Act Your Age

by Eve Dangerfield

  “Yeah, I think he could tell what I was. He was rough with me and I, um, called him ‘daddy.’”

  Maria stared at her for so long that Kate was glad of the noise of the café. It told her time hadn’t stopped. “Is everything okay?”

  “You called him Daddy?” Maria said, her face completely expressionless.

  “Yeah, he, erm, liked it. I think he might be that way, too. And, another amazing thing, he almost made me, y’know, finish .”

  She expected Maria to look impressed, she of all people knew that was a personal win, but her friend only continued to stare blankly at her. “So he treated you as you imagine being treated in your fantasies?”

  “Exactly. It was perfect. He was perfect.”

  “He’s not. No man is.”

  Kate waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. She merely tapped at her latte glass again, her features as frosty as a Melbourne morning. That didn’t make sense. Maria had found her crying in the bathroom after her first derby practice, and instead of being disgusted that a grown woman was weeping next to the tampon machine, she’d pulled her into the best hug of Kate’s life. From that day on they’d been friends. Maria had her over for dinner, took her to sex clubs and helped her set up an account on Kinkworld, a singles site for the sexually complex perverts of the world.

  Kate had known she wouldn’t like her hooking up with her boss, but she thought Maria would be pleased she’d almost come with another person and had been brave enough to try and make it happen again. Instead, she looked like Kate had told her she was stomping on cats for fun. After several tense minutes she made herself ask, “Are you mad at me?”

  “Katie!” Maria took her hand and squeezed it tight. “Of course not. I’m sorry if I seem strange. I’ve had a long day.”

  Kate smiled, relieved there was an explanation. “That’s okay. So, what do you think I should do?”

  Maria let go of her hand and settled, businesslike, back into her chair. “These clothes you’re wearing to work, the way you’ve been acting, you’re trying to tempt Mr Henderson into touching you again, aren’t you?”

  Kate felt her cheeks burn. “Yeah, um, pretty much.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Really?”

  “We both know you’ve craved a man like this your entire life. Now that you’ve got one in your sights, there’s no going back. What is your HR policy about workplace dating?”

  Kate didn’t even pretend she didn’t know the answer. “There’s nothing in my contract about having sexual relationships with your colleagues and nothing in the employee guidebook. I don’t think there’s ever been enough women at GGS for it to matter.”

  Maria made a noise somewhere between a huff and a snort. “So sleeping with him would just be frowned upon and bad for your career and reputation?”

  “I know, trust me, I know,” Kate said. “I’ve told myself all of this and worse, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting him. I can’t think of anything else. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

  “And you won’t consider getting another job?”

  Guilt squirmed in Kate’s stomach like a particularly unhappy tapeworm. “No.”

  “Well, then there’s only one choice. You need to stop this. Now. No more bending over or sexy clothes unless you want to wear it because of how it makes you feel, understood?”

  Kate nodded, feeling miserable. She’d been expecting this, but it didn’t make hearing it any easier.

  “If you want to begin a sexual relationship with this man,” Maria continued. “You need to go to him as an adult, proposition him and then let him make up his mind.”

  If Maria had suggested she walk up to Ty and punch him square in the face, Kate wouldn’t have been more surprised. As it was, she choked on her lukewarm hot chocolate. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. If I told you to stop trying to seduce Mr Henderson and let things go back to the way things were, would you do it?”

  “Yes!”

  “Really? Or would you continue dressing provocatively and bending over in front of this controlling, authoritative man until he snaps and fucks you on his office floor?”

  God, even the mere suggestion made Kate feel like someone had turned on a washing machine in her lower abdomen. “Probably that second thing.”

  Maria smiled icily as she folded one long leg over another. “Sexual attraction is one of the most powerful forces on earth. Your body will keep trying to get you into his bed and if you’re not careful, it could do a lot of unnecessary damage. You need to take your attraction out of your office and into one of your homes, or better yet, a hotel.”

