Playing Dirty

by Alix Nichols

  Considering the average hole-set’s size and skill, defending the hole is a job from hell. Good thing I’m just as big as Zach. And twice as mean.

  The only other guy meaner than me in the field—and in life—is Jean-Michel. We could’ve been besties if I’d had for him a fraction of the respect I have for Zach.

  Zach’s lack of meanness aside, I truly admire our hole-set.

  He’s honorable, and he trains like a beast, which is why he’s in top form. Last year, he was named France’s top scorer, and became the first Nageurs de Paris player to be selected for the national team. Our goalie Noah was the second and, once Lucas took over as the national team’s coach, he picked me to be the hole-defender on the main squad and Jean-Michel as a substitute hole-set.

  Aside from the fact that it’s an honor to represent France in international competitions, my pay doubled, and I quit my part-time job at my parents’ accounting firm. Mom was OK with that, but Dad wasn’t happy. I had to promise I’d join again when my days as an athlete are over.

  What I failed to mention is that I plan to become the longest-playing water poloist in the world.

  After the workout, we go for drinks. This time, coach takes us to a fancier place than our usual post-workout brasserie and orders champagne to celebrate my engagement. I had expected this to happen, so I asked my fiancée and my best friend to join us. Noemi had to work late, researching some messy case for her boss, but Roland said he’d come.

  True to his word, he did.

  “Congratulations!” Roland gives me a shamelessly fake smile and clinks his champagne glass to mine. “Everything on track?”

  While my teammates and coach are here to wish me joy and happiness, Roland is asking about the progress of my plan. What with being my best friend since childhood, he’s the only person who knows about it.

  “Oh, yeah.” I flash a bright smile that competes with Roland’s in its falseness. “The paperwork is done and submitted to the mairie, and we have a date.”

  “When?”

  “November 22.”

  “That’s two months from now.” Roland frowns. “Will you survive?”

  “Are you abstaining until marriage?” Jean-Michel asks, widening his eyes.

  I hadn’t noticed him sit next to us.

  I rub the bridge of my nose, scrambling for a plausible explanation. “That’s not what he meant.”

  “I meant it in the sense that Julien here is way too eager to call Noemi his wife,” Roland says.

  “Aww. How sweet.” Jean-Michel gives me a you-poor-lovesick-sod smile. “So, will you survive?”

  He wouldn’t be smiling if he knew the real meaning behind Roland’s question. My friend was asking if I can keep up the act for two more months.

  I can.

  I will.

  Even if it’s getting harder by the day.

  4

  Noemi

  “Where’s that darned memo?” Melissa inquires of the universe for the umpteenth time. With a panicked expression, she flips over the neatly stacked contents of her outbox and spreads them across her desk.

  As Bertrand’s PA, it’s Melissa’s job to be organized. And she was, until recently. But her longtime boyfriend took off with a bimbo half his age, leaving her and their toddler in a mortgaged house she couldn’t afford on her own. So, the house was sold to pay the debts, and Melissa moved in with her mom. Quiet by nature, the poor woman’s level of confidence took a huge hit after that debacle.

  For a split second, I consider saying something kind and supportive to Melissa. Then I think again.

  In this company—and in this life—it’s every man for himself. Melissa shouldn’t have let her personal issues affect her work. She should’ve stayed on top of things at the office, regardless of what’s been going on at home. Now she only has herself to blame for her downward spiral.

  Bertrand, who used to be satisfied with her performance, has started shaming her in public at every staff meeting over the last month. He also reams her out between staff meetings, “in private”, but loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  Almost every time he crawls out of his office, he asks Melissa a seemingly innocuous question. She answers with a quiver in her voice, and before you know it, he’s yelling at her.

  She’s become his PB—Punching Bag—as much as his PA.

  If I didn’t know my devious boss better, I’d think he’s developed a sudden and passionate hatred for his assistant of two years. But Bertrand doesn’t do emotions, and even hatred is an emotion. There must be something that motivates him to prey on Melissa during her rough patch—pushing her down instead of pulling her up.

  Ingrid sashays to Melissa’s desk. “Do you need help looking for that memo?”

  Melissa shakes her head.

  In her place, I wouldn’t accept Ingrid’s help either. The twenty-one-year-old is a secretarial intern in our firm, recruited personally by Bertrand. There’s speculation in the office as to whether she’s his mistress, a distant relation, or a friend’s daughter. She could also be a mistress’s daughter or a friend’s mistress. The possibilities are endless.

  But whoever she is, she wasn’t hired in response to a need.

  Lawyers and legal associates recruit their own interns, generally law students, to help with the workload. As for the administrative side of things, we have a top-notch hyper-efficient office manager who’s more important to the firm than any of the lawyers. She picks her own temps and interns whom she puts through a rigorous evaluation test before hiring. She wasn’t involved in or even aware of Ingrid’s recruitment.

  Suddenly, everything clicks into place.

  Bertrand is harassing Melissa in the hopes she’ll resign so he can offer her job to Ingrid.

  If Melissa wasn’t one of the two staffers hired by the other partner on an open-end contract, I’m sure Bertrand would’ve sacked her by now. He still can if he gathers sufficient proof of her incompetence.

