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