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afford to lose my job, but if there is more than one of us making a complaint, they’ll be afraid to fire either one of us.”
    Lorna had obviously analyzed this whole lawsuit situation very carefully, and while I heard what she was saying and believed wholeheartedly that she should go to the police and have Jim arrested, I was still hoping they’d give me my promotion. I didn’t want to drive over to Chicago to visit EEOC or any other equal opportunity enforcement agency unless I absolutely had to. I was hoping that I’d get my job and be able to push all of this anger, frustration and humiliation behind me. I wanted Lorna to do the same, but I wasn’t so sure she’d be able to forget about any of this until Jim had gotten what he had coming to him.
    “That’s probably true, although I think it’ll be best to wait and see what happens with my situation first,” I said. “But regardless of how things turn out, I think you still have to go to the police. And maybe you should even think about telling Lyle or Tom, too.”
    “If I go to the police, it’ll be my word against his, and on top of that, they’ll want to know why it took me four years to file charges. And if I go to Lyle or Tom, what difference is it going to make with both of them being friends with Jim? No, that’s not the way to go. And while I know you won’t want to hear this, I have to say what I honestly feel. There’s no question that you are the most qualified person for that management position, but I really doubt that you’re going to get it. I’m not trying to be negative or trying to undermine your confidence, but I know these men all too well. We can bring them down, though, Anise. You’re a black woman who’s being discriminated against because of her skin color and gender, and I’m awhite woman who has been sexually harassed by an executive of this company. So it’s not like they can say we’re both screaming racial and gender discrimination or that we’re both claiming that we’ve
been sexually harassed and are being forced to work in a hostile working environment. We both have separate claims, and I’m willing to bet that if we both come forward, there will be others who’ll find the courage to tell what has happened to them, too.”
    She had a point. Actually, a few good points, and I had to admit that she was right about what we were obligated to do. I’d already experienced discrimination at Bradford, the company I worked for prior to joining Reed Meyers, so if this was the same case here, I knew I’d have to help break the cycle. The evidence would be as obvious as Alaskan icicles if they denied me a second time, and now I knew I would have no choice but to file a complaint against the company if I wasn’t promoted.
    But how was David going to react to something like this? We hadn’t spoken to each other this morning before leaving for work, but I was hoping that this latest blowup of ours would quickly pass. I couldn’t deal with all the frustration here at work and at the same time participate in angry debates with him. What I needed was someone to talk to, someone to help me through these very trying times. I needed someone to be there for me tonight, and since I knew David wouldn’t be home until late, I decided to call my girl Monica to see what she was up to. I was hoping she and her husband Marc didn’t have anything important planned for the evening, which was a possibility, since their daughter had already finished finals at the private school she attended and had gone to Houston to spend part of the summer with Monica’s parents.
    But if Monica wasn’t available, I would go visit Mom instead.
    Mom was one of the few people who knew exactly what to say when times were tough.
    It would be a blessing to spend time with either one of them.

 
CHAPTER 3
     
    M ONICA HAD ANSWERED my phone call on the second ring and told me that Marc would be teaching a continuing education course at one of the community