Small Town Prompt
I knew what she wanted but I needed the work
I always felt I was working for Laney, not the company. A stunning brunette, she simply radiated authority. Whether Laney threatened you or offered a thumbs-up, you went back to the grindstone feeling honoured. Since most people called into her office were fired, we toiled in fear. I found her intoxicating, like a movie star villain. My dad says I’m ‘over-sensitive.’
From day one I assumed she was telepathic, reading our body-language and thoughts, probing for weaknesses. I was not wrong. All too soon, Laney dominated my every waking minute, after she stumbled on the one secret I would have done anything to keep.
Kanyan Insurance Ltd had brought Laney Malzard with them to Bothwell. The town had seen better days. Nine abandoned oil-rigs stood on the outskirts like dinosaur skeletons, reminding locals what had died. Half the stores on Main Street were closed and the Bothwell vibe was downbeat-except in the Kanyan sales-room.
From a digital console upstairs, senior staff could eavesdrop on our tele-sales efforts, but that wasn’t enough for Laney. She prowled her territory. Once a day I’d hear the click of heels approaching, and feel the touch of fingers strumming the small of my back before she spoke.
“Head down, Olive.”
Then she’d walk away. I almost said something the first time it happened, but that’s hindsight. I knew what she wanted, of course, but I needed the work.
In a place like Bothwell, jobs go to people who know people. Bradley Fitch-Rae, local big-shot, had tipped me off that Kanyan was renting a building he owned. His grandfather had pretty much built the town and left most of it to the family.
Bradley did me that favour because he and I had what you might call ‘history’. It made a change to meet Brad the nice-guy; I’d already met Brad the bad-boy when he was eighteen and I was way too young. Now, twenty-five with a mortgage, I wasn’t above dropping his name. Mister Fitch-Rae tells me you’re looking for staff. I got hired on the spot.
Training came first — twenty of us in plasterboard booths like battery hens. You got a chair, a desk and sheets full of names and numbers. You wore a plastic head-set with a mike attached, and got a headache from the buzz in the headphones. We took turns playing customers and callers. A week later they put us in the salesroom, which was just the same only the booths were smaller.
“I want my girls working hard for me.”
That had been the gist of Laney’s welcoming speech. Business picked up fast, but nothing else improved. Every so often Laney called someone in and fired them, until only twelve of us remained. We joked it was like a horror movie where victims get picked off one at a time. At the back of your mind was the sales commission, and in front, watching you through her tinted glass wall, was the boss.
Salesroom hours crawled past. When Laney came prowling the sound of her heels was a clock in my head, ticking the seconds away. The job was my life. My father in a wheelchair, debts to spare and a credit-rating to match. Tick, tock, tick.
“Olive. Any luck this morning?”
“One or two possibles.”
“Good.” Tick, tock, tick.
October came to Bothwell, nobody had been fired in weeks and I was selling well. I’d found a new boyfriend and was picturing happiness on the horizon, the way fools do. Then Laney called me to her office and smashed my dreams to bits.
I stood in silence while she looked me up and down like I was livestock. I could see green flecks in her amber eyes. She wore a navy two-piece with sharp shoulders. We were the same height but I was in sneakers, not heels. I waited.
“You know Kanyan discourages relations between staff members.”
“Relations?”
“You and Nate Wolenski?” She indicated a chair. I sat.
“Yes, Nate and I meet up- in our own time.”
“I’m not particularly concerned,” Laney drawled. “But since you’re here I’d like you to watch a rather startling video I came across yesterday. ”
I froze. A triumphant note in her voice said she had found the key to controlling me. My mind reeled. This wasn’t really about Nate. But Laney couldn’t possibly know about…no way-
The office lights winked red and green, the room began to spin and suddenly I was sinking.
I came round into a haze of Laney’s perfume. A gold glow became her desk lamp as my eyes focussed. She was on her cellphone. I saw a glass of water smeared with my lipstick. Had she made me drink? Whenever I blackout — it’s a regular event — there’s a period of confusion afterwards when I can’t think straight. Laney looked up.
“Doctor Jonas is on his way.”
“Thanks. It just happens sometimes…they say my mom was the same. I’m …not allowed to drive. Or swim.”
I was acting woozy to buy time. Finally the door opened and Doc’s face appeared. At six foot seven, he tends to stoop. We exchanged smiles and he shook Laney’s hand. It was nice to see somebody looking down at her. He spoke quietly, she replied “Of course,” and left the room.
