marked for no other advancement.”
My throat is drier than hell at this point, and swallowing doesn’t even help. It makes me sick or to my stomach and feel chalkier inside.
“It’d be a shame to lose such a talented young man like you after only a week,” she says, emphasizing her threat in genteel, accented words. “It’d be a shame to leave you to become nothing more than a mechanical pair of hands. A cog in this big, successful company, but I’ll do it if it means teaching you how serious I am about watching your reputation and the impression you leave on others by the company you keep, boy.”
I hang my head a little, not sure where I stand with her now. What else she may or may not ask me to do at this point, depending on whatever answers I give her. But right now, I just wish I could finish up the rest of my workday and go home.
Like she did a few minutes ago, Vanacore immediately switches from mean and ready to punish and ridicule, to someone nicer and kinder. I don’t know what flipped the switch, but something did, and now she’s wondering over toward me, her arms outstretched.
Briefly, I wonder if anyone else knows about these “mood swings” of hers, or whether I’m the only one she’s ever shown them to.
As she comes over close to me, I have a pretty good idea that I’m the only one who knows about this. At least, the only one who’s aware of this aspect of her at the company. There may be others in her past, but they’re not here to speak to that or about her.
Instinctively, I back away, but Vanacore grabs me. A little roughly, then, as if she remembers where we are and who she is, she lessens the energy.
“Do you want this job, Tommy? Do you want to continue working this job, and someday work up to having an even better one? To maybe even being a lawyer in your own right?”
I nod at h
er whispered words, though I know there are attachments to them. I can feel the strings lying in wait.
“You do?”
I nod again, though I feel doubly damned, doubly trapped now, and by a dream I can’t quite give up. The dream I have to be the one who stands up in court, not just stays behind at the office and take notes or dictation or prepare cases.
“Then let’s do some special work together,” she whispers. “Let’s get you properly instructed on what I want from you.”
Under her words and her eyes, both of which cast a spell on me that I can’t refuse, I follow her as she walks me to her desk — to the front of it.
“Do you have any objections to this instruction?” she asks me, taking her walking cane from its resting place.
She does so with so much thoughtful comment, calculation, that my stomach flips, and tightens nervously. I shake my head “no” and she points at her desk. The front of it where I’ve come to stand.
“Then lean over and take your punishment from me, boy. This is to teach you in a way that you’ll remember how much damaging your reputation by hanging out with a secretary in questionable scenarios can hurt.”
I lean over the desk, feeling my breathing get quick. My hands start sweating a moment later.
“Pants down,” she orders.
I obey, though my rational mind is screaming at me louder now. Asking me what in the actual fuck I’m doing, obeying her like this. Putting myself in a position like this. But then I get my answer, just as I take my pants down, and she orders my underwear to follow suit.
I don’t want to go back downstairs. I don’t want to have to deal with legal aids who don’t or won’t go anywhere with their lives. I don’t want to return to being faceless and nameless. Just the “tall guy who sweats a lot in a suit” who does better work than everyone else, but still doesn’t get anywhere because of it. I don’t want to go back downstairs. But I don’t really want to be here either, I think, pulling down my underwear, and laying myself bear to my boss — to her cane.
The one I’ve been weirdly worrying about possibly striking me, but I’m not thinking about that now.