Anna Montgomery Patton

The Depths of Hel



“You can’t spell Helen without the Hel,” roared Larry Moss, senior partner at Moss, Morris, and Meyers, LLP. Paralegals and junior associates laughed along with predictable eagerness.

Helen was standing outside the break room door, listening. There is only one L in Helen, she thought. She could have been sitting at her desk, the reception in the front of the office, and still would have heard Larry’s not-very-witty witticism.

Although the laughter had not yet faded, Helen entered the break room and steered straight to the refrigerator where she retrieved her half and half. HELEN’S HALF AND HALF the carton warned, in black Sharpie. She had already consumed her one cup of coffee earlier in the morning. But crowds in the break room made her nervous. People had been known to use her half and half despite the fact that she clearly labeled her half and half.

The break room went silent with her appearance. Then, “Hello, Helen,” said Larry.

“Hello, Larry, how are you today?”

Someone, one of the new junior associates, who probably went to USC, who probably barely passed the Bar Exam, tittered.

“Quite fine, Helen,” said Larry. He looked over his shoulder and showed his bleached veneers to his peers, in something that could be called a smile. He wanted to make sure that they caught the emphasis he put on Hel. They caught it.

“Glad to hear it, Larry,” replied Helen, who also caught it.

“Working hard, or hardly working?” said Larry and chuckled. Everyone followed suit. Helen blinked. “Working hard, of course. So. I better get back to my desk.” Helen strode from the room. Her co-workers were snorting before the door had closed behind her.

Helen was used to this treatment, but by no means did she enjoy it. When Helen started at the firm as receptionist, she was in her twenties. Although not attractive there was nothing particularly unattractive about her either. She just didn’t fit in with these cutthroat-cool San Francisco attorneys. Nor could Helen find equal ground with the administrative assistants, paralegals, or office manager. In part, because there was fluidity in those positions: it was highly unusual for anyone to stay on more than two years. In part because Helen was, frankly, awkward. Now, at age forty-two, the situation had worsened. Her position as receptionist remained unchanged, as did her hair (brown, too long, ponytail), her style (grandma with Forever21 accessories), her relationship status (single, possibly asexual), and her housing (studio apartment in Oakland, shared with a parrot named Paul). Some of these aspects may have been charming when she was twenty-five. But now, they only encouraged pity or barely-concealed disgust. It came as a shock to no one but Helen that she was the office outcast.

However today, after the break room debacle, as she filed case notes, Helen decided it was time for a change.

Why today? There are a number of factors that could have affected Helen. Mercury was in retrograde, according to www. ismercuryinretrograde.com. There was going to be a full moon that night. Helen had two cups of coffee instead of one. The BART train was late, causing Helen to be tardy for work for the first time in all of her seventeen years at Moss, Morris, and Meyers, LLP. Likely though, Helen’s decision to do something radical resulted from the fact that Helen forgot her lunch.

The office was a ghost town between the hours of one and three in the afternoon, as her coworkers went to lunches at downtown restaurants and stands. Meanwhile, Helen remained at her post. She packed her lunches and ate at her desk. Mondays she had a tuna salad sandwich, Tuesdays ham and cheese, Wednesdays peanut butter, Thursdays leftover spaghetti, and Fridays another tuna salad.

Today was Wednesday. It was an open secret in the firm that on that day her coworkers went to the Diamond Room. The Diamond Room was gentleman’s club on the outskirts of downtown, that served a five dollar lunch—“Wings Wednesday: all the breasts and thighs you can handle!” Typically the group that enjoyed this outing consisted of the youngest male lawyers, Larry, and every now and then a female associate who was trying to be “one of the guys.”

Helen made up her mind that she would join her coworkers on the Diamond Room lunch excursion. Promptly at one o’clock, men—suit coats already removed, ties loosened—began to gather at the elevators that opened into reception. When Clarissa, the latest hip admin assistant joined the group, Helen was not comforted. But she was resolute in her decision.

She slung her purse over her shoulder while she shut- down the computer. When she emerged from behind the desk everyone quit their chatter and turned to look at her.

