Dinner at Margot’s by Nicholas Foldesi

Dinner at Margot’s by Nicholas Foldesi

            “We’re launching a big initiative at the Department of Commerce soon,” Margot announced. “Our agency has been tasked with collecting and auditing market data across the last five years for the entire state, and our department has been assigned the role of communicating with each of our fellow state agencies, learning what data they have access to, letting them know how we intend to collect that data, and then informing them of what we find and, as appropriate, what we plan to do with the discovered information.”

            She turned her eyes back and forth between her two subordinates gathered in her office, Katherine and Susan, both of whom had started at the department in the past few months. “Sound good?” Susan, a recent college graduate in her mid-twenties, nodded quietly. Katherine, a woman in her early forties and Susan’s direct manager, pursed her lips and cleared her throat.

            “Do we have an estimate on what the scope of this project will be?”

            Margot turned her head. “What do you mean?”

            “Do we know how many communications we’ll be writing, how many agency contacts we need, how long each phase of the project is going to take?”

            “Some communications will be written by our department and some will be written by others,” Margot responded, “Collecting the relevant contacts will most likely be one of our first orders of business. The span of the project,” Margot leaned back in her chair, smiling, “Will likely take years, keeping us busy for a while. But these are all details being worked on by our team of analysts now.”

            Katherine diligently collected notes in her Moleskin notebook as Susan sat looking between the two. “Thank you,” she said with a nod, not raising her eyes from her pen and paper. Katherine had been taken by a subtle excitement  – managing a project of this magnitude was the sort of challenge her career needed, an accomplishment that could look very attractive on her resume at a later date. Having had a plethora of downtime in her employment with the agency so far, she looked forward to a challenge that would let her display the diligence and work ethic she knew herself to be capable of and, for a moment, felt optimistic about her future.

            Katherine and Susan remained busy during the following weeks, things moving at a relatively even pace until one afternoon when Katherine received a ping from Margot to come to her office. Margot swiveled her chair around to face Katherine as she sat across from her, crossing one leg over the other as she did so.

            “Hi,” Katherine said, briefly raising a meek smile before, noticing that it was not being returned, retreating it.

            “Katherine,” Margot began, her words flat and concise, “Do you remember who we sent our last communication to?”

            “‘Metrics Needed by Your Agency: What You Need to Know‘, it went to the primary and secondary contacts of all Tier 2 agencies in the first cohort,” Katherine returned like she was reading from a flashcard, hoping to highlight her attention to detail.

            “Yes,” Margot answered with a nod, “Did you check the recipients before you sent it out?”

            “Susan handled the distribution list,” Katherine returned immediately.

            Margot pursed her lips. “Susan is an analyst,” Margot replied, “You should be checking her work behind her.”

            Katherine sank in her chair. She felt something descend in her gut. “What happened?”

            “Half of the contacts who received that communication were in the second cohort,” Margot informed plainly. “Our liaisons were getting calls all morning. We had just told them last week that they weren’t getting their data pulled for months and now they’re confused. We’re going to have to write a second communication explaining the situation to them and go back to the one from earlier to make sure it gets to the right people.”

            “Of course,” Katherine returned, “Do we know what we’re going to say?”

            Margot crunched her face for a moment. “We have corrections we’ve sent in the past on the cloud,” she returned curtly, not letting a second pass from Katherine’s last word, “Just put together something. If we can’t have it out by end of day we’ll have to send it out tomorrow.”

            “Yes, of course,” Katherine said. Her pen, which she had brought with her though she had yet to write a single word, slid softly down her middle finger as her grip on it loosened. “I’ll get right on it.”

            “This creates a lot of extra work that’s going to clog us up,” Margot continued calmly, “Not to mention how poorly this reflects on the agency, and, moreso, on us.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “Of course,” Margot said, waving her fingers through the air dismissively, “I’m sure you understand the gravity of the situation,” and, swiveling in her chair again, turned away from Katherine to face her computer screen. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

            Katherine exited Margot’s office with dismay drooping down her face and, glancing over the divider to Susan’s cubicle, briefly met eyes with her subordinate before Susan furtively shot her glance away and back onto her screen. In that moment, Katherine recalled that she had actually seen Susan get up and go to Margot’s office an hour or so before she had been called. Returning to her own desk, Katherine started scanning through instant messages to confirm that she had, in fact, asked Susan if the distribution list was correct, and that Susan had, in fact, told her yes, Katherine having even asked her if she had double checked. Katherine squinted her eyes, trying to weigh whether bringing this up would just make her look worse or not before her train of thought was interrupted by a sudden presence approaching from behind.

            “You’re working on that correction communication, right?” Katherine heard from over her shoulder. Margot had emerged from her office while Katherine was buried in her chat history, resting her left hand gingerly on the divider.

            “O-of course,” Katherine returned with an unintentional stutter, navigating to the cloud and burying her face deeper into her monitor, trying to avoid Margot’s gaze. Though Katherine didn’t see it, a tiny smirk crawled up the corner of Margot’s mouth as she watched Katherine buckle, held for a mere moment before she retreated her hand and went about her way.

            Later that month, Katherine and Margot sat side by side through a meeting attended by upper and middle management under Elton Anderson, one of the project’s three executives. The meeting, Market Data Collection Initiative Phase One Department Checkpoint,occurred  quarterly for Elton to get updates on the progress each department had made on the various projects which they had been assigned . Having gotten updates from IT, Development, and Security, Elton turned his eyes to Margot.

            “Communications,” he announced, his fingers laced together as his hands covered his face. His elbows, sheathed by the pitch black fabric of his blazer, rested on the white, lineolated surface of the organization’s board room table. From the head where Elton sat to the opposite end, there were seven seats on each side, and Margot and Katherine sat at the very end of the table from Elton’s right, Katherine collecting notes on her laptop at the seat closest to the edge, guarded from Elton’s gaze by Margot. “I understand we had a bit of a hiccup in the last quarter  with some of the recipients on one of our communications.”

            “Yes sir,” Margot returned, her hands clasped together neatly in her lap. On this day, she was wearing a saffron dress with a pearl necklace resting on her pronounced collar bones, her smooth, tone legs crossed together and visible to Katherine beneath the dress’s hem.

            “And has any initiative been taken to prevent a mistake like this from happening in the future?” He moved his hands away from his face, looking at Margot directly.

            “Yes sir. Katherine has created a checklist to be used prior to sending any communication and we’ve developed a new tracker that captures each distribution list.” Neither of these were true.

            “Wonderful,” Elton returned unemphatically, now detaching his hands from one another and laying his arms flat against the surface of the table. His left hand picked up his pen and began tapping it against his notepad. “And how do you know that these initiatives will prevent this issue from occurring again?”

            Margot, not moving her body an inch, inhaled slightly in the same moment as she opened her mouth, then delivered, “The checklist will be used as a measure to ensure that we have the most accurate possible information regarding communication recipients prior to distribution. The tracker will capture each distribution list alongside the role of each recipient at their organization, as well as the rationale for selecting the recipients we have so that, in the case there are any issues with a distribution list moving forward, we have the information captured to look back on and pinpoint what went wrong.”

            “Great,” Elton said. He tapped his pen against the table’s surface thrice more. “When will I be able to see these metrics your department has developed?”

