Skip was an awfully young insurance investigator, said anyone who’d ever met him, and particularly, anyone who’d ever been investigated by him. He had a last name, but no one pronounced it properly, ever, so he got in the habit of telling people that all 15 of the letters in his last name were silent.
“Cultural thing,” he’d say. “Just call me Skip.”
“Skip Something Silent” he’d tried saying for a while, but after a lot of puzzled expressions, he settled for “(JP) Skip”. He had it printed on his business card. The JP, if you pushed him on it, stood for “Just Plain”, but the Human Resources Department at the very large insurance company where Skip worked – they had everything on file – she’d put her foot down on speculations, soon after he arrived.
“It’s unusual,” said Wanda, the HR Director, “but I don’t want to appear culturally insensitive by doubting it. And God only knows what kinds of torment he’s endured already, with a last name like that.”
Truth was, Skip figured correctly, nobody – especially Wanda — was likely to seriously investigate a name they could not pronounce. Nobody wanted to look – or sound – like a complete idiot… and Skip had designed his last name with that in mind. If you tried to pronounce it, and there were only two vowels to assist you, it would sound like you were choking. Ambulances were more likely to be summoned than police. Skip had figured it all out at the orphanage, lied about his age and his past, and made his way out into the world with all the savoir-faire of a smolt braving the wide, wild ocean. And if he hadn’t grown into a salmon, or a shark, he damn sure knew how to recognize a shark. Which made him, everyone agreed, a most remarkable investigator… just… terribly, awfully young.
Skip also had, it was generally understood, a very, very long commute to work, which explained his late hours, when he was in. When he wasn’t “in”, he was assumed to be out in the field, investigating, which also had its advantages. His innocent expression evoked so many different reactions, among those he investigated, but the word “stunned” was first on the list. Along with, variously, incredulity, rage, bitterness, and occasionally, outpourings of maternal or semi-maternal emotion.
“Ruthless and relentless,” were the words used by Henry, who was Skip’s boss’s boss, the Big Kahuna himself, after one court case. “I wouldn’t want him after me. You know, his brain works sideways. Not like other people’s… sideways. We’re awfully lucky to have him.”
He’d shaken his head in amazement, as he turned away to enter a waiting limo.
Unlike Henry the Big Kahuna, Skip did not travel by limo; he travelled by subway. He was assigned to a tiny cubicle in a small room behind several doors, at the end of a very long corridor, at the top of a very tall tower. Sometimes you could find him there, but not too often. More often, you could find him sitting in his boss’s office. She was the VP of Something or Other. She was also Henry’s daughter.
Sinead was a slim, young Irish woman of terrifying efficiency, with auburn hair and the most remarkable grey-green eyes. She also had, to Skip, a distracting tendency to strip down to just her bra and panties once they were alone in her office, which was as often as she could arrange it. Their office was many, many floors and a couple of office towers away from the huge tower campus occupied by their firm, and the door was unmarked. Unmarred, also, by navigational aid – it was like their company had lost track and moved without them. Sinead didn’t worry about it, except to say it was impossible to get the air conditioning fixed, in consequence.
“They can’t fix what they can’t find,” she’d say.
“Listen,” she told Skip one day, as he studiously avoided trying to avoid looking at her. “I’ve only got this one Armani pantsuit, and I can’t afford to go sweating into it. Skip! Are you paying attention?”
“I am, Shiny,” he said, dolefully, balancing his briefcase across his lap – Shiny was his nickname for her. “Really, I am.”
“That’s good,” Shiny said. “You know it’s important to keep things professional. People might misunderstand what I’m doing, dressed this casual, if someone walked in.”
Torturing me, Skip thought, is what you’re doing. And casual doesn’t quite cut it, as a description.
But the chances of anyone walking in, short of an armed SWAT team with explosives, were between slim and none. The outer door was steel, required electronic badge access and had a massive iron bolt on the inside, while Shiny’s office, the VP’s inner sanctum, had a thick wooden door with a combination keypad.
“Um, does this mean I have to let myself in, whenever I need to see you?” Skip had asked when he first started.
“Whenever I need you to see me,” Shiny’d said, “Or if I need you – which is always. Often – I meant, often.”
“Should I knock? Only, it’s a really thick door,” Skip had asked.
“No, I’ve given it a combination,” Shiny said. “One you’ll remember.”
She’d handed him a slip of paper.
“There you go – 6969 – you can remember that.”
Skip could, and instantly learned it, but he found it… somewhat disturbing. Still, it was good to find a job where the boss was friendly like that. Informal. Even sometimes, he thought, almost… affectionate?
