The next morning, everyone in the office was talking about what had happened yesterday, and wondering what was going to happen next.

“You should have seen him,” Jocelyn crowed, a huge smile on her face, “Cringing and whimpering, curled up in the passenger seat trying to hide himself. When we got to his apartment building, he didn’t want to get out of the car. I had to kick him out with my foot. Then I pulled away from the curb and left him there, on the sidewalk on his hands and knees, still wearing the uniform. It was priceless.”

“Looks like Paula finally got what she deserved,” Lizzie said, satisfaction oozing from every pore. “And after how she reacted when I held her back from attacking the boss, I don’t think we’re going to see that smug little twit show his face around here anymore.”

Katie looked from one woman to the next, seeing nothing but the image of Paul, alone in a room full of enemies. Did he really deserve what they had done?

“Mister Macho Man.” Maisie’s voice was full of scorn. “Not so arrogant anymore, I bet. Did you see him on the floor, crying like a baby? He was sobbing like a little girl.”

“That’s a good question.” Mrs. King spoke from the doorway, her voice cold. Every woman in the room turned. As Karen walked into the room, they had the sense of a barely controlled anger, but none of them had the slightest idea what she was angry at. Almost as one, they realized that somehow, they had wandered into a minefield, or worse, the minefield had come to them. When it came to dealing with the absolute ruler of La Belle Dame, not knowing what she was angry about was a recipe for dismissal ... or worse.

After a silence, the one woman who could be called her friend spoke.

“What is, Karen?” Maisie said softly.

“Whether you saw him on the floor, crying like a baby,” she replied, the edge in her voice obvious. “Whether you noticed him there, sobbing like a little girl. That question.”

“Of course we did.” Lizzie spoke, still unsure of what was going on. “Hell, ma’am, we’re the ones that put him there.”

“Yes, we did. We all did.” Karen walked to the front of the office and turned around to face them all. “We banded together as one, all of us, to humiliate a man because he was an arrogant son of a bitch, and none of us liked him at all. You attacked him, stripped him, and dressed him in women’s clothing. Then I came out and, with nothing but a few well-chosen words, made sure he knew how powerless and friendless he was here.”

“So hooray for us. We showed Paul how weak he really was, took away every scrap of dignity and self-respect he had, and reduced him to a crying mass on the floor. Why? Because we didn’t like him.”

She stopped for a moment, looked down and shook her head.

“What if the same thing happened to you?” Karen raised her head and looked at each woman in turn, her gaze sweeping the room slowly. “What if you worked for a company that changed the uniform code for women so you would have to dress each day like a prostitute? And what if you found yourself in a room full of men, and they held you down, stripped you, and dressed you like a whore ... just because they didn’t like you? And what if the head of the company came out, complimented you on your new uniform, and dismissed your pain as unimportant — like you’re just another bitch out walking the street.”

Nobody answered her, because there was no answer. Karen looked at Maisie.

“If Paul had been the arrogant son of a bitch we all thought he was, he would have gone to an attorney and sued us all.” Her voice rose and shook, and the anger started to pour out with every word. “He would have risen up, sure of his own rightness in all things, and taken us all to court. And contract or no contract, he would have won. Because if a jury ever saw what we did ... in fifteen minutes of inexcusable cruelty, we made that man the poster child for sexual harassment, and he could have ripped this company apart and walked away wealthy.”

Karen took a deep breath, pulling the anger back, just a little.

“Instead, he came to see me last night. He didn’t come to tell me he was going to sue. He didn’t come to yell at me for targeting him, for humiliating him, for reducing him to tears. No, he came ... to thank me. He wanted to thank all of us for showing him how truly worthless he was ... on his way to commit suicide.”

“He brought back the uniform, with the footprint on the skirt bottom from when you kicked him out of the car in front of his building. He had trashed his computer and thrown away everything he owned, because he wasn’t going to need any of it anymore. He just stopped by on his way to kill himself — and we drove him to it!”

