Just One Night, Part 2_ Exposed(46)

Tom bursts into my office with his characteristic inconsideration. Barbara stands behind him with a shrug and a smile before closing the door behind him, giving us privacy.

“Tom, I’m sorry I didn’t call to say I would be late; I—” but something stops me. The sheen of sweat that dots his brow, the flush of his cheeks and the rigidness of his jaw, it all adds up to no good. “Did something happen?” I ask.

“My apology wasn’t good enough?” he croaks. I’ve never heard his voice take this tenor. It’s thin, artless; it hints at an ocean of rage that threatens to submerge the entire building. “Was I not sincere enough?”

I shake my head, not understanding.

“I went too far Friday night, I know that. I apologized for that!”

“You did,” I agree, then turn up my palms as a sign of confusion. “I’m sorry, Tom, I’m still not following. What is going on? What’s upset you?”

“He took it away.”

“Took what away?”

“EVERYTHING!”

The cry is so loud that Barbara hurries back in as if expecting to break up a fight. But when she sees Tom’s face, sees the pain, she steps back out, closes the door again.

I wish she had stayed. Before me is a man so wrecked, it wouldn’t be implausible if he told me someone had just broken into his home and killed his children, raped his wife, stolen all of his possessions.

But Tom has no children, no wife, and all of his possessions are insured.

As far as I know, the only thing Tom has, the only thing he actually cares about, is his job.

I fall back in my seat. The air seems to have taken on the sulfurous scent of foreboding.

“What happened?” I ask again. But I know. I know Tom will be leaving today with the remnants of his career here packed up into a small box. I know his heart has been crunched with the same callousness we use to analyze the numbers of a division that is slated for liquidation.

And I know who’s responsible.

As Tom lets the silence do his talking for him, I shift positions; Tom has always been able to elicit in me a strange mix of derision and respect. And he didn’t just step over the line on Friday. He obliterated it. If I wasn’t afraid of damaging my own reputation, I could sue.

But that’s the thing. I never wanted to sue. I was ready to accept his apology, as self-serving as it might have been. I was willing to take this on a day-by-day basis. I wanted to see if we could make it all work. Not doing so wasn’t just bad for Tom. It was bad for me.

“On what grounds?” I ask weakly. “They have to have grounds, right?”

“The complaint of a client,” he hisses. “Apparently I’ve made some disparaging remarks to some of the women who work for Maned Wolf, Inc. . . . women I’m pretty sure I’ve never spoken a word to in my life—but they’re all willing to sign affidavits saying I have. And then there are other companies who have brought their business here, smaller companies who have suddenly remembered that I was inappropriate with the women at their firms, too.”

He stares at me, waiting for a response. My mouth opens but nothing comes out.

“It’s a joke, of course,” he says, then tears his eyes from me, turns to face the wall, raises his fist. “It’s. A. JOKE!” With each word he pounds his fist into the wall. I can practically see Barbara on the other side of the door wondering if she should come in again.

He continues to stare at the wall. “It’s a joke,” he says again, softer this time. “I’ve never harassed a woman in my entire professional career.”

“Wellll . . .”

Tom pivots slowly, sneers at me. “You?” He takes a step closer. “I said a few brash remarks the day after you flashed me your pussy.”

I grow cold, my nails scrape against my desk. “I didn’t flash you—”

“Tell me, if I hadn’t locked Dave out of the house, if I had accepted his invitation to dinner, would you have served me? Would you have poured my wine while wearing a dress made out of the same amount of material as a washcloth? Would you have sat next to me, wearing no underwear, knowing how high your hemline was going to rise as soon as you hit the chair, knowing that I would be looking at you while you were literally half naked for the entire night? Would you have let Dave debase you in front of me, let him indulge his little revenge fantasy?”

Now it’s me who turns red. The humiliation of that night shoots through me like the pain of a damaged muscle that’s been reinjured. “There is no need—”

“Because that’s how it seemed to me,” Tom continues, cutting me off. “You felt cornered. You felt like you didn’t have a choice. But I gave you a choice. That ass your fiancé was so eager to show off? I saved it! I left! I called Mr. Dade! I am not the bad guy here, so why the hell did you sic your fucking dog on me? Because I told you what you didn’t want to hear?”