Power Play

by Stein, Charlotte

  It never bothered me before my last meeting with Mr Woods. Before that sense of strange lowness, of a sudden shift in the way things are between us.

  ‘Go ahead, Benjamin,’ I say, though again those aren’t the words I want to use. The real ones are in the back of my mind somewhere, being ignored until I can think about all of this more clearly.

  ‘I’m supposed to take you up to your office, Ms Harding,’ he says, and that’s when I know it. I’m not going to get the chance to think about this strange little buzz in the back of my mind at all.

  And it’s mainly because of this sudden and creeping sense of unease.

  Of course, I felt that way the moment I walked in this morning. But it’s far more obvious now, as I take in every little nervy tic of the strange man in front of me. He’s not uptight exactly – it’s not like that. He’s not wound up inside himself, unable to escape. It’s more like his insides have escaped far too much, and are currently spilling themselves all over me. The urge to brush bits of him off my vintage Yves Saint Laurent suit is strong, very strong.

  ‘I see,’ I say, though of course what I really want to do is ask him what all of this is about. He has a lot of papers in his hands – which had seemed perfectly right in my head. It’s just that it doesn’t seem perfectly right now. ‘Lead the way, then.’

  He does. He lollops on ahead of me, every stride so immense that after a moment I actually find myself almost trotting to keep up. Of course I don’t let it show – he’s so obvious in his movements that I anticipate his head turns, and always slow to a near halt – but even so. There’s an element to it that’s mildly disconcerting. Like something about him doesn’t quite match up or work, and it’s my job to figure it out. Though I’ll be honest, I’ve no idea when the task fell to me.

  ‘Here we are, Ms Harding,’ he says, and I notice several things at once. I notice his voice first, despite the fact that doing so is the wrong thing to be picking up on. I shouldn’t be thinking about his odd, slightly glassy and very American sort of accent, while stood outside Mr Woods’ office.

  And I definitely should have taken in the new brass plate on the door, before anything about Benjamin occurs to me.

  But the truth is, I don’t. For a long moment I simply stare at him, in a much meaner way than I intend. I watch him ruffle through his papers, most of them almost sliding out of his grasp as usual. That ridiculous, All-American-Boy hair of his falling into his eyes, as he attempts to function like a normal human being.

  And then finally I ask, without letting any of my deep, deep concerns about this entire situation affect me. I don’t let them show in my expression, I don’t give them time in my tone. I already know what’s happened here, but I keep it cold and below the surface.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me why my name is on the door, Benjamin.’

  Of course, I half-know what his reaction is going to be. And I’m proved right when his mouth kind of flops open and his big eyes get bigger. The search for some unnamed thing amidst his pointless papers gets more frantic.

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Oh, I thought you knew, Ms Harding. Did no one tell you?’

  I think of the people above Woods, from the board of directors. Julian Wentworth, with the little pointed beard and the fidgety hands. Derek Carruthers, who so rarely visits that I don’t even have a few bullet points to pin to him. He could have three heads and one eye for all I know.

  ‘No,’ I say, and this time the expression on his face is so clear I could have read it from across a room. It’s you who were supposed to tell me, I think, and then I watch with the strangest sort of detachment as he searches in vain for something amidst his papers.

  ‘Ohh Geez, I’ve made such a mess,’ he says, under his breath. He needn’t have bothered. I can tell he’s made a mess, with or without his help. He has mess written all over him, in bold black marker. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something.’

  ‘Did you forget to give me a letter, Benjamin?’ I ask, because it’s torture watching him do this. My hands itch to do God only knows what. I can feel terrible, terrible words clawing at the back of my throat – words like we’re going to have to do something about you, Benjamin. Even though I know that’s one of the first things Woods said to me.

  ‘I think … yeah. Maybe … just hold on, Ms Harding.’

  I don’t want to hold on. I want to say it: We’re going to have to do something about you, Benjamin.

