His secretary sounded stunned. “I’ll have to get back to you,” she said. I thanked her and hung up.
The whole thing was childish and stupid and clichéd and I knew it, but I didn’t care. I loved it. I loved the power play, the adrenalin. I didn’t hear anything more that day and by evening I was worried that I had overplayed my hand.
I gave the staff an early night off, sending them home at seven p.m, and some of them wondered if I was sick. And I was! Like a schoolgirl, I was sick with the longing of a schoolgirl crush and I was nearly at the point of doodling his name on my desk, with hearts and flowers. The way he smelled, so fresh, so cool, so spicy. And the excitement that had shuddered through me when he held my hips as if he had every right. I wanted him and I wanted him to want me, me above all else.
I decided to leave for the day, go home and run double my usual distance, try to get him out of my head for a bit. I stood up, grabbed my purse and swung around and there he was, in the doorway, watching me.
“You leaving? Half-day worker.” He smiled and I looked at him, narrowed my eyes to suggest he get to the point, and he did. “Be my date tonight,” he said.
“To what?”
“Charity ball hosted by the mayor. Come on, we’re already late.”
“Wait.” I opened my office closet and took out an Yves Saint Laurent cocktail dress that left nothing to the imagination.
His eyes widened.
“Back in a flash,” I said, and I escaped to the washroom to change and I tried to steady my heart. I shimmied into the dress, touched up my make up, and slipped on killer heels. I’d be about three feet taller than him.
“Fuck me,” he said when I came out, “don’t you look sensational.”
“I plan to, later,” I replied and was gratified to see a red flush spread across his middle-aged pretty boy features.
We rode the elevator in silence, standing far apart and looking at the lit up floor numbers as if they held the secret to the universe.
We sat sedately in the back of his limo and the only movement was his hand riding higher and higher up towards my snatch, easing my skirt up, and pushing his fingers inside. I closed my eyes and flooded my panties with orgasms.
We arrived and he cleaned his hands off with a Wet Wipe as if he had been eating fried chicken and we went inside.
Oh, the clamour and the acclaim that rode the wave that was Junior! Cameras flashing, lights exploding, hugging, back-slapping, high-fiving. The only thing they didn’t do was carry him aloft and chant their love for him, but I guessed that the evening was still young.
The women associated with the power boys came over to interrogate me while their men paid homage to their tiny chief. At first, I downplayed my role. But that didn’t last long and I soon assumed the full reins of power while modestly insisting I was simply a worker bee, a lowly cog in Junior’s powerful wheel.
“I’m sure the missus isn’t going to be too fond of you,” one of them commented. “She was a model too, back in the day.”
“I was never a model,” I said. “I fire models.”
The evening ended with Junior ostentatiously calling me a cab and waving goodnight while he went off to gamble at some after-hours men’s club with his buddies.
But the next day, I got a text message from him: Stairwell#8 in 5? The question mark was a good thing; it meant he wasn’t that sure of himself.
Yes, I typed back and I got up. I was waiting in the stairwell when he arrived and we fell on each other, tonguing like school kids, grabbing furiously at each other.
“You got a passport?” he asked when we finally drew apart, our chests heaving like we’d run a marathon.
“Of course.”
“I need to go to Geneva for the weekend. Mary Ellen will call you and set it up. Officially, you’ll be there to consult. I’m promoting you. Vice President of Global Marketing Strategies. You like it?”
“I love it.”
I returned to my desk. There was no stopping me now.
And, for two, glorious, power-frenzied, high-flying years in which we fucked and fingered and hired and fired and threw our weight this way and that, there was no stopping me. Junior and I were feared and envied and I moved into a corner office close to his, taking my team with me to the seventeenth floor.
We had the greatest view and we practically lived at work, unless we were out gathering intel in five-star hotels in international cities. We were the self–crowned Emperor and Empress of Media, Publishing, Marketing, and Advertising, and the rush was better than any drug on the planet.
“What happened?” Cedar asks when I fall silent and I turn to face him. I pick up a sharp piece of amber from the basket of colourful stones on Cedar’s desk and I dig it deep into the palm of my hand.
“Well, he fired me, didn’t he?” I sit down. “Actually, he didn’t do the dirty work. He was probably busy cleaning his fingers with Wet Wipes somewhere else.
“I got to work one morning and he wasn’t there, which immediately struck me as odd. He was always there. And, I had had no early morning text message either. Junior never came to my place, even though I had given him a key. He never even saw my apartment the whole time we were together, which was a good thing because it was always in such a mess. I never had time to tidy it and the place was filled, floor to ceiling with all my swag. Plus, Duchess was going downhill fast and he was throwing up everywhere and peeing again and the place stank. And my clothes were all over the floor and the tables and I never had time to get anything dry-cleaned or sorted, I just kept buying new stuff.
“But anyway, that morning, I hadn’t got a message and the office was quiet. Dead quiet. None of my staff were there either, which really made me mad, and I couldn’t understand what was going on.
