America 1982-Chapter 125 - 36: I Am Excited Now_2

"Tommy’s right, Holly," Susan said, having buttoned up her shirt. She walked over to Jason’s chair and pulled it out, lifted her leg, and started to slip on her stockings. "Don’t worry, Mark is looking for a suitable house nearby. Once we become roommates and I move out of there, that problem will be solved."

"...But those two cops..." Holly said, somewhat shocked.

"They only act like that in the slums. As long as I stay out of those areas, the cops I don’t know tend to be really friendly towards me. So, if I don’t want to run into that kind of situation again, all I need to do is work hard to make myself rich." Susan finished putting on her stockings, slipped into her skirt, walked over to Tommy, and lit a cigarette:

"Got any plans for today? If not, I’m going to continue training those people in the classroom about what they should watch out for in a formal job and then call up various companies to check on how the women are doing."

"The HR department at AMD headquarters contacted me to say they’d like to place five female clerks in the secretarial division. The ten clerks we sent before have done really well; you can’t tell any difference between them and college students from their documents and reports. It’s only when you talk to them that it becomes obvious." Holly tried to recover from her previous shock as she spoke to Susan:

"They don’t care about that, though, as they wouldn’t chat with them anyway. Also, they hope to have four women at the front desk in the lobby of their headquarters, which looks like the White House, to guide visitors."

"So that’s nine in total, four of which need to be pretty, right?" Susan asked Holly after listening.

Holly nodded, "That’s right. But there’s also a company called ECDA that needs five clerks, female and preferably pretty, who can tolerate silent or quirky engineers because ECDA will send them to their engineering R&D department. They’ll help the engineers with coffee and miscellaneous data entry tasks, ensuring they focus on product design and R&D."

"Compared to those clients, engineers are the easiest men to deal with. When I interned at Symantec, it felt like heaven, surrounded by polite men. Even if they were interested in you, they’d only approach you when you were at the water cooler, strike up light conversation while making coffee, and then timidly ask you out to a movie over the weekend." Susan expertly exhaled a stream of smoke from her nostrils, a smile playing on her lips as she spoke:

"I’m curious if engineers dating women only have the option of watching a movie," she said.

"You’d better get those women used to their dullness. For all you know, one of the guys asking her out to a movie might suddenly become a millionaire and then gather the courage to ask her out officially," Tommy said with a chuckle to Susan.

"Thanks for the thoughtful reminder, Tommy. I’ve got to get to work," Susan put out her cigarette, popped a piece of gum into her mouth, and then left the garage.

Once Susan had left and only Holly and Tommy were in the garage, Tommy returned his gaze to the summons: "How’s our little HR business doing?"

"Currently, seventy-nine women have been placed into nine different companies, doing basic computer clerical work. There are forty more in training. Garry Good has asked me a few times whether or not we should consider expanding our classroom and number of computers," Holly said as she sat on the edge of the desk in front of Tommy, taking off her high heels. She rested one foot on Tommy’s knee while massaging her calf with the other foot that she’d drawn up.

Tommy leaned back and pushed his chair further away from Holly, creating some distance, and said: "I don’t care how many prostitutes we’ve sent to Silicon Valley, I mean how much money do we have in the account?"

Adding the uncharged paperwork fees and the unsettled wages for the women, it’s about a hundred thousand dollars," Holly said, her eyes playfully lingering on Tommy. "I noticed you couldn’t take your eyes off Susan while she was changing. I thought you might be interested."

"Contact Sophia, have her deal with the terms and such. In short, use a loan as a pretext to transfer the money from the HR company to Actor Corporation," Tommy said, ignoring Holly’s teasing and speaking matter-of-factly.

Holly was too taken aback to continue teasing Tommy, and after a moment of astonishment, she asked, "A loan?"

"Of course a loan. That way, even if Actor loses the lawsuit, we present a promissory note for a hundred thousand, ensuring there’s an existing debt dispute. The outcome would be Lotus not being able to get their hands on even a piece of toilet paper," Tommy Hawk told Holly.

