Flash Friday Fiction - for Friday 22nd October 2010

Meeting Adjourned

by Matt Potter

Once a month I fuck the boss. It’s not part of my job description. We have a meeting in her office, after thirty minutes she opens the door to what appears to be a storeroom but is actually a well-appointed fuck chamber, and we adjourn.

She likes being fucked on her back mostly: she enjoys watching me do all the grunt work. I grind and groan, looking into her chemically-peeled face as she grips my arse, the fingers of her wrinkling hands edging towards my tightened hole – the storeroom is soundproofed, the door to her office triple-locked, though no one would dare enter without her permission anyway – and not much is said beyond “Deeper” and “Harder” and “Faster”, all by her.

I don’t believe she has a similar relationship with any of my work colleagues. And if she does, I don’t care much either.

And if work colleagues heard of my ‘relationship’ with her, no one would believe it. I think she sees her conquest of me as a triumph of her supreme sexuality, her female carnality, or if nothing else, her economic power.

Thirty minutes before we meet, I take half a Viagra. I also jerk off three times earlier in the day, so by the time of our meeting, I’m trigger-hard and my balls are empty but ready to churn. I don’t come inside her. She can’t check: she’s too old to get pregnant and we don’t use condoms, so there’s no inspection of the reservoir afterwards. But I give a good show. My legs and arse tense, I stop mid-thrust – like cresting a hill – then I push deep down inside her and moan. Maybe my face turns slightly red.

I make sure I fake my orgasm after I’ve made her come twice. She then wraps herself in a thick Egyptian cotton robe, opens a bread hamper, plugs in a Tefal toaster and makes two slices of toast with margarine and Vegemite. She never offers me any. I watch her eat off a white-grey Royal Copenhagen plate, bitch-red fingernails stabbing the wholemeal crumbs as she licks them clean. Enthusiasm almost lights her face.

She puts her plate on the low table beside the bed, sips her Powerjuice from a crystal tumbler – she only offers me iced tea: I always refuse as I loathe the taste, which I am sure she knows – and resumes talking.

“We’re marketing ourselves into non-existence,” Callie said one day, running her fingers through her messy, re-blonded crewcut. She spoke exactly as she would at our weekly Marketing Team meetings, to all the overpaid, over-airbrushed, hyper-hyped-up hipsters she’d assembled to make her and the products we sell look good.

“Callie Crawford Cosmetics is such an exclusive brand now, no one thinks they can afford to buy my products.”

“I think you’re right, Callie,” I said, my tongue metaphorically twisting inside her arse. “We’ve marketed ourselves into a corner.”

I know other staff call me Tom the tongue-twister. They know – or think they know – how far my tongue is up her arse. (This is one thing I have never done. Callie, despite our sessions in the over-sized cupboard, is a conventional lay.)

“I’ve let you all convince me your over-exclusive branding would give us an even bigger market share and now you’ve left us no room to move.”

I sank against the plush pillow and looked at her profile: a largish nose, heavily mascara-ed lashes, lipstick that even in the storeroom light I could see was only half-chewed off.

“Reposition the brand,” I said.

Her head turned on the pillow. Her lips curled: smile or sneer, I couldn’t tell. “You must be fucking joking.”

I looked at the ceiling.

“I’ve spent thirty years building this brand to where it is now.”

“So, it’ll be a challenge,” I said, turning on my side away from her. I patted the pillow beside my head.

She punched my bare shoulder with the side of her fist. “Don’t fucking turn away from me! Tell me what you mean.”

“I told you,” I said, sleep in my voice. “Reposition the brand.”

“There’s nowhere to go but down.” I imagined her looking at my shoulder, eyes working overtime trying to fathom what I meant.

“Yeah,” I said. “Reposition the brand at the bottom of the market and work your way up again.” I looked at her over my shoulder. “If anyone can do it, you can.”

Her hand rested on the spot where moments earlier she’d thumped me.

“It’d be dumbing the brand down.”

“You’d make industry history and get more than your Albert Einstein fifteen minutes of fame,” I said, hitting her at her greatest chink, her need to leave a legacy.

She sank back on her pillow and with her hand still on my shoulder, drummed her fingers like a metronome.

I pressed my head further into the pillow. I made my breathing deeper, each breath longer, eyes half-closed, but ears alert.

“It’s a bullshit idea,” Callie said, taking her hand away.

Through my eyelashes, I focussed on the weave of the cotton pillowslip, and paused before responding. “Start with the perfumes.”

“And what would we call them? The names we have now are so high-end.”

I thought of Callie’s emotional depth.

“Shallow,” I said.

I thought of the folds of her vagina.

“Umbrella,” I added.

And I thought of the way I too often feel about her.

“Omen and Death,” I finished. “What slapper wouldn’t want to wear a perfume called Death? Packaging would be cheaper and you’d sell it by the truckload. In fact, you could probably sell it off the back of a truck.”

I stopped and listened to her breathing, shallow gasps every few seconds, as if denying herself air made her stronger. If I was a bastard, I’d say breathing and thinking at the same time were too taxing for her. But I’m not that much of a bastard.

“No one but you would have the balls to do it,” I said.

Callie laughed. “It’s a fucking amazing idea.”

“Yeah, it is.”

She whistled through her teeth. “Same scent, make a lot more of it, save on cost, just shift it differently.”

“Yes, it’s a brilliant idea.”

Callie laughed again, and suddenly threw back the sheet. “Just remember who’s paying you,” she said. “And just so you realise, I know you never come inside me. It might be an old twat but it still has some feeling.”

I reached down to the foot of the bed and slowly pulled the sheet back over me. Callie picked up her plate.

“You want some toast and Vegemite?” she said. “I think you need to tell me some more about this incredible idea.”

That night, Callie went home to husband number four and I went home to my partner. The effect of the half a Viagra had not worn off, and I was soon lost in fucking Mario as, gripping my arse, fingers edging towards my receptive hole, he yelled out Deeper! Harder! Faster! in a more genuine way, despite the lack of sound-proofing.