The Kissing Game

by Marie Turner

  I’m hoping that he spends all day on the phone specifying what kind of salad he wants on the side of his bacon avocado sandwich because I haven’t quite figured out how to hold onto the massive cliff I’m about to fall off.

  Morality, mortality.

  The partner hangs up the phone. He leans over his desk and puckers his lips but then returns them their natural state. I wonder what irrevocable things are about to spout from his face. He’s wearing a burgundy colored suit that gives him the appearance of rust. Parted as far on the side as gravity will allow, his grey hair forms a thin frail carpet over his shiny bald head, where freckles try to hide on his scalp.

  “It pains me to have this conversation with you two,” the Chairman begins. “Especially since you two would be the last people I might expect this from. Shocking, just shocking.” He shakes his head as if to say naughty naughty, tsk tsk. Everything he says carries with it a tone of self aggrandizement, as though he practices in front of the mirror each morning.

  A motionless statue, I watch as he slides the familiar-looking flash drive into his laptop. I know what’s about to happen. I know what my flash drive looks like, but still I pray for a miracle and have the urge to lunge across his desk and yank it out of his computer, shove it into my mouth, and swallow it. But he’s already seen the tape, obviously. Instead, I listen as the computer wheezes in a deep breath while I contain the sensation ascending in my ruined stomach.

  The Chairman then swivels his laptop around so that it faces us like a television. On the screen, Robert and I are kissing in the elevator, the image a wicked guest in the room. The sounds are so intimate that they aren’t really sounds at all, just hints of breathing and lips. While the video plays, Robert doesn’t move beside me. I hear nothing from his seat. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the ball of his thumb slide tightly across the armrest. Behind the computer, the partner puckers his lips again. The video is only seconds but feels like ten minutes. Then it’s over.

  After the video ends, he closes his laptop, and Robert and I are suddenly two detainees. The silence becomes electric static in the room.

  “Now, Robert, you’re aware of our firm’s policies, so I needn’t say any more to you than to notify you that there’ll be a meeting with the other partners tonight.” He then turns to me, his grey-blue eyes condescending. He tilts his head. “And you, Caroline, you’re being transferred. Henry’s working on the task now. You’ll no longer be working for Robert. You’ll be assigned to another attorney until a suitable position can be found for you.” He glances at both Robert and me, two hormonal twits who couldn’t follow a simple rule.

  “You should know I don’t revel in these conversations with staff, but it’s vital you understand, Caroline, we frown on this activity between partners and employees. While the burden of responsibility falls on our partners,” he gestures at Robert, “who understand the firm policies and agree to them, we believe staff must also observe the rule of professional interaction, which is always the best policy.” The Chairman pauses to tap his pen on his desk. Next, he scowls.

  “What concerns me is the method of delivery, however.” A pause. “Do you two have any idea how this flash drive arrived at my house, in my back yard?”

  If there were a button that if pressed would result in my being sucked into a black hole and spaghettified, I would press it. Instead, I shake my head and turn to Robert, who now has small ropes of tension forming in his neck.

  “Can’t say I do,” Robert states, his voice crimson. The sound reminds me of a dark road where travelers get killed and buried in shallow graves.

  “If you suspect anyone, Robert, I’d certainly like you to tell me. The matter is disconcerting, to say the least.”

  The smell of expensive wood in this office is suddenly making me queasy and being queasy is making my forehead sweat and being sweaty and queasy is making me feel the need to lie down.

  “Well,” the Chairman continues, “do either of you have anything to say on the matter? Would you be inclined to state the nature of your relationship?”

  I shake my head and notice Robert’s knuckles whiten on the chair. “No.”

  “That’s it for now, then. Caroline, you can collect your things and report to Henry who’ll give you the location of your new desk. It’ll be temporary until we can figure out which attorney to assign you to. Robert, I’d prefer if you’d stay in here with me a little longer. We’ll need to discuss a few matters of importance,” the Chairman adds.

