Desk Jockey Jam

by Ainslie Paton

  5: Warmer

  God, it was hot. One of those days where the air had the weight of oceans and whales in it, and soaked its way into your very bones. Glorious. If only she was on the beach, feet in the sea, instead of standing on a patch of cream marble off the entryway of the office, in her second favourite shoes: royal purple, slight platform, six inch dusty silver heels. Perfect with her gray pinstripe pants suit and the purple silk of her camisole top that showed above the top button of her jacket.

  Bree tipped her face to the warmth and sipped her mango smoothy. She had ten minutes of her lunch break left and she intended to spend them soaking up the vitamin D. She took the jacket off and slung it over a railing. She let the sun work its magic on the bruised skin of her arms and her sore shoulder muscles as she watched people come out of the building foyer, recoiling in surprise as the heat hit them, or go in and look instantly grateful for the crisp air-conditioning. She’d be one of those soon, but not yet she needed to stand, sip, think. And maybe the sun would burn away the strangeness of the phone call she’d just had.

  Tom. Two years of Tom. Then ten months of no Tom. Followed by twelve minutes of Tom on the phone. Bree didn’t know what to make of it. She wasn’t sure what she felt more of: surprise, exasperation or the rising edge of something that felt weirdly like satisfaction.

  Two years of Tom had been good. There’d been common friends, shared interests and Vietnamese restaurants in Ho Chi Minh city. There’d been the hot air balloon ride birthday surprise—hers. The V8 race car drive around the Bathurst track—his. There’d been breakfasts in bed and Sunday coast walks. There’d been kindness and friendship. And then the ultimatum, and the no Tom period began.

  And now after one phone call, she was supposed to forgive Tom for getting all furious over her work hours, over her commitment to her career. Tom, who worked a forty hour week as an air traffic controller and got so annoyed when she wouldn’t dump work, derby, sleep, to fit in with his shift breaks he’d tried to traffic control her. He’d slapped down the ultimatum. Quit the traineeship or lose the relationship.

  He had no idea how easy he’d made it to choose. What surprised Bree was how quickly she forgot about him. He was in her life one minute and then he wasn’t and after a few weeks of feeling angry and betrayed she simply got on with things and didn’t think about him again.

  Tom on the other hand had just said he’d done nothing but think about Bree for last two hundred and eighty days. He had a funny way of showing it. By which he clearly meant ‘treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen’. No call, no letter, no email, no text, no flowers, no showing up. So not surprisingly, Bree had not a teaspoon of keen.

  It’d taken her two minutes to tell him so. It could’ve taken less time, but she’d made the mistake of letting him try to defend himself. The whole discussion could’ve taken much less time if she’d just said, “Tom who?”

  What a jerk.

  Had he been a jerk when she was seeing him too and she’d never noticed? No, he’d been a good guy. She didn’t go out with jerks or losers or insecure boys. He was generous and happy and spontaneous and loud and funny and loved to laugh. He was fun to be with and um, yeah he liked a good laugh, and...

  Well, that’s probably what he’d excelled at—being fun to be with, until he’d had his sudden conversation to insecurity and jerkdom right around the time she entered the traineeship and her work hours increased and her play time got compromised. And then he wasn’t fun to be with. He was sullen and grumpy and expert at ladling out the guilt.

  He’d said, “You’re not giving us enough time.”

  She’d said, “You know this is what I’ve been working for. It won’t always be like this.”

  He’d said, “You’re putting your career and that idiot derby league before me.”

  And she hadn’t known what to say about that, because she was. So the ultimatum had been convenient in its way. Insulting and hurtful, but a no come-back, get-out free clause.

  Until just now, when Tom had tried to re-negotiate it.

