Everyone in the building knows I keep Daniel late on Fridays. The cleaning crew knows. The security guard knows. Daniel definitely knows, which is why his hands were already trembling at six o'clock when I stood in my office doorway, looked at him over my glasses, and said the sentence that rearranges his whole weekend.
"Stay. We need to go over your performance."
I am the boss, sweetheart. Not a woman playing at it, the actual name on the actual door, and Daniel is my assistant, twenty nine, brilliant, devoted, and so attracted to me that he has started making errors in reports just to be corrected. I know this because I would have fired anyone else by now.
I closed the door. I did not lock it, because the possibility of that handle turning is half the electricity in the room and we both know it. I sat on the edge of my desk, crossed my legs slow enough to count as a presentation, and opened his personnel file like a menu.
"Your work has been sloppy, Daniel. Distracted. I wonder why."
He stood there in his good shirt with his heart trying to escape through it and said, "I think about you, Ms. Courtney. I am sorry. I think about you all the time."
Honesty. Finally. I rewarded it the way a boss rewards anything, by giving him more responsibility. I told him exactly what his new duties were, standing there, in order, no notes needed. He was to stop apologizing. He was to look at me properly, the way he looks when he thinks the office is empty. And he was to show me, with his hands and his mouth, every thought he had been putting into those sloppy reports, while I evaluated his technique the way I evaluate everything, section by section, out loud.
Readers of my other stories know I have been the one caught in the bathroom, the one blushing under a man's authority. Let me tell you a secret about women like me. We learn. Daniel's technique scored very well in two categories and needed improvement in a third, so I made him repeat the third until his scores came up, which they did, beautifully, right there against my desk while the building emptied around us and the city lights came on. He takes direction like a promotion depends on it. Because, darling, in every way that matters to him, it does.
He walks out of my office every Friday at eight with his tie straight, his file glowing, and his whole body humming. Best assistant I have ever had. Worst report writer. Some trade offs an executive simply accepts.
Maybe you have a boss fantasy of your own. Maybe there is a woman whose doorway you would give anything to be summoned into, or maybe you are the one who wants a Ms. Courtney to sit on the desk and grade you. I do both kinds of appointments, and mine are a dollar a minute on PhoneBuckFuck. Consider this your meeting request, sweetheart. Do try to be on time. I keep a file.