by S. J. Maher
“We’ll get back to you about that,” Rebecca said.
“I think you would be wise to review SoSol’s handling of the whole thing,” said Jess. “Until we know who has been doing this to Candace, we can’t be sure it wasn’t an employee, even a manager. We need to think about calling the police.”
Craig and Rebecca looked rattled.
“For now,” said Jess, “I think Candace needs to take the rest of the day off.”
“Of course,” said Rebecca.
“Do you have the capacity to do a decent in-house security review?”
“I think so,” said Craig. “But if not, we’ll get the capacity. Immediately. Candace has been through the wringer.”
My sister stood up, so I stood up. It was time to leave.
“Guys, thanks for looking into this for me,” I said. “I’m so disappointed that this has distracted me from my work. I’m so excited about my job here, and I can’t wait to get to work on the WordUp campaign.”
“Candace, this is just awful,” said Craig. “But we’re going to get to the bottom of it. If we can’t, we should go to the police.”
He and Rebecca walked us out.
Jess steered me to the elevator.
When the door closed, I was fighting back tears. She gave me a hug.
“Poor Candace.”
When the elevator door opened in the lobby, Wayne was standing there, waiting to get in.
I broke off my embrace with Jess and wiped my eyes.
“Candace!” he said. “There you are. Are you okay?”
“No. But we’re working on it.”
I introduced him to Jess and blew my nose.
I told him I’d been hacked again and he shook his head.
“I can’t believe it. Who’s doing this to you?”
He reached out and took my hand in his. I could see real sympathy and affection in his eyes and I felt such a powerful feeling of attachment and gratitude I had to look away.
“We’re trying to get to the bottom of it,” said Jess.
“You know, I might be able to help,” he said. “I know a bit about hacking.”
“That would be great,” I said. “I’m sure you know more than we do.”
“Would you be comfortable keeping that to yourself, though?” said Jess. “I’d rather that you not tell SoSol what we’re doing. Just in case.”
“Of course,” he said, nodding. “That makes sense. I can even spy for you.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Jess. “Let’s meet at six p.m., at the bar at the Jane. So don’t mention it to anyone at work and don’t email or text us about it.”
He looked surprised at that.
“You think they might be snooping in my emails?”
“They have the legal right to do so,” said Jess. “So it’s best to assume they are.”
43
“Are you writing the next great American novel?” he asks.
He’s a bold one. He stands right up and walks over, drink in hand, wedding ring in pocket, stands in front of me, all confident and tall and actually surprisingly handsome, with a cocky smile and an air of complete ease.
“No,” I say.
I make myself smile.
“Nothing so interesting,” I say. “Just a journal.”
“And it’s not interesting? I find that hard to believe. You look . . . interesting. Mind if I pull up a stool?”
Wow. That was fast. He is next to me, ordering us both a round, before I have time to think about it.
This guy knows what he’s doing.
He is Adam, forty-eight, divorced, two kids back in Pittsburgh, who he sees every other weekend, a lot of time on the road.
He’s a lawyer, specialized in human resources.
I almost blurt: Just like my sister!
The stylish blond woman that Adam is drinking with is an only child. Amy, twenty-seven, single, from Providence, Rhode Island, two cats at home, retail consultant, brought in by chains to do spot checks on how well their outlets are implementing retail strategies.
“Like a secret shopper!” Adam says.
“Kind of. They don’t know I’m coming, but then they know when I get there and tell them.”
“That sounds really interesting!”
“No it doesn’t. It can’t. It’s so dull I sometimes think about running away and joining the circus.”
He laughs.
“Tell me about it,” he says.
He starts to laugh really hard.
“If I have to negotiate another termination agreement with another middle-aged executive who’s suddenly surplus to the requirements of Acme Corporation, I will . . . well, actually I’ll just do it, because I have child support payments to make.”
Oh, you fucking slimeball. Pretending that you’re divorced. I think about his wife, looking after the kids at home while he palms his wedding ring and tries to talk himself into the pants of every hottie he meets on the road.
Men are awful. Not all men, I suppose, but a lot of them. Maybe all of them. I don’t know. Maybe the ones who aren’t awful in this way—the cheating way—are awful in some other way. Maybe they’re detestably weak.
That’s my new theory. All men are either awful would-be cheaters or simpering weaklings kept in line by fear of women.
I think about my theory while we chat, but manage to keep up a fairly witty level of banter, and find myself enjoying Adam.
He has the bored detachment of the professional traveler and keeps up a pretty good light patter full of jokes that sound like they were lifted from late-night talk shows.
He tells me the mildly interesting history of the hotel, which used to be a railway station. We move to a table to order dinner.
We discover a shared taste for making fun of ridiculous menu language. It isn’t much, but it’s enough to make us laugh, a couple of strangers trying to snatch a bit of fun at the Scranton Radisson.
“Maybe I should have the lasagna,” says Adam. “It’s made with artisanal ricotta.”
“Is it oven roasted? A lot of the items are oven roasted.”
