Drenched

by Janine Ashbless

  At the time, Addison had merely shaken her head and ignored him. She tried doing the same thing now as he reveled in his ten point accomplishment.

  “Ten points,” Tony cried. “Add those to my scorecard. I’m on a roll.”

  “What the fuck did you say?”

  Addison glanced up.

  The tall, elegant brunette had rounded on Tony. Her phone was away from her ear now, her important conversation discarded. She was pointing at him with one crimson-polished nail.

  Not crimson, Addison noted. The fingernail was the same cranberry color as her chinos. The woman was nothing if not coordinated. Her snarl was the same brilliant white as the manic gleam behind her ice-blue eyes.

  “Are you playing your dipshit little games again?”

  “Zoe.” Tony’s smile was a pained grimace. “I was just … I mean we were just …” Tony glanced nervously in Addison’s direction, clearly hoping she would back him up. “… we were just counting bottles of water and—”

  “You get paid for doing fuck all, don’t you?”

  Addison blushed on Tony’s behalf.

  She struggled not to watch the scene but it had the forbidden allure of a gory horror movie or a gruesome traffic accident. As much as she didn’t want to see what was going on, a voyeuristic part of her needed to ghoulishly drink in every detail.

  Zoe was clearly about to tear Tony a new one. From the corner of her eye Addison could see him squirming beneath the presenter’s ire.

  “Let me give you a word of fucking advice,” Zoe growled. “You sit here all day, playing silly little games that relate to things that have nothing to do with you—”

  “We were only counting water bottles.”

  Tony tried to speak over her and stop the tirade but Zoe seemed unstoppable. She punctuated every point by jabbing her fingernail down at him. Her words were spat with such ferocity that beads of spittle escaped her mouth as she spoke.

  “—and you think that gives you the right to judge people.”

  “We weren’t judging people,” Addison broke in.

  She didn’t want to get involved in the argument but she could see Tony needed some help. Even though she felt no special affinity with Tony, Addison didn’t like the idea of anyone suffering such a torrent of abuse for no good reason.

  “We weren’t judging people,” Addison repeated. “We were just playing a dumb counting game.”

  Zoe rounded on her.

  She took a glance at the name badge on Addison’s breast and sneered.

  “You’re Addison, are you?”

  “Yes.”

  Zoe nodded. “I thought as much. I was going to listen to your radio show earlier. Then I remembered—you don’t have a radio show. I do.”

  Addison blinked. That response was both harsh and unexpected. The vitriol pouring from the woman was virtually radioactive. She didn’t know whether to be appalled or impressed. In the moment she was too stunned to respond.

  Zoe pointed at Tony. “You’ll stop using me as part of your stupid fucking games.”

  He nodded.

  She turned back to Addison. “And if you ever see me berating a worthless piece of scum again, you’ll keep your mouth shut, do you understand?”

  Addison’s hands had curled into fists.

  Tony stepped over to her and placed a reassuring hand on Addison’s shoulder. Smiling nervously at Zoe he said, “Addison understands. She won’t talk to you again unless you’ve spoken to her. She understands.”

  Addison didn’t understand. But she supposed, if there was a choice between keeping this job or pretending she understood, she knew which option would help to pay that month’s bills.

  “I want to hear it from her,” Zoe insisted.

  “I understand,” Addison said quickly. She didn’t allow herself to think about the words. If she’d given herself a moment to consider what she was saying, Addison knew she would have said, “I understand you’re a bitch with some sort of psychotic esteem issues.”

  Zoe flexed her scowl for a final time and then stepped away from the reception desk. She continued walking through the lobby, still glowering at Tony and Addison. When she finally disappeared through the door marked ‘studios’, taking her scowl and her green bottle of mineral water, Tony released a pent up sigh of relief.

  “What the hell is her problem?” Addison asked.

  “Zoe’s a bit of a ball-breaker,” Tony admitted. “But that was probably my fault. I shouldn’t have been playing the water bottle game. I know it upsets her. She’s indicated that before.”

  Addison frowned trying to think how the game could have caused any upset.

  Zoe had said they were judging her. Addison wasn’t sure how the concept of judgment could be involved. Was there some superiority that she didn’t know about between Evian, Perrier, Eau Naturelle or one of the other popular brands of mineral water? She felt stupid for even entertaining such an idea but it was the closest she could come to a logical explanation.

  A call came in on the desk.

  Tony had answered it before Addison remembered she was there as a receptionist. She smiled an apology to him as he glanced in her direction and spoke on the phone.

  Mineral water was clearly important to so many of the radio station’s presenters, she thought. Perhaps it had something to do with the corporate sponsorship from Eau Naturelle? Few of the presenters turned up at the studio without a bottle of that brand in hand.

  Addison had also assumed the drink was needed to help them speak more fluently in the nerve-wracking, throat-drying presence of a live studio microphone. She imagined the job would be frightening and exhilarating at the same time. But Zoe’s comments suggested the mineral water was for something else: that it was more than a mere drink.

  “Stern wants to see you,” Tony said.

  Addison cleared her head of her quiet musings and glanced at him.

