Chapter 26 – Mal has a proposal

I thought I was unique in doing my taxes late. I hate doing taxes and put it off as I generally owe a couple grand no matter how much I try to write off. This year isn’t any different, but I’m reminded, as I look at my online pay stub, that next year’s taxes are going to be a whole different story. I might make more money this year than I’ve ever made in my life. It’s not so much that I get paid that much more than a good studio gig, it’s just that I’m working at least forty hours a week. In the studio I’m lucky to get a few gigs per week. Most weeks it’s just one or two and that doesn’t come close to matching my paychecks now.

Evidently though, most people with real money do their taxes as late as possible. I get to sign for Mr. Orpheus’ messengered package from his personal accountant and see that it’s his and his wife’s tax returns. It takes me at least five minutes to figure out what I’m looking at, as I’ve never seen a tax return this complex before. But as best I can figure, through salary, bonuses, investments, and property sales, Mal made around three million dollars last year. And while he’s paying a lot more than me in taxes dollar to dollar, it looks like he’s paying about five percent in taxes as opposed to my twenty seven percent.

It makes sense, I guess. Having money makes making money easier.

At six o’clock, after most of the office has closed down and emptied out, I take the tax forms as well as a couple other memos that require Mal’s direct attention or signature and bring them into his office. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that he looks like he’s getting ready to go home himself meaning a comparatively early day for me. I might have him by the balls when it comes to treating me like a normal human being, but it’s still my job to be here as long as he is and he still works long long hours.

Setting the papers on his desk in two piles I nod at them in turn, “These require your signature. I’ll drop your tax return in the mail tomorrow morning and get the memos up to Mr. Zeller’s executive assistant so she can add his signature and then distribute it companywide. Everything over here just needs you to look at it before the weekend. Is there anything else you need this evening?

Mal leans back in his chair and looks relaxed for once. I haven’t seen him look this calm since my first few days here. And even then, it was rare since he’s putting so much effort into the McGreggor deal. We may not have the best working relationship, but I still find it nice for him to relax and find comfort in his life. But as he begins to speak, I notice that his relaxed attitude doesn’t seem to cross into his eyes. His shoulders are calm, his arms are draped lazily on the chair’s arms, his smile is lazy, even his voice is soft, but his eyes, they’re hard. His eyes are calculating and put me on edge. “No, that will wrap up the business day Miss Beaufort. But before we disband for the day, I’d like to have a conversation with you. Just two… colleagues. I’d like your honest opinion on a few subjects. Please have a seat.”

While Mal gestures toward the corner of his desk where I used to sit while taking notes, giving him full access to fondle my knee and thigh, I smirk and sit down in one of the chairs opposite his desk. I try to keep things as light as his body posture is showing while keeping aware of the warning bells his eyes are sending, “Sure, what’s on your mind Mr. Orpheus?”

Mal places his hands together in an almost praying pose as he speaks, “I know you don’t exactly have an office related history. That you come from a more, let’s call it a creative background. But even someone like you has been in offices. You’ve seen television shows and movies and plays about offices. Wouldn’t you say that it’s the norm for office professionals to be as sexually attractive as they can be? To not shy away from showing off?”

I shift a bit in my seat, afraid of where this is going already, “Well, no. Not necessarily. I mean, sure in the movies they always look so glamorous and shiny and sexy, but that’s the movies. That’s television. At the bank, or government offices, or an insurance office, people dress more normally. Nice, but normal. Even attractive people dress normally. Maybe you think this way because of the fashion houses that K Edison works with?”

I see that my point made no dent in Mal’s position, not in his body nor his eyes, “Of course you’re right, but I want you to think about it a little more. You use a commercial bank, Bank of America, right? So, you don’t see where they’re trying to impress real money. Just people like you who barely qualify for a checking account and maybe a free toaster.” It hurts as he mentions it because it makes me feel small but at the same time… I was really happy to open that account and I still use that toaster to this day! “By insurance office you mean your State Farm agent and by government offices you mean the department of motor vehicles and the clerk of the circuit court to get your driver’s license and pay your parking tickets. You haven’t ever visited a commercial insurance office that works multi-million-dollar deals or senator’s offices. No, the closest to real offices you have is here. And here we aren’t so different from most offices that deal with real money. We dress and act appropriately. If a girl wants a job as a secretary in an office like this, she’s going to have to show a little leg. She’s going to get touched by the men around her. She’s going to be expected to wear makeup and present herself at her most attractive. People like you, people that buck that system, tend to fail in environments like this.”

