Mel Goes To Hell

Inappropriate Behaviour

“Prostitutes have more jargon than I’d realised…do you know what a body slide is? Or how much they charge for one?”

Lili had to repeat her question before Mel realised she was being addressed.

“A…a body slide?” Mel swallowed, trying not to imagine it. “Should I know?”

Lili shrugged. “Probably not. You’d go and work in their industry instead of for us if you knew how much they charged.”

Mel found that hard to believe. “Oh, I doubt it. I like it here,” she managed to say, summoning a sickly smile.

Lili considered. “Well, I guess you could be a phone sex worker. One of my friends did that for a while, as a job whilst she was studying. She had the funniest stories…”

Mel almost choked, but recovered before Lili noticed. “No, thank you. I’m sure it doesn’t pay well and imagine what they might say!”

Lili dismissed Mel’s worries. “You’d have a script of what to say, I’m sure it would be a matter of what colour underwear to tell them you’re wearing today…”

Mel spluttered and was silent.

“Anyway, they don’t pay us enough here,” Lili concluded, to Mel’s relief. “I wish some billionaire would marry me and then I wouldn’t have to work any more.”

Gerry’s head popped up from behind a partition. “I think Gina Rinehart’s available!” He wore a big grin.

“Is she?” Lili asked. “Hmm, I wonder…”

Mel tried to keep her breakfast down. She didn’t think that Gina Rinehart could ever have enough money to attract her. She found herself wondering how Lili could…she shook herself and hoped she’d dislodged the disturbing image, too.

“Right, they don’t pay me enough to keep doing this. Come on, it’s time for the Christmas party!” Lili beckoned to Mel, who followed her cautiously to the fancy hotel over the road.

They both accepted glasses of wine from a passing waiter, Mel sipping hers slowly whilst Lili knocked hers back quickly so she could seize another.

Lili caught sight of a colleague she wanted to talk to and left Mel standing by the waiter. Mel breathed a sigh of relief and pulled out her phone, thinking about catching up on the story she’d been reading on the train that morning. The girl called Nona sounded nice.

…he knocked her out with what? she thought, feeling her face grow red.

“Mel!” Luce’s smile looked happy. “Welcome to the Hell Corporation Christmas party! Now, you’re not at work, so put your phone away –no working!” He reached for her phone to turn it off.

Mel swiped frantically at the screen, hoping to wipe it of words before Luce saw what had made her blush.

She needn’t have worried. He didn’t even glance at it.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you for letting me use your photos for my presentation. They were exactly what I needed!” He beamed at her.

“Ah, no worries,” Mel replied, uneasily. She slipped her phone back into her pocket.

“Have you checked your table yet?” he asked, pointing at the noticeboard.

Mel shook her head and leaned closer to look for her name.

“There you are – on my table!” Luce looked pleased, pointing, as Mel’s heart sank. She wouldn’t be reading anything else about Nona today.

Mel followed him into the hotel function room to their decorated table with Christmas balloons as a centrepiece. Luce insisted that she sit beside him, next to the dance floor, and she reluctantly complied. Lili slid in on her other side, followed by the other executives.

Mel grew steadily paler. She swore not to drink any more wine, lest she make a mistake. She sipped slowly from her glass and put it down on the table.

Looking around at the room, she wondered who most of them were. Gerry and Merih were joining a table which seemed to be mostly men, whilst others were chatting happily as they sat down.

The food was served quickly and Mel reached for her wine. Inexplicably, the glass had refilled. Another sip and she returned to her steak, careful to carve it into small pieces so she wouldn’t make a fool of herself.

Dessert was a raspberry and dark chocolate mousse that looked obscenely pink, even in the dim light of the function room.

“Oh, this is amazing,” Lili moaned, her spoon in her mouth.

Mel looked at her in alarm, but Lili took her spoon to the mousse again with a rapt expression, in no apparent danger.

Luce’s voice sounded throaty. “You have to try this.”

Mel didn’t know where to look, so she sliced a little of the pinkness with her spoon and put it in her mouth. She closed her eyes, the better to focus on the taste without the distraction of the others around her. Oh, I want more… she thought, opening her eyes and her mouth eagerly.

She finished her dessert with reluctance, reaching for her wine to wet her dry lips.

It had refilled itself again, though she’d been sure it was almost empty. She shrugged and drank.

The jukebox by the dance floor increased its volume. The medley from Grease kicked off this party as it had every other she’d ever attended. Mel waited for the song where a man declared he’d walk five hundred miles and was rewarded by the next track. The dance floor started to fill with her more eager colleagues, but Mel remained firmly in her seat.

A dance track with foreign words she was less familiar with began. The dance floor cleared quickly, leaving only eight women, who began to dance with a synchronicity that spoke of practice.

Mel felt her jaw drop. She was sure she’d never seen a version of Gangnam style where the girls rode on girl horses who evidently enjoyed the experience.

“Aren’t they brilliant?” Luce shouted in her ear, over the music. He refilled her glass as he spoke.

“I…” Mel swallowed. “Isn’t this one of those things that the company calls inappropriate behaviour? I could lose my job if someone from the Human Resources department finds out I’ve been looking at this!”

Luce laughed. “Now I know how new you are. They are the HR department – the manager is the horse in the middle. I think she’d prefer it if you just sit and watch the show, applauding loudly afterwards.”

Mel reached for her wine again. Perhaps if she drank enough, she’d manage to forget what she’d just seen her colleagues do.