“Then my phone rang and Mary Ellen said that a new guy from accounts was coming up to see me and that I should wait in my office. She rang off before I could say or ask anything.
“And that’s when I knew. I felt sick, I was perspiring like crazy and my silk blouse was stuck to me. I thought of leaving before the guy got there but I knew I couldn’t. I waited and then he arrived and he sat down across from me, he sat without invitation.
“He was tall and fat, like a food-addicted ex-football player and his suit was too small for him, and his tie was badly knotted. Not to mention that his cheaply-cut hair hadn’t been washed in a few weeks. Not someone I would have taken seriously under any other circumstances. This unstylish doofus was going to fire me?
“It’s a pleasure to meet you—” he said and he quickly paged through a folder with his horrible fat fingers and he was sweating more than I was. “Julia. Right, Julia. I am Derek DeWitt and I am sorry we have to meet under these conditions. A number of jobs have been cut today and yours, I’m afraid, is one of them.”
I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him thinking that if I stared him down, he would apologize and tell me this was a huge mistake.
“Here’s a package for you to review,” he said, and he pushed an envelope towards me.
“You’ve been given a year’s severance,” he said, “which is extremely generous and you’ve got benefits for another three months and vacation pay for any days you did not take. Do you have any questions?”
I shook my head.
“Do you have anybody you can call for support?”
I shook my head again.
“Are you okay to get home or do you need a cab?
“I live next door. I’ll walk. Where are my staff?”
“You no longer need to worry about that.”
“What about the contents of my office?”
“Everything will be packed up and sent to your home within the next two to three business days.”
I turned to shut off my computer and found the screen was black.
“You have been de-activated and deleted f
rom the system,” he said.
“But I have files on there that I need.”
He shrugged. “You can email HR and request specific files but if they are work related, you will have no right to them and your personal files have already been deleted.”
I picked up my purse, straightened my skirt, and walked out. He stuck close to my side and he stank like the Stink-Stopper I used to clean up Duchess’s pee.
“Can I have your phone please?” he asked. “It’s company property.”
“But it’s got all my phone numbers on it.”
“Fine. You’ve got two weeks to return it, along with a signed copy of your severance package. Thank you for your service to this company and we wish you the best with your future endeavours. May I have your security pass card?”
I handed it to him and he walked me out and I stood there for a moment, hoping no one had seen me.
It wasn’t even noon and I was already on my way home. I had no job. Clearly, I had no lover either. I had nothing. I walked towards my condo and that’s when I saw Junior and I ducked behind a marble pillar, grateful for a place to hide.
Junior was heading towards a breakfast bar, with a bunch of smiling acolytes in tow, some of whom were my former team. They were hanging onto his every word, and everyone was laughing.
I dig the piece of amber into the palm of my hand and stop talking for a while, and then I turn to Cedar. I feel utterly sick. “Would you consider that progress has been made, today?” I ask and I sound bitter.
He nods. “I know that wasn’t easy for you, Julia. Well done.”
“Yeah, sure.”
He goes behind his desk and pulls open a drawer. He grabs something and then he throws a pack of cigarettes at me, followed by a lighter and I catch them in quick succession.
“No smoking in here,” he says. “See you tomorrow.”
In other words, bye bye, birdie, off you go, deal with your own issues, but here’s some nicotine to ease the pain, a little reward for being a good girl.
I stand up and leave without saying another word.
20. GRACE, THE LIVING BARBIE DOLL
I TRY TO FIND THE GANG but of course I get lost and I am aimlessly wandering the halls when Samia finds me. I am chain-smoking my third cigarette. “Hello,” she says and just seeing her makes me feel better. “Come on, I’ll take you to the others. And how are you today?”
I growl something indiscernible and feel even worse for being awful to her when she is so sweet to me.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says.
“Just a bad day,” I mumble and I follow her.
For some reason, the others appear to be similarly glum.
“Nice pajamas,” Tracey says to me.
“Lululemon,” I counter, but neither of us can be bothered to carry it further.
Samia brings us our lattes and we drink in silence.
“No sign of Beatrice?” Grace asks me and I shake my head.
“What’s your story, Grace?” Tracey asks. She is antagonistic, looking for a fight and I don’t understand why she’s picking on Grace.
“I thought you guys knew each other’s stories?” I ask. “I thought you go way back?”
They look around at each other. “It’s never a straight line in Purgatory,” Samia says and they all nod.
Grace looks down and holds her large purse tightly on her lap. “I don’t have a story,” she says softly.
“Sure you do. You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Leave her alone,” Samia says from behind the counter where she is cleaning up, but Agnes disagrees.
“You know our dirty secrets,” she says. “And you know it’s because we care.”
“Do you?” Grace asks, trying to raise an eyebrow. “Maybe you’re just bored.”
“I remembered some vicious shit today,” I say. “It was brutal.”
I am trying to get their attention away from Grace.
“That’s why you’ve got cigs,” Agnes says. “They reward you when it was heavyweight. What was yours?”