            Margot turned her head slightly to her left, inhaled through her nostrils, and nodded. “End of week.” It was Wednesday afternoon.

            “Perfect,” Elton said, jotting something into his notebook. “Readiness?”

            Katherine worked late that night and the next to have the documents Margot spontaneously invented created and polished for Elton’s review Friday, her and Margot deliberating in Margot’s office for roughly an hour on the email they would send Elton to deliver the requisite documents with. It constituted a paragraph, designed to be as cordial and inoffensive as possible, and was answered that Sunday evening with a simple, “This is good. Thanks.“

            A few weeks later, in discussions Katherine was not a part of, it was decided their department needed more “hands on deck“. An intern was hired, a young man named Jesse, who was twenty five, held a Bachelor’s in English, and had just come back from a summer stint serving as lifeguard. The first thing anyone noticed about Jesse, aside from his jawline, was that he was in exceptionally good shape. His hair was dirty blonde, always kept short and clean, and, though a person of few words like Susan, he held an amicable demeanor, his resting face always set in a small, simple smile, as if he possessed some innate sense of wellbeing granted only to a privileged few.

            While Katherine was herself charmed by Jesse’s good looks and pleasant affect initially, she could not help but notice, over the initial weeks of his employment at the Department of Commerce, that Jesse did virtually no work. At times, when she attempted to train Jesse on the rote minutia of her role, hoping to offload some of the work on Susan’s plate for him to handle, she would actually watch him zone out as she was speaking to him, his eyes glazing over mid-sentence, most likely contemplating whatever insignificant dramas constituted his personal life. Katherine at the same time began noticing that Jesse seemingly became far more animated if he were talking to Margot or Susan than if he was talking to her, and in fact seemed to spend far more energy trying to elicit attention from Susan, who seemed largely apathetic to his existence, than he did trying to get anything done.

            “Margot,” Katherine introduced one evening, stepping into her supervisor’s office. It was fifteen minutes after five and most of the department had left for the day, some seen returning to their cars in the parking lot through the window of Margot’s corner office.

            Margot, who had been looking between her computer screen and a sheet of paper, turned her eyes up towards Katherine and met her with a smile. “Yes?”

            “I wanted to talk to you about something, about Jesse.”

            Margot, holding her smile, closed her lips and nodded her head twice, signaling for Katherine to keep going.

            “He doesn’t do anything, Susan and I are doing all the work. I see him just sitting there on his phone all the time, and I’m pretty sure he’s hitting on Susan. . .”

            “Katherine,” Margot interrupted, parting her lips and showing her teeth. She reached up one hand and took off the reading glasses she had been wearing, folding the arms in on themselves and placing them aside on her desk. “Executive leadership has decided that we need an intern, in part because of mistakes which you made. If Susan has any issue with Jesse’s behavior, she is free to report that to me or to HR.”

            “Yes, but. . .”

            “Katherine,” Margot repeated calmly, holding her smile, not taking her eyes off of her, “It’s getting late. I think it’s time you can go home.”

            Katherine stopped by a Wendy’s on the way back to her apartment, picking up a double bacon cheeseburger, a medium fry, a five piece chicken nugget, and a Frosty, all of which she scarfed down beneath a weighted blanket in the comfort of her own bed. The slurry of processed muck coalesced in her stomach and, as she laid awake looking at the ceiling above, her intestines groaned, attempting to digest what had been given to them and creating a deep sense of unease that permeated throughout her body and mind in the process. In the quiet of her bedroom alone, she was taken by an inexplicable sinking feeling, like a small vole died alone in the core of her gut, and, as her eyelids began to grow heavier, her mind began to recede as she fell into sleep.

             The project continued on schedule for the following month, Katherine remaining diligent  in her efforts. She was able to get Jesse to begin sending communications and updating the spreadsheet she’d created as per Margot’s cover-up, though he continued to remain idle for most of his employed hours. Katherine, taking more and more of the workload onto herself, began enjoying the sense of martyrdom and self-sacrifice she had adorned, telling herself that she was practically carrying the entire project on behalf of her department as she pivoted from one draft to the next, producing and distributing one communication after the other. She even came to enjoy the resentment she had begun to harbor for her coworkers, lavishing in the unfairness of it all, that the Margots and the Jesses of the world could survive on good looks and charm, while people like herself had to put in twice the work for half the credit.

            Come February, Katherine was assigned the task of developing an invite to a Mardi-Gras themed quarterly teambuilder for the entire department, her and Susan settling on a green background that divided into purple halfway down with a clip art picture of a studded, glittering mask to the upper right, off-setting the text. It read;

            “To our work family at the Department of Commerce,

            Everyone on our team has been making great progress on the Market Data Collection Initiative, and we thought it would be fun to celebrate all of the achievements and milestones our team has made with a special celebration for Mardi-Gras! The event will be held Friday, February  28^th from 9 AM to 3 PM in Stuart Dining Hall on the first floor, and we will be serving lunch catered by Nina’s Deli, so be sure to bring an appetite. We will be handing out awards to honor some of our team’s highest performers, and will also have a mask making station, as well as team builders and a raffle at the door with tons of hot, tech prizes. Be sure to come wearing festive green and purple, and please know that attendance at this event is mandatory for all staff and contract personnel.

            Warm regards,

            The Morale Committee in Partnership with The Comms Team“

            Katherine arrived at the given location the day of ten minutes early, taking a seat at one of several round, faux-marble linoleum tables that sat around the dining hall. The mask making station, composed of blank mardi-gras masks, paint, sequins, cotton balls, and gorilla glue atop a fold-out table covered by a purple, polyester tablecloth, stood against the wall farthest from her. Several of her coworkers sparsely populated the room, one or two each sat at the identical round tables that spread out from her. Susan stepped in next, flashing Katherine an unemphatic half smile as she came and took a seat at one of the chairs across from her. Behind her came Elton Anderson, dressed formally as expected, seeming dour and looking to no one as he headed steadfast from the entrance to the presentation station in the back corner of the room and began speaking discreetly to the sound guy. Next was Jesse, dressed in a hunter green turtleneck that clung tightly to his barrel chest, smiling lightly as he approached his associates and sat two chairs away from Susan. More of their coworkers came after and filled the majority of the seats remaining at the other tables, the other two executives of the department filing in shortly after and taking their place near Elton.

            At 9:06, a thin, older woman with short blonde hair who Katherine knew to be from HR stepped up to the presentation station and stood in front of executive leadership, parting them from the crowd. She had a hushed, inaudible back and forth with the sound guy before grabbing hold of the microphone which had been laying aside a laptop on the wooden pedestal before her and bringing it to her mouth.

            “Good morning everywuh-” a hostile, electric shriek immediately interrupted her, blaring into the ears of the crowd from the speakers above. The other male executive aside Elton snarled his nose immediately, which the HR lady saw before shooting a hostile glance at the sound guy, who promptly widened his eyes and motioned his hand in front of him, indicating for her to take two steps to the side, which she did. The colleagues present at the round tables shared bemused looks with one another, some light chatter sifting through the room before the woman began to speak again.

            “Sorry about that.” She flashed a smile. “Good morning everyone, thank you all for being here! I know that everyone in this room has been working so” she formed her open hand into a fist, motioning it up and down once, “hard,” and again, “on this project, so first off, why don’t we all give ourselves a big round of applause?”

