Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

  Al Runkin ushered the women into a conference room. He took a seat in a cracked leather ergonomic chair opposite them and laced his fingers behind his head. The salty remnants of underarm sweat haunted his dress shirt. “So.” He looked down his nose at the stack of papers on the table in front of him. “You’re aware of this.” He squeezed his chin down his neck, the skin folding.

  Sloane folded her hands on the desk. “It’s probably best we get the obvious parts out of the way. Yes. We’ve filed a suit as co-plaintiffs against Ames Garrett, as General Counsel, and against Truviv, Inc., more generally, under Title VII. While I’ve experienced direct harassment under Ames Garrett’s tenure at this company, my colleagues Ardie and Grace have brought their claims under the same act beneath the unsafe work environment umbrella, which permits claims where employees have been indirectly but negatively impacted by the harasser’s behavior. There. That should save us both some time, don’t you think?”

  “Lawyers.” His thin lips drew thinner. “How refreshing.” He sat up abruptly. The hinges on the chair squealed. “Here’s the thing: We have procedures in place for this sort of thing. A lawsuit? Well, I understand that you all are lawyers, so this is your—how do you say it?—milieu, but it’s not necessary.” He made a face as though he had smelled something bad. “In fact, an investigation is already underway. In the future, we have a hotline that allows you to call in these types of complaints. Helps to avoid the expense of lawyers and filings and such for everyone.”

  Ardie wrapped her hands around her knee. She didn’t know how she would feel about being in this room. The sickly overhead lights. The coffee mugs filled with pencils. “A hotline,” she said, “that’s often routed directly back to the person about whom you’re making the complaint. It doesn’t exactly require a doctorate to determine who then is making said complaint.” There, Ardie sounded like herself there. Her heart started beating. Presumably it had been beating all along.

  “We have a policy that allows employees making a complaint to skip the usual steps and go directly to senior management.”

  Grace—“The person about whom we’re complaining is senior management.”

  He threw up his hands. His forehead was a shiny ball of wax; the reflection of light kept moving across its surface. “What do you want us to do?”

  Sloane, who sat in the center, put a hand on each of their chair arms. “We think Ames Garrett’s employment needs to be terminated, for starters.”

  “Like I said, it’s under investigation.”

  “How long do you expect this investigation to take?” Ardie worried that “investigation” was a stage that had an ability to last until anyone who’d previously cared had lost the will to. It came with an image of endless accordion folders stacked on storage room floors, replete with meaningless papers. Maybe this was offensive to the hard work Human Resource workers otherwise performed, but it was Ardie’s particular bias and she allowed herself to carry it.

  “It’s hard to say. I would expect three days, a week at most.” Al shrugged.

  “Great,” Sloane said in a voice that said she didn’t think it was particularly great. “Then we’ll expect to hear a follow-up at that point. In the meantime, I’m sure you’ll be hearing from our attorney.”

  Our attorney. Ardie could imagine a person who was not an attorney feeling more powerful at the chance to use that phrase, but Ardie had peeked behind the curtain to the Wizard of Oz.

  They stood as one. Southern etiquette dictated that Al jump to his feet, too, but his lap got hooked between the chair and the table, so he hunkered awkwardly while trying to stand and wave.

  “Ardie.” He pushed the wheeled chair free and it clacked against the back wall. She paused in the doorway. “It’s nice to see you again. It’s been a while,” he said, voice lowered.

  She hesitated. “Yeah. I think you had hair back then.”

  Ardie Valdez hated Al Runkin.

  Employee Statements

  14-APR

  Kimberley Lyons:

  No, I wasn’t there when it happened. You see, I take care of the secretarial coverage during the lunch hour, which means that my lunch hour is late and so I had just left about fifteen minutes earlier. I’m sorry. It’s difficult for me to talk about. I’ve never known anyone who has died before, other than my grandparents, and that was when I was too young to even remember. It’s a shock to everyone on the fifteenth floor. We’re like family.

