Some, I mused while dressing, were more enigmatic. The guy at the convenience store on the corner and his eighteen measures of appreciation confused me; he was such a grump whenever I was in there. Maybe that was part of it for him; refuse to give me the right change and then go home to fondly remember the interaction. The front desk girl from work, too, surprised me; I don’t think she’d ever so much as made eye contact with me outside of telling me to stop forgetting my key card. The appearance of no less than four of my mom’s friends was…something.
I’d almost, as I slugged my bag across my back and reached for my housekeys, succeeded in ignoring the most obvious outlier of the bunch. Someone, some unknowable, mysterious, shadowy figure had rubbed it out nearly 1400 times to me. For me. While thinking about me? At any rate, the exact qualifying conditions mattered little. The number was genuinely, unquestionably, absurd. Obscene even.
I made my way to the elevator, grinning knowingly as I passed the door of apartment 503, sure that the occupant might well still be lying there in the fading bliss of her morning glory. I wondered if it worked like that, in real time. I mean, if it worked at all. Surely it didn’t, right? Dreams don’t come true. Do they?
Sure they do, I decided. After all, why not? I was a good looking guy, funny, tall, hard working. Why wouldn’t people think about me while they jerked and rubbed themselves? Still, I thought as the city bus bumped me along downtown, thirteen and a half hundred times had to be unhealthy. Even assuming that I was the only person she thought about, she’d have to have cum every single day for the last three and a half years while thinking about me.
Who, I wondered as I got off the bus, in their right mind would commit to that sort of thing? I had no obvious stalkers, and hadn’t recognized her at all besides. I mean, she was gorgeous enough; I’d definitely have remembered a face like hers. Dark hair in loose curls fell about a tan face that framed warm eyes and and a wide smile, just the sort that always spun me out into hopeless daydreams. Not slim by any means, her figure had seared itself into my memory with every mouthwatering curve. The skirt she’d worn in the snapshot I’d been stretched enticingly over wide, soft hips that I’d have happily died to put my hands on. The modest cut of her top had shown just the barest promise of what was sure to be the most astounding cleavage. The glimpse I’d gotten was of her in a breakroom of some sort, picking away at some sort of breakfast, scrolling absentmindedly through her phone. There were no clues that offered any meaningful solutions as to her identity, and certainly none to suggest her prolific deviancy. She looked, for all the world, like any other woman you’d fall for. Well, any woman that I’d fall for anyway.
I beat a hasty track up the steps of the building I worked in. I won’t bore you with the details of my profession; suffice it to say I spend a lot of time looking at spreadsheets and working weekends. At least coming in on Saturday meant I could forgo the need for a tie and jacket; it was unlikely there would be more than a few people upstairs. I let myself feel a moment of disappointment that the front desk girl didn’t work weekends. I’m not sure what I would have done if she’d been there though. I’m certain that making eye contact would have been the most I could have managed.
I settled in at my cubicle, sprawling the contents of my bag out messily across my desk. It was audit season, and I had a mountain of data to pull before the independent review team showed up on Monday. It was an enormous pain in the ass, but it had to happen, and no amount of putting it off would change that. Headphones on, laptop open, I dove in.
The work went well, if somewhat slowly, and by mid morning I was beginning to suspect I might perish of boredom. I hit the ‘compile’ button that would dominate the resources of my terminal for several minutes, and stretched back in my chair, yawning.
“Sleeping on the job again dick nuts?” shouted Jeeter from a few rows over, thoroughly terrifying me.
“How long have you been over there?” I hollered back, having not registered his arrival.
“Just got in,” he replied, approaching to lean on the flimsy wall of my vocational prison cell, chewing his gum like he was allergic to keeping his mouth closed, “you?”
“Yeah I don’t know, I think I got here around 9:00 this morning.”
“Yeah, nice,” he said, not listening as he peered conspiratorially around the office, “Hey you got that audit thing starting Monday, right?”
“You work on my team dipshit, you know it starts Monday.” Jeeter was a lot of things, but bright was not frequently among them.
“Sure, yeah. Hey did you hear?” he continued, still glancing around suspiciously.
“I heard your mum’s affections can be rented by the hour.”
