Desk Jockey Jam (7 page)

“You find it exhausting?” 
Bree’s eyes did a bug out thing.

“Shit yeah.”  It was hard
to tell which one of them was more surprised by what he’d admitted. 

She got it together, freak
wave quick.  “Okay—I’m calling that the moment.”  She did the pointing thing
again.  “Get out.”

No chance.  “I have to ask
you a question, Bree and you’re not going to like it, but since you don’t hate
me, and I’m not about to force feed you olives, I hope you’ll answer.”

“You do know you’ve pretty
much guaranteed I’m not going to answer any question you ask me?”

“Why?”  He thought he’d
done good at smoothing the rough seas.  “I thought we were getting on.”

“Just because this is the
longest non-work conversation we’ve had in a year does not mean we’re getting
on.”

“Ah Bree, you’re a fucking
snob.”  And a bitch, but he was smart enough not to add that.  Though not smart
enough not to have caused the expression on her face; pinched like she was
constipated.  Now she hated him.

“And you’re an arrogant,
self important, entitled, hyper-competitive, walking bag of pissed off, who
can’t accept a woman beat him to the job he wanted.”

He stood so quickly, his
thigh knocked against the table and sent a pile of her paper sailing off the
edge.  This angry she didn’t seem so small, as though her fury gave her height
and width.  But not enough to hold him down. 

“I need to know about the
bruise I saw on your shoulder.  Is someone hurting you?”

“What?”

“You heard me.  Answer the
question, Bree.”

She leaned across the
table.  She pushed up against it and shoved it into his legs.  She got as near
to him as the geography of the room, its glass wall and its furniture would
allow.  “Fuck off, you pompous prick.”

It was hard to imagine
anyone getting close enough to bruise this bitch of a woman.  He no longer
cared if anyone had.  He opened the door.  “Right then, we know where we stand.” 

He left the room like she
wanted.  The moment was so over.

·
      
 

Ant could hear Jeff whining
behind the door.  What was taking Dan so long?  The Valiant was parked behind
the Kombi, and the garage door was closed which meant the Mustang was inside.  Dan
wouldn’t go for a walk without Jeff and he knew Ant was coming.  He pounded
again and called out. 

That moment with Bree had
worked on him like sunburn.  He hadn’t even noticed it at first.  But then it
started to itch a little, especially the part about being arrogant, entitled
and self-righteous.  Then the sting started in when he thought about how she’d called
him a walking bag of pissed off.  By the time he left the office he was stiff
with the knowledge he’d actually considered it might be her fault if someone
hurt her and he’d thought that was okay.  Now he was pretty sure her explosion of
anger was a defensive response.  He’d made her feel trapped, then he’d
surprised her.  He was a prize fuckwit.  He felt like he had blisters of
disgust all over him.  He needed Dan to help pop them and peel all the dead
skin of his foul lack of grace, consideration and arrogance away.

By the time he heard Dan
in the hall, he felt like stripping off his suit and presenting himself already
naked for the flogging he knew he deserved.  He made do with taking his suit
coat and tie off.

“Sorry,” Dan called.  Ant
heard keys jangling, then, “Move, Jeff,” then the door was open, and Ant knew
what’d taken Dan so long.  He had a freshly fucked look about him, screwy hair,
heavy lids and half-dressed, a smile so smug it could rot your jaw.

“I’m interrupting.”

Dan laughed.  “You sure
are.  I‘d have left you out here but Alex wouldn’t let me.”  He swung the door
open and stepped back, taking Jeff by the collar to give Ant space to move
through the doorway.  Alex was in the kitchen, fully dressed and brushed but
her eyes were big and bright with left-over desire.

She said, “You’re not
interrupting,” but she blushed the same shade of pink camellia his mum loved.  She
handed him a coffee.  “Have you eaten?”

He threw his suit coat
over the back of a chair and unbuttoned his cuffs to roll his sleeves up.  “No,
but I’m cool.”

“I can make you an
omelette, ham cheese and mushroom?”

