Illinoir

Oh, and also, you’re turning into some sort of hideous monster.

I turned back to look outside. Trammel was on Paul’s back deck, wearing an apron from our Lighthouse Living Decor series, manning the grill. Steph was standing uncomfortably close, leaning against him, laughing at everything he said. I rolled my eyes in disgust. Trammel was known to be something of a ladies man, constantly hitting on every female that worked for him. Rumors abounded of his success with the women, and what impressionable, starry-eyed 20-something housewares company employee wouldn’t want to go to bed with the boss? One of the very few one-on-one interactions I had had with him had been outside the front door of the building. I was returning from lunch and had watched as Trammel smacked the ass of his PA as she went inside only to turn around and flirt shamelessly with a sales assistant. As I approached, Trammel had winked at me and said, “It’s good to be the king.”

Certainly it was. Who was I to deny that? When you’re ambitious and lucky enough to rise to the top of an empire, no matter what empire it is, you’ve got to take advantage of the spoils, right? That it was a third-rate housewares producer in a nowhere town, making money by exploiting cheap Chinese labor and cheap American aesthetics was neither here nor there. The man owned his own company, his own multi-million dollar company and you had to hand it to him, he knew how to play it.

The part I hated, the part that made my skin crawl every day since then was that when Trammel winked and said what he said, I smiled and laughed and winked back and I had felt good about it. God help me, for a minute there I had felt flattered that Trammel had brought me into his confidence, had made a joke with me, had not chucked me on the shoulder, but had very nearly, very spiritually, might as well have chucked me on the shoulder as he passed me on his way to his cherry red Corvette. The feeling left quickly, left completely as he gunned his engine, peeled out of the lot, leaving for the day at one in the afternoon, I couldn’t deny that it must be good, that it was undoubtedly good, and should be the goal of every man, to be the king, to be on top, to have the power. But I couldn’t deny that I also felt dirty, that I needed a shower. I was ashamed that I had let him charm me, that I had let his power lead me on. And I had hated him ever since.

And then there he was, directing his charm at Steph, pretending to be an every man, pretending like he knew how to use a grill all his life, like he was like one of us, or like he could take on any task that any common man could do, and do it better, because he was that good, because he was the king. And Steph, goddamn her, she was falling for it. But I couldn’t really blame her either. She basked in his attention, glowed from it, glowed like no woman had ever glowed around me. They were at the center of my vision, the edges hazy, blurry, indistinct, as if a spotlight was shining down on them, obscuring all else. My hand, planted against the wall, shaking, unable to support my weight, and I went to my knees again. All this in a matter of moments. Down on my knees, on the floor again.