Chapter 3 #12
They leave the bar together and she notices a group of older lesbians in cowboy hats, rowdy and full of swagger.
Seeing her staring, one of them tips her hat at Susan, and Susan is immediately brought back into her body and the reality of who she’s actually attracted to.
She can appreciate how Drew looks without wanting to fuck him.
She smiles at the woman in the cowboy hat, who watches her walk away.
Their flight leaves at 7 AM, just a few hours from now.
Ben hadn’t wanted them to stay any longer than they needed to.
So instead of going to bed, she and Drew stay out, eating breakfast in their party clothes and going to the airport as the sun rises.
They don’t talk about what transpired between them. Susan doesn’t want to ruin their fun.
“Are you going to the office?” Susan asks Drew when the plane lands.
“You’re kidding, right?” he says. “I’m going to go home and sleep for a hundred years. You should, too.”
But as Susan turns off airplane mode, she sees she has a text from Ben. “Come in this afternoon,” it says. “Meeting with Facebook.”
“I guess I’m needed,” she says.
“What’s it like to be important?” he deadpans.
“It would be more enjoyable if he paid me real money,” she says, thinking back to the conversation with Heather and the plan she’s been avoiding to report Ben to HR, mostly because she’d been so caught up in Eliza it had become impossible to think about anything else with any real seriousness.
“You know, actually, it might be really helpful if you told me how much you make. So that I could make a case about why I deserve more.”
He frowns, unbuckling the airplane seat belt and stretching. “Yeah, no. I don’t think I’m comfortable with that,” he says.
Like it’s nothing.
Susan has never been a violent person, but she’s pretty sure that right now, she could kill him with her hands.
At work on Monday, Susan messages the HR person, Linda.
“Do you have time to talk today?” she writes.
The way Drew wanted to make out with her but wouldn’t share his salary makes Susan realize how inappropriate the whole thing at the bar was.
He didn’t assault her, didn’t even really harass her, but there are some indisputable facts: They are coworkers, he knows she’s a lesbian, and they were very drunk.
It crossed a line, albeit in a soft boy kind of way.
If he saw her as an equal, if he actually respected her, he wouldn’t have sent the text in the first place.
Drew is not the worst man she’s dealt with recently—Kyle and Ben are in a tie for that award—but the incident with him is what pushes her over the edge. It’s a symptom of the work culture, which, under Ben, has turned poisonous. She can’t put this conversation off any longer.
“Anything for you,” Linda replies.
“Can I come now?” she writes.
Linda’s office is crammed with a desk and a couch and a window and some plants. Susan sits on the sofa.
“What’s up, hon?” Linda says. She’s a little bit older than Susan, wearing a simple blue dress with sneakers and oversize black-framed glasses, her brown hair in a friendly ponytail.
“I want to talk about Ben.”
“Oh no.” Linda groans.
“What?” Susan says.
“Sorry, go on,” Linda says, shaking her head. Nothing hangs on the white walls, as though Linda has never really moved into the space, or maybe she just expects to have to leave it soon.
“I just…” Susan isn’t sure where to begin. “I think we’re all getting sick of the way he treats women.”
Linda nods, suddenly looking very tired.
“He talks to everyone about sex, and he’s gross with the interns, he makes people find models for him to sleep with at events, and I’m sure that’s not even half of it.”
She’s never said these things out loud before, but now she feels she could talk forever.
Linda lifts her hands up. “I need to stop you there,” she says.
Susan stops, though she feels like the words are still trying to burst out of her.
Linda points to a folder on her desk exploding with forms. “You think you’re the first person to come into my office and file a complaint against Ben?”
“So what are you going to do about it?” Susan cries. “If so many people are coming to you?”
“Susan, be realistic.”
Part of her had expected something like this, but it still infuriates her. “Can’t you, like, talk to him?”
“And how do you think that would go for me? This is just what he’s like, Susan. Be grateful it’s not worse.”
“What is the point of having HR?” Susan demands.
She considers flipping Linda’s desk over.
“Honey, I’m going to be real with you, because I like you. The point of HR is to protect the employer,” Linda says.
“I know that,” Susan pushes back. “But what about when the employer is breaking the law?”
“Even then.”
“So nothing is going to change,” Susan says. She’s almost laughing. It’s all just so ridiculous.
“Not today,” Linda says.
Though it doesn’t reveal anything she didn’t already know, deep down, this conversation makes Susan feel out of her mind with rage and frustration.
When she’s back at her desk, she takes out her phone and hits stop recording on the voice memo app, then texts the file of their conversation to Heather.
“Hope this helps,” she says. “I’ll talk to whoever you want. Fuck it.”