  I rise, shifting my eyes to catch Robert’s but he looks straight ahead, his knuckles shaped around the armrests, his jaw looking ready to bite something. I walk behind him, past the wood-paneled walls, where I see my own shadow. I’m the mutinous evildoer--it’s written in the shape. It’s written in my own stupidity, which seems to have been preordained from ancient times, before lawyers and assistants existed, before there were suns or moons or jobs, before dinosaurs and Chairmans. As I walk behind Robert, I have the urge to bend down and whisper, “It’s not what you think.” But it is exactly what Robert thinks. I am the abhorrence, the sin scribbled in the ledger. I have fanned the coals of my own hatred for him for so long that it now totters and moans, lists to one side, and exhausts itself into a shapeless heap.

  Closing the office door behind me, I feel the gust of circulated air from the hallway hitting the perspiration on my forehead. I hear the click of the office door and the murmur as the Chairman speaks. I take several steps over to Henry’s cubicle, where I grab a chair from a nearby empty desk, wheel it over to Henry, and sit down to put my face in my hands.

  “Be cool, be cool,” Henry tells me in a jazzy whisper without looking at me. He’s wearing his typical brown plaid sweater vest over a white shirt and blue dress pants. He’s scribbling on a piece of paper. “You’ll be sitting in for Marjorie who works for Sara Denton. Two floors up. You’ll be filling in for her assistant who is in Hawaii on vacation.” He hands me the piece of paper. “You’re not to speak to Robert at all.” Then he whispers, “But everyone loves you, my dear, so your job is secure. Now go scurry back to your desk and get your things. Hurry, before Robert comes out.”

  “But, Henry, I need to talk with you and the boys at lunch. Can we meet in the empty office on the 23rd floor?” I whisper.

  “Yeah, sure, but be calm. Everything is coolio. Robert’s out. You’re in. It’s all fine. Exactly as planned.”

  Picking myself up, I clutch the slip of paper and try to muzzle the tears that want to snake out of my eyes while I glide the brightly lit hallways towards my desk, moving around the corners and stopping only to grab my backpack from my desk drawer. Todd is talking on the phone, but he winks knowingly at me. It feels as if I’ve killed a village of children and now the town is congratulating me.

  Instead of taking the elevators, I swing open the door to the stairs. Climbing the steps, the loud clomps of my footsteps throttle my ears. When I find Marjorie’s cubicle, I take a look around and my new temporary station. It’s a foreign country on this floor of the firm. The lighting is dimmer, the view out the windows is west instead of east, tall buildings rather than water. All the assistants sitting at their cubicles are Czechoslovakians to me. I plop down at the desk and notice the light indicating that Sara Denton is on the phone. I turn on the computer and login, using my typical user name and password. This computer wheezes and hums a mottled sound. Immediately, I check my email, but there’s nothing new. Around me, I hear the clacking sound of typing, the murmuring of conversations behind closed doors. I begin drafting an email to Robert.

  Robert,

  Did you ever do anything you regretted before? Did you ever look in the mirror and just hate yourself?

  I groan and delete the email. For a while I sit there just looking at the blinking cursor as if it might type a message all by itself, as if it could take the words out of my head and form them on the page. If only that were possible. Imagine all the great love stories that could be written. The lump in my throat feels like do
ugh. For nearly two hours, I sit there while Sara Denton talks on conference call after conference call. Meanwhile, I reorganize Marjorie’s desk, sharpen her pencils, dust the photo of her cocker spaniel, try to look busy, but all the while I’m thinking about only one thing.

  As soon as the time on the computer clock reads noon, I log out and head to the 23rd floor, on the south side of the building, where a small office sits vacant. Bursting in, I find Henry and Cory sitting holding sandwiches like microphones. Cory’s leaning back in his chair chewing on his mozzarella pesto from the downstairs food court, while Henry smells like he’s eating a tuna salad sandwich from home.

  “Well, if it isn’t the vixen of the hour. Come in, shut the door, you little slut. Did you get some lunch?” Henry asks me, the look of twisted glee on his face.

  “No, I can’t eat,” I confess, closing the door behind me. Food sounds atrocious right now. I sit down next to Cory. “Where’s Todd?” I ask.

  “He’s getting lunch,” Cory replies. His tie-dye of choice is blue and purple today. The benefit of working in the tech department is that nobody sees him. “So how’re you doing? You’re the hero of the hour, you know. I have to tell you. The staff is already discussing erecting a statue in your honor. They’re going to call it the Red Widow, as in the black widow, only with red hair. You’ll be depicted on a horse, like Joan of Arc, with your cloak flailing behind you. Maxine has already drawn a mock-up in marketing!” he laughs.

