Office Politics is a fragment by Jack Rusher, published here Wednesday, February 11, 2004. It is part of Stories.
A perfect match.
Morgan collapsed to the sticky stretch of carpet between the water cooler and the coffee station. One hand supported her weight and the other grasped her spasmodic back as she howled in pain, adding an anguished aria to the symphony of buzzing fluorescent lights.
Co-workers ran to her from the surrounding maze of cubicles, inquiring after her welfare, trying to help her up. Dean, her supervisor, stood at the back of the assembled crowd, silently scowling.
Morgan and Dean were in the sixth month of an affair that was notable for the ferocity of the sex and the secrecy with which it was executed. Dean had made it clear to her from the beginning that it was of the utmost importance that they hide the affair from the rest of the staff. Morgan, though she had agreed to these terms, did not approve of the arrangement. She had correctly intuited that his hesitance to disclose their relationship had more to do with his lack of emotional involvement than his concerns over workplace politics, whereas Dean had convinced himself, erroneously, of the exact opposite. This demonstration was meant to cause him to come to her aid, to touch her in the loving way that he never did during the work day.
Dean hated weakness with the acuteness of someone who had an ample and much despised supply within him. This vision of Morgan as helpless and needy was inextricably tied to boyhood memories of his histrionic mother acting out for attention, memories that led ineluctably to the kind of seething anger that deadened all tenderness within him.
Dean turned and stalked back to his office, slamming the door behind him. Morgan, seeing Dean ignore her pain, thought of the way her father had ignored her for her entire life. It was the worst thing Dean could do to her and she loved him more for doing it.