In his office were Joan, Curtis, and Helen, “Personnel,” with an extra chair pulled in for Melissa. For an instant all were silent while she read the document, but then Helen said with soft impatience, “I thought this was resolved.” No one answered, and she went on sotto voce, “Not that I would know. Not that anyone ever tells me anything I should know if I’m supposed to do my job.” At this point Melissa interrupted, announcing, as she handed the complaint like a completed task to Curtis, “I’ve already decided to fire them.”
The lawyer said, “Let’s not be hasty.” He waited till Melissa met his eye, and Frank noted in the pause, in his expression, a familiar fatherly indulgence. “This requires a formal response,” he said, “so we’ll have to investigate—for the sake of documentation—and if we find the complaint’s legitimate, we’ll let the perpetrators go, reprimand Henry, clarify our policy, put it all in writing, and hope they like our timely action. But not to worry. They’re not there to put people out of business. Also, it might not hurt to compensate Ms. Reinhart for her trials.”
“Compensate her?” Frank objected. “Isn’t that opening the door to all kinds of—”
“It’s already open. There’s no saying they won’t go ahead and sue.”
“You think she’s after money? I’ve talked to this woman and she doesn’t strike me—My impression was, she wanted to be left alone.”
“She filed a complaint.”
“I still say—” Frank insisted but stopped, not willing to expose the depth of his impression of Alice Reinhart. The possibility that he’d been manipulated by her into precisely this position seemed too remote even to contemplate, but now that it arose, his clear image of her became suspect, what was soft revealing itself as simply blurry, and he was not so sure of himself. Melissa was saying, “Maybe we didn’t do enough. But if we fire Hauser and Cole?”
And of course that was another problem for him. “They’ve both been here over ten years,” he said. “I don’t think—”
“What? Frank, they’re just—” She broke off when Jennifer, her secretary, opened the door.
“You better listen to this,” she said, the intrusion so odd and commanding that they all sat for a moment before getting up to see. She’d put her Walkman on Joan’s desk, unplugging the earphones, fiddling with it until she concluded, “I guess you have to use these. I thought there was some way.” And then she turned the volume up and all of them bent in, an ear turned to the drone of a woman’s voice saying, “That may be a gray area. But what’s been done to Alice Reinhart isn’t. It’s as clear as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.” What followed Frank couldn’t quite make out, until the woman spoke abruptly: “That’s the law, Tom. And if those ads don’t create the climate for that sort of tortious behavior, then I don’t know what does.”
Another voice—Tom’s, no doubt—began to talk about mayoral politics, and Jennifer, reading their faces, withdrew the earphones. “Sorry,” she said. “I got here as fast as I could. She said the ads are a kind of harassment, or they condone it, a whole kind of cultural harassment.”
If he hadn’t been so irritated, Frank would have laughed at the proprietary pleasure Jennifer took in conveying this choice item. “That’s vintage Lillian,” Curtis said. “That sort of collateral pressure. She knows a bit about creating a climate.”
“Lillian Roth?” He hadn’t recognized the voice.
“I know her,” Melissa said. “She wouldn’t sue us.”
“Lillian? She’d sue her mother if it served her purpose.” Curtis worked his jaw a moment while he thought. “This isn’t encouraging,” he said. “If I know Lillian, she isn’t after money. She’s making a point. And that, ironically enough, could get far pricier than throwing some mad money at Alice Reinhart. I can handle the complaint, but you’d better start looking for a labor lawyer.”
Frank watched Curtis and Melissa exchange another glance—something there—and recalled how the last time he’d seen Lillian Roth she’d been having drinks with Curtis. And now Curtis seemed suspiciously quick with his dire judgment of the situation, just as it was looking more manageable, clearer by the moment, Alice finally emerging from the muddle in familiar form. She had been manipulated. “Now, Curtis,” Frank said—abruptly, it seemed, since everyone started. “Without Alice Reinhart, there’s nothing to this, right? That’s it?”
“What do you have in mind, Frank? The law being what it is.”
“I just think it’s worth looking into. On the chance this isn’t really her idea. Meanwhile, what’s the worst case here? Can they do anything about the ads, an injunction or something?”
He was as amused as he was annoyed by the lawyer’s expression, the slow bemusement leavening with distaste. “I’ll have to look into that,” Curtis said. “But how wedded to this campaign are we?”
“We’re certainly not going to let one confused employee and her self-righteous, self-aggrandizing attorney dictate our marketing policy.”
“And I don’t have to advise you, do I, to take care about approaching Alice Reinhart? You wouldn’t want to do anything that Ms. Roth could misconstrue as intimidation.”
Frank turned to Melissa, who was asking Curtis, “What about Hauser and Cole? There has to be something.”
Helen said, “Here’s what we’ll do. Suspend them with pay while we look into this. It’s not punitive, so they won’t have any recourse. It’s a pain, though, everybody working overtime and double shifts and all.”
Melissa stood as if to go. “Hold on,” Frank said, and the others, who’d risen at her cue, halted too. “Melissa,” he specified. “I need a word. The rest of you can go.”
Only Curtis didn’t move. “Something I should hear?”
“Not necessarily.”
“In that case.” He sat down. “Just to be on the safe side,” he explained.
There was nothing to do but go ahead, so he explained that Beeksma—unused to being demonized in Time or made the subject of public comment ranging from righteous indignation at Gutenbier’s impropriety to ridicule over the company’s susceptibility to righteous indignation, let alone legal action—was getting squeamish.
“Yes, and I’m sure he has no tobacco holdings,” Curtis remarked. “My money says it’s a ploy to get his hand in deeper.”
Frank watched him well after he’d finished, as if to say: And? When nothing further was forthcoming, he said, “I’m inclined to take him at his word. And I don’t see what choice we have.”
“Call his bluff.”
Melissa stepped in, trying to be conciliatory, and proposed they change the ads, perhaps to something along the quaint lines she’d mentioned some time ago. “Haven’t they served their purpose anyway?” she said.
Why, he asked her, if the ads were serving their purpose, would she want to drop them?
“Because something else could serve us equally well and not get us embroiled in all this controversy.”
“It’s the controversy that’s serving us, Mel.”
“Not if Beeksma wants out.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “I thought it might mollify him if we shifted officers—only nominally, but he’d be none the wiser. He’ll just see evidence of our concern. And when the complaint goes away and everything calms down”—he waved his hand, voilà—“we’ll seem to’ve solved the problem.” Melissa was looking at him blankly, so he added, “It’s just a matter of buying time.”
“I’m a little confused,” she confessed, and, watching her work through her qualms before committing them to speech, Frank did believe she was, but not in any way she recognized. She said she was confused because she thought it was disarming, but what her questions, framed at last, finally revealed was her conviction that all he wanted out of this was her position: If the change were merely nominal, why should Beeksma see more in it? And if advertising were the chief source of their trouble, how would a simple change of personnel appease Beeksma? And if their problem with Alice Reinhart was so sure to go away—and how, really, could it be?—what difference could their switching positions make? That was the switch he meant, wasn’t it?
What was there to say? He turned to Curtis, seeking help. “I’m with Melissa,” Curtis said. “I don’t see what could come of it, other than disruption.”
To press his point would be to confirm their suspicions, their oddly—or not so oddly—mutual suspicions. With an effort (could he never again talk to his sister alone?) he held off, returned to Curtis, asked him, wasn’t he friends with Lillian Roth?
“Guilty. Though we’re more collegial than friendly, in all accuracy.”
“Maybe you could call her, colleague to colleague.”
“I plan to.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Unless, of course, you think I shouldn’t?”
“Why not?”