  Seeing Melissa’s escalating forgetfulness, it won’t take him long.

  Which would be a shame, because the woman is… nice. Unlike the ruthless baby sharks the corporate world teems with, Melissa has always refused to get involved in backstabbing and intrigues. She’s honest and unguarded, and at thirty-two, she still doesn’t understand what others figured out by the time they finished school: You can’t survive without soul armor.

  If you refuse to grow it because it makes you ugly on the inside, someday someone will put a spear through your heart.

  I’ve known that since my last year of high school, and not just because of what my friends and I did to Julien. Two months before graduation, I had a spear driven through my own heart.

  After the Cats and I taught Julien a “lesson in humility,” as we liked to call the public disgrace we inflicted, he came down with pneumonia. Our teachers told us it was so bad he had to go to the hospital and then recover at home for a month.

  By the end of that month, his family moved to Belgium. That meant I didn’t get to see Julien again until we bumped into each other in June. I like to think that if he’d returned to our school after his illness, I would’ve apologized and made it up to him somehow.

  That said, I doubt I would’ve gone as far as admitting I had a secret crush on him.

  Yes, that’s right—one of the school’s most popular girls fancied one of its most pathetic losers. The very guy she’d humiliated in front of everyone for daring to fall in love with her. I couldn’t bear the mortification of such an admission. But I would’ve tried my best to convince him I was truly sorry and hadn’t realized how cruel my little joke would turn out to be.

  Man, I regretted it once he was gone and I found myself missing him so much my heart had crazy spasms in my chest. “Juvenile tachycardia,” the doctors proclaimed, no doubt caused by the stress of upcoming exams. “Not to worry, it’ll pass soon enough,” they said.

  That convenient diagnosis fooled my parents, teachers, and friends. But not me. I knew what was wrong with my
heart. It wasn’t tachycardia. It was first love.

  Why, oh why, couldn’t I keep that knowledge to myself?

  Pre-armor unworldliness, I guess.

  One warm Saturday afternoon in May, when Lise and I hung out in the Galeries Lafayette, I spilled the beans. The silly cow that I was, I confessed to the Number One Mean Girl of the Lycée Molière that I was pining for Julien.

  At first, she thought I was messing with her.

  But then I showed her the diary I carried around in my school bag, so my mom won’t have a chance to lay her hands on it at home.

  Lise read a few entries and handed the diary back. “Wow.”

  That was all she offered as feedback. No words of comfort, no scolding me for being so undiscerning in my affections. Just “wow.” That should’ve raised a red flag. But, as I said, those were my pre-armor days. So it didn’t.

  The next day, Lise filched the diary from my bag and showed it to the other Cats, who kindly shared it with the rest of the class before I could recover it.

  And, just like that, I became the school’s new pariah, succeeding Julien who’d moved away. I guess that’s why, just like him, I’m wary of confessions and why I’ve never spoken of love to him.

  What a screwed up couple we make!

  I swallow the rest of my cold coffee and massage my temples to focus my attention back on work. For the next three hours, I wade through the murky waters of digital copyright, reading dozens of cases, legal texts, and expert commentaries so I can give Bertrand the arguments he needs to win this litigation for our client.

  I toil until everyone has left and the office has grown almost spookily quiet. When I run out of reference material piled on and around my desk, I haul my ass out of my cubicle and head to the bookshelves to dig up a few additional binders.

  Bertrand emerges from his lair.

  Weird. He never works so late.

  He surveys the empty cubicles and marches to Melissa’s desk. The overhead lights are still on since the cleaning staff hasn’t been to our floor yet. I have an unobstructed view of Bertrand through the gap on the shelf created by the binder I just pulled out. He sifts through the letters and other official documents in Melissa’s outbox. Glancing around again, he picks out two and sticks them in his briefcase.

  Then, his lips pursed hard, as if he was trying to crack a nut between them, Bertrand arranges the papers into a neat stack.

  Carefully, he sets the stack back in the outbox, and strides out the door.

  I recount this incident to Julien over dinner.

  “So, your boss is resorting to black hat tacks to get rid of his PA, huh?” he says.

  “It isn’t right.” I sigh. “And it isn’t fair.”

  He gives me a funny look as if he’s surprised at my words or didn’t expect me to care about what Bertrand is doing to Melissa or the unfairness of it.

  The doubt I’ve been suppressing since Julien and I went on our first date rears its head again.

  Does he really love me?

  Is it possible to love someone who showed no compassion in the past? Someone who was mean to you? Who was mean, period?

  Is it possible to love someone who used to act like a coldhearted bitch?

  Julien strokes my hand. “Will you tell Melissa about what you saw?”

  “Not yet,” I say. “But I will once I have proof.”

  There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m going to help Melissa by any means possible. I’m prepared to stick my neck out for her. But if I do it now by telling everyone what I saw, it’s my word against Bertrand’s. I have no proof of his machinations. I’ll get fired, and I won’t save Melissa’s job.

  But if I’m clever about this, Melissa can talk to him from a position of force.

