The rest of the morning passed uneventfully, and I savored the relative peace after my Hell Week. Donatello was doing expert witness duty in Dallas, so the phones were relatively quiet, and I concentrated on the stacks of mail that inevitably arrived after the weekend. Donatello apparently believed that the more mail he got, the more important he appeared to be, and he subscribed to every periodical known to the legal profession, as well as the golfing and racquetball magazines. He also spent money like a shopaholic on speed, so he received dozens of catalogs and a ton of junk mail, which multiplied with every additional item he ordered.
The result was a staggering amount of mail, all of which had to be sifted through carefully by yours truly to glean the few pieces of business-related correspondence that actually required professional attention. These were referred to designated associates, who did what was needed. I sorted and stacked the rest of the mail in Donatello’s office. Since he traveled so much, this mountain of paper grew exponentially on his desk, atop his file cabinets, on the seats of every chair, and in overflow cartons on the floor.
At home I sort through my mail over the kitchen wastebasket. Even though, or perhaps because, I made my living for years as a marketer, I don’t even open the junk mail. If you want to get my attention, you’d better put first class postage on your message, and even then, the envelope had better be addressed to me by name. Catalogs go right into the recycling bin. So after just a few days, the sight of Donatello’s office with its cascading piles of brochures and catalogs sickened me to the point where I began throwing the obvious junk out furtively, putting just enough of it in his office to be plausible. First, I did a quick sort through the entire pile and pulled out the genuine business correspondence. Then I grabbed a stack of catalogs and headed for the supply room, where I stuffed them in the waste bin underneath the legitimate trash that was already there. The first time I was caught, it was by Strutter. Her only comment was, “His last secretary liked the trash basket in the women’s room. She figured he’d never be able to catch her at it in there.”
After that, my morning trip to the women’s room, made the long way around when Donatello was in town so I wouldn’t have to walk past the door of his office, became standard operating procedure. The other secretaries just smiled knowingly. On this morning I went the short way, since Donatello was safely away. This route took me past the office of Alain Girouard, the third of the firm’s senior partners, which occupied the sunny southwest corner of the floor and was adjacent to a small conference room.
As I passed the conference room, I glimpsed Girouard and his young, blonde secretary, Ingrid Torvaldson, who had her back to me. Girouard hissed something at Ingrid, then caught sight of me passing and reached to slam the door shut, but not before I saw Ingrid cover her face with her hands. I paused for a few seconds, wondering what the brute could possibly be saying to her to cause such distress; but hearing no sounds of physical abuse, I decided it would be prudent to mind my own business and moved on.
Inside the women’s room I methodically removed several paper towels from the top of the trash receptacle built into the wall, dumped in the stack of catalogs, and replaced the used towels. I was washing my hands with the thoughtfully provided liquid soap, apparently designed to suck every last molecule of oil from human skin, when Ingrid slammed through the door, stalked into the nearest stall, and started to bawl, all the while flushing the toilet madly in an attempt to muffle the sound. Once again I pondered the wisdom of intervening, but this time, compassion overcame prudence.
Between flushes I tapped on the stall door. “Ingrid? I won’t ask if you’re all right, because you obviously aren’t. Is there anything I can do?”
Her only answer was to honk into a tissue, but at least she didn’t flush the toilet again.
“Would a sympathetic ear help?” Silence. I tried again. “My daughter Emma isn’t much younger than you, and I would like to think another woman might offer a shoulder if she needed one.”
I didn’t really think the maternal reference would cut any ice with Ingrid, as upset as she was, but to my surprise, she slid back the latch and opened the stall door, a wad of toilet tissue pressed to her nose. I returned to the sinks and dampened a clean paper towel with cold water, then grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the counter. They were so cheap, you could practically see the wood shavings in them, but they were better than nothing. I handed Ingrid the tissues and draped the wet towel across the back of her neck, a technique employed by mothers everywhere to nip hysterics in the bud. There were a few more sniffles, but her heart wasn’t really in them.
