This was unlike any office Lee Holloway had ever seen. Then again her experience of the employment sector was somewhat limited, this being her first real job; and frankly, she was glad of any escape from the fog of familiarly enveloping her family home. The smothering heat of that unbearable closeness was like trying to inhale cotton wool. Work here, she found, while frequently demanding, was an escape. The eight hours a day, five days a week Lee was outside the house was like breathing in the first air of autumn, chilled and dusty with the soot of distant bonfires.
Speaking of which, something was burning. The faintly bitter smell of something charred ticked the fine membranes of her nostrils. It undercut the typical fetid sweetness of the aftershave worn by the sharply suited men who seemed to make up the bulk of Mr. Jay's clientele, their odour as thick as their Croatian accents and as unctuous as they gelled scalps. A thin wedge of smoke bleed out from under her boss's office door. Lee scrabbled to her feet, pausing only to stifle a raucous sneeze exploding within her sinuses, and scrambled towards the door, padding in an unfortunate semi-jog, moving as quickly as her pencil skirt would allow. She pressed up against the heavy mahogany of the door and gave a timid knock.
"Um, Mister Jay?" she started, in little more than a bleet. "Um," she repeated, somewhat unnecessarily. She pondered, her head spinning for a bewildering few moments, a blush of some unspecified embarrassment beginning to bloom across her cheeks. Lee sniffed deeply, tipping back her head and wrinkling her button nose in a motion that seemed to occupy the whole of her face, and gave a decent impression of having collected herself. She rapped upon the door again, firmly, so that a dull thwacking of wood on flesh actually reached something like an audible level. There was no reply; nothing.
Lee snapped the gum she had been chewing on all morning, and, clicking her teeth in an earnest grimace, she pushed the door open, just slightly at first, and peaked around the corner. The smoke hung densely in the air, with the weight and presence of a person; it stung her eyes, and something like tears begun well and slick over the blue of her iris like a glaze. Through the fog she could just make out the shape of her boss's curious leather boots propped unapologetically on his desk, leading into the chequered flare of his patch-work socks. Fanning a hand in front of her face, Lee pushed her way into the office.
"Why, he-llo there, sweetcheeks," Mr. Jay enthused, his eyes bright and grin broad in the mist of the smoke. "Say, can I offer you a light?" In his gloved fingers, Mr. Jay wafted a wad of blazing letters under Lee's quivering nose with theatrical glee; Lee wouldn't have been more taken back had a pair of snow-white doves came fluttering free of her boss's jacket sleeves.
"No?" his eyebrow gave a sardonic arch. With a sweeping gesture, Mr. Jay brought the flames towards the cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth; an orange ember flared at the tip as he took a deep luxurious breath in, lolling back in his executive chair, dumping a smouldering mess of paper into the metal waste-paper bin. Lee gasped, and peaked into bin in order to assure herself the burning paper was on its way to becoming an extinguished ashy memory; her father had always warned her, usually after his fourth whisky, that the world of work was run by 'crazy bastards', but dying in a inferno was a little beyond even her commitment to the job.
"Oh, ho, I don't blame you," Mr. Jay chortled, a thin stream of smoke rising from his smeared mouth, the violet-grey mist casting his painted-on pallor into an even grimmer light. "It's a filthy habit; and not one pretty girls - like you - should sssully themselves with."
He smiled a yellow smile and Lee shuddered despite herself, a fine furrow crinkling the bridge of her nose like a disdainful marsupial. Well, she thought to herself, a taste for Cuban cigars would certainly explain the jaundiced tinge of his teeth; a contrast of hue that seemed so unnatural against that chalky matte Mr. Jay did seem rather keen on. It looked, well, inhuman.
"Uh, Mr Jay? What were you burning?" Lee winced inwardly at the faultier in her voice, its girlish pitch virtually breaking into a falsetto.
Mr Jay kicked his feet off the table and leant across his desk, sending a bundle of red biros, HB pencils, and a ream of what looked like architectural blueprints skittering onto the floor. Unperturbed, he grabbed an ashtray shaped like a banana and stabbed out his cigar.
"Oh, it was only some, some stuff from the government, maybe the FBI – or would that be the CIA?" he paused, taking in Lee's pained expression with those earth-brown eyes. "What, you don't think it was anything serious, do you?" An atrocious laugh stuttered from his ruined mouth like machine-gun fire as he lay back in his chair, crippled with a spasm of hilarity that seemed to jolt through his very bones like an electric current. Lee froze, unsure and agonisingly self-conscious of it; and, oh, there was that blush again, stealing across her cheeks like wildfire. She gave a giggle, an attempt at politeness, but her nervousness strangled her vocal codes, rendering her endeavour at humouring her boss more of a deranged squawk than an expression of mirth. Her daddy always told her to laugh at the bosses' jokes, no matter how feeble.
