Last Chance Saloon (16 page)

After the limited success of the lunch the previous day, he was working himself up to asking her out for dinner. And this time he’d do it without the help of Fred Franklin or the pretext of discussing work. Subterfuge and manipulation weren’t Joe’s usual methods. Though the lunch had been partly work-related, he was ashamed he’d brought pressure to bear on her. But he just hadn’t been able to stop himself.

As he watched her carefully hang her jacket on the back of her chair, he was trying to decide where to take her. Somewhere so new the paint was still drying? Or somewhere old, mellow and out of town? Which would she prefer?

He stood in front of her. She looked at a button midway down his shirt and, to her surprise, thought, I could just open that and slide my hand in. In the split second that she imagined the touch of his skin – taut, silky beneath his chest hair – she had a hot flare of sensation. He sat on the edge of her desk, and she found she was watching the way the front of his trousers bunched and gathered. What would happen if she inched down his zip and slipped her hand in…? Once more her nerve endings prickled with heat. Mesmerized, she forced her eyes from his flies to his face. She felt frightened. Then angry. He smiled at her as he’d done every morning, but today it was different. All the intensity had moved from his mouth to his eyes. Less sweetness, more tension. Less sunniness, more breath-holding anticipation.

‘Morning, Katherine.’

‘Morning,’ she said, shortly.

He paused and managed to make eye-contact before saying, ‘Thank you for coming to work today. You’ve made an old man very happy.’

Katherine coldly quirked an eyebrow. ‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, it is. As a very wise man once said.’ Joe paused, rubbed his chin thoughtfully and said, ‘What was it exactly? Oh, right! “You are the sunshine of my life.” ’

‘That’s interesting,’ Katherine replied slowly, ‘because another very wise man – he’s a judge, actually – once said, “Sexual harassment in the workplace is a crime.” ’

There was a split second of stillness, then Joe twitched as if
she’d hit him. As his face flooded with colour, he was already moving off her desk, sickened by shock and sudden self-loathing.

Sexual harassment! She said he was sexually harassing her. Him! Joe Roth. He’d always thought that sexual harassment was done by older men, who held a position of power and abused it for sexual favours. Like Fred Franklin. It had never occurred to Joe that his enthusiastic wooing of Katherine might be viewed in such a light. He’d just thought he’d been
flirting
with her. He felt dirty and disgusting – and rejected.

‘Sorry,’ Joe said, his face aghast as he backed away. ‘I didn’t mean to… it wasn’t my intention to… I’m terribly sorry.’

Savouring her sour triumph, Katherine turned her attention to the figures on her desk. To be fair, she thought, it wasn’t exactly
harassment
, as such. He hadn’t ever accidentally-on-purpose grazed her nipples under the guise of passing her an expenses claim. Or suggested she sleep with him if she wanted a pay rise. Or while she was photocopying in the eight-foot-wide corridor, he hadn’t rubbed up behind her, making sure she felt the full benefit of his erection, saying, ‘Whoops, excuse me, just trying to squeeze past you. Tight fit, this eight-foot-wide corridor,’ the way Fred Franklin did to some of the other girls.

But he had bullied her into going to lunch with him. Even if it was work-related. And he had smiled at her a lot, an awful lot, and that
wasn’t
work-related. Not to mention all that irritating stuff about wise men saying things. It’d get on your nerves!

She stuffed down the unpleasant feeling that true victims of sexual harassment wouldn’t have been one bit impressed with her accusations. But at least she’d managed to get rid of him. Right, then. Opening balances!

‘Yes,’ Joe said hollowly.

Instantly it was mass-exodus time, as all the other men gave him the widest possible berth. Sometimes a man’s just got to be alone, they reasoned.

If it was a woman who’d been blown out, she’d have been besieged by other women, laden down with chocolate and comforting platitudes. ‘That pig!’ ‘Plenty more where he came from.’ ‘Bet he had a tiny willy, anyway.’

But because he was a man, Joe’s desk immediately became a tiny raft marooned in a very big sea. All morning, any men on the right-hand side of the office who wanted to talk to anyone working on the left-hand side went to the back of the office, down five flights of fire escape, out the back by the bins, around the block, back in the front door, up in the lift, into the office and over to the desk of the person they wanted to speak to, rather than pass in front of Joe.

Fred Franklin was the sole source of human contact and then only because he couldn’t be arsed walking down five flights of stairs. As he lumbered past, he placed his hand awkwardly on Joe’s shoulder and suggested in wise-and-kindly-elder-giving-advice-to-raw-youth fashion, ‘Shag someone else, son.’

