by Jamie Knight
So, Vanacore was gentle by comparison. She didn’t hit too hard in reality, though it still hurts like a mother. I’m not injured in any way. Just brought in line. Brought to heel. And I’ll tolerate it to keep my job. Anything to be kept out of that cesspool.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Melissa
After having my fill of the shopping therapy that Friday evening, driving home to spend an uneventful weekend by myself — the first uneventful weekend in five years since Dennis and I are usually connecting via video chat and spending some “intimate” time together — I return to work. I return to business as usual that Monday.
It’s now Wednesday, and for three days in a row now, I’ve seen Tommy rush out for lunch, only to come back ten or fifteen minutes later, with various brown or plastic bags full of take-out food. One day it’s from a fried chicken place; another day, it’s from a sushi place, and today it’s from a Vietnamese noodle soup place.
And, like all the other days, it’s a small bag of food. Only really enough for one person. Momentarily, I feel like flagging him down, asking him what he’s in such a hurry for. Why he can’t even give himself a full half-hour to eat, but I think better of it. He’s not even looking my way, as he had for the last few days, and he looks more disheveled than usual. Frumpier than usual, too, which I don’t get a good feeling about.
Neither does Isabella because she says to me in between bites of her chef salad (we both decided to eat at our desks today) as Tommy disappears back up the elevator, “Poor kid. I know all the bosses around here work their assistants hard, but I’ve heard Ms. Vanacore takes that to a whole other level. A whole other understanding of hard.”
This starts a knot in my stomach. A knot that travels up to my neck and down my spine.
“What you mean?” I almost don’t want to know, but it’s better than catching Dennis’s eyes in the portrait I still have on my desk of him. Even though we’ve been “broken up” since before this last weekend, and I haven’t bothered to bring it up to Isabella, I can’t bring myself to do anything with this photo, his picture. It feels too final, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of final. Not yet.
“Heard she’s a bit of a slave driver,” she says. “Heard it goes beyond just asking for a lot out of her employees, to some of those requests being beyond what most people consider fair or acceptable.” She meets my eyes over another bite of lettuce, egg, and ham, or turkey. “Also heard from some folks that this played into her reputation at other law firms.” This causes my stomach to turn, twist, and tighten even more.
From somewhere in my heart, mind, and soul, I suddenly get the image I saw of Ms. Vanacore last Friday, as I was hurrying from the cafeteria to talk with Dennis. The meanness, possessiveness she had about her. The dismissiveness she had toward me, and the way I can only imagine she was with Tommy when she saw him in there, eating lunch. My heart, mind, and soul whispers one fatal word to me about her. Predator.
This sends a sickening shiver up and down my back and across my neck. She’s a predator, Melissa. Really look at Tommy the next time. Look at what you see there. And you won’t see a busy worker, you’ll see someone being groomed as prey.
I swallow thickly under this, barely able to keep down the little bit of lunch I’ve managed to eat.
I’ve also stopped listening to Isabella now, but I don’t care. Between my lingering sourness over Dennis, how he just ended things like that with me, and my budding concerns about Tommy and how well his new job is really treating him, I don’t have the attentiveness I’m used to having. I also don’t have the emotional availability.
Probably a good thing, as if I were too available for my emotions, I wouldn’t be here at work. I wouldn’t be able to carry on a single sentence, let alone answer phones, and direct important calls for eight hours a day.
Even if poor Tommy is being groomed or molded into some kind of slave or appetizer for Ms. Vanacore, I can’t do anything just yet. I can’t be sure of anything or say anything. I have to get a chance to talk to him. Look at him properly. As it is, he’ll barely even stopped and talked to me. My mind goes to a little over a week ago when I happened to hear exactly what Ms. Vanacore thought of Tommy and me being seen together in any capacity. Which I doubt is an accident, given I’m just the “lowly secretary” and Ms. Vanacore doesn’t want her assistant mingling with the likes of me.
