The blouse toppled onto the floor, she was disrobing, more than captured images, she is giving up. The short black pants are crumbled at her ankles; she steps out of them like a bather appearing from within a pool. She moves away from her clothes, nude before him for the first time. He can see the aroma of her body, the inch he knows from sitting close to her, the small, scoops of flesh he’s dreamed so often of, the slim waist curving slightly and the long thin legs. She is lovely, he is unprepared, and she is against him, like burying his face in a bouquet of flowers.
* * *
About that time he was interrupted by her theatre, truly a Greek tragedy, if there ever was one, amidst the jeers of coworkers, during a second quarter profit party. Amelia stands pouting, her little outfit worn purely for Joseph, as he walks by her and joins a colleague to discuss the progress of his project.
She has said: “I went to lunch with Mineliss” after he asked her how her lunch was. She is listening to the speeches.
“…and it’s because of your hard work and dedication that this fourth quarter has been the greatest in Immunex history…”
He says benignly how much he likes her pigtails. She smiles with worried eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know it would upset you.”
“I tell you what, I think I’ll just let that be you and Mineliss’ gig from now on.”
“What?”
“Lunch.”
“Joseph, no.”
His Adam’s apple bobbles as he glances towards her, swallowing thickly. “Yes. I can’t share you; I thought you knew that. I don’t blame you, but I can’t…”
“It’s a phase, I’m the new girl, the one they’ve all just recently discovered. They won’t care about me in a few weeks.”
“No. You are assimilated, my dear. I can’t share you.”
They applause the rubicund jolly of the senior vice president’s antics in the front of the room. He has his hand over his mouth and his eyes are wet.
“We’ll talk about it some more, Joseph. I’ll come see you later this afternoon.”
“I don’t want you to come see me anymore. I won’t be just another person you visit, that wasn’t the point of any of it.”
“Oh, Joseph, come on.”
She will plead with him with her eyes. But he has already gone, moving swiftly through the crowd towards the door. To go after him would cause a scene. She turns just as Mike Mineliss wanders to her side. He will fill time, at least.
* * *
“…his vital signs are stable. He should come to at any moment, Mrs. Moore.”
Darkness. Only a faint flood of ghastly light, a shimmer of the sun; the sun that hung over the clouds as he ran towards the window. There are sheets over my body. There is a bed below me. There is a metal bar against my wrist. He opens his eyes to see his darling wife standing above him, speaking with a doctor.
“…the lacerations on his forearms, legs and chest should heal without scarring. He’ll be fine in a week,” the stranger said.
“Thank you doctor, thank you so much.”
There is a bouquet of flowers beside the window, in a vase, with a card. He has not read the card, he does not know the caring words it contains. There is a monitor he does not know the purpose of, with a red line racing across the screen.
“Joseph?” his wife pleads, in a desperate voice he’s heard before, in the night, when they have not had sex, when he has begged her and she has refused. Why would she prefer to fight? Why would she make so many excuses — I have to get up early with the kids, I didn’t sleep that well last night, I don’t feel well — and be so willing to stay awake to chastise him, to argue with him, to destroy him. You are the beast of my home. “Joseph, honey, my darling. It is so good to see you. Oh thank god… thank god this wasn’t our 15 minutes. Can you imagine? Our 15 minutes gone because you fell out of an office window and landed on scaffolding. It’s so good you’re okay… that we didn’t lose our 15 minutes to something like this… honey? Joseph?”
“Good morning.”
“It’s late, honey. It’s not morning anymore,” Mrs. Moore said, clutching his arm in a cliché of body language.
“Oh.”
“Do you feel okay, honey?”
“No…”
“Look, the office sent flowers,” she stared down at it, re-reading it. “They apologize for the senior who wasn’t there for your meeting. It seems that you weren’t on his schedule, some mistake by a secretary. Also, the janitor’s union has sent chocolates and an apology for the loose piece of carpet that you tripped on. They’re all so glad you’re okay. We’re so fortunate that there was that scaffolding there. Did you know that honey?”
“No…”
“No what? What honey?”
“It wasn’t scaffolding.”
“It was honey.”
“No. It was her,” he replied Berkeleyly.
“There was a window-washer’s scaffolding two floors below, you landed on it, after you tripped and fell through the window. They say it was a one in a million chance for you to fall through, but flukes happen. I’m just so glad you’re all right.”
“What day is it?”
“July 25th, it’s a Tuesday.”
* * *
The unfortunate subject, hidden icon of a voyeur bureaucracy, crushes the alarm clock that shrieks in icy resistance, awakened from a thick slumber of phantasm snapshots that predict the pedigree of her nemesis, even envision his post of sixteen screens, like a mythical hydra, while mixing in the musty breath of the wolf, who she has recently had a visit from in the neuron flints of her subconscious, if such clairvoyant abilities are to be believed, not from want of material, or wishing to debate the love-lust yearnings of the Brönte sisters. She is not alone in the house, the spectator of big bang debris shares this hobby with a local, who arrives in the rooster’s waddle light of day, knowing her mistress shall be unconscious, and strums the feminine phallic at the foot of the bed while dreaming of mediaeval mechanisms surrounding the object of her affliction. This morning, a lengthy licorice whip fashioned by braiding strands of the sticky candy, pulverizes the fleshy ovals of her hind, after tying her tightly to her bedpost quickly transitions into a circumstantial rape that unfolds rather mildly into a voluntary duo suck-fest that almost wakes up the sleeping beauty who’s unknowingly fisted her accomplice while chewing on her swollen left nipple, all while the camera goes in for a close up. The voyeur, witnessing in dry throat wonder, loses his perspective at this point, unable to shrug politely and continue based on the theatre, he invades the compound through the unguarded thicket of the garden walkway while the assistant quickly slips back down the stairs and the lady of the house finally rouses unknowing the spiral hairs littering her chest are not her own.
The camera lens of dispossession, having been left on automatic search, following her slight movements as she removes her flannel, Fall catalogue sheets from her body, chronicles a deleted third party in the room, as she, long legged, slouching, absent-mindedly, strolls bare-footed into the adjoining bathroom for a lengthy bath in hot, tumbling water. He, whose skin glistens like rocket fire from her proximity, a prey animal who’s scent fills the cocaine heat of his inner nostril, positions himself like a young Graham for the best damn show he’s ever apt to witness, as she, unknowingly moves just as he would wish, to later step in a creamy mush of anonymous origin on the linoleum floor.