Simmer Down

by Jessica Conant-Park

  Ade nearly choked on her food and looked at Owen as though he had utterly lost his mind. “Anyhow,” she said pointedly, obviously not wanting to discuss Owen’s latest radical change of career in front of everyone, “this Full Moon Group can keep everything going, and we can still go out for bad food and expensive drinks at the clubs.”

  “Unless Oliver was killed for this key man insurance money,” Josh added, “and Barry gets caught. Hard to run a bunch of clubs from a jail cell.”

  The idea of Barry as the murderer was an extremely disappointing one because it left Hannah completely out of the prison picture. But at least she wouldn’t have a job in Boston anymore and would move far, far away, not, as I envisioned it, back to New York, but to Tahiti, maybe, or South Africa or, ideally, Antarctica, where she might freeze to death. Yes, Hannah in Antarctica. I could live with that.

  But there was no reason to think that any of us at the table would be able to solve Oliver’s murder or that any of us had even seen his killer last night. The gallery had been crowded. Most of the people there had been strangers to all of us. Besides, anyone could have snuck into the back of the gallery through the back door that had been left open. The murderer might have slipped in and out without being seen by anyone at all.

  I finally returned Lucy to my sister and we wrapped up dinner. My hazelnut tart, which was topped with fresh whipped cream, got glowing reviews from the two chefs at the table. Obviously, I did not reveal that this was the second of two tarts I’d baked that day.

  We said our good-byes, and I reminded Adrianna that our visit to the shelter was tomorrow at one. In the morning—since “harassment doesn’t break for the holidays”—I’d have to face Naomi and hotline calls, but after lunch, I’d meet Adrianna at the shelter.

  Josh drove us back to my apartment, and although I was thrilled about his new job, I was still pretty worried that the fifteen minutes it took to drive from my parents’ house in Newton to my condo in Brighton would be the last time we’d be alone together until…well, until I didn’t know when. But we would have tonight. Snacker had insisted that Josh spend the night at my place, since the two of them would see plenty of each other at work. Snacker knew where his new apartment was, and Stein would be there to welcome him.

  “Josh,” I said when we got into bed, “I am really happy for you. Simmer is going to be so perfect. You’ve worked so hard, and you deserve this. Gavin obviously knows what he found in you, and he appreciates how talented you are.” I set the alarm to five thirty for Josh and turned the light off.

  “Yeah, we’ll see how everything goes. I wish we weren’t opening on New Year’s, because that adds more pressure to a first night, but it’ll all work out. Forty-eight hours from now, the opening will be over. Gavin’s a good guy. But he can be tough, and he definitely has set ideas about certain things.” Josh let out a big sigh and rolled over in bed to cuddle me.

  “Like what? The ‘obligatory steak’?” I asked. Then I kissed him.

  He kissed me back, slipped my T-shirt off, and moved on top of me.

  “You don’t want to know.” He slipped under the covers.

  I didn’t. No, not right now.

  NINE

  AH , the Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace! My home away from home. It was December 30, the morning of the day before New Year’s Eve. Why was I stuck spending school vacation here? I looked around at the dreary office, which showed evidence of my failed efforts to organize the Organization. I had arranged and rearranged the few pieces of furniture, attempted to file the millions of papers floating around the room, and lined up the shoe boxes that Naomi used for the few office supplies we had: four staplers, two tacks, seven thousand rubber bands, and a green pen. The monthly budget for office supplies was about three cents, and the board of directors had not approved my lively proposal to renovate the depressing two-room office. Envision an inspiring decor…tropical colors and accent lighting…Consider the research that demonstrates a strong correlation between the physical environment and emotional health… The board, however, had evidently decided that cheesy industrial felt carpeting, concrete walls, and battered cafeteria tables provided a work setting suitable for an agency devoted to helping the harassed. The board must have felt that since our hotline callers never saw us, the office could continue to look like a disaster area, and no one would be the wiser. In the hope of hanging one of my mother’s wreaths, which were hideous but colorful, I had tried to force a nail into the concrete. After many failed attempts with a power drill, I’d left a bent nail, sans wreath, hanging sadly from a concrete block.