  But what was really confusing about this wasn’t the guy’s gall in assuming she was pining for him after all this time, not his stunning confidence that she’d consider getting back together after his lack of consideration, or even his failure to ask how work was going. Stupid jerk. What was really confusing about all this was that she hadn’t even stopped for two seconds to consider it. There was the big fat hovering presence of the word ‘no’ in her mouth almost from the moment Tom said, “Jesus, it’s good to hear your voice, Bree. I’ve missed you so much.”

  Which told her something she’d known deep inside, but not articulated. She was happy being alone. She was happy putting her career, for all its stresses, worries and heavy time commitment before a relationship with Tom or anyone else for that matter.

  Bree could see the skin on her arms pinking slightly. She should put her jacket back on, she should go inside, but she was stuck in the heat wondering what that said about her. She hadn’t bothered dating since she’d shown Tom she preferred office and track time to Tom time. And she wasn’t the least bit concerned about that. It was smart to focus on the work. It was healthy to be self sufficient. It was making something of her life to have goals and chase them. It was everything she wanted.

  And the best thing—since she was so smart, so healthy and so ambitious, she didn’t have time to feel lonely. And the barely two second pause before she told Tom to take his offer of renewed association and permanently shove it where the sun didn’t shine, was the proof.

  She picked up her jacket and draped it over her shoulder. She walked out to the kerb and dumped the empty smooth cup in a street bin. She didn’t feel rattled about the call with Tom, if anything now that it was all over she was amused. He’d actually used the line, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ as his reason for not being in contact, when absence —hers, had been the whole reason for the ultimatum in the first place. It was a toss-up as to whether that was so lame it was legless or so dumb it was without a voice box.

  “What’s got you smiling?”

  Bree pulled her jacket on quickly and turned to find Anthony standing there. He had his suit coat off and slung over his shoulder and the cuffs of his white shirt turned back and rolled up so she could see tanned forearms. There were little beads of moisture on his forehead. He looked hot and bothered by it.

  Hopefully he hadn’t noticed how bruised her shoulder was. “The weather.”

  He nodded. The top button of his shirt was undone and his tie was pulled out from his collar. It was maddeningly inconvenient that he was so delicious to look at. Not even Bree’s suspicion and general wariness about him was enough to wean her off how much she appreciated his whole physical package.

  He smiled. “It’s the kind of heat that feels dirty, unless there’s a sea breeze behind it.”

  Good God. He’d said the words heat and dirty in the same sentence. They flew across the melting pavement between them and invaded her body like little lust missiles. He’d said the word breeze and she’d felt a whisper soft caress. And he smiled at her. She was half tempted to look around to see if he was talking to someone else. She tucked her head down and looked at her shoes. There was no reason to respond. She had no response. Her tongue had melted. How was it possible for a man she distrusted so much to be able to do that to her? She needed to shut that down, right now. Hard.

  She’d been so worried Monday morning after G-man and his crew were at the track she’d watched him like he was highly flammable. Because if he’d twigged, it would make things very hot for her. She had a strategy. If he mentioned it: deny it, laugh it off, tell him he needed an eye check-up. As strategies go, it might as well have been designed by Tom. It was lame, dumb, but it was all she had. Because there was no way she trusted him to keep the secret like Chris did. No matter what Toni said, Anthony was the ultimate competitor, he’d use whatever he could to get ahead and if that meant making her secret common knowledge she didn’t think he’d
hesitate for a second to send leading comments her way until the curiosity of the whole team, heck the whole office would be focussed her way. And not with the kind of attention she needed.

  But he’d treated her no differently. He didn’t look at her more or less often. He didn’t talk to her more or less often. He did however lose the worst of his pissed-off-ness. She got her usual good morning, her usual offer to bring back coffee or a sandwich, her usual good night. After a few days of this she stopped waiting for him to confront her or start with the innuendos. It seemed Kitty was safe to ride again.

  But Bree had wobbly knees.

  Maybe it was seeing him track-side looking weekend casual and slightly out of sorts surrounded by his coupled-up mates, or it was all the surreptitiously checking him out she’d been doing since then, watching to see if he was going to give the game away.

