NOTE: I finally managed to finagle a few moments away from family responsibilities to rewrite this old chapter. My parents are still ill, elderly, and still living five hours away from me, so I don't know when I'll have another chance to work on the story, but I hope you enjoy this installment! Sleeping Beast is still at the top of my To Do list, whenever I get a minute to work on it.—Stefanie
-o--O--o-
Maybe I am a coward.
That's what I was thinking when Grabwicke started talking, not that I heard him right away.
"Sim? Sim . . . Sim! SAMANTHA IRENE MOREAU," my head was up by then, but Grabwicke kept up the act, one hand cupped beat-box-style over his mouth as he intoned sternly, "PLEASE COME TO THE NURSE'S STATION AND COLLECT YOUR RITALIN."
I took my elbows off my desk and leaned back, making a face that said he wasn't as funny as he thought he was. Grinning, Grab propped a shoulder against the doorjamb and flicked a glance at the cell-phone centered on my desk blotter, which I'd been glaring at when he wandered by. "What did that poor cell phone do to deserve whatever nasty consequences you're considering?"
I grimaced. "You mean besides wrecking my entire life that time I accidentally updated all my apps at once?"
Grab smiled. Bitching about operating systems had been the foundation of our friendship, way-back-when. While our contact was chiefly limited to the workday, I nevertheless considered him a reasonably close and completely reliable friend.
"Yeah. Besides that," he answered, folding his arms across his chest to let me know he'd stand there all day if necessary.
I frowned at the phone again.
"I hate sucking up," I grumbled.
Grab waited patiently, and I sighed, folding my arms, too. "I had a huge argument with Randi, and one of us has to end it by picking up the phone. I think it should be her, because she's the one who called her best friend a
delusional, brain-damaged coward
, but..." I telegraphed my conclusion with a pissy mouth-pucker. "I'm fucking sick of mumbling comebacks to imaginary arguments whenever I'm alone."
Grab's attentive expression morphed into puzzlement. "You never struck me as the type-" He stopped mid-sentence to arch backwards, glancing both ways as he did.
I waved him into my office, because I had a good idea what he was going to say. A couple of months earlier, Grab had a front-row seat when a senior account executive tried to smack me down at a staff meeting because I'd been refusing to make the changes he suggested. Ron was in charge of the project, but I was in charge of the art, and I'd worked with the client several times in the past. I wasn't about to waste two days playing with cameras, computers, and product packaging to satisfy Ron's ego-erection: when the client shot down the changes, I'd be the one who looked like an idiot. No. Way.
Unfortunately for my jackass sorta-boss, I don't
do
peer pressure. Not when it comes to my work. When he attempted to bully me into submission, I very calmly reiterated the reasons I wasn't leaping onto his bungling, butt-fucking bandwagon (I may have phrased it more nicely at the time), at which point the senior account executive's very senior boss told him to shut the hell up (he may have phrased that more nicely at the time, too), because Ron was obviously not as "in tune with" the client's wishes as "dear Samantha." (The guy is like a million years old and a horrendous conversational misogynist, but I get paid the same as the guys, and he hasn't grabbed my ass once in four years, so he can call me "honey" as often as he likes.) I managed not to gloat-overtly-and the meeting moved on.
Ron did not.
He opened the door for me after the meeting was over, but stopped halfway, holding me captive for whatever threats he'd planned to make. It didn't get that far because the super-senior misogynist sidled up behind him during Ron's introductory insult. I swear, Ron must have run over a kitten on his way to work that morning, because karma was seriously kicking his ass.
ANYWAY, the point of this whole story-yes, dammit, I do have one!-- is that when Ron muttered, in a very nasty tone, "Why are you such a bitch, Samantha?" I answered with a carefree shrug and a few flip words. "Genetics? Environmental toxicity? Hard to say, Ron." His head and neck flushed flamingo-wing-pink, but he didn't even have time to pry the tight white line of his lips apart before the old guy wheezed into chuckles behind him, forestalling anything else Ron might have said.
Yup-
me and karma are both bitches
, Ron.