  Tony nodded toward the handset he had just replaced in the receiver. He spoke slowly, as though long words might cause possible confusion. “Stern, the station manager, he just called and said he wanted a word with you.”

  Addison sighed. She stared unhappily up at Stern’s office on the first floor.

  The windowed wall of his office overlooked the reception area through one-way glass. She stared up at the mirrored surface and wondered if Stern was behind the glass staring down at her. She wondered if he had seen her confrontation with Zoe and now wanted to tell her that her services were no longer needed on the reception desk.

  It would not, she reasoned pragmatically, be the first job from which she had been fired. Reflecting on her inability to learn life lessons, she supposed it would not be the last. Resignedly, Addison pulled herself from her seat and started toward the stairs.

  “Here,” Tony said, stopping her before she left the desk. “Stern said you’d need this.”

  She frowned as she looked at the bottle of mineral water he had pushed into her hand. It was a clear bottle and, of course, bore the Eau Naturelle label. Before she could ask any questions the reception desk telephone was ringing again. Tony was quickly immersed in smiling his way through another plastically-pleasant conversation and Addison realized she had to visit Stern as she’d been commanded.

  Her journey up to his office took her past the accounts department.

  She saw the head of Human Resources standing and chatting with one of the clerks from that department. The two women were both smartly dressed wearing short-length skirts and tight, figure-hugging tops. As they spoke, the head of human resources drank from a green bottle of mineral water. She placed the rim of the bottle against her lower lip and tilted the base upwards so that the liquid poured freely into her mouth.

  She swallowed in slow, leisurely gulps.

  Her throat moved with languid mellow ripples.

  Watching her, Addison knew
this was how the woman’s throat would move after she’d drunk red wine on a romantic date. It was how her throat would move if she’d licked the sweat from a lover’s naked body. It was how her throat would move if she was on her knees, sweat-lathered with passion and swallowing her lover’s cum.

  Even though she was only engaged in a dull conversation with a clerk from accounts, her eyes were closed in a state of near-orgasmic bliss. Her chest had broadened and Addison was sure she could see the shape of the woman’s nipples jutting against the fabric of her bra and top.

  Blushing, Addison looked away.

  There’s something in the water, she thought.

  She didn’t really believe there was anything in the water when the thought first crossed her mind. The phrase was one of those catchall excuses she had grown up with. It was a response that was used to explain everything from the high incidence of redheads in one region through to acts of political stupidity in localized voting patterns.

  Now, in this case, she wondered if there might be a grain of truth in the words.

  Warily, she considered the weight of the bottle in her hand.

  She’d yet to take a drink from this one and already it had transformed her into a licentious pervert. She had been ogling the head of Human Resources and picturing the woman licking the sweat from a lover’s body and then kneeling down to swallow his cum. Addison wondered how severely the mineral water would affect her libido if she dared to take a sip.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to experiment and find out.

  She wasn’t sure she dared to make that investigation.

  There was a small reception area outside Stern’s office. Two people waited there beneath the watchful eye of Stern’s dour-faced personal receptionist.

  Addison recognized William Daye as one of the station’s more successful presenters. He was tall and darkly attractive in a bland-James-Bond fashion. The woman sitting away from Daye, huddled alone in a corner of Stern’s reception, was Lydia Knight.

  When she first saw the woman that morning, Addison had thought Knight looked overly glamorous for a woman who was in a recording studio presenting an unseen radio show. It surprised her that Lydia wasn’t sitting closer to Daye as she had assumed the two presenters were friends as well as co-hosts on the afternoon show, Daye and Knight.

  Lydia, it seemed, was sitting away from Daye because she was preoccupied.

  She sat in a corner of the room. Her gaze was lowered and her ankles were crossed. She had the base of a pale green bottle of mineral water pressed between the tops of her thighs. Unconsciously, and seeming unmindful of anyone else seeing what she was doing, Lydia rocked the bottle back and forth against her crotch.

  Addison held her breath. She wanted to watch the woman more closely. She wanted to see what was going on. She had never before encountered anything so—

  “May I help you?”

  Addison glanced up to see that Stern’s dour-faced receptionist was addressing her. The woman’s words cut through whatever thoughts she had been forming about the peculiarity of Lydia’s actions.

  “Addison,” she explained. “I’m here to see Mr. Stern.”

  “From main reception?”

  She nodded.

  “Go and sit in that corner and drink your water.”

  Addison frowned and tried to think how she was supposed to respond to such an unprecedented command. She started to say something, then realized the words would likely land her in more trouble than she currently needed.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Stern,” she repeated, wondering if there had been some confusion. “He just called down and—”

  “Go and sit in that corner and drink your water,” the receptionist repeated, pointing. “I shall inform Mr. Stern that you’re waiting. He will see you when he has time to see you.”

  The woman scowled at Addison and then turned her gaze away. Addison could see an earpiece trailing from the receptionist’s ear and when the receptionist began speaking again, Addison knew she was no longer part of the conversation.

  Daye flashed her a sympathetic smile.