“Nothing roasted in a pit in the woods? Always in the oven, eh? Seems passé.”
After the menus are gone, we make fun of the customers and staff.
“That fellow’s in a hurry, isn’t he?” he says.
“I hope he’s hurrying to a haberdasher’s.”
“That is what is known as a Full Cleveland. Mark it well. You don’t see it much anymore.”
He keeps topping off my wine and I keep laughing
I have to remind myself, from time to time, to tell him that I never do this kind of thing and, after the wine kicks in, to give him the sudden glazed-eyed look of affection, which he has, no doubt, seen many times before, in other hotel dining rooms.
He waves for the check.
“We should take a walk,” he says.
Then he gets up to go to the bathroom.
“I’ll be right back,” he says.
“I’ll be waiting.”
As soon as he leaves the dining room, plop!
Roofie time!
44
I spent the whole afternoon in a conference room in Jess’s office going through everything that happened since I started at SoSol. We had a stainless steel carafe full of coffee and a big pitcher of water. She asked me questions and typed and did web searches and sent emails.
She was in lawyer mode, which was like the bossy big sister of years past, except that I couldn’t escape her instructions.
We reconstructed, to the best of my ability, the whole thing. I did what I could to recall the text exchanges with Not Declan and described the horror show at the Guggenheim, the threats delivered when I was in the bathroom at the Parkview, my brief conversation with Declan about the whole thing, and that morning’s Facebook post.
I have a really good memory, and I think Jess was impressed by my ability to recall it all in detail. She stopped me with follow-up questions from time to time, drilling down to details that I hadn�
�t put in order. She asked me over and over again about the party at Alvin’s, about his challenge to Wayne, and about the moment he grabbed my ass.
“Do you think that all counts as sexual harassment?” I asked.
“It’s open-and-shut. It’s not time to think about this yet, but we could easily file a claim and he’d probably pay you out as soon as he talked to his lawyer. If he’s behaved like this in the past, it likely wouldn’t be the first payout.”
“Wow.”
“I need to talk to Wayne, on his own, ask him to recall the same events, see if your stories match. I also want to know if Alvin was texting while you were in the bathroom at Parkview.”
“Oh, God! That would take some balls, wouldn’t it, to be taunting and harassing me while sitting at the table with my colleagues?”
“Sounds like Alvin has no shortage of balls,” she said. She shook her head. “It’s actually kind of amazing that somebody could think that he can behave like this. It’s not 1975.”
“Do you think he might be behind the whole thing?”
“He’s my chief suspect.”
“But whoever texted me seemed to know details of my conversation with Declan. I spilled a drink on him.”
“Didn’t you say that Rebecca was there when you bumped into him?”
“She was. I think so. Yes.”
“So maybe she told Alvin. Like, ‘Candace was so drunk she spilled Declan’s drink.’ ”
“That’s true.”
“Your phone came from SoSol. If Alvin wanted to, he could have installed a program to allow him to control it remotely. He could have easily hacked your Twitter and Facebook that way.”
I started to wonder if Alvin was playing a fucked-up game, luring me into a sick relationship where I accepted harassment in exchange for cheese sales.
“But we have no proof.”
“Not yet,” said Jess. She gestured at her pile of notes. “But we’re getting started.”
“Could it be someone else, though? I mean, Declan denied it, but how can I know? He would have access to the files that someone sent me.”
I couldn’t believe he would do it, but felt I should see what Jess thought.
“He’s the other suspect,” she said. “But his story about Iceland does check out.”
She turned her laptop so I could see the screen. She had found a story about the Digital Innovation Summit in Iceland. It featured a photo of Declan giving a talk. She flipped to another screen, with the conference schedule.
“He was giving the keynote when you got the first texts,” she said. “See? His talk started at noon. Iceland is four hours ahead of New York. You got the texts at about nine thirty, right?”
“Yup. Right. That makes sense. He really doesn’t seem to be the type to sexually harass somebody. He wouldn’t have to. He’s, like, handsome, rich, funny, and nice.”
“Hm,” said Jess. “Too cute to be a suspect. Okay. You know sexual harassment is about power, right?”
“You’re right, I know. But I just don’t think he’d do it. I bet I’d know for sure if I saw him again.”
“Sounds like a good idea. But don’t sleep with him.”
I rolled my eyes. “As if.”
She smiled at me and shrugged. I could see she was thinking of some ill-considered trysts in my past. I decided to ignore the implication.
“Are there any other suspects we should consider?” she asked.
“Beatrice was asking about JFXBF. But I don’t think he would have the energy or ability to pull off this kind of thing.”
“I agree,” she said, and laughed. “No.”
“I know. So it looks like it’s Alvin,” I said.
“Or Declan,” said Jess. “Or someone else.”
45
When Adam gets back to the table, I figure I should let him know I’ve had some second thoughts.
“Did you get lost? Trying to remember who your date is tonight?”
He laughs and sits down. Mr. Cool.
“As if,” he says. “Believe me, I’m not much for dating. When I get time off, I like hiking. I really like it when I can take the kids, but I go by myself a lot.”