            The attendees applauded themselves in unison, the executives following a beat after.

            “Awesome! Thank you so much, everyone. We are nearing the completion of phase one of our,” she swallowed, “data collection initiative for the state of Texas, and just wanted to thank you all, we know how many of you have been pulling long hours in and out of the office to make this happen, and we just want everyone to know we appreciate everything you’re doing, please continue being the awesome team you are to help make this project a success. We have so many great activities planned for today to celebrate all of your hard work and achievement, but first, everyone please welcome the lovely Catherine Grimaldi.”

            The female executive, a woman who looked to be in her sixties with long, blonde curls cascading down from her head, stepped forward and bowed graciously as she accepted the microphone.

            “Thank you so much for that introduction, Deborah,” she clasped it in both hands, raising it to just beneath her chin, “It is such a lovely thing to see so many of the familiar, shining faces of our work family, and I know it has already been stated, but I want to echo what Deborah said about all of the hard work everyone has been putting in on this project, I know. . .”

            It was in that moment that Katherine saw Margot enter through the open double doors from across the room, eleven minutes into the event, in a gold, single-strap sequin dress with a man trailing two paces behind her. The man had on a smile, more slight and amicable than the confident display of teeth Margot gave her subordinates as they both approached. He was wearing a green, fuzzy sweater with a zig-zag pattern that ran the circumference of his svelte midsection, and sported a bountiful head of soft, brown hair with a full and neatly trimmed beard that ran to the bottom of his neck. He kept his hands in his pockets, the two stepping lightly, mindful not to create any additional noise that could offend Margot’s superior as they came to the table with Katherine, Jesse, and Susan, pulling out chairs in a similarly mindful fashion by lifting them from the ground and displacing them softly, intentionally minimizing the amount of noise they created, Margot two seats away from Jesse and the man directly beside her.

            “. . . and we all know that this has been an extremely busy quarter, but thanks to all of the hard work put in by our team, we are on track to complete phase one of the Market Data Collection Initiative on time, a significant feat for government work. . .” Ms. Grimaldi paused a beat here, allowing space for the one person who laughed to do so, “. . . So everyone, please give yourself a big hand for all that you’ve done!”

            The audience began applauding themselves again, the denizens of the communications department following suit. Looking over at Margot, Katherine noticed the languid way she clapped, motioning her wrists toward one another and allowing her hands to limply collide together before pulling them back away. She was certain this form of “clapping” was not generating a single decibel of the noise filling the room. At the same time, she looked at the man beside Margot, undoubtedly her husband, and watched the way he clapped, far more heartily, with one elbow pivoted into his lap as he watched Mrs. Grimaldi with the same earnest smile still on his face, as if he actually enjoyed being there. At that moment, Katherine could not help but notice that she actually found this thin, domesticated-looking man to be rather handsome.

            Ms. Grimadli’s speech continued on, Deborah behind her flipping through a presentation as Ms. Grimaldi discussed performance metrics, key objectives, and reiterated the core values of the department (Accountability, Inclusivity, Integrity, and Leadership). Katherine did her best to listen, but truthfully found the whole thing difficult to hold attention on as the speech continued for a good thirty minutes before Ms. Grimaldi accepted her applause and handed the microphone back to Deborah, who asked the audience to “hang on tight” as they “made sure everything was ready” for the next speech from Kris Seawart, the other male executive. Margot flashed a smile to her team, meeting eyes with each of them one-by-one and giving a moment for the room to fill with the quiet hum of indistinct chatter from the others present before she began to speak.

            “So sorry I’m late, everyone,” she said, shaking her head, “Rudolph and I were having some difficulties with the car this morning.” Her eyes shot over towards the presentation stand where the executives were huddled, then back to her team. “I did tell Ms. Grimaldi I was going to be late, heavens, a shame I didn’t get to hear all of it. What did I miss?”

            Jesse and Susan both shot their eyes over to Katherine.

            “Oh, she was just thanking the team, and everything,” Katherine delivered, “Letting everyone know how great of a job they were doing.”

            “Oh, perfect,” Margot said, flashing her teeth again, “Yes, so good of her to show everyone appreciation.” She looked her table mates over once more. “Everyone, this is my husband, Rudolph. . .” Rudolph stretched his eyes open and smiled at everyone, letting out a soft ‘hey’ which was barely audible, “He’s a professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas, he teaches Derrida.”

            “Is that true?” Jesse quickly asked, “I love philosophy.”

            “Yes,” Rudolph answered. He had one leg crossed over the other and had begun to wag his foot up and down. “I specialize in deconstruction and postmodernism, but I also have an affinity for many of the twentieth century French classics, you know, Camus, Sartre, absurdism, et cetera.”

            “University of Dallas?” Katherine added, “That’s near where my parents live.” Rudolph and Jesse briefly turned their eyes towards Katherine, and then back to each other.

            “Do you know Nietzsche?” Jesse asked.

            Rudolph smiled. “Oh, Nietzsche. Well, of course I know Nietzsche. The Will to Power?”

            Jesse smiled back. “Yeah. I finally read Thus Spoke Zarathustra last year in college. Very difficult but definitely worth it. People think nihilism is supposed to be this depressing thing, like you just say ‘oh, life has no meaning’ and,” he lifted his hands in the air, “Just throw up your hands and give up and roll over. Nietzsche actually wanted people to find their own meaning in life. That whatever you thought was the most valuable thing to do you should pursue, because there’s no one objective ‘end goal’ to life.”

            Rudolph nodded, a soft smile still resting on his face. “Yes, you can’t really call yourself a serious academic when it comes to philosophy without having read some Nietzsche. And I assume you’re familiar with Camus?”

            “Yeah, didn’t he write The Stranger?”

            Rudolph nodded emphatically. Katherine leaned back in her chair, her eyes fixed on Rudolph, beholding the soft, well-spoken man before her. In all her years, she had never managed to find a man so articulate and well-groomed, typically having settled for short term relationships with men who were slovenly, poorly manicured, and generally far less socially fluid. As she watched him speak, she admired in him not only how precise he was in his speech, but the warmth with which he spoke to Jesse, and the enthusiasm with which he discussed his field of study. Resting her elbow on the table and her chin in her palm, she suddenly became aware of how long she had been watching Rudolph and, thinking then of what Margot might make of it, her eyes slid compulsively to face her direct superior who, she discovered, had already been watching her, her lips also raised in a soft, resting smile and her clear, glassy eyes held on Katherine. Katherine immediately darted her eyes away, choosing to look over at the executives continuing their discussion.

            “Yeah,” Rudolph answered, “A classic. I was just asking cuz I was wondering what you thought of Absurdism.”

            “Absurdism?” Rudolph nodded, and Jesse continued, “Isn’t that, like, life has no meaning, but instead of being sad about it, you think it’s cool and fun?”

            Rudolph smiled and nodded emphatically. “Yeah, basically.”

            “Yeah, that’s cool, I can feel that, in a way. . .” Jesse paused a moment as he trailed off. “So, you said you majored in Decomposition?”

            “Deconstruction,” Rudolph returned, “Popularized by Jacques Derrida in the 1960’s.”

            “What’s that?”

