Honeybee, page 8
While she is talking, I slowly lift my hand and put it on her bottom. She screeches and then pulls back, mortified. As she looks around reception and cranes her neck behind the desk to make sure no one is coming, she angrily pushes my hand away.
‘For fuck’s sake, Renée. Enough. Seriously, I can call Mel at Pink Apple and have her send someone else if you don’t pack it in.’
‘Woah, did you just threaten to fire me?’
‘No, I …’ She did, and now she can’t believe she said it. But she did. ‘Please, can we just focus? I’m not like that here.’ This sends me over the edge.
‘Not like what here?’
She looks around again. ‘I don’t know, fun.’
I choose not to wind her up by asking her if she’s ever fun. I’m really annoying her now and, funny as it is, I don’t actually want to annoy her, so I stop messing around and listen. She pulls out a laminated sheet of A4 listing names and numbers and puts it on the desk.
‘You answer, ask who it’s for and who it is, press hold, introduce the call and either press release to put it through, or return to take a message from the caller. OK?’
I nod but can’t remember anything she just said.
‘Do you need me to show you again?’ she asks, sincerely. I tell her there is no need. ‘OK, I need to go and set the meeting room up. That will actually be your job too, but I’ll do it today to ease you in slowly. Do you think you’ll be OK with the phones for ten minutes? I’ll talk you through the rest when I’m done.’
‘Yeah, I think I’m good. I mean, it’s just answering phones, isn’t it?’
‘OK, cool. And please, if anyone comes up to you, try not to talk about lesbians.’
She smiles as she walks away. More a smile of resilience than affection, but a smile nonetheless. The whole word-vomit thing was terrible and embarrassing, but even Flo can’t deny that it was a little bit funny.
I feel a little high up, so I pull the lever on the side of the chair, and I get slammed back towards the ground again. This gives me a real fright, so I could do without the phone ringing at that exact moment. I stand up and look at it, like it’s the first and only phone in the entire world and I have no idea what it is. Why is answering it so terrifying? What did Flo tell me to do? Pick it up. Just pick it up.
‘Hello,’ I say. Shit, I’ve forgotten the name of the company. ‘Hello?’ I say again, but the person on the other end of the phone seems to expect more. ‘Hello, the Magic Place,’ I say, to which they say, ‘The what?’
They don’t laugh.
‘Can I speak to Ben, please?’ says a male voice.
‘Ben who?’ I ask.
‘Did we recently employ another Ben? It’s Jordan from the London office. Who is this?’
Why is someone from the London office so scary?
‘My name is Renée, it’s my first day. Ben …’ I pick up the laminated sheet of A4 but drop it. It wafts somewhere under my desk. ‘Hang on please,’ I say politely as I get down on all fours to retrieve it.
‘He’s extension number four,’ says Jordan, impatiently.
‘OK, great,’ I say, getting up and whacking my head on the desk. ‘FUCK!’ I yell down the phone, which is greeted by a ‘Bloody hell, I’ll just call his mobile’ and a dial tone. I remain under the desk for a few seconds while I rub my head. How did just answering a phone go so badly?
As I come back up, I jump again when a man’s voice says, ‘Hello.’
I say hello back, before I look up. ‘It’s her first day,’ he continues. I realise that he’s on his mobile, and not actually saying hello to me, which I find really embarrassing.
‘All right, I’ll get it straight over,’ the man says, hanging up his call. ‘Well, that went well,’ he says, smiling at me.
‘Yup, Flo told me to swear and hang up on everyone who calls. Just doing my job.’
He smiles. I smile. I hope the phone doesn’t ring again while he is still standing here. He’s tall, slim, handsome and black. He’s wearing a nice blue suit. He has the kindest eyes.
‘I’m Ben.’
‘Hi, I’m Renée. First day, obviously.’
‘You’ll get the hang of it. Maybe try not to swear, though. And personally, I find sitting on my chair helps, rather than the floor. I dunno, that might be just me.’
I sit on my chair and feel infinitely less stressed than I was thirty seconds ago.
‘I’m going to suggest that you press that red button there. That is your out-of-office, it means that if you’re not at your desk, the phones ring in the main office and one of us will pick it up.’