  Kate pictured herself checking into a hotel with Ty, smiling knowingly at one another before slipping into a locked room to do unspeakable things. The image had a glossy, surreal quality, as though she were imagining herself sleeping with an Oscar award winning celebrity.

  “So, how do I approach him?”

  “You said he likes what you like; is he on the scene?”

  Kate imagined the look on Ty’s face if he was made to attend one of the campy fake-slave auctions Maria took her to. “I don’t think so.”

  “Is he the kind of man who thinks such things are silly?”

  “Very much so.”

  Maria huffed. “Is he on one of those dating apps? Tinder or Blumble?”

  “Bumble,” Kate corrected. “No, I heard him tell a guy that dating apps are too much work.”

  “Lord, well then it’ll have to be your workplace.”

  Kate began to process and discard ways of approaching him at work. Email? Too risky. Wait in the car-park? Creepy. Telegram? No idea how they worked. Trick him into going to a meeting in which she was the only other attendee? Also creepy.

  It was only when she heard Maria say her name that she realised she was zoning out.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “Oh, Katie.” Maria checked her gold Cassio watch. “It’s getting late, how about you come back to my place for dinner?”

  Kate hesitated. She’d been looking forward to going home, having a long hot bath and watching the football, but Maria had taken the time to talk to her she’d feel so rude if she just bailed. “Okay, sounds good.”

  Maria paid for their drinks, swatting away Kate’s proffered twenty dollars and they left the café. It had been twilight when they entered the café, but it was pitch black now. They walked toward Maria’s BMW and Kate was suddenly glad she’d accepted the offer of dinner; it would be warm and cosy at Maria’s place and whatever her husband whipped up it would be better than what she had lurking in her fridge. Baking aside, she wasn’t a great cook.

  As they reached her car, Maria turned to her, her mouth tight as if she were tasting lemons. “How old is Mr Henderson, by the way?”

  Oh dear. “He’s forty…”

  Maria raised her eyebrows. “Forty?”

  “Forty…like…erm, five?”

  A long stream of Spanish swear words filled the frosty air.

  Chapter 5

  Kate’s hands were shaking. Beneath her desk, her patent leather shoes were tap-tap-tapping on the floor. Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe. You’re ready, you can do this.

  It was a quarter to six. She’d deliberately stayed back an hour working on her monthly status reports because hell, why not try to look like a champion employee before you tried to convince your boss to have sex with you?

  The entire floor was quieter than Kate had ever heard it. There was no music, no laughter, no vacuum cleaners humming. All the staff, down to the cleaners, had punched out. Not Mr Henderson, though. Ty was notoriously one of the last people out of the building at night, the one who set the alarms. Kate wasn’t sure why, but working late meant he was allowed to take alternate Fridays off. She’d heard he rode his motorbike down to the Mornington Peninsula to spend the long weekend soaking in hot springs and having sex with a load of glossy MILFs. She wasn’t sure if sh
e believed that, though. The guys she worked with tended to talk about Ty as though he were James Bond, a larger than life character living a sexy narrative that they, with their paunches and bald spots, could only imagine.

  Sure, judge your colleagues for eroticizing the life of Tyler Henderson, that’s fair.

  Kate’s palms had begun to sweat. She groaned and rubbed them along her skirt. It was an old one, calf-length and covered in a pattern of bananas and monkeys. She’d paired it with one of her new water-silk blouses in the hopes of looking whimsically sexy.

  Despite her promise to Maria she hadn’t fully reverted back to her old style of dressing. It wasn’t to flirt—the consensus among her colleagues was still ‘your clothes have changed and so have you, man’—she wore the new things because she felt different when she had silk against her skin. Sexier. More confident.

  Her phone buzzed on her desk. She picked it up and saw a text from Maria.

