Judgment day will come, it says. It’s just a matter of time.
2
It’s exactly 11:47 when I get back to my office at Stalling & Webb, one of Philadelphia’s holy trinity of corporate megafirms. I can’t help but know the time exactly, given the view from my office. It’s a regulation associate cubicle except for the fact that the window behind my desk is entirely consumed by the immense yellow clock face on top of Philadelphia’s City Hall, which is directly across the street. If you have to have a clock looming over your shoulder as you work, it’s one of the nicest: an old-timey clock, round as the moon and almost as large. Ornate hands, curlicued with Victorian ironwork, move precisely on time, silently pointing to Roman numerals of somber black. Nobody senior to me wanted this office because of the clock, but I didn’t mind it. I always know what time it is, which is good for a lawyer. As Socrates said, time is money.
I swivel around in my chair and look at the clock. 11:48. 11:49. I don’t like it so much anymore, though I’m not sure why. 11:50. It’s only a matter of time.
“Snap out of it, Mare,” says a distinctive voice from the doorway. My secretary, Brent Polk, comes in with a stack of yellow message slips and coffee on a tray. Brent’s a slim, good-looking man with hazel eyes and a thatch of jet-black hair. He’s also gay, but only Judy and I are privy to that bit of job-threatening information. Judy nicknamed him Bent in honor of his sexual preference; he loves it, but we can’t call him that around the other secretaries. They think he has a girlfriend in Massachusetts and can’t decide whether to get married. The perfect camouflage — a man who won’t commit. He blends right in.
“Coffee, what a great idea. Brent, you’re a man among men.”
“Don’t I wish.” He sets the coffee and the messages down on my desk. “Look, I even have the tray today. Aren’t you proud of me?” Brent’s ticked off because one of Stalling’s commandments is THOU SHALT NOT CARRY COFFEE WITHOUT A TRAY because it will stain the carpets, and he got reprimanded last week for not using one.
I pick up the YOU WANT IT WHEN? mug gratefully. All the coffee mugs talk back at Stalling, because the employees can’t.
“Now listen, Mare, you got another call from Mystery Man. This is ridiculous. We should change your phone numbers. It’s been going on for a year.”
“Don’t exaggerate. It hasn’t been a year.”
“Yes it has, off and on. It seems like it’s more often now, too — this guy must have nothing better to do. Are you getting more calls at home?”
“When did he call?” Lately I’ve noticed the calls have fallen into a pattern, occurring when I get back to the office or home from work. I get the feeling that someone knows when I’m coming and going, which is not a good feeling to have. If Brent knew the whole story, he’d call out the National Guard. But I’m not sure the whole thing isn’t coincidental.
“What difference does it make when he called? He called.”
“Let’s hold off. I’ve had the same phone number since I started here. All the clients know it. I hate to change for no good reason. People hate that.”
“Arrrrgh,” he growls in frustration, and reaches for my throat.
“Back, back. I’m telling you: You don’t screw up your clients without good cause. Then they go away, and you’re broke.”
“But, Mary, it’s sceevy. Did you ever think about what this guy’s doing when you answer the phone?” He wrinkles his nose in disgust. “I had an Uncle Morty who—”
“Brent, please.”
“Well it’s the truth.”
“All right. Let it sit for a while. If it keeps on happening, we’ll change the numbers, okay?”
“Yes, bwana,” he says with a sigh.
“Good.”
His dark eyes light up wickedly. “Wait’ll the big kahuna hears you won that motion. He and Delia are gonna celebrate tonight at the Four Seasons”. Brent’s connected like nobody’s business at Stalling. The latest dirt is that the senior partner on the Harbison’s case, Sam Berkowitz, is having an affair with his secretary. “I figure she’ll leave at five and he’ll leave ten minutes later. This time I’m gonna win. I can feel it.”
“What do you mean, you’re going to win?”
