Wishful Thinking Read online

Kel—”

  “Please! That is enough!” thundered the director of HR. “Kelli, will you please shut up!” The moment the words left his lips, he looked as though he wanted to pull them back, but of course it was too late. There was a muted gasp from the others in the room, but no one said anything.

  Phil cleared her throat as her coworker sank back into her chair in sulky silence. “Mister Dickson, maybe you can see my point now,” she said quietly.

  The director of HR glared at her. “You will kindly keep your comments to yourself until I ask for them, Ms. Swann,” he said icily. “At any rate, now that Kelli has had her say—”

  “I was just getting started,” Kelli muttered, but Herbert Dickson went on as though he hadn’t heard her.

  “Now that Kelli has had her say,” he continued, “I think someone else might like to say how they felt when you abused them.”

  Phil opened her mouth to object to the word “abused” when Alison raised her hand.

  “I’ll say how I felt, Mister Dickson,” she said, giving him a big-eyed look that was guaranteed to melt any man on the planet.

  “Very well.” He smiled at her. “We’ll continue with you, Alison. Now I believe that Ms. Swann, er…criticized your wardrobe choices.”

  “She called me a slut,” Alison said, glaring at Phil. “And I resent that because…” She paused, her mouth working but nothing coming out.

  “Because…?” Herbert Dickson prompted.

  “Because…” Alison had a strange look on her face—a look that might have been terror. “Because I am a slut,” she said at last, all in one breath. “But that’s only because my father never loved me. He…he…he abandoned me and my mother when I was only five and ever since I’ve been looking for a man who’ll love me the way he should’ve.” Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, that’s what my therapist says anyway. That I confuse sex and love and that I use sex as a weapon. But…” She shook her head. “But why am I saying this?”

  “I, er…don’t exactly know. But if you’re quite finished—” the HR director said.

  “He says that I sleep with men in power to try and get back at my father. And that I make them buy me expensive gifts to punish him for never caring about me. Like the Mercedes that Atwood bought me.” Alison slapped a hand over her mouth and Phil had the pleasure of seeing her smug boss look distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Now, Alison, you know I never—” he began.

  “People, people!” Herbert Dickson pounded on his desk. “Let us get back to the subject at hand. Now I think Alison is quite finished. So we need to move on to, uh… Counselor Miles.” He cleared his throat and looked expectantly at Davis Miles. “Davis, isn’t it true that yesterday in the break room, Ms. Swann propositioned and sexually harassed you?”

  “I…I…yes, in a way.” Miles shrugged unhappily. “But…but what she said was actually mild compared with what Alison does,” he continued, getting red in the face. “I mean, Alison is constantly in my personal space and hanging all over me. Once I walked into my office to find her leaning over my desk with her skirt pulled up. She…she begged me to spank her and she called me Daddy!”

  “People, please!” The director of HR was staring at them helplessly.

  “What?” Alison shrieked. “Davis, how dare you say that?”

  “I’m saying it because it happened. And because I’m sick of it. Why don’t you leave me alone, Alison? What do you want from me?”

  “What do you think I want from you?” she snarled. “You’re the hottest attorney in the office and you’re bound to make partner in the next five years. I want you to marry me and take me away from all this. My therapist says I’m projecting my dreams of a perfect man on you and that I should give it up but I don’t want to. I want to be rescued, damn it!”

  “Well find someone else to rescue you!” Davis Miles roared. “I don’t want to be your white knight! I have no interest in you at all because I’m gay!”

  There was sudden and complete silence in the office and then everyone started talking at once. Herbert Dickson pounded on his desk with both fists. “Stop it! Everyone just stop talking!” When everyone had quieted down, he stood up and leaned over his desk, glaring at all of them like naughty school children. “People,” he said, breathing heavily. “May I remind you what we are here for? Please keep your remarks relevant to the matter at hand. Now if we may continue…”

  “I’ll go next.” Atwood Dickson stood up with a swagger. Clearly he wanted to have his say and get out of the room.

  “Atwood, please, I really don’t think—” Herbert Dickson began, but Phil’s boss ignored him.

  “I had a yearly review with Philomena—Ms. Swann—yesterday in my office. I told her I had received some very troubling reports and offered her several options—”

  “You mean when you offered to give me a clean report if I slept with you?” Phil demanded.

  Her boss’s face got beet red. “I never…I never…” He stuttered and stammered but the wish was working overtime in the enclosed space of the office and he couldn’t finish the lie.

  “Ms. Swann, may I remind you that I will ask for your comments when I want them?” Herbert Dickson asked, glowering at her.

  “And may I remind you, Mister Dickson, that this is supposed to be a HR review, not a character assassination,” Phil retorted, fisting her hands in her lap. Her heart was thudding against her ribs but she was damned if she’d sit still and listen to her repulsive boss put his own spin on things. “For literally years I have put up with all kinds of disgusting behavior from Atwood Dickson and yesterday I got sick of it! He’s constantly making lewd remarks to me and trying to touch me in inappropriate ways and when he practically threatened to fire me yesterday if I didn’t go to bed with him, I—”

  Her boss’s face had been getting redder and redder until he looked ready to explode. “Well, it’s not like I would have actually screwed you, you little bitch!” he exploded. “After all, I haven’t had an erection with a real woman for the last six months.”

  “What?” Herbert Dickson was as surprised as the rest of the people in the room, Phil included, to hear this little fact. But judging from the look on his face, none of them was as shocked as Atwood was to be telling it.

  “That’s right,” he blustered, unable to stop. “I’m impotent when it comes to having sex with a real live woman. The only way I can come is if I’m jerking off to the computer.”

  “Atwood, I really think you’d better stop,” Herbert Dickson commanded, in vain.

  “Because…because…” Atwood Dickson’s face was now brick red and Phil wondered if he was going to have a stroke. “Because I’m addicted to hentai. Furry hentai.”

  “Huh?” Phil, Miles, Alison, and Herbert Dickson said in unison.

  “Furry hentai?” Kelli grimaced. “I know what he’s talking about. It’s these little Japanese cartoon porn thingies—they look like animals only with human faces and …other parts.” She shivered. “They scare the crap out of me.”

  “Eww, Atwood.” Alison made a face. “Is that what those little things were? I always wondered why you wanted to look at the computer all the time instead of me. I mean, if I say so, I look a lot better naked than some hairy animal.”

  “That’s certainly a matter of opinion,” Davis Miles muttered.

  “How dare you? I have never…”

  Phil wrapped her arms around her waist as her coworkers went off to the races again. She wasn’t sure if she ought to feel glad or upset. She settled for being quiet.

  “People! People!” Herbert Dickson roared. He had to bang on his desk for almost five minutes before the talk subsided this time. At last, all eyes were fixed on him in sullen silence.

  “May I remind you…” The director of HR was breathing hard and looking very red in the face himself. “May I remind you that this is not the place to air your dirty laundry. And speaking of laundry, may I further state that I…I…” His face worked as though he was fighting to find the righ