Katherine ignored it all, she had work to do. Besides, she thought, he might be back. And if he is, I’ll know he’s a pathologically arrogant wanker. And if he doesn’t come back, he couldn’t have handled me anyway. Either way, I can’t lose.

Then she had an unexpected, unwelcome throb of loss. Maybe he wasn’t that bad. But, no, there was no scope for thinking that. Because they all were. Sooner or later.

Usually just after they’d slept with her.

Joe got through the morning, not quite a broken man but definitely badly bent out of shape. He went over and over his behaviour during the past three weeks and had to admit he’d been very persistent with Katherine. He’d always been can-do and practical. If you want something – or someone – you do your best to get them. But he’d never meant to be pushy.

Or to
sexually harass
her.

The thing was he was fairly sure he
wasn’t
guilty of sexual harassment. Which almost made it worse. She’d flung an extreme accusation at him, not because it was true but because she loathed him so much she had to find a good way of getting rid of him. The pain of rejection was acute. Especially when he’d thought he’d noticed a tiny thaw.

At lunchtime Myles looked deep inside himself for some words of comfort to offer Joe. Something profound and healing. Finally he hit on it.

He walked over to Joe, placed his hand on his shoulder, looked at him with immense compassion and said, ‘Fancy a pint?’

A tiny light appeared in Joe’s dazed, dead eyes. ‘Sure.’

They took a long lunch, even by advertising standards. In other words, they didn’t come back until three o’clock. The following day.

By the fifth pint, they’d exhausted their usual topics of conversation – Arsenal, cars, Arsenal, breasts, what pricks all their clients were, Arsenal, England’s chances of hosting the World Cup in 2006 – and were buffered enough to skirt around their feelings. In the middle of a discussion on Manchester’s public transport system, Joe blurted out the sexual-harassment charge.

‘I shouldn’t have forced her to come for lunch with me yesterday,’ he admitted, with shame and regret.

‘Worth a try, mate,’ consoled Myles, ever the wide-boy.

‘I pushed her too far, she’s obviously very fragile.’

Myles muttered something to the effect that Katherine was about as fragile as a Sherman tank

‘You don’t see what I see. She’s so…’ Joe stared dreamily into the middle distance ‘… sweet sometimes.’

‘She’s accused you of sexual harassment and you say she’s sweet. You’re pissed, mate.’

‘Now that you mention it, I am.’

‘When you’re sober again, you’ll have gone right off her.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You’ll ’afta. ’Cos she don’t want you, mate.’

Joe winced. ‘I’m going to apologize to her.’

Myles was appalled. ‘You’re bleeding radio.’

Joe looked puzzled.

‘Radio rental – mental!’ Myles expounded. ‘Cockney rhyming slang.’

‘I know,’ Joe said. ‘But you’re not a Cockney.’

‘Nah. From Surrey. The poor bit, though. Now, listen, mate, you can’t apologize to her. That’s as good as admitting you’re guilty. Do you want the sack? You work hard, you’re ambitious. Leave it, mate!’

‘But I don’t think she meant it. I think she just wants me to shove off…’

‘Then do!’ Myles said, simply. ‘Now listen to Uncle Myles. What you need is to get up-close and personal with a totally pukka bird. That’ll sort you.’

‘No. It’s too soon.’

‘By the weekend?’

‘No.’

‘Sorry, mate. Forgot you’re going to the footie.’

‘No, I mean it would still be too soon.’

‘All you have to do is pretend it’s her.’

‘I can’t. I’d know. She wouldn’t be Katherine.’

‘Who looks at the mantelpiece when they’re poking the fire?’ Myles smirked triumphantly. He had an answer for everything.

‘Myles, you’re depressing me,’ Joe said wearily.

‘Cheer up, mate. You’ve been kicked into touch before, right?’

‘Well, I went out with Lindsay for three years, then she moved to New York –’

‘And you’re still up for it with other girls, right?’ Myles interrupted.

‘I suppose. I mean, it took a while, we’d kind of run out of steam anyway, but it wasn’t easy and though it was amicable it was still –’

‘Blinding,’ Myles cut in. ‘Very interesting. Not. What I’m trying to say here is that you win some, you lose some. You’ll get over it.’

Drunken hope filled Joe. Through the fuzz of alcohol, it seemed eminently possible to stop caring about Katherine. Even to meet another girl. He felt better already. ‘You’re right!’ he agreed. ‘Life’s too short.’

‘That’s it,’ Myles urged. ‘And who wants to go where you’re not wanted?’

‘Not me. I’d make a bad obsessive,’ Joe admitted.

‘Why’s that, mate?’

‘Dunno. I’m just not obsessive enough, I suppose.’

