by JD Nixon
We gladly trooped out, relieved, but before we reached the door Heller spoke up again.
“Oh and by the way, none of you will be receiving a bonus from that assignment.”
His usual practice was to allow us to keep any tips we received from clients, earning more than enough income himself from the steep fees he charged to run the business comfortably. It was a good incentive for us, because the better our service, the better the chances were that a client would throw a big tip our way at the end. And of course, the better our service, the better the Heller’s reputation became. Usually Heller would have handed over the gratuity to the four of us to share, so to be stripped of that privilege was unmistakably a punishment. But he hadn’t finished with us.
“And none of you will be working without supervision for the next twelve months. I want you to know that it was only because I haven’t had any trouble with any of you before that I didn’t fire you all this morning. Don’t make me regret that decision.”
I wasn’t quite sure why he included me in that comment, because he’d had plenty of trouble with me before. But I wasn’t going to argue and suitably chastised, we headed for the door again.
“Stay behind please, Matilda,” Heller instructed.
Reluctantly, I returned to him. Clive followed the three men out into the main security office, closing the gym door behind him. I looked up at Heller silently, not knowing what was going to come next. Maybe he was going to yell at me after all.
“That last part doesn’t apply to you.”
That was surprising. “Oh, okay.”
“I still need you free to do solo jobs for me.”
That made sense. As the business’ only female employee, I did a lot of ‘babysitting’ of rich women in town with their husbands for business, assignments that didn’t require more than one staff member. Heller would never let anything interfere with my ability to make money for him – not even his own anger at my unprofessionalism.
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
But still I lingered for a moment, knowing the answer before I asked. “Did you enjoy meeting Jenna?”
The hint of a smile crossed his shapely lips. “She invited me to meet with her again tonight in her hotel room to discuss some future business. She was quite impressed with my . . . er . . . professionalism.”
I rolled my eyes. Heller had an unashamed appetite for screwing around casually and indiscriminately. He was the master of the one-night stand and being so tall, muscled and strikingly beautiful, he picked up women as easily as a kid picked up a cold at a kindergarten. He would never turn down an opportunity to spend a night with Jenna Mackenzie. What man would?
“I’m sure Monsieur Roux was equally impressed with your . . . professionalism,” I commented wryly.
His smile widened. “Monsieur Roux also suggested that I meet with him again tonight in his hotel room.”
I snortled with laughter. “Should I even bother asking who will end up having the pleasure of your company?”
“It wasn’t a difficult choice, Matilda. Ms Mackenzie will be quite a treat.”
I tried desperately not to mind, but it was one of the main reasons I hadn’t yet succumbed to his incredible charms. I wasn’t interested in being a notch on his bed head and I wasn’t confident that I’d ever be anything else if I did weaken one day. He wasn’t exactly someone looking for a meaningful relationship, even though he’d told me that he cared about me. Whatever that meant. And besides, I loved my job far too much to jeopardise it by sleeping with my boss.
“Well, I hope you have fun,” I said, a little wistful.
“I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”
“I really don’t want to know.”
“Why not? I always want to know what you get up to with your boyfriend.”
That made me laugh. “Yes, but you’re a pervert and I’m not.”
He smiled faintly. “No Matilda, it’s because I want to make sure that he’s looking after you properly.”
I met his eyes, unsure how to respond to that, so instead I spun around and scurried towards the door.
“Don’t forget we have the office staff meeting this afternoon.”
“I won’t,” I called over my shoulder.
“It would be nice if you were on time for once.”
I sensibly ignored that pointed comment, glad to escape back to the relative safety of the security section. Clive didn’t have any assignments for me so I decided to hit the gym hard, not yet over all the rude comments about my butt. After changing out of my uniform, I made my way to the gym on the third floor, which was reserved for those of us who lived in the building.