            “Basically,” Rudolph began, uncrossing his legs, leaning back in his chair, then recrossing with the opposite leg over the other as his eyes moved up towards the ceiling, “Deconstruction proposes that all social relations between people are composed of logical structures based upon binaries. . .” Rudolph waved his hand in the air, and Jesse nodded, inviting Rudolph to continue. “Like, male, female. . . good, evil. . . higher, lower. . .” In this moment, the members of the table all faced Rudolph, feeling that the floor had opened up for him to present his case to them.

            “Essentially, for these binaries to function as such. . .” he had his elbow rested on the table, his palm tilted towards the ceiling, “As binaries, they have to be in some sense interdependent. So, male and female are both genders, good and evil are both judgements of morality. . . The point being, for two things to be considered opposite, there must also be some common ground between them. Ideas must share a quality in common in order to be opposite.”

            Jesse nodded along, watching Rudolph intently as he continued. “So, the next notion is that of Differ’ance. So if I say tree,” he cast his hand out towards Jesse, who nodded again, “Imagine a tree,” and again, “So when I say tree, I imagine a tree, and you imagine a tree, but odds are, we don’t imagine the exact same image of a tree.” Rudolph now set his other elbow against the table and leaned forward, pointing both hands towards Jesse. “So each word approximates whatever object or idea that word is meant to represent – there isn’t a direct, one-to-one relationship.”

            Rudolph leaned back in his chair again, folding one arm into his lap as the other went into the air, pieroting along with the cadence of his voice. “So that’s the difference, or Differ’ance, it’s that ambiguity or dissonance between the signifier, in this case a word, and the signified, being whatever the word is intended to represent.”

            “That’s interesting,” Jesse said, leaning his own elbow against the table and stroking his chin, “I’ve never thought of language that way, but I guess that’s true. And that’s why we have so many misunderstandings, because two people can hear the exact same thing and walk away with totally different interpretations.”

            “Yeah,” Rudolph said, smiling, “Exactly.” He again rested his elbows on the table, leaning back in as he straightened out his fingers and pointed his hands towards the sky, bobbing them up and down as he continued, “So that’s where Deconstruction comes in, essentially. Because our society is founded on implicit understandings of meaning, particular social roles assigned to individuals based on gender, class, et cetera, because of that Differ’ance, or that ambiguity in meaning, the ‘social contract’ we all subconsciously obey is always up for reassessment, for renegotiation.”

            Jesse continued stroking his chin. “Very interesting. . .” he said, opening space for another pause before he thought of his next question. “So, do you know Nietzsche’s concept of the Master versus the Slave’s mode of morality?”

            Rudolph nodded, leaning back into his chair and folding his hands back in his lap. “I’m aware.”

            “Would Derrida say that that was one of these false binaries?”

            Rudolph nodded, smiling as he did so, “I would imagine,” then he rested his elbow back on the table, turning his palm up towards the ceiling again. “Well, that would be the Hegelian argument, wouldn’t it?”

            “I’m sorry?”

            Rudolph shook his head, throwing his hand into the air. “My apologies. You’re familiar with Hegel?” Jesse nodded. “That was a concept from Hegel, the Master, Slave dichotomy. Essentially, the Master imagines himself to be superior to the Slave, being as the Slave must do as the Master wishes. However, the Master’s status as the Master is dependent on the Slave’s existence – the Master can be no Master without a Slave. And so, we imagine that it is the Master who holds absolute power over the Slave, but really it is the Master who is dependent upon the Slave to be anything at all, opening room for subversion in their hierarchical relationship.”

            Margot smiled, reaching her hand behind Rudolph and rubbing the back of his shoulder reassuringly. “That’s my Rudolph,” she said to the table, then leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. “Well, that would be the Hegelian argument,” she repeated, shaking her head back and forth teasingly with a smile and performative pomp, then reached to scratch the back of his head as he gazed into her eyes. Katherine watched with interest as she noticed a particular joy, a sudden boyishness that filled Rudolph, contradicting the air of intellectual seriousness which he had held just moments ago as he smiled back at Margot, happily beheld in the gaze of his lover.

            “Hel-” was then heard from the loud speaker, promptly followed by another sudden shriek, which came to a quick end as the HR lady, who everyone at the table had by then turned their gaze to, once more stepped out from under the speaker overhead. “Hello, everyone. Thank you all so much for your patience. Thanks again Ms. Grimaldi for that lovely speech just a bit ago, and everyone please give a round of applause for Mr. Seawart, who will be discussing our plan moving forward for Phase 2.”

            Everyone applauded, and Katherine watched Mr. Seawart step up to the stand, bow to Deborah as he took the microphone from her hand, and try to flash the sincerest smile he could manage to the audience as their applause died down to make room for his voice. His face was stern, with deep lines etched into his forehead and cheeks, though he was only in his forties, and he began to speak at length about the agencies they were partnered with, the benefits their efforts would bring to the taxpayer, and the importance of each employee’s contribution to the whole. Katherine however, in spite of her best efforts, found the entire thing to be rather dry and difficult to keep up with, and spent the duration of the speech zoning out, here and there fixating again on Rudolph’s face and admiring the boyishness with which he dangled one leg over the other, letting his foot sway from side to side, and the softness and earnestness in his face. She imagined him to be a kind, sensitive man, and, allowing her mind to drift, wondered what he could possibly have in common with a person like Margot.

            The remainder of the teambuilder went by without much alarm, Jesse and Rudolph continuing to carry most of the conversation as Margot watched admiringly and Susan sat by aloofly, only ever speaking if someone else spoke to her. Katherine did at one point make a mask, but it did not place among the winners (all from other departments) who received a Department of Commerce lanyard for third place, a laptop case for second, and a fifty dollar gift card for a local steakhouse for first. At one point, participants were encouraged to write three questions on individual slips of paper and to walk around asking their questions to each other, at which point they would exchange the slips of paper with the questions they’d just asked to go share that question with someone else. Katherine wrote “What was your favorite childhood memory?”, “What is something you’re passionate about?”, and “What is the name of your celebrity crush?”, the last of these being one she held onto and asked to no one, realizing that she could think of only a handful of celebrities by name and was remiss to know anything about her coworkers’ sexualities. When the event ended at 3 PM as promised, everyone was dismissed from work early for the day as an additional treat, and Katherine bid the rest of her department adieu before driving home to enjoy a microwave dinner and an episode of The Sopranos. In the days that followed, Katherine would overhear a conversation between coworkers in Accounting that the entire event, to include utilities, materials, and the time of each employee present, cost the state of Texas just shy of $220,000.

            March continued uneventfully, the first phase of the Market Data Collection Initiative wrapping up smoothly and, on the Thursday of the third week after the team builder, all staff received an email asking them to come to the break room at 2 PM. Katherine mosied with the bulk of her colleagues to the requested location that afternoon to find balloons on the ceiling and ice cream cake sat on the wooden table to the right of the entrance, “CONGRATULATIONS TEAM!” spelled out in multi-color paperboard letters across the far window strung from one end of the ceiling to the other. Susan entered from two paces behind Katherine, Katherine only noticing her presence once she was standing directly behind her, at which point she stepped out of the way to give her room to come in, Jesse following shortly behind.

