Though he ignored her as best he could, she refused to let him. Though the missives stopped, the touching continued. She would call him into conversations and put him on the spot in front of others. She would smile and wave to him. She later claimed that it was only because she didn’t want work to be awkward, but she had made it so, putting him in a situation in which he did not know what she wanted. The demands for attention increased. She became angry at his lack of attention towards her, while telling others that he was angry. Those around them, directed by whatever she was telling them behind his back grew distant and cold. He became isolated, and he did not want to go in anymore. He could not understand why she didn’t just accept that he didn’t want anything to do with her anymore and leave him alone. His silence was not because of her initial rejection, which had not been a real one, not guided by her heart, but for her betrayal, her having set him up to hurt him. He did not trust anything she said anymore. She was cold and vain, her warmth and interest in others an act. 

It went on this way. She yelled “Good morning” at him one day in front of everyone, with seeming emotion in her voice. She watched him through windows. She danced in front of him in her new outfit. She hunted him down one day to show him pictures of his gift. She had given it to her dog, and he could not understand why on earth she would show him that if she wanted his attention. He dropped her from social media, making his decision clear. Then the shit hit the fan. She could not accept that he was no longer interested in her. Why she could not was a mystery, as it was what she had wanted. She had either been lying to him or lying to herself, and she was not making work any less awkward with her insistences. She was making everything worse. And, one day, she accosted him at lunch. 

She came to his car, and she demanded that he stop ignoring her. She berated him for his warning about the letch, calling him delusional. She opined about what her friends would have thought if they’d read his words, thereby admitting that it had both been his warning that changed her feelings about him and tacitly admitting that she knew what she allowed, how she behaved toward the letch, was wrong. But, somehow, her behavior was his fault. She told him she loved his gifts, that they were “amazing,” and she lambasted him for never having said hello to her first, which was not true. She began to sob, so he hugged her which she accepted. But she had put him back into the situation he did not want to be in. It seemed she needed to control him. 

Once again, she left him with no understanding of what she wanted, where they stood. So he did all he could do, and he sent her an email making his position clear, trying to placate her, as her behavior had become erratic. But she had already made plans, unknown to him, devious, deceitful plans, and she was only waiting for the impetus to play them. He gave it to her, unwittingly. She had not answered his message, and he, apoplectic at the inconsistencies between her words and actions, emailed her again, without placation. It appeared, yet again, that someone else intervened and told her what to think, what to do, someone whose attention she craved and who saw an advantage for themselves, and her response to him was not to contact her anymore. She, the woman who had just come to his car demanding that he stop ignoring her. 

His mind reeled. It made no sense in any universe. Her words and actions were diametrically opposed, most likely because half of them were not her own. Fearing the side of her that seemed unhinged, he was desperate to know what her problem was, so he made another mistake and returned to subterfuge, only to attempt to figure out what was going on in her head. Recall that she had refused to leave him alone when he had made it crystal clear that he wasn’t associating with her anymore. She had made him the work pariah with her talk behind his back. He was worried about what else she would do, so he pretended to be someone like the men she knew—trust fund babies, emotional infants who spent their nepotistic money on life-sized How Wheels. She did not answer anything, as he knew she would not. But what he did not expect was what happened next. 

She filed a complaint against him, two to be exact. The women who had pretended to be his friend, made no attempts to stop his attention, had talked to him for months on end and told him personal things, who had accepted his gifts willingly and had refused to let him walk away, had decided to mischaracterize it all, painting herself as a victim. 

At the time she made her complaints, she had nothing but suspicions, nothing concrete with which to cast aspersions on him, except for the two emails he’d sent her, which she mischaracterized, omitting her part in any of it, acting as if she had done nothing. She had clearly been instigated to do it by someone else, someone she had not told the whole story to. She went to HR and to the police, and, in an interesting turn of events, told two different stories. The general gist of the stories was the same … and mostly untrue. But the details did not coincide. Professionals should have spotted it immediately, but, things being what they were and the area being trapped in a time long gone, added to by the zeitgeist of the times, she was simply believed, out of hand, no investigation. HR provably violated its own policies, the head being a self-involved nimrod who had never done any job they’d held there correctly. And she had another weapon—she cried. 

In disbelief at her dishonesty, her complete denial of any wrongdoing whatsoever, and fearing for his livelihood, he made his final mistake. Desperate to throw her off, to make her have second thoughts about what she was doing, he ramped up his alter ego and became nasty. It was stupid. It was short-sighted. And it was illegal. But there was still nothing real in any of it. She had committed perjury, and she was being believed out of hand, though the evidence clearly showed that her story was suspect. He, at that time, saw no choice. And he was caught.