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CHAPTER THREE

“Ok, yeah…yeah…totally understandable” Brenda nodded as she talked on the phone.

“She always does the nodding thing,” Wendy said, trying to bring humor into this, “and I’ve called her out on it before, but she swears the person can hear the intention.” Wendy smiled and admired her wife across the room while she sat with Emma and me on the couch.

“Hey, she’s the lawyer, I’m not going to question her practice…I guess literally.” I smiled and laughed a little, allowing myself the slightest bit of levity after hours of doom and panic.

Brenda reached the wall of the kitchen and twisted on her heel, sock squeaking against the wood floor.

“She also paces when she’s on the phone, another quirk I’ve pointed out, but she doesn’t really have a reason for that one.” Wendy gave me a concerned look and put her hand on my knee.

“Vi, it’ll be alright, I promise. You’ll bounce back.”

“Will I?”

She was trying to distract me from the whole situation by telling me all the quirky things her wife did, and I couldn’t thank her more for it. I had t o focus on something other than the insanity of the afternoon that preceded this moment, some of the insanity being my doing, of course.

“I know, yes, ok, well…I appreciate it, I wish we’d talked under better circumstances…ok…”

Brenda trailed off as the other end of the conversation terminated. Her polite smile softened, and she looked like she just tasted something bad. “Cunt,” she said as she put the phone in her pocket. She walked back toward the living room and stood in front of the three of us on the couch.

“Ok, your HR department…or, former HR department, have their ducks in a row.” Brenda said before sitting down on the couch on the other side of the room.

“And?” I said, dread thrumming in my ears. It hadn’t stopped since I threw that goddamn paperweight.

“Well, this is a pretty fucked up thing to find out,” Brenda’s sailor mouth born from a childhood in Australia that she couldn’t utilize much in the courtroom — judges hate when you call the prosecutor a motherfucker, even if they are one — so she saved it all for the times we hung out, or when we did…other things. “Turns out, big corporations with big insurance policies have something called ‘disgruntlement coverage’ to handle the costs of stuff like this…or worse, I guess” Brenda realized the pall she cast over the room in bringing up the most grim shit possible.

“Well I don’t plan on ventilating Dale any time soon, but, hey, the night is young” I said.

“As your lawyer, I didn’t hear that,” Brenda joked, settling into the couch. “It’s a lot easier to beat a manslaughter rap over something with premeditation.”

“Of course, of course” I said. The jokey haze only lasted a couple of seconds before the wave of woe hit again. My stomach tightened and my neck muscles went stiff. “Emma…I got fired…” I said, turning toward my girl friend and resting my head on her shoulder.

“Vi, it’s fine. I’m rich, so, it doesn’t actually matter.” Emma said, and even though somebody saying something like that with such blunt affect would plunge most people into further despair, I’d learned to love Emma’s sometimes hilariously direct tone.

“So, what about the contract stuff?” I turned back toward Brenda. “I know Dale fucked with my stats, there has to be evidence of it.”

“And there’s also evidence of a woman with very conspicuous pink hair fastballing a paperweight into a luxury SUV that’s going to make your case a lot tougher to argue.” Brenda frowned slightly.

“I…I know, but what I did doesn’t make what he did any more OK.”

“I fully understand that, Vi, and if you really want to try to take them on for unlawful termination, we could give it a go, and there’s a chance you could even win.” Brenda rested her elbows on her knees and leaned toward me, “But cases like that take years sometimes, and the success rate isn’t great. Corporations, especially huge ones like Mirobeat, have teams of lawyers dedicated to covering their asses by any means necessary. They’ll intimidate you, call you at all hours of the night, maybe even physically threaten you.”

“Bren, I think telling Vi that there’s a chance someone will tie her to a chair and degrade her isn’t as much of a nightmare scenario as it is for most people.” Wendy turned to me, gripping my knee, a big smile on her face. The fun of the BDSM shared between the four of us flickered in my mind, but maybe for the first time since I started dating Emma, I wasn’t even remotely aroused.

I smiled and rolled my eyes, then looked over to Emma. “Em, I just…I’m sorry for doing this, for being like this. ”

My girlfriend narrowed her eyes. “What the fuck are you sorry about? Dale sounds like a dick, and if I was in your place, he would be thankful if the only thing that ended up broken was his windshield.”

I tried to find the humor in it, the light, but it was tough. “What am I going to do? I mean, I didn’t like that job, but, it was…there…at the very least.”

Emma put her hand on my shoulder, a reassuring gesture she didn’t turn to much, but it felt so good in the moment. “We’ll figure it out, Vi. We’ll get through.”