There was a short burst of applause as Barrett appeared on-screen. He was seated at a desk with a bookcase behind him and his well-manicured hands clasped together on the blotter. There was an expanse of glass to his right, and through it we could see the night sky of KL dotted by a hundred pinpoints of light.

“Good morning,” Barrett said with a broad smile. “I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person today, as planned, but the show must go on, as they say. So, from the other side of the world, let me welcome all of our CDMI family to this important instructional session.”

Cheryl leaned over and whispered to me: “All of the family except the ones who need it most. How’d management weasel out of this?”

“As you all know,” Barrett was saying, “CDMI has a zero-tolerance policy for any form of sexual harassment. Our workplace must be a safe place for every single one of us. And that means not only unwelcome advances but a hostile work environment, dirty jokes, so-called locker-room talk—”

“Fuck, yeah,” guffawed a man in the row behind us.

“Even consensual relations, if they impinge on a healthy work environment. We exist to nurture our talent to reach his or her or their highest potential.” He seemed to be reading, and I wondered if he had a teleprompter or if someone off-camera was flipping through cue cards. “We won’t tolerate anything that impedes that. I want to assure all of you that here at CDMI we take sexual harassment very seriously.”

“I take it seriously, too,” spoke the same voice behind me. “That’s why I practice it every single day.”

Snickers rippled through the seats around us. “Tom Canto,” Cheryl hissed in my ear. “Staff photographer and resident perv.”

I stole a glance: in the seat behind me was a man with a three-day scruff who looked very pleased with himself. He was surrounded by young people, boys and girls watching him with expectant smiles—fawning interns, I guessed, all waiting for their next cue to laugh. He held a camera on his lap, right at his crotch. He grinned at me, and the shutter whirred before I could whip forward again.

“I don’t even know why I need to attend sex training,” he said loudly. “I’m already damn good at it.”

Cheryl raised her voice as the interns giggled. “Ignore him. He’s terrified that people might think he’s gay. It’s typical overcompensation.”

The man let out a belly laugh.

Barrett was winding up on-screen. “So now let me turn the program over to our much valued director of human resources. We are extraordinarily lucky to have her on our team. Everyone, please welcome Lucy Carter-Jones.”

“You met Lucy?” Cheryl whispered.

“Briefly.”

“I work with her on our EEOC cases. She’s great. Fascinating bio, though, right?”

“Hmm?”

“She comes from one of those posh English families, you know? Who made all their money in the Atlantic slave trade. When that was outlawed, they went into tea plantations in Asia and basically did the same thing there.”