Maybe the Horse Will Talk

by Elliot Perlman

  ‘What’s hot-desking?’

  ‘It’s a system of office organisation that does away with permanent workstations for employees, thereby freeing them up to sit next to different colleagues.’

  ‘So people have to continually move desk?’

  ‘Yes, and often without warning,’ expounded Bradley Messenger enthusiastically.

  ‘Why would anyone want to do that?’

  ‘Change, they get to experience change. We want to be change-makers here at Freely Savage, don’t we? And that’s just for starters.’

  ‘Change-makers?’ echoed Maserov unbelievingly, ignoring as best he could the never-ending corporate need to convert nouns and verbs into each other or force them into unhappy marriages in order to create the illusion they are technical terms in a learned discipline.

  ‘To exploit the invigorating effect of change.’

  Maserov reminded himself that he had twelve months’ protection with pay so the insanity of hot-desking, of continually moving people from workstation to workstation, wouldn’t affect him personally. But he was nevertheless affronted by the madness of it.

  ‘So you want me to find out what the Second Years think about hot-desking?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will their opinions carry a lot of weight?’

  ‘Probably not. We haven’t decided yet what to do with them.’

  ‘I can tell you already, without asking,’ Maserov said. ‘People, fee-earners, will hate it.’

  ‘Do you hate it?’ Bradley Messenger asked.

  ‘I’ve never done it but it sounds like a stupid idea, especially for lawyers. By the way, when you ask me how I’d feel about being the Second Year representative . . .?’ inquired Maserov haltingly.

  ‘We’re asking you to do it.’

  ‘And when you’re asking me to do it . . .?’

  ‘We’re telling you to do it. It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Stephen.’

  With that Bradley Messenger stood up and the meeting was over.

  V

  ‘It sounds insane. Who on earth could possibly be in favour of hot-desking?’ Eleanor asked her estranged husband as she knelt over the bath to wash the soap off two-year-old Jacob Maserov, the younger of their two children.

  ‘People who will never themselves have to leave the comfort of their own desks, people who have to prove they deserve their salaries, have to come up with new ideas to foist upon the already terrified,’ said Maserov as he knelt beside her, bathing their older son, Beanie.

  ‘How can hot-desking possibly improve efficiency?’

  ‘It can’t. But you’re missing the crux of what I’ve told you.’

  ‘What’s the crux?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘That they asked me to be the Second Year representative,’ Maserov explained while wrapping Beanie in his favourite blue towel with the head of a bear at one end.

  ‘So what does that mean?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Is it because you stuck your neck out with Malcolm Torrent?’

  ‘It’s got to be, no one knew I existed before that.’

  ‘Is it good?’

  ‘Well,’ said Maserov, thinking. ‘It’s too soon to tell but it’s definitely annoying, ’cause it means I have to go into the Freely Savage office to ask people stupid questions that will make them angry at the person conducting the survey, me, when I could be working back at Torrent Industries.’

  ‘Trying to give aid and comfort to their band of sexual predators,’ Eleanor interrupted.

  ‘Yes, and working to pay off the mortgage on the house you live in with our sons. I really don’t think you should look at my work as saving sexual predators.’

  ‘I wouldn’t think you’d want anybody looking at your work that way. But what other way is there to look at it?’

  Maserov started gently towel-drying his older son’s hair with the bear head part of the towel. ‘Eleanor, we don’t know exactly what these guys did and, anyway, even people accused of murder deserve to be defended.’

  ‘You wish it was murder. Murder you can defend. Everyone understands murder,’ she said, pat-drying her youngest son, Jacob, using the closed toilet as a seat.

  ‘Are you saying sexual harassment is worse than murder?’ Maserov asked.

  ‘I’m saying murder is more understandable.’

  ‘Well, actually the sex urge is more frequent in people than the urge to kill.’

  ‘Not when we lived together.’

