Chapter Two
Emmi
“Thanks for your ideas; now can you please organize those books on the bottom shelf for me,” my pig of a boss demanded.
“Really? You want me to bend over like this so you can just stare at my ass all day?” I said as I dramatically bent over near his bookshelf.
“Yes, like that,” he said as he eyed my ass from his desk.
“I’ve got work to do, and you’ve got a meeting in five minutes,” I huffed as I stormed out of his office.
I was literally minutes away from quitting and trying my damndest not to do it. My job wasn’t the best in the world, but it paid well, and I was working at a big-name New York marketing firm. Even though my boss was the biggest chauvinist I knew, he was my ticket to moving on to bigger and better positions, and I was trying to tough it out. Unfortunately, my patience was growing thin.
I hid in my office and dialed my best friend Jessica in hopes that she would talk some sense into me and calm me down. Otherwise, I was going to be out of a job, and I didn’t have a cent in my savings account.
“Jessica, I’m about to lose it and go crazy on this boss of mine,” I moaned into the phone.
“Do it,” she giggled. “I dare you. Then you can come out here, and I’ll hook you up with the dance club I’m doing marketing for. You’ll love it.”
“I thought you said your boss was a racist?”
“Nah, he’s just an old white guy. I’ve learned to deal with him. I think he actually likes me, but he’s just never had a beautiful ebony woman working for him before. He’s really nice, just makes stupid comments sometimes.”
“Like what?” I asked as I tried to distract myself with her story.
“Like last night after we had our biggest night ever at Tavern on the Red, he told me what an amazing job I had done,” she started to say and then paused.
“Well, that sounds nice.”
“Then he added, he had never met a woman of color who was as smart as I am,” she laughed. “He really did mean it as a compliment.”
“That’s good, because he sounds like an ass.”
“Really, he is just from a different age. He’s trying, and I’m trying to be more understanding. I actually really like my job. I spend my days talking to people and getting them to come to our restaurants and clubs. Then my nights are free drinks and dancing. I can’t believe I get paid for this.”
“I can’t believe you have an MBA and are doing that,” I laughed, but then realized I sounded a little catty. “But it sure sounds better than what’s going on here. My boss just asked me to bend over and organize books on the bottom shelf so he could look at my ass.”
“You should turn his ass in! Report him or something.”
“To who? He’s the boss. I guess I could go to human resources, but I don’t know if it’s even worth the effort. I could go all the way up the chain to the owner, but he’s probably a little hard to reach.”
“I’m telling you, Emmi; you’ve got to come out here. Your father is out here; I’m sure he could help you get a job if you don’t want to work in the nightclub industry with me.”
“Ugh, can you even imagine my father’s excitement if I came home and asked him for a job? He’d never let me live it down.”
“Think about it. You’ve got lots of choices out here, plus you’ll have me around for support.”
“Emmi, I need you in this meeting!” my boss bellowed from the hallway as he walked by.
“That’s my boss beckoning me to come. I better get going.”
“Are you going to quit?” Jessica asked.
“You know me; I like to plan things out. I’m going to tough it out as long as I can, but I think I’ll start making plans to move out there in a month or two.”
“Fine, but don’t let him push you around. He needs to know that women should be treated equally to men in the workplace.”
“I’ll do my best. Call me tonight,” I said as I hung up and slipped my phone into my purse before heading to the meeting with my boss.
“Mr. Duncan, I don’t think I’m supposed to me at this meeting; it’s just for team leads,” I said as I sat down in the chair next to him.
“It’s okay, I need you to take notes,” he said as he handed me a pad of paper and then let his hand gently glide past my breast as he drew his hand back toward his own lap.
Dan Duncan wasn’t a horrible guy; he was an average-looking man who just had this weird obsession with me. He talked to me often about how his wife hated to have sex, and he was looking for some side action. Sometimes I actually felt bad for him, at least in the beginning when I first started working for him. But as the months dragged on, I realized he wanted me to be his side action, and I wasn’t interested in him at all.
