Congratulations !
You have been awarded points.
Thank you for !
- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 07/28/2015
Manhattan Ladies
Born 1969, M, from Herten, NRW, GermanyManhattan Ladies
A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton
She was sorry about what had happened, of course, having declared it openly, even if she had been disappointed by his lack of professionalism.
What was that? Calling a woman ‘soured”?
What? Soured? Why not ‘fermented’?
Then he said she was a stinker.
Okay, he said it was her perfume.
What? She wore Chopard’s “Wish”, a distinguished scent.
She said he was bordering on harrassment and she left the office very disappointed.
She, a CEO, being mobbed by an employee.
Okay, an employee that she had an affair with.
Her punch in his stomach had been witnessed by six people.
She always complained about his decisions?
Yeah, right.
His decisions were a little off the wall, so to speak. Going to the newspaper that refused to withdraw their scandalous article about the firm and talking with the reporter about cake recepies? Pouring sarcasm over the angry widow, suing her phone company for sending a bill to an empty office?
Their company had work to do, not people to hate.
So Thea and George had an open debate about it.
Okay, a very open debate.
God knows why George had gone crazy.
Had she done something wrong?
Gee wiz, she didn’t know.
Funnily enough, this exchange of spicy staff knocks actually just made the erotic tension increase. Thea had always thought of herself as someone that was immune to any macho tick-tock or funny wagging of eyebrows. Now George Goldman was playing the same game that he played with everyone: laying a chick flat by downplaying her.
She called off her meetings and logged into the web.
Games? Reading? Opera? What could satisfy her now?
Pamper herself, that was what she was going to do.
She phoned her extravagant interior decorator friend Gloria Steinway and asked her if she liked the opera “Aida.”
Maybe the Met had tickets for tonight’s show.
Gloria was all flames for the idea and, yes, they got tickets.
She emoted, in her thick New Jersey twang, “Oh, dawlin’, I owe you one. I just had the woyst customer. This business is a puysonal injury suit!”
Thea went home, showered and changed, thinking maybe she had done the wrong thing in choosing blabbermouth Gloria as her date for the evening. She put on her gala dress and walked out onto the open street looking like a diva, feeling like a toad.
So, there they sat, enjoying their visit to the opera.
But all through “Don Carlos”, Thea could not help thinking of George.
Why had he insulted her?
He had claimed that she was soured and a stinker only because she seemed so sour all the time. That was not only like a bad joke. It was the worst joke.
During the intermission, she asked Gloria over a glass of “Moet et Chandon” ... why.
“You ah very funny in your oaff-time,” Gloria said. “You’re like Roseanne on speed. But at work you are Gandhi. What is that?”
“Just me in private and me at work, I guess,” she answered.
“Loosen up, sister,” Gloria said, sipping on her drink and winking at the men.
“I’ll try,” she concluded.
The second act began and Philipp II began singing his long aria. Thea heard him vocalize, but couldn’t really locate the tones. George kept popping or pooping up in her mind, reminding her of being a stinker.
Stinking of what? Bad perfume?
Afterwards the two ladies took a cab to a side street Off-Broadway and sat feet away from the Neil Simon theatre in “Tout va bien”, the sexiest little French hot-spot in Manhattan. They spoke of men, they spoke of opera and they spoke of fun.
Thea felt like shit.
She returned to her Park Avenue flat at two a.m. She was drunk and decided to call in sick the next day. She woke up the next morning with a hangover and her feelings about George just as intense as before.
Despite her promises of calling in sick, Thea went to work.
After all, she was the CEO. Her thoughts wandered as she rode the subway off to the centre of town. What was it with George?
Stepping into her office, she told her secretary Debbie to bring her hot, black coffee and sat back in her chair overlooking Central Park. It was a grand view, but her head felt like a tank of jellyfish dancing the macarena.
Ay-ay, cuando las medusas beber demasiado la cabeza me duele bastante mal.
What a drag. It was difficult being the boss when you, in your mind, had just spent the morning punching your employee in the guts.
Debbie came in with her coffee and left without even looking at her.
After a few moments, having thought it over four times, Thea called Debbie in again.
Debbie arrived from her desk outside with the look of someone being called to the electric chair.
Thea smiled.
“Hi, Debbie!”
Debbie looked at Thea for the first time and now Thea saw that it was contempt that brewed in her eyes.
“Good morning, Miss Hennigan!”
“Do I ... suck as a CEO?”
“What?”
Debbie looked confused.
“No, you’re good. Just very ... adamant!”
“Can you do me a favour?”
“Anything you wish!”
Thea really didn’t know if Debbie would do this ‘thing’ willingly.
Okay, she wasn’t going to ask her to play strip-poker.