  ‘Anyway, these are so far just allegations,’ Maserov said, dragging the plastic stool over to the basin where he would encourage Beanie to brush his teeth.

  ‘You mean they’re unfounded?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Why don’t you know yet?’

  ‘I’ve only just moved offices. I’m trying to survive. It’s complicated.’

  ‘So you have your work cut out for you, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maserov. ‘I do. I have my work cut out for me. Not too much toothpaste, Beanie. You don’t need that much.’

  ‘I do,’ said the five-year-old Beanie.

  ‘No, not that much.’

  ‘I need only this much,’ said Beanie, ‘but I want the rest.’

  ‘That’s a fine distinction,’ said Maserov.

  ‘Thank you, Daddy,’ said Beanie, applying the bristles of his toothbrush to his small pink tongue.

  Eleanor bounced Jacob wrapped in a towel on her knee. ‘So you’ll still have to go back to work at night there too . . . probably,’ she said.

  ‘Well, no, actually. I don’t have to rush off tonight. I can read the kids a story, maybe two.’

  ‘You probably shouldn’t,’ said Eleanor, fumbling in a small wicker basket for Jacob’s nappy rash cream.

  ‘No, it’s alright.’

  ‘But don’t you need as much time as you can get to solve Malcolm Torrent’s problems?’

  ‘Well, one of the advantages of my new situation is that it’s task oriented. There’s no one watching me, noting when I come and go, so as long as I feel I’m making progress I can be satisfied with the day’s work. It’s almost like I’m working for myself.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t want to be complacent.’

  ‘I’m not complacent. It’s just that I’m now in a position not to have to race back to work every night, away from my sons . . . and away from you.’ Maserov reached his hand out to stroke his wife’s arm but she slowly pulled away.

  ‘Eleanor, I’m more my own boss than ever. For the first time in years I don’t have to rush off anywhere, don’t have to study. You’d said you wanted more time together and —’

  ‘Yeah, I did, but now we’re separated.’

  ‘I know and I don’t like it. I don’t like being separated.’

  ‘It’s a transition,’ said Eleanor. ‘It’s still new. All transitions are hard. It’s only been four months. You need to give it time.’

  ‘I need to give it time?’

  ‘Yes. We were together many years, you know.’

  ‘I know. I was there.’

  ‘Not for all of it,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘Even when I wasn’t there I was still . . . there.’

  ‘You need to give the separation another chance,’ Eleanor explained.

  ‘That’s what people urge with respect to a marriage, not a separation.’

  ‘Well, I’m saying it with respect to the separation.’

  ‘Don’t you find it difficult?’

  ‘Perhaps I’m coping better than you.’

  ‘Perhaps you are. But can I read the kids a story tonight?’

  ‘No, not tonight. Tonight’s not good.’

  ‘Tonight’s not good?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why isn’t tonight a good night for me to read a story to my children?’

  ‘I’ve . . . um . . . I’ve got . . . Someone’s coming round.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘Are they my
friend too?’ asked Maserov.

  ‘I don’t think you would think so.’

  ‘Would they think so?’

  ‘I don’t think they would think so.’

  ‘So we have that in common, me and your friend?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘This friend, the one who’s coming over who would agree with me that we’re not friends, are they animal, vegetable or mineral?’

  ‘You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘It sure sounds like I do.’

  ‘It’s Marta. Marta’s coming over.’

  ‘Marta?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You could’ve just said “vegetable”. I would have got there eventually.’

  ‘I know you don’t like Marta. That’s why I thought it might be better if I read the kids a story and then you won’t run into her.’

  ‘She doesn’t like me.’

  ‘It’s not you.’

  ‘It feels like me when I say hello and she doesn’t answer.’

  ‘It’s men. She doesn’t like men.’

  ‘She married one, sort of.’

  ‘No, they were legally married.’

  ‘No, I meant he was sort of a man.’

  ‘He was a man before she married him,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘Yeah but three years after she left him he still hasn’t thawed out.’