“Hey Helen, are you taking lunch outside the office today?” asked Brad. Brad was in his early thirties, wore his blonde hair in a man-bun, and was a paralegal originally from Orange County. He always got “hammered” at the Christmas party.

“Actually, I wanted to join you folks today.”

Larry pushed his way from the center of the group to Helen. “Well I’ll be damned. Helen, I had no idea you had a penchant for breasts!”

“I like fried chicken,” said Helen.

“That’s what I meant. What else would I mean? What did you think I meant?” Her co-workers egged him on with smirks and widened eyes.

“I assumed that is what you meant, Larry.”

“Ha! Good! The last thing I need is a harassment lawsuit, am I right?”

Brad laughed the loudest at this. Clarissa brought manicured hands to her face in mock or real disgust.

“Well we would be honored to have you grace us with your presence, Helen,” said Larry.

The elevator door dinged and opened, perky and happy for company. Everyone piled in. Helen was surrounded on all sides by the guys, their different and liberally applied colognes assaulted her nostrils.

They walked along Market Street, Helen trailing the group like a needy mutt. The afternoon sun shone through the thigh gap of Clarissa’s skinny-jean-clad legs. Occasionally she glanced back at Helen, but she made no move to bring her into the fold. A homeless man walking in the opposite direction tried to stop the guys as they passed, asking for money. They did not make eye contact and kept up their steady stream of bro talk. When the man got to Helen she eyed his dirty palms, his long nails, and did not give him any cash. She did apologize.

During this brief exchange she somehow managed to miss the light at the crosswalk, as her co-workers charged ahead.

“Hey! Wait up!” she called. She was ignored. “Wait up!” she tried again, this time waving her arms at their backs.

Clarissa turned around and lifted her Ray-Bans off the freckled bridge of her nose. “We’ll see you there Helen!” she shouted before turning and marching on with the herd.

Helen waited for the round of traffic to pass. Muni busses stopped. Taxis let out passengers, Ubers picked up people bent over screens. A bare chested man tap danced on a piece of cardboard while another played drums on an overturned plastic bin. Tourists walked slowly past in generic San Francisco sweatshirts, for some reason looking up to the sky before looking back at the maps on their phones.

When at last the white walk light shone again, Helen had lost sight of the group. She had to pull out her own phone to get directions.

It goes without saying that Helen had never in her life been to a strip club. When she arrived at matte black double doors beneath a flashing neon Diamond Room sign, she hesitated. Walking in alone was a far different matter than blending in with a crowd. Especially in the middle of the day.

Yet, Helen squared her shoulders, as if preparing for a battle, and pushed into the darkness.

In fact, it was not that dark. Darker than outside, but lit a bit too brightly for a strip club. The green carpet was sticky under her loafers. She spotted Clarissa and the men, at tables only inches from the stage. Larry stood and waved.

“Breasts and thighs over there,” he said as he swung his arm to the right, tour guide style. An assortment of fried chicken body parts soaked in their own juices beneath heat lamps. A bouncer stood stoic beside the array, collecting five dollar bills. Helen handed over a twenty and received her change, which was given entirely in ones. That business done, she grabbed a paper plate. She heaped it high with chicken. Might as well get her money’s worth, she figured.

Remarkably, Clarissa had saved her a seat. When Helen sat down Clarissa said, “Sorry about leaving you behind. But I figure we gals should stick together in here, right? Strength in numbers, or whatever.” She returned to her own plate of chicken: a single drumstick that she picked at with those painted black nails.

Music came on over the speakers, Def Leppard, “Pour Some Sugar On Me.” A woman in a sequined bikini—the sort only available for purchase in Florida—and lucite platforms made her sluggish way to the pole in the center of the stage. The pink scar from a C-section glared from sagging white gut above her pubis. Angry red razor burn framed the triangle of her crotch. Her breasts were tight orbs held by stretching skin. They were too far apart. There was a plum colored bruise just below her knee.

The stripper gripped the pole with one hand and wrapped a leg around it to spin in a circle. The guys hooted, chicken meat between their teeth, dollar bills between their fingers.

