Reasonable Accommodation

"Something like that," Jack said.

Maxine's three male attorneys nodded in agreement. Maxine wished at that moment that they would be consumed by the mouth of Hell.

* * * *

Seven days later, Maxine sat in her office at 8 pm, with the door closed. A dozen projects lay in folders spread over her desk, incomplete, but Maxine still fumed over the settlement of the dispute about Deirdre.

The firm had agreed to pay Deirdre another settlement sum. They had agreed to provide an additional reasonable accommodation for her condition. In addition to being able to display her nude body in the conference room on the 34^th floor for an hour a day, she was entitled to have sex with other willing work colleagues four days a week.

So far, there had been no shortage of willing work colleagues.

Maxine couldn't stand it. This . . . new blonde trollop . . . whom she, Maxine, had hired! . . . had turned all her plans upside down. During partner meetings, she could see the smug way her colleagues, like Jack, Thomas, and Baylen, looked at her, satisfied both with the solution and how it obviously rankled Maxine. It drove Maxine to distraction to know that Thomas, who was 30 years Deirdre's senior, had been one of the first attorneys to help satisfy Deirdre's "condition."

"I'm just taking one for the firm," Thomas had told Maxine. She wanted to punch him in the face.

The maelstrom of emotions kept her from getting her work done.

A knock sounded at the door.

"Come in!" she shouted, grumpily.

To her surprise, Deirdre entered her office, and she closed the door behind her.

"Ms. Reichert," she said through tight lips.

"You can call me Deirdre."

"Do you want something?" Maxine asked.

"Yes," said Deirdre. "I'm sorry about how much this has upset you. I'm grateful to you for hiring me. I want a mutually satisfactory solution for us to move forward. I have . . . an idea."

"And that is?" Maxine stared at Deirdre. Her rage was tempered, somewhat, by her attraction to the young attorney. She was such a lovely thing, whatever outrages she had perpetrated on Maxine's law firm. That lithe figure. Those trim legs under the short skirt.

Deirdre smiled and began to unbutton her blouse. Maxine's mouth gaped.

"I thought," Deirdre said, "that maybe we could come to a reasonable accommodation."