Dan sat at the table. 
“No, don’t feed him.  This is meant to be a quick stopover.  Quick, Ant.  Like
you said, you’re interrupting.”

“Dan.”  Alex smacked the
back of Dan’s head, then pushed her fingers through his hair and bent forward
to kiss the top of his head.  It was hard to tell whether Dan liked the smack,
the hair pull or the kiss more.  He grinned, like a satisfied bastard, whose
girlfriend had just moved in.  “Plan on getting indigestion, mate.”

Ant sat.  Alex started on
the omelette Ant wasn’t sure he’d be able to eat.  His stomach was full of
self-loathing.  Old Dan, pre Alex, would’ve gotten him drunk right about now
and all of this would’ve gone away.  New Dan was less forgiving, but
forgiveness was the last thing he needed.

“I fucked up,” he said.

“How?”

“Look she’s a prickly
little bitch and...”

Dan cut him off.  “You
fucked up, but now you’re going to blame her for it.”

“Right.  Shit.”  Ant
sighed. 

“Start at the beginning,”
said Alex.  She waved a tomato at him and he nodded.  He’d probably have nodded
at having his balls removed if she suggested it.  Except now he thought about
it, Bree had already done that.  She took his promotion first, then she took
his self-respect.

He stood up.  This might
be easier if he was moving.  “I never even got close to finding out for sure if
someone’s roughing Bree up.”

Dan refilled his coffee
cup from the plunger pot.  “Why not?”

“She got to me.”

“You said she was five
foot nothing and reserved.”

“Not that a well prepared
five foot nothing couldn’t do you some harm, Ant,” said Alex.

“He’s a tree, Alex,” said
Dan.

“So she’d be packing a
chain saw.”

They laughed, but Ant
wasn’t seeing the humour.  It was Bree’s humour and then her anger that’d
derailed him.  None of it reserved.  “She was different to what I expected.”

“What do you mean?”

“For a start she was
threatened by me and then she was funny and kind of vulnerable and then she
totally lost it with me.  I never expected any of that.  She was supposed to be
all business, straight up and down and Frosty the Snowman.”

If Dan and Alex ever had
kids, the expression on Dan’s face would be the one his teenager would come to
know as the one right before things got ugly.  “When you say you threatened her
what do you mean?” His voice was so even, his posture so relaxed, but it was a
party trick, masking his ability to have you skewered and writhing on the spike
of your own dumbness before you even knew he was gunning for you.  This is what
he’d come to Dan for, the brutal stripping of his own defensives.  Didn’t mean
he had to give them up easily.

“I surprised her in a
really small meeting room and I closed us in because I wanted to keep it
private.  She kept asking me to open the door but I didn’t.  And since I’ve
never sought her out for a private discussion before I guess it was threatening.”

Dan looked at Alex. 
“That’d do it,” she said. 

He turned back.  “You said
she was funny and vulnerable and she lost it.”

“She was funny right up
until she called me arrogant, entitled and a walking bag of pissed off.”

Ant thought Dan might
laugh.  There wasn’t an ember of humour in him.  “Not vulnerable because she
felt threatened by you?”

He had to think for a
minute.  He leant on Dan’s fridge.  “No.  She was vulnerable because she
admitted she found the job exhausting.”  He came back to the table and sat.  “She
told me outright I was making her uncomfortable and I ignored it, but she
didn’t back down about it.  Kept on telling me to get out and leave her alone. 
At no time did I pick her for scared.”  Not even when she’d come at him, almost
climbing on the table to get in his face.

“But for all that you
still thought she felt threatened?”

He had a couple of seconds
of think music while Alex put the omelette down in front of him.  “I asked her
if she hated me.  She’s always avoided me like I’m diseased.  One time she
chose to stand up rather than take the last seat at a meeting table beside me. 
She said she was too exhausted to hate me, but the way she reacts to me it’s
gotta be near enough.”

“What’s your role in it?”

He picked up the knife and
fork.  “I breathe.”

“Ant.”

