As she comes over close to me, I have a pretty good idea that I’m the only one who knows about this. At least, the only one who’s aware of this aspect of her at the company. There may be others in her past, but they’re not here to speak to that or about her.
Instinctively, I back away, but Vanacore grabs me. A little roughly, then, as if she remembers where we are and who she is, she lessens the energy. “Do you want this job, Tommy? Do you want to continue working this job, and someday work up to having an even better one? Being a lawyer in your own right?”
I nod at her whispered words, though I know there are attachments to them. I can feel the strings lying in wait.
“You do?”
I nod again, though I feel doubly damned, doubly trapped now, and by a dream I can’t quite give up. The dream I have to be the one who stands up in court, not just stays behind at the office and take notes or dictation or prepare cases.
“Then let’s do some special work together,” she whispers. “Let’s get you properly instructed on what I want from you.”
Under her words and her eyes, both of which cast a spell on me that I can’t refuse, I follow her as she walks me to her desk — to the front of it.
“Do you have any objections to this instruction?” she asks me, taking her walking cane from its resting place. She does so with so much thoughtful comment, calculation, that my stomach flips, and tightens nervously. I shake my head “no” and she points at her desk. The front of it where I’ve come to stand.
“Then lean over and take your punishment from me, boy. This is to teach you in a way that you’ll remember how much damaging your reputation by hanging out with a secretary in questionable scenarios can hurt.”
I lean over the desk, feeling my breathing get quick. My hands start sweating a moment later.
“Pants down,” she orders.
I obey, though my rational mind is screaming at me louder now. Asking me what in the actual fuck I’m doing, obeying her like this. Putting myself in a position like this. But then I get my answer, just as I take my pants down, and she orders my underwear to follow suit.
I don’t want to go back downstairs. I don’t want to have to deal with legal aids who don’t or won’t go anywhere with their lives. I don’t want to return to being faceless and nameless. Just the “fat guy who sweats a lot in a suit” who does better work than everyone else, but still doesn’t get anywhere because of it. I don’t want to go back downstairs. I don’t really want to be here either, I think, pulling down my underwear, and laying myself Ben to my boss — to her cane. The one I’ve been weirdly worrying about possibly striking me, but I’m not thinking about that now. I’m in total shock and awe over how much I despise the job I’ve had for as many years as I’ve had it. Enough that I would be willing to go through this corporal punishment to keep away from it, I guess.
“I hate to do this to you,” she says, in much the same way my dad used to say things like that. Things like, “this hurts me more than it does you,” and that kind of thing, though with my boss, there’s no legitimate somberness to it. Just an act. Underneath it, I can sense hunger. A desire for doling this out to me in this way. “But I’ll do it if it means you get on the straight and narrow with you and that secretary, and the impression you need to leave with everyone in the office, considering you work with and for me.” She emphasizes “for” like an associate lawyer is just a fancy term for “slave.” She pauses, playing with the cane in her hand. Testing the weight of it in various areas. The texture of it, though I know she knows every inch of it like she’ll know every inch of my ass after this. “Are you ready for your punishment? For your correction? Instruction, Tommy?”
I nod and prepare for the worst. It comes in the next second.
Crack! The cane hits my backside. For all the fat I have on my body, it doesn’t save me from the pain of this first strike. It sears up and through me like nothing else ever has. At least since I became too old to put over someone’s knee.
“You’ll get five more exactly like that,” she tells me matter-of-factly.
Crack!
“Make that four,” she says.
I groan, but nothing more. Tears spring to my eyes, but I let them sit there, sting and fidget.