Don’t you go thinking like that, Skip told himself, sternly. T’ain’t professional – and you really need this job! But she does have gorgeous legs, he thought. And beautiful, beautiful perfect breasts – he’d seen them a time or two, while she was changing bras. They were –
“Skip,” Shiny said. “Earth to Skip.”
“Oh sorry,” Skip muttered. “Distracted. Mind on other things. Won’t happen again.”
Yes, it will, Shiny thought to herself, and smiled slightly. It will.
“What’ve we got today?” she asked.
“Couple jumpers – one bridge, one subway.” Skip said.
“You got the names? Particulars?”
“Yup – all the details.”
The Butler and Buttons Insurance Group – also known as BBIG – owned insurance companies far and wide. Shiny and Skip had noticed, early on, that the company truly hated to pay out to claimants that didn’t deserve it – liars, and cheats. Oh… and dead people. BBIG did their legal damnedest to never pay out to dead people, or dying ones. Or their families.
“It’s terrible, Skip,” Shiny’d said one day. “I feel so guilty, depriving people of their benefits. But that’s what they pay us for – finding reasons to not pay. That’s how we earn our bonuses.”
“What if,” Skip said one day, looking fixedly at her knees… “what if… they weren’t actually real people?”
“You mean… make them up?” Sinead was intrigued.
“No – I mean – just add them as customers, after they’re dead. You and me, we get paid our commission for saving the company money, right?”
“That’s true.”
“So, if you add somebody to the system, retroactively, after they’re dead, the company won’t pay them, or their estate, like they always don’t. Why would they? We’ll get paid for making that possible. Of course, there’s no premiums, but we’ll save BBIG a ton of money,” Skip said, “in claims admin. And legal fees.”
“That’s true,” Shiny said, and crossed her fabulous legs. She was sitting on her office couch at the time. She patted the soft leather beside her. “Come. Sit.”
“No thanks,” Skip said. “It’s been a long train ride. I was thinking of something else. Wondering.”
“What?” snapped Shiny. She wanted to celebrate the prospect of fatter bonuses, and she wanted to celebrate now. With Skip.
“We could be doing even more good,” Skip said. “You know how the company keeps us under pressure to deny a percentage of claims?”
“Yes. Yes. Get to the point,” Shiny said. “That’s certainly true.” She hated that part of it – truth to be told, she’d rather deny them all.
“What if…” Skip faltered. “What if… we arranged it so they only – or mostly — refused to pay out on the fake people we made up? Then maybe, all those other people, who deserve it, would actually… get paid? Cause we’d be hitting our rejects quota?”
There’d been a spate of recent executive memos from Henry, chiding various departments for missing the quota, euphemistically described as cost containment objectives. He’d discussed them extensively with Shiny, over the dinner table.
“Henry would be happy,” Shiny mused. “He might even promote us.”
“Legal costs would drop too,” Skip said. “All those court cases they wouldn’t need… since dead people don’t sue. It should just about cover the cost of paying people out properly.”
“Skip, my dear,” Shiny said. “You do have a most remarkable mind. Young, but remarkable. Are you sure you won’t sit down with me? No? Look, be a sweetie then and hand me that bra over there – the one behind the door.”
Skip gulped, focused hard on those uncanny green eyes, and turned to do as she asked, looking away as he reached behind him to hand her the newest flimsy scrap of something. Seeing that Skip’s eyes were elsewhere, Shiny stood up and took a step forward, so that Skip’s proffering of the bra caused his knuckles to brush across her nipples. He started, in consternation.
“Ohmigod Shiny, I’m –“
“–Oops,” she said. “My bad – you didn’t know I was moving. My fault entirely.”
He’d dropped the bra on the arm of the sofa, and Shiny bent over slightly to pick it up, slipped on the straps, and then slowly and deliberately cupped each breast as she tugged the bra cups over them.
“There,” she said, smiling at him. “No harm done.”
Don’t know about that, thought Skip, hustling out of the room. I’m gonna need a bigger, heavier briefcase if she keeps this up.
He sat in his cubicle, staring at nothing, for almost half an hour, absently rubbing the hand that had touched her breast. After a while, he casually slipped out of his cubicle and down to the men’s room, in the end stall, for a little relief.
This strategy proved less relieving than Skip had hoped. He could not achieve a result without conjuring up a mental image of some nude, fantastical woman – but the images that popped into his head, inevitably, were of Shiny herself. It was, he reflected, like trying to drown a fire with kerosene. Ramping up the frequency of his retreats left him groaning in despair. Not to mention, chafed.