            “Oh, sweet, cake,” Jesse said to the air in front of him, stepping closer to the break room’s sink opposite of the wooden table. “I guess I can swing a small piece, just for this occasion.” Katherine, observing Jesse’s youth, beauty, and defined physique, experienced a spike in cortisol upon hearing this comment.

            More of the department flooded in through the door, followed by Margot, who floating over to her teammates, flashed one of her smiles, her glassy eyes washing over them.

            “Cake,” she stated redundantly, looking to the store bought mound of sugar before them. Deborah, who had been the master of ceremonies during their recent teambuilder, was standing before the table, a stainless steel pie server in her hand, cutting slices out of the cake and serving them on small, styrofoam plates with polite cordialities to the colleagues who approached her.

            “Are you excited?” Margot asked her team. Katherine attempted the most genuine smile she could muster.

            “Looks good,” Susan stated.

            “I was thinking I could maybe swing a small piece,” Jesse repeated for Margot to hear.

            “Of course,” Margot said, looking Jesse once over and smiling. She paused a moment, then reached out her hand, setting her fingers softly on the air in front of Jesse’s shoulder. “Oh, you know, I was thinking. . .” The others turned to face her, Susan and Jesse nodding.

            “Jesse, you and Rudolph were having such a great conversation at the department meeting last month, I thought, to continue the celebration of a job well done, why don’t we all have dinner together? Rudolph and I can host at our place.”

            Katherine felt a hushed anxiety perk up in her. Certainly, it was normal for colleagues to go out for dinner and drinks after work on occasion. She was not certain how normal it was for people to go for dinner at their boss’s house, but, nonetheless, she was in no position to protest, as she imagined doing so could embarrass Margot, something she would certainly pay for in some form or fashion later down the line. And, in spite of her unease, she did also possess a certain curiosity to learn more of the way Margot, always dauntingly enigmatic, lived in her personal life, and to learn more of the nature of her relationship to Rudolph.

            “That sounds like a lovely time,” Katherine said, trying to sound as sweet, as pleasant, as demure as she could possibly muster. Margot smiled.

            “Sure, that sounds great,” Jesse said, his mouth assuming an amicable, resting smile.

            “Why not?” Susan delivered flatly, looking at none of her colleagues, her eyes fixed on the cake before her instead.

            “Lovely,” Margot said, stretching the corners of her mouth out once more and twice blinking, “I’ll coordinate with Rudolph and get back with you all about a date and time. It should come to your email. Would a Friday night work for everyone?” Everyone nodded. “Perfect. Looking forward to it!”

            Margot then stepped towards the table, leaving room for her subordinates to follow close behind, each procuring a slice of cake from Deborah, Jesse asking for only a half slice as promised. The team members from there all made polite chit-chat with their colleagues as they enjoyed the reward given for their labor, then disposing of their plates and plastic forks into the ten gallon, black plastic trash bin in the corner beside the door and returning to their desks to finish out the day’s work. Margot’s promised email came the next day, inviting them all to dinner at her and Rudolph’s home at 7 PM, two Fridays out, complete with her address.

            The night of, Katherine made the twenty minute drive from her apartment to Westover Hills, led by her GPS the entire way. It was dark and raining and she nearly had a collision on the way over with a white 2012 Toyota Tacoma that was running a red light and came to a grinding halt in the middle of the intersection, reaching a full stop only a foot or two away from t-boning her as she was making a left. Katherine shrieked out a “Fuck!” alone in her car as she swerved slightly to the right in the midst of her turn, luckily making it onto the perpendicular road without colliding into anyone. Making it to Margot’s neck of the woods unscathed, she entered the wooded neighborhood with its cobblestone barrier walls, fitted stone driveways, and miniature mansions peaking out at her from behind the trees, looking to the windows alight from the activities of, she assumed, happy families flourishing therein. She made a right, a left, and another right, navigating deeper into the neighborhood where the woods grew thicker and the light grew darker, until she came upon a long driveway of grey and uniformly rounded stones with a mailbox in front that bore the numbers of the address she’d been given. The house beyond it was concealed by trees from the street, and it was only after turning onto it and driving several yards that she first saw Margot’s home, three stories high with its yellowed, stucco walls, red terracotta roofing, and wooden shutters adhered to the sides of the windows. She drove up to the two story garage that connected to the house from its right, pulling in between the two cars parked just outside of it which she assumed to be Susan’s and Jesse’s respectively, before getting out and, still shaken from her near miss earlier, pacing slowly to the front door and ringing the doorbell. Only two moments passed before the door opened and she was met by the smiling face of Margot, wearing red lipstick and a pearl necklace, the gold, sequin dress she had worn to their community builder a month prior covered by a dark grey, cashmere cardigan, and she met Katherine’s eyes directly, greeting her as though she were an old friend.

            “Katherine!” she said, emphasizing the first syllable and drawing out the last, “So glad you could make it! How are you?”

            “I’m fine,” Katherine said. She, by contrast, was wearing no make up beyond a light application of foundation, an oversized t-shirt bearing the logo of her alma mater covered by an oversized, nylon jacket, and jeans. “Sorry I’m late. I almost got into a wreck on my way over here. Someone who wasn’t looking nearly t-boned me but I was able to swerve out of the way in time.”

            “Oh, Katherine,” Margot said, furrowing her eyebrows and flashing a small frown at her as she reached one hand to place on Katherine’s shoulder. Katherine noticed a glass of wine held close to her abdomen in the opposite hand. “I’m so sorry to hear that, your nerves must be stiff as boards.” Margot released her hand, turning her back to Katherine as her head remained swiveled around to face her. “Come inside, we’ll get you something to drink.” Katherine, surprised by Margot’s warmth, watched her walk in front of her before she moved to follow inside, shutting the door behind her. She felt the static from Margot’s fingers linger as she walked a few paces behind her and tried to remember the last time prior that she had been touched.

            “Rudolph!” Margot called in a sing-songy voice, extending out both vowels, “Katherine is here. Do you think you could fix her something to drink?” They were walking through a hall towards the kitchen at the other end. Katherine looked to notice a small, wooden dresser to her left that sat just outside the entryway to the den. The dresser had a picture of Rudolph and Margot on their wedding day that sat on top, both smiling and Rudolph with his eyes closed and mouth wide open as rose petals fell all around and onto them from some unknown source.

            “Of course!” Rudolph answered emphatically from beyond Katherine’s line of vision. “Katherine, what would you like? We’ve got a moscato and a sauvignon blanc.”

            “We’ve got more than that, darling,” Katherine heard Margot chime in.

            “I know, those are just the best options. . .” A brief pause. “. . . In my opinion.”

            “Katherine,” Margot began, “You have to try the sauvignon blanc. We’d just got it on our trip to Naples this Summer. It’s been aged fifty years.”

            Katherine stepped into the kitchen. Susan and Jesse were standing to the side as Rudolph shoved begloved hands wrist deep into a big metal bowl sat atop the vinyl-finished wood of the kitchen’s island. “You guys went to Naples?” Jesse chimed in, his own glass of wine held close to his chest.

            “Oh, Jesse,” Margot lifted a hand to cover her mouth. She had just taken a date from the charcuterie display laid out on the island. “It was beautiful. You have to see it.” It was becoming increasingly clear to Katherine from the languidity in Margot’s body and the uncharacteristic  looseness of her speech that Margot had already had a few glasses by the time she had arrived.