  I don’t laugh. I feel the gargantuan tragedy of my situation as I glance past Cory toward the view of the freeway leading to the Bay Bridge, a peek of the bay’s icy waters in between sky scrapers. The office is so tiny that the room barely holds the three of us around the small desk. Bookshelves behind us sit empty. Without the overhead light on, the room has only the dim light from the floor-to-ceiling tinted glass window, giving the space a cave-like quality.

  Cory studies me. “Take a deep breath,” he says.

  “Yeah, it’ll all be over soon,” Henry adds. “There’s a partner meeting tonight. Robert’s out for sure. Robert’s pissed off enough of them to guarantee his ousting. They were in there yelling for two hours.”

  “Oh god,” I say. “This is awful.”

  “Yeah? What’s with the big change of heart, anyway?” Cory asks.

  “I’ve made a huge mistake, you guys. Huge. And another thing, I’m pretty sure that I was the one who drank the Xanax that night, not Robert. On accident, of course. I must have drunk from the wrong glass,” I confess.

  Cory opens his mouth like a fish, and Henry stops chewing.

  “Get out!” Henry says. “What makes you think that?” A bit of sandwich remains in his cheek like a chipmunk.

  “If you took all those Xanax, you’d have been out on your feet.” Cory scowls.

  “I was. That’s the thing. I was out of it, but Robert wasn’t. He even drove me home. And you know what that means, right?”

  “No.” Henry smirks.

  “It means that Robert kissed her and he wasn’t even drunk,” Cory states while pointing at me, the look of fascination on his face. For a moment, Henry and Cory look contemplatively at me before shoveling in their food again.

  “Hmmph.” Henry shakes his head.

  “I know,” I say.

  The office door whips open and Todd joins us. He’s looking smart in his slim-fitting button-up shirt, grey slacks, multicolored scarf around his neck, and shades over his handsome eyes. He takes off his shades. “What’d I miss?” he asks, looking eager to catch up.

  “Robert kissed Caroline that night and he wasn’t drugged. She took the Xanax on accident,” Cory states. “Now she feels guilty because he’s getting fired. You’re going to have to keep up. I can’t summarize for you every hour upon the hour.”

  “And he kissed her back, without being drugged,” Henry states for emphasis, looking as if a miracle has just happened.

  “No!” Todd says, his mouth open wide.

  I groan and flop my arms on the desk, my face into my arms.

  “Hmm,” Todd says, taking off his scarf and putting it on his lap. “You know, I always and my suspicions. Robert is like that mean boy on the playground who throws stones at the girl he likes. I had a sneaking suspicion he had a little chubby for you.”

  “Why weren’t you less of a bonehead that you could’ve told me sooner?” I whine. But then I notice that Todd looks as if he says that just to be nice, as if he knows the kind of compliment you’re supposed to pay to your friends when you’re surprised.

  Todd opens up his pilaf and pulls out a plastic spoon. “I dunno. I thought you hated him.” He shovels a spoonful in his mouth.

  “Oh god, what am I gonna do, you guys?” I moan.

  “First, here, eat a granola bar.” Cory hands me one. He’s an endless supply of granola bars and tie-dye shirts. “And we have to pow-wow. What’dya think my little lackies?” Cory looks around at Henry and Todd, who shrug and blink and chew.

  I open the granola bar and take a bite. It’s like eating cardboard with chocolate chips. I deserve a disgusting lunch, so I don’t complain.

  “Well, Caroline can’t confess to mailing the tapes because that incriminates you,” Henry says to Cory. “And she can’t confess to trying to get the tapes back from my boss’s house because that incriminates me.” He points at himself. “But she could tell the Chairman that she’s a slut, basically, that she threw herself at Robert.”

  Todd smiles. “Oh yes, I like this idea. Caroline would become the firm-wide hussy. We haven’t had a good hussy in the firm since … oh god, what was her name?” Todd says with his hand over his mouth while he chews. In the little office, we’re a bubble of munching sounds.