It would have been different if we had some sort of chemistry, or if I admired him even, but Dan Duncan wasn’t a man I admired or found sexually attractive. He was a balding, overweight, middle-aged man who didn’t respect my opinions. I had an MBA from New York University, yet he couldn’t be bothered to listen to my ideas when I offered them.
As the meeting got started, I saw Mr. Duncan move his hands into his lap and instantly got a bad feeling. I didn’t dare look over to see what was going on, but I saw movement and thought he might have been rubbing himself under the table. My body tightened with fear. I hoped he wasn’t going to grab my hand and put it into his lap to feel him or something like that. He’d never done anything as bold as that before, but I didn’t know how far he would be willing to go.
“We need to build up our online subscriptions for the NY Magazine campaign; does anyone have any ideas for this?” Susan, the head of the campaign, asked the group.
There was silence in the room. A deafening silence because no one wanted to say an idea that would be turned down by the whole group. I had ideas, but as Mr. Duncan’s assistant, I wasn’t in a position to give them to this group of people, or so I had been told by Mr. Duncan in the past. So I leaned over and whispered in his ear.
“A Facebook campaign might work well.”
“Maybe you could try a Facebook campaign,” Mr. Duncan said as he grabbed my hand and tried to pull it toward his body.
Instinctively, I pulled my hand back and pushed my chair away from the table. Because I had been leaning against Mr. Duncan, his chair also pressed back away from the table, and the whole room looked at him and I. His zipper was down, his throbbing member exposed, and there I was, right next to him. I was mortified and got up and ran out of the room.
It had looked like I was the one who had unzipped him and was playing with him. I was leaning in to talk to him. I was the one who pressed my chair away from the table, and I was the one who everyone would think was having an affair with her boss. I couldn’t take it.
As I slammed my office door behind me, I grabbed a box and started filling it with my personal belongings. I couldn’t stay there another minute. My face was flushed red with embarrassment, and my hands were shaking as I tried to grab my things and flee the building as fast as possible.
“It’s okay,” Dan said as he stood in my doorway. “I’m fine with people knowing about us. We can file some paperwork with human resources, and they might have you move to a different floor, but we could be together.”
“What are you talking about, Mr. Duncan?” I yelled.
“I know you feel it too. Now it’s all out there. Now we can move on with this and stop playing these silly games.”
“What games?” I yelled as I grabbed my purse and my box and pushed past him.
By this time, the whole office was standing around listening to us argue. I had to admit, I would have been listening to any of my peers if they were having the same argument; it was a salacious event, that was for sure.
“Emmi, it’s normal to have a crush on your boss. And I just want you to know I understand,” Dan said dramatically when he realized everyone was listening. “You’re a beautiful woman; there’s no denying it.”
“Dan…Mr. Duncan,” I said as I tried to find the right words. “You’re a lonely old man who has treated me like a piece of meat since the day I arrived. You sold my ideas as your own or ignored them all together. You pulled your penis out in a meeting and tried to get me to touch it. I’m sure there is a huge lawsuit I could file against you and this whole business,” I said calmly as I gathered my wits about me.
“You’re fired,” Dan yelled angrily at me.
“Really? I’m literally walking out the door with my things in this box, and you want to say I’m fired so you feel like you are the tough guy? Everyone in that meeting saw your tiny penis, Dan; I think they know that I’m quitting and you’re not firing me.”
“Get out!” he screamed. “I’m going to file a lawsuit against you for sexual harassment and grabbing my private area.”
“Wow, okay, you do that,” I laughed as I stormed out of the main office and onto an elevator.
The nerve of that guy to try and turn everything around on me like that. No one was going to believe I had been after him, but I still had worry building in my gut. As soon as I exited the building, I called a lawyer friend of mine who had gone to NYU with me.
“Morgan, I think I might have an issue on my hands,” I said as I stood next to the building, still shaking from the commotion.
“What’s up?”
“My boss basically tried to get me to grab his penis but then turned it around and told everyone in the office that I was the one who was coming on to him.”
