The Accent of the Temp, or Lay Back and Think of England

I came to London for many reasons, the history, the experience and so on, but mostly for the accents, and to wake up next to that accent as much as possible. To fuck as many Englishwomen as I could get my hands on. I worked as an office temp, because I’d never gotten laid in any job as much as I got laid as an office temp. I brought my winning people skills and switchboard operation experience to where the accent was and waited for the pussy to descend upon me. The first two weeks proceeded as expected, a middle manager with the tits of Scarlett Johansson crying on the way out of a traumatic meeting was comforted in my sensitive American arms and then in her tiny English bed. A short but doe-eyed junior clerk (she said “clark,” gah!) crawled disarmingly across her kitchen floor to unzip my jeans.

All Englishwomen spit, apparently.

The very next week I was stuffing envelopes in Centre Point, a view across the conference table of Westminster, and flirted openly with a woman named Vera. Vera was Jamaican, but I was willing to make an exception, her accent, if anything, even more sexually charged. I asked, leaning over a stack of shareholder reports, my eyelids blinking once (once is important), if she’s like to have a drink with me. The other girl, Cheryl, an American, was in the bathroom. She agreed, but insisted on asking Cheryl along. Cheryl came along and the two of them got along famously, my prick and its sudden Jamaican obsession taking a backseat to stories of Cheryl’s graduation trip to Ocho Rios, money making a desperate escape from my pocket.

On my next assignment, handing out flyers for a cel phone company on Oxford Street, there was Cheryl again. I gave her a curt nod and smiled wide for the onslaught of pedestrians. It turned out that most of them were American tourists.

“Don’t give them away so fast,” she said.

I’d figured that I would get this over with as quickly as possible and was ready to drop the whole thing in the trash. I ignored her and kept going. “Stretch it out ,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because if you run out before I do, you’re supposed to take some of mine and I need the money, thanks.”

I glared at her and she frowned back at me. It’s not that Cheryl wasn’t pretty, it’s that there were nothing but Cheryls at home and my work permit was only good for six months.

“Your mom and dad aren’t taking care of things for you? No suite with a view of a waterfall?”

“I saved for this all year, but it’s going so fast.” She dropped her handing-out arm and engaged me straight on. “I didn’t know it was this bad.”

“The real world, you mean?” I asked, slowing up slightly.

“No, Rick, I mean London,” she said, exasperated. I’d finally pissed her off. She said nothing the rest of the day, but I slowed up enough for her to catch up to me and then to match her pace. At 2:30, we parted ways and hoped never to see each other again.

The next day, the two of us found each other at opposite switchboards at an insurance company almost entirely staffed by temps on Euston Road. I answered calls with a full American accent, taking on full conversations with some of the more beautiful-voiced claimants. She faked an English one to be understood quickly and put them through.

“Don’t you feel weird talking like that?” I asked.

“It’s just easier,” she said. “Did I just hear you give your number out to someone?”

“She seemed nice,” I said, and went back to my book, Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence. I was waiting for the administrator in the blue and white striped rayon shirt to notice it.

“You’re reading Lawrence?” the administrator asked that afternoon on the way out the door.

“Yes.”

“I haven’t read that one. Is it any good?” My pants melted for her.

“Lawrence was a misogynist pig,” Cheryl said, not just breaking the mood, but rubbing DDT all over it. The administrator nodded and walked off.

I was stuck with Cheryl and the lack of sex for two more weeks at the insurance company and then at a construction office, the two of us alone, the office having been given the week before Christmas off.

“I thought for sure you’d go home for Christmas,” she said, flipping through a Daily Mail.

“Can’t afford it.”

“Me either.”

Hours dragged by, and we said nothing to each other. At noon, I took a call from the girl who normally runs the switchboard.

“Just checking in to see how your day’s been. Have you had any trouble?”

“No, it’s been really,” I looked at Cheryl and lied, “busy, but we’ve been handling it fine. How’s your vacation?”

“My holiday’s been lovely, thanks. Just cozying up my flat before I go to my mum and dad’s.”

Talk to me. Talk to me.

“Do you decorate?”

“Fairy lights have quite engulfed the place, yes. It’s always so dreary once they’re taken down, isn’t it?”

Cheryl was on another call when a third call came in. She pointed at the light and glared at me.

“Yes it is. You don’t realize how much they add until you take them away.”

Cheryl got off of her call but didn’t answer the next. She folded her arms instead.

“Noreen, is it?” I asked. She responded enthusiastically that it was her name. “I’m sorry but I’ve got to pick up another call. Call back later, though, please. I need the company.”

Noreen giggled girlishly and agreed. I took the other call with venom, a male, and ended it quickly.

“What the hell is your problem?” I asked Cheryl.

“Your chit-chat is annoying the hell out of me.”

“Just because I’m nice to people.”

“Just because you’re nice to girls,” she said, and continued her letter.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.” She dotted an i with terrible force. “Nothing at all is wrong with that.”

