Steamed

whole graduate school business was really going to interfere with my socializing and my television watching. What’s more, since I should make a decent impression on my new boss, I’d now have to change into something other than jeans.
    Totally annoyed, I threw on a good shirt and some decent footwear before driving downtown. I parked in a garage and found the address Naomi had given me, an office building right in the heart of Downtown Crossing. I made my way up three flights of stairs (the elevator was broken) and found Suite 412. When I entered, I instantly realized it was no suite, at least as I understood the word. To me, suite conjured up the image of luxurious rooms at the top of the Ritz with beautiful views, room service, and a minibar. What I saw before me were two rooms separated by a dilapidated door that stood open. Industrial gray carpet covered the floors, and one tiny window in the second room provided a view of a concrete wall. The only furniture in the first room were two cafeteria-style tables and some metal filing cabinets overflowing with papers.
    “Hello?” I called into the apparently empty rooms.
    “Chloe?” A woman popped her head out from the far room. She walked toward me. I smiled weakly. Far from looking like an international supermodel, this Naomi Campbell had ghostly pale skin and medium-brown hair that fell to her knees and was plaited in tiny braids with multicolored beads adorning the ends. She couldn’t have been much older than I was, but she was dressed in bland, hippyish clothing, her outfit completed with, ugh, Birken-stock sandals. I’d gone to a radical leftist, politically activist, politically correct college, and I thought I’d escaped when I graduated. And what was up with her hair? I silently christened her Braids.
    Braids eagerly reached to shake my hand. “Well, let’s get started. As you can see, we’ve got tight quarters here, but we make the best of it. I’m going to clear a space for you at one of these tables, so you can have a workstation for yourself.”
    Great.
    “Come into my office, and I’ll fill you in on the organization.” '
    I followed Naomi into her dinky office and listened to horror stories of women who’d been harassed at their workplaces. My job was to answer hotline calls from women who were dealing with creeps at work and needed help in fending off the jerks. Then there’d be a lot of “outreach” work, as Braids called it. As far as I could tell, outreach work meant calling random companies I would select from the Yellow Pages and offering to present sexual harassment workshops.
    “Now, even if they say no at first, you should always make a follow-up call,” Naomi instructed. “Every organization is required to have a sexual harassment policy, but not many places know how to educate their employees properly.”
    “So you want me to harass them about their harassment policy?” I suggested. My new boss glared at me. I couldn’t blame her for feeling disappointed in the quality of student she’d been assigned. “Um, who else will I be working with?” I asked.
    “Well, we have some volunteers who come in sometimes during the week to help out. And there’s a board that meets once a month in the evenings, so you’ll get to meet all those folks when you come to those. But for now, we’re a small group.” She smiled at me.
    “So, it’s pretty much just you and me?”
    “We’re a nonprofit organization, and at this point we don’t have the funds to pay for any other staff. But maybe that’s a project you’d like to take on while you’re here. Fund-raising. Fund-raising and getting the word out about our organization.” Organization was a generous term for this one-woman operation, but Naomi had to think positively, I supposed.
    We finished up with Naomi leaving me a big, fat folder detailing the history of the organization and the procedure for handling hotline calls. She said I could tackle the material when I returned on Monday. I didn’t see why I couldn’t take this bad boy home with me and read it in front of Days of Our Lives next week, but I just nodded and smiled and otherwise did my best to look breathless with expectation about my new line of work. How I was going to survive the year cooped up in this little room with Naomi was beyond me. “See you Monday,” I called with false cheer as I swiftly made my exit.
    I’m free! I’m free! On to my weekend! Oh, damn. I had Eric’s funeral tomorrow. What