  “Felicia,” Henry says between bites.

  “Right,” Todd replies. “I wonder what ever happened to her.”

  “I don’t think Caroline could pull off office slut like Felicia could. Caroline’s too...” Cory says.

  “You’re right. She’s definitely too…” Henry seconds, his lips pressed together as though he’s trying to come up with the word.

  “Too what?” I ask.

  Henry frowns. “No matter what, she still won’t get Robert his job back. She’ll only succeed in making a fool of herself,” Henry says and sips his soda. “Robert is out of the firm. There’s no way around it, I’m afraid. All that’s left is the meeting with the partners tonight, and that’s just a formality. The partners just needed the excuse, and now they have one. And the best part is that Robert can’t take any business with him. So all his clients stay with the firm.”

  “This is, by far, the worst thing I’ve ever done. I can’t live with myself if I get him fired.” I sound like moaning wind.

  “Why do you like him so much now?” Cory asks me, chewing his sandwich. He dabs his mouth with a napkin.

  Three pairs of eyes are on me suddenly. “I don’t know. Think about it though,” I say. “Robert kissed me. He kissed me and he wasn’t drugged.” I fail to mention that he kissed me a second time.

  “I think your chances at friendship or anything else with Robert is fairly impossible now, don’t you?” Henry asks me. “He’ll hate you, if he has any idea, which I’m sure he does. I mean he knows who you’re friends with.” Henry points at Todd and Cory. “He knows you planned this. That guy learned war by warring himself. He’s no fool.”

  “Yeah, Robert knows,” I say, holding the lip granola bar. “I could tell by the way he acted in the meeting. He put it all together pretty fast.”

  “Hmm,” Todd mumbles, chewing pilaf. We all sit there silently chewing for a minute. Henry drinks the last of his soda and tosses it into the trash.

  “I don’t know,” Todd mumbles. “Quite the predicament.”

  I groan.

  “I’m afraid he’s right, pumpkin,” Cory says. “You’re going to just have to sit back like the rest of us and watch the fun unfold. Your job in this is done. Don’t worry, though. The partners thank you.”

  “Why
you’d want to save him is beyond us all.” Henry twirls his finger.

  “Beyond us all,” Cory seconds.

  “Most definitely,” Todd adds. “Good riddance to that evil man. Beautiful as sin but evil as the devil.”

  We spend the rest of the lunch discussing Henry’s new romantic interest, a newbie who works in the mailroom, wears a goatee, has a big gut, and plays the electric guitar. Henry can’t stop gushing about him. Todd and Cory give Henry advice on how to woo the young man, assuming he’s gay, of course.

  When we convene eating our lunch, we move single file out of the office back toward our desks, parting at the elevator banks. As we head in different directions, I realize that my friends can’t help me, that I’m alone in the problem I’ve created. Alone in my own head. And I’m going to have to solve my problem alone, too, if that’s even possible.

  For the remainder of the day, I sit at the desk outside Sara Denton’s office while she takes calls all afternoon, and when she comes out of her office, she looks at me as if I’m an alien and hustles down to another lawyer’s office, where she closes the door behind her. At 5:00 p.m. I collect my backpack and head down to the coffee shop in the lobby, which gives me a clear view of the elevator banks. I order raspberry soda and sip slowly while keeping an eye on the lobby. I feel ruinous and ruined, and I’m so hungry suddenly that I could eat a whole pizza by myself, but I just sit there watching.

  At 6:35, several partners file out of an elevator together, walking in shrugging clusters towards the exit doors, some towards the garage elevators. At 7:20, I spot Robert, looking tall and alone, carrying a box under one arm, his briefcase under the other. The slight hunch of his stride, even at a great distance, gives me an inexplicable aching. How could I have done such a horrible thing to this man? He moves across the lobby toward the elevators leading to the garage, where his car must be parked. He places the box and briefcase on the floor to press the elevator button. As he stands waiting for the doors to open, the large palm near the lobby fountain crouches over him, shadowing his face. Though I strain, I can’t see his expression. But as the elevator opens and he steps inside, I swear I see something akin to fear. I wonder if he sees me from far across the lobby, sitting in the coffee shop. But before I can tell, the doors close.