  I scooted my chair closer to what served as my desk. The folding chairs and folding cafeteria tables gave the impression that we were some kind of covert agency that might suddenly need to pack up quickly and disappear. I picked up the phone to check for messages, found that there were none, and flopped back in my chair. As much as I griped about social work school and this internship—pardon me, field placement—I really did want to accomplish something while I was here and consequently found myself wishing that somebody would call for help. It seemed to me that very few people knew about this organization, whereas I was pretty sure that throughout Greater Boston, women were being harassed at work and needed help. Nobody deserves to be frightened or, in some cases, terrorized at work. It occurred to me that if I didn’t loathe Hannah so much, I could pick her brain for marketing ideas to let women know that we were available. The one request of mine that the board had granted was for high-speed Internet access for the computer, so I speedily searched the Web for ways to “get the word out.”

  I had a few hours to kill before I had to go meet Adrianna, so I called Josh, who said I could pop into Simmer on my way.

  Just after I hung up, Naomi burst in the door. “Good morning, Chloe!” she said breathlessly, her arms laden with binders and notebooks. What she did with all these materials was beyond me.

  “Morning, Naomi,” I said, quickly looking for something on my desk to suggest that I was engrossed in work and not fantasizing about what Josh might make me for lunch.

  “We obviously need to have a staff meeting after the horrible evening we experienced together. Let me put my things down, and then we’ll talk.” Uh-oh. I was in for one of Naomi’s “staff meetings,” which meant that the two of us would sit practically on top of each other and bare our souls.

  The phone rang. I hoped it was someone who’d need my help for the next hour. “Hello? Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace. How can I help you?” It had taken me months to get that greeting down pat. I’d suggested to Naomi that we simply call ourselves the BO, but, reasonably enough, she’d vehemently objected to the abbreviation. At least Naomi put up with my calling us the Organization. In return, the BO remained strictly my own unspoken name for our agency.

  “Good morning. Is Ms. Campbell in, please?” a male voice asked politely.

  “One moment, please, and I’ll connect you.” I always liked to give the impression we were a huge company and that I would have to transfer the call through a complicated phone system to track down the person being called.

  “Naomi, it’s for you,” I called into our only other room, the office where Naomi kept her desk. Hers, much to my annoyance, was actually a desk and not a folding cafeteria table. Maybe one day I would qualify for real furniture, too!

  “Oh, hi!” Had she just giggled? “One minute.” My supervisor had the nerve to shut the door between our two rooms. I knew it! She had a romance brewing! And with a man! Maybe I would use our staff meeting to investigate Naomi’s love life.

  Moments later, Naomi reentered the main room, attempting to hide a smile. “Okay, let’s get going here.”

  She pulled a chair up next to mine. “I think it is important that we process what happened at the Food for Thought event. Although we hear about violent crimes in the paper and on television, we were present at the scene of a terrible tragedy, and I’d li
ke us to use each other as sounding boards to express any emotions we are experiencing. Chloe”—she paused and looked at me hard—“how are you?”

  I knew that if I said, “Fine,” the single innocuous word would lead to a lengthy discussion about my repressing unbearable emotions, so I lied and blathered on for a bit about how I was coping and leaning on Josh for support. “And how about you, Naomi? Do you have someone special you can lean on?”

  “Thank you for your concern. I have a very good support system in place. Now, moving along, let’s talk about the current cases we’re dealing with. In particular, there is a young woman I’ve spoken to a number of times. The same woman who left that message on your voice mail the other day, remember? She has chosen not to give any identifying information about herself, which is fine, but I think that it’s because she is so terrified of her employer. I spoke with her a few days ago, and her situation was unbearable. Her contact with one of her bosses disgusts me. He continually makes sexual advances, touches her inappropriately, and uses explicit language when speaking with her. Every caller we get deserves our full commitment, but no one is more needy or deserving of our help than this woman.”