“Thanks,” she said quietly and blew her nose again. She wet another paper towel under the faucet and pressed it to her eyes, propping her slim haunches on the countertop. “Oh, God, I’m going to have such a headache.”
“I’ve got Advil at my desk. I’ll get some for you in a minute. Better now?”
“Yes, much.” She removed the towel from her eyes and turned to look at herself in the mirror over the sinks, then groaned. “I can’t believe I let that bastard get to me. I promised myself that I would never join the club, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let him harass me.”
“Club? You lost me.”
“You know, all the women with self-esteem low enough to allow Alain to persuade them into his bed. If I had a dollar for every female he’s propositioned in this place, I’d be rich.” She shook her head at her image in disbelief, then turned on the cold water faucet and began splashing her ruined face vigorously.
“Oh, dear,” I said since nothing more intelligent sprang immediately to mind. “That old story. Well, if it helps, we’ve all been there at one time or another.”
Ingrid looked startled. “Don’t tell me he’s already made moves on you, too. You haven’t been here a month. Even he doesn’t work that fast.”
“Oh, no, no! I didn’t mean Alain specifically, just men generally, men in the office. Years ago,” I amended hastily. After all, I had identified myself as the mother of a person about her age. I was sure she would be unable to believe that a woman of my advanced years could be subject to such overtures.
“I see.” Ingrid finished sloshing her face and dried off on more towels, which she gathered up and pushed into the trash bin. Meeting some resistance, she peered into the receptacle and looked at me with amusement. “A lot of mail today?”
I returned to the topic at hand. “I heard Girouard taking you to task. At least,” I amended for the sake of accuracy, “I assumed that was what he was doing before he slammed the conference room door in my face. I wasn’t eavesdropping, just passing by on my way here.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think anyone saw us.” Ingrid fiddled with a stray lock of blonde hair as she sized me up in the mirror. She turned to face me. “What the hell. It’s common knowledge anyway. Alain has been after me for months. I thought I was safe, because I work for him; but for some reason, after all this time, he’s decided to add his personal assistant to his string of conquests. Heavy emphasis on personal.”
A sardonic grin flitted across her face as her sense of humor reasserted itself. “I really can’t think what prompted this, but we were spending a lot of time together preparing for Donahue v. City of Hartford, late nights and so on, and well …” She shrugged. “The usual story of proximity and rampant hormones, I guess. Nothing special.”
I smiled at her candor. “No, nothing special until it happens to you. There you are, maybe feeling a little down about something. You’re tired, lonely, and along comes a spider …”
“… and sits down beside her,” Ingrid finished gratefully. “Yes, that’s how it is. Or was,” she added firmly. “It’s not as if there’s any way I can complain. This isn’t a corporation, where there are sexual harassment policies and avenues of redress. The lawyers call the shots, and Paula Hughes, the HR manager, does what they want. So I just confronted Alain today and told him in no uncertain terms to leave me alone, that I am emphatically not interested
. In fact, first thing this morning, I posted for another position at the firm. It pays almost as much, and I would be working for the little eunuch who passes for an operations manager here.”
I was happy to see that she was regaining her composure. I also knew exactly who she meant.
“Harold Karp!” we said in unison and laughed.
Karp was the firm’s bean counter by vocation and an avid horticulturist by avocation, cultivating profits by day and an impressive assortment of flora by night, which he insisted upon potting and displaying on the desks of all but the most pollen-sensitive staff. I myself had been presented with a clump of Lily of the Valley in a porcelain pot just yesterday, along with detailed instructions on how to nurture it in the dry environment of the Metro Building. I wasn’t optimistic. My gardening skills were never all that terrific. Besides, I always seemed to prefer the weeds to the expensive perennials.
“Well, that seems safe enough,” I agreed, remembering Karp’s thinning hair, round shoulders, and soft paunch as he patrolled the perimeter of BGB’s four floors each morning to make sure all of us peons were present and accounted for. Ingrid would face no threat from Karp.