“Well howdy, Olive.”
I felt I’d been rescued. Doc Jonas attended my first blackout when I was twelve. I unbuttoned my blouse as he opened his bag.
“What happened?” He had a pencil torch for my eyes, stethoscope for my lungs and heart.
“Office politics. Laney’s my boss.”
“I see. Been taking your meds?”
“Regular as clockwork.”
Doc chatted as he finished his checks.
“I’ll tell her you need to sleep it off. Maybe I’d better run you home.”
Good ol’ Doc Jonas, I thought. But this was only a reprieve. Laney wasn’t going to back off.
13.22. OLIVE — Call me ASAP. Am not at work X
13.23. NATE — ??? Ok. Will ring 14.30 X
I wanted to get to my guy before Laney did. A Kanyan junior exec, Nate had his own office -but was Laney higher up the ladder? I paced my bedroom floor. I heard the TV downstairs; dad’s best friend. My window overlooked the garden I’d neglected since September, all weeds and leaves. I flopped onto the bed.
I met Nate one Thursday lunchtime. We were riding the same elevator and -flattered when he asked- I agreed to meet him for a drink. I suggested Alamo Joe’s, a few blocks away. Nate was confident and full of clever tricks for closing sales. He was older than me, blue-eyed, single and new in town.
“I don’t need to be top dog at Kanyan,” he said, “but the top dog will always need me. You see, I’m a closer.”
“I’m an opener,” I joked, and he liked that.
We arranged a replay the following night. Nate relaxed, told me stories about life, love and luck.
“I’ve always been lucky,” he said. I guess he was. I let him steer me to his flat on Glebe Street. After months of flying solo I was there for the taking and Nate stepped right up.
I hadn’t stayed over -getting my dad horizontal was a nightly chore- but went back to Nate’s the next day. I told him about my dad, the blackouts, and how my mom skipped town when I was three. You might as well give a guy the bad news up front. But Nate wasn’t fazed at all. I hadn’t felt so attracted in years. But if I was right about what Laney wanted-
My phone rang. Nate!
“Hi there. What’s occuring?”
“Laney called me to her office. She knows we’ve been dating. Company policy blah blah. Has she ever spoken to you about me?”
“Never. And company policy only covers the workplace. Laney can go spin -it’s not her business what happens outside. Where are you anyway?”
“I had one of my blackouts. Doc Jonas drove me home.”
“You’re okay?”
“Fine. I’ll be back in tomorrow. Nate, is Laney senior to you?”
“Not officially. Different department. Why?”
“She looks at me like she’s crazy.”
“Olive, honey, I’m flying to Texas tonight, remember?”
“I know. Just don’t answer if Laney calls you, okay? I need to sort this out.”
“Don’t do anything silly.”
I started making dad’s supper. There was so much I couldn’t tell Nate. He was correct -the boss had no power outside the office. But that didn’t explain why Laney wanted to show me a video or why she’d looked at me the way a cat stares at a wounded mouse.
22.01. LANEY MALZARD — Hi Olive. Hoping you have made a full recovery. Please come to my office first thing tomorrow.
This time there was no small talk. She was dressed to kill, skin-tight shirt and skirt, hair in a bun, nails like glaring crimson shells. Her cellphone was plugged into a PC monitor. We stood uncomfortably close. She hit PLAY. My face burned as I recognised the scene I’d prayed it wouldn’t be.
“Quite the performer, aren’t you? Did young Bradley Fitch-Rae write the script?”
I said nothing. The ten year-old video spoke for itself. I had indeed performed for Bradley. On camera, on my back, on my knees. All that summer he’d fed me liquor and pills like sweets. I stared, memorising the website logo: TeenzinXtreemz. Brad had sworn he’d erased us from the internet. I realised Laney was waiting for my reaction.
“Laney, where did you get this?” On the screen Brad -leering like some tattoed devil- was swapping between me and a redhead named Stephanie Wise. Dear god, Steph-
“Hot stuff,” Laney purred.
I nearly screamed.
“It was 2007. We were just kids. Bradley had…it was supposed to be our secret…”
My voice tailed off. I’d already said too much. I’d been fifteen, horny and up for anything. I’d never been so excited in my life and it showed. Brad -indulging some fantasy about monetising videos- had put one online as a trial. But that was just the beginning of the nightmare into which Laney was blundering. If she so much as mentioned Steph…
I took a deep breath. I was in shock and Laney was out of her depth. She thought the video was a trump card. She thought Bothwell folk were toys she could play with. Wrong.
