by Marco Vassi
In the office, Joan finished her brandy, put the cup down, and leaned back on the couch.
“Do you want to spend the weekend at my place?” Margaret said.
Joan inclined her head and looked down at the floor.
“Monday begins a whole new world here. And we might not have another chance to relax for a while.”
Joan held out one hand and Margaret took it between both of hers. It was the answer to her question. Margaret grew warm as she was struck again, as she was more and more often, that sex was only the expression of something much deeper that was going on between them.
As they sat, silent, holding on to the awareness of their feeling for each other, there was a knock at the door.
Margaret leaned forward, sitting erect on the edge of the couch.
“Come in,” she said.
The door opened and revealed Lou and Jack standing in the hallway, the salesman slightly behind the other man, and both of them diffident about entering. It was the first time either woman had seen Lou sensitive to the vibrations of anything that was happening in one of the office rooms.
Margaret raised one eyebrow as she looked at them. “Well?” she said.
“Can I come in?” Lou asked. And as he spoke he walked into the room, Jack following behind.
“Lou came to say good-bye,” Jack said as he spied the brandy bottle on the desk and made for it.
Lou walked to the middle of the room and stood facing the two women. He had his hands clasped at his chest and he was rocking slightly on his heels. He was feeling the impact of his departure, coming to understand it as an indicator of his age, that he was truly getting older, closer to the fatigue that beckons to death, and that a new generation was filling in behind him and would obliterate all his traces. The realization made him sentimental.
“So,” he said. “I guess it’s time to get my ass out of here and leave all the headaches to you.”
Margaret stood up. She and her former boss shared a long moment within which they allowed each other to die. It was painful, but there can be no birth without pain.
“Good-bye, Lou,” she said softly.
Lou nodded, and then looked over at Joan. The copy editor was watching the scenario with slightly glazed eyes. Her face open, her body relaxed on the couch, her tumultuous feelings swarming through her expression, she seemed no older than sixteen. Lou felt a paternal pang, which, for him, was almost indistinguishable from a carnal spasm. He recalled all the times she had come to his apartment, and the things they did together, and it all seemed remote, a surreal sexuality that was the manifestation of a kind of unconsciousness, a working out of deep chaotic urges, a series of impersonal unions that was redeemed by the tenderness with which they had treated each other.
Looking at her now, so vulnerable and young, he thought, “Can this be the woman that sucked my cock and let me fuck her in the ass?”
The room was momentarily locked into a frieze, as the four people were tripped into a psychic communion that transcended all social definition.
Joan seemed to snap out of her trance, and she got up from the couch, walked over to Lou, and kissed him on the cheek.
“Good-bye, Lou,” she said.
He put his arms around her and looked into her eyes, and then said, “If you need me, you’ll know where I am. Maybe you’ll want a vacation in the sun sometime. And when you visit, I’ll show you some interesting movies.”
She blinked. “Oh, you still have those,” she said, and as she formed the words, she wondered how she could have forgotten about what once would have seemed so terrible, that somewhere in the world there would be pictures of her being seen by strangers, pictures which showed her in the most lewd actions possible.
“I’ve passed into history,” she thought.
Lou disengaged and stepped back. “You should all come visit,” he added. And each of the three people who heard him caught the obliquely humorous implication, for they had all been captured, one way or another, by Lou’s camera. There was even some footage of Jack, tied naked to a post, while a fat woman who stood more than six feet tall whipped him vigorously.
“Good-bye, Maggie,” Lou said, and Margaret walked over and embraced him. He held her slim body against his, hugged her once, and then stepped back.
“Well, what is there left to say?” he told her. “You’ll learn as you go along and you’ll do the best you can.”
“I hope so, Lou,” she told him.
“And you’ll be careful with Al,” he added. “He’s a cunning man. And he really has no concern about hurting anybody. I mean, he’ll run over you and not even notice.” And, without changing his tone of voice, went on, “And he’ll hurt you in ways you might not even imagine. He has an instinct for people’s blind spots and vulnerabilities.”
Jack stepped forward from the desk where he had been sipping brandy and watching the entire interaction.
“Stop, Lou,” he said, “you’ll scare them.”
Lou smiled. “OK,” he replied. “You be the hero. Make sure they don’t get shitted on.”
Margaret shook her head. “For God’s sake, Lou, we’re not children. You think just because we’re women we don’t know how to take care of ourselves?”