Thoroughly stricken and breathless with helpless laughter, Mr. Jay's head had come to rest on his forearms, a fine coat of powder smudging into the rich damson of his coat. Lee's attention was snagged by the shear greasiness of his roots; a coating of ingrained dirty so thick it gave his murky blond hair an almost mossy tinge. A faint wave of nausea, tinged with a disgusted awe, rolled over her; that level of dishevelment was surely a lot of work to maintain.
In a sudden spasmodic flash, Mr. Jay slapped his out-spread palms on his desk, the sharp clap ringing out and startling Lee from her contemplation on her boss's follicular fall from grace. He pushed himself up out of his chair, and waved a vague finger at Lee, a gesture somewhere between an accusatory point and a beckon.
"Act-ually, I'm glad you came in here. I've a, ah, point to rrraise with you," Mr. Jay announced, rolling his 'r's and eyes in perfect synchronicity. He sloped around the parameter of the desk, those dark eyes never breaking contact with Lee's glacial irises, which by now were the thinnest frame around her pupils. She gulped, her tongue suddenly thick and coarse in her mouth.
He paced around her, and leant in just behind her shoulder, standing so close to his secretary that she could smell the rancid heat of his breath, mingled with the chemical fragrance of layers of greasepaint, reeking like some child's parody of femininity. He paused as if savouring the moment, the chilling still before the predator's strike. A cold fear bloomed in Lee's stomach, unfurling like a wing in flight. She didn't dare turn to face him, but she could just make out the expression on his ravaged face from the corner of her eye; he was – was he? – smiling? He was. Grinning. Strangely enough, Lee was less than reassured.
A warm exhale tickled her ear, a soft laugh. An open cringe broke across her face, her teeth closely meshed in anticipation of something. One of the drawbacks of working for a madman, Lee had found, is they're rather difficult to predict. A pair of leather-clad hands came to rest on her trembling shoulder, and Lee flinched as if struck.
"Ah-ha-ha, no need to get twitchy, there," he hissed into her hair. "I just want to offer a little... corrective advice." Lee forced herself to take a deep breath, force her hunched shoulders down, and calm the feverish panic lapping at the base of her throat. Mr. Jay slunk further around her, so that he was stood right behind her; her eyes fluttered shut as terror won out over will-power.
Lee gulped, and inhaled a deep breath with as much vigour as though it were her last. The mind scurried frantically from appalling outcome to appalling outcome; he wouldn't do something terrible to her, would he? Something truly awful? He wouldn't – Lee's throat contracted at the mere suggestion – dock her wages – would he? There were some bad men out there, she knew that, but she'd never braced herself for the possibility of having run into one, let alone working for one. Has she not always done her best to be the best secretary she could be? Had she not faultlessly recalled Mr. Jay's entire baffling array of aliases? Did she not meticulously transcribe ever one of her boss's odd rambling love-letters to some Mr. Wayne-or-other? Wasn't she courteous to all of his clients, even that strange fellow with the hessian bag over his head?
"Mr. Jay, I'm trying to do my best," she began, a falter shattering her attempt at professional confidence, "I promise you – oooh!" Lee gasped as Mr. Jay slid his hand down her arms, grasping them just below the elbow in a hold that wasn't painful as such, but it was firmer than any man had ever held her. Beneath his touch, she bloomed with heat, a dizzying contrast to the chill breaking out down her spine. Still Mr. Jay stood silent behind her, the scent of sweat and make-up at once waxy, florid and acrid. And in a move as sudden as summer thunder, he slammed her hands onto his chaotically arranged desk, her palms flat and her back arched ever so slightly.
Mr. Jay waltzed around to the other side of the desk, a maniacal smile rioting across his lips and dug for a moment in a draw. Lee watched in dumb amazement, confusion and surprise frazzling her neurons in bewildering, savage jags.
"Ta-da!" he sang, tossing a scrupled wad of paper down in the space between Lee's trembling hands. "Now, now," he cooed, clucking his tongue and stepping close again to her, taking a moment to smooth out the paper, and then to stroke her brow in some pantomime gesture of compassion, "I think you need to take a closer look-see." The weight of his hand appeared at the base of her skull, as Lee allowed herself to be tipped forward without an ounce of resistance so that her nose was a foot or so from the letter.
"Closer, closer... Thatta-girl! Clooo-ser!" Mr. Jay crooned in that nasal whine of his, dancing around back behind her, his clumpy boots moving with unexpected grace. Bent double, Lee was uncomfortably aware of the indignity of her position; it was like something she'd seen on the Discovery Channel; a posture, she believed, which was know in the animal kingdom as presenting. Although he was out of sight, she could feel his, his presence behind her unfortunately protruding rear.
"Now – read!"