  I knew exactly the caller Naomi meant and had to get her off the subject of this woman because, when I’d taken her first call, I’d given my usual unorthodox advice about fending off jerks by eating stinky foods. In answering the hotline, I tried to begin by following the standard recommendations from the manual, but I sometimes had to move beyond the book in ways that would have infuriated Naomi. For example, I didn’t want her to find out that I frequently suggested that women take self-defense classes and practice their moves on abusive bosses.

  “You know, Chloe,” continued Naomi, “I cannot stand to think of another woman waking up in the morning, frightened to death about having to go to work. I’ve never told you this, but I’ve been through this firsthand.”

  I stared at Naomi. “What?”

  “The year before I went to graduate school, I was working in a bank. I just had a teller job, and I was trying to save money that year for school. It was the worst year of my life. The bank manager seemed like a really wonderful guy. Married, pregnant wife, a real family man who was well liked by everyone I worked with.” She took a deep breath and went on. “I thought he was really nice, too, until the harassment started. I was young and insecure, and at first, his comments seemed like compliments, and I’m embarrassed to say that I was flattered by some of the things he said. It seemed like harmless flirting, I guess, at the time.” She paused. “And then his comments became more suggestive. He started touching me in passing and pretending his touches were accidental. Asking me out, wanting to be alone with me…well, it became terrible and scary. I didn’t know how to handle it, and I felt partially responsible because I’d been stupid enough to like some of his initial attention. When I’d ask him to stop, he’d ignore me. By the time I finally got around to speaking to the HR people, I was miserable. And you know what HR did? Nothing. Not a thing. They told me I had no proof and that this man had been an exemplary employee for all his years with the bank and it was highly unlikely that he was doing any of the things I was describing. I could fill out some paperwork if I wanted, and they could look into it, but it was my word against his, and perhaps I’d better just find another job.” Naomi had tears in her eyes.

  I reached out and touched her leg. “Naomi, I’m so sorry you went through that. I had no idea.”

  “And so I left the bank. I didn’t know what else to do. There was no one to give me advice and tell me what to do. The sexual harassment policy seemed like a token paragraph thrown into the HR manual. No one there had any training in how to implement the policy or how to handle complaints. I felt alone and frightened. I knew what he was doing was wrong, but I didn’t know what steps to take to protect myself. That’s when I decided that this is the kind of work I’d get into. I had planned on working with teen mothers after school, but this work became my calling. After my own experience. That’s why I’m so driven by my work here.”

  I immediately felt horrible for all the times I’d made fun of Naomi behind her back. It made me queasy to think of anyone terrorizing her. As much as her outspoken, overly dramatic style and her use of social work catchphrases (“Provide access for the disenfranchised!”) drove me crazy, she had grown on me. And now I was proud that Naomi had transformed her terrible experience with her manager into a motivating force to assist other women who needed help.

  “And this young woman who’s been calling reminds me of myself in some ways. When you work for a small business like she does, it’s even worse. She’s got nobody to help her except us, Chloe. She doesn’t deserve what she’s had to put up with!” Naomi was vehement. “And just because this Full Moon Group has money and power over her doesn’t mean they can get away with this!” Naomi clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh!”

  “She works for the Full Moon Group?” No way! My mind raced. Finally, a motive to implicate my favorite suspect! If harassment occurred at the Full Moon Group, maybe Oliver had harassed Hannah, who’d murdered him in self-defense! Or in a vengeful rage! On second thought, I realized that the Full Moon Group must have lots of female employees besides Hannah and that the sicko harasser could be someone other than Oliver. It could be Barry, for instance, or someone in charge at one of Full Moon’s locations.

  “I shouldn’t have said that. I can’t believe I violated her privacy like that. You’re a coworker, after all, but this caller has been so secretive. She only revealed her employer to me accidentally in one of our conversations. I’m not even sure she’s aware that she did so. I was just letting her talk and vent some of what’s been going on for her, and it came out. So, obviously, we need to keep this information to ourselves, as with all of the information we get from hotline callers.”

