Page 10 of Dirty Work
Chapter Seven
“This is a problem.”
I’m squeezing into the dress I’d worn at my high school graduation just over four years ago. I remembered that I brought it with me when I moved to the city and thought it would be perfect.
My roommate, Karen, shifted her legs under her. She’s sitting on my bed aside the heap of my simple black clothing.
“No, that is perfect!,” she says. “It looks amazing on you. It’s tight, it’s sexy. It’s good.”
“It doesn’t fit!” I smooth the fabric across my butt and hips. It’s pulling a little, slightly too tight around the widest parts of me. But part of me agrees. It does look sexy. It shows off my curves. It doesn’t fit how it did four years ago - it fits better.
At least, it fits better for the occasion I need it for.
An auction. A date auction. When I heard about it at work last Monday, I was borderline disgusted by it. It was some retrograde, sexist, misogynistic stuff.
“You should do it,” Bryan whistled in his deep velvet voice as he sidled up to my desk. He put his hands down flat on the desk, letting himself linger there over me as I scrolled through the email everyone received from Human Resources.
If Bryan was telling me to do it, maybe I would consider it.
“You don't think this is messed up? Guys bidding on women? For a date?”
“I guess so, a little. I mean, it’s not like you ladies are prostitutes, or anything. But don’t you want to be objectified a little bit?” He slides his hand over to mine and slips his fingers around my wrist, pressing gently on my pulse point.
Damn. I can feel myself blushing. I know what he’s doing. He’s mimicking what he did to me a few hours ago, in his bed, with my arms above my head and his teeth on my earlobe.
“Bryan,” I whisper with embarrassment. But I don’t move my hand away. Maybe Idowant to be objectified. Maybe it feels a little bit...good… to be to desired as a sex object. Maybe I do want to be eaten up and consumed by someone who only saw her as a piece of ass.
Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.
“Don’t you?” he asks, pinching his fingers around my wrist a little harder.
“Not at work. No. Not in a professional environment!” Now I pull my hand away. “It seems a little inappropriate, if you ask me.”
“I did ask you.” Bryan already knows that I loved to be teased like that. “Anyway, I think you should do it. The money will go to a charity of your choice. Do it for...I don’t know. Do it for all the poor monkeys in Antarctica who need boats to get to New York. Or if you have a better cause that you’d like to have the money go to.”
“Will you be bidding?” I laugh at Bryan’s joke, even though it feels a little too close to home for me. I do have a cause in mind, and I’m a little annoyed that Bryan is making fun of the idea of charitable giving.
“If I see something worth paying for.”
He walks away without giving me anything else. Just like that, he can give to me and he can take away. It almost feels cruel, but the pleasure he can give me is excruciating. As he walks away, I admire how good he looked in his charcoal-colored suit. He’d removed his jacket and was walking around the office with his shirt sleeves rolled up, showing off his tattoos in clear violation of both the dress code and the code of conduct. But he never got in trouble - not even a little.
I suspect that some of the older men in the office, the partners, are a little jealous of Bryan. Of his youth, of his looks. Of the way the women in the office all loved him.
Bryan is a little bit inappropriate with everyone. He cracks jokes about anyone, but it’s always at his own expense.
For example.
I overheard Bryan and his close pal Greg talking about some girl Greg hooked up with at Bryan’s birthday party. She had been flitting with both of them, and Bryan kept extolling Greg’s dick, and telling the girl that Greg was an amazing catch and that he felt lucky to just be associated with him and hanging out and sharing a beer with him on that night.
He told the girl that Greg was a legend in their group of friends at the office, that there was no way he could compete with Greg.
He was a good wingman, and even though Greg was hot, he was too cookie-cutter. He faded into the crowd of all the good-looking finance dudes out at the bar. He almost had a cloak of anonymity, whether he wanted it or not, because he was so good looking and because there were so many other guys in the city, hell, at that very bar, who looked just like him.
Bryan is different. Bryan knows it. He’s a little self-deprecating, a little outside the type of guy who runs the city, a little better. He isn’t afraid of being a little offensive. He isn’t polite. When he told me to dump her boyfriend the day we met, the fact that Bryan is a little different became apparent. But the fact that he would sayanythingisn’t the only thing that was different about him.
He is, apparently, a little richer, too.
It doesn’t hurt that his body looks like it was been carved from the same marble the walls of his bathroom had been cut from.
As he walks away, I feel a little surge of jealousy. What did he mean, that he would bid if he saw something worth paying for?
But I push the jealous thoughts out of my mind. Maybe I would sign up. If anything, to just see what the whole thing was about.
And maybe a guy would bid on me.
