Someone Else's Shoes(80)

Joel, who had initially moved back in surprise, walks round to the other side and steadies the punchbag with his arms so that she can hit it harder, and she notes with gratification that increasingly he flinches at each impact, his body leaning in, his left foot sliding forward to give him greater purchase. Sam hits and hits until she feels something in her finally give. And then, abruptly, she stops, her hands dropping to her sides, suddenly aware of her heart racing, the trickle of sweat running down her back into her waistband. There is a silence, broken only by the creak of the punchbag swinging gently on its chain. She looks up at Joel, who is watching her, both hands still resting on the bag, as if he is not sure whether she is about to hit again.

“You okay?” he says.

“Miriam Price wants me to come in and talk to her,” she says, panting.

Joel looks startled.

“About a job,” she adds. They gaze steadily at each other. Sam feels sweat dripping into her eye and attempts to wipe it away with the back of her arm.

Neither of them speaks.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Joel says finally, dropping the punchbag.

“I don’t want to leave,” she says. They stare at each other. And then, without thinking, she steps forward, takes his face between her boxing gloves, and kisses him.

At the first touch of Joel’s mouth, Sam’s body goes into a kind of shock. She has kissed nobody but Phil in more than twenty-five years, and she is not sure even they have ever kissed like this. Everything about Joel is alien, and delicious. He smells different, his lips are softer, his body harder, his hands on her hair, the suggestion of overwhelming strength. Joel’s arms slide around her, her body melts into his, and the kisses grow deeper, more urgent, her gloved hands at his neck, her breath rapid. Time stalls, everything around her disappears so that it’s just his lips, his skin, the heat of his body against hers. Her whole body feels as if it has become molten, melded to his, long-dormant synapses springing to life. She wants to take off the gloves. She wants to feel his skin against hers, smooth and warm. She wants to wrap herself completely around him. She wants to reach into his trousers and—and—She pulls back, her breath hard in her chest, her gloves raised to her face.

And then she sees Ted. He is standing by the loading doors, his mouth slightly open as he sees them, a look of what she can only describe afterward as horrified disappointment on his kind, fleshy face.

“Joel, I—I—” she stutters. She turns and runs back toward the office, wrestling the gloves off and hurling them behind her as she goes.



* * *



? ? ?

Sam walks briskly through the cubicles until she reaches her own, her color high, her sights fixed in front of her, sure that everyone in there must know what just happened. Her body feels as if it has been ignited, as if she is radiating heat, and her thoughts are churning and jumbled.

She sits down in her chair a little shakily, staring unseeing at the screen. She has just kissed Joel. She has just kissed Joel. She wanted to do a lot more than just kiss Joel. She can still feel his mouth on hers, his tough, sinewy body against hers. She thinks of Ted’s appalled expression, then abruptly lets out a half-laugh, a strange high-pitched squeal, and puts both hands to her face, immediately mortified. What on earth has she done? Who has she become? She glances guiltily behind her, but nobody seems to have noticed. Heads are bowed. Marina is walking past with a mug of coffee. The photocopier by the fire-exit door appears to be on the blink again. She jumps slightly as her phone buzzes. Joel.

    Are you okay?



She stares at it.

I think so, she types, with trembling fingers. Did Ted say anything?

    Just that it was none of his business. He went straight out again.

You think I should go after him?

No. No. I don’t know. Maybe I should. I don’t know what just happened.



She glances up, checking to see if anyone has noticed, if anyone can sense that this is her, Sam Kemp, sneaking around locking lips with a work colleague. Was this almost having an affair? Was this where her life was heading? Did Ted think she was a terrible person? Help me, she thinks, not sure who she is actually asking. And then she jumps out of her skin because a dark-haired woman is standing in the doorway to her cubicle glaring at her and saying, in a loud, American voice: “WHERE ARE MY SHOES, BITCH?”





twenty-five


Nisha had walked unchallenged into the offices of Uberprint. The men gathered by the vans glanced at her but nobody seemed to think it unusual that she was walking straight through the back entrance. After a cursory glance at her legs they turned back to their discussion. The offices are drab, the kind of place that might sell pet insurance or drain solutions, and she wrinkled her nose at the smell of stale carpet and machine coffee as she headed down a corridor that looked like it led to the main office. A young woman lifted her head from her phone at the reception desk, but didn’t stop her, and Nisha pushed through a set of double doors, finding herself in a large space divided into gray cubicles.

In the corner of the room she saw a big, glass-windowed office containing a gathering of young men in cheap suits, while around her a vague hum of half-hearted industry emanated from the individual desks, people clicking on keyboards, murmuring into phones or sipping tea while chatting at the photocopier. She scanned the room, her bag clamped to her side. Then she spied a woman, hunched in one of the far cubicles as she took her seat, her badly tinted hair visible above the composite partitions. Nisha had stopped and stared.