  Good luck Katie, try to be brief and call me as soon as you’re done xx

  Kate sighed. If she screwed this up, the last thing she’d want to do was discuss it. Maybe she could switch her phone off and pretend it died. Although, knowing her luck, tonight would be the night someone stabbed her at the 307 tram stop and she wouldn’t be able to call for help.

  Worry about getting murdered later. You need to pump yourself up to tell your hot boss he should ignore all good sense and workplace ethics and sleep with you.

  Her pep talk did nothing to improve her mood. Her palms were still sweating and white spots kept bursting behind her eyes. As she closed down her computer, she became sure she was going to faint. She had a harder time staying conscious than most people. Alcohol blackouts aside, she’d spent her childhood passing out from plain old fear: at scary movies, the baboon enclosure at the zoo, during her school performance of The Wiz. Doctors told her parents it was something she’d grow out of, but she’d still collapsed when her neighbour jumped out at her from behind a bin last year. She’d woken up to find herself in a puddle, surrounded by hot paramedics who thought she’d wet herself. That had been bad enough. If she collapsed in front of Ty, she was officially joining a nunnery. In Gstaad.

  Of course thinking about collapsing in front of Ty only made her breathing shallow and turned her tongue into a piece of dry toast at the bottom of her mouth.

  I can’t do this. I’m like one of those fainting goats, only less cute. Ty’s going to laugh in my face.

  She’d taken her mid-morning Ritalin a little later than usual, hoping to extend its effects into the evening. It didn’t seem to be working and taking another one wouldn’t help. Ritalin wasn’t the equivalent of a line of speed the way most people seemed to think it was. It didn’t get her stoned, and it didn’t pep her up, it just cleared away the static-y fuzz that blustered through her head, and made her motivated enough to see most tasks through to completion. Valium might have helped, but she didn’t have any Valium.

  She racked her mind for something, anything that could help snap her out of her panic. Her brain handed her bits of generic self-help advice and affirmations, blue light and calm visualizations. And then it landed on something new: Rapunzel.

  Rapunzel was the Barbie Trolls’ prize blocker and mushroom picker, a six-foot-three lesbian with a partially shaved head and three tongue piercings. She had a white-gold braid even longer than Kate’s and was incredibly, almost unnaturally, self-assured. She also slapped herself in the face before derby bouts and advised the other players to do the same. “Not hard, mind,” she said. “Just quick repetitive taps, like a boxer.”

  Kate had never seen any merit in hitting yourself but nothing else seemed to be working. She raised her hands to her face and tapped her cheeks a little. It did nothing but make her feel silly. Then, she heard Rapunzel’s voice, deep and salted with the accent of her Manchurian childhood. “That’s pathetic. You really want to fuck this guy?”

  “God, yes,” Kate said aloud.

  “Then hit yourself harder. Your face isn’t made out of post-it notes, you’ll be fine.”

  Grimacing, she slapped herself harder, once, twice, three times. When she pulled her hands away, she was surprised to discover she actually felt calm. Her tongue was wet again and the white spots weren’t popping behind her eyes anymore. Rapunzel’s technique had worked. Kate reminded herself to thank her, then realised that would make her look insane.

  There was less than five minutes until she was due to see Ty. Needing something to do with her hands, she pulled out the folded piece of paper she intended to give him.

  It was a bit high school, but she’d decided a note was the best way to proposition him. She would walk into Ty’s office, say hello, place the note on his desk and then leave. She would not linger saying things like ‘obsessed with you,’ ‘can’t stop thinking about you,’ and ‘would literally stab someone in a non-essential organ to hook up with you again, Mr Henderson. Please have sex with me, or I will die.’

  The note was short, sweet and to the point; I know you told me to forget what happened in your hotel room, but I can’t. I want more. If you’re interested, look up my profile on Kinkworld. My user name is @LolaJones.

