LOVING THE HEAD MAN (28 page)

      
“Because that would be too obvious.
  Besides, he had bigger and better things in mind for you.”  She said this as she looked around Bree’s big office, and remembered her small, pathetic one.

       “I want you to stop so much as mentioning my name and Mr. Colgate’s name while you work in this building, do you understand me?”

       “This is a free country,” Pru said.  “I’ll mention anything I want to mention.  And since it’s true, I will continue to tell the truth about you too.”

       “If you expect to remain at Colgate, you will stop spreading your vicious lies and you will stop right now.”

       Pru looked at Bree.  “Who do you think you are?  You can kiss my ass, that’s what you can do.  You’re nobody, I don’t care how many sleepovers you have with the top brass.  You’re just a poor little
negro
girl from Mississippi, who attended some nothing Mississippi law school, who couldn’t make it on her brains, but had to rely on what was between her legs.  The difference between you and Deidra Dentry is a matter of class, you see.  You spread your legs for Robert Colgate, when DeeDee wouldn’t.  He had to beg her for it, and still didn’t get it.  You, on the other hand, had a neon sign between those legs of yours.  ‘Come and get it,’ became your battle cry and I’ll continue to make sure that everybody in this building knows it, too.  Telling me what I will and will not do.  Who the hell do you think you are?”

       “I’m your supervisor, Miss Cameron,” Bree said calmly, fighting an incredible urge to slap her subordinate.  “And you’re fired.”

       Pru jumped to her feet.  “What?” she
asked,
astounded.
       Bree stood up too.  “You heard me,” she said.  “Your little
Mississippi negro girl
supervisor has fired you.”

       “You can’t just fire me!”

       “Yes, I can, and I have.  You’re still on probation.  As your supervisor I can fire you and fire you summarily. 
Which I have chosen to do.
  Now get your things and be out of Colgate and Associates by close of business today.”

       Pru was stunned.  She stared at Bree as if she had suddenly grown horns.  And the hatred in her eyes made Bree wince.

       Pru left, slamming the door behind her.

       Bree sat back down, as tears entered her eyes.  She hated firing anyone, even Pru, but what could she do?  Let her insubordination continue unchecked?  And here she
was,
one of only a handful of black females in this firm and Pru and her ilk were already trying to label her as some kind of a incompetent slut.  She couldn’t allow that kind of cancer to remain at Colgate and spread like some kind of crazy wildfire, destroying the reputation of all of Colgate’s black female employees in its wake.   

       It was a
sister,
in fact, who had called and told her what Pru was saying all over the building, and how it was affecting morale.  They worked harder than everybody else to get their positions at Colgate, the sister had told her, and these rumors, these persistent, nasty rumors, weren’t helpful.  Weren’t helpful, she had said, as if she, too, was blaming Bree.

       And not an
  hour
later, Wade Furst, Bree’s direct supervisor, was in her office, to offering up his blame as well.

       “Rehire her,” he ordered.

       “Rehire her?” Bree asked, astounded. 
“But why?”

       “Reinstate her, Brianna.  And I mean now.”

       “And I want to know why?  You don’t know what all she said to me.”

       “I don’t care if she called you Hitler and put a swastika on your forehead, you rehire her!”

       But Bree stood her ground.  “No. 
Especially when you won’t even give me a good reason why.”

       “Her uncle is billionaire industrialist Warren Bachmann, a man with a mighty reach at a time when we can’t afford any enemies, not any.  Is that a good enough reason?”

       “No,” Bree said.  “As her supervisor that’s my ruling, and my ruling is final.”

       Bree could see the hatred in Wade’s eyes, too.  “Prudence Cameron,” he said with his infamous huff, “is reinstated effective immediately, and will be reassigned under a different supervisor.  Consider that final ruling of yours overruled.”

       And he left.

       Within minutes, Bree was entering Robert’s office.  To her surprise, Wade and Prudence were already there.

       Robert, who seated behind his desk, stacks of papers in front of him, listened to all sides.  Bree could tell that he didn’t need or want this new wrinkle, but she didn’t see where she had any choice.  She wasn’t letting some arrogant racist like Pru run roughshod over her or anybody else at Colgate.  Not without a fight she wasn’t.

