Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

  And, because Grace was a perfectionist, she’d set to work perfecting her craft. To think that a few short weeks ago, she felt trapped inside this very same room, put out by the lack of cellphone service and loss of her precious time.

  It was so easy.

  Grace knew her rights, too. For a whole year after Emma Kate’s birth, Truviv was required to provide her with a private space in addition to breaks sufficient for her to express milk. Truviv was not required to allot her any time to sleep, but really, shouldn’t they be? Maybe just a little?

  Grace pulled the sleep mask over her eyes and tried to shut the world out. The beauty of it was that no one suspected Grace Stanton would lie at all, much less about feeding her infant daughter. No one suspected a thing, which made Grace wonder, what else might she be capable of pulling off?

  Deposition Transcript

  26-APR

  Ms. Sharpe:

  In your initial complaint, you alleged a decade-long culture of sexual harassment. A decade is a long time. Why didn’t you say something? Surely, you were afforded the opportunity to report your concerns at some point during that timeframe. At least once. But I will tell you, we didn’t find a single instance of complaint on record from you.

  Respondent 1:

  I obviously feared for my job and the future of my career. I feared retaliation from Truviv. A fear, which, as you can see, has turned out to be quite valid.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  Ms. Glover, in that case, you’ve now sat on this alleged information for at least ten years, by your own account. Why now?

  Respondent 1:

  To believe that I was the only incident of sexual harassment would have been naïve. But I wasn’t comfortable with the same thing that had happened to me happening right under my nose. I could no longer, in good conscience, stand by and watch without speaking up.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  Mr. Garrett was poised to become Truviv’s next CEO. You were aware of this, weren’t you?

  Respondent 1:

  I was.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  Your conscience has impeccable timing.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  When you say that you recently believed there was another target of Mr. Garrett’s alleged behavior, to whom exactly were you referring?

  Respondent 1:

  Katherine Bell.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  And what exactly did you see Mr. Garrett do to Katherine Bell?

  Respondent 1:

  I saw him singling her out for attention, attention that was not commensurate with her current position within the company. I saw him ushering her into closed-door meetings in his office.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  Does the company have a policy against closed-door meetings?

  Respondent 1:

  Of course not, but—

  Ms. Sharpe:

  So in sum, you are alleging that Ames Garrett paid attention to one of his employees and had meetings in his office.

  Respondent 1:

  No, Cosette. It got worse. Much.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  29-MAR

  The following day, outside of Ames’s office, Sloane cradled a stack of accordion folders against her hip. She knocked gently, leaning in close to the door to listen for signs that he was on the phone.

  But in moments, Ames’s muffled voice sifted through the wood. “Come in.” Sloane turned the knob, the metal insides of the lock twisting out of place. The shades were drawn over the floor-to-ceiling windows, masking the view of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge and turning the natural light gray.

  Katherine stood behind Ames’s desk, her weight leaning onto the hand resting against the hard surface. Sloane was more surprised to realize that she wasn’t all that surprised to find Katherine there. Katherine had been following along with whatever was happening on Ames’s screen. Sloane had been trained in a similar fashion behind countless partners’ desks when she was a young associate, enough separate points of reference that this particular one shouldn’t turn the switch on any alarm bells. Which just went to show how context mattered.

  Katherine looked up. “Hi, Sloane.” And Sloane tried to read the hidden messages that might be written there. But she found that Katherine’s own shades were drawn, the view masked.

  Sloane made no hurry as she walked over to the chair opposite the desk and took a seat. She crossed her legs. “I brought the disclosure requests for the subscription box acquisition,” she told Ames. “I highlighted what I thought we should push back on. You want to take a look or do you want me to pull the trigger?”

  Ames’s forehead creased, his eyes following her without moving his head. A stash of Hot Tamales protruded from within his cheek. The scent of cinnamon clung to the air.

  Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Sloane thought.

  Because while Katherine’s expression was a blank, Ames’s said one thing: power.

  “I can come back,” Katherine said, straightening. She glanced between Ames and Sloane. Sloane couldn’t quite get used to the way Katherine’s short hair left her entire neck exposed.

  Sloane watched Ames, but didn’t budge. When Ames nodded, Katherine collected a legal pad and pen previously stranded on the desk and left.

  The photographs of a dozen famous athletes smiled down at them from the walls. Sloane tapped her heel on the thin layer of carpet. The chair in which she sat wasn’t company-issued. It was mid-century. Navy leather. Comfortable. Probably pricey.

  Sloane, who had a natural aversion to silences, let this one stretch.

  Ames cleared his throat. “I’ll take a look at them before they go out.”

  Sloane kept the accordion folders on her lap. “What’s Katherine working on?” she asked.

  Ames leaned back in his chair, rubbed his middle finger and thumb across his brow line. “I was teaching her to use Edgar,” he said, as if suddenly tired. “Looking at some of the SEC filings and regulatory matters.” He ran his fingers over the length of his tie, straightening it on top of the buttons of his shirt.

