Cobel catches Helena’s hand as she turns to leave. Her voice is steely yet passionate as she pleads, “I’ll be of use, I’ll be of service.”
Helena huffs a surprised laugh, a puff of cold air hovering in the inches between them. She tilts her head dramatically, her ear almost touching her shoulder. “And what do you have to offer me, exactly?” she says, because Cobel has worked with Lumon for many, many years, and she can’t exactly say “fuck off, you bat”.
“Whatever you want, my dear,” Cobel snaps. All that vitriol, nowhere to put it. She’s still thinking she has power, control over Helena, of all people, when she never had any power to begin with. It’s almost sad.
Helena smiles placidly. “Get in,” she says, voice harsh like she’s training a German Shepherd.
Cobel gets in the limo. Helena looks down at her, planted in her seat.
“You expect me to sit on your lap?” Helena says, impatient.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Cobel says, but she slides her ass across the leather seats to make room for Helena.
Helena had once said, “the workers are our family”. Harmony Cobel was more like a rodent that lived in her house that kept evading extermination. The woman had always been there, for as long as Helena could remember. She’d always been a fucking bitch, too. Helena wonders how much of her own disposition was picked up from watching Cobel work.
Cobel rides in the limo to Helena’s penthouse in silence. Helena stares out the window and curses her father for ever hiring this abominable woman.
There’s a rumor that Cobel sucked off her father to get her position, but no one has any real evidence. It’s strange for Helena to imagine, not Cobel on her knees, but her father experiencing any type of real pleasure. How far would Cobel go to get her job back?
“Are you sorry?” Helena asks, looking at her own reflection in the limo's privacy screen.
“All I can be is sorry,” Cobel says, but Helena doesn’t believe her.
They exit the limo and Helena nods to the apartment’s security officer, scans her keycard so the elevator will open and steps inside with Cobel. Helena always feels a twinge of anxiety in elevators, now, ever since the suicide attack.
Helena heads to her bar and offers Cobel a drink. She refuses, but Helena makes two martinis, anyway.
It’s bothering Helena that she still doesn’t know what Cobel’s fucking deal is, why she’s so obsessed with Cold Harbor.
“Do you want to fuck him?” Helena asks.
Cobel stares at her evenly.
“Mark S,” Helena clarifies with a sweet smile. She takes a sip of her martini. Helena scans Cobel for any twitch of fingers, any dilation of pupils. She then scans Cobel for any sign of life at all, any breathing or blinking. Her scan is inconclusive.
“I would fuck Helly R,” Helena says, stabbing her olive. “It would be like masturbating, right?”
Cobel twitches, finally. Her mouth. Was the woman about to laugh? The very idea is absurd. It was probably a half formed grimace.
“I do not want to fuck Mark S,” Cobel says, pronouncing “fuck” the way people angrily shout “merge!” in traffic.
“You want to put him in the maze, and see if he finds the cheese or the trap first,” Helena guesses, looking out the windows with a bored expression before turning back to Cobel. “I must say, fucking sounds much more exciting.”
“You’ve always been… promiscuous.”
Helena raises an eyebrow. “You’re saying I’m a whore?”
Cobel nods, shortly.
“Wow.” Helena snorts. Shakes her head. “Wow. You really never know when to shut up, do you?”
Cobel narrows her eyes. “You’re not better than me.”
“Maybe not,” says Helena.
“I should spank you like I did when you were ten.”
“I’m afraid I would like that, since I’m, in your words,” says Helena leaning in to whisper in Cobel’s ear, “a whore.”
Helena throws a smirk behind her shoulder as she walks away. She places a Bob Dylan record on the turntable and drops the needle.
“I love this song,” she says, spinning around playfully and locking eyes with the older woman. “Don’t you?”
Cobel stays in place as Helena nods her head to “Maggie’s Farm”.
“I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa, no more,” Helena sings softly, tauntingly.
“Do not waste my time, Helena,” Cobel says.
Helena turns down the volume. “You said you don’t want to fuck Mark S,” Helena says slowly. “Have you fucked me?”