“Bradley Fitch-Rae is Kanyan’s landlord,” I said.
“Indeed. I’m not planning to broadcast that he’s trending in online filth. I’d much rather this was our secret, Olive.”
My blood ran cold. In her eyes I saw an expression I knew too well. From here on there would be no going back.
“What do you want?”
It was Friday night and I was taking my own sweet time getting dressed for the evening. Two weeks had passed in a daze. I’d hardly sold anything, Kanyan’s air-conditioning was down, the building was freezing and Laney kept circling the sales-room like a shark.
Today she had mouthed the word ‘later’ at me through her glass wall as I left. We had a date -an offer I couldn’t refuse- at her place. It was my third summons to the log cabin Laney was renting on the edge of town.
As I came downstairs dad was wheeling himself towards the TV. He’d been handsome once -the best cop in Bothwell- till the night he interrupted a stickup at Brags liquor store and took a bullet in the spine. He’d stepped out to buy a six-pack and some candy. Came back a month later in a wheelchair. It was something we lived with.
“How do I look pop?” I gave him a twirl, the red dress a bit short for October, red stockings and cowboy boots just for fun.
“Good enough to eat,” he replied. “Whose the lucky guy?”
“Nate from Kanyan.”
In fact, Nate was in Houston hustling insurance. I wriggled into my duffle-coat. Bradley had hit the roof when I told him about Laney and the video. We talked the whole thing through and Brad said there was only one solution. Laney was from Oklahoma City -she didn’t understand how things work in a town like Bothwell. You never get upside of a family like the Fitch-Raes, and Laney was already way over a line she couldn’t even see.
“You have fun now,” dad called.
“Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” I chirped. That made him laugh.
I took the alleyway to Nine Well Wood and trotted through the trees like Red Riding Hood with a torch and a cellphone. For the millionth time my thoughts went back to 2007 and the night Stephanie died. The smell of sweat, the camera rolling, the sound of leather on skin. Brad had pulled me into the bathroom for some mirror-action; we’d left the poor girl alone, tied up, for maybe ninety seconds.
But that had been long enough for Steph to choke and die. It was a freak accident, one in a million. But what with the ropes and whip-marks and three kinds of dope in her bloodstream, me and Brad would have gone down for years.
Fitch-Raes, however, don’t do time. Bradley -with a little help from his friends- had put the body into Well #7, one of nine dry wells his father shut down in 2005. Fitch-Rae boys learn how to cap a drill-shaft before they can drive.
We’d kept the lid on Steph for ten long years and weren’t about to talk now. Freedom’s all you have when you’re dirt poor, but maybe Brad slept better than me on his twenty-million dollar cushion. The memory of that night was just something we both had to live with. I stopped and leaned against a tall, cold tree. Hold your nerve, Brad had told me.
I slow-walked the last fifty yards to the Park. It wasn’t like Steph was the first girl to leave Bothwell in a hurry. My own mother had. The only proof Steph had hung out with me and Brad -the video- had been wiped from the net. Until now. God alone knew how Laney got hold of it but that didn’t matter. Brad was calling the shots and I had no choice.
I emerged from the wood at Lowther Holiday Park and was looking straight at the back door of cabin eleven-Laney’s place. No-one saw me arrive.
By eleven o’clock she was satisfied, exhausted, asleep on her bed. I’d worked hard to get her there. Silently, I took Laney’s cellphone into the lounge. Firelight glowed and there was a whiff of pinewood and sex.
I went through her phone quickly, not touching the text messages we’d exchanged; they were innocent enough. But I carefully deleted the TeenzinXtreemz video, cleaned the phone with a tissue and put it on the mantel. Pulled on my dress and boots and shoved the stockings into my coat pocket.
Outside the back door I shivered, sending the text as arranged, fingers shaking: AAA. Within a few seconds all the power went out across the entire Park like God had pulled a plug: porch-lights, windows, street lights -and the surveillance cameras.
I crossed the treeline into the wood, turned and looked back. There was enough moonlight to see the unmistakable shape of Doc Jonas loping towards Laney’s cabin. He wore a track-suit, plastic gloves, a surgical mask and a cap. The stars shone down and it was all terribly real.