As my finger is heading towards it, the phone rings again. My heart bursts through my shirt. ‘Fuck. Shit, no sorry. I’ll just answer it.’
Ben leans over the desk and presses the red button. Instantly I hear the phone ringing in the office behind me. My relief manifests itself physically, and I sit back into my chair with a large exhalation.
‘Thank you,’ I say, noticing a wedding ring, and feeling disappointed.
‘No problem. Ah, Flo,’ he says, looking behind me as Flo walks back over. ‘I suggested Renée puts the phones on her out-of-office while she gets acquainted. It’s a lot to take in, I’m sure.’ Flo looks at me nervously, wondering what mess I’ve created, but relaxes when she sees how calm and happy Ben seems. ‘OK, good luck,’ he says. ‘I’m on line four if you need anything. See you later.’
‘See you later,’ I say, like a child staring at a lollipop. He is delicious.
‘No,’ says Flo, firmly.
‘No what?’
‘1) He is the boss and 2) he is married. Stop thinking that right now.’
‘He’s the boss? Wow, that just made him one hundred per cent sexier,’ I say.
Flo presses the red button again. The phones are back under my control. She runs through the procedure one more time. ‘Got it?’ she says, firmly.
‘Got it,’ I say.
‘I’m nearly done in the meeting room. Hang here for five and I’ll come get you for a walk-through. OK?’
‘OK.’
As she walks away, I call her back. ‘Flo?’
‘Yes Renée?’
‘How married is he?’
‘Renée, no!’
The phone rings again. I stare at it for a few seconds, then slam my finger on the red button. The sound of it ringing in the main office is a relief. I will master this, I just need a moment to settle in.
I look at the list of extensions. My gaze hovers over ‘Ben Jackson #4’.
I hope he gets a lot of calls.
Over the next few hours, I notice that Flo is very serious at work. She’s very formal with people and, even though I get that it’s her job, it all seems very silly. She sends lots of emails with stunted subject lines, telling us things she thinks are important. Stuff like: To all concerned, there is plenty of printer paper in the back room if you need a top-up. Just reply to this email to let me know if I can get it for you. Thanks, Flo. Or: To all concerned, I have noticed a distinct lack of uptake on the decaffeinated coffee in the kitchen. I am considering disposing of it to make space. If anyone has an issue, please come to me directly. Thanks, Flo.
This one makes me laugh out loud at my desk. Like, seriously Flo, WHO FUCKING CARES. I can’t help myself and have to wind her up a bit on email. I respond: You sound so sexy in emails. All this talk of decaf coffee is getting me aroused.
Next thing I know, Flo is standing up and shouting, ‘WE ARE NOT LESBIANS!’ across the office. No one knows where to look. I see that an email has popped up from me, how is that possible? Is there someone else called Renée Sargent here? Flo storms over, steam coming out of her head.
‘You REPLIED ALL you absolute twat-basket,’ she hisses.
‘Eh? I what?’
‘When you get sent a group email, you click Reply to respond to the person who sent it to you and Reply All to respond to everyone on the chain. You just told the entire office you think decaf coffee is erotic!’
‘Ohhh, that’s what that means!’
I turn and look around the office. All the men are laughing, and Chloe looks cross. I stand up, face them all and shout, ‘I’M ONLY JOKING!’
‘There, all OK now,’ I say, sitting back down, trying to avoid eye contact with Flo.
‘Just TRY to not be you here, OK? Just TRY!’
God, professional Flo is so uptight.
6
Flo
We make it to Friday without Renée talking more about lesbians, or her making fun of me in front of my colleagues. She finally mastered the phones yesterday afternoon after three days of calls being put through to the wrong people, clients getting hung up on, and Renée having breakdowns about how much she hates technology. Things are OK, but the office is a very different place.
It’s rare that I don’t see at least one of the guys going to her desk to ask unnecessary questions – especially Matt, he can’t get enough of her. I watch him looking to make sure there’s no one else there, then go up himself to make crap chitchat. Renée is chatty back, because that is what she does. He fancies the pants off her, and it’s so obvious. Even Phil hasn’t stopped smiling since Monday. There is a new energy in the air, a more flirtatious vibe. It’s a bit like when Georgina brings in doughnuts for everyone. Renée is the doughnuts.