I had asked Heller to devise a weights program for me so I could achieve a bit more muscle in my upper body, and was also doing some regular sparring with Daniel who was more my size than the rest of the men around. That, combined with the security and self-defence courses I recently completed, made me more confident in my ability to protect myself than I’d been when I’d first started working for Heller. Not that I’d had to test that theory yet. Much of my work over the last months had been confined to holding the hands of rich, elderly and nervous women who wanted security installed in their over-large houses and chaperoning the bored wives of wealthy foreign businessmen visiting the city to finalise business deals. I’d been employed to deal with Heller’s female clients and that’s what I principally spent my life doing.
When it was time for our weekly office staff meeting, I joined Heller and his three managers – Daniel, Sid and Clive – in Heller’s office to discuss potential jobs, new assignments and anything else of general interest to us all. I originally was required to attend these meetings when I’d taken on the role of Heller’s client manager, and even though I was doing more security work these days, Heller still insisted that I attend. And that was probably because, although Clive was nominally my boss as the security manager, Heller often personally decided what assignments I’d be working on.
The men discussed boring things about staffing and budgets for ages until the end when Heller queried if anyone had anything else to say.
“I had a very interesting enquiry via email this morning,” informed Daniel with an impish gleam in his chocolate brown eyes. We all sat forward in anticipation, ears pricked. Interesting was always, well, interesting, in this place.
“Who from?” I prompted impatiently.
“Clarence Cockburn.”
“The Clarence Cockburn?” I asked in amazement. “The creator of Synonymy?”
“That’s the one.”
Four of us looked at each other with delighted surprise, Heller the only one not sure about the fuss. Clarence Cockburn was an expat techno-guru, consistently in the list of the top one hundred wealthiest individuals in the world. He had moved to LA after developing an online game called Synonymy that offered a virtual world containing a mix of fantasy quests and simulated real life. Members could create a new persona and establish a secret life where they could be whoever or whatever they wanted, in miniature.
If you wanted to be a tall, thin, sexy, fighting elf with magical powers who conquered fierce villains in thousands of quests, when in reality you were a dumpy, pimply, thirty-two-year-old virgin still living with your mother and stacking shelves at the local supermarket, then no problem! Sign up to Synonymy, pay the membership fee, create your new character and start living your new virtual life. If on the other hand, you actually were a tall, thin, sexy, fighting elf with magical powers who wanted to experience life as a dumpy, pimply, thirty-something virgin still living with Ma, you could do that on Synonymy as well. There was something for everyone and the two worlds of fantasy and simulated real life coexisted surprisingly well. It was as if The Sims and World of Warcraft had met, fallen in love and had a baby. It had just been named the most addictive online game ever developed at a recent pop culture awards show.
Like everyone I knew, I’d played it for a while a few years ago and had loved it, but
hadn’t been able to afford the monthly fee to keep my membership going. The character I’d created was a hot, sword-wielding tough magic chick – great body, skimpy black leather shorts and top, impossibly huge boobs, knee-high black boots, masses of long black hair, huge sapphire blue eyes and lush red lips. She could kick arse with the best of them using either her sword or her spells, but also liked to play the piano, clean the bathroom and cook Lobster Thermidor.
Yes, it was fairly tragic, but it helped me through a very dull patch in my life where I wasn’t getting any action or acting work and had to beg my parents for money to survive. I’d even been driven to ‘unexpectedly’ visiting them at dinnertime to cadge a free meal off them, I was that broke. I’m sure they wouldn’t have been impressed to know that some of the money they gave me for living expenses went towards a virtual game. Sorry Mum and Dad, I thought guiltily, I swear I spent the rest of it on food and rent!
Daniel continued speaking after we settled down from that exciting news. “Mr Cockburn is returning to the city to accept an Innovation in Technology award from the Prime Minister. He’ll be over here for a couple of weeks and wants a security presence during his stay. Nothing noticeable though, he requested, so I guess that counts you out Clive!”
Clive nodded gruffly. He was built like a tank and was what you would definitely classify as ‘noticeable’.
“Most of our security men are noticeable though. They’re all pretty big blokes,” Sid mused.
“Is he interviewing other companies?” Heller asked.