“Typical thing for a boss to do. Want me to file a claim?”
“I really wasn’t going to file anything, but I don’t want him turning things around on me, either.”
“I’ll feel out the human resources department. Email me their contact information and your statement about what happened. I’ll see what I can do. You’d be surprised at how much businesses know about these jerks and just don’t do anything until someone files a claim. Do you have vacation time? You might want to take a few days off from work while this all gets settled.”
“I actually just quit over this,” I said reluctantly.
“Well, okay then. I’ll see if we can’t get them to give you some sort of severance pay.”
“Don’t worry about all that. I don’t care about the money; I just don’t want him claiming I was the one harassing him.”
“Alright, Emmi, I’ll see what’s going on. Get me that email and I’ll take care of it. Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m going to be just fine. Thanks.”
Our conversation was brief, but it was enough for me to calm down a little. My hands were still shaking, but that was from the adrenaline of the moment, and at least I didn’t feel like my chest was going to explode any longer.
I took my time getting back to my apartment and even stopped to grab a cupcake on the way. I’d lived in New York for years and hardly ever seemed to find the time to enjoy one of the amazing cupcake shops that were in the city. I loved cupcakes; it was a sign of how unhappy I was that I hadn’t been eating them lately. When I finally reach my apartment and collapsed onto my couch, I dialed up Jessica to fill her in on the rest of my afternoon and see if she was still up for having me crash on her couch.
“If I happened to have quit my job today and needed a place to sleep in Los Angeles, would you have a couch for me?” I said excitedly as I waited for her to respond.
“Yes! Oh, my God yes! You quit? You really quit? I can’t believe this. This is so awesome. Yes, get your ass out here right away, and we will have an amazing time.”
“Okay, well, I just have to call my father and get him to help me with my move. This is going to suck,” I laughed.
“It’s fine. Your dad loves you and hates that you’re out there. He will be fine with you coming to Los Angeles.”
“He’s going to flip his shit when he hears that my boss tried to get me to grab his penis and that’s why I quit. You know my father; he’s going to have lawyers and lawsuits and make a huge thing of it.”
“Just tell him you got fired.”
“What? But I didn’t.”
“It’s easier. Aren’t you always saying that your dad feels like you’re not responsible because you forget to make your student loan payments all the time?” Jessica said as her logic started to unravel. “Just tell him you forgot to turn in an important project on time and were fired. He won’t question it.”
“I like it,” I laughed. “I’ll just play up the stuff he’s always hounding me about, and he’ll say ‘I told you so,’ and it will be done with.”
Admittedly, I didn’t like the idea of my father going on and on about how he was right, and I was wrong, and couldn’t live alone in New York. But I liked this plan much better than talking about my boss and his penis with my father. If my father knew what had really happened, nothing could save Dan Duncan and his career when my father finished with him.
“Okay, call your dad and get your move started. I’ll clean off my couch so you can actually have a place to sleep.”
“Thanks, Jessica, I’ll get a job right away and help with the bills.”
“No worries. I get paid four times as much as you did at that marketing firm,” she laughed.
“What? Really? Four times?”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to make you feel bad when you were so excited about landing that job. But yeah, the club business is pretty good here in Los Angeles.”
“Wow, good for you! I’m excited for you. I bet you’ll have your student loans paid off before I even get a real job,” I joked. “Okay, I’ll text you when I’ve got a moving date, but hopefully it won’t be long.”
“Deal. Talk to you soon. Good luck with your father. And don’t worry about getting a job when you get here. With your blonde hair and cute body, you’ll land a nice job to match your nice ass,” she joked, in reference to my old boss always commenting on my ass.
“Thanks a lot,” I laughed. “And I’m going to need all the luck I can get with my father.”
My father was one of the best men in the world. He just wanted what was best for me, and I knew it. After my mother had passed away, my father had stepped up his game and started worrying about every little decision I made. It was like he wanted to make sure I didn’t do something stupid that my mother would have stopped me from doing if she had been alive.
“Hi, Dad,” I said in an upbeat voice as I tried to hide the bad mood I was really in.