I’ll get fired, he thought, or get arrested for putting my hands on the boss’s daughter. And, he reflected, his imagination, if not his ambitions, had progressed much, much further than just ‘putting his hands on her’.
“Just keep yourself in check,” he told himself. “Do what you have to.”
So, they settled into an uneasy rhythm, cranked up the fatalities from across the country, legal costs dropped, and the bonuses poured in.
Shiny, on the other hand, was becoming alternately snippy, or aggressive in her day-to-day states of undress. The office became hotter and less bearable – unknown to Skip, Shiny would crank the thermostat up to 80 degrees each night, and sometimes higher, before turning it back down in the morning. It amused her to watch Skip sweat, and watch him struggle, in turn, not to watch in fascination as sweat drops trickled down her neck, into her cleavage, and down her belly. Shiny gave up on wearing a bra, altogether, and got into the habit of calling Skip into her office even while she was stripping off her outside clothes.
Skip had begun to grow quite accustomed to Shiny’s two perfect breasts, now constantly on display in various states of perkiness, and he’d trained himself not to flinch when Shiny would sit down beside him on the sofa, wearing only the briefest of bikinis. But, trained observer that he was, Skip couldn’t help noticing that the panties themselves were becoming increasingly… brief. Not to mention, translucent.
I’m going to say something – I have to say something, he told himself, one morning. Or do something. Spend even more time in the field? There’s limits. Shiny acts like it’s natural, all this near-nudity in the workplace. But, if I give in, she owns me. It’ll be my fault somehow, if I complain, Skip told himself. Like the wildebeest that gets too far from the herd, and who knew the lions were that close? But… he thought, we’re doing so much good – lawsuits are way down, bonuses are way up… and speaking of way up, Skip headed for the washroom again, trying for a little preventive maintenance.
Before he could get through the outer door, there was Shiny, on her way in. She was wearing an emerald green mini-dress – ohmigawd those legs – and backless pumps, together with a jade necklace and matching earrings. Her auburn hair had been cut short, he noticed, so you could see more of her slender neck. Watching her approach, Skip felt suddenly, was like watching… a lioness, maybe.
And I’m the wildebeest, he thought to himself. Just look at those green eyes.
“Skip,” she said. “The very man I was looking for – come and talk to me while I change.”
Change was Shiny’s euphemism for taking off what she wouldn’t put back on.
“I’ve got my hands full,” Shiny said, “so be a pet and let us into my office please?”
Once again, Skip punched in the unforgettable code, while Shiny smiled serenely behind him.
“That’s much better,” Shiny said, as she dumped her purse, kicked off her shoes, and then wriggled out of her dress. “Much, much better.”
As usual, of late, there was no bra, just those two perky little breasts, looking more aggressively perky than usual. Skip had been dreaming about them, lately, but their reality was so much more… real. And nearby, too. Shiny was standing right in front of him. And this time, not even the briefest of panties, but just a few light auburn curls, the same colour as her hair.
“Oh gosh,” Skip said, nearly speechless. “You’re… You’re…” He’d dropped his briefcase. He bent to retrieve it.
“Notice anything else?” Shiny said. She licked her lips.
“You’ve got a… oh my – didn’t that hurt?”
“A lot, when I had it done,” Shiny said. “But that was ages ago – doesn’t hurt at all now. Here – let me show you.”
Skip dropped his briefcase again. He never made it down the hall. In fact, for the next few days, he barely made it out of the office. On the other hand, he’d stopped carrying those big ugly briefcases. And somehow, miraculously, the air-conditioning in the office got fixed.
***
Dennis Vine had been the senior litigator for the Senior Partner of Wheedle, Slice and Gaskett Partners, LLP, aka WSG, for a very, very long time. He’d been expecting to make partner every year for nearly the past seven years, and every year, as his billings increased, Dennis grew more confident that the golden day was coming. Today, on his way up in the elevator, today would be his day. This year’s tiny trough – nothing more than a slight dip or a downturn, really, to a level that had earned him a fabulous bonus two years ago – just highlighted how much he’d been a star performer on that legal team. Women and children, old ladies and tearful old men, desperate fathers – Dennis had shot them all down, unflinching, in court. And even if WSGs biggest client, BBIG, was a bit soft in the caseload department these days, Dennis knew that would turn around too.
He knocked on the Senior Partner’s door.
“You wanted to see me, Mort?”
“Sure did, Dennis. C’mon in, sit down.” Mort sounded genial and friendly. But he always sounded that way, thought Dennis. No cause for alarm, but they didn’t call him Mort the Impaler because he was easy to read.