"Haven’t you always said that Actor doesn’t need much money? Besides, even if we lose, this company doesn’t have much that Lotus would want to take away."

"Although the possibility of losing isn’t high, we have to be fully prepared. That way, even if Lotus wants to forcibly take away our company’s assets, they’ll have to wait until the staffing company has settled the debt. By then, we can toss them a few computers and ensure they won’t find any data they want." Tommy rested his fingers on his forehead, his eyelids drooping, and said:

"Moreover, Actor needs at least twenty or thirty thousand to deal with the court. Sophia writes a defense letter and sends it to the Massachusetts court. The defense letter is written by ourselves; we just need to borrow a law firm’s name. They charged us four hundred for that, and this litigation has several stages. The lawyer’s letter is the first stage, we don’t respond and we don’t spend money. Currently, it’s the second stage, filing, and we also choose the cheapest defense because only a few hundred will suffice. Otherwise, we’d deal with jurisdiction, flaws in the opponent’s charges, and other such motions to delay time, needing professional lawyers to fly to Massachusetts court to deal with those judges, and fees would start at several thousand US dollars. Plus, we’d have to cover round-trip tickets."

"You’re acting like a lawsuit shark now, Tommy," Holly said with a smile, looking at Tommy’s demeanor.

Tommy exhaled and drained the coffee from his cup:

"And what we need to hold out for is the third stage, evidence disclosure. That’s when both sides’ lawyers start gathering evidence, accumulating strength, preparing to land a knockout blow on the opponent or force a total capitulation."

"I have another question. You just said we need twenty or thirty thousand to cope, so why take out a hundred thousand? Most of that money is supposed to be settled white income," Holly continued to inquire.

"Hold off the settlement of that white income from those companies, lend it to Actor, and then Actor uses that money to buy a batch of the cheapest computers that can run MS-DOS. Support those SSD training classes held at other universities, giving each institution one or two machines as a token will be enough. Remember to have the school’s TV station and the school paper take photos for you," Tommy said to Holly, his tone calm.

"Aren’t you afraid that those companies will give you trouble?" Upon hearing Tommy say they should pause the settlement of funds that should be returned to the human resource managers or founders of those staffing companies, and divert this money to buy computers, Holly’s beautiful eyes widened in surprise. The motion she was subconsciously doing, massaging, stopped, and her long legs instinctively tensed.

This bastard really had the audacity to halt the settlement of white income due to be returned to certain individuals at those companies and repurpose it!

"Let’s be frank, tell them we’ve gotten into trouble, they’ll understand. It’s just a pause in settlement, not that we’ll owe them money. Those companies enjoy the beautiful female clerks I provide them, and they’ve saved so much on expenses, they should understand everything has a damn price. From the day we reached a deal, they knew this is what it means to be an adult," Tommy said, rubbing his chin where the stubble, untrimmed for two days, was somewhat prickly:

"Besides, I’m planning to wait until the California schools’ training classes appear to be operating properly, and then I’ll have you stop the salaries of these women who’ve just started their stable jobs. The reason is that the company has been sued and entered into the evidence disclosure phase of investigations between both parties. To avoid trouble and pursue a settlement, we, as a small company that bends over backwards to survive, show our submission. Therefore, we need to turn over our accounts and data, including financial flow, for the other party to inspect, so salary payments will be temporarily halted. If they’re unhappy, you know to tell them to go to the very companies that employ them."

Holly sat motionless on top of the office desk, just staring dumbfounded at Tommy Hawk as he spoke these words. Seeing her with a more shocked expression than when Susan was humiliated by the police, Tommy seemed more interested. He walked toward Holly, parted her legs, placed her on the office desk, and looking down at Holly, he said:

"Did I not take Lotus’s first lawyer’s letter seriously enough? It’s not that I was not taking it seriously; I am excited now. But don’t worry, I’ll cover your laundry bill."