It took a moment for Lee's vision to focus on the words swimming before her. Her salvia ran as thick as cement as she fought to move her tongue in something resembling speech. A staccato bubbled from her:
"Dear Mr. Jay thank you for your order of 500kg of potassium nitrate..." She halted with an, "ah!" as her boss worked a handful of hair into his grasp and tugged, her head arcing back like a bow, her lips curled back from her pretty little teeth in a grimace of sting and shock, her mouth arranged in a perverse parody of a grin. He gave another pull, and something like real pain shot through the base of Lee's scalp and into the spinning core of her brain.
Mr. Jay lent over Lee, one hand still entangled in her hair, the other planted on the desk, leather brushing against skin. "No! Read it a little closer!" he spat, in a gravel tone she'd never heard from him before. A dampness beaded on her lower lashes, and budded into a fully fledged tear. "Read. What. It. Says."
"D-d-dear Mr. Jay, t-t-thank you for - for your order of 500kg of potassium nitr-ite – oh." A nauseated fear ran over her skin as she realised her error. One slip of the keyboard, and look at what trouble it had landed her in. She started to explain, "Well, I must have misread -" when she was cut off by the shock of being yanked upright, and a cool edge pressed against her throat. It was the sharpest taste of life she'd ever tasted; jarring and alive with violent colour.
The blade wasn't breaking her skin, but instinct told Lee that with the slightest twitch it'd sink into her flesh as quick as a footfall breaking fresh snow. She could feel the whole of her boss's body pressed up against her back, as warm as tumbled sheets, only without the homely comfort. In the deepest corner of her being, something in Lee unfurled. Homely comfort was the last thing she wanted; but this? It was too much, too much stimulation shooting through her synapses like lightening, for her frantic mind to place together in any meaningful way.
"Now, Miss Holloway, I think a lesson is in order," he hissed, "as much as I'd like to tell you to the contrary, not everything burns; or at least, not everything burn as well as I might like it to. A quick chemistry quiz: what does potassium nitrate do on heating?" Without waiting for the never-arriving answer, he pulled the edge of the knife in closer to her quivering throat, just denting the thin veneer of skin; an inch more, and his office would resemble the elevator scene from The Shining.
"It decomposes violently. Or, if you prefer – ssskkkchoom!" he gleefully explained, an unmistakably thrill of sheer enthusiasm weaving through his rasp. "Where as potassium nitr-ite; well, something of a damp squib, I hear. Now there, honeybun, you can see my problem, can't you now?"
A fully-fledge cry broke from Lee, a wet jag breaking from her mouth, tears pooling and falling freely now. She brought her shaking hands to the blade in a childishly pathetic gesture; to her surprise, Mr. Jay didn't slit her open in an instant. Rather, he let her place tentative fingertips on the smooth steel, and guide it gently away from her. The touch of metal was refreshing, almost, to Lee's burning flesh; relief at having it away from her washed over her in waves.
Mr. Jay wrapped his arms tight around Lee, her arms pinned down by her sides, and it occurred to her that she might have been short-sighted in thinking that the knife was the most dangerous entity in her proximity. With a moan, he nuzzled his nose against her neck, his breath warm and sour against her. Lee felt her body relax a little in response, a relax almost to touch, despite adrenaline still coursing through her veins in a manic relay. A hug, even a one rather outside of prescribed relationships between boss and employee, was something to be appreciated, right? That relief after such fear – it occurred to Lee in some shadowy aspect of her soul – might almost make the trauma worth it. The strange contrast between the cold and warm, the sharp and soft; even if she could arrange her whirring thoughts in something like logic, Lee would still be baffled by the emotions surging beneath her skin. As if to compound the shock, he rocked her slightly in their mad lovers' embrace.
"Now, now, now, what I want is for you to understand why I can't let this sort of mistake sssslip through the net. Ho no." His voice was barely above a whisper, a gentle murmur; she could scarcely pick it out over the thudding of her pulse. "In certain circles, I have a reputation to maintain; it's very important to me, the sort of message I send out to the people I communicate with."
From a mouth as dry and tinder, Lee tried to make some vague noise of endorsement. After all, maybe her typo had damaged her boss's professional image; she wasn't convinced that her misdemeanour quite warranted having a blade thrust at her, but still. She had erred in her duties, and been duly punished; a notion that appealed to her on some simple, base level.
Giving a deep, slow sigh, and without breaking his embrace, Mr. Jay continued: "This sort of error, well, it strikes me as the product of a bored mind. And I can't have that, no no." Lee uncoiled in his arms, a sick sort of flame licking deep inside her.
"Be-cause, sweetiepie, if I ever bore you –" A sudden scream of pain sang in Lee's thigh, dazzling and consuming her, as Mr. Jay drove the blade sharply down. " – It will be with a knife."