by Kris Webb
The bus, which usually spent ten minutes mired in traffic, barrelled down the snarl-free streets and deposited me in front of my building in what seemed like moments.
I stopped on the edge of the road, my fellow commuters parting around me. I watched the bus as it shrank into the distance and tried to suppress the feeling that my career was still on board.
Kerry smiled sympathetically at me as I approached her desk. ‘Mark’s in his office,’ she said softly.
I tapped on the glass panel beside Mark’s door and he looked up. In contrast to the quagmire that was my desk, his was always clear except for the one document he was working on at the time.
‘Hello Julia.’
‘Should I come in or just head down to HR to pick up my final cheque?’
I’d decided an attempt at humour might defuse the situation, but he looked as though he was actually considering the option.
‘Sit down,’ he said finally. ‘Procan settled the patent litigation yesterday.’
‘You’re kidding! The other side walked out of negotiations last week.’
Mark shrugged. ‘All I know is that they reached a settlement yesterday and had to announce it to the stock exchange.’
As Procan was a public company, information that could affect its share price had to be formally announced before it leaked. That was exactly the type of work I was there to do.
‘When they couldn’t find you, Brian contacted Gavin. I was out at a meeting, so Gavin handled it all himself.’
I rested my head in my hands for a second. Opening my eyes, I looked across at Mark.
‘God, Mark. I’ve been having trouble getting Jack to sleep lately. So I turned off all the phones – and forgot to turn them on again. It’s such goddamn bad luck that something like this happened.’
He nodded. ‘I figured it was something like that. Look, it’s not a total disaster. I talked to Gavin last night and told him what you’ve got going on. Stay away from his side of the floor for a while and it will sort itself out.’
I felt a breath of relief. Maybe this would just blow over and we could all forget about it.
‘There’s one thing, though,’ Mark added. ‘We don’t think now is the right time to put you up for partnership.’
I felt as though Mark had thrown a brick at me. I swallowed hard. ‘One afternoon I’m out of contact and that ruins everything I’ve done here?’
Mark took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. Pushing them back into place, he shook his head slightly. ‘Look Julia, the first thing to say is that this isn’t a life sentence. Next year things will probably look totally different. But now . . .’ He trailed off.
I wasn’t consoled. Next year was an eternity away in a law firm. Anything could happen. The economy could slow, which would mean less work and definitely fewer new partners. A new and brighter star might take my place. I’d worked myself inside out for this opportunity now, not sometime in the future.
‘It’s not just this business yesterday. It’s the whole situation with Jack. What you’re trying to do is huge and I admire the effort you’re making to stay on top of everything. But . . . but it’s not enough. You used to be the last person in the office, clients knew that if you said you’d do something, you would. Now you have to be the first out of the office and I know some things have been slipping.’
‘Just give me a chance, Mark. Things will get easier, once it all settles down.’
‘You think you want this, Julia, but trust me, you don’t. The first couple of years I was a partner were the hardest I’ve ever had. On top of my normal workload, I had to start managing staff, doing admin stuff and all the crappy jobs the bigwig partners don’t want to be doing. If you think you’re just keeping your head above water now, believe me, you’d be swamped. I only just managed, with Andrea not working and looking after everything not connected with this office. Doing it by yourself would be impossible.’
I knew what he was saying made sense, but I couldn’t see past the fact that the carrot which had been dangled in front of me for years had been yanked away.
‘So suddenly I’m not up to scratch and I’m on the scrap heap?’ I didn’t even try to keep the anger out of my voice.
Mark shook his head. ‘Nope. You’re good at what you do – very good. And we’ve put a lot of time and effort into training you. But what’s happening at the moment isn’t working for anyone here. So what we think you should do is step back a bit. Maybe let someone else handle one or two of your clients.’
Well at least Procan was off the list. That was a start.
‘Okay.’ I nodded slowly.
I pushed myself out of the chair and walked to the door.
‘Ah, Julia?’
I turned back towards him.
‘One thing, though, when you’re thinking about whether you can give away a couple of matters and lighten your load . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t even consider trying to get rid of Gordon’s statue case.’
‘Oh well. When I lose that trial, not making partner will be the least of my worries. Jonathon will have me washing dishes in Chinatown for the rest of my life.’
On that cheery note I left.
TWENTY-THREE
‘Patrick, I really don’t think that anyone is going to notice whether the extractor fan filter is clean.’
He gave me a withering look, scrubbing harder with what looked suspiciously like an old pair of his underpants. ‘I’m not doing it for the show – I’ve been meaning to do it for ages.’
This statement didn’t have a lot of credibility coming from a man who vacuumed his bedroom about twice a year.
It was a week since my partnership prospects had disappeared. Thankfully Maggie had talked me out of my first impulse, which had been to march around to Gavin’s office and confront him with the huge injustice that had been done to me. The anger that had fuelled this idea disappeared before lunch and I finally figured out that what I felt most was hurt.
Jennings Walker was a business. It was there to serve its clients and make money. But I’d worked myself inside out for years and knew I was well thought of. Somehow I’d thought that gave me some kind of credit to work with. For the first time, however, I realised that I was just one of a legion of young lawyers who’d passed through the place. No one would remember my name in a year’s time if I left tomorrow.
