Chapter 4: Office Hours
The hum of the photocopier was a dull, monastic chant in the stale closet air. Michelle hit the button, the green light scanning beneath the platen glass, illuminating the dust motes dancing like static. She’d cleared a space, shoving aside boxes of binding combs and redwell folders. Angela stood by the door, one ear pressed to the particle board, listening for footsteps in the hallway. Her knuckles were white around the spine of a thick volume she’d brought with her: The Phenomenology of the Gaped Self.
“Clear for now,” Angela whispered, her voice tight.
Michelle didn’t look at her. She hiked her tight pencil skirt up around her waist, no panthers. In the greyish light, the aftermath of Eddie, of Ben, of Marcus, of the VP, was a visible sheen on her inner thighs, a testament to the lunch break’s first activity. She turned, placed her hands on the cool metal edge of the machine, and lowered herself into a deep squat over the glass.
The cold surface kissed her labia. She adjusted her stance, widening her knees, settling her weight until her swollen, used flesh was pressed flat and obscene against the pane. A faint smear of earlier transgressions clouded the glass.
“What are you doing?” Angela’s question was breathless, part horror, part voyeuristic thrill.
“Documentation,” Michelle said, her voice flat. She looked over her shoulder, her short hair brushing her jaw. “You’re always talking about reclaiming the gaze. The female form as text. Well, read this.”
Angela stepped closer, her academic detachment crumbling. She could see everything in the sterile copier light: the neat, vulnerable wax job from the salon, now a landscape of abuse; the puffy, parted lips; the faint, glistening trail leading back to the source. It was violently, shamelessly explicit.
“It’s… it’s a powerful recontextualization of office machinery,” Angela stammered, falling back on jargon like a prayer. “Using the tools of patriarchal bureaucracy to… to archive the lived, sexual reality of the…”
“Shut up, Angela.” Michelle’s interruption was a knife. “Make 50 copies of this ruined cunt and pass them around the partners’ meeting. That’s real praxis.”
The words hung in the dusty air. Angela’s mouth opened, then closed. The theoretical had just been handed a stack of paper and told to collate. A tremor ran through her hands. She placed her precious book on a shelf, its cover facing the wall as if in shame. She moved to the control panel, her finger hovering over the glowing green ‘Start’ button. Her eyes were fixed on the image splayed on the glass—a grotesque, beautiful still life of consumption.
“Do it,” Michelle hissed, pushing down slightly, creating a wider, more obscene seal.
Angela pressed the button.
The machine whirred to life. A bar of light began its journey beneath Michelle, illuminating her from below in a rhythmic, clinical flash. Whirr-click-zzzt. Whirr-click-zzzt. Each pass was a theft of her intimacy, transforming wet, raw flesh into dry, black-and-white toner. The mechanical sound was deafening in the small space. Paper fed, sliding out into the tray, sheet after sheet, each bearing the same stark, graphic imprint.
Angela watched, mesmerized, her breath coming in short pants. This wasn’t theory. This was treason. This was truth. A wetness bloomed in her own silk underwear, a traitorous response to the absolute nihilism of the act.
The door handle rattled.
Both women froze. The copier finished its cycle and fell silent with a definitive thunk. The sudden quiet was louder than the noise had been.
The door opened.
Natasha from Mergers & Acquisitions stood in the doorway, a box of toner cartridges in her arms. She was taller, older, with a sharp bob and eyes that missed nothing. Her gaze swept the scene: Michelle, still squatting over the copier, her skirt a bunched halo around her waist; Angela, guilt-stricken, one hand still on the machine; the stack of warm copies, the top one glaringly obvious.
A slow, knowing smile spread across Natasha’s perfectly painted lips. “Ladies. Resourceful use of company assets. I’m impressed.”
Michelle straightened up, turning to face her, not bothering to pull her skirt down. The cool air hit her wetness. “We were just discussing workflow efficiency.”
“I can see that.” Natasha stepped in, letting the door swing shut behind her. She dropped the toner box with a thud and plucked the top copy from the tray. She studied it, head tilted. “High contrast. Good detail. Captures the… essence.” She looked from the paper to Michelle, then to Angela. “Though I’d have suggested a warmer tone. This is a bit cold. Clinical.”
Angela found her voice, a thin, reedy thing. “It’s a deconstruction of the male gaze through the appropriation of…”
“Oh, save it, sweetheart,” Natasha said, not unkindly. She tossed the paper back onto the pile. “You’re not fooling anyone with that grad-school bullshit. Especially not yourself.” She stepped closer to Michelle, her eyes appraising. “I heard about your after-hours desk review with Peterson from Finance. And the janitor. And the bike courier last Thursday.” Her finger, tipped with a blood-red nail, traced a line through the dampness on Michelle’s thigh. “You’re not a philosopher, honey. You’re a fucking archeological dig. Every layer tells the same story.”
