Buster’s new girl’s name was Janine. I found out about it because I called his office at the wrong time and got a message meant for someone else. Once I knew, it was so obvious that I wondered why I’d never seen it. I went in to fire her myself—if he didn’t have the balls—and tell him we were done.
When I got there, I learned he’d taken her out to lunch. I sat at his desk, brooding on fire and brimstone. To think I’d once had dreams about doing filthy things on this desk. To think I’d told him that, and that my insides had quivered when he’d laughed! To think Janine—whoever she was—had gotten that fantasy meant for me.
I’d called him up beforehand, told him that the girl had to go or things would get ugly. At first he’d tried to give me attitude, but then like a punctured tire his voice went from angry to whining. I’d never seen him as less of a man. I said, go ahead and break it to her gently, asshole. I’m going to break you, nothing gentle about that.
I waited at his desk for him to return. Straighten things out. I’d keep the apartment, of course. He could hole up with the hobos and the smack addicts, for all I gave a damn. I finally understood how Rhett Butler could have been such a fucker as far as Scarlett was concerned. Love had nothing to do with it.
I jumped at sound of the intercom.
“Yes,” I said, voice like a snake going through the forest on its belly. Voice like a “Do Not Disturb” sign.
“There’s a young man here interested in the now-open position,” said Sally, all Midwestern sass. Now there’s one he for sure hadn’t fucked.
“Yeah?”
Probably some snot-nosed bastard. I wanted to eat this kid for breakfast, and I hadn’t even met him yet.
“Should I send him in?”
I thought I’d give him the Eye of Death until he felt the Apocalypse coming. A good few minutes of the glare, and he’d run like the building was on fire. Then I’d feel better. I said, “It ain’t my office.”
Sally got a good down-home laugh out of that “ain’t.” She thought I was losing it. Well, what did she know? She’d never had it to lose.
A moment later the door to my chamber opened, and through the proverbial puff of smoke I saw the sweetest revenge I’d ever laid eyes on walk straight into my clutches.
I uncrossed my angry legs. I glared at the kid. Little asshole. He looked so surprised his big blue eyes bled sad eye juice all over the place.
“I think this is for the paralegal position,” he said, as if his thoughts made a rat’s ass hair of difference.
“Well, the boss is out right now,” I said. Probably sticking it to Janine one last time, parting being such sweet sorrow and all that.
“Oh. Well, that’s quite all right. I’m prepared to wait.”
It wasn’t until the leaf of paper cut through the haze that I saw what it was. He was handing me his resume. I looked at it, caught the “skills” section. Kid must have had every skill but people skills.
I said, “Sit down,” and bit into the words like they were caramels. Like they were arteries.
“Thank you,” he said, and then in a voice like a newborn lamb, “I’m glad to be able to interview with you.”
Interview? With me?
And this is when the idea came to me, like that moment when they finally plug the damn Christmas tree into the wall and the whole fucking thing goes up in a wall of orange and green flame.
Fire in my eyes, I looked at him. Those baby blues, like I’d said, a narrow suit, a king’s ransom of curly dark hair the likes of which I’d only ever seen on children. Any woman would have liked him, provided she liked them naïve, with big fuck-me eyes and a body like an ice-cream cone, made to be licked from the top down.
My tongue was itching to do that job. I looked at him again. He fidgeted and looked down at that junk resume.
I stood, and was light-headed in the sudden breeze that came off the recollection of my sins. My bare knees buckled only slightly. I leaned against the desk, and those electric-blue antennae on the surface of my skin were reaching out and brushing the black cilia on the arm of his suit, creating some serious friction. I crossed my legs at the ankle.
I said, voice like honey poured over a scarf of silk, voice like a lick of cool air on a hot day, voice like a tongue in the private forbidden zone of the Devil, “So you want to work for me?”
“Uh”—a moment of confusion, a fast recovery. “I thought the listing was by a Mr. Martinez.”
And here I scooched my little butt up on the desk a bit. I pretended to think about it. Then I shook my head.
“No, it was mine.” Half mine, in the eyes of the law. Which meant half of this sweet morsel belonged to me too. I already knew which half I wanted.
“Oh.” He was trying to look at his hands. I let him try. I let him fail. He had working hands, and I wondered where he got his calluses. Weight lifting? It could very well be. These Harvard boys were crazy about their bodies. Did I say Harvard? I meant, Hawford Community College. In Southern California. They called it the Harvard of Highway 63. Truckers’ learning. The Ivy League of hard knocks. You get it. Life.
“You’re going to have to demonstrate some of these skills to me, Mr. York,” I said, and I suspended his resume like a condemned man, a foot above the bin. The wind in the room sighed. The resume went down into the bin on the errant thermal. “Now it’s just you and me. The way I like it.”
His eyes gaped like Bambi’s, right before the forest fire, as I came over and sat down slowly, deliberately, in his gray pinstriped lap.
Let me tell you a little something about me so you can appreciate what that kid might be feeling. My soon-to-be ex-husband was once a Marine, then a small-scale politician. Neither career lasted long. The Marines discharged him for disorderly conduct, and he hired a spin man to cover it up just long enough that he could win election to city council. Then the whole sordid saga came out. His first wife, a TV anchor who realized she’d hitched her wagon to a star about to go nova, left him.