“I would never abuse my position of power.”
Helena snorts. That’s a lie. “I think you just haven’t thought of it yet, too occupied with Mark S. But now you’re thinking about it, and you want your job back more than ever. You want my innie to eat you out under your desk while you’re on a call with the board, don’t you?”
Cobel shakes her head, boiling over with contempt, but it just spurs Helena on more.
“You want to fuck her like you’ll never get to fuck me, right? You think little Helly R will bottom for you, Harmony?” Helena frowns mockingly. “Pathetic.”
Cobel launches herself at Helena, but instead of the blow Helena is expecting, their lips crash together. A clanking of teeth, then Helena parts her mouth and they’re kissing. The angle is awkward, Cobel has to stand on tippy toes, and the kiss is aggressive, like they're trying to strangle each other’s tongues, but at the same time, it’s hot, filthy, wonderful.
Helena has to admit, fucking the old lady while she begs for her job back is starting to sound appealing, and she wonders if that was exactly why she invited her back here.
–
Helena grinds down on Harmony Cobel’s face, moaning exaggeratedly like the whore the other woman accused her of being. Cobel is beautiful like this, attacking her clit with a single minded ferocity, sucking and licking and bringing her so, so close, then focusing her attention elsewhere. It’s infuriating. Cobel knows how to torture. She does it with Mark S, methodically breaking him down, and she does it with Helena now, face buried in her pussy. Helena is sure she’s never been this wet, and watches the moisture drip down Cobel’s chin. She shivers.
Warmth is pooling in her center and suddenly she’s about to come, and she moans, for real this time. Cobel pulls away and wipes her face with the back of her hand.
“Put me back on the severed floor,” she demands.
“Put your tongue back on my cunt and I’ll consider it,” Helena gasps out.
“I want verbal confirmation that I will be back managing MDR on Monday morning, then you can come.”
Helena groans, frustrated. “You know I can’t agree to that.”
“Are you telling me you don’t have the power to reinstate me? That all you are is the pretty little face of the company?”
“I can’t reinstate you because you’re fucking insane!” Helena says. “Harmony, please, I need–”
“You are a child,” Cobel spits out. “This is much bigger than some fleeting earthly pleasure!”
Helena shouts in frustration and reaches between her legs to finish herself off. Cobel grabs her hand and pulls her finger backwards until it hurts.
“I’ll chop off your fucking fingers,” she says, seething. “Helly R would be pleased.”
Helena spits on Cobel’s face, and it lands on the corner of her mouth. Cobel licks it away.
–
Helena doesn’t come, and Cobel doesn’t get her job back. Everything remains the same.
Helena and Cobel stare at each other, neither one wanting to speak first.
“I must go,” says Cobel, finally. “I am spending tomorrow with my mother.”
“Must be nice,” Helena says. “Mine, as you know, is dead in all the ways that matter.”
“Only because you killed her,” says Cobel, scoffing.
“Oh, is that what we’re calling it, now? I’d say she knew the risks.”
“She’s with Kier, now, anyway. I don’t think I’ll be able to say the same for you.”
Helena’s mother’s body was still alive, hooked up to tubes and wires in the Lumon wing of the hospital, but her brain was mush. She had been one of the first to receive the severance procedure, and they’d drilled too far into her skull. Live and learn, Helena thought. She’d always been more of a daddy’s girl, anyway.
“You loved her,” Helena says. It’s a guess, a stab in the dark, but her eager eyes watch Cobel’s hand, smoothing out the duvet, as it stills. “Not my father. My mother.”
She goes back to making her side of the bed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Helena. I was her pupil.”
“And I’m yours?” Helena says.
Cobel rolls her eyes. “I suppose.”
“What’s that saying? The student has surpassed the…”
“Master,” Cobel finishes, automatic.
A smirk stretches onto Helena’s face. “Mmm, yes.”
Cobel flushes, and Helena is momentarily entranced by the red blossoming on the high points of her cheekbones.
"I will return to the severed floor," Cobel warns.
"I look forward to seeing you there," Helena says.