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“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.” Joan Crawford
I want to kill my boss. It has become an absolute truth that a small portion of my time every day, is now taken over with creating increasingly inventive ways to murder him slowly. Take today for instance. Today I’m debating whether to hang him out of the tenth-floor window tied to the conference table, or disembowel him with the cake knife from the tea trolley. This is all done while taking diligent notes at the meeting that he’s forced me to sit in. Never let it be said that men can’t multitask.
“I think you really need her and it’s past time that we made her position more formalized. My only query is which position?” He shoots a quick glance at my pen scribbling over the paper taking notes, before continuing. “Should we say missionary, or reverse cow girl?”
“Wait. There’s a severance card? How is it that I’ve worked for you for two years and never even got a Christmas card, yet you’re handing cards out willy nilly to anyone that you sack?”
I wonder whether this happens so much to him that he simply doesn’t notice it anymore. An image pops up in my head of cab drivers hurling themselves from still moving vehicles, and chefs throwing pans out of the window to tuck and dive away from him,
“Just thinking what’s next in your diary today. I can’t work out whether you’ve got kicking abandoned puppies, or the appointment to send small, orphaned children up the chimneys.”
“Do you want me to find it, or do a flamenco dance?” I ask sharply. “Because I’m sure that’s the only possible reason that you could have for snapping your fingers at me.” “Or maybe I just want you to come to heel,” he says wickedly, looking at me closely with his eyes full of malicious amusement. “It’ll take more than a couple of fingers to do that,”
“The thought of your face when I said that still has the power to make me laugh.” I shake my head at him and he grins, his teeth white in his tanned, angular face. “No really, I was at a business luncheon with one of the senior partners the other day, and it made me laugh out loud.” “What did he say?” The senior partners are not known for possessing any sort of sense of humour. “I had to pretend that someone had fallen and broken their leg.”
It’s James, the new intern, or victim, depending on what you want to call the young men who enter Gabe’s office arrogantly and then shortly afterwards race back to university with their tails between their legs.
Gabe might be a complete bastard, but I sort of think of him as my bastard, and I don’t like other people criticising him.
Gabe interrupted. “That’s the opening verse from ‘Mi Chico Latino’ by Geri Halliwell,” he said, his voice choked with laughter. I’d looked at him and considered many answers, but finally settled for shrugging. “Everyone’s a critic. If only more people listened to Geri, the world would be a much better place, and we’d have more Latin men around.”
I remind myself once again that the rare, nice moments don’t compensate for the dismissive way that he usually treats me. I hate him I tell myself repeatedly. I fucking hate his dismissive, perfect arse.
I’m a reformed man. I want something serious. I’ve taken a leaf out of your book.” I grunt. “Take the whole fucking tree, Jude. It’s never done me any good.”
“Laugh it up you giant wanker, but you were fucking scared of Robert.” “It wasn’t so much Robert, more his unhealthy interest in the occult.” I sigh. “I think he’s a high priest now.”
these black jeans are so tight that if I take them off there’ll be an imprint of my dick on them.” He laughs and slaps my arse. “Well hello, Sister Dylan. How nice to meet your puritanical self.” I follow him, still pulling at my shirt. “Is it puritanical to not want to tell the general public that I’ve been circumcised?”
To: Dylan Mitchell From: Gabe Foster I have logged onto Amazon and purchased you a dictionary, because even auto correct seems unable to cope with your erratic spelling.
I swapped the cards on the two bouquets of flowers that he wanted to send out. His mentor’s wife had therefore got a card thanking her for a fantastic night between the sheets, and Fletcher had got the one congratulating him on his pregnancy.
He scoffs. “I know all that I need to know about them because you tell me. It cuts out the middleman business.” “Ah, that pesky middleman business, usually called conversation. How it does interfere with everything,” I say lightly.
as you’re a shithead sometimes, I’ve trained you to be a fairly acceptable shithead to me. If you died, I’d have to go to all the effort of training someone else.” “If I died, maybe you should consider a change of career into the nursing profession. With your lovely bedside manner, you’d be a shoo-in.”
Gabe, you look really bad. Get into bed now and do as I say.” I put out my hands to help him if he needs me, but then freeze at his next faint words. “I’ve imagined you saying that a few times, Dylan, but never when I feel this crap.”
To: Gabe Foster From: Dylan Mitchell Mr Thorpe wanted to know today why I don’t call you Sir, and you nodded in agreement. It feels a bit Fifty Shadish to me, but I’m willing to give it a go. Just don’t make me put the words ball gag with it.
It feels almost like a family home, albeit one that belongs to a family that loves beige. I would totally have thought to find him in one of the trendy areas of London, surrounded by designer furniture with martinis on tap, and not here in this soothing, warm house. I shake my head. The man is still an enigma, but now an enigma with a lovely home that I want.
“You’re just jealous because you could never pull these off.” I look dubiously at how tight they are. “I sincerely doubt that you can pull them off unless you’ve got a chisel.”