“I’m glad you have a plan.” I patted her hand briefly.
“It’s just so infuriating to be thought of as one of Girouard’s harem,” Ingrid continued. “I know everyone thinks I’ve been sleeping with him right along, but it isn’t true, and it never will be true.” She frowned at her reflection. “I’ve put up with his pestering this long only because I really need my paycheck, and I’m almost vested in the firm’s retirement program.”
“Do you think Girouard will let you go quietly?”
“I don’t know, but I had to do something. I had reached my limit, you know?”
The chattering of other secretaries, headed for lunch, could be heard approaching the women’s room. “I know exactly what you mean. Okay now?” I asked quietly.
Ingrid nodded vigorously and put a finger to her lips. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep my waterworks our little secret. I don’t want to blow my cool and collected image.” She grinned gamely, if a bit crookedly.
“You’ve got it. Besides,” I added, nodding toward the trash receptacle,” you’ve got something on me, too.”
“Yeah, between us, we share two of the worst-kept secrets in this place.” Giving a final tuck to the recalcitrant tress, Ingrid winked and led the way out. We went in opposite directions to our respective pods.
I arrived at my desk just in time to hear Bolasevich howling for Strutter, who sat before her computer wearing a transcription machine headset and her habitual serene expression.
“Tuttle! Get your lazy ass in here before I tell Paula Hughes to hire me a real secretary,” he yelled.
It wasn’t the first time I had heard Bolasevich’s vulgarity, but it always made me flinch. Strutter remained where she was, fingers busy on her keyboard, until she came to a stopping place that seemed to suit her.
“Tuttle, where the bejesus are you? Get in here, for crissake!”
Strutter calmly removed her headset and gathered up a pad and pen. “At least this time he didn’t say lazy black ass,” she commented, rising from her chair and swaying languidly toward Bolasevich’s door. “That really pisses me off.” She paused in the doorway and smiled benignly at her boss. “You bellowed?”
“I wouldn’t have to if you ever, for once in your life, moved your keister into second gear,” the big man grumbled. “Shut the door and take a seat. I’ve got a letter of opinion to get out this afternoon, so don’t take all day about it.”
Strutter stepped inside the office and closed the door, winking broadly at me just before it shut. Always ladylike in demeanor herself, she seemed completely unperturbed by Bolasevich’s ugly mouth, whereas I would have been ballistic. Let Bellanfonte take that tone with me just once, and he’d see my keister heading for the building exit—in overdrive. Where do these lawyers get their arrogance, I wondered for the umpteenth time. Girouard thinks he’s God’s gift to women, Bolasevich thinks he’s God’s gift to the legal profession, and Bellanfonte thinks he’s God’s gift generally speaking. Do they teach a course in applied egotism in law school, or is high-handedness a prerequisite for admission?
Two young associates scuttled by, the boy pale and the girl flushed. Farther down the corridor one of the female partners, a shrill, bony litigator known among the staff as The Diva, stomped out of her office and yelled after them, “By eight o’clock tonight, and don’t you ever make the mistake of trying to go over my head again, got it? Got it?” she repeated more loudly, demanding to be acknowledged. The humiliated young lawyers bumped into each other as they turned around, nodding like marionettes. The boy dropped a sheaf of papers he had been holding, and the two quickly crouched and scraped them together before hurrying on their way.
Hardly a morning went by that some similarly distressed youngster didn’t pass by, and my heart went out to every one of them. To become eligible for partnership consideration, every newly admitted lawyer at BGB had to serve six years as an associate, the legal profession’s equivalent of indentured servitude. “First Years,” especially, were expected to put in twelve- to fourteen-hour days routinely, and additional hours on the weekends were the norm. It didn’t get a whole lot better in years two through six, either. Four years of college, three years of law school, and six years of that sort of apprenticeship must create a wicked thirst to bully someone else when partnership was finally achieved.
I sighed in sympathy for the unlucky associates and returned to my telephone. So far, I thought, answering and transferring calls with growing confidence, it’s been a very interesting day.