  She felt silly even writing the word ‘Kinkworld’ to Ty, much less directing him to her profile, but it would explain everything so much better than she could. The alarm she’d set on her phone began to chime, soft bells increasing in volume. Kate turned it off and tucked her note into a tiny side pocket on her skirt. There it was perfectly positioned so she could pull it out and hand it smoothly to Ty, like a flight attendant giving a passenger a microwaved omelet.

  “Now or never,” she told herself. “It’s now or never.”

  Kate knew exactly how many strides it took to get to Ty’s office—two hundred and nine—but today there seemed to be half that. A quarter of that. She was near him in record time, hearing strains of what she knew was blues music came through his open doorway. Ty loved the blues. It was one of the many arbitrary, stalkerish things she knew about him. She felt the sickening lurch of dizziness and slapped herself as quietly as she could. Her vision immediately sharpened. Though she was sure Rapunzel never intended her pre-derby routine to be used this way, it was quite a discovery. Maybe Kate could make her some muffins and act like it wasn’t a gift for teaching her how to control her wayward brain.

  Kate straightened her lace headband and forced her legs to carry her into Ty’s office. For a panicky moment she wondered why he wasn’t there, then realised he was hidden by his huge computer monitor. The top of his blond head was visible, so was a big hand drumming the top of his cordless mouse. He gave no indication he’d heard her come in.

  Kate opened her mouth then closed it, her heart fluttering against her ribs like a panicky hummingbird.

  I can’t do this, she thought and took a huge step backward.

  “Middleton,” Ty’s computer said. “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t sound angry, just mildly inconvenienced, as though she were a door-to-door salesperson trying to sell him cleaning products. Kate swallowed. “I just…”

  Her voice was a thing of ridicule, so girly and crackly it was embarrassing. She swallowed again, trying to wet her throat and sound more like a grown up and less like a Disney mouse. “I wanted to ask you something?”

  “And that is?”

  “I was wondering…I was thinking…”

  “Yes?”

  She let out a soft wheezy breath. Maria hadn’t prepared her for this. Nothing had prepared her for this. The top of Ty’s head was more intimidating than a gang of youths loitering around a train station at night. She couldn’t just hand him a folded up note like they were in primary school. Why had she ever thought that was a good idea? As of now, her mission was over. She stared around Ty’s office for something she could talk about instead. Desks? Lamps? A big swirly painting by some abstract artist Ty had probably had sex with? Then her gaze fell on the only thing in the room more disturbing tha
n a sex-painting, a fancy crystal tumbler full of brown liquid. Jackpot. “I just wanted to say, you shouldn’t be drinking at work. It’s really unprofessional.”

  That got Ty to move out from behind his monitor. “What?”

  Dear lord, what was wrong with her?

  “Erm, nothing,” Kate stammered. “Except…except you’re not supposed to drink at work. It’s a violation of our HR policy, you know, like why we can’t have beer at the Friday barbecue?”

  Ty stared at her as though he’d never seen something quite so ridiculous in all his life and now that he had he needed time to process it. Despite her terror, Kate couldn’t help noticing he’d had a haircut. The shorter style brought out the hard planes of his face to perfection and emphasised his eyes. For someone who could glare better than Clint Eastwood, they were a surprisingly warm shade of blue, like a favourite pair of jeans, faded and so comfy she could sleep in them.

  “You came here,” he said slowly. “To tell me off about drinking at work?”

  “Erm, yeah,” Kate said, figuring it was too late to back down now.

  “I see.” Ty raised his tumbler to his mouth and took a slow, deliberate swig.

  That’s just mean, Kate thought. “Okay, now that we’ve talked I should probably head home. See you tomorrow!”

  Ty bared his teeth in something that definitely wasn’t a smile. “Before you go, Middleton, I want you to tell me something.”

  “Yes?” she asked nervously.

  “If you’re so concerned with workplace practices, why is it every time I turn around, I’m looking at you bent over in a skirt so tight you couldn’t slide a piece of paper between the fabric and your ass?”