I shake my head, seeing where Mal wants to go with this conversation, “Yeah, sure, I guess so. You know and I don’t. But that doesn’t change anything between us. You’ve been a pig to women and while I have to work for you, I don’t have to act like that. Its hard enough for me to be a ‘normal’ woman and I won’t stoop down to being a piece of eye candy just because it’s what you’re used to.”

Mal’s body posture still doesn’t change, which is worrying. He should be getting angry as I’m directly confronting him and denying what he wants. “You’re right Paris, I do know. But it’s not just what I’m used to, it’s what this office works best on. My staff’s productivity is down across the board. They’re normally happy to come to my office and see me for any number of things, but always to enjoy seeing my secretary out front. She’d smile and flirt and present herself to them for their enjoyment. They don’t get that now. Hell, it’s not even just my department. Both sales and marketing are down, and according to the directors of those departments, it’s only the staff here on the thirty fourth floor that’s dragging them down. And it’s only been since you started.”

I sit up straight and lean forward, getting ready to tell Mal that we’re done and I’m not going to even entertain anything he has to say from here on out, but he holds up his hand to me and keeps talking, “No wait, I have an honest proposal. One that I believe will work for everyone involved. We’re both trapped by Alistair in HR. He’s running that department like his own kingdom and I’d normally run him out of the company, but he has me by the balls. So, nothing changes with his arrangement. You stay working here, I leave you alone physically. But, for the betterment of the mergers and acquisitions department and for K Edison Global as a whole, you tart it up again. You bring your flirt back and smile and entice the staff again. You bring them the joy that they’ve been missing, and we’ll reevaluate in a few weeks to see if this morale boost brings our numbers back up. If it doesn’t, you can go full frumpy for all I care. You can come in wearing pants and an oversized sweater. But if it does work, you have to keep up that act for as long as you’re here. And while the staff will occasionally touch you… a harmless caress to your shoulder or leg, a playful swat to your ass… I promise you that it won’t come from me since that bothers you so much. This is me being nice and asking this for the company. What do you say? Want to be a team player and honestly help out instead of being an anchor on our numbers?”

While it would be easy to just throw out everything Mal’s offered out of hand, I try to be as reasonable as I can. I can’t deny his numbers out of hand. He knows that I can easily look up and compare this quarter to last year and see if he’s telling the truth. And I’ve actually seen some of his correspondence with sales mentioning the downturn in both departments. And the downturns do correspond with my arrival. But if that’s the answer, if having some ‘tart’, as he put it, for the guys to goggle at makes the difference between them doing well and doing bad, that’s more on him, right? That’s bad office chemistry. And you don’t fix bad chemistry by falling back into the old rhythms. I don’t know HOW to fix it, but that’s not my job. And my job is also not to be a poster girl for the guys to drool over.

I look back into Mal’s eyes and shake my head again. “No. I do want to be a team player, and I’ll do most things I can to help out, but I’m not playing some bimbo role just because it’s what worked before. You say I gotta wear skirts, I’m wearing skirts. You say I gotta wear heels, I’m wearing heels. You say I have to keep my makeup on, I’m keeping my makeup on. But beyond that, you know you can’t demand more and I’m not offering more. I don’t want this to be acrimonious between us Mr. Orpheus, but I’m not playing that part for you.”

As Mal stands up, nodding as if he recognized that was where our conversation was going to go, I don’t see any sign of defeat in his body language. In fact, its almost the opposite. It’s like he got exactly what he wanted. Walking around his desk he gestures toward the door, “Okay, just a little bit more then. Please come with me to the conference room. I have a little presentation there made just for you.”

I roll my eyes as I stand up and follow behind Mal toward the conference room. I imagine he has numbers or some other business related data to show me that being some bimbo office slut is best for the company and I’m hurting orphans and baby seals by not playing his fantasy role, but I can look at the data and still say…

The conference room on our floor is rather small. Both upstairs and downstairs have better conference rooms where we bring in clients and impress them. The main reason this one hasn’t been torn down and re-purposed is that it’s a good area to get a group of ten to fifteen staff together for a meeting. But it’s never private or secure as all the walls to the conference room are glass and it sits right in the center of the floor. That’s why I slowed down and stopped halfway to the conference room as I saw the first slide displayed on the big screen there. It shoed my drivers license, a photo of my apartment, and a list of accounts including my cell phone, my Bank of America account, my credit card, my State Farm insurance, and even the last parking ticket that I paid at the clerk of the circuit court. None of this was my ‘Paris’ information. It was all my ‘Jamie’ or ‘PJ’ information.

As Mal stepped into the conference room he held the door open and said quietly, but loud enough that I could hear him clearly, “Come on Paris, let’s get this done. We’ll rip the band aid off quickly and it will only hurt a little bit, I promise.”