All she wanted was honesty.
“Tell me something!”
“Anything!”
“What happened yesterday?”
Debbie opened her eyes another millimetre and now looked at her boss like someone about to burst out laughing.
“You punched Mr. Goldman in the stomach,” she answered.
Thea nodded and looked down.
“Was that a problem?”
“For whom? George? Me?”
Thea shook her head. “Was it a problem that George insulted me, his boss, and that I, his boss, punched him in the stomach.”
There was no response.
“You can be honest, Debbie,” Thea said. “Your job is not at threat here. George will not be fired. I just ... wanted to know how I can deal with this kind of tension in the future. George crossed the line and I bit back.”
Debbie breathed in and as she did, her breath shook a bit.
She hesitated and stopped.
“Miss Hennigan,” she began, albeit apprehensively. What followed was a speech that seemed just as rehearsed as it seemed nervous. It seemed to spray out of her like a gargoyle spitting vomit on a pedestrian community of linguists. “I know that you and George have been amorously involved for some time now. After all, it has not escaped anyone that you two are not in for a relationship, but actually have what is called a series of one-night-stands. Yesterday, however, was a series of insults. So, yes, it was a problem. We all work hard, Miss Hennigan. We try to keep this company working on an efficient level. We are one of many companies in the complex, but we take pride in keeping things orderly and professional along side many others like us. George crossed the line when he told you ... what he told you ... you should’ve loosened up. George crossed the line when he said that you are a stinker. I would never do that. I couldn’t. Not only ... did he do that ... here, where you obviously have made out, embarassing yourself silly many times. No, he did it in the conference-room in front of me and six other people. So, why is it that a walking dick has the right to do things to you and I don’t? Because he sometimes blows your whistle? Because we are women and he is a man? You should’ve kept your feelings to yourself. A boss does, you know. She keeps stuff to herself.”
Thea sat back and took a long look at Debbie.
“Debbie. Thanks. I never asked you what your feelings were. You’re right, but still ... I just asked if it was a problem. Anyway, you have answered my question. What do you propose I do about it?”
Debbie shook her head, wreathing her hands like a school girl.
“I am in no position to tell you anything, Miss Hennigan, only that you must keep your affair with George out of this work place. It has reached a climax that will topple the firm. Maybe. This firm is efficient and ... popular. However, the company climate is also an issue. We have to be happy here. If you do continue seeing George privately, do so honestly ...”
Thea paused.
“I will be honest with George.”
“Good thing.”
“You can go.”
Debbie left, nodding.
So, Thea remained sitting there in her office, thinking about her quarrel, about her dramatic reaction to George’s comment and suddenly remembered that she had been in a bad mood yesterday morning before the punch. She had been complaining about everything. Why? She had set the alarm on the wrong time. That had made the day start off wrong. Then the car wouldn’t start, because she had failed to take it to the car mechanic. The auto repairman came and started the car for her, but once on the road she had been stopped at every red light.
No wonder that her mood hit rock bottom when she saw George and her cynical, provocative exterior. It had to go wrong. They ding-donged back and forth the entire day until it exploded in a punch. So simple. So complicated.
“Debbie,” Thea said, pushing the button on her intercom.
“Yes, m’am?”
“Tell George to come in here, won’t you?”
There was a long pause before Thea secretary Debbie answered.
“Of course.”
Thea twiddled with her thumbs while waiting. She paced the room, rehearsed lines, acted out scenarios, told herself jokes. Just to pass the time.
When George came in, it all seemed so different, so simple, so complicated.
Not bad at all.
The whole thing, the whole quarrel had been based on a simple misunderstanding.
Simple.
Complicated.
Simply complicated.
George wandered in, wreathing his hands.
The long pause was painful, to say the least.
“I’m sorry I called you a stinker yesterday,” George began. “It’s just that when you’re moody, you spread this really bad vibe around the room. That’s really difficult for the people in your staff. You mope and mutter. I guess I just said I meant your perfume because I was afraid to tell you the truth. And I can be pretty cynical, too, at times.”
“Okay,” Thea said.
Another pause, an awkward one, followed.
Then, Thea shook George’s hand, smiled, and offered him some coffee.
They ended up sitting there for a half hour, chatting about future projects.
He even asked her out on a date, but that is another story.
What would Gloria have said?
“Told you so, you silly New York brat.”
Ah, the Manhattan ladies keep shining, keep smiling, keep complaining, keep living, keep running, keep talking.
One thing, they ain’t.
They ain’t boring.
Thea and Gloria make you remember that.
Strange, how little things become big just because an alarm goes off at the wrong time.
George and Thea? Their affair continued.