  ‘Oh, man. Here it is. Here,’ he says, and I have to wonder if I looked like that when I first stumbled into Mr Woods’ office. Clothes barely fitting me, words all fumbling one after the other. Scorchingly sensible of a mistake I’ve just made.

  Though when he speaks again, I’m almost relieved. There’s at least one glaring difference between the way I was and the way he is – and it comes to me as he tells me he’s always getting things wrong.

  He’s not ashamed like I was. He’s almost bright and boyish about it instead, the expression on his face full of a kind of hope I don’t know how to process.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ms Harding,’ he says, as some of the papers spill out of his hands. And then I simply have to stand there, frozen, as he tries in vain to gather them up. Everything about him so big and clumsy and sweet somehow, in a way I know I never was. ‘But I swear, it will never happen again. I swear to God.’

  What a strange creature he is – though I confess, I’m grateful to him. For a long moment I’m so transfixed by his utter awkwardness and his ever-hovering grin that I can’t focus on the true matter at hand.

  Woods is gone.

  And I am his replacement.

  * * *

  I have three contact numbers for Gregory Woods. One is for his office, which would now mean I’m ringing myself. The other is his mobile phone, which always goes directly to his curt little voicemail message: Woods. Speak. And the last is his home number, which I have never on pain of extreme torture rung.

  I will never ring it, not now. He’s done this thing, and that’s all there is to it. It’s the sort of person he is; it’s the way he operates. He makes a decision as brisk as a knife coming down, and if you get one of your limbs chopped off in the process, well.

  So be it.

  Though I swear I don’t feel that way. I feel calm and composed, all the way through the rest of the Monday morning break-down. I am like a summer breeze as I field questions from the head of the sales division about targets Woods has decidedly not set. I’m the very soul of inner peace, when I discover the other seventeen thousand problems no one ever thought to ask a man like Woods about, because Woods always looked like someone in control.

  He treated me like someone in control.

  But as I learn at one-thirty-five on Monday afternoon, his legend was definitely somewhat exaggerated. In fact, by the time Benjamin asks me if I’d like my midday Scotch, I’m convinced Gregory Woods was some sort of magician.

  I knew him in so many appallingly intimate ways, but I didn’t realise his level of incompetence. And judging by what Benjamin is now telling me – in all innocence – it wasn’t sober incompetence.

  I think I actually say to him: ‘Are you serious?’ though I swear I don’t mean to.

  It’s Woods I’m angry at, of course it is – and yet I snap at Benjamin so hard his teeth practically rattle. His mouth comes open again, though this time it at least has the wherewithal to seem voluntary. He almost catches it before it’s reached the halfway mark, but I still glimpse those odd teeth he has – so perfectly straight and white and gleaming, apart from the hint of point on the incisors. It’s not a hint really. It’s strong and obvious and like he should have a lisp, though I’m not sure how I come to that conclusion.

  And I can still feel the words he wants to get out, pushing at the back of his throat.

  ‘Uhhh … well …’ he starts, and that urge to correct him beats on me so hard I’ll be feeling it tomorrow. Don’t start your sentences like that. Don’t, don’t, don’t oh God don’t please I hardly know what’s
happening to me. ‘Mr Woods tended to like his Scotch with –’

  ‘Benjamin, sit down,’ I say to him, while my insides scream at me: do not ask him to sit down.

  I should never have sat down when Woods asked me to, that first time.

  ‘O – K,’ he says.

  I’m grateful that he looks so bemused, I really am. Though I’m less grateful when he seems to have the most appallingly difficult time picking a chair. At first, he actually seems to think I want him to sit next to the antique sideboard, on a leather wingback that has no real purpose being there. I mean, he does realise that thing is about twenty paces away from my desk, right?

  ‘Sit here, Benjamin,’ I say, but when I do I realise something even more horrifying than all of the rest of the weird urges bubbling up inside of me. His name … the way it sounds …

  It’s better than the way Woods used to say Ms Harding. The whole thing just rolls right off my tongue, with emphasis I don’t intend on syllables that shouldn’t have it. And when he takes the chair opposite my desk – all of his big body folding down into it as though he’s half the size he actually is – I’m almost certain he knows it.