You know, Dylan, I really lucked out in the assistant department. The other partners in the firm have ended up with someone awful, who soothes them, is at their beck and call and agrees with them all the time. I got one who is sarcastic, argumentative, scruffy, rarely where he should be, and calls me Shithead Boss Man rather than Sir.” Jude laughs at him, before reaching out and swiping one of the prawns from my carton of sweet and sour. “He’d call you Sir if you spanked him.” “For fuck’s sake,” I sigh, burrowing my face in my hands,
“All that - the tender touches, the snarky conversation. It was almost like foreplay for sick people.” I choke on a prawn. “It was not foreplay for fuck’s sake. That’s the way I always talk to him.” “Well in that case, I’m surprised he hasn’t got you bent over his desk every spare minute that he has.”
Seriously, Dylan, be careful, because you’re a giving bloke. If anyone needs anything, you’re first in the queue to provide it. Don’t choose someone who will never appreciate that gift. Don’t give to someone who will take it and never give back.”
Jude was right to be worried because I’m in far more trouble than I’d thought. That prickly exterior of his has always challenged me to be better, but the real him attracts me beyond comprehension. Shit, I think morosely. I’m fucked.
“I always obey your orders,” I say indignantly. “I am quite possibly the best assistant in history.” “That would certainly be true, if you were the only assistant in history.”
he’s staring hard at Fletcher with a look that could kill. I check Fletcher. Damn, it hasn’t worked.
he shakes his head fiercely at me and I subside, albeit with a glare on my face that I make sure he can see. As normal any sign of rage from me is treated by Gabe as if I’m putting on his own personal show to entertain him, and I see him suppress a smile. He is the most contrary man that I’ve ever met.
Yes, Cinderella won a real prize - a man who couldn’t see her true worth until she fitted in the shoe properly.
“Okay, you’re on, but do not think that when we get back to the office, I won’t make you redo the coffee when it’s shit.” “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say blandly. “My day wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t have the ritual, multiple refilling of the coffee pot for our cosy, little taster sessions.” “Smart ass,” he says tartly.
“Please say that again, but make your voice go all husky, like on a Friday afternoon when you’ve been yelling all day.”
“Tradition comes from something being so brilliant and such a good memory, that you try to recreate it every time that you can.”
To have all of his attention focused on you, to make him laugh and see his eyes examining your face as he listens intently to what you say, is a heady, dangerous feeling, and I’ve never felt so happy and free.
He makes me feel alive, the way that my mum had always promised me would happen when I met someone serious. But I know looking at him that I still mean absolutely nothing to him.
no one seems to have noticed that my world has just spun on its axis. Sadly, that includes the man who has done the spinning.
To: Gabe Foster From: Dylan Mitchell I have prepared the fourth pot of coffee for you to taste. I pray that this one meets your exacting taste buds, because I do actually have plans for the rest of my life.
Up close he looks tired, with huge, dark circles under his eyes, and to my knowledgeable eye, he looks a bit ragged. It’s the way he always looks when there’s a problem at work, and his busy mind is working to untangle it. Maybe I’m the problem I think grimly. He’s probably working out how to hand me my severance package.
“Fuck no. I hate the tosser. If you wanted to spend a year with someone who thinks intelligent conversation is a recap of ‘Hollyoaks’, then on your own head be it.”
“Gabe, I’m fully aware that you’ve probably had the upper hand in all of your sexual encounters since the very first time. However, what on earth gave you the idea that I’m in any way compliant and biddable?”
“You imagined me then?” I ask, my voice hoarse from earlier. He sends me a quick glance, smiling hesitantly. “A lot.” I gasp, and his eyes sharpen as if recalling himself. “Usually it helps to envision your assistant naked. It combats the desire to throttle them.” “I think you’ve taken the whole seeing your audience naked in order to negate their power thing, wrong,”
The knowledge comes to me slowly at first and with no initial fear, seemingly a part of this dreamlike shower. I’m in love with him. For a long second, I try out the knowledge for fit, and it does. It fits and fills all the parts of me, stretching out perfectly until I can feel it in my bones. I love this grumpy, irascible, yet sometimes tender man. How could I not? I see now that all the rage he sometimes fills me with is the flipside to this feeling, the other side of the coin.
How stupid am I to be in love with someone who has never, and will never, want love?
he makes commitment-phobes look like wedding planners,
To: Gabe Foster From: Dylan Mitchell Due to your temper tantrum over my spilling coffee on your laptop, I am taking an early lunch. Would you like me to bring you something back? Maybe the blood of a virgin, or eye of newt?
He’s a conundrum, this man. Doesn’t want to hurt me, is worried about it so much, and then does it every time.
“I know you’re going to miss me,” I say in a deliberately, smug voice. His head shoots up and he glares at me. “Don’t worry, Gabe, you’re not alone. London will be thronged with wailing men mourning my absence for a whole week, so go out and join them if you feel isolated. Don’t be ashamed. They’re your brethren.”
If I look carefully I can find my brother’s initials on one corner and the words, ‘Dylan is a giant poo head’. He’d carved it when he was seven and I was five, and apparently, I’d been aggravating him. The aggravation had increased for him when my dad had found the carving, but for some reason my mum had refused to sandpaper it out and still laughs when she sees it.
I’d tried to use the excuse of having to go to school to get out of it, but my mum had declared loudly that her children would not bow down to the oppression of the Department of Education.
