Chapter 15 - The first week

The first week of being Paris flew by. My morning routine got shorter each day as I got better and more efficient at cleaning, getting into my faja, putting on my makeup, doing my hair, and getting dressed. Riding into the office with Grace made the morning commute far less stressful as I felt comfortable, safe, and could even chat and laugh on the way.

Dealing with Mr. Orpheus himself was problematically easy. He was, simply put, distracted. Almost all of his energy was going into a particularly problematic acquisition for K Edison Global. Acquiring McGregor corporation would be a true feather in the cap of K Edison. They’d attempted it several times before and failed each time. Mr. Orpheus had evidently bet his career on being able to land them. If he succeeded, the sky was the limit for him. A massive cash bonus was the least of his prizes as he’d likely get a vice presidency out of it as well as a major stock buy in when the company went public. If he failed though, he may well kiss his career goodbye. At best, he’d stay director of Mergers and Acquisitions. At worst he’d be fired for cause. Per everybody that dealt with Mr. Orpheus directly, he was laser focused on this one deal and not his normal “playful” self.

To me, an outsider, Mr. Orpheus still came across as an egotistical, sexist, misogynistic, chauvinist. No matter how many people used the term Executive Personal Assistant around him, he used Secretary. Admittedly, I was faking my assistant’s credentials, but he still taught me everything as if I were a child with no previous knowledge of anything. Even down to which button to press to turn the computer on and what order to turn the computer, mouse, and monitor on. I needn’t have worried about knowing the basics of secretarying as Mr. Orpheus taught me exactly how he wanted anything and everything done. Filing, answering the phone, monitoring his email, organizing his day, managing his time, and keeping those without access to him out of his office and even his line of sight.

While he’d vary what he called me, I was always to call him Mr. Orpheus or Sir in public and Mal or Malichai in private. Terms he used for me included Paris, secretary, sweet cheeks, sweety, honey, baby, missy, and girl. Never once did he call me Miss Beaufort as practically everybody else did. I even had to use his full name and title when referring to him on the phone, as in, “Good Morning, this is Miss Beaufort, secretary to Mr. Malachi Orpheus, Director of Mergers and Acquisitions at K Edison Global. How may I help you today?”

My days with Mal were kept busy. Personal traits aside, he was honestly working his ass off on this deal. Research came in every single day, and I had to prearrange it, checking it against research previously obtained, throwing out anything that was out of date, and prioritizing anything that he needed to see first. Managing his emails meant dealing with over three hundred emails every day. Managing his phone meant juggling almost one hundred calls a day. If doing the job was just that, I could see how people would get satisfaction out of it. I felt I was honestly a vital part of his team and helping get this acquisition done. But that’s not all it was.

Mr. Orpheus did not want housekeeping in his office. He was rather tidy on his own, but his trash still needed to be taken out. His carpet still needed to be vacuumed, and the hardwood floors still needed to be swept. Piles of paperwork left overnight still needed to be organized and readied for the morning, some of it needing to be filed away, most of it being left for him to continue with. So, I had to add janitor to my list of duties.

Fine, but on top of that I was also his personal barista. Everybody in this company loved their coffee drinks, or cuppas as they called them, and Mal was no different. That first morning he took me to the break room and had me make a cup of coffee for myself while he went over some of my daily tasks. He then made his own cuppa while telling me what he was doing. At the time I didn’t know I was being given my one lesson on how to make it and was expected to be able to repeat it. Later that day when I was asked to get him ‘A Cup Of My Coffee’ I went and got him just that. A cup of coffee. That’s when I learned just how calmly cruel, he could be. I didn’t even get three steps into his office, carrying the coffee, when he got up from behind his desk and approached me. I stupidly thought he was being nice and coming to me to get the coffee. And I was partially right. But when he took the cup from me, he immediately turned and dropped it into the trash, telling me that I was a stupid cow and needed to go back and make his coffee the way he’d “painstakingly showed you how to do it earlier”. His voice never rose, he never physically threatened me. But in those few words he made me feel like an idiot that couldn’t do a simple task.