“Nope. He said he chose us because we were small and discreet and we’d been recommended by Alston Paul.”
Heller nodded. That was a client before my time, but I knew that Alston Paul was the bigwig CEO of a multinational mining company who visited to the city early last year to sign a deal to buy a majority share in one of the nation’s leading coal mines. It had been an extremely controversial arrangement at the time, rushed through parliament and resulting in mass demonstrations from the angry mining staff. Heller’s had provided a high profile security detail to protect Paul during his visit and it had clashed on a number of occasions with the disgruntled employees. There had been a lot of TV coverage of the battles, which perversely had only garnered Heller more business.
I was glad that I hadn’t been working for him then, as my sympathies would have all been with the employees. They were right to protest in the end as most of them were consequently restructured out of their jobs, replaced by cheaper foreign workers. I’d had a heated discussion with Heller about his role in the whole affair one night, but he’d remained impassive about the consequences. To him it was merely another assignment.
“It’s just business to me, Matilda. I don’t care who is right or wrong, who is rewarded or who is robbed, as long as the job is done professionally and I am paid,” he had declared with impatient finality, disregarding my emotional arguments. I remember then storming off the rooftop in an enormous self-righteous huff, much to his bemusement. It had taken me a whole day to calm down. He’s often cool and detached like that. It infuriates me, because I’m the opposite.
“I will take Matilda with me to the interview with Mr Cockburn,” Heller decided. “She’s soft and unthreatening.”
“Hey!” I protested. “I am not unthreatening! I’ve been working out a lot. Just look at these muscles. They’d scare any IT geek.” I pushed up my sleeve and flexed my bicep. The others smiled politely. I pushed my sleeve back down again, crossed my arms and sulked. I’d picked the wrong crowd to impress with my miniscule muscles. Daniel winked at me sympathetically. He’s not exactly built like the proverbial brick shithouse either. Niq, he and I were all rare creatures in this temple of testosterone.
“When do we meet with him?” Heller asked Daniel, ignoring my theatrics. He’d seen it all before.
“Later in the week when he arrives from the US.”
“Okay.” He glanced around at the four of us, a hint of smugness on his face. “I have one further item to report.”
Daniel, Sid and Clive all raised their eyebrows, obviously none of them in the loop on this piece of news. I was always the last to know anything, so I wasn’t surprised at being surprised.
“Just this morning, I signed a contract with Taldac Limited to provide security to their office complex for a five-year period.”
There was a general murmur of awe around the room, which I joined even though I had absolutely no idea who or what Taldac Limited was.
“Doesn’t Taldac have a long-standing relationship with Select Security?” queried Clive in his flat, gravelly voice.
Heller smiled, and it wasn’t a smile you’d want your mother to see, particularly my mother who had a big crush on him. “I undercut them, but even then we’ll still be pulling in a healthy profit. Select were taking them for granted and overcharging them for years. Let’s just say that the CEO of Taldac wasn’t thrilled with that discovery after I pointed it out.”
Sid whistled under his breath. “Select aren’t going to be happy with Taldac’s decision to switch. That’s a lucrative contract.”
“Yes, it is.” Heller smiled that nasty smile again and a shiver ran up my spine. He relished any opportunity to best Select Security. “There will be a generous end-of-year bonus for every man this year.”
I cleared my throat noisily.
Heller’s blue headlights landed on me. “And every woman. Anything else?” There wasn’t, so we were all dismissed.
I flounced off to my desk, still miffed about the lack of appreciation for my growing muscles, and checked my email. I had twenty-five emails since I checked last thing the previous evening before leaving for Will’s house. I am not kidding when I say that my family’s emails should be regulated by the government. They are public nuisances, forwarding on every crappy email ever written – every request for banking details from Nigeria, every urban legend, every tired old blonde joke.