  Julien surveys my face. “You’ve changed since high school.”

  My eyes bore into his. I have changed. The old Noemi would’ve done nothing so she could stay in Bertrand’s good graces and make sure her contract is renewed next year. The new Noemi believes that by doing nothing, she’ll help Bertrand frame Melissa.

  Aside from the fact that the poor woman doesn’t deserve it, it’s just plain wrong.

  Julien doesn’t add anything to his observation, but there’s enough approval in his eyes to forgo words. I guess that’s it—the answer to my doubts. Julien is giving me a second chance. He still loves me. A man who feels nothing for a woman can’t look at her the way Julien looks at me. He wouldn’t make love to her so tenderly, so reverently. He wouldn’t propose to her just to give her a comeuppance for a childish prank.

  That’s it! No more questioning his feelings. No more poisoning our relationship—and our future marriage—with my doubts. I’m going to trust him the way he trusts me.

  Who knows, maybe he doesn’t even think I was such a bad person in my teens. After all, I didn’t break the law, mistreat a dog, or kill anyone.

  All I did was to play a stupid joke that hurt his ego.

  A joke he got over within a month.

  5

  Julien

  Has she really changed?

  Is she capable of it?

  Or is the whole Melissa story just another ruse, one of the many tricks in my fiancée’s duping toolbox? Something she made up to show herself in a better light? How I wish I could read her mind!

  As we watch Noemi’s favorite show before going to bed, memories race through my mind. I recall the worst day of my life.

  Jeez, I was dumb at eighteen!

  The day of the “life-changing” McDonald’s conversation with Noemi, I booked appointments at the barbershop and a tattoo parlor on my way home. Later that evening, I ordered the lemon-colored underwear from an online retailer and wrote the love letter.

  I completely rewrote it three or four times over the next few days, baring increasingly more of my soul with each rewrite. Noemi wanted it to be heartfelt. It had to be sincere. No crutches in the form of song quotes, no swiping sugary samples from the Internet, no shielding myself with humor.

  I had one shot at winning the girl of my dreams, and I was giving it all I had.

  On the evening of Noemi’s birthday party, I arrived at her place in yellow briefs, my hair dyed a flashy shade of green, and an enormous double rose drawn on my acne covered back. The tattoo was still fresh and covered with scabs. A line of text cut through it between my shoulder blades.

  It read, I love you, Noemi Dray.

  There’d been a considerable amount of pain associated with that tattoo, but I’d welcomed it as a tribute to the gods for my chance to be with the woman I loved.

  Everyone fell silent and stared at me. The girls whispered and giggled, and a few of the boys said things like, “You’re a nut job, dude.” If Roland were there, he would’ve done something to make it easier for me, but he hadn’t been invited.

  Noemi emerged from the crowd, took my hand, and led me to her room.

  Once we were inside, she pulled the door shut. “I didn’t think you’d have the balls to actually do this.”

  “Yet, here I am,” I said. “Green and yellow as requested.”

  She smiled.

  I itched to add that if she’d allowed me to wear a blue T-shirt, I could pass for a Brazilian soccer fan, but I bit my tongue.

  No humor, remember? Just feelings.

  I handed her my letter.

  “Will you read it for me?” she asked.

  Uh-oh.

  I’d been hoping she’d read it herself, silently, in my presence. Or—even better—after the party. I wasn’t prepared to voice the raw emotion I’d poured into my words.

  She thrust the folded sheets back into my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Please?”

  Oh well. I’d come this far…

  “All right,” I said. “Sure. I’ll read it to you.”

  I unfolded the three handwritten pages and began to read.

  Darling Noemi,

  I saw you for the first time in Madame Foucault’s class exactly one year, three months and five
days ago. You’d just transferred to our school.

  That day you rocked my world. I thought you were the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. I thought you were a blessing. A gift from heaven.

  Something hatched in my heart that day, and that thing has been growing ever since. It gets bigger every time I look at you. It doesn’t stop growing when I can’t see you like in the evenings, on weekends, and holidays. At night, when I make love to you in my fantasies and dreams, it doubles in size.

  You are so incredibly amazing.

  If I was granted one wish, it would be to experience your love, even for a day. To have you want me like I want you, to take you in my arms, to kiss you, and to make love to you because you need it. Because you love me. After that, I could bite the dust, no problem. I would die a happy man.

  Sometimes I think you’re too flawless to be real. Or to be human. Sometimes I wonder if you’re an angel or an alien or an android from the future. For the record, I don’t care what planet or time you are from. What matters is this: You are Perfection.

  Sometimes, I try to picture you old with your curves gone, your hair white, wrinkles all over your face, and brown spots on your hands. And you know what? Even in those fantasies, you are still perfect.

  Noemi, I had to tell you how I feel because if I didn’t, my love was going to burst like a supernova and end the universe. OK, maybe not the whole universe, but my universe. In other words, my existence.

  I would do anything for you. Anything. If you want me to strip naked and jump into an icy lake, I will. If you ask me to drop out of school and join the Foreign Legion, I’ll do it. I would eat your poop if for some reason you wanted me to.

  I want you to know there are no limits to what I would do for you.