Double cappuccino, five shots of espresso, three ounces of steamed half and half, five ounces of foamed fresh milk, topped with two dashes of cinnamon and one of nutmeg. It took me a couple tries to get it right and he seemed pleased. Two days later, I messed it up though as the break room was packed and I had to shuffle between people and ended up mistakenly giving him two and a half dashes of nutmeg. When I delivered it to him, he took one look at it, told me I’d “fucked up his drink” but “I’ll forgive you this time sweet cheeks” and let it go. Yesterday was the whole milk issue. Someone used all the fresh milk, so I just pulled out yesterday’s milk from the fridge. I mean, seriously how the hell is he going to tell the difference? It’s still fresher than any milk I’ve ever drank!

But he knew.

I had to stop everything I was doing, put my coat on, and go find a market that sold fresh milk. Four blocks on a day where sleet was coming down like nobody’s business. My umbrella saved my hair, but my legs were near frozen by the time I got back. I’ll be sure to never get his damned coffee wrong again!

Getting his daily lunch, getting his dinner most days since we stayed until eight o’clock on average, and pouring him his double shot of bourbon at exactly six thirty were other food delivery tasks assigned to me. It might not be so bad if it were just getting the food. Call up the delivery service, the guy brings it up and I pay for it using Mal’s corporate card, and then take it into his office, right? Nope. He doesn’t trust delivery men and has me do that whenever he can. So, I trudge across town to get his specialty ordered food and bring it back, hoping to God it doesn’t get cold. And when I bring it to his office, I have to lay it all out in his seating area so that he can come over at his leisure and eat. It should go unsaid that I’m expected to know when he’s done and then come in to clean up after him. He doesn’t like the smell of food staying in his office so I can’t simply throw it away in his trash can and instead have to take it halfway across the floor to throw in the communal trash. His bourbon? It has to be placed next to his right hand, no matter where he’s sitting at six thirty. The first three days that was at his desk. Thursday, he went home at six, so I didn’t have to deliver it. Today I had to search through half the damned floor before I could find him. Turns out he was hiding from me and wanted to see how long it would take me to find him. And evidently seven and a half minutes is too long, and I’ll need to improve.

Then there’s the touching. Rhea was right, he passed well into whatever could be considered sexual harassment when he slapped my ass that first day. But every day he’s touched me inappropriately. I don’t’ think there’s been a single day where he hasn’t touched my ass. Either a slap to get me going faster or a caress and a pat to ‘reward me’. Yesterday when he got that call and found out that McGregor corporation had overextended their primary bank loan, he actually pulled me in and kissed me. I was horrified, then excited hoping he’d **** his tongue in my mouth, then more horrified when he didn’t, meaning I’d have to go through something like that again.

Just dealing with Mal would make this the worst job I could imagine. But then there’s everybody else. I swear, this place is a mad house. First there are the other assistants. The ones I’ve met have all looked down their nose at me with contempt and did very little to hide that fact from me. In particular there was Jennifer and Claire. They both worked up on the 37th floor for the CFO and the COO respectively, but they liked to come down for their coffee break and mingle with the other assistants. When I wasn’t in the break room myself, they made it a point to check up on me at my desk and they’d take every opportunity to give me ‘advice’ on how to present myself more professionally. Less stylistic hair. More subtle makeup. Longer skirts. Better fitting, i.e. not as tight, clothing. Shorter heels. Better bras. I would have understood their complaints, but they knew who I was working for. They weren’t there to help me, they were just being catty. And the one time that I told them off, telling them that I was dressed appropriately for my boss, they went and tattled on me like we were in a school yard.

Margret was the Executive Personal Assistant to the CEO and the head of all the personal assistants. She doesn’t often come down here for her breaks, but she came down to read me the riot act on ‘acting unprofessionally’ toward my colleagues. I could read between the lines as she looked down her nose at me… don’t bitch at the other assistants when they complain about me right to my face.