       “And the only reason she’s firing me is because she’s jealous,” Pru insisted.  “I was selected and she wasn’t, and she can’t deal with that.  She never once mentioned my work
product,
she never once mentioned how valuable the senior attorneys regard my insight and judgment.  All she harped on was the fact that I was victorious, and she was not.”

       “That’s not true,” Bree said.  “Your decision to continue to spread lies and innuendo, and your blatant racism are the reasons for your termination, and you know it, Pru.”

       “You’re lying and the truth isn’t in you,” Pru shot back.

       “You’re the one
whose
lying, and you’re spreading your lies like a cancer--”

       “All right that’s enough,” Robert interrupted and Bree was shocked, and disappointed, that he would interrupt her.  “You two aren’t going to stand up here and trade insults, at least you aren’t going to do it in my office.”

       “Now you see how ridiculous all of this is, Bobby,” Wade said.  “That’s why I told Bree she couldn’t fire Prudence.  No way, not now, and especially not for the reasons she cite.”

       “You didn’t bother to hear my reasons,” Bree pointed out.
       “It was a bunch of nonsense, that’s why,” Wade shot back.

       “Prudence,” Robert said, his face well tired of it,” Brianna is not firing you.”

       Pru and Wade smiled.  Bree’s
  heart
dropped.

      
“Thank-you!”
Pru said, looking smug and vindicated.

       “But I am,” Robert added.  “Pack your shit and be out of my building in the next twenty minutes.”  Then he looked at Wade Furst.  “Wade, escort her out,” he ordered.

       Robert stared at Wade after he said it, as if daring him to try and overrule him.  Wade’s embarrassment was complete.  He took a stunned Pru by the arm, and escorted her from Robert’s presence.

       Bree grinned.  “Thanks for backing me up,” she said.

       Robert looked at her angrily, which confused her.  “What?” she asked him.

       “Did you have to do this today?”

       His question threw Bree.  “I  . . . I just . . . What do you mean?”

       “I have enough on my plate, Bree,” he told her.  “Don’t add anything else.”

       “I wouldn’t have added that if Pru hadn’t been so insubordinate.”

       “You heard me.”

       “Yes, I heard you.”

       “Now get back to work.”

       Robert was different on the job, and Bree understood that.  But it still stung.  “Yes sir,” she said, and left.  She also knew, as she walked down the corridor away from his office, that her days as an attorney in her lover’s law firm were numbered.  She would see to that.

SIXTEEN

Dinner that night was filled with tension, especially when Zack sat down and was on Bree’s case about firing Pru.  How he even knew about it was a mystery to her.

       “But it makes no sense,” he said to her. 
“Especially now.”

       “So in your mind it would have made more sense later, but not now?”

       “You know what I mean,” Zack said.  “Firing your competitor--”

       “She’s not my competitor.”

       “She was.  And to fire her now, when Dad is in the middle of a sexual harassment lawsuit, makes no sense.  Now she’ll join forces with Deidra Dentry and create more trouble for him.”

       “Oh, that’s nonsense.”
       “It’s not nonsense,” Zack replied, and then looked at Robert.  “It’s not nonsense, is it, Dad?”

       Robert was seated at the table reading over a report and, quite frankly, wasn’t paying either one of them much attention.  “What’s that?” he asked as he finally bothered to look up. 

       “Tell Bree she picked the absolute wrong time to fire Prudence Cameron.”

       Robert frowned.  “What do you know about that?” he asked him.

       “I’ve got a friend or two at Colgate who keeps me posted,” Zack said with a smile.  “And they agree with me too that Bree overplayed her hand.”

       “I didn’t overplay anything.  She caused herself to lose that job.”

       “But why now?” Zack wanted to know. 

       Before Bree could answer, however, Robert answered for her.  “Because Brianna doesn’t make moral decisions based on timing and political expediency,” he said as his cell phone began to ring.  “She does the right thing whether it’s in season or out of season.”  He pulled out his cell phone to look at the caller ID.  “Whether you want to hear it, or whether you don’t.” 

       “But,” Zack started but Robert, seeing his Caller ID and immediately answering, put up a finger for him to hold his thought.