Читать книгу The Question Authority - Rachel Cline - Страница 12

On the way back to my cubicle from Jocelyn’s office I pass the backs of three of my coworkers—we are referred to as “paralegals” but are in fact “Special Clerical Associates (provisional)” in the eyes of the civil service, and thus paid like secretaries. The desks of my fellow Bartlebys are all half-buried in file folders. Their monitor screens are plastered with spreadsheets; their gray-beige cube walls peppered with evidence of girlfriends, boyfriends, children, vacations . . . I’ve been here for three months and have not decorated mine at all. What would I post, pictures of Tin Man? I’m sure no one around here wonders about my personal life, anyway. I suspect most of them don’t even know my name.

I put the accordion file down next to my monitor, take my seat, and rattle my mouse. I realize I’m really upset. I am not usually very concerned with politics, or justice, or things like that (which I think is what makes me reasonably good at this job—or at any rate fast, as Jocelyn has observed) but this case is different. I assume the guy is guilty—I don’t have to read a word to make that leap. Sure, there could be a crazy girl making false accusations, or a jilted lover with a vendetta, or even a misinterpretation of clumsy but not criminal behavior, but these things are not nearly as likely as a middle-aged man thinking it might be fun to seduce a teenaged girl, which is probably a crime even older than prostitution, except that I don’t think we even started calling it a crime until . . . sometime after World War II? Am I wrong about that?

A couple months ago I got an email from Trina Franklin, one of my former classmates at the Academy—the rare African American one. She said some of them were hiring a lawyer over what happened to us in eighth grade and did I want to join. They think they might get Gloria Allred. I said no, because I couldn’t picture complaining about the minor shit that Rasmussen did with me, but it made me wonder again about Beth. Did she ever look back on that experience as an episode of abuse rather than hot sex and wild adventure (as it seemed to her at thirteen)? But even in the Internet Age, a person named Beth Alice Cohen is hard to find, especially if you’re not sure what state she’s living in. And a person named Nora Falsington Buchbinder is a slam dunk, which means she’s never looked for me. In fact, she could dial my old ULster 5 phone number from back then and get my mother’s answering machine, even now. I haven’t had the heart to throw it away.