The Joy of Joy

The two of them, Victor and Joy, were sitting at their respective desks on a Friday evening. Victor had just turned his computer off, and he swiveled his cheap office chair and looked over at Joy. She poked a button on her own machine and looked back at him.

She said, "Let's go out for alcohol."

Victor looked up over his flat screen, raised his fingers and placed them on his temples. He said, in a cartoon psychic voice, "Beautiful one, you read my mind. WHERE... SHALL... WE... GO?"

Joy looked at him for a second, then laughed, a sound from deep down. She shrugged helplessly and named a faux kitschy chain place at a nearby strip mall.

"Work for you?"

Victor spread his hands, palms up, and nodded in an exaggerated way, making Joy laugh again. They both got up, and he noted that his coworker picked up two photographs from her desk and put them in her shoulder bag. One of the framed photos was of an older woman, her mother maybe, and the other a portrait of her teenaged daughter. He'd noticed the school photo or whatever it was struck him as more of a glamor shot than anything else: the image featured some prominent cleavage for a school picture. Her daughter was, however, gorgeous, just like Joy herself.

Walking to the elevator, he lingered behind Joy, watching her walk. She had a fantastic ass. Actually, all of her was fantastic. She was easily one of the best looking women he'd ever been around; just an absolute knockout.

She was probably in her early thirties, he figured, maybe older, but very, very well put, and kept, together. He suspected she'd had her kid young, and he got the idea she'd been single for a while before her latest marriage. On the phone, she talked with her college-age daughter more like a girlfriend than a mother, he thought. Joy had a few lines, and some brown freckles, but she apparently stayed out of the sun, and her skin wasn't tanned, ever; it was creamy, a deep, luscious color, light without being pale.

"Oh for-" Joy said, and followed that with a muttered, "Shit." The elevator bank was dark. "God damn it, we have to take the stairs." She stomped a shoe on the dingy carpet of the hallway. "Sonofabitch."

They headed to the stairway and started the four story descent to their escape. Victor watched Joy move on the stairs; her nicely sized breasts jiggled as she hopped down the concrete steps, and her hair swished around. He checked her out for the thousandth time, running down her features all over again: tall, shapely, narrow waisted and round hipped with large, firm breasts, she had an exceptional body. She was pretty, too, with shining brunette hair and fine features.

"Gorgeous," he thought. "Gorgeous."

Joy clicked and clacked on her high heels down the stairs, muttering under her breath the whole way. Finally, at the second floor landing, she turned to Victor and said, "You know, I'm not going to miss this place at all. Not at all."

He was surprised. "What? You're leaving?"

She said, "You bet your ass I am. I'm going to (she named a rival company), and this place can kiss my ass. What a stupid pack of worthless..." Joy searched for a word, then found it, "...schlubs." She puffed out her mouth, huffing in frustration. She looked around in the stairwell, searching, and then found what she was looking for: a surveillance camera. She raised a finely shaped hand and extended the middle finger directly at the lens. Then she said, "Let's get out of here and get a drink. I'm celebrating my great escape."

Victor said, "I'm down. Let's go." He silently shook his head, knowing his weekday scenery was about to get a lot less appealing.

Victor wondered if her looks had gotten her more trouble than anything else; she attracted a lot of attention, from both men and women. He suspected the men who went for her had to be crazy possessive; she was just too gorgeous for it not to be a problem. Victor had worked pretty hard to get along with her as a work friend, waiting out her suspicion over the last year to just get along well as friendly coworkers. He'd seen some of the other guys' behavior around her at the workplace, and had decided to just not try to compete with anyone else. She was out of his league. It had worked out pretty well.

Except now she was leaving, and the sightseeing was over. "Bummer," he thought to himself.

Twenty minutes or so later they pulled up in the lot of the restaurant-bar, parking next to each other. Joy got out without taking her bag. Victor waited politely while she tucked a driver's license and visa card into a pocket in her skirt. He idly looked at the sort-of conservative work wear she had on, a shiny white blouse and plain black skirt. He supposed on someone else the look would have been dowdy, but on Joy it was elegant and supremely sexy. She locked her car, and he put his hands in the pockets of his pants while they walked side by side to the door.

He lightly bumped into her shoulder with his, joking, and she started, then smirked and shoved back, and like a couple of kids they pushed and shoved their way to the door. They were both laughing when they got to the restaurant, and they wriggled and shoved their way into the entrance, grabbing and pressing. The pimply kid at the wait station rolled her eyes at them as they walked past her into the bar.

Victor had gone out with Joy before, for after work drinks, and he knew she wasn't really great company. She'd had an ugly divorce, her second, the year before, and tended to vent about her ex a lot. Victor had no idea if the guy was really so horrible, but in Joy's embittered view he was an ogreish piece of shit with no redeeming features of any kind. He remembered particularly an evening when, after several heavily alcoholic girly drinks, she'd slouched into him and whispered furiously, "He divorced me because he really likes little boys," an accusation he'd found unnecessarily nasty and ugly. He wasn't sure he really liked Joy much as a person.

On the other hand, she was stunningly beautiful, and certainly a lot of fun to look at and ogle. Victor had no problem with that part of her company. He reached the door, opened it, and dramatically waved his gorgeous, soon-to-be ex-coworker into the bar.

Heads of both sexes turned when they walked into the bar area, and Victor smiled wryly, knowing perfectly well nobody, absolutely nobody, was looking at him.