Chapter 04 - Grace explains the problem

The week rolls by in its normally droll manner. I try to fish around for a Valentine’s date but having just broken up with Carie last month, my heart wasn’t really into it this year. Instead, while Grace took a girl out for one of those meal, show, hotel room discount deals, I stayed in and watched a couple sad romantic comedies.

While most people got to enjoy the long weekend with President’s Day on Monday, Grace had to head into work for a normal day. No rest for the K Edison Global crew. I spent some time in the studio working on some tabletop stuff, just trying to expand my portfolio and maybe get some commercial accounts, but still ended up back home before Grace.

When I got the text from Grace asking if I’d be in this evening, I shot back an answer and ran down to the corner grocery store to buy something for dinner. I knew she’d be in a bad mood with having basically struck out on Valentines Day and then having to work today. A bag of ready-made salad, a fully cooked and hot rotisserie chicken, and some veggies I could steam in the microwave plus a small cake we could share. Not exactly gourmet, but better than ordering delivery or nuking something from the freezer.

Grace got home in the expected mood and took a quick shower before dressing in her lounge shorts and a comfy off shoulder sweater. I didn’t press her on anything while we ate and let her carry the conversation, but even then, it was clear she was thinking about something. I kept catching her looking at me in a strange way. Like she was assessing me. If we were strangers in a bar I’d think she was checking me out, but since I know we both go for the big breasted bimbo type, I know that couldn’t be it.

Finally, after we take care of the dishes, we sit down in the living room. Grace grabs the streamer remote but doesn’t turn on the TV. Instead, she curls her legs underneath her and sits up straight, looking right at me. “Jamie, you know that guy I talk about at work, right? Mr. Orpheus?”

I run the name through my head and remembered him. “Yeah, he’s the prick that makes his secretary act like a whore and stuff, right?”

Grace nods, “Yeah, that’s him. But it’s not just his personal assistant. He acts like that with any woman that he has power over. The entire personal assistant pool knows to avoid him if they can. Any woman in the sales department, since they’re on the same floor, do everything possible to avoid his side of the office. Even middle managers get the same treatment from him if he thinks he can get away with it.”

My brows furrow as I grow angry, afraid I know where this is going. I stay quiet and after a moment, Grace continues, “I spent most of the day with Rhea Birdie, our HR director. I got hard numbers on Mr. Orpheus after my… my… incident with him. He’s been with the company for almost twelve years and has gone through thirty-two different personal assistants. Understand, he’s only had his OWN assistant for the last eight years. Evidently him going through one every eight months or so now is an improvement, compared to how bad he was in his early days. Rhea was clear that everybody knew what he asked of his Personal Assistants. Orpheus’ direct supervisor is Mr. Zeller, the vice president of investments and he has been made directly aware of what Orpheus does. Evidently this came to a head six years ago and the final word was that so long as Orpheus didn’t cross the line into criminal activity and continued to make the company money, he was untouchable.”

I can’t stand it and ask directly, “Grace, what did he to do you?”

She looks down and lets her hair obscure her face from me. I’ve never seen Grace like this as she’s one of the strongest people I know. Man or woman, big or small, timid or loud, forward or shy, friend or foe, she was the absolute strongest person I know and now I’m watching her hold back tears. She seems to have won that battle at least for now as she looks up and brushes the hair out of her face. Her eyes might be red and very wet but her cheeks are still dry. “He cornered me where he knew the security cameras had a blind spot. I was so shocked by what he did that I don’t remember his exact words but as he felt up my ass in a gross and obviously lecherous manner, he told me that since I was going through problems with the embezzlement team, that he could always be an ally. IF I would just open up to him. Go out with him.”

I could imagine the scenario and wondered how Grace ended it. A knee to his groin? A slap across the face? No, she wouldn’t slap him, Grace would outright punch him. But Grace corrected my assumed action, “When he came in close, obviously going for a kiss, I couldn’t move. All I kept thinking was how he ruined all those women’s lives when they hadn’t done anything wrong. And here I was, already under suspicion. What harm could he do with that if I didn’t do what he wanted?”