  He knows how I’m saying it. Those guileless blue eyes and that almost-smile on the faint imprint of his mouth … they tell me what I need to know.

  ‘Are you OK, Ms Harding?’ he asks, as I sit behind the vast safety of the desk that once belonged to him. Unfortunately, doing so just makes me wonder if he ever needed to hang on to it the way I’m doing right now.

  I’m like the survivor of a shipwreck. Barrett and Bates is going down in flames, and I’m thinking about some awkward creature’s secret face signals.

  ‘I’m perfectly fine, Benja–’ I catch myself this time, though I’m sure he notices. Something flickers across his otherwise completely innocent gaze, something I recognise without even trying to. And then I get control of myself and start again. ‘I’m fine, Ben. I just want to get across a few things to you, before we go any further.’

  He nods, eagerly. I wish to God I didn’t have to add that ‘eagerly’ onto that description.

  ‘Of course, Ms Harding. I mean – I guess I’m your assistant now. And to be honest, that suits me a lot better. You’re so direct, you know? So –’

  ‘Stop!’

  I don’t mean to shout it, I swear. It just happens. A lot of things seem to be just happening, and I don’t know if I can cope with them all.

  ‘Sorry. You go ahead, Ms Harding. I’m listening. I’m really doing my best to be all ears.’

  Lord, he punches the air a little, after that last statement, the way a cartoon character from the fifties might have done. Gee willikers, Ms Harding! I sure am glad I’m working for you, gosh yes!

  ‘You’re doing fine, Ben. But what I really wanted to stress to you is this: you’re not my assistant. You weren’t really Mr Woods’ assistant. You –’

  ‘Oh my God, am I fired? Oh man, I –’

  ‘Benjamin,’ I say, and am deeply disheartened to find that his full name has the exact effect on him I expect. It freezes him in place, big hands clutching the chair arms. Those soft eyes caught somewhere between wounded and a promise that he can do better. I wish he wouldn’t want to do better for me quite so badly.

  ‘You’re not fired. I’m simply trying to tell you that you’re a clerical assistant. That’s what you were hired for – to help with general office paperwork, mail and filing. You’re not here to bring me a Scotch.’

  He isn’t really anything of the sort – he was always Woods’ PA. It’s just that I can’t have him being something like that right now. I need him to be away, writing letters for other people who don’t need a letter writer at all.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, but he doesn’t look as embarrassed as I’d feared he would. There’s a hint of sheepishness there, true, but then I imagine that’s his default state. Whereas the other emotion on his face – disappointment – probably isn’t.

  He looks like the kind of guy who takes most things in his stride. Unless it’s his brand-new boss telling him she can’t possibly spend her time ordering him to do humiliating menial tasks on her behalf. Then he just seems as though his entire world is falling apart, right before his eyes.

  And oh, I don’t like what that completely naked expression on his face is making me want to do.

  ‘I don’t need you to caddy for me at the golf course.’

  I really, really don’t like what it’s making me want to do.

  ‘I don’t require you to dry my hands for me after I’ve been to the ladies’ room.’

  God, I know it’s going to make me do it.

  ‘But if you want, you can … compose letters for me. And compile some reports.’

  Damn it.

  ‘Really?’ he says, and oh Jesus he just looks so hopeful. No one should ever look that hopeful over the prospect of writing to the head of the board to ask what the fuck is going on. I mean, a phone call might have been nice, you know? Promotion would have gone down a lot easier if it hadn’t been phrased thusly, in a letter:

  You’re now the managing director of Barrett and Bates, effective immediately. If you have any concerns, contact several people who don’t give a shit.

  ‘I hardly see why not,’ I say, though I know it’s a mistake. And I know it more strongly when I ask Benjamin to leave, and on his way out of the door he says:

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Of course, he realises his error almost immediately. He’s that sort of person, I think – the kind that makes many goofy blunders, but is intelligent enough to know he’s made them only a second later.

