Chapter 4
Jane had begun to feel comfortable and at ease at the agency. She liked working for Julia as her immediate supervisor, with Hailey as her boss. She loved the fact that they were giving her projects with substance, and a chance to read manuscripts and write synopses and evaluations of them. She had passed with flying colors on the first one, and Hailey gave her several more. She gave insightful, intelligent feedback. She had to read the manuscripts at night, so she was less available to Benjie. He was complaining, but she needed to focus on her career now. She loved working for the agency, and could see it as a long-term job until she was able to set up a business of her own one day. She admired all the women she worked with. Each one seemed to have carved out the right niche for herself, and she hoped to do the same.
She went to the office kitchen one day at noon for the salad she had put in the fridge that morning and was annoyed to see Dan Fletcher there again. He seemed to hang out in the kitchen at lunchtime, hoping to cop a feel when the assistants came to get their lunches. The narrow kitchen gave him ample opportunity to rub up against their bodies, and he didn’t hesitate to do so. They never called him on it. They were young and afraid to.
Jane paid no attention to him and was scowling as she walked straight to the fridge for her salad, avoiding contact with him. Someone had moved the salad to a lower shelf, and as she bent over to get it, she could feel a hand slide between her legs from behind. She was wearing thin linen slacks, and she could feel his hand stroke her through the fabric. She wheeled around and stood up so fast that it threw Dan off-balance and she grabbed his wrist hard and stunned him.
“If you touch me again,” she said in a normal voice that anyone could hear, “I’m calling a lawyer, or the police. Is that clear?”
“Whoa . . . ‘though she be but little, she is fierce,’ ” he said, quoting Shakespeare. He looked unfazed by her reaction as she dropped his wrist. Bob Benson walked into the kitchen in time to see and hear the exchange. Jane walked past both of them with her salad and headed back to her office, where Julia looked at her strangely. Jane looked angry, with a determined expression.
“Something wrong?” Julia thought maybe someone had taken part of Jane’s salad and she was annoyed. That happened. Some people just took what they wanted, regardless of who it belonged to.
“That asshole stroked my crotch,” Jane said, fuming.
“What asshole?” Julia looked stunned.
“Fletcher. The guy is a total pig. I told him if he did it again I’d call a lawyer or the police.”
“He does that shit all the time,” Julia said sympathetically. “Sorry, Jane.”
“Why do people put up with it?”
“Because he’s the boss. He’s got the winning hand.”
“Not anymore. Does anyone read the papers? Guys like him lose their jobs and wind up in jail now. People a lot bigger than him.”
“I know. But it takes a lot of guts to go after someone like him.”
“If he does it again, I will,” Jane said, and dug in to her salad. Julia went back to what she was doing on her computer.
Bob Benson was in Dan Fletcher’s office by then. He walked in quietly and sat down. Dan smiled at him as though nothing had happened.
“I walked in at the tail end of that exchange between you and the new girl working for Hailey,” Bob said with a serious expression.
“Great tits,” Dan said without hesitation, “and they’re real, none of that new fake crap. They must fill them with rocks. Hers are the real deal.”
“How do you know?”
“I copped a feel when she first got here. I was checking her out.”
“You can’t do that,” Bob reminded him, panicked over what Dan said and his remorseless attitude about it.
“Who says?”
“The world. Women. The law. Times have changed, Dan. We could lose the agency over something like that. You may think it’s funny, but no one else does. People take that kind of sexual harassment very seriously these days. If she ever did call a lawyer, or the police, you’d be in big trouble. We both would. Martha is handling nothing but cases like that right now. It’s a very big deal.”
“Oh for chrissake, a little feel here and there won’t kill them. They’re not virgins, for God’s sake. Girls give blow jobs in school at thirteen these days. By the time they come to work here they’re old hands. They can’t play innocent.”
“They don’t have to play at all. They have a right not to be touched or manhandled or stroked or fondled. You have to keep your hands to yourself, and you can’t make lewd, suggestive comments. Dan, I’m counting on you to behave.” Bob was very serious.
“What a fucking bore,” Dan said, looking annoyed.
“Never mind if it’s a bore, just rein it in, right now,” Bob said, and went back to his office with a rock of terror in his gut.
Dan Fletcher was a loose cannon, and he also drank too much. Bob was well aware that he drank when he went out to lunch, not just wine but hard liquor even before lunch, which loosened his behavior even further. He was a walking menace, and Bob was beginning to wish he’d retire. A sexual harassment suit from an employee was something he did not need. And a younger employee was liable to blow the whistle on him faster than an older woman of another generation, who might hesitate. As far as he knew, no one else in the office was a problem, but Dan Fletcher was. That made the agency vulnerable since he was co-owner with Bob. But Dan was loyal and they’d started the agency together, which meant a lot to Bob. He put up with some of Dan’s behavior because of it. But not if he went too far. As far as Bob knew up to this point, Dan was all talk and no action, like some men his age. He never thought Dan was dangerous, but what he’d just seen was seriously out of line.
Hailey never heard about the exchange and was too busy to notice that Jane was upset. She was desperately trying to line up sitters to spend the night for two weeks, when she went on tour with Phillip White. It was a mammoth effort figuring out how to cover every waking hour for three kids for two weeks. But she had to do it or she couldn’t go. Felicity had agreed to give her a week, but she couldn’t do more. She had her own kids to keep track of, even though they were older. Her sister had agreed to come up from Jamaica for that week. For the second week, Felicity could pick them up at school and stay until bedtime, but that was all. Hailey used three other sitters to fill in on various days, and the schedule she was blocking out in timeslots looked like she was running a hotel or an airline. She spent every evening making calls and her children were desperately unhappy she was going to be away. She was going to miss the school fair, Bentley’s first big science project, and Arianna had the starring role in Annie, which Hailey was going to miss. It was a disaster, but not going would be too. She didn’t have a choice, she had to do it.
She never mentioned to Bob Benson what an agony it was for her to cover the two weeks for her kids, and all that she’d be missing. The children each cried about it at various times. It ripped Hailey’s heart out and she had tried to explain to them how important the trip was and that she couldn’t get out of it. She suggested a trip to Disneyland at a later time to console them, but no one wanted to go. They wanted her at home for everyday life, and the events that mattered to them. She felt like a monster leaving them, and she still had two weekends and several days to cover. She had an idea and called her yoga teacher in desperation. She hadn’t been there lately, but the teacher was a nice woman, liked kids, and had offered to babysit before. She needed the money. She could barely pay her rent from the money she made teaching yoga. Hailey called her and explained the situation to her.