“You want in? It’s only a buck.” Brent pulls a wrinkled piece of steno paper out of his pants pocket and reads from it. “I bet he could wait ten minutes, but Janet says only five. Maggie bet he’ll tough it out for half an hour. Lucinda says they’ll leave together, but she’s crazy. He’s got his position to think of. Not that position, this position.” He laughs.
“You mean you have a pool going?”
“Yeah.” He slips the paper back into his pocket.
“You’re shameless. You don’t know they’re having an affair.”
“What, are you kidding? Everybody knows it.”
“But he’s married.”
Brent rolls his eyes. “So was I.”
“You were young. It’s different.”
“Please. I can’t believe you’ve lived this long, you’re so naive. Take a look at Delia next time you’re up there. She’s edible.”
“She’s okay-looking, but—”
“Okay-looking? She’s a knockout. I’m gay, dear, not blind, and neither is Berkowitz. He’s got the hots. Everybody’s talking about it. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
I make a finger crucifix and ward him off with it. “Blasphemer! The man is chairman of the department!”
“Oh, excuse me, I forgot. Your idol, Berkowitz, King of Kings. You know what I heard about him?”
“What?”
“You have to promise not to freak when I tell you, or I’m not going to tell you anything else. Ever again.” He wags a finger at me through a too-long shirtsleeve. Black, of course, the only color he wears. “Especially about this partnership crap.”
“What did you hear?”
“Promise, Mary.”
“Tell me! We’re talking my job here.”
He leans over my desk. I can smell the Obsession on his neck. “I heard that no matter what they say, Berkowitz is authorizing only two partners from litigation. Two, not three. Two, and that’s it.”
“Not three? They said three!”
“Yeah? Well that was then and this is now. They don’t want to divide up that pie any more than they have to.”
“So they’re just going to fire one of us? I can’t believe it.”
“Here we go. I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
“How are they going to choose between the three of us? We all have the same evaluations, and we all bill over two thousand hours a year. We’ve indentured ourselves to this fucking firm, now they’re gonna lop one of us off?” I rub my forehead on the front, where it’s beginning to pound. I’m convinced that this is the partnership lobe. It’s right next to the bar exam lobe and the SAT lobe.
“It won’t be you, Mare. You just won a big motion.”
“What about Judy?”
“Judy’s got it made. They need her to crank out those briefs.”
“And Ned Waters, what about him? I don’t want to see any of us fired, for Christ’s sake. It’ll be impossible to get another job. It’s not like the eighties, when you could pick and choose.”
“Listen to me, you’re working my last nerve. Are you having lunch with Judy today?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Go early. Talk it over with her. She’ll straighten you out.”
And she tries to, as we sit at a wobbly table by the wall in the Bellyfiller, a dingy restaurant in the basement of our office building. Judy drags me here all the time because the sandwiches are huge and the pickles are free. She doesn’t mind that the atmosphere is dark and cruddy, the bigscreen TV attracts all the wrong people, and the sawdust on the floor sometimes crawls.
“You’re letting this make you nuts, Mary!” She throws up her long arms, with their Boeing-sized wingspan. Judy Carrier is six feet tall, and from northern California, where the women grow like sequ
oias.
“I can’t help it.”
“Why? You just won a motion, you dufus. You’re undefeated. We should be celebrating.”
“How can you be so relaxed about this?”
“How can you be so worried about it?”
I laugh. “Don’t you ever worry, Judy?”
She thinks a minute. “Sure. When my father is belaying. Then I worry. His attention wanders, and he—”
“What’s belaying?”
“You know, when you climb, you designate one person to—”
“I’m not talking about rock climbing. I mean about work, about partnership. Don’t you ever worry about whether we’ll make it?”
“Making partner is nothing compared with rock climbing,” she says earnestly. “You make a mistake rock climbing and you’re fucked.”
“I’m sure.”
“You should come sometime. I’ll take you.” She turns around and looks for our waitress for the third time in five minutes.
“Right. When pigs fly.”
She turns back. “What did you say?”