I put that thought out of my head, as well as the follow-up one about Dennis and Ms. Vanacore being a good fit for each other, and continue to focus on work. I do so until the end of the day.
But my self-control, my mantra of taking my mind far, far away from Dennis, cracks the minute I’m in my car. I don’t know what’s come over me, but I suddenly don’t just feel like letting him end it right then and there. He can’t break up with me like that, without another word from me. Without some other bit of hell to pay for everything.
I dial his number and wait on the line before I’ve even had time to ask myself what I’m going to say to him or why.
Unlike all the other times in the past few weeks or months, he actually picks up right when I call. Dismally I think that all it took was for him to break up with me for him to finally act like a “good boyfriend.”
He says, “What you want? I told you we were over, Melissa, so you better not be calling me thinking that you’re going to try and plead your way back into my life.”
Whatever I was going to say (and again I have no fucking clue what that would’ve been anyway), that goes out the window, and out comes my anger. My rage. My sorrow and confusion about being dropped like old news. My embarrassment at being labeled a crier and manipulator. “No,” I say, I didn’t call you to cry or plead for you to come back to me. Don’t flatter yourself,” I say, fighting the cracks in my mask, “don’t flatter yourself by thinking you are worth any more tears or wasted nights, Dennis.” Never before have I realized how close Dennis is to being a bastard. Not until now. “I just called to let you know that I’m not going to let you just break up with me and not have to hear or take any hell from me.”
Dennis makes a sound like he’s scared, but he’s not.
And that just makes me angrier. “Enjoy your new life with that little girl toy of yours while you can, Dennis,” I say, “that little Tinkerbell who is granting all your wishes, but you’re going to get what’s coming to you. You’re going to pay for thinking so little of me.”
“Oh?” Dennis chuckles, but it’s far from sexy or kind. “And how are you going to do that? Come to Paris?”
“It doesn’t matter where I go or don’t,” I say, formulating a plan right then and there, “I’m going to make sure you pay in literal money for all the heartache and pain you’ve caused me.”
Dennis laughs, and I hear a little cruel, bemused giggle underneath it. His new girlfriend is with him, and I’ve just realized it.
I jut out my jaw. “You two are laughing now, but you won’t be when I finally bring a suit against you for all the monetary gifts and support I’ve ever given you over the months.” I pause, thinking instantly of Tommy.
Though he’s not technically a practicing lawyer yet, by what I saw on his resume that fateful morning, he’s skilled. He’s observant and tenacious. If given the opportunity, I’m sure he would wreck Dennis in court. He would get him on anything and everything he could.
“Don’t forget, this job you’ve been dissing me over? It’s for one of the more prestigious companies in the country, to say nothing of the world,” I add, remembering what I’ve heard and seen about the plans for expansion. The expansions I’ve experienced already and in just such a short time.
“Okay,” says Dennis, “You get your little lawyers to come fight for you then, little girl. You make me pay for that hell I put you through.” He pauses, humming evilly. “Though I seem to remember you seeming to like all that hell. Screaming, begging, and crying for more, no matter what. No matter how many times I left you hanging, you would always come back for more. Treat me like I was just so g
ood to you.”
My stomach sinks. My heart, mind, and soul come by another devious realization right then and there. He was cheating on you long before this girl, they say soberly, reverberating all this through all the chambers in my body. He was never faithful to you. Not really. All those times he was late coming home? All those times he was suddenly “busy”? All those times he seemed out of it when you were supposedly celebrating an important occasion? He was cheating on you then, too.
I feel weak in my stomach at this, but I don’t dare cry. I don’t allow myself to. Instead, I harden my jaw even more and say, “Well, you’ve finally shown me that you aren’t so good to or for me, and you might not be afraid of what’s coming for you now, but you will be. I have tons of great lawyers to choose from”— here I can think of no one but Tommy — “It’s just a matter of time before I can have paperwork served to you.” In my head, I make a mental note to make sure this paperwork gets to him on the anniversary of when we started going out. In late October.