Michelle didn’t flinch. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, you’re doing amateur hour in a professional kitchen.” Natasha’s hand moved, cupping Michelle roughly between the legs. Her fingers slid inside with an easy, proprietary confidence, making Michelle gasp. “You’re still worried about copies. About being seen. You haven’t fully embraced the void.”
Angela watched, paralyzed, as Natasha worked her fingers in and out of Michelle, the wet sound obscene in the quiet. Natasha leaned in, her mouth close to Michelle’s ear. “The real praxis isn’t handing out pictures. It’s becoming the office furniture. The utility. The thing everyone uses and no one acknowledges.”
She withdrew her glistening fingers and turned to Angela. “You. Academic. You like to watch? You like to study? Then learn.”
Natasha unbuttoned her own tailored slacks, pushing them and her lace thong down her hips. She turned around, bending over the same copier Michelle had just vacated, presenting herself with the unceremonious authority of a CEO presenting a quarterly report. She was bare, waxed, her skin flawless. “Michelle. Come here. Show your friend what a truly reclaimed gaze looks like.”
Michelle moved as if in a trance. She dropped to her knees behind Natasha. Her hands gripped Natasha’s hips. She didn’t hesitate. She buried her face between Natasha’s ass cheeks, her tongue lashing out, probing, delving deep into the other woman’s anus with a hungry, desperate intensity.
Natasha groaned, a low, satisfied sound. “Yes. That’s it. Service. That’s the thesis.” She reached back, tangling her hand in Michelle’s short hair, grinding herself back against the frantic tongue. “You see, Angela? No jargon. No copies. Just function. She’s my toilet. I’m her purpose. It’s beautifully efficient.”
Angela felt the world tilt. Her carefully constructed lexicon—agency, subjectivity, reclamation—shattered and rained down around her like broken glass. This was beyond theory. This was degradation so pure it circled back into a kind of devastating power. The wet, sloppy sounds of Michelle’s face-fucking filled the closet. The smell of sex and toner and dust was overwhelming.
“Now you,” Natasha commanded, her voice strained with pleasure. “Angela. Get over here. Put that clever mouth to work.”
Angela’s legs carried her forward before her mind could consent. She sank to her knees beside Michelle. Natasha shifted, guiding Angela’s head between her own legs, pressing her face into her cunt. “Eat me. And learn the taste of reality. It’s bitter. It’s salty. It’s fucking real.”
Angela’s tongue touched flesh. She closed her eyes. The taste was a shock, musky and primal. She heard Michelle’s gagging grunts beside her, felt Natasha’s thighs clench around her ears. The last fragments of her intellectual pretense dissolved in the acid of shared debasement. She sucked and licked, tears of shame and a terrifying, thrilling release streaming down her cheeks, mixing with the fluids on her chin.
It was Natasha who came first, a silent, shuddering climax that bucked against their faces. She pulled away, breathing heavily, and turned. Her eyes were dark with conquest. She looked at them, kneeling in the dust, faces slick and ruined.
“The meeting starts in ten minutes,” she said, pulling up her slacks, her composure returning instantly. She grabbed the stack of photocopies, tapped them neatly on the shelf edge, and slid them into a large manila envelope. She handed it to Angela. “Here’s your homework. Distribute them. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter. The lesson happened in here.”
She left, the door clicking shut behind her with a sound of finality.
The silence was different now. Charged. Broken. Michelle stood up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked at Angela, still on her knees, a wreck of smeared mascara and confused arousal.
“See?” Michelle said, her voice hollow again, the brief fire extinguished. “No cackling required. Just… efficiency.”
She smoothed her skirt down, a pointless gesture. She walked out, leaving Angela alone amidst the boxes and the ghostly smell of sex. Angela looked at the envelope in her hands. The weight of the papers felt like the weight of the world. She could hear the partners gathering in the conference room down the hall, the murmur of masculine voices discussing quarterly profits and liability clauses.
She stood on trembling legs. She did not open the envelope. She walked to the industrial shredder in the corner, its hungry maw gaping. She fed the entire stack in, sheet by sheet. The machine gnashed and whined, reducing the stark images of Michelle’s defiance, of her own complicity, to a whisper of confetti.
The sound of the shredder was the loudest thing she had ever heard. It sounded like something precious, something terrible, being erased forever. And when it was done, she knew with a cold, clear certainty that Natasha was right. The lesson had already been absorbed. The copies were irrelevant. She was the document now. And she was blank.