“Nothing. So you really don’t worry about making partner?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re both good lawyers. You do the discrimination defense and I’m the entire appellate brief department. We’ll make it.” Judy grins easily, showing the many gaps between her teeth, which are somehow not unattractive on her. In fact, men look her over all the time, but she disregards them cheerfully. She loves Kurt, the sculptor she lives with, who has most recently hacked Judy’s buttercup-yellow hair into a chunky Dutch-boy cut. She calls it a work in progress.
“You think it’s that easy?”
“I know it is. Do the work, the rest will come. You’ll see—”
“Here it is, ladies,” interrupts our waitress, who hates us. Not that we’re special; the waitresses here hate all the customers. She slides the plates off her arm and they clatter onto the center of the table. Then she stalks off, leaving Judy and me to sort the orders. We move the heavy plates around like bumper cars.
“Girl food coming at you,” Judy says, pushing the garden salad and diet Coke to me. “Yuck.”
“Gimme a break. If I were ten feet tall I could eat like a lumberjack too.” I slide her the hoagie with double meat, a side order of potato salad, and a vanilla milkshake.
“But you’re not. You’re a little Italian shortie. Where I come from, we use you people for doorstops.” Judy bites eagerly into her hoagie. She starts at the end, like the sword-swallower in the circus. “Actually, there is one thing I’m worried about,” she says, chomping away.
“What?”
“You. I’m worried about you.”
“Me?” I can’t tell if she’s kidding.
“Yes.”
“The phony phone calls?” I take a gulp of soda. It tastes like aspartame.
“No, they’ll go away. I’m talking real danger,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows comically. “Ned Waters is after you.”
“Oh, jeez. Don’t start, Jude.”
“He wants it, Mare. Better buy some new undies.” Judy likes sex and talks about it frankly and naturally. Since I was raised a Catholic, I know her attitude is perverted and evil. Faxed from Satan himself.
“Judith, keep it clean.”
She leans over confidentially. “Be prepared to deal with the man, because it’s true. I heard it from Delia the Stone Fox.”
“Delia? Berkowitz’s secretary? How does she know?”
“She heard it from Annie Zirilli From South Philly.”
I laugh. Judy loves to make up nicknames. Half the time, I don’t know who she’s talking about. “You mean Barton’s secretary?”
“Right. Annie saw him mooning around his office yesterday and started up a conversation with him. He told her he’s interested in someone but won’t say who. He said the girl — that’s what he said, too, the girl — doesn’t even know herself, because he’s too scared to tell her. Too scared, can you believe this guy? What a horse’s ass!” She stabs at her milkshake with a straw.
“He’s shy.”
“In a kid, it’s shyness. In a man, it’s dysfunction. And I bet money you’re the lucky victim, because he always tries to sit next to you at department meetings. Plus I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” She makes googly eyes.
“Bull. If he were interested, he would have followed up in law school. After our big date.”
“But you met Mike.”
“Ned didn’t know that. He didn’t even call back.”
Judy shakes her head. “Sounds just like Waters. A torrid love affair of the mind. This guy has intimacy issues out the wazoo, I’m telling you. He’s too cool. Cool Waters, that’s him. Run for cover.” She plows into her potato salad with a soupspoon, like a bulldozer clearing heavy snow.
I watch her eat, thinking about Ned Waters. I still say he’s shy, but it doesn’t square with how handsome he is. Strong, masculine features, a smattering of large freckles, and unusual eyes of light green. “He has nice eyes.”
“If you like Rosemary’s baby.”
“Come on. He was a hunk in law school.”
“It’s tough to be a hunk in law school, Mare. If your pupils respond to light, you can screw half the class.”
I smile, remembering back to school when I had dinner with Ned. I was surprised when he asked me out, but not when he didn’t call back, because he was so quiet on the date. He barely said a word; I yammered away to fill the silences. Of course, I didn’t sleep with him or anything; that would have required 12,736 more dates, and even then I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. Enjoying it didn’t happen until Mike.
