Free The Claim by Billy London

in the middle of doing her “angry” draft, where she freely wrote what she really wanted to say either to the court or the other side and sometimes her client before she modified it for human consumption. Partway through reading it back, calling the other solicitors “mental retards who couldn’t find the Employment Act if it was rammed into their bowels” seemed a fair judgement. It was really the best way to get Rocco and the feel of his lips on her hand out of her mushy head. Bernie interrupted her efforts to tell her there was an Enzo Vitale waiting for her.
    “Oh!” Nonna’s boss…old boss. Something or other, she didn’t really know how to refer to him other than what Nonna kept saying about him in Sicilian dialect— fetuso . Not particularly friendly. Batty old woman. She really would have to reply to that card Nonna had sent her inviting her to try some cakes. She really did fancy some cake. “Oh, all right. This once.”
    The door opened and a man who obviously had a height complex walked in. “Anna Taylor?”
    “Yes, hello.” Politeness forced her to stand up and offer her hand. She sat back down behind her desk and looked at him expectantly. Well?
    “I asked someone who the reference AT was and I was directed here.”
      Don’t call him fetuso, he’ll know what that means... “What can I do for you?”
    “I believe you need to speak to your client, make her understand that this claim is pretty pointless.”
    Anna looked to the side, an automatic reaction to find another pair of eyes as filled with incredulity as her own were. “Why on earth would I do that?”
    “It’s not how things are done,” he said with such oily slickness, Anna felt the need to wipe her hands.
    “Well, according to the laws of this country, it is how things are done. I’ve written a grievance letter to you on my client’s behalf. You need to respond to that. If you don’t or we can’t come to a satisfactory arrangement, we’re filing our claim with the Tribunal. I thought that was pretty clear in the letter.”
    “Maybe she was not a good worker—”
    “You should have taken her to a meeting. She worked for that deli for thirty years without a single disciplinary.”
    “But she’s a woman of advanced years...”
    “Age discrimination.”
    “It seemed—”
    “Outside of the range of reasonable responses. See you’re going to make it very easy for a judge to slap you upside the head with the procedure book. If I were you, I’d speak to some solicitors, not me, and come to a figure such as the one I’ve indicated in the letter. Not the grievance, the one I sent a few days ago.”
    Enzo’s face went purple. “I am not paying that old bitch anything.”
    Anna sent him a blank smile. “Then be prepared to be very publically corrected about what you should and should not do with employees. I don’t think I can be of any more help to you.”
    She turned back to her computer and typed hard, attempting to dispel the faint trembling in her fingers from quite violent irritation at the man’s presence.
    Enzo slammed the letter on Anna’s desk.  “You have no idea who I am, do you? Things like this get people like you hurt.”
    Anna slowly got to her feet. “I’m going to ask you once. Leave.”
    He smirked. “Talk to your client. Ask her who the Vitale family is. What they do. See if that will jog her memory.”
    She circled her desk to the door and held it open in invitation. “I don’t think you have two brain cells to rub together for a spark enough to understand what I am saying. Get out of my office, please. Get some solicitors. Give my client what she wants. Goodbye, sir.”
    Enzo finally took the hammer to the head and headed to the door. “Whatever she’s paid you or Rocco Mamione, it’s not enough. They’re a family full of pathetic losers who’ve always rode on others’ coattails. All I did was cut her off. You’ll see you’re backing the wrong horse. I hope you see sense before