  ‘Well, that’s a man for you,’ Eleanor replied.

  Maserov kissed his children goodnight and went outside to wait in his car to see if Eleanor’s visitor was indeed her friend Marta, the divorced geography teacher who hated him because he reminded her of men. When he saw that it was, he was relieved and exhaled quietly though his nostrils.

  part three

  I

  There were four women, former employees of Torrent Industries, suing the company for sexual harassment. But only one of them had engaged a lawyer. The other three were apparently unrepresented. At least this was on the face of it what their pleadings suggested. This piqued Maserov’s interest. Why would three out of the four of them sue the construction behemoth without engaging a lawyer? How would they know where to start? Even from Maserov’s earliest glimpse of their files, and it was a mere glimpse, nothing in them appeared to him un-legal. Each one of the three unrepresented women had a statement of claim that read as though they had been drafted by a skilled and even motivated lawyer.

  It seemed likely that the three had actually engaged a lawyer to draft their pleadings but why, wondered Maserov, would their lawyer hide his or her identity behind the clients? Since their time at Torrent Industries coincided, it was likely that all four women knew each other, and yet only one, a Carla Monterosso, had a lawyer acting for her who was willing to admit it. Maybe the one lawyer was acting for all four of them? But then why be open about it in Carla Monterosso’s claim but not in the others?

  Maserov was confident Bruce Featherby would have some information or at least a theory about this, which was why he picked up his phone from what felt to him like the sanctuary of his office at Torrent Industries headquarters.

  ‘Bruce Featherby?’ whispered Featherby anxiously, almost breathlessly, down the phone when seeing the prefix of the incoming call from Torrent Industries. But it wouldn’t have taken a call from Torrent Industries to stimulate an autonomic fight or flight response in him. No, ever since his first encounter with Maserov over the phone he had begun to speculate that he, Featherby, was being considered for the category of ‘former person’. In fact he might already have been consigned to it. If not, perhaps his every move now was being scrutinised to determine whether or not he should be allowed to stay on the partnership track or else, like a wart, be frozen off the body politic of the competition for partnership at Freely Savage.

  Why did this inexplicable Maserov thing have to happen to him? If only someone else had been handling the Torrent Industries sexual harassment allegations. And perhaps former personhood wasn’t the end of this, not even the worst of it. Maybe he had already signed his last departmental birthday card for someone he saw every day and didn’t know.

  ‘Bruce, it’s Stephen Maserov. How’re things? This a bad time? I got the files, thanks. Tell me, why are three out of the four plaintiffs representing themselves or seeming to? What do you make of that?’

  ‘I can’t talk to you, Maserov,’ whispered Featherby, as though even telling him that might be bad for him.

  ‘This a bad time? I can call you back. I just thought you might know something about their lawyer. The unrepresented plaintiffs’ files have the fingerprints of a lawyer all over them.’ Maserov wasn’t meaning to fan the flames of Featherby’s anxiety but that’s what he was doing.

  ‘I can never talk to you,’ answered Featherby with a low quiet steadiness to his voice.

  ‘Featherby, we’ve been through this. Okay, I got the files but I hope there are no hard feelings between us.’

  ‘No one will talk to you,’ said Featherby quietly as he placed the phone down into its cradle. Maserov was going to have to figure this out on his own.

  II

  It was time to read the affidavits to see each plaintiff’s case. For no reason other than it was first in the pile, he read the affidavit of Lilly Zhang. For Lilly, a cheerful but shy 24-year-old, it began with an invitation to lunch from the man for whom she was working, Brian Weeks, in Compliance. Out of a sense of unease she declined the invitation with great embarrassment but it led only to more invitations, until she finally accepted. When that first lunch passed without incident she agreed to let the man take her out again at the end of three very long days. This time the executive wanted to buy her a drink and so took her to a bar. Maserov read that, while Lilly Zhang drank only mineral water, Brian Weeks had at least four drinks, two of which were spirits, and this was when he began making suggestive comments about Lilly’s body. He told her, ‘I like Chinese.’ Lilly was uncomfortable but he was her boss and so she just sat there as he commented on her rear. Then he put his hand on the back of her blouse so that it was resting on her bra strap. She gently moved his hand away and told him that she was due to meet her boyfriend and had to leave.