In general, those working in the sales and the marketing departments were nice enough. The men didn’t hide the fact that they were undressing me with their eyes all the time, but they were polite when they spoke and never touched me. The women of those departments were tolerant, with some seeming to lean upset and some leaning toward jealousy. The people of the M&A department all took their lead from Mr. Orpheus, though they were more polite than him. They called me the ‘head secretary’ though when I referred to myself as an executive personal assistant, they followed suit and called me either an executive assistant or personal assistant. At least until the next day when they’d slip back to ‘head secretary’. As for their looks, they made me prefer being virtually undressed by the other guys on the floor since the M&A team didn’t hide the fact that they were eye fucking me the entire time.

Only a few guys stood out. The first two were a couple managers in sales. Frank and Thomas. These two were frat brahs if there were ever frat brahs in the entire history of fraternities. Most people around them just rolled their eyes and accepted their juvenile behavior since they were both excellent sales managers. They both had records with the company for sales and they both helped the people under them to excel at their jobs. But if I hadn’t been forewarned about what Mal does physically, I’d think that these two were the bigger threat. They were always together too, which made it worse as they seemed to help each other take advantage of me. Frank so far has gotten me to spill water on my chest three times by ‘accidently’ bumping into me while I was delivering a fresh pitcher. It’s never enough to drench me, just enough to make my blouse stick to my breasts for a few minutes. Thomas takes a more hands on approach. Literally. His favorite game seems to be waiting around a corner until I walk by, then grabbing me, pulling me close to him, and keeping me there until I make a big enough fuss. If I don’t play along, by squealing or stomping my feet or pummeling my fists against his chest, he’ll just start rubbing me all over. My ass, my breasts, he’s even started to pull my face to his as if to kiss before I upped my game and kicked him. His laughter as I stomped away was probably the worst. He liked my reaction.

And then there was the exact opposite. Darnell. At first glance, Darnell was taller than Mal by several inches. He had to outweigh him by about fifty pounds. Saying he was athletic wasn’t doing justice to the word athletic. I heard yesterday that he played cornerback as a scholarship football player at Northwestern for four years while he got his master’s degree. He was a manager in marketing, but he liked to keep his fingers in all the pies and was constantly helping out everybody around him. Yet somehow, he was still the most productive member of his team and was rumored to be next on the list to be the director of marketing. You’d think a person like that, a large athletic, confident, successful black man would be threatening. But I swear, he’s the nicest person I may have ever met. He was the only one that kept calling me Miss Beaufort until I told him he could call me Paris. Except for the handshake we shared the fist time we met, he’s never even tried to touch me. And while I’ve seen him admire me from afar, he’s at least had the decency to look away when he knew I saw him.

Finally, there was Trixie. She made it a point to come visit me when she could. We had lunch together twice, though they were both at my desk since I couldn’t leave. Her whole attitude was something I studied and tried to mimic as she was just bubbly and happy and bright. She got the same treatment as me but none of it seemed to bother her. She even mentioned how she liked the men looking at her, ESPECIALLY the M&A men. She said it made her feel extra attractive. She even joked that she noticed she got LESS looks when she was near me because they were all checking me out. We talked makeup and hair, we talked men and sex which was a little awkward until I looked at it as acting, and she even gave me advice on how to help Mal. If this were real life and I wanted to be here, I probably would have taken her advice, but it just came too close to encourage Mal to sexually harass me. Right now, I was on firm ground that while I was pleasant, I did nothing to encourage his actions. If I were to give him the massages or random touches that Trixie suggested, it’d be as good as asking for more from Mal.

Now, as I close down the office at nine PM Friday night, I can finally call it a day. I can finally call it a week. Mal is going off on some trip this weekend, otherwise it sounds like he’d be here at least on Saturday, meaning I’d have to be here on Saturday. As is, I get the weekend off. A weekend where I can actually be a man for more than a few hours at night!