After lunch, Judy and I take a walk around the block, since it’s a warm day in spring and Philadelphia’s infamous humidity has yet to set in. We window-shop, checking out the displays at Laura Ashley, Banana Republic, and Borders, a chic bookstore on Walnut Street. I like Borders, because it’s made reading fashionable, and I like to read. Judy likes Borders because it has an espresso bar with big cookies. Big as flapjacks, she likes to say. I treat her to a big cookie, and we walk back to the office, with me feeling like the stumpy mommy to a child on growth hormones.
3
A black-mirrored elevator whisks us to the top of a black-mirrored monolith that is home to a major oil company, an investment banking house, and Stalling & Webb. Stalling has the building’s top seven floors, which always remind me of the seven deadly sins I learned in parochial school. Sloth is the bottom floor, where Judy gets off, and the next stops are Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Lust, and Avarice. Pride is the penthouse. I get off on Envy, which is where Martin H. Chatham IV, the junior partner on Harbison’s, has his office. I’ll tell him about the big victory after I freshen up.
Stalling’s ladies’ rooms are like heaven. They’re clean, palatial, all done in cumulus white. The Corian countertop boasts eight generous basins, each lined with fake gold. At the end of the countertop is a white cabinet stocked with all-you-can-eat toiletries — free Tampax, Band-Aids, mouthwash, and dental floss. There’s even Neutrogena, which I use liberally.
I wash my face as the secretaries joke around with me. They started to be nicer to me after Mike died, killed by a hit-and-run driver as he rode his bike along the Schuylkill River. I became a Young Widow, a character many of them recognized from their romance paperbacks. The lawyers, who have no time to read anything, barely remarked Mike’s passing, which was fine with me. It’s private.
I blot my face with a pebbled paper towel and take off.
Martin’s on the telephone but waves me in. I sit down in one of the Shaker chairs facing his Shaker desk. Everything in Martin’s office is tasteful, in a Thomas Moser kind of way, except for the owls. Needlepointed owls stare from the pillows, ceramic owls glare from the bookshelves. I used to think the owls were a high-prep fetish, like whales, but there’s a better explanation. Martin is boredom personified and must know it, so he’s seized on an interest to make himse
lf interesting. The owls fill the vacuum where his personality should be. Now everyone knows him as Martin, the Guy Who Likes Owls. See what I mean?
“I’m listening, Stuart,” Martin says into the telephone.
Listening is Martin’s forte. He listened when I told him my idea for this motion, even as he winced with distaste. Martin’s of the gentleman’s school of litigation, which considers it bad form to put your client’s interests ahead of your squash partner’s. It was Berkowitz who green-lighted the motion, because Berkowitz is a real lawyer and doesn’t know from squash.
“Good enough, Stuart. Take care, big guy.” Martin hangs up the telephone and immediately puts a finger to his lips, a tacit whoooo! He makes a note in his red day journal to bill his time and another in his blue telephone log to bill the call. Later, Martin will bill for the time it takes him to write a file memo about the call, and he’ll bill for the cost of duplicating the memo. Martin makes $265 every hour and 15 cents every page. In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
“So, Mary, how did it go?” he asks blandly.
“Very well.”
“Good news?” His washed-out blue eyes flicker with interest.
“We won, Martin.”
“We won? We won?”
“He ruled from the bench. The class action is no more.”
“Good God, Mary!” Martin pumps me for every detail of the argument. I edit out the “Ave Maria” and give him the colorized version, in which I star as Partnership Material, No Question. When I’m finished, Martin calls to see if Berkowitz is in. Then he grabs his suit jacket, because THOU SHALT NOT WALK AROUND THE HALLS WITHOUT A JACKET, and dashes out.
I walk back to my office. I’ve done my job, which is to make Martin look good. That’s why he goes alone to Berkowitz’s office, to take credit for the win. Likewise, since Martin’s raison d’être is to make Berkowitz look good, he’ll let Berkowitz take the credit when he telephones Harbison’s General Counsel. Because Berkowitz has made the GC look good to his CEO, the GC will send him more cases. ASAP. And partners who bring in the most business make the most money. You get the picture: The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone, and so on.
Everywhere That Mary Went Page 2