  Kunal Anand:

  The women went crazy. If anyone says that isn’t the case, they’re lying or trying to be P.C. or something. They were like rabid dogs, thirsty for male tears. Rabies makes you thirsty, in case you didn’t know. I saw it on Viceland.

  Katherine Bell:

  I just started here. In fact, I moved from Boston, so I’m new to the Dallas area as well. This is a difficult first impression, I guess you could say. I really wasn’t involved in office politics.

  Al Runkin:

  I’m not aware of anyone exhibiting any violent behaviors, no. Our department takes personnel and, particularly, mental health issues very seriously. Think of us as guidance counselors for grown-ups. Homicide? I doubt that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  7-APR

  The bar where Sloane sat nursing a thirteen-dollar glass of Merlot traded in black leather and copper metals. The atmosphere was luxe and inviting, though she’d chosen it primarily for proximity—it sat on the same block as the Truviv office building—and for the fact that the dim lighting managed to make her look at least ten years younger. She could see her reflection in the mirror behind the bar, between the half-full bottles corked with plastic nozzles promising intricate drinks mixed by bearded men with tattoo sleeves and plugs in their earlobes.

  She should go home. Her phone had been silent all day. Derek had been gone by the time she’d gotten up and he hadn’t responded to any of her text messages. It made her feel like a high school girl, all insecurity, chin acne, and a vicious internal monologue that had come out of thin air. He could get someone younger, Sloane. Men could do that. Prettier, too. There was always prettier. And now you’ve handed him permission to do it with a clear conscience. Bravo.

  Yeah, but he couldn’t get Abigail’s mother, she shot back. He couldn’t get me.

  “Can I buy you another glass?” She probably had that startled look, cords in her neck flaring like a reptile. The man who had taken the seat beside her could only be in his twenties. He was boyishly handsome, freshly shaven, a thin build, with enough dark hair to sweep to the side. He wore a pink, short-sleeved, collared shirt that was trendy without trying too hard.

  She noticed with mild surprise that there were only a couple sips left in her glass.

  “I’m married,” she said. And nearly twice your age, though she didn’t feel the need to add this part.

  “Then it’s a good thing my question wasn’t: Will you marry me?” He drummed the bar top. “Because then I’d have to be properly embarrassed.” He had dimples in his cheeks, because, of course he did.

  She turned her attention away. She hated when men did this, pretended that she was being presumptuous—worse, full of herself—for assuming that buying a drink was short for, would you be interested in me?

  They sat in unamiable silence.

  “Sloane Glover, right?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that he was holding out his right hand.

  She turned slowly, eyed the bartender who was drying highball glasses on the other end of the bar. “Yes,” she said, taking his hand.

  “Cliff Colgate. Dallas Morning News.” He slid a business card across the slick wood to her. The word “Reporter” appeared underneath his name. “Do you have a minute?”

  Sloane didn’t move to leave.

  “I’ve been working on a story about a spreadsheet that has been cycling around a group of professional women in the Dallas area. The BAD Men List—I’m sure I’m telling you what you already know—details the sexually predatory behavior of men in power here in tow
n.”

  “Interesting.” She pushed the base of her wineglass in a circle, the remaining liquid swirled around its edges.

  A pocket-sized notebook appeared, along with one of those pencils people used to write down miniature golf scores. “Would you like to comment?”

  “On what?” Sloane’s mind was calculating.

  “On the BAD Men List—its contents, its usefulness, its ethics, anything.” His elbow rested easily on the bar, the pencil pinched between his fingers. She had a vague thought about what it would be like to fuck him, but it was only a passing one. Sloane had moved past the age at which she could have a one-night stand never having gotten around to having one. She didn’t know whether to mourn this or be grateful.

  She took a short swig of the wine. Almost gone and she hadn’t decided whether or not to order another, now that she had company. “What makes you think I would have any commentary to add?”