Dennis just laughs at me and murmurs something to his girlfriend. Tinkerbell giggles again, but I don’t care for it. I just warn them both that those papers are coming for them, and hang up.
From there, I drive home.
I may not know much about law myself, but spending as much time in a big company as I have, I’ve picked up a couple key phrases and buzzwords, and I’m about to look those up to see just what I can get my ex-boyfriend to pay for. My heartache and his infidelity have to be worth something to a court, whether French or American.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tommy
Since the disciplinary action Vanacore subjected me to in her office, over her desk at the end of last week, this following week has been a blur. It has been full of answering emails, compiling more notes, adding them to the database, and answering her phone more. Even though it’s at my desk, and something I’ve gotten used to even more, I still don’t like it. I don’t feel like I’m really getting to use any of my knowledge and skills as an associate lawyer by acting as a secretary.
While it’s still better than being stuck down on the legal aids’ floor, it’s a bit of a letdown. It also feels like more punishment. A less physical version, for not being “obedient” or “following orders” enough, even though I didn’t think I belong to her in that way. Sure, I’m her assistant, but I wasn’t under the impression that I was hers and hers alone, as in her mentee.
But after getting caned by her, I don’t trust myself to say or do anything other than what I’ve been told. Other than what I’ve been instructed.
So, I’m going to get meals for her. I skimp on meals for myself throughout the whole week, even though I can see Melissa watching me worriedly.
Each time I’ve gone in and out of the office this week to go get Vanacore lunch, I see the way Melissa looks at me returning so soon after I left. Returning with only a small bag of food in hand. Though I try not to make eye contact with her, I see how worried she is. How concerned she is. I know she wants to talk to me. I know she wants to ask me what’s going on and whether I’m taking care of myself in any way, but I can’t.
And it’s not just because Vanacore would have a problem with it if she knew; that’s part of it, but there’s a bigger part. A more important one. I’m also her boss, and as her boss, it’s unfair of me to burden her with my problems or with my issues. I should be strong enough, big enough, old enough to deal with them on my own. I shouldn’t have to go running to a secretary, a friend of mine, because of anything like this.
If anything, Melissa should be able to depend on me. I want her to depend on me. Confide in me. She’s done enough protecting me. If anyone should be going to anyone with her troubles, it should be Melissa to me, not me to her. Good bosses and boyfriends do that.
Boyfriend? The word lingers oddly in my head. As it does, I realize that the picture on Melissa’s desk of her boyfriend has been slowly migrating across the desk this week. As of today, it’s been officially shifted back a bit, but not fully away or down. Just back.
Even so, the movement seems to communicate something. Hint at some change.
As much as I would like to think about how or what change has occurred, I don’t have the time.
Vanacore’s just come back into her office from an afternoon at court with a few clients back to back, and she’s got file folders and recordings to match. She dumps them all on my desk without a second thought.
“A bit of extra work, and a few more billable hours for you before you get your paycheck,” she says.
I nod and give her the answer I’ve been giving her all week. “Yes, ma’am,” I say.
And, as she’s done all week, she looks satisfied. But today, this afternoon, she looks a little more devious. “Good. Since you’re so willing, I think it’s time we broach another bit of work you should be doing for me to earn all those paid hours, Tommy.”
As she says this, she kicks at my seat, moving it away from my desk. She spins my seat around.
“Ma’am?”
She smiles, and while it’s brilliant and bright, it’s also foreboding or darkly enchanting, and the hair on the back of my neck starts to rise. “After your first week here, we talked about me being able to be of service to you. Helping you with particular things that only people like us can handle for each other, but I’ve done some thinking. If you don’t want my services, I want yours.”