Grace evidently saw my anger rising and waved it off as she went on, “Look, there’s nothing to do about it. I talked with Rhea because of it, and she convinced me not to move forward with a report or anything. I hate to say it, but so long as I don’t respond positively to him or put up a fight, Rhea says he’ll just move on to a… God, what did she call it? He’ll move on to a ‘more fun’ target.”

Grace gestures up to her chest, indicating her lovely B cup breasts, “Besides, she reminded me I’m not physically his type and there were plenty of women in the office that ARE his type. So even by doing nothing, I’m going to end up hurting someone else since he’ll get to them because I didn’t play ball.”

I nod, seeing now why Grace is so broken up. By not taking on Mr. Orpheus directly she was going to feel responsible for anyone that got harassed after her. Even though she knew she couldn’t do anything, she’d still see it as her fault. At a loss of words, I go with the most generic if at least earnest thing I could say, “Hey, I’m here for whatever you need Grace. Let me know and I’m there, no questions asked.”

I’m a little taken aback at Grace’s immediate response, “Don’t say that yet Jamie. Here me out before you volunteer. Hey, I know you’re trying to quit, but do you have any cigarettes?”

I fish out my ‘just in case’ pack of smokes along with my zippo and join Grace on our little balcony overlooking the alley and train station. I consider taking off my nicotine patch but decide that it’s safe so long as I only have the one cigarette. If I go for another, I’ll take it off then.

After Grace smoked half of her cigarette in just two big drags, she leans on the railing and starts telling me about her plan without looking at me. “I talked with Rhea for a good long time, and she was the one that made it clear. We need three things to get Mr. Orpheus out of the office. We need him to actually commit criminal sexual ****. It needs to be a felony offence and sexual harassment is only a civil offense. But since that’s actually what he does most of the time by using threats, we really just need someone to be willing to charge him with the crime.”

Grace tosses her finished cigarette into the alley and looks at me directly, “Or rather, have someone that SEEMS to be willing to charge him without him being able to **** his way out of it.”

Only halfway through my own coffin nail, I know where this is going and reach under my jacket to pull my patch off, giving Grace time to continue. “Basically, we need someone to step into the lions den with the intent of having him sexually **** them. To be willing to have the episode recorded in order to have video and audio evidence of the threat or use of **** and then be willing to stand in front of him and say they’re going to go to the police if he doesn’t quit. If he doesn’t leave the company.”

I tilt my head a bit to the side, not quite getting what Grace is laying out. “Wait, why not just go to the police? If he does that and you have the evidence, can’t you just…”

Grace shaking her head negatively silences my question, “No, that won’t work for a lot of reasons. I mean, sure if we had that type of person then it might work. But having someone convicted of sexual ****, especially on a first count and especially with an impeccable record like Mr. Orpheus, is beyond difficult. It would also be hard on the woman as she’d have to stand up in court, in front of the press, and state how she was abused.”

I nodded slowly, understanding how embarrassing that could be even if it were all true. Grace went on, “What we hope is that with the evidence, Mr. Orpheus will want to avoid something like that. He’ll try to **** his way out first but if we have a person that makes that impossible, then his only choice to avoid the public eye as a sexual predator is to quit. He’d more than likely get fired just for the accusation going to court, so quitting would save his reputation and might let him get another job elsewhere. And while I hate dropping him off to be someone else’s problem, he’ll at least be out of K Edison Global, making all the women there safer.”

I light a cig for each of us while nodding, “Okay, I get it then. How can I help? Want me to call up some of the models I’ve worked with? Most of them aren’t as busty as you say he likes, but I know some that might help out.”