  “The name Ames Garrett showed up on that list.” He had the air of a schoolboy, perhaps a bit of a teacher’s pet. “Not long after, you and your colleagues, Adriana Valdez and Grace Stanton, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him.” He tapped the butt of the pencil against his temple. “The power of deduction.” He was joking, of course.

  “You’ve been following it.” She took another sip of the wine. The drops of red that settled at the bottom when she returned the glass were so few that she would look desperate if she tried to reach them with another drink. “Sorry, but you don’t strike me as a ‘professional woman,’ as you put it.” She twisted in her seat; her skirt rode an inch or two higher up her thigh, but purely by accident.

  Ames had found out about the list—she didn’t know how, exactly—and so she should have assumed that anyone might have seen it and, still, she hadn’t expected a reporter. She suddenly felt that she was at the starting line of a race; the gun had just fired and she had no clue how far she was going to have to run.

  “Over three thousand people have access to that list, Sloane.” Her first name. Her hackles rose ever so slightly. “You really think that three thousand people can keep a secret?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  11-APR

  Wet pavement stretched out like a tongue from the open loading station on the basement level. The cavernous cement block smelled like gasoline and old compost. Men trucked crates of soda cans using dollies.

  “I need the supply-room keys,” Rosalita said to the foreman. Crystal waited by the elevator, keeping watch over their cleaning caddie. She was back.

  The foreman sat on a stack of cardboard boxes, slouched over a clipboard. His stomach pooched under his yellow polo. A hollow dimple marked his belly button. “If you’re asking something, mina, you best be doing it from your knees,” he said without looking up. He signed her paychecks.

  “No problem, but I warn you, I bite.”

  “Fuck you.” He spat on the cement floor. But he undid the key ring hooked to his belt loop and tossed her two keys. “Don’t steal shit. I’ll check.”

  * * *

  Crystal and Rosalita dragged the cleaning cart over the elevator ridges on the upper floors—thud, thud, thud.

  “He asked me to blow him.” Crystal pulled on rubber gloves.

  “He asks everyone to blow him. Just don’t do it.”

  Crystal didn’t reply. She studied the fingertips of her gloves, pinching them—too big.

  Well.

  Sometimes Rosalita thought how the foreman was a kid once, who probably liked Batman and toy cars and Legos and stuff. She pushed the cart. Her calves sprung to life. She parked it midway down the hall. “I’ll be back,” she told Crystal.

  “You know I don’t like being left alone.”

  “Says the bitch that didn’t show up to work,” Rosalita said, with a laugh, over her shoulder. “Who do you think I was with then?”

  At the supply and copy room around the corner, Rosalita slipped the key into the lock and pushed down on the lever. The room smelled like warm paper—chemical and woodsy. The copiers emitted blue lights as they slept. The automatic overhead bulbs flickered on as she crossed the room to the dual-level cabinets. She knelt, read the laminated labels that appeared on each of the cabinet doors. She selected three pens, four different color highlighters, a package of notecards, three envelopes, and a notebook for Salomon. Rosalita was stealing, but only in the same way that the men and women who worked on these floors did for their children’s school projects. And they didn’t feel guilty, so why should she?

  Two days until Salomon’s entrance exam.

  She returned and placed the supplies on the bottom shelf of the caddie. “What are those for?” Crystal asked.

  “None of your business.” Rosalita checked the dangling clipboard.

  “I didn’t go to college.” Crystal peeked at the school supplies.

  “Maybe you should have.”

  They cleaned the darkened office floors. The city lights pierced through the slats of closed blinds. Their ghostly silhouettes passed over glass partitions. Occasionally, inside the conference rooms, she would look through the windows and notice a building engulfed in black save for one or two golden cubes of light and see a person inside vacuuming the floors and dusting the bookcases.

  She passed through the fifteenth-floor offices, observing only secondary signs of life—a change in scent, a granola bar wrapper left on a desk, an open gym bag—and, pooled in the bottom of a waste basket inside Ames Garrett’s office: a puddle of soupy brown vomit.