At the flat last night, Renée said, ‘The guys in the office are quite lechy, aren’t they?’ And I had to admit that I hadn’t noticed until she started. ‘It’s probably because I’m a temp. I’m novelty. They know I won’t be there long, so flirting with me isn’t going to create a long-term issue,’ she said, noticing that I hadn’t been subject to their advances. But it isn’t that, it’s simply because Renée is sexual. She is confident and sociable and guys have, and always will, love that. She’s not one of those women who flaunts her body, but she’s pretty. And even though she isn’t skinny, a size 12 with normal-sized boobs, she radiates something that guys respond to. I don’t. It’s that simple. You either have it or you don’t. Men are nice to me, they flirt with her.
‘Yes,’ I said, agreeing with her comment about her being a temp. ‘I’m sure that’s it.’ But of course I know it’s because I have no sex appeal. I’ve been wondering if Chloe’s lack of sexuality is deliberate, to stop men hitting on her. That’s quite clever if it is.
Renée walks purposefully over to my desk. This is good. She is focusing on work and obviously needs me to organise something important. ‘My armpits smell of onions, do you ever get that?’ she says, sniffing her pits and looking at me as if replying would be normal.
‘Renée, what? Are you …? You can’t just … did you want anything else? Anything work-related?’
‘Oh yeah, Matt says everyone is going for drinks tonight, shall we?’
‘Renée, you can’t just put your out-of-office on to come and ask me about social plans,’ I say, trying to look unbothered that I don’t know about these drinks that ‘everyone’ is going to.
‘I didn’t, I’m going for a wee. I just came to see you on the way. So, shall we go? He just emailed me.’ I look over at Matt, he is straight up staring at Renée’s bottom. I pretend not to notice. ‘Well, shall we?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t know if socialising with colleagues is a good idea.’
‘Oh no, nope, not having it. There is no way the old Flo is creeping back.’ She leans down to me, her elbows are on my desk, her face is very close to mine. ‘Flo, stop acting like this job is everything. We’re twenty-two years old, this is our first true summer of being adults. Look at us. We have a flat, an income. We’re flying, Flo. This should be the summer that sets the tone for the rest of our lives. We are young, we are professional, and we are fun. We can be all of those things at the same time. Or, you can be boring. Up to you.’
I don’t know how it’s happened, but by the end of her speech our faces are almost touching. She appears to not be moving until I respond.
‘Fine. Let’s go,’ I say. ‘I’ve never been for “work drinks” before, it sounds very grown-up.’
‘Great,’ says Renée. Matt has now got up and slides over.
‘Hey honey,’ he says to Renée. ‘What’s this mothers’ meeting all about?’ Renée doesn’t seem to buckle at being called ‘honey’. Also, ‘mothers’ meeting’? Rude. I find him so gross.
‘We’ll come after work, for the drinks. Fun!’ Renée says, as she walks off towards the toilet. Matt watches her the whole way. He’s so animal in the way that he is towards women. It must take a lot of control for him to keep his tongue in his mouth. It gives me the creeps. Renée seems entirely comfortable with it.
After work, we gather in reception. Matt arrives on the dot of five o’clock, asking Renée questions about Spain and what the social scene was like down there. Every time she mentions going clubbing, he raises his eyelids repeatedly and very quickly, as if instead of ‘clubbing’ she’d said ‘shagging’. I’d tell him to go away if I was her; it must be annoying to have someone hover around you in that way. Not that I’d know.
‘Can you come, Ben?’ Matt asks when everyone is assembled and ready to leave.
‘I can’t, I’m sorry. I need to get back for Penny.’
‘Oh, come on, mate. She won’t mind you having a quick pint, surely?’ Matt pushes.
‘If he needs to go, he needs to go,’ Georgina says, putting a comforting hand on Ben’s arm. ‘Send our love to Penny,’ she says, to which Ben smiles back. I pick up on something weird that makes me wonder why Penny needs ‘our love’.
‘Have a pint for me!’ Ben says, leaving. Everyone is clearly disappointed. If Ben is this lovely at work, I can only imagine what great company he is on a night out.