Grace takes a another agonizingly long drag before crossing her arms and looking at me dead in the eye, “No, we don’t need a woman. Orpheus knows how to press their buttons and still come out looking strong and in charge. We need something more. Something that will add oomph like embarrassing him.”

I hold my hands up, fearing where this was going, “Whoa whoa whoa… you can’t think that I could do that, can you? I mean, what the hell do I know about secretarying?”

Grace laughs out loud. When she gets her humor under control she finally looks back at me and asks, “Is that really your first issue? Doing the actual job of a personal assistant?”

I try to rationalize my outburst, “Well sure. I mean yeah, he isn’t even going to go for me if I could do the work though, right? He’s not going to be attracted to a guy. Those old boy clubs are pretty homophobic…”

My voice fades away as Grace simply smiles wider and wider. When I’m finally quiet she smirks and says, “God Jamie, you will fit right in with the bimbos he normally goes for. No, we weren’t thinking of putting you in as yourself. I convinced Rhea that you could pull off looking just like the girls Mr. Orpheus goes for. And you know damned well it’s true!”

When my mouth opens to protest Grace is at the ready and speaks before I can get a single word out, “Yes, I’m thinking of the Halloween contest last year. We won first place as the French maid and butler. They knew damned well that I was a woman playing the butler, but they thought we were two women. They never even GUESSED that you were a guy in drag. You passed THAT convincingly.”

I have to admit, that was quite the night. We’d worked hard at the costumes for a month but were supposed to be just normal butler and maid without any gender play. But when they sent the wrong sizes on the day before the party, we had to act fast or just back out. We ended up getting Grace almost an entirely new costume which is why it didn’t go over as well, but I fit into the French Maid outfit with just a little extra padding here and there. The blonde wig, Grace working on my makeup, the shaving of my arms and legs… of which the hair was just barely coming in again… and the fact that I could already walk in three-inch heels made it work.

I open my mouth to offer another protest, but Grace has obviously though this through and is still ready with a rebuttal before I can say anything, “I know you spoke as little as possible that night which helped with the cute factor, but I also know you worked hard on your voice for that play in college. What was it, ‘The Women’? You told me you spent three weeks on stage playing a woman in a full female revue of that play and no-one even guessed at it. You looked, acted, and SPOKE like a woman for weeks in front of audiences of hundreds of people and fooled them all. Do you mean to tell me that you couldn’t do this in front of an audience of a couple dozen people for another couple weeks?”

Again, Grace made a good point. Playing Edie Cohen in ‘The Women’ by Clare Boothe Luce back in college was daunting but I won that bet with flying colors. The review of the play in the Chicago Reader even compared my acting to that of Debra Messing’s from the movie version.

Instead of directly confronting Grace, I toss my cigarette into the alley and stomp back into our apartment. When I hear Grace follow me in and close the window, I say without even looking at her, “So let me get this straight. You want me to play the part of a sexed-up bimbo secretary in order to entice some lech to sexually **** me by either forcing me into a sexual act or at least threatening it. You want me to turn my life upside down for, let’s face it, probably closer to six weeks, all in order to later confront this guy with the threat that I’d take him to the police and actually go through with a criminal trial as a GUY in drag that was sexually abused in the hope that he quits to avoid the problem. You want me to do this to a guy that regularly blackmails women who DON’T threaten him. Do I have that right?”

I turn around and look at Grace and immediately see that I do in fact have that right. The whole plan was ridiculous. It had such a small chance of working. It would be difficult to set myself up to act like that in public again and not just on the stage or at a party this time. It would be even more difficult to not only act like some bimbo, but actually do it in the attempt to entice a man into sexually using me. Put it all together and something like this was destined to fail. And if I’d looked at Grace and saw hope or any humor whatsoever, I probably would have said no right then and there. Instead, what I saw was my good friend, so hurt by what’s been going on and what has now happened to her, that I seemed to be the only chance she had to make it right.

And how could I tell a friend like that no?