And then the emergency fire klaxons went off.
My first thought was that nobody could possibly hear an emergency announcement over that din. My second thought was, so how can we tell what the emergency is? After a shocked, motionless moment, I followed Jeannie and Cindy, the mailroom girls, to the windows overlooking Trumbull Street, where half a dozen anxious secretaries already jockeyed for position. From the Hartford Civic Center, which occupied most of the block on the opposite side of the street, clouds of thick, black smoke billowed upward, filling the air with frightening speed. Although the smoke was still below us, it was clear that even the top floors of our building would soon be engulfed. The klaxons continued to whoop relentlessly, drowning out whatever a building management staffer was yelling into the loudspeaker system.
“What’s happening?” wailed Jeannie, or perhaps Cindy, and I shrugged helplessly, as bewildered as she and possibly even more frightened. With images of September 11th etched into our memories, thoughts of terrorism were unavoidable.
“It looks like a fire across the street,” I hedged without speculating on the possible causes. “I suggest we blow this pop stand, ladies.” I was glad that my voice sounded steadier than my knees felt.
We joined the stream of white-faced BGB employees, plus a few luckless clients who had been conferring with their attorneys, heading for the nearest fire stairs. Still unfamiliar with the rabbit warren of cubicles, I meekly followed the crowd. A young associate who had been drafted into fire marshal duty stood at the door to the fire stairs, plainly wishing that he could bolt from the building with the rest of us. He compensated by shoving people through the door as quickly as possible, yelling, “Move! Move!”
Jeannie, Cindy and I stumbled into the stairwell behind Bolasevich, who bulled his way impatiently past a knot of messengers who were trying to give an obviously pregnant young woman some room to maneuver. Although tempted to follow in his wake, I told myself to get a grip and set an example for my young companions. We adopted a more measured pace of descent, struggling not to give in to panic. If only the klaxons and the loudspeakers would stop, but on and on they went, whooping and yelling at us to evacuate the building immediately, as if that were not already uppermost in our minds.
In the time it took us to get down to thirty-six, the stairwell behind us
filled with employees from the higher floors. There were two flights of stairs between each floor, which put our progress at two down, seventy-two flights to go. I glanced around for Strutter and Margo but didn’t see them. Ingrid was nowhere in sight either. In fact, the only familiar person I saw was Harold Karp, clinging to the right handrail just in front of me.
“How are you doing?” I yelled at my young friends over the din. Obviously, they were terrified almost to immobility. “Hey, I’ve got more than twenty years on you, so if I can do it, you can, too,” I goaded them. Wide-eyed, they clung to each other and moved stiffly on.
Ten more flights and we passed the fire door to the thirty-first floor. Then the crowd stopped moving. At first, we all pressed closer to those in front of us, every instinct urging us onward; but as we felt the pressure from behind us, we realized that stopping was our only option.
“Evacuate the building immediately,” screamed the loudspeaker for what had to be the hundredth time, and I fought the hysteria rising in my chest. Instinctively, I knew that if I lost it, everyone else would, too. We would become a mob, trampling each other.
Were the stairs blocked? Was the air on the lower floors already suffused with acrid smoke, sucked in by the building’s intake fans? Was the door at the bottom of them locked? We had no way of knowing. No information filtered up the line of silent, frustrated escapees. Was this how it had been in the stairwells of the World Trade Center?
The air in the tight quarters grew stale and hot as long seconds ticked by. One minute … two … five. We were sheep in a herd, too frightened to bleat, waiting to suffocate in a stairwell. And then we sensed movement ahead of us. Slowly, slowly, we found room for one more step and another. Hardly daring to hope, we kept our eyes on our feet, willing ourselves not to stumble or shove. Then we were on twenty, and a crossover corridor to the remaining fire stairs gave us a welcome chance to move horizontally for a few seconds before re-entering the stairwell. Shaky breaths were drawn all around, and we were back in it.
Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) Page 4