To my joy, there was one gem of an email. It was from my best friend, Dixie, a petite and perky Malaysian-Australian, with enchanting black eyes, a cute black pixie hair cut and the biggest libido I’d ever known in a human being. There was an attachment to her email and I opened it cautiously, well aware of her penchant for forwarding naked photos of men she had conquered and snapped with her phone while they were slumbering in post-coital bliss. I angled my monitor to ensure that Niq, who did his distance education schooling in the same general office area as Daniel and me, wasn’t able to view the photo. It had a high probability of falling into the porn category.
The photo was taken in a hotel room. I realised with a jolt that I recognised the man asleep on the bed. He was a high-profile rugby league player with a notoriously sordid reputation for involuntary sexual encounters with women in nightclub toilets. Scrutinising the photo, I noticed he was much less endowed than I’d imagined, given his reputation. Perhaps that’s why he had to force himself on drunken women so regularly?
I sent Dixie a quick email back: That’s a teeny peeny! How did you meet him? How did you manage to do him in a hotel room and not in a nightclub loo? And is it true that size doesn’t matter!!?
After hitting the send button, I deleted the photo from my computer. Heller was not amused by Dixie’s behaviour and I’d promised him that I would ask her to stop sending me such photos. I did ask her to stop, but she still kept sending them anyway. And to my shame, I have to admit that I did keep looking at them as well.
Chapter 5
I retired early that night, cooking myself a simple dinner – a small dish of garlic prawn fettucine with basil, cherry tomatoes and wilted English spinach leaves, washed down with a few glasses of a crisp and tasty sauvignon blanc. Heller provided us with an excellent pantry located on the sixth floor and everything was free! Have I mentioned that I love living in the Warehouse?
Nicely loose from the alcohol, I watched TV in my pyjamas, sprawled on my white lounge with indolent inelegance. But when the nation’s leading current affairs program People’s P
ulse came on, I sprang up with vested interest. The show’s host was Trent Dawson, a sleazy celebrity with a reputation for being a love-rat and the story he introduced was titled, ‘City’s Foxiest Fighter?’
“No, no, no,” I prayed to myself, fumbling for the remote. It was too late. The YouTube footage beamed from my TV and I watched in horrified petrification as my butt, barely encased in those tiny panties, broadcast to approximately 2.8 million viewers, my mother and father but two of them.
I turned up the volume.
“– now generated over two million views on YouTube. It appears, contrary to what the fashion gurus’ want to tell us, that men do appreciate a real woman with delicious curves. And perhaps it’s every man’s secret fantasy to be bruised up by a tall, masked woman in lingerie?” Trent Dawson smirked. “So who is this superhero wonder woman who saved Jenna Mackenzie from a crazed fan? Who recognises her? Contact me on email or Twitter or Facebook if you think you know her.” He leaned closer to the camera, his brown eyes intent. “I want to interview that woman. Help me, viewers. One of you has to know who she is.”
I switched off the TV, stomach sinking. My phone rang immediately. I knew who it was.
“Matilda.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said, invoking the Bart Simpson defence. “It doesn’t even look like me. I was working at the show, but I was in my uniform the entire time. The mask is confusing everyone.”
There was a deliberate silence. “That’s good. You keep saying that if anyone asks.” Another silence. “I’m going out now. Good night, my sweet.”
“Night Heller.” My turn to be quiet. “Have fun with Jenna.”
His low, growly, sexy chuckle made my stomach flip. “I will, but not as much fun as I could have with you, Matilda.”
He hung up, leaving me palpitating over that little comment for a while until sleep finally claimed me.
The next morning I watched TV while I ironed, nearly burning a hole in my cargo pants when the show’s vacuous and bouncy female host interviewed Jenna Mackenzie live in the studio. It was her last media appearance in the country before she was flying out to Milan for yet another fashion parade. Jenna purred her way through the friendly chat with the sycophantic host, her lips redder and more bee-stung than I remembered, her eyes dreamy. Her contented and languorous mien virtually screamed out to the world that she’d spent the previous evening indulging in an orgy of sizzling sex with a smoking hot stud. As I flicked off the TV, I mercilessly quashed the familiar sharp burn of jealousy and faced the day with a determined bright smile plastered onto my face.