Adrenalin kicked in. I ran west to a clearing where Brad was waiting on a scooter, engine throbbing. I jumped on behind, grabbed his waist and the engine growled as we weaved through the trees. A mile across the bumpy soil was the old industrial estate. We passed a few units and pulled up next a pickup truck. I jumped off and looked back into the darkness.
“You nixed the electricity real good.”
Brad shrugged. “Blew the main fuse in the box at the gate. Left a dead raccoon on the wiring.”
Brad heaved the scooter up into the pickup, covered it with a tarp and we piled into the front seat. A text message landed with a ping. Brad palmed his phone and read aloud “OK”. Doc’s work was done.
“I can’t believe we’ve done this.”
My voice was husky. Brad grabbed my hair, yanked my face to his, forced his tongue into my mouth. We gnawed at each other and broke apart, panting.
“Not a word to your Nate Wolenski guy. Not. One. Word. Got it?”
“Got it. I cleared Laney’s phone. You got the video off the net?”
“TeenzinXtreemz? I bought them out and killed the website. But any schmuck with a DVD copy could put it back up again. There’s a dude in California says he can arrange something with Google to block any future uploads. Not sure I believe him, though.”
He was fondling my bare thigh and I was already moist. I opened my legs and his fingers went into me, bursting the dam. I moaned, squirming. I grabbed at his flies and ripped the zip down. It was like the old days.
Afterwards he swore softly and licked his fingers. I felt suddenly afraid.
“Can we go now?”
Brad had this habit of clamming up suddenly. His face was blank. Maybe he was praying for this nightmare to end. I sure was, and I reckoned Doc Jonas felt the same. He’d been in up to his neck right from the start. Brad had called him in the night Steph died; an order, not a request. Doc had had to play ball -any routine autopsy would have found his drugs in Steph’s blood. Like the ones in Brad and me.
Doc had been everybody’s dealer back then, from cops to robbers. We knew enough to send him down for twenty years, but that was mutual. Perhaps Jonas believed tonight’s job would wipe the slate clean. Suddenly I wanted to be clean, in the shower, in my own bed, alone.
“Can we go now?”
Brad glowered. I counted to ten, eleven. …and just as I was wondering if I was going to follow Steph down into Well #7 he started the engine.
“Home time for you, Olivia.” Using his old pet-name for me kept my head in the past, just where Bradley wanted it.
Laney wasn’t buried locally, of course. Once the pathologist and the D.A. were satisfied, her family flew the body back to Oklahoma City and that was that.
In Bothwell, the ‘accident’ had played out like Brad predicted. Laney’s body wasn’t discovered for 36 hours, at which point the cops called Doc Jonas to check her out. It would take them another half-day to organise forensics from upsate.
Doc concluded Laney must have fallen in the dark after the electricity failed, and cracked her skull on the steel of the wood-burner. A tragic but purely accidental death. Naturally, any of Doc’s DNA found at the scene later would be eliminated. It was a near-perfect crime. The local paper dropped the story after 48 hours and in any case, the Police Chief was Bradley’s cousin Jude.
Nate went to the funeral -Kanyan paid for the trip- and I met him at Alamo Joe’s the following night. We talked about death, and about fun stuff we might do together. Then, out of nowhere-
“Tell you what, Olive -the same family owns Lowther Holiday Park and the entire block Kanyan is renting. It’s like they own everything.”
I played along.
“The Fitch-Raes. They struck oil here in 1922 and built the town. I’m sure I told you I used to date the eldest son, Bradley.”
Nate nodded. “You did. I met him at the service.”
“Bradley?” This was news to me.
“Un-huh. Nice guy. We had couple of beers. Seems that Kanyan are negotiating to buy the Brown building from him. I think Bradley was ‘paying his respects’ to try and keep that ball rolling.”
“Did he…did you mention me?”
“Of course. He said ‘You’re a lucky man, Nate. Olivia deserves a break.’ He had a faraway look so I changed the subject. I got the feeling it broke Bradley’s heart when you dumped him.”
“Are you kidding? Every screwed-up rich kid thinks their heart has been broken.”
Nate looked wistful.
“I’d say every tramp from here to Oklahoma City would have put the hook into Bradley just for his money. I’m kinda proud you were better than that.”
That was when my head began to spin and one by one the lamps started going out. Last thing I heard was Nate calling Doc Jonas.
Another from Solomon
Written for this Tantalizing Tale’s prompt