I’d gone through the motions the last week or so, flicked a few files to other lawyers, and my workload was slowly coming back under control. Without the incentive of moving to the next level, everything looked pretty dreary and I felt as though I was just putting one foot in front of the other. I knew I had to fire myself up again if promotion next year was really going to be a possibility, but I couldn’t muster the energy.
In stark contrast, Patrick was as excited as I’d seen him since he’d confessed Jennifer had seduced him in the work kitchenette.
Tony had called him yesterday to say that the woman who’d agreed to have the first cooking show in her kitchen had cancelled. He’d asked if Patrick would be interested in taking her place – with the show to be shot in our kitchen today. Far from being insulted that he was a last-minute ring-in, Patrick had accepted enthusiastically. I suspected he was still harbouring dreams of fame.
I’d arrived home last night to find whimsical sketches of coffee cups propped at the back of the counter and a new Alessi juicer that looked like an alien space ship off to one side. There was also a full set of gleaming saucepans, a marble chopping board and a chef ’s knife. More worryingly, there were two new vases, each filled with what Patrick claimed were native flowers.
‘I thought the whole idea was to shoot the segment in a real kitchen. I wouldn’t even recognise this place as ours.’
Despite Tony having told Patrick that the ‘normal people’ on the show were simply a way of making the chef look good, Patrick was on tenterhooks.
‘Well, if you’re going to be on TV, you have to make a bit
of an effort.’ He’d finished with the extractor fan and had moved on to the fridge, which he’d only cleaned yesterday.
‘This must have cost you a fortune. How did you afford it all?’
Patrick looked uncomfortable. ‘Same as everything else – credit.’
Patrick was so nervous, he hadn’t even eaten and had barely said two words, even to Jack, all day. Despite Jack’s best efforts, the entire house was still spotless at lunchtime and I was under strict instructions to make sure it stayed that way.
This whole thing was so out of character that I was starting to worry about how much being unemployed was weighing on Patrick. In the two weeks since he’d been fired, he’d been knocked back by the other three major accounting firms in town. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it except to voice his conviction that Jennifer was using her influence to prevent him finding another job in the industry.
Patrick wasn’t the only one flustered – Tony’s call had unsettled me as well. Another week had gone by with no word from him and here he was turning up again. Sure, it was Patrick he’d called, not me. But if he really didn’t want to see me again, would he have arranged to shoot the show in my house?
The truth was he probably hadn’t even given it any thought.
‘So do you know who the chef is?’ I asked as I blew on a party sausage before handing it to Jack. Unfortunately, his love of Carla’s meatballs hadn’t ushered in a new approach to food and a worrying amount of his diet still came from the frozen food section at the supermarket.
‘Some guy called David Green. He’s head chef at a restaurant in town.’
‘Do you know if he’s been on television before?’
Patrick shook his head. ‘I hope so though. I’ve just remembered how uncomfortable I am whenever anyone produces a video camera. Can you tell me what on earth made me think I’d be any good at this?’
‘This is totally different to amateur stuff. You’ll be great,’ I assured him with as much conviction as I could muster.
‘You think so?’ he asked desperately.
‘Absolutely.’ I nodded sagely.
‘What time are they coming?’
He looked nervously at his watch. ‘In half an hour.’
We both looked at Jack, who was jumping around the room astride the broom, making horse noises and crashing into every available surface.
‘Don’t suppose you have a playgroup to go to this afternoon?’
‘’Fraid not.’
He looked at me pleadingly.
I’d been keen to see what happened, but it was clear that a television shoot and Jack couldn’t coexist in this small house.
‘Okay,’ I relented, ‘I’ll take him swimming.’
‘Thank you,’ Patrick sighed with relief.
I’d taken Jack to the local pool earlier in the week. My expectations of our outings were becoming more realistic – I figured that if I expected total catastrophe, anything else was a bonus. As neither of us had drowned, I’d deemed the expedition a success.
Now, after two hours of unsuccessfully trying to convince Jack that splashing harmlessly in the baby pool was way more exciting than throwing himself into three metres of water, I was exhausted.
We returned home to find a van and a couple of cars parked outside and the house crowded. For a low-budget half-hour show, there certainly seemed to be a lot of people in the kitchen and spread around the deck.
I took Jack straight to his room and put him down for a sleep, blessing the fact that he was so tired he couldn’t muster the energy to put up a fight.
My swimming costume had soaked through my T-shirt and shorts, making very undignified-looking patterns, and I decided to change before venturing into the kitchen.
‘Hi Julia.’
I heard the familiar voice behind me as I was quietly pulling Jack’s door shut. I turned and saw Tony standing in the doorway. I couldn’t help the lurch in my stomach at the sight of him.
I glanced down at my front, trying to gauge how bad the watermarks looked. Bad.
‘Over here, Tony,’ someone called from the kitchen, and with an apologetic wave he was gone.