“Look, I really don’t
know, that’s why I asked.”  He took a bite of egg and ham.  “I thought I had a
pretty good fix on how I played with other people, but lately I’m not so sure.”

“Wouldn’t be having an
epiphany would you?” 

He looked up at Dan and
caught his smirk, but said, “Great omelette, Alex.  Bree might’ve felt
threatened because she knew what I was going to ask.”

“How would she know?”

“She knew it wasn’t a work
question.  She knew I wanted it to be between the two of us.  She knew I’d seen
the bruises.  And she sure as hell knew I wasn’t going to ask her out.”

“So what happened when you
did ask?”

“She fucking lost it with
me.  But not in some hysterical female way.”

“I beg your pardon, Ant,”
said Alex.  He knew she was objecting to his assumption that all females got
hysterical.  He dropped his eyes to his plate.  There was ballroom dance
teacher Alex, not to be mucked with Alex.  The woman who’d turned Dan inside
out and helped him re-make himself.

“Sorry, Teach.  But you
know what I mean.  She didn’t shout or cry or carry on.  She was calm.  She told
me plain and strong to get the fuck out of her business.”

“So it didn’t go as well
as you might’ve hoped,” said Dan.  “But this is fixable.  You can pick a better
approach, you can talk to her again.  What’s really upsetting you?”

Ant put both hands to his
head.  “She’s so goddamn irritating.”  He dropped them back to the table.  “I stood
in that room and I could see how she might push someone to hurt her.”  Dan shifted,
his weight coming forward.  He was about to rip into Ant so he kept on, “That’s
not the worst of it.  The worst of it is I stopped caring if they were.  I just
walked out on her.  What kind of a bastard act is that, Dan?”

Dan said the words, “And
now,” and they were like an option in a contract.  They came with conditions. 
If Dan didn’t like what Ant said next, things would get dead ugly.

He looked down at the half
eaten omelette.  “I’m ashamed I thought that for even a minute.  And I fucked
up bad because I made this all about me, about how she wounded my pride.”  He
pushed the plate away and stood up.  He walked over to Dan’s fridge and opened
the door.  No beer.  Probably just as well.  “I’m only irritated by Bree
because she doesn’t fall for my act and she took what I wanted.  She deserves
the senior analyst role, I know that.  I always knew it.  It just didn’t suit
me to admit it.  She’s got the credential for it and the skill.”  He came back
to the table and sat.  “And she sure as fuck doesn’t deserve to be threatened
by me or smacked around by anyone, ever.”

Dan reached over and
pushed the plate back at him.  “Eat.  You need your strength; epiphanies take
it out of you.”

Ant ate.  He still felt
scalded.  All he could think about was how to fix this; how to get near Bree
without making her so distrustful she was like a roller derby girl playing
offence and defence at the same time.

When he left, hours later,
Alex kissed his cheek and Dan walked him out.  At the door he said, “I’m just a
big loud fuckwit,” and it felt like a definition of the normal he no longer
wanted to live with.

Dan sniffed a laugh. 
“Yeah, so was I.  So was Mitch, till we met the reason not to be.   Maybe
you’ve met yours.  And I don’t mean the girl.  It’s bigger than that.  It’s
about what’s going on in your heart.”

Ant nodded.  It was close
to midnight and he was tired of this day.  He wanted a shower and his bed.  “What
am I supposed to do about it?”

Dan slapped him on the
back, in a place where the imaginary sunburn still stung.  “I’m your fuckwit
mate, I’m not an oracle.  All I know is you have to be genuine and it’s
something we’ll always be working on.”

Ant went home and stood
under the shower till the hot water stuttered, but when he got into bed he
couldn’t sleep.  He got up again and fetched his laptop; he might as well check
the markets, read a few reports as stare at the ceiling.  He wondered if Bree
did that too.  Or did she leave the office and forget about it, did she enjoy
her evenings with a bloke?  That made him think about the bruises again.  He
opened an email.  If he asked her again this way, it’d be done.  And without
the awkwardness of another confrontation he didn’t know how to manage.