This time, it continued ... in private and not in the conference room.
Manhattan Ladies(Charles E.J. Moulton)
Manhattan Ladies
A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton
She was sorry about what had happened, of course, having declared it openly, even if she had been disappointed by his lack of professionalism.
What was that? Calling a woman ‘soured”?
What? Soured? Why not ‘fermented’?
Then he said she was a stinker.
Okay, he said it was her perfume.
What? She wore Chopard’s “Wish”, a distinguished scent.
She said he was bordering on harrassment and she left the office very disappointed.
She, a CEO, being mobbed by an employee.
Okay, an employee that she had an affair with.
Her punch in his stomach had been witnessed by six people.
She always complained about his decisions?
Yeah, right.
His decisions were a little off the wall, so to speak. Going to the newspaper that refused to withdraw their scandalous article about the firm and talking with the reporter about cake recepies? Pouring sarcasm over the angry widow, suing her phone company for sending a bill to an empty office?
Their company had work to do, not people to hate.
So Thea and George had an open debate about it.
Okay, a very open debate.
God knows why George had gone crazy.
Had she done something wrong?
Gee wiz, she didn’t know.
Funnily enough, this exchange of spicy staff knocks actually just made the erotic tension increase. Thea had always thought of herself as someone that was immune to any macho tick-tock or funny wagging of eyebrows. Now George Goldman was playing the same game that he played with everyone: laying a chick flat by downplaying her.
She called off her meetings and logged into the web.
Games? Reading? Opera? What could satisfy her now?
Pamper herself, that was what she was going to do.
She phoned her extravagant interior decorator friend Gloria Steinway and asked her if she liked the opera “Aida.”
Maybe the Met had tickets for tonight’s show.
Gloria was all flames for the idea and, yes, they got tickets.
She emoted, in her thick New Jersey twang, “Oh, dawlin’, I owe you one. I just had the woyst customer. This business is a puysonal injury suit!”
Thea went home, showered and changed, thinking maybe she had done the wrong thing in choosing blabbermouth Gloria as her date for the evening. She put on her gala dress and walked out onto the open street looking like a diva, feeling like a toad.
So, there they sat, enjoying their visit to the opera.
But all through “Don Carlos”, Thea could not help thinking of George.
Why had he insulted her?
He had claimed that she was soured and a stinker only because she seemed so sour all the time. That was not only like a bad joke. It was the worst joke.
During the intermission, she asked Gloria over a glass of “Moet et Chandon” ... why.
“You ah very funny in your oaff-time,” Gloria said. “You’re like Roseanne on speed. But at work you are Gandhi. What is that?”
“Just me in private and me at work, I guess,” she answered.
“Loosen up, sister,” Gloria said, sipping on her drink and winking at the men.
“I’ll try,” she concluded.
The second act began and Philipp II began singing his long aria. Thea heard him vocalize, but couldn’t really locate the tones. George kept popping or pooping up in her mind, reminding her of being a stinker.
Stinking of what? Bad perfume?
Afterwards the two ladies took a cab to a side street Off-Broadway and sat feet away from the Neil Simon theatre in “Tout va bien”, the sexiest little French hot-spot in Manhattan. They spoke of men, they spoke of opera and they spoke of fun.
Thea felt like shit.
She returned to her Park Avenue flat at two a.m. She was drunk and decided to call in sick the next day. She woke up the next morning with a hangover and her feelings about George just as intense as before.
Despite her promises of calling in sick, Thea went to work.
After all, she was the CEO. Her thoughts wandered as she rode the subway off to the centre of town. What was it with George?
Stepping into her office, she told her secretary Debbie to bring her hot, black coffee and sat back in her chair overlooking Central Park. It was a grand view, but her head felt like a tank of jellyfish dancing the macarena.
Ay-ay, cuando las medusas beber demasiado la cabeza me duele bastante mal.
What a drag. It was difficult being the boss when you, in your mind, had just spent the morning punching your employee in the guts.
Debbie came in with her coffee and left without even looking at her.
After a few moments, having thought it over four times, Thea called Debbie in again.
Debbie arrived from her desk outside with the look of someone being called to the electric chair.
Thea smiled.
“Hi, Debbie!”
Debbie looked at Thea for the first time and now Thea saw that it was contempt that brewed in her eyes.
“Good morning, Miss Hennigan!”
“Do I ... suck as a CEO?”
“What?”
Debbie looked confused.
“No, you’re good. Just very ... adamant!”
“Can you do me a favour?”
“Anything you wish!”
Thea really didn’t know if Debbie would do this ‘thing’ willingly.
Okay, she wasn’t going to ask her to play strip-poker.
All she wanted was honesty.
“Tell me something!”