“Well. This is depressing,” said Helen.

“What else did you think it would be?” said Clarissa. “I don’t know. I don’t think I ever thought about it, really.”

“You chose a hell of a lunch to make your first.”

Helen nodded her head. “I forgot my lunch today.”

“You could have gone anywhere else.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“But I’m not gonna lie, I’m glad you’re here,” said

Clarissa. She looked at Helen for the first time. Helen’s remote brown eyes. Helen’s sweater, a sweater her deceased mother had knit.

Helen didn’t know what to say so she just nodded again and looked at Clarissa out of the corner of her eye, while she continued to eat a chicken breast with plastic fork and knife, paper napkin spread over khaki slacks.

The woman onstage removed her top and flung it at the boys with total apathy. Her areolas were surprisingly small. Brad caught the top and Larry clapped him on the back. “When are we going to make a real lawyer out of you? None of this female paralegal shit!”

What neither Helen nor Clarissa realized when they agreed to this lunch, was that because no alcohol was served, the performers did full nudity. The strip tease did not stop with the bikini top. When the woman began to untie the bows straining on each hip, Clarissa sucked on her cheeks and Helen put her fork down.

The bows were undone and the woman pulled the bottoms back and forth along her crotch in the way one cleans a bowling ball. Once she judged she had done this action for an appropriate length of time, she also threw this piece of fabric to the crowd. It landed on Helen’s shoulder.

The men went wild over this. It was better than the 2012 Giants World Series win. It was better than that time the office manager did a body shot off Larry at the Christmas party. It was better than the Supreme Court Case a senior partner argued (but lost). It was better than their first blow jobs. It was better than the firm’s flag football team winning the championship last year.

Brad whipped out his phone and took a picture which he posted across all four of his social media platforms. He couldn’t tag Helen, because she didn’t have social media. Whether or not he would have is uncertain.

What was Helen’s reaction to all of this?

First, she wanted to cry. Not for herself, but for this woman. Next, she wanted to yell at these men. And Clarissa too. She did neither. She pulled the discarded bottoms from her shoulder with delicacy but not revulsion. She folded her napkin and placed it atop her empty plate, with fork and knife crisscrossed beneath.

“Thank you for lunch, Clarissa,” Helen said as she rose and gathered her coat, her purse. Clarissa saluted her but kept her seat.

Helen kept her bearings as she exited the club into the bright Bay Area sky. She walked at a normal pace to the BART station. The same homeless man stopped her and she gave him the one dollar bills from the Diamond Room without commentary. She rode the escalator down to the train, inserted her ticket into the machine, and grabbed it when it stuck out on the other side like a mean tongue.

She rode a second escalator further into the depths of the city. And then she stood, waiting for the train.

Whenever Helen waited for the train she had the urge to leap in front of the oncoming train. At the same time, she had the fear that someone would push her in front of the oncoming train. Thus, she always stood a few feet back, a few more than others did, behind the yellow caution strip.

Today the impulse to leap was more compelling than ever before. She wondered about the point of anything, any of it, her life. The howling started low and far off down the infinite dark of the tunnel, increasing to a scream of white lights upon approach.

Helen’s feet left the ground, prepared to splay into an elegant jeté, the sort she used to do in ballet class when she was a little girl. But she found herself jerked back to the platform. Those seconds of blissful abandon interrupted.

The noose that pulled her back was the strap of her purse. A boy had his arm slung through it as he tried to untangle the bag from her arm. As he tried to steal the bag.

Helen pulled her purse back from the thief, a teenager in a Dodgers sweatshirt with headphones on his pale head. As it turned into a tug of war the train flew past the struggle. Some bystanders noticed but did nothing to help.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Helen yelled, and the boy gave up. He ran away without a word and disappeared up the escalator, into the vacuum of the city.

Helen held her purse, panting. The doors of the BART train opened and passengers filed out, around her, pushing, ignoring. She turned her back on this, returned to the escalator, and rode it up up up until she was back outside. When she reached the air, she looked to the sky, and choked on a scream.