  He’d be easier to ignore when the words coming out of his mouth conjured up end-of-year tax returns not sultry nights, silk sheets and dirty sex. Why did he have to say that? Couldn’t they have had that stupid, forgettable, state the obvious weather conversation you generally had with people.

  He moved first and she followed him up the buildings front stairs to the foyer. When the doors slid open it was like standing in front of a dinosaur-sized fridge. The cold air wrapped around her and relief shot straight to Bree’s head. She sighed aloud. Anthony groaned with pleasure, lifting his face to the ceiling, bearing his neck. Oh God. It was too easy imagining him doing that when.... shut that down, right now.

  They looked at each other and laughed. It was the single most personal moment they’d shared in twelve months. Then they got in the lift with a bunch of other people and went to their floor, went to their desks and the next thing Bree knew she was nodding goodnight to him across the office, and he was barely looking up at her as she left and everything was as it should be.

  6: Bruised

  Ant rested his board against Dan’s Kombi. The surf was crap this morning so they’d come back to shore early which meant there was time to talk before he belted home to get ready for work.

  “What are you supposed to do when a chick has bruises?”

  Dan’s head came around sharp. “What kind of bruises?”

  “Multicoloured ones, lots of them.”

  “Assume she’s accident prone,” said Mitch. He hopped about brushing sand from his foot. “Or she’s got a second rate ballroom partner who’s got two left everything.”

  “That’s never going to get old is it?” said Dan. He pulled himself up on the promenade railing between the Kombi and Ant’s Alfa and sat, his bare feet on the lower rail.

  “By the time we’re sick of it you’ll have more than two left everything and the stand-off with Ferdy over that viral make-out video with you and Alex will be a full on knife fight” said Fluke.

  “It’s because you have a girlfriend you feel you can say any friggin’ stupid thing that comes to mind, right?” said Dan.

  Fluke grinned. “Yeah, pretty much.” He dodged a back hander from Dan only to have the one Mitch aimed at him connect with the side of his head. Classic. He was still grinning though. Nothing could wipe the grin off Fluke’s face since he and Carlie had gotten together.

  “The bruises,” said Dan. “Do you think some bastard is knocking her around?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I’ve seen bruises, ugly, purple and green, on her arms twice now. Once weeks ago, early in the office before the air con kicked in. She had her jacket off and there were bruises all over her arms. And then this week I ran into her on the street. Her shoulder was like a rainbow. Both times she covered up as soon as she saw me.”

  “Is this same chick that makes you rave on about how equal opportunity is a bad thing because it stops the best and brightest?” said Mitch.

  “Yep.”

  “The same chick who got promoted ahead of you,” he said.

  “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “Anytime.”

  “What are we talking about here? You think some fuckwit is hurting her?” said Dan. Fluke got up on the railing beside him and Dan casually pushed him off.

  Ant shrugged. “I dunno, but what if there is?”

  Dan sighed. “You find out.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “She’s a colleague. If someone is knocking her around, it’s your business. If some bastard is knocking any woman around, it’s your business. Why are you even hesitating?”

  “You don’t know this chick. She’s private, reserved. She’s a snob.”

  “You think she’s beating herself up?” said Fluke. He got up on the railing without interference from Dan. It’d be so easy to tip him backwards onto the sand below. Almost deserved it for the stupid comment. Ant took a step towards him and Fluke let go his towel and grabbed the railing. “I mean she says she walked into a door, or fell down some stairs.”

  Ant stopped with both hand on Fluke’s shoulders and gave him light shove, just enough to be threatening. “No, I don’t think she’s beating herself up.” He let go of Fluke and stepped back. “And I don’t think she’s accident prone, has a rare medical condition, or plays a contact sport. This girl is no Toni, no Miss Behavin on skates.”

  “Well what?” said Dan.

  “Fluke might have a point. She might be covering for being slapped around. She does have,” he paused, looking for the right word, “attitude.”