ANYWAY, this is a guy who has significant-if infrequent-situational power over my career-he could probably fire my disrespectful ass-but even if Ron's comment had contained far more insightful personal slurs, I wouldn't have worked up the energy to care. Yet one harsh word from Randi-at least when that word was "coward"-had schooled me on the meaning of true PEER pressure and ruined my whole damn week-and it was winding up to ruin the following week, too.
I answered Grabwicke's unasked query about one second after he closed the door. "I don't give a shit what Ron thinks of me, but I don't give a shit what Ron thinks about anything else, either. I'd never in a million years ask for his opinion. Ever," I added, just to be clear. "But when your best friend-who knows you better than
anyone else on earth
-when
she
calls you a coward, you start wondering if maybe she's right." My eyes went back to the shiny black rectangle on my blotter, which was loudly seconding Randi's opinion of me at that very moment.
Grab plunked down on a visitor's chair and interlaced his fingers, making a hammock to sling behind his head. "Give," he said, and I did.
-o-
It was ridiculous. After my second Bill's Club fantasy date-unarguably the best GYN appointment in the history of chick check-ups-I spent the majority of the following two weeks stumbling into walls in a lustful daze. I mean
seriously
ridiculous. ...
I masturbated every night at least once, and usually more often, with no pornographic nudges required to set my fantasies free, whatever the time or setting. In meetings with clients and colleagues, I struggled to pay attention to the matter at hand, rather than where my hands would rather be. Between my shower massage and the edge of my bra tweaking nipples which were constantly erect, I could barely get dressed in the morning. After a couple of days, I switched to wearing my tightest bras and loosest panties, because the slightest brush of fabric across my skin was enough to set my body afire and my mind adrift on a sea of sensual memories, bouncing from the brightly-lit examining room table to the geometric pillows perched strategically around my favorite stranger's bed.
I was tired from not enough sleep, twitchy from too much caffeine, and irritable because copious amounts of self-service weren't enough to take the edge off a libido thrust suddenly into overdrive by the shock of a second adolescence.
I was probably already subconsciously on the verge of blaming Randi for all of this when she arrived at my house on a Friday night for one of our semi-regular, semi-formal dinners. Since I was ready a bit early, I'd bitten off a big hunk of one of my boredom-killing hobbies, mostly in an effort to prevent my hands from wandering.
Long story short-Martin and I sometimes take extension classes at the local colleges, and he'd once traded me a full day of flower-arranging for six Saturday mornings of blacksmithing. I was elbow-deep in hothouse flowers when Randi arrived, but she's used to my foibles and poked around the living room while I finished up with what I was doing.
Fully immersing myself-hands, nose, and heart-in creative activity had dulled the edge of my newly-chronic crankiness, so everything was going great-right up until I casually mentioned I was thinking about requesting a repeat of my first Bill's Club date, the stranger in a bar scene, which hadn't left my mind for more than a day or two since it happened.
If I hadn't been distracted by peonies and poppies, I might have noticed Randi's reply was uncharacteristically slow in coming and suspiciously short on opinion.
"Why not one of the big ones you joined up to try?" She didn't know specifics, but we'd spoken about fantasies in general, and I'd concluded aloud that my dilemma was probably fairly common-a "big" fantasy too intimidating to attempt without backup or insurance.
Still unwilling to discuss details, I blew off her question.
I paused right there in my retelling, making solid eye contact with Grabwicke to mutter, "Huh-I guess I am a coward."
Grab laughed and waved me back to my story, which was at the she-said-she-said part. Incidentally, Grabwicke was hearing almost none of the
real
story. Although he knows I have "friends"-Alex and Martin-Grab doesn't know anything about the club, so I changed our purported topic of dissension: I said Randi was pressuring me to try speed-dating with her, which wasn't bad for a spur-of-the-moment fabrication, if you ask me.
So when Randi asked why I was putting off my "serious" fantasies, the rest of the actual conversation-not what Grab heard-went something like this:
Randi: Why not one of the big ones you joined up to try?
Sim (me): Not yet. (Completely blowing off Randi's second sincere attempt at heart-to-heart communication.)
Randi: You joined for something more than no-strings sex, Sim; I know you did. Stop dicking around and get on with it.
For some reason, I interpreted that as her criticizing my morals, and I froze, paying all sorts of attention.