I escaped to my bedroom with relief and threw on a dry singlet top and trousers. With so many people already involved, the last thing I wanted to do was get in the way. Trying to convince myself I wasn’t avoiding Tony, I went into the study and closed the door.
Other than a couple of shattering crashes, which I hoped weren’t Patrick’s new vases, and a few teeth-jarring scrapes along the floor, there wasn’t too much noise coming from the kitchen, but I still couldn’t concentrate. After about half an hour I stopped pretending to work and looked in on the filming.
Despite the fact that the crew had been there for over three hours, it didn’t seem as though much cooking had been done. I perched on the back of the sofa, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.
Patrick and another man, who I assumed to be David Green, were standing in front of the bench, each with identical knives and chopping boards. David was instructing Patrick on the proper way to dice an onion.
‘No, no, no. That’s not finely diced, that’s massacred. Here, try again,’ he was saying in a deep voice.
He scraped the irregular chunks of onion into the sink and handed Patrick another.
‘You need to work with the grain of the onion – don’t fight it,’ he coached.
I could see why they thought this guy would work on TV and wondered whether they hadn’t chosen him more for his looks than his cooking skills. For some reason I’d been expecting someone French and small, with a neat little moustache. David looked more like a footballer than a chef.
Although Patrick was well over six feet, he looked short in comparison. On the back of one of David’s hands was a tattoo that I couldn’t quite make out, but it looked like some sort of spider. His face was handsome in a beaten-up sort of way, as though he’d survived his fair share of bar brawls.
As I watched, the camera focused on Patrick, who started to painfully cut up his onion into rough, irregular cubes. Beside him, David’s knife flew and within five seconds he had a perfectly diced onion. With Patrick still labouring away, he turned to the stove.
Boredom had clearly overcome Patrick’s nerves and casting a glance over his shoulder, he waved a tea towel in front of the camera while swapping chopping boards. ‘Ta da,’ he announced, looking proud. ‘Just a little trick I picked up in chef school.’
He quickly turned and dropped the perfectly cut onion into his pan on the stove.
David turned back to find himself left with the huge chunks of onion. ‘Right. So it’s going to be like that, is it?’
Tony, who had been standing off to one side, spotted me and came over. ‘How’s it going?’ I asked as he leaned on the wall next to me.
He shook his head. ‘We’re running way behind schedule. The lights blew one of the fuses, so we had no power for an hour. I’m afraid your kitchen will be out of action for a while yet.’
I waved my hand. ‘Gives me the perfect excuse not to cook. You can stay all week if you want.’ As soon as I spoke, I realised how much like an invitation that sounded. ‘I mean . . . the crew can . . .’ I decided to cut my losses and change the subject. ‘How’s Patrick going?’
‘Well, I think. He was nervous when we started, but because he has been in front of the camera for so long, he’s pretty much forgotten about it. He and David seem to have hit it off, which is good.’
‘Are you taping this?’
‘Yeah. We rehearsed it a few times without the food and then got some pretty good stuff doing it properly. We’ve got a heap of food though, so I told them to play around with the script a bit. We might be able to edit some of the impromptu bits in if they work.’
Having salvaged the onion and set it cooking on the stove, David was talking to the camera again. Patrick spotted me and smiled slightly.
‘Fresh ripe tomatoes are the key to this dish. The first step is to remove the skins.’
One of the crew appeared with two steaming bowls filled with tomatoes and hot water.
‘All you need to do is gently pull the skins off each one.’ David plunged his hands in.
Patrick copied him, slipping his hands into the water, and instantly let out a howl. ‘Shit!’ He rushed over to the tap and turned on the cold water, running his injured hands underneath. ‘Mate, that’s not natural. That water must be close to boiling.’
David laughed as he placed each skinned tomato on the board.
Hands still under the tap, Patrick turned to face the camera. Putting on a David Attenborough voice, he whispered as though trying not to disturb some elusive jungle creature.
‘Now, one of the wonderfully unique things about chefs is that they are stark raving mad. Although able to withstand high temperatures, they are remarkably out of touch with the rest of the world, as evidenced by the fact that they have not yet discovered the modern invention of tinned tomatoes.’
David stepped in front of the camera. Using the same voice, he mimicked Patrick. ‘Another truly bizarre species that lives in this habitat is the unemployed accountant.’
I looked nervously at Patrick, but he was smiling and seemed to be enjoying himself.
‘This species believe they are able to do away with the traditional skills of hunting, gathering and cooking, relying instead on takeaway pizza and the local Indian restaurant. However, they are suddenly left floundering in a frightening world of fresh vegetables and uncooked meat when their income is removed.’
Patrick threw his head back and laughed.
‘Now, if we could get back to the cooking?’ David arched his eyebrows at Patrick. ‘It is important to make sure that the onion is only sweating, not frying.’
‘Okay, yes. Sweating good. Frying bad.’ Patrick pointed at his pan. ‘Perfect.’
‘No Patrick, that is definitely frying. This is sweating.’ David pointed at his own pan.
‘Oh, right. Sorry.’ Patrick adjusted the flame under his pan and made a face at the camera.
‘Now pour some balsamic vinegar over it.’