“Baby girl, how are you?”
“I’m going to be coming to stay out in Los Angeles…” I started to say.
“What happened?”
“Why do you think something happened, Daddy? Can’t a girl change her mind and decide to move to be closer to her father?”
“Yes, a girl could, but not my girl. You just told me last week how much you loved it there. Are you having troubles? Is it a boy? Tell me who it is, and I’ll get him fired,” he said in a half-joking, half-serious way.
“Daddy, you know I can handle myself just fine. There was just a little misunderstanding at work, and it got me thinking that I’d like to work somewhere that I’m valued and appreciated.”
“Did one of those scumbags hit on you? I swear to God, if I find out—”
“No, Dad, it’s nothing like that. I just came in a little later than I was supposed to because I thought our meeting was at a different time. It’s for the best; I didn’t really like it there.”
“You got fired?”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it getting fired. We decided to part ways.”
“Emmi Lynn Shields, are you still using your damn cell phone as an alarm? I told you over and over that you can’t rely on those and needed a real alarm clock. Gosh, I wish you’d listen to me sometimes.”
“Yep, that was it, Dad,” I said as I leaned back into my couch and put my feet up on my coffee table. “I’ll definitely get an alarm clock before I start my next job. You were totally right.”
“You know I have a business friend that needs an assistant for a little bit. Maybe you could take the job until you find something that is better suited to your MBA.”
Oh, man, this conversation was derailing fast. I didn’t want to work for some old dude my father knew. The last thing I wanted was my dad getting me a job or having any say in what I was doing while I was out in Los Angeles.
“How about I get out there first before you start lining up jobs for me?” I laughed as I tried to avoid committing to being his friend’s assistant. “Speaking of getting me moved all the way out to Los Angeles…”
“Oh, honey, of course, I’ll send you some money. You know I’m going to love having you out here. We can go to the beach, have dinner together and maybe you’ll even decide you want to come into the family business after all.”
“Dad, we’ve talked about this. You and I just don’t work well together. I don’t want to ruin our relationship.”
“Okay, but don’t hold that against Declan if you decide to take the assistant job with him. He’s a good guy and not nearly as overbearing as I am. In fact, he’s a lot like you.”
I wasn’t sure if my father meant that comment as a compliment or not, but it didn’t sound like one. I slowly licked the frosting off the second cupcake I had brought home and felt more relaxed than I had in months. This day was turning out better and better now that I had decided to move to the west coast.
“Is it sunny there?” I asked to change to topic a bit.
“Yep, sunny and 79 degrees today.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m looking forward to getting out of New York already,” I laughed. “Can you transfer the money to my account tonight and I’ll call some movers to see when I can get things going?”
“Sure thing, honey. I think you should have them move your car also. I don’t want you driving across the country all by yourself. I’ll send you enough so you can fly out.”
“Okay then, I’ll let you know when to expect me.”
“Perfect. I’ll have Salina make up the spare bedroom for you.”
My eyes got big; I might have stopped breathing even, as I tried to figure out how to word what I was about to say. Sure, I couldn’t wait to see my father and I’d love to spend some quality time with him; but no way was I going to move in with him. I’d rather sleep on Jessica’s couch for a year than under the watchful eye of my father.
“Um, Dad,” I started to say. “You know my best friend, Jessica Timmons from college…um…she lives out there also.”
“Oh, so you don’t want to stay with me?”
The silence on the other end of the phone practically broke my heart. I couldn’t do it to him. No matter how bad I wanted to avoid his watchful eye, I couldn’t let him be heartbroken.
“No, no, it’s not that; I was just going to say I might be staying with her sometimes too. You know, until I decide where I’m going to work and all. I hear the traffic out there can be very difficult to navigate.”
“Yes, it is. It can take up to two hours to commute to work for some people. Don’t worry about that right now; we can figure it out when you get here. I can’t wait to see you.”
“I love you, Dad. I’ll call you with all the details when I have the move organized.”
“I love you too, baby girl.”