  Though it doesn’t make it any easier, I know. It still makes his mouth open and close, that sweetly curving upper lip of his compressing as he searches for a way to rectify what he’s done. He called me sir, even though I’m a woman. He called me sir, and for reasons we won’t go into it’s making him all flustered.

  ‘Sorry – I meant –’ he starts off, but I cut him down dead.

  ‘Sir is fine,’ I say, as I wave him out the door.

  * * *

  Of course, sir is not fine. And after he’s gone I sit at my new desk and consider all the ways in which it isn’t fine at all. It’s what I used to call Woods, for a start. It’s meant for a man, for afters. And then there’s the fact that it makes my body flush from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair.

  Yeah, there’s that.

  I close my eyes and try to think of something else. There are a million things for me to think about, after all. Woods had apparently allowed a whole department to keep operating unnecessarily, for reasons left unclear in the paperwork he never actually did. Tomorrow I’m going to have to fire every one of them, while he most likely suns himself in Barbados.

  And yet my mind returns to that one word over and over, so casually said. Sir, I think. I am somebody’s sir, and then I have to count all the things about him that aren’t right, just to keep myself on an even keel.

  His mouth is strange. It’s like it has no corners or definition around it, no real shape to keep it in place. Of course, occasionally when he talks it’s given a proper outline, but then, it’s not really the outline I want it to have. Movement just makes those lips plumper, more obviously sensuous, and then when he stops talking all I can see is how smooth and soft that mouth is. If he didn’t have that heavy jaw and all of that overflowing size, he’d look like a cute cartoon character, and nobody wants that. They want men with intense, cold, manly gazes. Not that warm, soft-focus eagerness. Not those sooty lashes that probably look beautiful spread over his cheeks – when he closes his eyes in ecstasy, maybe.

  God. God. How did the word ‘beautiful’ get into that sentence? How did ‘ecstasy’? I have absolutely no clue, and yet for a long moment it’s all I can think about. All of the things that are exactly right about him crowd out the things that probably aren’t wrong at all, and I’m left helpless on the burning ship again.

  Though I don’t clutch at my desk this time.
I turn to my computer – the ridiculous wood-backed thing my former paramour ordered from Japan, and that I’ve already searched for any evidence of his impenetrable motivations – and do what I’d wanted to the moment I knew he was gone.

  Hell, I wanted to do it the moment I knew he was different, on Friday afternoon.

  I go online, and start looking for someone who can give me the things he no longer knew how to. The things I’m no longer getting, and apparently need so desperately that I’m willing to actually venture onto Craigslist and read insane ads like:

  I want to piss on your head. Call 1-800-asshole, if you’re into that.

  No, 1-800-asshole. I’m not into that. But of course the problem is I don’t know what I am into. It was just easy to do the things Woods wanted me to do. It was calming and pleasurable and a distraction, from Anderson in sales being a doucheknuckle. From Patterson in marketing smacking my ass as I pass by his department – then acting like I’m the sourpuss when I tell him he’ll lose a finger the next time he pulls that shit with me.

  It meant I didn’t have to go home and stare at the walls of my pathetic apartment, with my pathetically neat little dinner for one in front of me, and know that this is my life. I am the managing director of a mid-sized but well thought of publishing house, operating out of the tiny city of York.

  And that is the most of it.

  Even if it’s not, exactly. After all, I am here in this plush little office, in my prim little suit with the perfect cuffs, looking at images of women who’ve been doing some very dirty things. And though that’s not quite on the level of what my predecessor was getting up to between these classy-painting covered walls, there’s a certain frisson to it, I have to say.

  I can understand its allure exactly, and not just because I want something to replace whatever Woods was providing. It’s the look of things, I think. It’s the smell in here, of varnish and too-thick carpets, as I bring up a picture of a woman facing away from camera.