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TWENTY-SEVEN

“Lucy! Oh my God. What’s wrong?” Alex ducks down, kneeling next to her assistant. But Lucy’s face is buried in her knees. Her shoulders quiver. “Please tell me.”

“I’m sorry, Alex,” she sniffles. “I know I must seem insane.”

“No. You just seem upset. I want to know what’s going on. Lucy, what happened between you and Howard?”

“Nothing, I—” Lucy finally looks up, her face swollen from crying. Trails of gray mascara cling to her cheeks. Lucy doesn’t just look upset, she looks terrified.

“What is it?” Alex asks, a knot forming in her stomach. She reaches out and puts her hand awkwardly on her shoulder. “Please, you can tell me.”

Lucy pulls herself out of the cavity and stands up, looking to make sure the door is shut. She turns back to Alex and says nearly in a whisper, “It’s just that Howard Demetri isn’t the great guy you might think he is.”

“In what way?” Alex asks. She thinks about the angry phone call and the clenched fist she saw through the crack in the blinds. The weaving drunk Howard she ran into in the hallway at night. There was also what Tom told her about the woman.

Lucy leans forward, her eyes looking impossibly large and round. “He has another side to him, one that is—” She glances once more at the door, her face twisted in fear. She lowers her voice. “Dangerous. For women, you know?”

A shiver starts in the back of Alex’s skull and spreads up through her hair. Could it be true? But she knows that of course it could be. Look at all of the powerful men who by all accounts seemed fine, even like exemplary leaders, but who were predators in secret. Is there anything to say that Howard Demetri couldn’t be one of them?

“What has he done?” Alex asks, a sinking feeling in her chest.

Lucy’s voice is so quiet Alex has to lean over her desk to hear it. “He came to visit me, down in the mailroom. He… made a pass at me. I didn’t feel like I could turn him down, Alex. There’s no one down there, you know? He said I would lose my job.”

Alex realizes she’s been holding her breath. She slowly releases it. “That’s so terrible. To feel threatened at work. I’m so sorry, Lucy, I had no idea.” But maybe she is being naive. It happens all the time like this, doesn’t it? Powerful men taking advantage.

“I’m not the only one,” Lucy says darkly. She’s stopped crying now but her voice is still raw. “There was another girl in the mailroom, Veronica. Howard would go down there and pay her visits when she was all alone. This was a while ago, back when I was new here. Before I knew.”

“What happened to her? Is she okay?” Alex can feel Lucy’s fear.

“I don’t know. Only a week or two later she didn’t show up to work. No one knows where she went.”

“That’s too much for anyone to have to go through. I am so sorry, Lucy. There has to be something we can do.”

A sob escapes Lucy’s throat. “Oh God, please do not tell anyone about this. It would ruin me. I can’t lose this job.” Alex is alarmed by the outburst. She goes around her desk and puts an arm around Lucy’s small shoulders.

The idea of Howard getting away with something like that infuriates her. “I’m sure they wouldn’t fire you if you went to HR and explained to them—”

“No!” Lucy draws back and looks at Alex, panicked. “No. I cannot go to HR. And you can’t either. You have to promise me. Oh my God.” Her chest rises and falls so rapidly that Alex worries she might start to hyperventilate.

“Okay, no, I won’t, Lucy. I promise. Here.” She reaches for a water bottle she’d taken from the break room earlier. Lucy takes it from her and drinks noisily. “I’ll make sure to warn you if I see him,” Alex says, feeling helpless. It isn’t enough, not nearly. But Lucy nods gratefully.

“Thanks, Alex. I’m so glad you’re here. It’s been such a hard time at the office since Francis.” She drinks several more gulps of water and coughs. The girl is obviously traumatized by her boss dying, and now this. It is too much for someone so young to deal with. Lucy pulls away, giving a loud sniffle and dabbing at her eyes.

“But can you be sure to tell me if anything else happens that I should know about? And will you promise to go to HR if he does anything else to you?”

Lucy glances once more toward the door. “Of course,” she says, not very convincingly. “I should get going.”

“Of course.” Alex watches Lucy’s back as she disappears into the hallway. She seems so young, so vulnerable, that Alex finds a lump forming in her own throat. She can relate to Lucy. There is a kind of bravery that you must possess to come to this city with nothing and no one, a certain amount of having nothing to lose.