About Last Night - Chapter 6
Dear readers,
Sorry, I am a bit late this week with the next Chapter of Helena’s story. I’ve had an incident with a donkey at the weekend (you can read all about my donkey incident in my upcoming Substack post) and I also had to travel with work, so I am a bit behind. I hope you can forgive me :)
Catch-up on Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.
February, 2018
After winning an important new account, Jim decides to throw a Hawaiian-themed party at the office, where a bleached-haired DJ with a fondness for sun beds plays a selection of gruesome techno tracks. My colleagues wear surf shirts, fluorescent sunglasses and flower garlands around their necks, despite the fact that it’s positively freezing outside. I, for one, barely bother to dress at all these days. I’m wearing jeans, a hoodie and Converse shoes. Carrie Bradshaw would be appalled, but gearing up like a parrot and pretending to give a rat’s arse is not an option, even if I cared enough to try. My accounts are still unprofitable, and my relationships even more so, not to mention that Amy has officially ghosted me.
‘Didn’t you get the memo, luv?’ asks Janine, the Office Manager, eyeing me with reprobation. ‘You were supposed to wear Hawaiian.’
‘I did get the memo, just decided to ignore it,’ I say. ‘But for you, I’ll wear a garland. Hand me one.’ I point at the bunch of flower leis around Janine’s arm.
Looking a little less ridiculous than my colleagues, I head towards the bar. I want to be away from the awful noise they dance to, pretending that it’s music. Everyone appears already drunk, and I have some catching up to do. I order a rum and coke and lean against the bar, watching the organised mess on the dance floor, under an unfortunate change from techno to drum’n’bass.
‘Helena, I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ jingles a voice in my ear. I turn around and notice a gold necklace with the name MIMI dangling over a striped top and delicate collarbones, the face above it worthy of a Vogue cover.
‘Hey there, Mimi,’ I say and give my beautiful intern a kiss on the cheek. ‘Why were you looking for me? You know I’ve retired from shot-drinking competitions.’
‘Yeah, right,’ she rolls her eyes. ‘Like that’s gonna last. You just couldn’t take defeat,’ she giggles.
‘I am a sore loser, truth be told. ’
Mimi smiles with dimpled cheeks and take a sip from her fingerprinted glass of Chardonnay. ‘I wanted to say thank you for helping me with the presentation.’
‘How did it go?’ I say, remembering that I helped her with some bullshit internal competition.
I can tell she can barely contain her excitement. ‘I got it,’ she said. ‘I got the job. I’m a junior account executive now.’
I am both happy and sad for her, like a mother probably would. She’s only twenty-two, so technically speaking, she could be my daughter. If I had a teenage pregnancy that is. I hug her hard. ‘I’m so very proud of you, sweetie,’ I say. ‘You are going to get places in this God-forsaken industry. If that’s what you want, of course,’ I add, wondering if being a Group Account Director or whatever Jim likes to call me these days is even something I’d wanted. He saw something in me when he hired me those many years ago. A hunger I could never satisfy, a desire to work myself into the ground, anything to stop me from thinking about Amy, my dead mother or how I was the reason that everything turned out the way it did. He trained me into his bloodiest hound. I never liked the taste of blood, but I didn’t know anything else. I was still a child when he gave me my first job. Just like Mimi.
‘To your success,’ I say, raising my glass.
Mimi downs her white wine and puts her finger-printed glass on the counter. ‘Let’s dance,’ she says and pulls me by the hand, but I can’t think of anything worse.
‘I’m sorry, sweetie. I can’t dance to this music. If the DJ decides to play some Gloria Gaynor, give me a shout. Until then, I’ll be quietly hydrating myself.’
‘Gloria who?’ she laughs as she moves away and disappears into a crowd of limbs and Hawaiian motifs. I watch her dance and wonder how would it feel to be her mother. Not easy to imagine when you’re motherless.
‘She’s a handful that Mimi, isn’t she?’ says a baritone voice to my left.
I turn a loaded gaze towards the Creative Director, a man in his late fifties with salt and pepper hair, broad shoulders and a reprovable reputation. What goes through my mind as I hear those words can’t possibly be true.
‘What makes you say that, Damian?’
‘Oh, nothing. She’s a little minx, that’s all,’ he says, sipping straight vodka. I notice a glimmering drop that hangs in the corner of his mouth, like a salivating wolf.
Before I can control myself, my hand forms into a fist, and I see myself launching it into Damian’s face. Taken by surprise, he staggers and falls backwards against the bar while I experience the world’s most atrocious knuckle pain. A pain that feels so good. Unlike any other, self-inflicted or otherwise.
He pulls himself up and rubs his cheek. He grunts, making a visible effort not to punch me back. I hold onto the bar, panting, my heart full of something threatening to jump out through my rib cage like in a scene from an Alien movie. Janine has appeared next to us, looking aghast.
‘What in God’s name happened here?’ she says, with a drunken slur, barely holding on to the margarita glass in her hand.
‘She punched me,’ says Damian, rubbing his jaw.
‘Is that true?’ says Janine, looking at me with mascara-caked eyelashes that add a grotesque touch to her drunken presence.
‘Yes,’ I say, sure of something I haven’t been before and taking the margarita glass right out of her hand.
‘Why?’ she says, either visibly struggling to comprehend the situation or worried about her beverage. I am not exactly Damian’s size, and it would have taken more than a carefully applied blow to make him lose his balance – the man is a centaur. It took something else all right. Something buried deep inside my body, exploding out of me and into his clean-shaven jaw.
I down Janine’s drink. ‘Because of what he said.’
‘What was it? I must know,’ says Janine, slurring her words even more now that she’s trying to control her speech. ‘Was it racial, sexual, or any other kind of harassment?’
She’s a handful that Mimi.
I wasn’t sure if I had punched him for Mimi, for Amy, for myself or for women everywhere. ‘No,’ I say, unable to articulate in Human Resources language that it wasn’t what he said, as much as how he said it.
‘Fuck this,’ says Damian and kicks the bar with his Balenciaga trainer. ‘I’ll file an official complaint.’
I clench my fists by my side and keep my jaw as tight as possible to stop myself from lashing out again. Do your worst, I think, hardly more mature now than I was when I provoked Fierce Ellie all those years ago.
‘Looks like you might be in a bit of trouble,’ says Janine and, picking up one of her falling fake lashes, gives me a condescending look. ‘I’m going to have to let Jim know.’
‘Do what you gotta do,’ I say, watching Janine shuffle away with Damian.
‘I’m glad you punched him,’ I hear a child-like voice in my ear seconds later. Mimi is suddenly by my side and yawns casually. She orders another glass of Chardonnay.
‘Why is that?’ I say, feeling my heart beat faster.
‘He’s a disgusting man. Last Friday, he came in after me in the toilet with his dick hanging out.’
My eyes bulge, my heart sprints. ‘And what did you do?’
She leans in to whisper in my ear. ‘I think we had sex. I was really drunk. I can’t remember.’
I have a sudden attack of vertigo. I need air. I need something.
‘Isn’t that disgusting?’ continues Mimi, taking a sip of her Chardonnay. ‘I mean, he’s a married man, with children my age.’
I feel like I’ve just been punched in the gut, and I clung on to the bar like to a lifebuoy. ‘A shot of tequila,’ I scream at the barman. ‘Actually, make that three.’
Stay tuned for Chapter 7 next week and don’t forget to let me know what you think of the story so far. Share it if you like it! Do what you can to spread the word and help a starving writer (and by starving I don’t mean literally, of course, but metaphorically, as I am starved for connection with my readers).
Until next time, stay out of trouble. Drink responsibly and all that jazz! :)