“Services” and “yours” stick out to me like red, burning flags. I know what else she’s implying, but I don’t want to let it seep in. She was clear enough when she masturbated to me in front of me. When she asked me whether I wanted to join in. I also remember that she agreed to go slowly if I was interested in it at all, but now it seems she’s reneged on that.
I lick the roof of my mouth, feeling dry and queasy everywhere. “Ma’am, I know that this company has a rep—”
“A double standard,” she says, “and I’m sick of it. So, a bunch of younger women and older men can get together, have relationships, and everyone is fine with all this, but not anyone else? Not us?” She sounds angry. Livid, though, I don’t know why. Everything she’s vomiting at me doesn’t seem to have anything to do with me, and yet the way she’s looking at me, it’s as if I’m the one who’s caused her issue. “I’m going to have you, Tommy. I’m going to make you more than my assistant. More than my clerk. You’re going to be mine.” She leans forward to emphasize this. “You are mine. You were the moment you accepted the job with me, son, and you’re going to start doing other tasks for me.”
I go to move away, but Vanacore darts forward like a cobra in a dress and catches me. She presses her lips on mine, wraps a hand around my head, and keeps me there.
We both sigh into the kiss, but for reasons that couldn’t be more night and day from each other. For her, it sounds like a weight has been lifted. An appetite satiated.
For me, it’s surprise and fear. My surprise and fear quickly melts, and under something, I can only describe as a fog. As a listless, meandering energy that comes over my head and body. It’s like she’s put a roofie in my drink, but I’m not drinking. And the roofie is her entire energy.
Tommy! Tommy, your boss has just kissed you! Forced her lips on yours! Pull away! Get out of this situation, screams my brain, but it’s futile. The longer her lips are on mine, the more helpless and under her spell I feel. With each passing second, I’m forgetting more about what the situation as it actually is, and am instead focusing on the fact that I’m kissing a girl. It’s just happening. I’m being consumed by it. Devoured by it, and for a while, I don’t resist. I shut off my brain. Banish the part of me that has any issue with what Vanacore has done, what my goals are in this company, or any other objections.
But it’s when her lips come off mine, and her hands start to wander below the belt, that I’m out of my charmed state. My bespelled heart and mind practically shake “awake.” I push my chair away from her before she can get a hold of any part of my pants or the zipper.
>
“Tommy,” says Vanacore, rubbing the front of her pants with one hand, and trying to stop my backward motion with the other, “you’ve got to take this a bit further with me if you want to get paid properly for the end of your week.” She murmurs this like it’s the sexiest, most enthralling pick-up line she’s ever used. “You enjoyed the kiss, so why not go a little further?” Part of this rings like an offer, the other a demand.
I jump up out of my seat, move past her, thankful for once that I’m as big and bulky as I am. It allows me to make room for myself when someone’s trying to squeeze me out or crowd me like Vanacore’s is doing.
As I make it to the door, she barks out my name. I don’t turn around, so she continues, “You’ll get a paycheck this time, but it’s going to be slightly altered.”
In my head, I know she can’t do this. She can’t legally stiff me on hours actually worked, especially since those were put in the “billable” hours section, but she still has to sign off on them. And I have a feeling she’s not going to sign off on a few extra I put in yesterday. I don’t like this kind of abuse of power, but, as if she can hear exactly what I’m thinking — as if some other person in her life has accused her of it before — she says, “You’ll get out of the situation this time, but starting next week you’re going to behave a little better. Do your work more thoroughly, or I will get you demoted.”
I swallow nervously at this. Either way, I’m fucked. She’s just told me I am, and while I know I could go to HR about this, I don’t. I don’t want the first promotion I got to be sullied in this way. Especially not after all the work I’ve put in to get here.
“Goodnight, ma’am,” I say. “See you on Monday.”
Vanacore doesn’t reply to that. Instead, she says, like a threat, like a sin I’ll never live down, “You enjoyed kissing me, Tommy. I’m not going to let it stop there.”
I let those words hang in the air as I close the door on them in the next second.