            “We got a boat tour through the Blue Grotto,” Rudolph added, eyes cast down into the metal bowl at his waist as his hands continued to manipulate whatever contents were within.

            “The Blue Grotto!” Margot exclaimed. “Jesse,” a beat, “Susan,” she waved her right hand up and down at them, letting it sway limply at her wrist, “If you ever have the chance, you simply must go.”

            Rudolph took his hands out from the bowl, removing each of his rubber gloves one by one as he stepped to the silver, stainless steel trash can in the corner of the room, placing his foot on the pedal at the bottom to pop open the lid and discard his gloves. He then retrieved a wooden spatula with a red, silicone head for spreading and, using a towel to shield his hand, used the other to open the oven and retrieve a metal baking sheet covered with some manner of hard crust bread which, to Katherine, looked to be rye.

            “Cheese spread is almost ready,” he announced, consoling his guests.

            “Nice,” Jesse returned. He looked around at the charcuterie layout on the island, complete with slices of various cheeses and meats, a summer sausage, candied fruits. . . “This is so much food. Thank you guys so much for inviting us into your home.”

            “Of course!” Margot sang. She then turned her head to face Katherine. “Everyone’s done such a good job, we just thought. . .” She shook her head back and forth as she raised her hand, palm up towards the ceiling. The right corner of her mouth curled up into a smile as she trailed off, making the assumption that this gesture was sufficient to finish the sentence.

            Rudolph had by now begun spreading the contents of the metal bowl onto the individual slices of bread he had procured from the oven. “We’ve got a few of these ready,” he said, turning his head towards his fellow attendees, “Anyone want some?”

            “I believe I’d like to try a piece,” Jesse said, stepping over and grabbing one. Katherine used this opportunity to take a step closer to the charcuterie board, procuring a cracker with a slice of salami and one of what she assumed to be cheddar.

            “Katherine, how have you been?” Rudolph said, turning towards her and, upon meeting her eyes, “Oh, Katherine, your wine, forgive me.”

            “It’s okay,” Katherine assured. “You’ve been busy.”

            “Which did you want? I’ll have to fetch something from the wine cooler.”

            “What were the options again?”

            “A moscato and sauvignon blanc,” he reminded, “Unless you wanted something else.”

            “The moscato sounds good.”

            “Perfect, I’ll be right back,” Rudolph declared, and retreated through a door beside him.

            “We’ve got a wine cooler,” Margot informed Katherine, who she was now standing beside, and smiled, giving her glass two shakes in the air to illustrate. “We like wine.”

            With Rudolph away in the other room, a brief silence began to fill the air, provoking Jesse to speak.

            “Margot,” he began, “I saw what looked like a big painting in your den when I came in. What was it?”

            “Ah, The Roses of Heliogabalus.“

            “Huh?” Jesse asked. Susan, who was clutching a glass of wine herself, turned her head to face him.

            “The Roses of Heliogabalus.“

            Jesse gave pause, facing Margot without saying anything additional.

            “Would you like to go see it?” She offered.

            “Sure, I would love to.”

            Margot led the way, stepping past Katherine through an open doorway and down a single step into the den, Jesse following next and the other two women in tow close behind. As she stepped down onto the hardwood floor, Katherine noticed the ornate Persian rug which filled most of the room, a coffee table sat plainly in the center. On the wall farthest to her left was a stone fireplace with kindling actively burning therein, and to her right was a wooden bookcase embedded into the wall with each shelf filled left to right. Directly in front of Katherine, taking up most of the wall, was the painting noticed by Jesse. At first glance Katherine saw only a mess of pink, but upon closer inspection began to make out the faces of attendees at what appeared to be a party, dressed in togas and crowns, some smiling and some looking aloofly towards a few of their compatriots who lied smothered beneath a flurry of rose petals which fell from above. Margot stepped ahead of the others, looking up to the left and the right as she scanned the portrait, which, stretching out to either side of her and reaching almost to the ceiling, must have been several yards long, before she turned on one heel to face her compatriots and smiled.

            “The Roses of Heliogabalus,” she reiterated, raising the hand that held her wine glass, “Painted in 1888 by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.”

            “Nice,” Jesse admired, stroking his chin. “What is it about?”

            Margot turned her head back and up to look the portrait over once more. “Heliogabalus was a teenaged boy who ruled Imperial Rome as emperor for a very brief few years. . .” She turned the rest of her body to face back towards the painting, looking it over as she spoke slowly. “His reign ended with his assassination. Most recorded history surrounding Heliogabalus is disputed as highly exaggerated if not outright fabricated. Sir Lawrence’s painting depicts one such account where Heliogabalus invited friends to a dinner where rose petals were released onto them from above as a surprise. The legend goes so far as to say that some died, suffocated under the weight of the pedals, but that detail, of course,” Margot paused, taking a sip of her drink, “Seems unlikely.”

            “So what made you want to get this painting?” Jesse asked, balancing his glass between his fingers. Margot turned back to face her guest, smiling and tilting her head as if delighted by the question.

            “This is my favorite painting,” Margot clarified. She then looked towards Katherine, meeting eyes with her briefly, before turning her gaze back to Jesse. “When you came in, did you notice the picture of Rudolph and I?”

            As if conjured by mention of his name, Rudolph appeared just behind Katherine and Susan, having come through the kitchen and holding a glass of wine in each hand.

            “Katherine,” he said, getting her attention as he gave a slight bow and handed the glass off to her. As he did so, his fingers briefly brushed against hers and Katherine, somewhat instinctively, automatically shot her eyes towards Margot to find her gaze already fixed on her, the same smile she always donned painted over her face.

            “Rudolph, darling,” Margot said, turning towards her partner, “Would you be so kind as to fetch the picture from our wedding day?”

            “Of course, darling,” Rudolph answered, and quickly scurried away through the door on the opposite side of the room, reappearing moments later with the small portrait Katherine had observed as she’d entered in hand.

            “What did you want with it?” he asked, stepping around the corner of the coffee table to come closer to his wife and her guests.

            “Oh, I was telling Jesse, but I suppose everyone could see it. He asked about the painting.”

            “Ah, the roses,” Rudolph returned, and he handed the picture in its frame to Jesse, who lifted it to his eyes and smiled.

            “So you had all these rose petals come down on you during your wedding day, just like in the painting?” he asked.

            Margot, delighted, answered, “Yes, isn’t it lovely?”

            “Yeah, definitely,” Jesse returned, turning the picture over in his hand as his eyes stayed on it, “So this painting really must mean a lot to you?”

            Margot stepped over to her side, pacing thoughtlessly, “Yes, ever since I first saw it at seventeen. . .” She trailed off, balancing her wine glass back and forth between two fingers. “Rudolph, darling,” she emoted, and Rudolph’s ears perked up, “I’ve run out of wine. Could you fetch me another?”

            “Of course, darling,” Rudolph repeated, and came at once to retrieve Margot’s glass and disappear into the kitchen.