“Then keep out of it!”

“I’m not in it!”

“You’re everywhere! You’re like that Visa thing, in between me and everywhere I want to be.”

“Believe me, I do not want to be anywhere near where you want to be.”

“You interrupt my conversations. You get between me and women. You’re a goddamn plague on my prick.”

“I’m a what, exactly?”

“A plague, a fungus, a catching eyesore on my penis!”

“Is that your way of saying I’m ugly, or just diseased?”

I paused and frowned. I’d gone way over the line. “Look, I’m sorry. I just haven’t been able to get a date since I met you.”

She nodded slightly at this, but seemed unable to speak.

“I didn’t mean that eyesore thing. I’m just frustrated. And it seems like it’s your fault and I just didn’t want to see your face. You know? I just did not want to see you today. You’re actually very pretty.”

She pretended to proofread her letter.

“I mean it, you’ve got beautiful lips and stunning eyes and if….”

“Fuck you,” she said, her voice a little quavered.

“And you’ve got an ass to die for.”

The switchboard lit. I took it.

“Fordham Construction.”

“I need to speak to Mr. Picketts, please.”

“The office is closed until after the first, but I’d be happy to take a message.”

“Asshole,” I heard Cheryl say.

“That’s right, I forgot. I’ll just call back, thanks.”

The light went off and I got up. I pulled Cheryl’s chair to face me, her angry eyes turning to panic, then back to anger. I took her letter and pen out of her hand, grabbed her by the hair and kissed her. I expected a slap, would have welcomed one, really. She gave a mild shocked whimper, but kissed right back, her whole face pressed hard into mine, sticky breaths exchanged instead of clean air, her lips, which really were beautiful, no matter what accent passed between them, slipping mine between them.

England disappeared. My body, resigned to cold, dreary hours with the one girl in this country it didn’t want to fuck, revved and purred, recategorizing Cheryl as forbidden fruit. The tip of my cock nipped at my belt buckle. Fresh kill, it buzzed. Cheryl split her knees and admitted my legs, her hands on my spine, on my shoulderblade, then on my neck. I cupped one of her thighs, full and soft in my palm and she stood up. I bent her over the desk. She slipped out of it. I kissed the back of her neck, my palm turning up between her legs. She bent over her chair, but it slipped. She walked to a wall. I put my arm around her, took her tit in my hand, nibbling and licking her neck at the base. She tried an office door. It was locked. I slid my other hand deeper between her thighs, pressed into the seam on her pants. She tried another door, panting, and another. I unzipped her pants, found satin panties in my fingers. Moved down.

I turned her face, my fingers pressed authoritatively into her cheek, and took her earlobe between my teeth, toyed with the earring. She exhaled, squirmed. I pressed into her. She moved again, my belt in her fingers. I pushed under her panties, felt the wet in my fingers, the slippery, swollen need in her. Was I forbidden fruit too. Did she well up with hate when she saw me this morning too? She tripped and fell to the floor. I turned her over, pulled her pants off, threw her panties and shoes in different directions. She looked up at me, red-chinned. I’d been ripping her face with my stubble. She deserved it, I thought. I deserved it too.

“Tell me you hate me,” I said.

“I fucking hate you,” she said, quickly and easily. I dropped my face between her thighs, slid my hand under her back and lifted her pelvis to me on a fist. She helped me out, put elbows down and lifted her ass in her hands, her knees bent back to her chest. I saw my eventual destination, smelled it, admired its loathsome folds, split it with two fingers, shiny dark red, and plunged in.

She tasted sweet, I imagined virginal. My tongue slid down to her hole and filled its tastebuds with her desperation. I stuck it inside a few times to tease. She took my head between her feet and pulled me tighter and up. I slipped up slowly, tongue twisting until I found the spot that made her moan and I worked it, flicked it gently with the tip of my tongue. Enemy territory seduced with the skill that my side brings to the battle. In a few minutes she began to buck and writhe and I stopped before she could finish, my cock as hard as it’s ever been, I kneeled up and pushed in.

She turned over, losing me, and I got back in just as she made herself come. I jerked and jolted, fucked her into the carpet, moving her along though she bent herself against it like a stretching cat. I’d pushed her back to the switchboard just as it lit up. She climbed the side of the desk and answered.

In an English accent: “Thank you for phoning Fordham Construction. Offices are closed until after the first of the new year. All enquiries will be answered at that time.” She hit the release button, which hung up on them.

“That’s good,” I said. “Say it again.”

“Thank you for, ungh, phoning Fordham ConstrucTION. Offices are,” I started to come, “closed until after the first….”

“Oh fucking hell!”

“…of the year.”

“Mmm rargh!”

“All enquiries will be answered at that time.”

She was pressed into the desk, her face against it, panting. I was bent into her, my hands still clutching the sides of her hips. I was already thinking of another go. The switchboard rang again. She looked to me for a sign. I nodded.

“Thank you for phoning Fordham Construction.”

I was definitely ready for another go.