  That night was the night Weeks started sending her lewd text messages in which he claimed to be able to feel that she was attracted to him. At work over the ensuing days he would go in and out of work mode. He would be in work mode when he wanted something from her quickly but would slip out of it when he himself had finished a task and was taking a break, even if his finished task had now given her new work. She deposed that he seemed to delight in trying to distract her with suggestive text messages even after he had given her work to do that he had described as important and urgent.

  Maserov read that on one occasion Weeks had texted that he wanted her to do to him what she did to her boyfriend. She ignored this but it didn’t stop him. Within two days he had texted her that he wanted her to fellate him right there under his desk. She ignored this text too but was having trouble sleeping at night for fear of what might come next.

  She began dreading coming to work. Early one afternoon, he returned from lunch smelling of alcohol and began to massage her back as she sat at her desk, very quickly moving his fingers to the front of her blouse and touching her breasts. At this she began to cry, got up from her desk, and ran down the corridor to the elevator. Lilly deposed that the executive called out in a voice for everyone to hear that if she ‘didn’t want it’ she should have said something sooner. Lilly, frightened, humiliated and aware that everyone could see her, waited for the elevator to take her down to the ground floor where she ran out, breathless, to Flinders Lane. She went into the Grain Store cafe where a few people were still finishing their lunch. Without waiting to be seated she sat down at a corner table and buried her head in her arms and cried. Maserov took a break to splash water on his face. He had to read these affidavits but he was starting to realise just how much he didn’t want to.

  Next he read the affidavit of Carla Monterosso. It began with the date Ca
rla had started working at Torrent Industries and then the date she was transferred to Mike Mercer in Urban Infrastructure. She had heard rumours about Mercer but then one heard rumours about so many of them. If you listened to them all you couldn’t work for anyone. Maserov was already impressed with the affidavit. While nothing specific had been alleged yet, the scene had been set, a milieu, an environment had been established that felt entirely real to him.

  So Carla began working for Mike Mercer. He would comment approvingly or sometimes with mock disapproval on her choice of clothes, setting the tone of one-sided informality that had her permanently off-balance. She remembered the first time he came to her workstation to read over her shoulder. She could smell him. She waited for him to touch her but he didn’t, not that day or the next time he read over her shoulder or the time after that. Then, a few days later, he was reading over her shoulder again and this time she felt his hand, the flat of his palm. At first it rested on her shoulder. Then as he was reading her typed words out loud to himself she felt his index and middle fingers fiddling with her bra strap. No one walking past would have detected anything untoward.

  Maserov winced and screamed to himself, ‘Stand up! Get up now.’ Carla had screamed but no sound came out. The screams had bounced around inside her head like a pinball.

  A team of people, a subset of the Urban Infrastructure department, was working back late on a tender proposal for a bridge in Iraq. It involved long days and late nights. There was an urgency due to a looming deadline and among the team a sense of excitement, even among some of the support staff. They were lucky to have been asked to work late nights and long days, privileged to be chosen to be on the team. If the tender was successful the team – the whole team, not just the team leader or his executives, everyone – would be minor heroes within the department and, it was said, within senior management. One wanted to think that everyone was in this together, pulling in the same direction, part of a group, part of the Torrent Industries Urban Infrastructure bridge tender team. The support staff were told several times a year, and always at the office Christmas party, to feel a sense of pride every time they saw a crane with a Torrent Industries logo on it reaching way up to the heavens somewhere in the city, in a magazine, or on television. ‘We couldn’t do it without each and every one of you,’ they were told.