            “Rudolph is so kind. . .” Margot stated aloud absent-mindedly, and then, remembering again her last thought, continued, “It’s been said of Heliogabalus that he,” Margot tilted her chin up towards the ceiling, delivering the next lines with performative pomp for entertainment, “‘abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury’,” she paused for effect, looking to Jesse directly, turning her head and smiling, “Leading an ‘unspeakably disgusting life’,” to which Jesse smirked. “Katherine, Susan, have you had a chance to look?” she said next, looking towards both mentioned members of the audience she had cultivated. Susan smiled insincerely, and her and Katherine each took the picture one by one and held it in their gaze momentarily.

            “Should I take this back to the entryway?” Katherine asked after her turn.

            Margot waved her hand in the air dismissively. “Just set it on the coffee table, thanks,” and Katherine did so.

            “Here you go, honey,” Rudolph said, returning from the kitchen and handing off a freshly filled glass to Margot.

            “Thank you, baby,” she returned, smiling at Rudolph and, lifting the wine glass just above her head, leaned in to kiss him.

            “So, Rudolph,” Jesse started, walking past the couple to the bookshelf on the wall nearest to the kitchen doorway, “This is quite the library that’s been built up over here. Am I right to assume this is yours?”

            “Mostly,” Rudolph answered, smiling. “A few are Margot’s.”

            “Oh, nice,” Jesse said, running his index finger down the spine of a copy of The Republic. “Margot, which ones are yours?”

            “Oh, nothing much,” Margot returned, scrunching up her face and shrugging her shoulders, “Just a few cooking books and such.”

            “I think she’s got a copy of The Necronomicon down there somewhere,” Rudolph added, a smile cracking across his face.

            “Oh, stop,” Margot said, lightly slapping him on the shoulder as the two laughed. Katherine noted Margot’s slap to be as devoid of vigor as when she had been clapping at the community builder, motioning her hand towards him and letting it limply fall against the fuzzy fabric of his cardigan.

            “Do you have a favorite philosophy, Margot?”

            “Oh, no,” she answered, scrunching her mouth towards one corner as she shook her head, “I let Rudolph handle all of that stuff.” Her and Rudolph met eyes, smiling at one another. She raised a hand to scratch his shoulder.

            “It seems you’re pretty big on history, though,” Jesse added.

            Margot nodded. “Yes, my first degree was in History, actually. Then I got my Master’s in Business Administration. . .” She raised her glass to her mouth, taking a sip. “Academia doesn’t pay.”

            “Ouch,” Rudolph said, turning his face towards her as he smiled, “Harsh.”

            Jesse smiled as well, turning to face his hosts. “Am I to take it then that Margot is the breadwinner of the house?”

            “Alas,” Rudolph said in mock defeat, “It is true.”

            “Rudolph does what makes him happy,” Margot said, raising an arm to reach around her husband, who turned a warm smile toward her.

            Katherine, who had been quietly observing the interaction from a few paces behind the couple, was overtaken by a sinking feeling in her chest. Beholding the comfort and sophistication with which Margot lived, surrounded by art and literature, supported in a close relationship by a kind-hearted and doting husband whom she found quite attractive and desirable, and remembering that Margot held a position in senior leadership as her direct superior despite being several years her junior, contrasted it all against the life of TV dinners she ate alone in her one bedroom apartment, and, beginning to grow weak, fell slowly into the couch in front of the coffee table, after which she immediately finished her wine glass. In her fall, Katherine had collided into the cushion with enough force as to elicit the attention of her hosts nearby, who turned their heads to face her.

            “Oh, Katherine,” Rudolph began at once, “Are you okay?”

            Margot released her hand from Rudolph, looking over Katherine who, in spite of her best efforts, looked as frail and pathetic as she felt. “Rudolph, darling,” Margot began, “Why don’t you go fetch a glass of water for our guest?” She began to pace slowly towards Katherine from there, Rudolph giving an ‘of course, darling,’ and darting back into the kitchen as Margot paced over to her guest, her hips shifting back and forth with each step. Looking to the wall behind her, Katherine noticed Jesse, standing by the bookcase, leering over Margot’s ass as she strode towards her.

            “Katherine,” Margot emoted dotingly. She came to the cushion immediately left of Katherine, caressing its coarse fabric with the tips of her fingers before sitting down gently beside her. For the first time that evening, Katherine noticed the dark red painted on Margot’s fingernails. “I’m so sorry you aren’t feeling well,” she continued and, here, to Katherine’s surprise, Margot reached behind her head to run her fingers through her hair, pulling the individual hairstrings outward from the base of her skull and allowing them to fall gently one-by-one from between her fingers before bringing her hand back to Katherine’s scalp to repeat the motion again, consoling Katherine as though she were her own child. “It must be that near miss you had earlier.” Katherine held eyes with Margot. She was not able to articulate the way that she felt in the moment, but she imagined it akin to the way a young doe would feel, walking to the edge of its forest home and seeing human beings for the first time on the outskirts of its little world, making fires and creating civilization.

            “Here you go, Katherine,” Katherine heard, and turned her eyes from Margot to see Rudolph standing a few inches behind her, reaching to hand her a glass of water, which she took and cradled at her chest.

            “Rudolph,” Margot said, turning her head up to face her partner. Katherine noticed that Margot’s hand had begun firmly gripping her ankle. “Why don’t you show Jesse and Susan our home gym?”

            “Certainly,” he responded, “Does that sound good with you all?” He looked to the two, who each nodded their heads to him, and soon the three disappeared from the room, all shuffling out through the door to the kitchen behind Katherine.

            Margot reached her fingers back to Katherine’s scalp, scratching the back of her neck as she continued to hold eyes with her. “Have some of your water, darling,” Margot instructed. Katherine brought the glass to her mouth and took a sip. “That was quite the fall. Are you feeling any better?”

            “Yes, thank you,” Katherine responded. An inarticulable mixture of feelings had begun to well up within her. While there was something decidedly strange about the familiarity Margot was showing her, which seemed quite inappropriate to their working relationship, she simultaneously had no urge to resist it, feeling comforted by the touch and attention she was receiving. Looking into Margot’s glassy, green eyes, she felt for a moment that she was really being seen, and she started to notice how rarely she ever felt seen. From the moment she got up, through all her work day, through the time she spent alone in her commute, to the moment she went to bed, no one saw her. Even when she visited her parents, when her mother would ask her if she had been on any dates or when she was settling down, others were only ever interested in who Katherine could be for them, but, in that moment, she felt as if Margot could see right through her, that she knew exactly what Katherine felt, all of her dreams, desires, and disappointments, and however strange Margot’s closeness to her seemed, Katherine began to want more of it, to open herself to her completely, to let Margot see the things she had kept buried inside for years.

            “I didn’t know you liked history,” Katherine perked up.

            Margot smiled. “Yes, yes, my first love. . .” She paused her hand, steadily cradling Katherine’s skull as she looked her up and down. Katherine began to hone in on the details of Margot’s face, the cleanness of her skin, her high cheekbones . . . As she stared longer, she began to notice the places on Margot’s lips where the dark red lipstick she had donned that evening had begun to flake off, the individual molecules of dust powder foundation becoming more visible as they contrasted against the natural tone of her skin. Margot smoothed her hand through Katherine’s hair, bringing it out and away from her scalp again. “You know, Katherine. . .”

            “Hm?”