“Anything!”
“What happened yesterday?”
Debbie opened her eyes another millimetre and now looked at her boss like someone about to burst out laughing.
“You punched Mr. Goldman in the stomach,” she answered.
Thea nodded and looked down.
“Was that a problem?”
“For whom? George? Me?”
Thea shook her head. “Was it a problem that George insulted me, his boss, and that I, his boss, punched him in the stomach.”
There was no response.
“You can be honest, Debbie,” Thea said. “Your job is not at threat here. George will not be fired. I just ... wanted to know how I can deal with this kind of tension in the future. George crossed the line and I bit back.”
Debbie breathed in and as she did, her breath shook a bit.
She hesitated and stopped.
“Miss Hennigan,” she began, albeit apprehensively. What followed was a speech that seemed just as rehearsed as it seemed nervous. It seemed to spray out of her like a gargoyle spitting vomit on a pedestrian community of linguists. “I know that you and George have been amorously involved for some time now. After all, it has not escaped anyone that you two are not in for a relationship, but actually have what is called a series of one-night-stands. Yesterday, however, was a series of insults. So, yes, it was a problem. We all work hard, Miss Hennigan. We try to keep this company working on an efficient level. We are one of many companies in the complex, but we take pride in keeping things orderly and professional along side many others like us. George crossed the line when he told you ... what he told you ... you should’ve loosened up. George crossed the line when he said that you are a stinker. I would never do that. I couldn’t. Not only ... did he do that ... here, where you obviously have made out, embarassing yourself silly many times. No, he did it in the conference-room in front of me and six other people. So, why is it that a walking dick has the right to do things to you and I don’t? Because he sometimes blows your whistle? Because we are women and he is a man? You should’ve kept your feelings to yourself. A boss does, you know. She keeps stuff to herself.”
Thea sat back and took a long look at Debbie.
“Debbie. Thanks. I never asked you what your feelings were. You’re right, but still ... I just asked if it was a problem. Anyway, you have answered my question. What do you propose I do about it?”
Debbie shook her head, wreathing her hands like a school girl.
“I am in no position to tell you anything, Miss Hennigan, only that you must keep your affair with George out of this work place. It has reached a climax that will topple the firm. Maybe. This firm is efficient and ... popular. However, the company climate is also an issue. We have to be happy here. If you do continue seeing George privately, do so honestly ...”
Thea paused.
“I will be honest with George.”
“Good thing.”
“You can go.”
Debbie left, nodding.
So, Thea remained sitting there in her office, thinking about her quarrel, about her dramatic reaction to George’s comment and suddenly remembered that she had been in a bad mood yesterday morning before the punch. She had been complaining about everything. Why? She had set the alarm on the wrong time. That had made the day start off wrong. Then the car wouldn’t start, because she had failed to take it to the car mechanic. The auto repairman came and started the car for her, but once on the road she had been stopped at every red light.
No wonder that her mood hit rock bottom when she saw George and her cynical, provocative exterior. It had to go wrong. They ding-donged back and forth the entire day until it exploded in a punch. So simple. So complicated.
“Debbie,” Thea said, pushing the button on her intercom.
“Yes, m’am?”
“Tell George to come in here, won’t you?”
There was a long pause before Thea secretary Debbie answered.
“Of course.”
Thea twiddled with her thumbs while waiting. She paced the room, rehearsed lines, acted out scenarios, told herself jokes. Just to pass the time.
When George came in, it all seemed so different, so simple, so complicated.
Not bad at all.
The whole thing, the whole quarrel had been based on a simple misunderstanding.
Simple.
Complicated.
Simply complicated.
George wandered in, wreathing his hands.
The long pause was painful, to say the least.
“I’m sorry I called you a stinker yesterday,” George began. “It’s just that when you’re moody, you spread this really bad vibe around the room. That’s really difficult for the people in your staff. You mope and mutter. I guess I just said I meant your perfume because I was afraid to tell you the truth. And I can be pretty cynical, too, at times.”
“Okay,” Thea said.
Another pause, an awkward one, followed.
Then, Thea shook George’s hand, smiled, and offered him some coffee.
They ended up sitting there for a half hour, chatting about future projects.
He even asked her out on a date, but that is another story.
What would Gloria have said?
“Told you so, you silly New York brat.”
Ah, the Manhattan ladies keep shining, keep smiling, keep complaining, keep living, keep running, keep talking.
One thing, they ain’t.
They ain’t boring.
Thea and Gloria make you remember that.
Strange, how little things become big just because an alarm goes off at the wrong time.
George and Thea? Their affair continued.
This time, it continued ... in private and not in the conference room.
- Share this story on
- 3
COMMENTS (0)