  “Absolutely,” I assured her. Confidentiality was no joke here. Women who called were not only desperate to stop harassment but desperate to hold onto their jobs, and they were usually too scared to give us much information about where they were calling from. When the women called from work, they sometimes whispered so nobody would hear them talking. Another sad fact was that we often had no way to return calls, since many women didn’t give us their home phone numbers because they didn’t want their husbands or partners to know what was going on. Although it was the harassers who should have been ashamed of themselves, it was the victims who felt embarrassed and guilty.

  “Do you want to show me your list of things that cause you anger?”

  Uh-oh. “Um, I’m still working on it. Can we review that later?”

  Naomi agreed but reminded me of the importance of this insightful exercise. When we’d wrapped up our meeting, I jumped on the Internet to search for anything I could find about Oliver’s murder. Most of the links led me to pages with brief accounts. Nowhere could I find new information. One page, from the food section of a newspaper, mentioned the murder but focused on Simmer and “its up-and-coming young chef, Josh Driscoll.” The article included details about Josh’s background and sample menu items, and the number to call for reservations. A lengthy description of the design and decor of the new restaurant, together with polished quotes from Gavin, made me suspect that he’d had enough clout to persuade someone to include the material.

  I did find Oliver’s obituary, which appeared with a photo, but was surprisingly brief. It stated that he was survived by his wife, Dora, and that a private memorial service was planned for a later date. After everything Adrianna had said about Dora’s extravagance, I wondered why she wasn’t giving her husband a lavish funeral.

  “Chloe?” Naomi said as she put on her winter coat. “I’ve got to run out and drop off this thank-you present to Eliot for welcoming us so graciously to his gallery. Be back in an hour or so, okay?” I wondered what the gift was. Probably New Age candles or a book on speaking openly with your inner child.

  “Sure. I’ll see you later.”

  Back to the important wor
k of surfing the Web. I searched for information on hermit crabs. My goal was to learn how to keep Ken alive. In minutes, I’d discovered an entire population of people out there frighteningly devoted to their pet crabs. I learned that Ken would need a bath once a week. I’d have to dump him into a bowl of water and let him slide around for a few minutes while he washed out his shell. I could handle that.

  What I could not handle was that Ken was going to molt. Yuck! He would burrow himself in the sand and look dead for a few days, and then would move from his shell into another, slightly larger, shell. I immediately concluded that Ken’s cage would have to be shrouded during this process. The sight of a shell-less Ken would make me puke. But I’d have to buy him some alternative shells. The site I was looking at even sold a large number of hand-painted hermit crab shells in various sizes. For eight ninety-five plus shipping, Ken could sport a Spiderman, tie-dye, or bull’s-eye shell. And here I was dressing (housing?) him in plain brown! I decided that if Ken decided to actually move in my presence, I’d reward his good behavior with a decorative shell or maybe with a decorative cage background or the toys and fancy lighting the site also sold.

  I read a long paragraph on how to determine whether or not your hermit crab was dead, and I silently cursed Walker for having given me a pet that required study to determine whether he was even alive. And should the crab, in fact, be dead, I could click on the link that took me to the Hermit Crab Memorial Page. I went ahead and clicked on the assumption that Ken wouldn’t make it much beyond New Year’s. Oh, this had to be a joke! Should Ken pass on to “Hermie Heaven,” I could go and post a eulogy on the site. Pages and pages of memorials to dead crabs loomed in front of me with wistful words from their owners. “Oh, Bingo! You were the best little guy. It’s so hard to lose a pet, and you will be missed more than words can say. You will always be loved. See you again…” Oh, good God. “Only a tiny bit of time with a tiny bit of a crab, but a giant hole in my heart.” And my favorite: “I never had the chance to name you. I took you home, but it seems the car ride was too much for you to handle. When you hardly moved and then your leg fell off, I knew.” The other crab forums were filled with pleading messages from owners seeking help from other hermit crab fanatics: “Hermit crab missing legs!” and “Can I use a hamster ball with my hermit crab?” and “Something has gone dreadfully wrong!” and “Traveling with crabs?”