Chloe isn’t asked directly but tells us she is on a cleanse and not drinking, and Georgina says she has a ritual of fish and chips with her sister on Fridays and wouldn’t miss it for the world. I love that about her.
‘OK, let’s go,’ says Matt, who is acting like our group leader. Renée links arms with me and rushes to the lift. She used to do this when we were at school, always walking in front of the boys so they could see her bum. Renée likes being watched. I don’t. It feels very odd to be going out with the boys from work. I suddenly feel like they’re all total strangers. Without the security of talking about office supplies, I have absolutely no idea how to make conversation.
In the pub, Matt offers to get the first round in. Everyone orders pints of lager and he makes a joke about how he never thought I was the kind of girl to drink pints. ‘Flo drinks like a man,’ Renée says, nudging me as if that was a nice thing to say. ‘Clearly office Flo and out-of-office Flo are quite different then,’ Matt says, winking at Phil.
Why did he wink at Phil? What did that mean? I think Phil moves a little closer to me, or maybe he just moved out of someone else’s way. Does Phil fancy me? If so, do I fancy him? We’ve never really said much to each other. He’s kind of quiet, like Matt’s sidekick. He always does the top button of his shirts up, I always thought that was quite square. Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s actually sexy. Why did Matt wink at him? I suck my belly in and down my pint. The rat just woke up, I won’t let it ruin this for me. ‘Anyone want a Blow Job?’ I ask, immediately regretting it.
‘Get in there, Phil!’ Matt says, and I want to die.
‘I mean the drink,’ I splutter. ‘Amaretto and Baileys. Not …’
‘We know, Flo. Jeez!’ says Matt, making me feel so stupid. Why didn’t I just say shots? Idiot. Regardless, everyone says yes, so I go to the bar and order everyone a Blow Job. But rather than humiliate myself again I say, ‘Can I get six of those shots where you put the Baileys on the Amaretto, sorry I can’t remember what they’re called.’
The barman looks at me straight-faced and says, ‘Blow Jobs?’ as if I was being such a prude to not just say it. I feel even more stupid so down an extra one while I wait for my change.
A few rounds in and we’re all sitting in a booth. Matt is next to Renée; he is openly flirting with her, and turning absolutely anything she says into an innuendo. ‘I used to work in the Ship and Crown’ is met with, ‘I bet pints weren’t the only thing you pulled’. And ‘growing up on a tiny island without much to do’ gets, ‘I bet you found something to do, eh?’ and more of those super-fast eyebrow raises. He must think she had loads of sex to pass the time. Which isn’t a million miles from the truth. Both Matt and Phil are from Guernsey, but we’ve never met them before. They went to schools on the north of the island, very different from Tudor Falls. Matt went to the same sixth form as us but he’s a few years older, so we never met. And Phil left school at sixteen and went to the College of Further Education to study business. Neither of them went to uni, both getting jobs right out of studying. It makes them seem so experienced compared to us. It’s weird how people go to university when the people who don’t bother seem to come out of school and get the same jobs anyway. I wonder what I actually learned at university. How to cook pasta with pesto and battle through a drunken blow job, mostly. There weren’t seminars in either.
I can’t imagine giving someone a blow job on Guernsey. I’ll always assume that everything I do here will be spread around the island in five minutes. It was very liberating being in England with no history. Here, even with people I didn’t know growing up, my shame seems to hang off the walls. I can feel the old me putting the barriers back up. There’s only one way to break them back down again. I finish my pint.
‘We should dance,’ says Matt suddenly, raising his eyebrows at Renée again, as if he just said, ‘I think we should all have sex.’ I’ve never seen this twitch-like face manoeuvre he now keeps doing. What is it? It’s horrible. How does Renée not want to punch him in the face? She lets out a high-pitched ‘Wooooo’ and waves her arms around in the air, making her boobs bounce up and down like basketballs. This almost pushes Matt’s eyebrows off his face.
Phil turns to me and says, ‘You up for a dance, Flo?’ He nudges me with his elbow and Matt makes an annoying ‘Oooooh’ noise. What is happening? Is Renée going to dance with Matt? Am I going to dance with Phil? Is it the 1950s?