  Dan came off the railing and was in his face. “Fuck, Ant. I’ll do more than bruise you if you’re suggesting she brings it on herself.”

  He turned away and grabbed his towel. “Keep your hair on, Dan. That’s not what I’m saying. She won’t take kindly to me interfering.”

  “You’re not asking for her full medical history.”

  “I’ve hardly had a dozen conversations with her outside work stuff.”

  Dan went to object again, but Mitch got in. “Why’s it Ant’s problem?”

  “Thank you, Mitch.”

  Dan scowled at Mitch then grabbed his board and stowed it in the Kombi. “Explain to me how you’re going to make this someone else’s problem and it’ll be the right thing to do.”

  Ant handed his board over. All their boards lived in the Kombi during summer. “I can’t be the only person to have noticed.”

  Dan took Fluke’s board, but instead of busying himself stacking it inside the Kombi, he focused his baby blues on Ant. The kind of sharp eyed focus that helped Dan change his life. “What? You think there’s a first-in, first-response thing. You think there’s a pecking order for something like this, or a limit on the amount of concern that can be shown?”

  Ant held Dan’s stare. Dan wasn’t the only one who’d had a tough childhood. Ant’s wasn’t near as bad—not one tenth as bad, but he’d had to grow up fast, had to leave school early, get a crap job and study at night. He was still catching up. He was the only one in the Petersen’s team without a blue chip, right university, right degree pedigree. The only one who’d got there sideways from sheer persistence. Oh sure, he looked the part, acted it so well it was who he was now, but scratch the Italian wool surface of his life and you got a scrapper like Dan, which meant he knew exactly what he had to do.

  “Ah shit. I have to ask her about it.”

  ·

  Bree was at her desk, head down and busy when Ant arrived in the office at his usual post surf time for the first time in a good while. She didn’t acknowledge him. She’d not done more than nod at him when she was leaving last night either. And yet they’d shared a laugh yesterday and an actual shared understanding moment. At least that’s what he’d thought. Must’ve gotten that wrong.

  Lately he’d been skipping the morning surf more often than he was making it to the beach to get a jump on the work day, and even though the air con wasn’t firing, the reception from Bree was usually frosty enough to keep him cool.

  Without doing more than giving him a weak smile and a bland good morning, with a side of ‘you’re early’, that was
more, ‘officer he did it’, Bree made it known he was spoiling her peace. So he hoped she was happy this morning because sometime today he’d be invading more than her sense of early morning office ownership. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen those bruises on her arms and he had to ask, even if he wasn’t the first. Even if it upped her frost quotient towards him.

  And that’s what made this so much harder. Bree already gave off intense dislike. Not that she was overly friendly with anyone on the team, except Christine and that was a girl’s club thing, and the competitive nature of the office ensured they were all rivals before they were friends, but still, if there was anyone she avoided more, it was him. And if her reaction to him coming in early wasn’t enough of a tip-off then there was the never sitting beside him at team meetings, going so far as standing instead of taking the last seat near him, never accepting his group invitations to lunch or Friday night drinks, and rarely if ever making eye contact. No wonder he’d figured her for a snob and a bitch and stopped trying to engage her. As far as he was aware, the only thing he’d done to make her eyes shoot icicles of hatred at him was exist.

  Ordinarily he couldn’t care less about something like that, but since his epiphany in the shape of a girl who likes girls, he did care. Because post the fiasco with Toni, he wasn’t sure he hadn’t missed something important about Bree and how she reacted to him, and that made him even less sure how to approach this.

  For all of five seconds, he thought about going around the problem and talking to Christine. It was likely she’d know, and if she did, and it turned out Bree was the worlds most clumsy person, then this whole thing was done with. He could stop worrying about it. But if Chris didn’t know, and he raised it with her, and it turned out Bree dressed the way she did, trousers and long sleeves on days when all the other women wore lighter summer clothes, because she was hiding something terrible, then he was making things worse for her by dragging more people into it.