“Fuck off, asshole” he laughed. “They sent the auditors in early. One of ’em’s already in the boardroom. Shit’s everywhere.”
“Explains why you’re here then I’d imagine” I teased, knowing he was nowhere near ready to contribute his data.
“First, fuck you. Second, I’d have been here before the fucking sun came up if I knew who they’d sent.”
I asked him to clarify.
“Bro,” he whispered, eyes flickering furtively toward the boardroom, “I don’t know what the fuck a woman like that is doing in accounting. It’s fucking criminal.”
I still didn’t catch his drift.
“It’s like,” he clarified, drawing the outline of an hourglass in the air with his hands as he whistled, “you know? Unreal body on her. Forget spreadsheets, I wanna spread…”
“I’m sure you do, tiger,” I laughed, craning my neck to try to spot her through the glass wall of windows surrounding the conference room, “but maybe you should work on being useful for a change and get your numbers pulled before she fucks you out of a job.”
He pulled a face, but conceded the point and slunk away to get his work done.
Another hour passed in productive silence, only broken occasionally by Jeeter cursing at his computer. Shortly before lunch, my phone dinged with a text message. Jeeter. I was sure it would be some shitty meme.
+ My guy, did you see her yet?
I replied that I hadn’t, that I wanted this done so I could get home.
+ You’re a whole ass clown dude
+ Hang on
+ like always, gotta do your dirty work for you…
I observed with a grin as I watched Jeeter stand at his desk, run his fingers ineffectively through his disastrous haircut, and walk too slowly past the bank of glass panes that served as the north wall of the room, before circling back around to his desk. A moment later, my phone dinged again.
+ [Attachment: 1 Photo]
It was blurry, and the angle was atrocious, but there was no doubt to be had; my heart forced itself violently into my throat and my chest tightened as I recognized, with the most painful clarity, Ms. 1367.
I think I set a land speed record as I packed my bag ran out of there.
___
The next day was torture. Knowing that I’d be facing her first thing on Monday morning almost destroyed me. I stared at the photo Jeeter had taken of her obsessively, willing it to be anyone else, trying to spot some detail that
would prove her to be someone she wasn’t. The proof wasn’t there, though; it was definitely her.
I hardly slept all weekend, and certainly not more than an hour or two Sunday night. Despite my earnest pleading to God above, I was not hit by a bus, car, meteorite, or lightning bolt on my way in to work. I looked a wreck as I slunk through the lobby, not even brave enough to check for the receptionist’s glance as I drifted by. Choking back my terror, I pushed through the last set of doors to the department.
The place was abustle with activity, which meant I might skate by unseen or unnoticed. Maybe I’d luck out and have a fatal heart attack at my desk before I had to present my report to her team. I decided to lend some aid to the prospective explosion of my arteries by fixing myself a coffee from the kitchen.
The machine made some heinous sludge that couldn’t legally or morally be called coffee, but I needed it to overcome the sleepless agony of the weekend. I bullied myself into steeling some resolved while I stood there waiting, knock-off Keurig screeching and slurping along angrily; she couldn’t possible know what I knew about her. Surely I could keep it together long enough to run through my slides, hand her my report, and leave the room without vomiting on myself. There was no reason at all to let on that I suspected her to be the worlds most prolific masturbator, or to indicate that I was aware of my role in her private sex life. There was certainly no cause for me to give any impression at all that I’d spent the last 48 hours alternating between wondering where she knew me from and what she looked like naked.
“That thing sounds awful” said a woman from behind me, genuine concern in her voice.
“Yeah, well,” I replied, back turned to the source, “Bertha’s got just what I need this morning.” I was pleased at the chance to practice keeping a level, casual tone. She laughed cheerfully.
“You call it Bertha? I guess it fits; she sounds like a Bertha alright.”
Of course it was called Bertha. It had been called that for years. Not as a slight to Berthas universally, but because it sounded like it’s namesake, the CEOs wife, tossing her cookies in the bathroom at a Christmas party several years ago. I chuckled as I turned to address her.
“You must be new here…”
You’d be correct in guessing who stood there, mere feet away, in that tiny kitchenette with me.
“Oh fuck” I said.
Leave a Reply