  “How very hands on of you.” She drummed her nails across the folder. They were short and unkempt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a manicure other than what she and Abigail managed in an empty bathtub, their limbs hiked up over the sides as they took turns swiping polish over their fingers and toes.

  He intertwined his fingers on his stomach, which bore only the subtlest hint of age in the form of a pocket of fat sitting right above his belt. “She’s writing a memo for me on the SEC laws of disclosure surrounding cybersecurity breaches.”

  “Shouldn’t Grace be doing that?”

  He tapped his fingers together. “Grace won’t mind. She’s just back from maternity leave. You might say I’m being considerate.” He looked pleased with himself.

  Sloane sat forward, resting her elbow on the folder in her lap. Her chin on her fist. “Because, funny enough, I thought she was supposed to work under me?”

  He tilted his head to stare up at the ceiling. Yes, Ames, thank you, it’s plenty obvious that you’re annoyed with me, but I’m not going away. “I’m delegating to where there’s a need, Sloane.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You can’t keep your hands off the new merchandise.”

  He brought his chair back to straight. “Look who’s objectifying now.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Go take a Midol, Sloane.”

  She clenched her teeth, her lower jaw jutting forward into an underbite. She actually was on her period, so this irked her more than it should have. If there was one monthly obligation we dreaded, it wasn’t the backing up of operational databases or the handing in of audit collection sheets or the checking of updates to the management packs—it was our periods. No number of commercials in which women dove into pools wearing white swimsuits could convince us that our periods were a thing of swanlike beauty. On our best days, we maintained a grudging allegiance with our bodies. We knew we shouldn’t be ashamed. We weren’t ashamed. We
were grown-ass women—which is obviously why we paraded to the restrooms with tampons secretly stuffed into our cardigan sleeves as though we were spies delivering encrypted information. Other times, we had to fish quarters out of the bottom of our purses, searching for change to feed the feminine hygiene dispensers that had yet to be updated in the past twenty-five years. We took birth control in an attempt to assert a modicum of control over our uncontrollable hormones. We unbuttoned our pants at our desks. We rattled the kitchen Tylenol bottle into our hands. We ate chocolate. We pretended that all of this was a myth. That we had neither fallopian tubes, nor menstrual cycles, nor breasts, nor moods, nor children. And then we took it as a compliment when one of the men in the office told us we had balls. So, tell us again how this wasn’t a man’s world.

  “But while we’re on the subject.” Ames pushed his sleeves up his forearms. “I guess I should let you know that Bobbi wanted you gone. After the little stunt you pulled at Desmond’s memorial.”

  “It wasn’t a stunt.”

  He shrugged. “Thinks we’re having an affair, trying to have an affair, I don’t know what the fuck.” His jaw worked. “Point is, she doesn’t trust you anymore.”

  Sloane laughed mirthlessly. “I would think it’s you she shouldn’t trust.”

  “Women.” He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned all the way back. “Anyway. Look, the deal’s always been that I’d have your back as long as you didn’t make things hard for me. I thought you understood that. I’m doing this out of the kindness of my heart, Glover. We have history. I get that. I try to respect it, really I do. But you pull stuff like that again and, well … I’m not going to protect you.” Idly, he pulled a golf ball from his desk drawer and tossed it up in the air and caught it. “I’ll feed you to the wolves and it won’t fucking bother me. We clear?”

  Sloane surveyed her surroundings, took note of where she was, of the environment she’d chosen to inhabit. Of the man sitting behind the desk. Of her position. “I wasn’t aware we had a deal.” She reached a conclusion. “In that case, I want a bigger office.”

  He let the chair come crashing back to upright. Balanced the ball on top of a stack of Post-its. “What?” His cheek tightened with, not a smile, but somewhere in that family. As though he’d just heard a ridiculous punch line.

  “And I want job security,” she said. “A contracted time period with a buyout clause.”

  He crossed his arms. What were the things she had liked about him again? Sloane couldn’t remember.

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  She ignored him. “I want a larger 401(k) contribution. Double.”

  He rolled his chair so that his legs were hidden underneath the desk and his arms rested on top of it. Good. He was coming to the table. She knew him too well and, it had suddenly occurred to her, that he might, before long, consider Sloane to be a liability.

  “If I didn’t know you better, I might think you were blackmailing me.”

  “I’m negotiating. Isn’t this what you taught me to do?”

  He looked to his side, but there was no one there to buy his Can-you-believe-this-woman schtick.

  “I already told you,” he said. “If I’m appointed CEO, then I will be sure to recommend that you succeed me as General Counsel.” He steepled his fingers.

  “And I am telling you that I’m here to protect myself. Plain and simple.”

  He scoffed. “From what, Sloane? You suddenly think I’m the boogey-man?” He elicited a faux shiver. She wasn’t amused. “We’ve worked together for, what, twelve years? I think we’ve done all right.”

  She wondered if that were true. If in the novel of his own life, as his very own point-of-view character, Ames Garrett believed that he and she had done “all right.” He wasn’t wrong. Not entirely. Weeks, even months, could go by in which Ames didn’t make her blood boil or undermine her authority or make an inappropriate comment or hold over her head that they’d slept together. She felt a weird sense of loyalty to the man with whom she’d worked for most of her professional life. He thought they’d done all right. All right.