And they were a fraction of an inch from launching into a spirited and heated argument, a thing that had formed one of their favorite activities. They realized it at once, and both burst out laughing.
“All right, all right,” he said, “I’ll go.”
And standing a few seconds longer, awkwardly, Lou dropped his gaze to the floor, and then, quickly and surprisingly, walked out of the office.
He went straight through to the elevator, rode down, came out of the building onto the street, scraped his shoes several times on the sidewalk, a subconscious gesture which was transformed into a symbol, and set off down Madison Avenue, his walk jaunty, whistling to himself.
Jack, who had poured himself another drink, turned to the two women.
“Well, here we are,” he said.
“This is who’s left,” Margaret said.
“And the ones outside?” Jack asked, pointing his head in the direction of the party.
“There are a few who are necessary. The rest can be replaced.” She walked behind the desk. “I’ll make a list over the weekend, and we can have a meeting on Monday. I’ll give notices then.”
Jack nodded.
He glanced out the window, and then back to Margaret. “And what about Al?” he asked.
“What about automobile accidents?” she replied. “Life is filled with unpleasant realities. We’ll deal with him as best we can, and if he makes it impossible, we’ll…” she caught the use of the plural pronoun, realized that she was assuming too much, and went on, “I’ll leave.”
Jack perceived the shift and supported her original articulation. “I don’t think that Joan and I will stay on if Al forces you to leave.”
“Can’t we begin our own publishing house?” Joan asked.
Her voice had regained its usual timbre. She was slowly climbing out of her state of shock, and would lapse into it from time to time, but with less frequency and severity, until the whole thing with Manuel became a distant reverie.
Jack and Margaret began to exchange amused glances, to comment on the girl’s business naivety, but something arrested them, and the expression became interestingly serious.
“That actually might be possible,” Jack admitted, already thinking of whom he would see for backing.
“Well, so much for Al Leeds,” Margaret said. “If he fucks with us, we leave him his office building and take up somewhere else.”
Jack stood silently a moment and then, putting his cup down, said, “Well, I guess I’ll get on back to my apartment.” And then, catching the eyes of both Joan and Margaret at once, added, “Unless you two want to invite me to your place.”
Margaret and Joan looked at each other. They smiled, a brief warm exchange, a glint of excited complicity passing between them.
“Too much work to be done,” Margaret said.
“Looks more like a honeymoon to me,” he told her.
“That too,” Joan replied, and she and Margaret put their arms around each other’s waists.
Jack walked over to them and put his arms around their shoulders, and the three of them snuggled in together, feeling the warmth created in the central space between their bodies.
“We’ll get to it,” Margaret said.
“I know,” Jack replied.
“It really feels good in here,” Joan said. “All of a sudden, it feels good.”
“It’s your office,” Margaret told her, “so how should you feel except right at home?”
The three of them enjoyed the first few minutes of their new working and life arrangement, having arrived, after a long string of interconnecting permutations and combinations, at a synthesis in which, for the first time, they had no hidden bits of information anywhere in the triangle. Their business interests and their life involvements were free to interpenetrate.
While, outside, the writer who had been talking to Joan had become progressively drunker, and having no one to talk to, had lapsed into a fantasy which, as it became clear he would leave the party alone, was tinged with bitterness.
“I’ll bet these people never have sex,” he said to himself. “Probably sublimate it all into their pornography.” He was disgruntled enough to accept a logic which, were it presented to him when he was feeling intellectually righteous, he would have demolished.
He poured himself another glass of champagne, consoling himself for his inability to score with Joan, whose sexual potential he was able to discern beneath the plain exterior she was affecting. And, to restore his sense of self, he began to plot a novel which would be set in a pornographic publishing house, and would feature a prim secretary who, when she took her clothes off, became a wanton slut.
“He slipped his fingers in her cunt,” he wrote in his mind as the opening line, and tripped into an orgy of images in which he took revenge on all the women in his life who would not fuck him or listen to his ideas, and, paradoxically, elevated them into archetypal sex goddesses whose raw beauty and power always reduced him to tears of wonder.
And as his cock began to stir in response to the pictures flooding his brain, he put down his glass and walked unsteadily to one of the desks at the far end of the room, where there sat, gleaming with cold erotic vibrations, his truest love, the typewriter.
He sjipped hix gingers in her nunt, he wrote, drunkenly, but with thundering finality and passion.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by Second Chance Press
ISBN 978-1-4976-2484-9
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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