  The Dallas Morning News—April 11—Article: Disgraced CEO Hopeful Faces Sexual Harassment Charges

  VIEW COMMENTS

  Anonymous Former Truviv Employee

  04/11 at 6:26 AM

  This is not the only offender at Truviv.

  Anon Current Truviv Employee

  04/11 at 6:31 AM

  I have worked for years with Ames Garrett. He is a good man with a proven legacy. He has never demanded accolades, but has quietly steered the company through choppy waters and numerous potential legal hazards and into the prosperous age of recent history. These claims are unfounded and it is embarrassing that this is what passes for reporting these days.

  Ruth McNary

  04/11 at 6:36 AM

  Stop. Believe women. There is no value in a “He’s a good guy who did good things for the company” defense. This comeuppance is long overdue.

  Anonymous & Fed UP

  04/11 at 6:45 AM

  There is no evidence of anything. Every false complaint makes it harder to believe women and somehow wanting actual facts makes us the bad guys. Yes, guys. Was anyone raped? Was anyone assaulted? No. And no one is alleging otherwise.

  Truviv Employee

  04/11 at 7:01 AM

  Seriously, Anonymous & Fed Up? Yes, someone, someones actually, were assaulted. That is exactly what is being alleged. And by the way, no one has to be raped for an assault to take place. This isn’t the 1950s.

  Anonymous & Fed Up

  04/11 at 7:02 AM

  Were you there, Truviv Employee? Do you know what happened? Great, then you don’t know.

  Anon Victim

  04/11 at 7:16 AM

  I’d like to thank the women that came forward to accuse Ames Garrett. It’s inspired me to name my own abuser at Truviv. His name is Lamar O’Neill.

  Lamar O’Neill

  04/20 at 2:11 PM

  I have been made aware of this commenter and also know who has made these false allegations against me. Out of respect and kindness, I am choosing not to name this person publicly, but will be taking immediate legal action against this person.

  Ruth McNary

  04/11 at 7:35 AM

  @AnonVictim I believe you. I am so sorry you went through this.

  Anonymous & Fed Up

  04/11 at 8:12 AM

  Really, @RuthMcNary? On what basis? Is this where we’re at as a country? We don’t care about due process or evidence anymore? Why are we okay with slander in its most obvious form?
You are ruining people’s lives and careers. Let’s see the proof. Texts, emails, this is a digital age, so if the women’s and your allegations are true, show us. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. I for one still have some respect for our founding fathers.

  Anonymous

  04/11 at 8:45 AM

  You don’t know what went on there. No one knows.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  12-APR

  Since filing the lawsuit, Sloane had taken to working with her office door shut more often than not. She was cloistered in her office when the commotion began. It was a buildup of noise, really. Voices. This happened sometimes. A senior attorney reamed out an IT person, someone got engaged or brought a new baby around to show their colleagues and, for a moment, a small flurry of activity would break out on the office floor.

  Sloane finished typing up the email that was sitting on her desktop. Then, curious, she poked her head out. A clump of secretaries gathered at Beatrice’s station.

  “What’s going on?” Sloane asked.

  Anna, Ardie’s secretary, turned. “They’re saying someone jumped off the building.”

  Sloane stepped out into the hall to join them. “Jumped off the building. This building?” She pointed at the floor. “Who’s saying?”

  Corey, the fifteenth-floor receptionist, answered. “I was just covering for lunch on Nineteen. That’s what the receptionist there told me.”

  A phone rang. Beatrice glanced down at the blinking handset and ignored it. Two more lines lit up. Then three. Beatrice sent them all to voicemail. But within seconds, the lines were flickering red again. She picked up. “Hello?”

  Anna tapped her hand on Beatrice’s desk. “I just got a text.” She held up one finger. Lowered it. Anna pressed her fist to her mouth. “I just got a text from my friend Kristen on Nineteen. She said that she heard … that she heard it might have been Ames.”