And that’s how he met me, Wanda. Wiggling Wanda, Wet and Wild Wanda, Wonder Wanda. I had a three-part act at a joint right out of town. They said that when I was on stage, you could hear beer being poured ten miles away.
Buster came into the bar like Dick Hapless, fresh from his resignation hearings, the sad steam of failure rising off him like fog. In those days he still looked a little bit like a younger Clint Eastwood, rather than an older Dick Cheney.
By the end of Act One he’d given me a thousand dollars. By Act Two, he’d promised me a house on Cape Cod. After Act Three he came backstage and proposed.
What makes a girl say yes? The promise of immortal love? A brilliant wit? A nice ass? I wanted the house. I married Buster because after years of working the shittiest job I knew about, I was ready for the easy life. Now that wish had bitten me in the ass. Turns out there is no easy life.
But I still had what it took to make a sweet young thing like this forget his Mama, his school and the god he grew up fearing. I hoped.
I sat down and thought, it was now or never.
I wish I could describe what it felt like to kiss him, but it got lost in what came after. Yes, he was a bit rough around the edges, but nothing like the college boys when I was young. Compared to that, these girls nowadays got it lucky.
I eyed the desk, which in my mind wasn’t just a workplace but a set. I got a wicked idea. I backed up, sat my ass down on that erection of polished wood, and winked.
“Let’s do it here,” I said.
“Do it here?” squeaked Hawford. His tie hung around his neck like a loose lasso. On that last word his voice rose like a nervous girl’s. You would have thought it was the first time he’d done this. Hell, maybe it was.
“Oh yeah,” I said, tapping the desk for emphasis. “Right here. Pretend it’s the end of a long day, and I need you to help me…unwind.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He went in like a diver, like a man prospecting for gold. I let my loose legs just open up and swallow his entire head. His tongue was like quicksilver, like a fish slithering in and out of a hidden cove. I pulled his head forward into my lap like I’d never done with Buster; I leaned back and let my hair dangle like a wild woman’s.
“You ride that pussy, cowboy,” I hollered, for emphasis, banging one heel against the desk. His face was glistening with tears when he came up. Like he’d had a revelation down there.
“Take your pants off,” I whispered into his disbelieving face.
“Yes ma’am,” he whispered, unable to speak fully. I watched as his hands struggled with the belt, the clasp, the zip.
“Forget it,” I whispered, pulling him closer. I rolled up the edge of my skirt and let the pillar of his penis get at me.
We might have been a high-school couple kissing on the desk, but any close observer would have seen the join. I pulsed around him, hot with fiendish blood. His kisses were like little dots of fire on my face and neck. I held him close, kneading the tight dough of muscles of his ass, savoring the fullness, the power of it. I was the boss. My tissues breathed him in and out like water.
“Breathe with me,” I whispered, letting our breath together set the rhythm for our movement. “That’s right.” The snake slithered in the garden; I shook like an arrow cocked in a bow.
“That’s right, kid,” I said. And with an internal boom like a cannon gone off, I came.
I slithered back against the desk. Watched as he picked up his pants. His bare ass was a work of art. I’d never wanted to see Italy, and now I’d never need to.
“I hope you’ll consider my application,” he said over his shoulder.
“Oh yes,” I said, without even the barest flash of guilt. I watched him walk out the door, hips swinging. Sally watched him go too, then turned and raised her eyebrows at me. I shrugged.
It wasn’t two minutes before Buster came in. The girl had been all over him. He’d been crying his eyes out too, I could tell. Like the comedy mask to his tragedy, I grinned from ear to ear.
“Kara—” he began, all the fight going out of him in a rush. For a powerful man, Buster sure didn’t have much stamina.
“I forgive you,” I said, all smiles. He stopped and sagged against the door frame like a man who’d been shot.
“Sure,” I said, licking my lips and running my fingers over the whorls of polished wood carved into the edge of the desk. “We all get one mistake.”
“It was a mistake,” he said.
“It was,” I agreed. He shook his head.
“You’re too good to me,” he whispered. “I don’t deserve you. I never have.”
I let him marinate a bit longer in his self-loathing and gratitude. Then I stood up and adjusted my skirt. Too late, I saw my panties were lying in the middle of the floor like a wilted flower.
“You know,” I said, shifting my hips just enough to set his dreams on fire, “that when I came in here I was thinking naughty thoughts?”
“You were?” he said. God, men are too easy.
“Sure. You just get me all worked up.” Hope dawned in his beady eyes.
“I don’t deserve you,” he said again.
And then, hammering the nail into the coffin: “You should hire a new secretary. But this time, hire a guy. A kid just dropped off his resume. Here it is. Must have fallen in the trash by mistake.”
“Sure, sure,” he said, his eyes still gleaming like polished beer bottles.
I hoisted the resume like a white flag.
“After all, if you hired a man, it would make me feel a bit more confident that you wouldn’t be, you know, tempted.”