Light filtering in through the shaded fourth story window, I leaned back against my creaky office chair, pressing my fingers against my temples in hopes it would help the words flow faster. The blank word document had only two sentences on it, the rest of the whiteness stared back at me with a blinking line.
As much as I wanted it to, this manuscript wasn't going to finish itself. Even with my screen facing the empty window and the door in front of me closed, it still felt too impersonal a space. It was work, after all.
I thought a walk might clear my head, but it was too cold and windy today. I decided that maybe something hot to drink would make me feel a little better.
I'd have to call my assistant, who I'd only had for a few weeks. Though I hated using the phone, I longed to do anything but write. I switched my browser window to things I'd written in the past, cradled the chunky phone under my ear, and dialed an extension.
"Hey, Zach? Would you be able to get me some tea?" I wasn't exactly sure what our assistants did when we weren't needing things, but I didn't think it could be very stimulating. I paused, mentally sorting through the teas we had at the office. "Uh, is there peppermint? Okay, yeah, that works. Thanks." I hung up.
I sorted through what I had on my screen for inspiration. things months and sometimes years old, with good feedback and impressive word counts. Anthology deadlines were approaching and I currently had no new content to put behind my name. I scanned over some paragraphs, eyes catching on certain buzzwords, watching the poetic prose flow into itself.
There was a knock on my door, and my tea chauffeur entered, a compact man in a button-up, rectangular glasses and jeans. He smiled with my steaming disposable coffee cup. "Anywhere?"
I paused from intermittent glancing at my words. "Yeah. You can put it right next to me. Thanks."
He placed it down carefully, far enough away from the computer. "Getting any work done today?" He asked the question with an "I know you write for erotic magazines" tone. He hadn't been working for me long.
"Oh, um, not really. It's really slow, right now. Not feeling very inspired." I reached out to drag the cup of tea closer to me; its sleeve stuck to it from the heat. I grinned, reading a particularly juicy passage. "Just rereading some older stuff."
He cracked a smile, scratching his face. "I don't know if you'll get much done, doing that." I knew this, too. I could have spent the whole day rereading things from my past; the writing was the hard part.
"Kinda awkward. sometimes, though." It was often a more than a little embarrassing to know people were reading this shit. "I assumed you didn't really have a lot going on though. Cause I haven't seen you all morning."
"Oh, I have things." I really didn't expect him to be doing much at all. I didn't know that much about assistant lives, but it probably involved more sketchy Google searches than even my job.
"I wish there was a way someone could read what I have so far without actually reading it, you know." Now, this was a far stretch. I was just surprised he hadn't left, yet.
"Oh, um," he fidgeted, "yeah, I don't really have anything I need to do for a bit." So maybe he'd lied about having things to do.
I took a breath in. Sharing work is good. "I only have, like, three sentences, or something, but I have all this other stuff written down about it. Like plot and stuff."
He sat on the futon I had to my right, the one no one ever sat on - it's wasn't like I was a school counselor or anything like that. "Yeah?"
"I'm just working on some, you know, dominance stuff. Yeah."
He sat still with his hands on his knees, catching my eyes captured by the open door.
I blushed a bit. "Could you close that?"
He closed it and I didn't really know which way to take it next. It's not like I had any more than a paragraph, plus I barely even knew him.
I expected him to find a way to wiggle out of it, but he sat back down on the futon. "What do you have so far?"
I cradled my laptop in my arms, holding it out to him. "I can't read it aloud."