“I don’t feel ready to go there right now,” I reply. “And I’m not sure where ‘there’ is, actually. I got to a point where bad things went down but I don’t know what happened after that.”
“If you haven’t got to the part where you die, then you can be sure there’s a lot more crapola to come,” Tracey is confident. “Whatever happened today, it’s only going to get worse.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” I tell her and she grins and sticks her tongue out at me.
“Forewarned is forearmed,” she offers, and I light up a cigarette and offer the pack around.
“Nah, I’ve got lots,” Agnes says and the others decline.
“I was married,” Grace says softly, and we turn to her and wait. “I was married to a surgeon. A plastic surgeon, actually. He made a lot of money. We lived in the suburbs and we had a huge house and I had a Mercedes SUV and we had three children: two boys and a girl. I’m a fan of the Royal family and my children were all named after royals: Harry and William and Beatrice. Harry was nearly thirteen when I left. William was nearly twelve and Beatrice was ten. Everybody thought I had the perfect life. But Richard, that’s my husband, he changed me. And I do mean literally. Everybody thought I was so lucky, that I’d never have to grow old because Richard would give me facelifts and things, but he made me have surgeries I never wanted and every time I woke up from an operation, I looked different and less like myself.”
She stops.
Samia comes out from behind the counter and sits down next to her.
“He said I needed a breast job after Beatrice was born and he also made me have a hysterectomy so I wouldn’t get pregnant again. He said three kids were enough and he didn’t want to worry about it. He gave me liposuction on my legs and tummy. I had breast and buttock implants and he took a rib out, to give me a longer waist. But the body ones weren’t the worst, it was how he took away my face.”
“How does anyone ‘make’ a person have surgery?” Tracey asks. Clearly she doesn’t believe a word of it. “You could have said no, this is my body, my face, leave it the fuck alone.”
Grace shakes her head. “You’ve clearly never been at the mercy of a manipulative, cruel, psychopathic bully. It starts very slowly and once you take that first little step, you are rewarded. I don’t mean with gifts, although there were lots of those too. The first surgery he suggested was liposuction, to get rid of the baby fat. I argued. I said I would lose the weight over time, with diet and exercise, that it would come off. But he was so persuasive. This was much, much quicker, and didn’t I know how many women would kill for this opportunity? That it was incredibly expensive and such a wonderful solution and it would save me a lot of hard work and trouble.
“I said no, I was fine. I was healthy and strong and I would lose the weight, he’d see. He didn’t say anything, but he got really cold. We’d had a very loving, intimate, affectionate relationship up until that point, but he froze me out. He’d chat with the nanny, and the children, and anyone who came to visit, but he was icy to me. And he wouldn’t touch me. When I tried to talk to him about it, he would just look at me and say ‘you know,’ and he’d leave the room.
“Eventually, I gave in. I thought well, fine, it’s only liposuction and he was right, lots of women would have given anything to have it done. I told my best friend and my sister and they couldn’t understand why I was arguing about it. To them, it was a no-brainer, have the surgery. They both volunteered to go in my place and made me feel very stupid, and I felt ostracized by them too.”
She takes a sip of her tea.
“I had the surgery. It hurt like crazy. You have no idea how painful it was. And Richard was so kind, so loving, supportive, generous, and gentle. Being loved and pampered by him like that was unbelievable, especially after his cruelty. I was more
relieved and happy than I can tell you.”
“How long before he wanted you to do another one?” Isabelle asks.
“About four months. Buttock implants. What could I say? It wasn’t like I could change the shape and size of my bottom myself. And there was that ice about him when he suggested it, as if he was waiting for me to say no, so he could freeze me out. And when I agreed, it was like sunshine pouring down on me with all its might. And that’s how it went. And then came the breast jobs. Lifts, implants. Then the ribs were taken out. My friends and family thought I looked fantastic. Everyone was envious. No one understood. I had to follow a strict diet, no sugar, no sodas, no white flour, very few carbs, and no fat. Richard had a chef prepare meals for me. Sugar ages you, he told me. All that stuff ages you, and he couldn’t have me eating garbage, not after he had done all the work he had done.
“But he was happy to keep me drugged. Painkillers, tranquillizers, you name it. Never anti-depressants though, he was violently opposed to those. He said they messed with your brain and he’d never go there.
“One night, we had just finished having sex and he was examining his handiwork, very pleased with himself and he started caressing my face, pulling my hair back, running his thumb around my ears, and stroking my nose. It was extremely pleasurable and I lay there, enjoying every minute until he said, Graceful, we have to fix that bump on your nose.
“I sat up and grabbed the sheet up around me and I said no, Richard. Not my face. My face is mine. And he looked at me coldly and said have it your way, and he left and all that cruelty started like it had never ended. And again, no one supported me. And I had three babies, they were so little at the time and Richard even turned the nanny against me. I had no one, no friends, no support, nothing. It was terrible.
“I asked him one night if it would stop at my nose. If I do this, I asked, will you leave me alone? And he lied, he said yes, he promised. Just this one tiny thing, this one tiny, tiny thing. What could I say?
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