Expert moves. Pivots away from my needy affirmation-seeking to manly independence.
“So there’s not a woman in every town?”
“No,” he says, laughing. “Have you had a look at the women in Scranton? Or Watertown? Syracuse?”
We laugh together and both sip our wine, looking at each other in silence. I smile.
“So, want to go for a walk?”
“Where?” I ask, swirling the dregs of wine in my glass. “Your room?”
“Sure,” he says, drains his glass, and stands up.
“Is there wine there?”
“Minibar,” he says and cocks an eyebrow.
“Sold.”
The rest is easy. I actually decide to let go a little bit, enjoy myself for a few minutes, until the roofie kicks in. Once we’re in the room, I kick off my flip-flops, sit cross-legged on the bed, and demand he bring me wine. He does as I bid, and I give him a tiny little kiss on the lips as thanks and push him away. He stares at me with real desire from the armchair. We look at each other over our wine.
“I really like you, Amy,” he eventually says.
I let that sit for a while, take a drink of wine, and then get up and walk over to the armchair. We make out for a little while. He is tender. By the time he starts to get druggy he’s removed my dress, I’ve removed his shirt and unbuttoned his pants, and he’s on the bed on his back, in a stupor, but his body is obviously still capable of carrying out its role. I am sad when he turns into a roofied automaton and wonder whether I want to carry on with what we had started.
He grunts and reaches for me. I stand in my underwear and look at him.
“I should have waited,” I tell him. “You took your medicine too soon.”
What to do?
46
Jess insisted that we not go over my recollections or our theories with Wayne, since she wanted to make sure that we didn’t suggest answers he wouldn’t come up with on his own.
He arrived at the bar at the Jane with news.
“Craig is out,” he said. “About an hour after you left, Alvin came by for a meeting with Craig and Rebecca. Craig came out of his office. He thanked us all for our hard work, then said that he would always remember his time ‘stretching boundaries’ at SoSol, but he had chosen to embrace another opportunity.”
“Did he look like he was excited to embrace another opportunity?” asked Jess.
“He looked like he had just been fired. I was afraid he was going to cry. It was . . . awful.”
“They’re circling the wagons,” said Jess.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“If this ends up in court, or mediation, they can say, ‘Hey look, we learned that the manager in question had allowed an unhealthy environment to develop, so we took action.’ ”
“But if the problem came from Alvin . . .”
She held her finger up.
“Which we don’t know,” she said. “But even if it did, it’s sort of a script, a process, a step that indicates seriousness. I’ve been through quite a few of these in the past few years. There are two ways they go. Double down and deny any problem or fire the manager and prepare a settlement.”
“So this might be a good sign,” I said.
“Seems like a really good sign,” she said.
“Poor Craig,” said Wayne.
We all sat silently for a moment and thought about poor Craig.
“They’ll be paying him to go,” said Jess. “Don’t worry about him too much.”
“You’re smart,” said Wayne, and he looked at Jess admiringly. “How long have you been doing this kind of work?”
I didn’t like that. He was my future boyfriend, not Jess’s.
Jess touched her hair. She was a little too happy with the compliment.
“Two years,” she said. “You s
tart to see the same patterns recurring.”
“You must deal with some real dirtbags,” said Wayne. “Sexual harassment is so unpleasant.”
“That’s why it’s against the law,” she said.
“How do you think Candace’s situation will play out?” he said.
“It’s too early to say. We don’t have all the facts. After we finish these, I want to take you to my office and ask you some questions. Do you mind doing that? It could theoretically have a negative impact on your employment.”
Wayne laughed.
“I don’t care about this job at all. I have a real job in California starting in September. This is just something to keep me busy during the summer. I could walk away tomorrow. So sure. I’ll happily answer your questions. Nobody should be able to get away with treating anyone like they’ve treated Candace.”
He turned to me.
“This is not okay,” he said. “It’s going to follow you for the rest of your life. No matter what you do, you’ll have to live with the fact that every creep in every office where you work will see that picture.”
God, he was adorable. I looked at him admiringly. So did Jess.
“I was talking about it last night to my friend Lenora,” he said. “She writes for Pandora, a website that runs a lot of stories . . .”
“I love that website,” said both Jess and I.
We all laughed.
“Anyway. She’s a really good journalist, really nice person, and she thinks that this would be a good story. Young woman, just starting her career, gets hacked.”
“That could be a good idea,” said Jess. “By telling your own story you at least gain agency, get your version of events out there.”
“Instead of being a victim who had something bad happen to her, you could be a strong young woman overcoming an attack,” said Wayne.
“And it would likely immediately solve my SEO problem,” I said. “It would be the first thing anyone would find out about me when they google me, instead of the crap on Reddit.”
“I’ll flip you her email,” said Wayne, and he fiddled with his phone.
“Okay, fun’s over,” said Jess, glancing at her watch and our empty glasses. “Time for me to drag you back to my office, Wayne, and submit you to a thorough interrogation.”