            “You have great hair,” Margot widened her smile, bobbling her head left and right as she brought her face closer to Katherine’s and delivered with warm familiarity, “I’ve always been jealous of your hair.”

            The comment surprised Katherine. She struggled to imagine there was anything about her that Margot would envy, but it felt sincere, and Katherine felt something in her open up to Margot, looking her over like that same doe on the edge of civilization, vulnerable, curious, as Margot’s eyes began to shut, and she brought her face closer, and closer. . .

            And her tongue was in her mouth. And the hand on the back of her head closed its grip and clutched Katherine by her hair. And Katherine felt something, something she had believed was all but dead within her come back to life, felt the ice melt off of it as it regained its senses, and Margot’s chest was pressed against hers as they kissed, Margot probing Katherine’s mouth with her tongue as Katherine gave her tongue to Margot in turn, which was sucked for just a moment before being released for Margot to lower her head and bite Katherine’s collar bone, and as she did so, whatever thing it was which Margot had reawoken in Katherine cried, “Yes, I am yours, I’ll give you all of me, just love me, just. . .“

            And Margot released Katherine, promptly sitting upright and it was over. Katherine turned her torso to see Rudolph and the two other guests standing behind her. She did not know how much any of them had seen, but Rudolph looked uncomfortable, Jesse somewhat bemused.

            “Darling,” Rudolph began, trying to hold his composure, “I showed our guests our home gym. . .” He paused. “How is Katherine?”

            “Margot, I didn’t know that you taught yoga,” Jesse interjected. Katherine couldn’t tell whether Jesse was attempting to diffuse tension or mock the situation.

            Margot straightened out her back, regaining her posture, her hands placed on the couch between her legs like a cat, and she gave them her smile, that look like she was on camera. “Yes!” She answered, then brought her hands together at the fingertips before her chest. “Namaste,” she delivered with a slight bow.

            “I’m doing okay,” Katherine said, answering Rudolph’s question. She felt a tinge of guilt sink in her stomach, the picture of the two on their wedding day reappearing in her mind. “Thank you for my water,” she thought to say, bringing the glass back to her lips for another sip.

            Margot lifted herself off of the couch, coyly taking the few steps to approach Rudolph, and brought her hand to his shoulder, squeezing it lightly before running it down his chest. “Rudolph, darling,” she began. She brought her fingertips down the fuzzy exterior of his sweater, slowly releasing them one by one. “Thank you so much for dinner tonight, and for taking care of our guests,” she gave him her back-and-forth head bobble, reaching her hand behind his head to scratch his scalp just as she’d done with Katherine, “You’ve been such a wonderful host.” She released her hand, taking a step back and turning so they could both hold Katherine in view. “Katherine has been telling me – She nearly had an accident earlier and she’s just winded. I think it would be nice of us if we let her rest some in the guest bedroom.”

            “Jesse,” she began, turning her face towards him, “You’re strong. Could you help me carry Katherine?”

            “Of course,” Jesse answered perkily, and stepped to the arm of the couch which Katherine’s back had been resting on. “Katherine, are you ready?”

            Katherine, still bewildered, nodded her head, and let out a meek, “Unh-huh. . .” Jesse scooped his arms under Katherine’s, and gently helped lift her.

            “Jesse, let me lead, I’ll show you the way,” Margot said, stepping behind the two others to reach the door to the kitchen.

            “You’ll be back soon, right?” Rudolph asked wearily. Katherine could feel his skepticism.

            “Of course,” Margot said, smiling, then stepped through the doorway to the kitchen, “This way, please!” She said in an almost sing-songy voice, and Jesse followed with Katherine close behind.

            The three went back through the hall through which Katherine had first entered and to a separate hall that ran perpendicular, then down that to a door that opened to a spacious room with green carpeting and wooden furniture, a big, king-sized bed set in the middle.

            “There, please set her down there,” Margot instructed, and Jesse laid Katherine out on the bed. Katherine looked up to the canopy, what little alcohol she’d had dissipating from her system along with the adrenaline from Margot’s kiss.

            “So glad to have you here, I’d been looking you over all night,” Katherine heard Margot say, then, her eyes still fixed on the canopy, she heard rustling, and at first did not dare to look until she could not help but turn her eyes and crane her neck to see Margot in her brassiere, having removed the dress she had had on that evening, assisting Jesse in pulling his shirt off to slide her hands down his pectoral muscles as he reached his hands behind her and undid her bra, revealing her breasts, and she saw Margot’s wide, brown nipples just before Jesse eclipsed them in his hands, and Margot leaned in to stick her tongue in him just as she done to her, and Katherine felt a sinking feeling, still thinking of the picture of her and Rudolph on their wedding day and feeling guilty again, feeling guilty that she didn’t even feel as bad for Rudolph as she did for herself, that for one moment she was Margot’s but Margot was never hers, was not Rudolph’s, nor Jesse’s, but that Margot was only Margot’s and did as Margot willed on Margot’s behalf, without regard or thought to anyone else, and in that moment Katherine felt the weight of her stomach more accutely than normal, she felt the excess of flesh of her body slide down to either side of her and she felt hideous and wretched and alone, tears even beginning to well in her eyes as she felt Margot’s nude body slam against the bed right next to her, Jesse having thrown her there as she laughed and he next crawled over top of her, having just unbottoned his jeans, and they went kissing and laughing and sucking and fucking right next to Katherine as if she wasn’t even there, as if she didn’t exist at all, and the tears in her eyes continued to well until they began to fall down her cheeks as Jesse slid into Margot and Margot moaned in delight and Jesse’s glasses fell on Margot’s collar bone and Margot laughed and Jesse thrusted and Margot’s laugh turned to a moan and

            Katherine left the room and closed the door behind her, uncertain if the two lovers she left behind had even noticed her exit, and she walked slowly back through the kitchen, where she encountered Susan. Upon noticing Katherine, Susan simply widened her eyes, giving Katherine a quiet “These people are fucked,” before walking down the hall and out the door, presumedly to get to her car. Katherine stood a moment to watch Susan’s exit, the sight of which instilled in her a rare and fleeting feeling of hope, the likes of which gave her the resolve to make the following steps ahead back to the den area to meet Rudolph.

            When she took the step down from the kitchen area to the den, she saw Rudolph on the same couch where Margot had taken her. He had procured the rest of the bottle of Merlot he’d served to Katherine for himself, as it sat before him alongside his glass on the coffee table, and he did not turn his head to meet Katherine, just staring forward at The Roses of Heliogabalus, any of the joy or light he’d had in his face gone and his cheeks stained by his tears. Katherine approached slowly, coming to sit down gently beside him before leaning in, resting her hand on his thigh, to which he turned his head slowly, his face curled into a scowl, and looked upon her with enough anger and revulsion that she pulled her hand away immediately, watching him cautiously as she got up slowly, then silently exited the house.

            The next Monday back at the office, Susan put in her two weeks. Jesse finished his internship within a month and left for an exciting sales career in the private sector. Katherine stayed at the Department of Commerce for an additional three years, writing Margot’s emails and scheduling her meetings, and seldom ever saw Rudolph again, only occasionally on instances such as seeing him out the window one time when Margot’s car was in the shop and he had to pick her up for something, the events of that evening never referenced again.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Nicholas Foldesi 2026

Image Source: Dey from Fictom.com