She could feel his eyes on her.
Since that day, Kate had started bringing running shoes to work. At the end of the day, when Levy was going home, she waited at her desk, her shoulders tight and frozen in dread.
‘You’re working too hard. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home. We might even grab a bite on the way. Do you like sushi? Wait, who am I kidding? Everyone likes sushi. I know a great place on—’
‘No, it’s okay, Theo. Thanks, but I’ve got my gear. I’m jogging home. Got to find the time to keep in shape these days,’ she said, reaching down to pick her running shoes out of her gym bag and then holding them aloft above her head as proof of her intentions.
‘You don’t need to do that. You look in pretty good shape to me,’ he said.
That one almost made her puke.
Some nights Levy would persist, asking two or three times. Would she like a drink, or dinner? Levy said he’d been comped tickets for a Broadway show, or a suite at the Four Seasons for a night – would she like to tag along?
Kate said no. Every time. It didn’t seem to matter. He would touch her shoulder, his fingers grazing the side of her neck, then sigh and leave. When he got into the elevator every night, Kate shuddered in pure relief, rolled her shoulders and felt the tension drain away.
In meetings he would often sit beside her, his hand slapping itself down on her knee or her thigh when he introduced her to clients or lawyers on the other side of a case. It felt wrong. It felt like he was staking a claim to her – making her his property.
Kate showered every night when she got home – not because she was sweating from a run – she never ran home. The gym stuff was simply an excuse. She washed to get the smell of him off her, the corruption that she felt when he touched her. It was beginning to affect her health.
Lately she’d been having a lot of headaches. She knew it was tension – stress. Not from the job, but from her boss. Fridays were the worst, when she carried files to his car for him, his eyes peeling away her clothes as he stood behind her in the elevator, her heart hammering, waiting for him to make some kind of move, or to touch her.
The more she avoided one-on-one meetings with Levy and made excuses not to go to dinners, the more frustrated he became. He criticized her work, under the guise of ‘feedback and mentorship,’ and Kate couldn’t help but notice the criticism was getting worse the more she turned down his advances.
She had thought about making a complaint, but she had never felt like he’d crossed the line into harassment, no matter how many times she read the harassment policy on the firm’s intranet. Sometimes he came close to stepping over it, and Kate knew it wasn’t about just one incident – that a course of conduct had to be proven, but how the hell could she prove that when most of the incidents happened when it was just the two of them alone? It would be Kate’s word against Levy’s. Besides, junior associates who complained about equity partners often ended up on the street, with no reference, which practically made them unemployable. Kate didn’t want that. She had worked too hard to get here.
As she watched Levy and Scott walk away on Hogan Place, Levy’s rebuke ringing in her ears, Kate took the opposite direction – even though it was the wrong way – back to her apartment. First alleyway she saw, she ducked into the shadow. There were no tears, but she felt like crying. The fluttering in her chest that became a cramp, tightening her breath, would not clear without Kate pushing that release valve and letting it all out. Crying is good for you. She knew this. She’d read enough self-help books, but it just wasn’t how Kate was made. She couldn’t cry. Not anymore, not since that day. The valve was closed and locked, keeping all that emotion inside where it churned and churned. But a thought calmed her. Her heart rate fell, her breath slowed and deepened.
She wanted to go home. Not back to her apartment. Home.
Forty-five minutes later she stepped off the Edgewater Ferry, which she’d taken from midtown. When she was nine years old in Edgewater, New Jersey, she had played in the abandoned Kellogg factory with her childhood friend, Melissa Bloch. The factory was gone now, and in its place was a modern marina. Times had moved on, the factories made way for expensive waterfront condos, and with the exception of one or two companies that remained, Edgewater was now a kind of hip Gold Coast. At least half of it was, anyway. The town was divided by River Road, with the waterfront properties attracting the high prices. On the other side of River Road, in the hills, property went for half the price. Kate crossed this road into West Edgewater as soon as she left the ferry terminal. She walked past the realtors at the end of the block and turned right on Hudson Avenue – a steep climb to Adelaide Place, her father’s house.
Louis Brooks had moved to Edgewater in the seventies. At that time he was a cop in the city, and his partner was Gerry Bloch, Melissa’s father. It was Gerry who persuaded her father to move out here. Property was cheap because the land had been poisoned for a century or more by corn oil and chemical manufacturers. They lived side by side on Adelaide Place. It had been a magical period. A small-town childhood with a friend who was more like a sister. Life was great. Until Gerry Bloch got arrested, that is.
By the time she saw the colonial house she had grown up in, her calves were burning and her feet were sore from the climb. She had walked up the hill in her heels – her running shoes safely locked away in a drawer at work. She walked up the brick steps, painted wooden rails framing them, when the front door opened.
Kate expected to see her father. A white-haired seventy-year-old who still thought he was forty-five. Louis Brooks – always pronounced Lou-is, never Lou-ee. He would be wearing a cotton shirt, work pants, and there would be flecks of paint or oil, or both, on his lined but welcoming face.
But it wasn’t her father who opened the door. Instead, she found herself looking up at a tall, striking young woman. Her black hair buzzed at the sides, long on top and swept back in a quiff. She wore a black denim jacket, navy-blue jeans with a green shirt. No make-up. Just a broad smile on the face of Kate’s best friend, Melissa Bloch.
Bloch had moved away for some years, become a police officer and transferred around the country. She retired, early, from the force six months ago and moved home to her old house next door to Kate’s father. This had been a solace to Kate, who had missed Bloch terribly since she’d left. Now, Bloch made a living as a freelance training instructor for the NYPD, doling out refresher courses on advanced driving, control and restraint, and investigative practice. In her spare time Louis kept her busy helping him with various DIY projects, which he said required a second pair of hands. Both Kate and Bloch knew Louis didn’t really need any help – he just needed the company.
‘Shouldn’t you be in work?’ Bloch asked.
‘I took the morning off,’ said Kate.
Tilting her head, Bloch held Kate in her gaze for a few seconds before standing aside to let her in. She knew Bloch didn’t buy that. Although Kate’s problems at work consumed her thoughts twenty-four-seven she had yet to tell anyone about it – even Bloch. It was Kate’s problem, and she was determined to keep her head down, mouth shut, and just get through it. In the kitchen, Louis was already pouring coffee. He had splotches of some dark substance on his cheek and the collar of his shirt. If he was suspicious at the working-hours visit, he didn’t show it. Kate thought he was probably just glad to see her. He handed steaming mugs to Kate and Bloch and they took a seat at his kitchen table.