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I turn to her fully. “Just now.”
Without breaking eye contact with me, she grabs her legal pad and a pen. She begins to write something on it. “What kind of incident?”
“Bullying and assault,” I answer, my voice burning around the edges.
Charlotte startles back. She bugs her eyes out and clears her throat. “Excuse me? Melissa, did you say ‘assault’?”
I nod. “I did. I happened to wander down to the legal aids’ floor this morning because I’d offered to help a man by the name of Tommy Radner.”
“Yes, I know him. I helped promote him yesterday for a job with Ms. Vanacore,” says Charlotte, like she’s afraid of what else I have to say about him. She clutches her pen and paper a bit tighter. “What happened with him?”
“It’s not what happened with him. It’s what happened to him.” My voice breaks a bit, but I force myself to save my emotions for later when I have time to have them with a glass of wine and a bit of chocolate. “He was verbally and physically harassed by other legal aids on the floor for being promoted to a new job.” I pause, watching my words sink into Charlotte.
They change her face like color change paint underwater. Except here, the results aren’t what I would call beautiful. They are ugly, and they twist her usually beautiful, and fiery pixie features dark and brooding.
“They insinuated that he got the job because of sexual favors and then proceeded to physically assault him. They tormented him and the box of possessions he had come to collect from his cubicle.”
Charlotte flinches, looking pale. “These are serious accusations, Melissa.” She pauses, making further notes. “Around what time was this?”
“About ten or fifteen minutes ago,” I say.
In response to this, she writes something down, underlines it, and then boxes it in. “I hate to ask for this, Melissa, but do you have any further proof of this? Who was involved, and in what capacity?” She sighs unhappily. “I hate to sound like I don’t take your word, but…”
“You need evidence,” I supply for her. She nods. “I understand. These kinds of allegations can be made up. They can be falsified, so of course, you need proof.” I dig out my phone, which has been burning a hole in my skirt pocket since I put it back in there before coming to Tommy’s actual rescue. I had decided to take some video of the altercation, and now I’m glad I did. Now I don’t feel so bad for taking a few extra minutes before coming to his aide. “Which I have. Some video of a part of the altercation,” I say, keying into my phone and pulling up the video. I pass her the phone but don’t dare to start the clip.
Charlotte, true to her mama-Ben persona, straightens her shoulders schools her face together before hitting play on the video. The clip starts with Simon Grizzle, a guy with a crewcut and an atrociously fake tan, calling attention to Tommy. He gets the whole office to pay attention as he lays out his theory for how Tommy got his new position.
Charlotte grimaces at the first horrible string of words. She continues to look troubled and angered by what she hears and sees next — the sheer depth of their cruelty. “Oh my God,” she breathes. I can only guess she’s just seen the part where he gets pushed onto the ground, and his possessions kicked from him. “Oh my God, this is horrible!” She’s just heard a male and female associate insult and assault Tommy with words and physical actions. “This is not okay! Not okay at all,” she says, stopping the clip early. Something I’m quietly grateful for, as it’s hard to have to relive this incident when it’s so fresh and loud in my soul.
She hands me back my phone, asking, “Can you tell me of anyone else who may have been involved? Can you tell me anything about what they said or did?”
“Yes,” I say, “I can. I can tell you as much as you need to know, but I don’t have any more video to back it up.”
“That’s fine.” She holds my eyes with hers briefly. “I may need to borrow your phone or get the clip off of it. Maybe with Reese’s help,” she muses to herself, then looks up at me. “Reese, I mean, Mrs. McKenzie has been kind enough to help me with the technology around here. I’m a bit slow with computers.” I nod, understanding. She stops this line of thinking to address me about the incident again. “Tell me whatever you can tell me and that I’m going to take this to Kane and the rest of the partners. They need to hear of this. While I am planning to immediately have those involved expelled from this company and barred from ever working at another company in Manhattan again, I have to run through procedure.” She sighs, sounding and looking as exasperated as I would in her position. The procedure is done to keep everybody safe, but here it feels like it’s just doing more injury and allowing more time to pass for more ugly things to well up.