  His shrug said that he didn’t quite understand the receptionist’s rudeness. And the shifting of his gaze, and his exaggerated pretense at suddenly seeing something interesting in his magazine, said he had no intention of discussing the matter.

  Knight seemed oblivious to everything around her as Addison took a chair in a facing corner. It was impossible not to watch as Knight rolled the base of her water bottle against her crotch. The woman’s eyes were closed with lurid concentration but her jaw hung half-open. She occasionally released soft, moaning sounds that were obscenely reminiscent of orgasm.

  Addison didn’t know whether to be intrigued or repulsed.

  The sound of Stern’s office door opening snatched her attention away. She looked up in time to see the receptionist tell William Daye, “Mr. Stern will see you now.”

  As the receptionist spoke to Daye, Zoe flounced out of Stern’s office.

  Zoe stormed over to where Addison sat and pointed a finger down at her. Her cheeks were flushed with twin spots of matching color. Her nipples stood hard against the smooth fabric of the blouse beneath her little black Chanel jacket. There was a spreading damp stain on the crotch of her cranberry chinos.

  Addison tried not to gape.

  “Let me give you a word of fucking advice,” Zoe growled.

  Addison flinched, expecting a tirade similar to the one Zoe had inflicted on Tony. Instead of an outpouring of bile and fury, the woman simply puckered her lips into a scowl and said, “Don’t think you’ve heard the last of this.”

  Then she was gone.

  Addison was left alone in Stern’s reception with Stern’s receptionist, Lydia Knight, and her own bottle of mineral water.

  “Jesus,” Addison muttered. “Is that scary bitch incontinent? Or does she just cream herself from stamping on everyone below her?”

  “She’s not incontinent,” Lydia muttered. “She’s just humiliated.”

  Addison glanced at Lydia.

  The woman hadn’t opened her eyes. She still sat with her legs slightly apart, the bottle of mineral water pressed firmly against her crotch, her chest rising and falling with symptoms that looked as though she was in the throes of a near-orgasmic release.

  “She’s just humiliated,” Lydia repeated.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Drink your water,” Lydia said. “Stern will have expected you to have done that much when you’re summoned.”

  “What’s going on here?” Addison asked. “What am I missing?”

  “You’re not missing anything.”

  Lydia’s bottle continued to rock back and forth. The motion was slow, deliberate and consistent with its rhythm. She continued until her entire body stiffened. The shock of stiffness was followed by a small, trembling shiver. Then she took a long, drawling breath that sounded lewdly similar to an orgasmic sigh. Finally, Lydia opened her eyes. She studied Addison with a solemn appraisal that was almost too intense.

  Addison allowed the woman to look, still trying to work out whether this was uncommonly bizarre behavior, or if it fitted with everything else she had so far experienced at the radio station.

  “Drink your water,” Lydia urged. She closed her eyes. “That’ll be for the best.”

  “You two aren’t talking, are you?” called the receptionist.

  Lydia said nothing. She continued to rock back and forth.

  Addison decided it would be best if she didn’t respond. She didn’t think she would be able to say anything constructive as a reply to such a school-mistress-type question. Unless she watched every syllable she muttered for the rest of the afternoon, Addison knew she was in serious danger of saying something irrevocable and career-killing on her first day with the radio station.

  “I’m sure you both know that Mr. Ste
rn doesn’t allow talking whilst you’re waiting,” the receptionist called.

  Addison had known no such thing.

  The rule sounded positively draconian. She settled back in her chair and wondered if she should simply give up on the idea of becoming a radio presenter. Admittedly, the goal of becoming a radio presenter was a long-cherished ambition. But it seemed that the goal of being a radio presenter at this station came at the cost of dignity and respect.

  “Yes,” Lydia sighed.

  The word roused Addison from her musings. She turned and glanced at the woman. Lydia had the base of the bottle of mineral pressed so hard against her sex it looked like beads of pressured-perspiration were sliding down the sides of the plastic. Her eyes were closed but the lids fluttered as though she was in the throes of euphoria.

  “Yes,” Lydia repeated.

  Addison tore her gaze away.

  Was Lydia really getting herself off? Was that acceptable public behavior anywhere? Had no one else in the radio station noticed? And why was Lydia’s arousal so frighteningly contagious? Addison could taste the electric excitement in the air. Her entire body throbbed as though she was yearning to share some of the woman’s infectious sexual enthusiasm.

  “Are you …?”

  Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t think how to broach the subject without sounding voyeuristic, challenging or judgmental. Lydia hadn’t bothered to open her eyes and Addison was happy to convince herself that the woman hadn’t heard her question.

  “Never mind,” she said quietly.

  “Drink your water,” Lydia whispered. “And let me finish what I have to do.”

  Addison wouldn’t let herself brood on the questions that rushed through her thoughts. She herself was sitting in a corner of Stern’s reception area, with her legs parted further than usual for this skirt, and she had noticed that she was resting her own bottle of water against her groin. Her temperature seemed slightly raised. She was acutely conscious of the weight of the bottle against the delta between her legs. And, if she was wholly honest with herself, the idea of rubbing out a quick happy from that same place was not unappealing.