The drama continues, emotional and wrenching revelations are made. Like an injured dog backed into a corner, Boner lashes out in a rage – but to no avail
The next day following the evening at the Chinese restaurant, Boner bursts into the Kyiv Poster newsroom at 7 a.m. expecting to be the first one there and put a stop to an email accusing him of sex harassment, for he is and will remain king of his domain.
He is immediately confronted with everyone already there, and they look straight at him. Even the driver, who has a drinking problem, is there.
Aside from Boner, no one is ever in that newsroom before 10, with most usually waltzing in around lunchtime.
Boner’s not having it. It’s HIS newsroom, it’s HIS paper, and HE’S in charge.
“What the hell are all you looking at? None of you got anything on me, see! Nothing! Get your asses to work! Try anything, say anything, just look the wrong way, and you’re fired!”
The Face, who appeared to Boner at the Chinese restaurant the night before to foretell all this (and possibly cause it), suddenly hovers above him once again. And again, no one is shocked or surprised, except Boner.
The Face says:
“Sure – like your accidental tough-guy rolled-up-sleeve casual hairy forearm into the breasts ploy.
“Or that innocent firm squeeze of the shoulders that continues just a little too long.
“Or those touchy-feely hairy liver-spotted hands around the waist from behind, as if to oh-so innocently convey a supposedly joking desire to do a comic dance in celebration of a Kyiv Poster female reporter’s well-written story, ‘Which needed almost no editing!!!’ you shout into the back of her head, accosting her ears and fumigating her with a visible gray-tinted spray of your bad, aging breath, for which you feel she should be both grateful and suppliant before you. And then your groin ever-so accidently ends up firmly pushed into her lusciously young skinny buttocks.”
“Eruh, I don’t know what you’re, gaaarr, getting at. Any contact, dor, is purely incidental. I do everything I can to give my duaaahh journalists encouragement, dyaaa.”
“‘Encouragement’, you call it? Funny, Boner, why all of that ‘encouragement’ you so freely dispense in the newsroom never gets parceled out to… the boys…”
An indignant Vlad Lemurov vigorously nods his head…
The Face disappears.
No longer fearing, a young female journalist now steps forward.
She says:
“Or all those times he sits behind his desk, massaging himself… there… but trying to hide it… and then getting up and walking trying to give the impression that he’s naturally like that, but what he’s really got is a… is a…”
A number of KP journalists, male and female, chime in: “Don’t be afraid, now, our sister. Go ahead, we’re all behind you. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of – say it, say it…”
And so she does:
“… but what he’s really got is… a hard on… but what the fucking bastard’s really got is… a boner – he’s got a boner, a boner… he’s got A BONER!!!”
The girl is on the verge of breaking down, but she is immediately surrounded by her colleagues, who put their arms around her and keep her standing.
“Is there anything else, our sister? Go on, don’t be afraid… go on…”
The young woman’s spirit and courage are renewed:
“And then… and then… I’d be sitting there, at my desk, and I’d see him coming toward me. I don’t want to look, and I don’t, but even when I don’t see him, I know he’s coming toward me… he’s coming right toward me… and then he’s right next to me, his crotch right next to my head, and I try to pull away, but the way he’s standing over me, with one arm around the back of my chair, I don’t have anywhere to move, and he moves in closer, as if to reach over for something, or to show me something on my computer, all the time making noises, like urgurgargaaa, and I can tell he’s really excited now, and he touches… and he… touches…”
“Go ahead, our sister, go ahead…”
“And he touches… MY FACE WITH IT!!!”
Boner flies into a speechless rage. His fury breaks through the crowd around the girl and he has his hand hard against her face, which he pushes into a wall, increasing the pressure, increasing the pressure…
But now, the publisher Moe Zaire’s secretary is in the room. Somehow, her voice breaks through the chaos and uproar as she calmly tells Boner he’s wanted in Zaire’s office upstairs.
Filed by Mr. Torrance “Twinkle Toes” Foote, December 22, 2015