‘Yeh, ‘sa problem, innit? Right, so this Kathy –’

‘Her name’s Katherine,’ Joe interrupted. ‘She doesn’t answer to abbreviations of it.’

‘Ooooooooh, excuse
me
,’ Myles hooted, grabbing the handbag of the woman at the next table and thrusting it at Joe. ‘The award of the handbag!’

He looked angrily at Joe. ‘Don’t take it so serious, wouldja?’

‘Sorry,’ Joe said, slumping back into his pit of gloom. ‘It’s just that I just thought I was finally getting somewhere with her.’

‘Snog ya?’

Joe snorted. ‘No.’

‘Take my advice, mate, you weren’t getting nowhere if you haven’t even snogged her.’

Joe sighed. In his crude way, Myles was right.

‘Give the woman back her handbag,’ he said, wearily.

Ravi, tearing open a Marks and Spencer’s ploughman’s roll, which boasted thirty-six grams of fat, watched with interest as she unloaded apples, satsumas, pears, nectarines, plums and grapes and arranged them like amulets around her desk. ‘Care for half my roll?’ he offered, in his public-school voice.

Tara made her two index fingers into a cross.

‘It’s got extra mayonnaise,’ he tempted.

‘Bad magic. Keep it away from me.’

‘You’re absolutely barking.’ Ravi jumped up, thrust his hands on Tara’s head and bellowed, ‘Out, out, demons, leave this poor child.’

‘That feels
spectacular
.’ Tara sighed, as Ravi massaged her skull. ‘I love it when you exorcize me.

‘Oh, don’t stop,’ she begged, as Ravi abandoned her, to cram eight hundred calories of sandwich into his mouth.

‘No choice,’ he mumbled through mouthfuls. ‘Nothing like a good exorcism for working up an appetite.’

A highly harassed Vinnie rushed in. A sleepless night with his three-month-old had had him pulling his hair out, and as soon as he saw Tara’s desk, he felt his hairline recede another
inch or so. What kind of office was he running? ‘What’s going on here? It’s like Albert Square!’

‘Are you subcontracting?’ Teddy and Evelyn, the his ’n’ hers couple, had arrived.

‘Opening a fruit stall?’ Teddy inquired.

‘What a great idea,’ said Evelyn. ‘Can I buy a banana?’

‘Bananas aren’t welcome round here,’ Tara said curtly.

‘Too fattening?’

‘Too fattening.’

‘Bananas aren’t fattening.’ Vinnie knew he should maintain managerial distance, but couldn’t help himself.

‘That’s right. Nothing is fattening,’ Teddy insisted. ‘Look at me. I eat whatever I want, as much as I want of it, and I’m like a stick insect.’

‘Women talking about how many calories things have –
that’s
what makes them fattening,’ Vinnie decreed. ‘Women ruin food for themselves.’

‘Did you see the documentary last night about the blokes up Everest?’ Ravi brayed. ‘Bloody freezing. One of them, his thumb completely froze and fell off. Nothing to eat but snow…’

‘Maybe I should try that,’ Tara said, thoughtfully. ‘The Everest diet. Right, Ravi, Evelyn, everyone gather around, we’re going to have a credit-card-cutting-up ceremony.’

‘Another one?’ Vinnie exclaimed. ‘It’s only six months since the last time.’

‘I know, but I got my Visa bill this morning. Stop me before I spend again,’ she intoned darkly. ‘Ravi, scissors!’

Ravi dutifully passed the office scissors.

‘Bin!’

Ravi already had the wastepaper basket in his hand: he knew the drill of old. Tara took out her purse and held her Visa card
aloft, swivelling from the right to the left. ‘Everyone looking?’ Then, fighting a pang of loss, she pushed the scissors through the unwieldy plastic. As everyone except Vinnie burst into applause, Tara murmured, ‘I am cleansed, I am pure. Now for my Access card.’

Everyone stood in respectful silence as the Access card was neatly snipped in two, then clapped again.

‘Your Amex?’ Ravi suggested, and after a slight hesitation, Tara took it out and reluctantly bisected it.

‘Sears card?’ Ravi then said, and Tara said irritably, ‘Look, I’ll need something. What if it’s an emergency?’

‘You’ll still have your cashpoint card and your Switch card.’

‘O… K.’ Sadly, Tara cut her Sears card in two and let it fall into the bin.

‘I’ll give it a week before you’re on the phone saying your purse has been stolen and that you need replacement cards.’ Vinnie sighed. Maybe it was time he went on another course to learn how to manage staff. ‘Can you all please do some work now?’ he urged, belatedly trying to act like the boss he was.