“So, I won’t beat around the bush, Dennis,” Mort said. “You know we’ve been looking at you as partner material for a good while now, I’d guess…”
Dennis nodded. But Mort was still speaking.
“… that’s why, I was disappointed in your performance this year. Litigation billables are way down – not just you, your whole group. And the BBIG account is severely off. You took your foot off the gas, it seems to me. Lost sight of the bigger picture. That’s not the profile of a partner at all. Matter of fact, considering the increased costs, I’m going to have to let you go. Effective immediately. Sorry and all that – leave your office keys and badge with Mavis, at reception.”
And that was that. Twenty minutes later – out on the street. Dennis glared at the office complex opposite, where BBIG occupied dozens of floors in multiple towers.
That bastard Henry, thought Dennis. If he’d given us our share of their legal business, just a tiny percentage, we’d have weathered this storm. I’d be a partner now. Shit.
Dennis dropped the file box he’d been carrying, including the flowering cactus from his corner office. What did he care – he’d carefully ignored the overheard wisecracks (actually, he’d wiretapped his juniors’ offices, for evidence of treachery), the comments that referred to him as the biggest prick in that office, if you didn’t count the cactus. ‘I heard that’, he’d muttered to himself frequently. ‘You’ll regret it, when I make partner’. But now he hadn’t, and they wouldn’t, and who the fuck cared about a plant? Dennis booted the plant in its crotch, spraying dirt and cactus bits everywhere, then had to stop and scoop it all into a nearby trash bin as a cop started shouting at him.
“Fuck you, Henry,” Dennis muttered. “I’m coming for you.” He started across the road, with a great and increasing sense of purpose.
***
Sinead’s phone rang in her office, with its special “This is Henry” ringtone, just as she and Skip were finishing up a working session.
“Ahhhh,” she said. “Ahhh.” A pause. “Hello?” She panted.
“Sinead, there’s a lawyer outside my office. Rather agitated. It’s you he needs to see,” Henry growled.
“Now??” Shiny asked, and guided Skip’s head to a better angle. “Ahhhah… now?”
“Right now,” said Henry, “if you can untangle yourself from your work.”
“I’ll be… I’ll be right… right there,” Shiny said. She stood up, which didn’t help Skip’s neck.
“I’ve got to go, Skip my dear,” Shiny said. “We’ll take this up again in the morning.” She threw on her dress, no undergarments, and slipped into her heels, then she was off down the hall, looking for all the world like a slightly rumpled (but very content) lioness.
***
“Oh ho,” thought Dennis to himself, as Sinead breezed in, unaware he’d spoken those words aloud.
“Oh ho?” said Sinead.
“The old man’s sent a goddess to cool me out,” Dennis quipped.
“Oh, that’s not me,” Sinead said. “I’m the Vice President of Something or Other, and you’re the Something or Other. You’re the reason I’m here. Come on upstairs to the rooftop lounge, and let’s have a drink,” she said. She smiled, and put her arm around his waist, like they were suddenly best friends. Dennis returned the gesture – it felt like she was naked, under that thin sheath of silk.
“Tell me what I can do for you,” Sinead said, softly.
Dennis breathed deep, straightened his jacket, and stood up a little straighter. His hand strayed down to the curve of Sinead’s hip. Still felt naked.
Well alright then, he thought to himself.
“Alright,” he said out loud. She really had, he noticed, the most unusual eyes. They walked upstairs together, up a spiral staircase that led to the rooftop lounge, almost like lovers on their way to a wedding bed.
Dennis’ scream, on his way off the roof, seemed unusually brief – but that was only because Shiny had already turned away and begun striding down the stairs again, heading for the executive elevator. She had a manicure booked for later, and she’d chipped a nail.
A short while later, after Shiny’s elevator had carried her away, Skip softly descended the back stairs from the top floor. He had a camera with him, and a thoughtful expression.
***
At home, much later, Sinead kissed her Dad on the cheek and started up the stairs.
“Hi Dad,” Sinead said. “Seen Mom?”
“Oh, you know your mother,” Henry said. “She’s off somewhere, spending my money.”
“She’s good at it,” Sinead said.
“How’s your little project coming along?” Henry asked.
“Just perfectly,” she said. “By the way, we picked up another case this afternoon. Some depressed lawyer.”
“One of ours?” Henry asked.
“He is now,” Sinead smiled. “He is now.” She continued upstairs, disappearing onto the landing, and Henry shivered.
“So much like her mother,” he whispered to himself. “And she has her mother’s eyes.”
[Image Credit : Photo by Elijah Pilchard on Unsplash ]
by 
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There are some very funny bits in there, Bruce. Well done!