  She often found herself saying: He doesn’t know any better. It was this thought that had flashed through her mind the moment she added his name to the BAD Men List. Issues with physical and interpersonal boundaries at the office; pursued sexual relationships with subordinate co-workers; sexist. That was what she’d written beside his name. She worried she’d been unfair to him in some way. Leaving him unable to defend himself. That whether or not he knew better mattered. And it was as though she’d just woken up and realized that it was she who had been allowing herself to be the defenseless one and that of course Ames knew better. He was fifty years old. She’d added him to the list as her mea culpa to other women out there. But now Sloane needed to make sure that if Ames became CEO, she didn’t find herself cut out of a job and replaced with a newer model. And so he needed to understand that she could make things difficult for him at a time when he didn’t want them to be difficult.

  “A bigger office, Ames. Job security. A 401(k) and your pay stub.”

  “My pay stub?” He shook his head incredulously.

  “That’s right. What you were making when you were in my position. I want that immediately. And what you’re making now. So that I know what to ask for when I’m made General Counsel.”

  He ran his hand through his hair. She remembered when she thought the white streak through it—a symptom of something called Waardenburg syndrome—was so interesting. Hair couldn’t make someone interesting. And neither could an office and famous friends. Ames fucked missionary-style, like a jackrabbit. “You women all think the system is out to screw you.”

  “You are the system, Ames.” She stood, stared down at him, thought about how her stilettos could poke cleanly through his eye sockets if she wanted them to. “And in case you’ve forgotten, we screwed.”

  * * *

  The decision had had nothing to do with Derek, and Sloane should have felt bad about that. It was just that she had wanted to sleep with Ames and now she didn’t. What she wanted was to marry Derek, she’d decided, as though Ames were a flu virus she’d needed to get out of her system. She was over it. And she wanted to stop. A decision that she’d shared with Ames earlier in the week.

  The response had been chilly, at best. Angry, at worst.

  “Oh, sure, now you want out,” he’d said in one of their talks since. “You opened up your legs and used me to get ahead in your job, but now you want out.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Oh, really? You were the youngest attorney on the Tread Ops deal, Sloane. You’re telling me you think that was all you? Enjoy your bonus for that. You’re welcome.”

  “We’re both adults here,” she’d said, like that had anything to do with it.

  They’d been having the same conversation for a week. A continuous loop. In the interim, she focused on what she was good at—work—because twenty-nine-year-old Sloane hadn’t yet decided how to punish herself for the affair with Ames, now that she’d had her cake, now that it was being shoved down her fucking throat.

  Don’t make this weird, she’d said to him, repeating words she’d once heard from a college boyfriend.

  At five-thirty, her office line rang and it was Ames’s voice on the other end. “Can you come down here?”

  Once she’d replaced the receiver, Sloane had stared at her desk. It was only a breakup. Breakups were supposed to be awkward. That didn’t change whether you were sixteen or nearly thirty. So Sloane carried a legal pad to Ames’s office, where he greeted her good-naturedly.

  “Shut the door, please,” he said, waving his hand to demonstrate.

  She took a seat in the chair in front of him. It was mid-century. Navy leather. Comfortable. Expensive.

  Ames moved around to her side of the desk and sat on top of it, knees splayed so that she was eye level with his crotch. He rested his elbows on his knees. “We’re fine, right?”

  Sloane
relaxed. They were adults. “Yes, absolutely. We’re fine.”

  “No hard feelings?” His eyebrows lifted boyishly. She could imagine, with some distance, she might find him charming again. Just not in a way that made her want to kiss him.

  “Of course not.” She smiled, wanting to put him at ease. “I just want things to get back to normal.”

  His head bobbed up and down, up and down. “Me, too. Me, too. That’s what I want, too.”

  And then she blinked and his hand was on her thigh. His mouth on her neck. His fingers tangled in her hair.

  She gasped. “I meant—” Her voice was breathy—sexy? God, she hadn’t meant to sound sexy. “Ames,” she said.

  He pulled her head back. His lips covered her throat, where her heart pounded at the surface.

  “Stop.” This time she knew there was no mistaking what she said or how she said it. His weight pressed down on her thigh. His tie trailed her lap. A wet tongue slipped into the crevice of her ear.

  The sound that squeezed from her chest was strangled. In the back of her mind, she remembered that she was at work. At the office. Don’t make a scene.

  Sloane used the force of her legs to shove the chair back. The lace trim of her skirt ripped at the hem releasing the sickening noise of a small laceration in the fabric as it split. But Sloane freed just enough distance between their bodies to duck beneath his arm. She didn’t look back as she swung open the door to his office. She didn’t have to. She already knew what he looked like with ruffled hair.

  The path from Ames’s office to Sloane’s was a straight shot and she walked the distance briskly, chin up, eyes trained at her target, as if she were walking the plank with careful dignity. Tears dripped from her eyes.

  From down the hallway, Ardie glanced up from a printout, and then did a double take.