“Do you know why he had been such a bastard to everyone? He had been told his entire life that he was worthless ... a nothing. He had been beaten, belittled, and abused by everyone he had ever known, and when he started working here, he was sure it was going to happen again. So he tried to pump himself up, make himself feel important by acting as if he was important. He put on a mask and hoped it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“It did, but not the way he had hoped. He became rude and nasty, arrogant and dismissive. Paul saw it happened, but as much as he wanted to stop himself, he couldn’t. Because if he took off the mask, the only thing waiting for him underneath was the certainty that he was ... nothing at all.”

“But we didn’t know. We didn’t ask. We didn’t see. Because we didn’t look. And really, ladies, we didn’t want to, did we? Because we didn’t see a person. We saw a target. We saw a self-important little man, and we hate self-important little men, so we didn’t see the damaged child inside. We just beat up on the symbol and ignored the pain, and in the end, there wasn’t an arrogant little prick in a skirt and blouse, raging at the humiliation he’d been given. There was just a hopeless little boy, realizing just how useless and worthless he truly was.”

The anger roared out again, and they all felt it stab them in the heart with each word she spoke.

“We almost KILLED a man last night, because we didn’t stop and look at what we’d done! We didn’t see him as he truly was ... because we didn’t want to look. We just wanted to hurt.”

“So I ask you all again, did you see him on the floor, crying like a baby? Did you notice him there, sobbing like a little girl? Because I didn’t, really ... until he thanked me last night for making him feel so worthless that death was the best of all his possible futures.”

The room was dead quiet, as each woman thought about what Karen had said, and what they had done. Finally, Maisie spoke.

“What happened? Is he ... is he okay?”

“No, he is not okay,” Karen replied, sarcasm dripping from every word. “But he’s not dead, and that’s something. I only managed to talk him out of finding a quiet place to kill himself by promising to help him see he’s more than he thinks he is. He’s coming back this morning, and he’s going to apologize for all the things he’s ever said and done to hurt anyone here. Honestly, I don’t think it’s necessary — not after what we did to him. But I’m the one who made him promise to, because I think he needs to apologize, to put all of it behind him. And because we almost killed the man, we’re going to apologize, too.”

“What? Apologize to that little prick?” Jocelyn’s eyes flashed. “Sorry, ma’am, but you can’t make me tell that bastard I’m --.”

Karen looked over and didn’t hestitate.

“Fine. You’re fired. Pick up your check from accounting and get the hell off of my premises.”

“WHAT?”

“If you don’t have enough compassion in you to realize that what we did to him yesterday was wrong, after everything I've just told you, I don’t want you working for me. Ever.” Her lip curled in a semi-snarl. “I only hire humans, you see. And you’re obviously not qualified for the position. Now get out.”

Jocelyn stared at her ex-employer for a second, then snagged her purse and her coat before marching out of the office.

“Does anyone else have a problem?” Almost as one, the rest of the women shook their heads, and Karen smiled. The tension left her, and the anger as well. None of them were truly bad, and she knew where their hearts would take them eventually. At that moment, Team Paul was born.

‘This could work,’ she thought, then shook her head slight. ‘No, it will work, or damn it, I’ll know why.’

“Thank you, everyone,” she said softly, “You make me proud of you all.”

She took a deep breath. “As you all know, the name of this company is French but I first saw it in the title of a poem by Keats, entitled La Belle Dame sans Merci. Translated, it means ‘The Beautiful Lady Without Pity.’” Karen looked at her staff, and smiled. “I think we’ll just stick with Le Belle Dame from now on, don’t you?”

Maisie smiled back and nodded, and the other women did as well.

She called her car, and told the driver to pull up and drop the young man at the front door. Then she turned back to the staff.

“All right, then,” Karen said. “Let’s see if we can show Paul that he’s more than he thinks he is — and show him that we’re capable of more than we showed him yesterday.”

He entered slowly, in his new black suit, crisp white shirt, and fuchsia tie. His hair had been cut and styled, and he was clean-shaven, but for all of that, he somehow managed to look older instead of younger. He was nervous, and it showed, and he stood by the doorway, not knowing how to begin. The women looked back at him, and as he opened his mouth to speak, a dozen voices joined his in a welcome chorus ... Karen’s included.

“I’m sorry.”