Mary looked away. “I don’t know.”
Bennie wondered if it was the thing with her mother. “Listen, we’re a firm of four women. A hardy few, a happy few, I’m too tired to remember the quote. We should be able to talk about anything.”
Mary wet her lips. “Well, it’s just that there’s something I wish we could talk about.” Her soft brown eyes found Bennie’s. “With you, Bennie. It’s about the firm, and money.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, I know that Caveson and Maytel went out of business. How exactly does that affect us financially, and will St. Amien and Brandolini make it better? For example, I tried to call long distance on Friday and couldn’t. I called AT amp;T to check the line but they said they’d talk only to the person whose name is on the account. Is something wrong with the bill?”
Anne nodded gravely. Her artful makeup had worn off by now, leaving her even lovelier. “And laying off Marie last month. You loved her, and she was our only other secretary. You wouldn’t have done that unless you had to. And there’s other cutbacks. No magazine and reporter subscriptions. Only double-sided copying. We’re not supposed to take clients to dinner anymore, only lunch. And we share everything but toilet paper.”
Judy chimed in, “You just won a jury verdict for Ray Finalil, and we should be flush. Celebrating. But you don’t even seem that happy about it. What’s going on? We have a right to know.”
“Wait just one minute.” Bennie felt herself stiffen. She didn’t want to discuss this with them. She had let herself get too close, somewhere between the pantyhose and the lo mein. They weren’t her colleagues; they were her employees. “I don’t agree that you have a right to know. As a matter of fact, you most certainly do not have a right to know. It’s my business. Literally.”
Judy’s cheeks turned as pink as her bangs, and Mary bit her lip. “Bennie, I’m not sure we have a right to know, but we want to know. It’s our burden to share.”
“Right,” Murphy agreed.
Bennie considered it, only reluctantly. “Okay, I do have a cash-flow problem. Ray Finalil is going bankrupt, and he didn’t pay us or his experts. St. Amien’s case is great, but frankly, he may come too late. I don’t know if I can keep the wheels on this thing until it settles, and there’s always a chance that it won’t settle at all.” Bennie gathered her papers and rose stiffly, stowing them quickly in her briefcase. “You don’t have to worry about your jobs for the next two months, but that’s all I can guarantee. At this point, that’s all I can promise you. Two months.”
The three associates looked thunderstruck, and Bennie was fairly sure none of them had considered her job in jeopardy until this very moment. She looked down, fumbling with the latch of her briefcase, willing the lump from her throat. Then she forced herself to meet their eyes dead-on and steeled herself to say what was best for them, and not what she wanted to say at alclass="underline"
“So now you know. I think things will change when we settle this class action, but I’ve learned enough law this weekend to know that that may take a long time. I will understand if any one of you wants to leave. Feel free to put out your résumé. I wish you all the best and will give you nothing but the highest recommendations. And I will manage without you. So if you need to leave the firm, please go.”
“We don’t want to leave!” Judy blurted out, and Anne was shaking her head.
“No way. I just got here.”
Mary looked stricken; her lips parted. “I didn’t mean it that way, Bennie. Let’s just go to dinner. Forget about the whole thing. We have two great cases, in the class action and Brandolini, too. We can make it work. Bridge the gap somehow-”
“No, you guys go to dinner without me.” Bennie shook her head quickly. “I’m beat. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Thanks again, for everything.” She managed a fraudulent smile and headed for the exit. Her face felt hot, her mouth dry. Words she’d heard earlier that day flashed into her mind, about Amadeo Brandolini: He had failed to support his family, or to protect them. It made him feel ashamed, as a man. She understood now exactly how Brandolini had felt. The feeling wasn’t confined to men. She left the associates quickly, and without another word.
Outside the office, the night air was dark, humid, and cool. The streets were deserted even though it wasn’t that late. An empty SEPTA bus traveled down Chestnut Street, rocking from side to side with a hydraulic hissing. The bus didn’t bother to stop at the kiosk at the corner, since nobody was waiting there, but accelerated, belching gray exhaust into the street. Bennie took a right turn onto a side street to lose herself in the narrow colonial streets of the city. She usually took them for her walk home because she liked the different sights they afforded, an insider’s view. But tonight her route wasn’t a matter of preference. She simply felt like hiding. From her associates, from herself.
She headed down a backstreet too narrow for a streetlight. An almost complete darkness lay ahead of her, interrupted only by the pool of a mercury-vapor streetlight at the far end of the block. It must have rained hard while they were working, and the asphalt of the street glimmered slick and black. Her Sauconys squished on the wet sidewalk. Then she heard a funny sound right behind her.
She turned, but there was no one there. Maybe she was just tired. Stressed. Still, she picked up the pace, hoisting her heavy briefcase a little higher. Something made her glance again over her shoulder. But there was nothing there. Bennie, usually so fearless, felt suddenly uncomfortable.
Enough already. Loser.
She held her head up and inhaled deeply. The wet air had a heavy odor that was hard to explain. Maybe it was her imagination, or maybe it was something else, which she identified next. Cooking oil? She had walked northeast, far enough to find herself approaching Chinatown. The scent of saturated fats wafted down the block, spewed into the air by whirling fans atop a score of restaurants.
She walked on, and brightly lit signs with red lettering-PEKING DUCK, DIM SUM, SHANGHAI GARDEN-surrounded her, and she remembered she had only cereal to eat for dinner at home. Her dog could wait a little for his walk; she felt oddly that she needed to be around people. She ducked into one of the bigger restaurants, hoping to get a table quickly.
The restaurant bustled with suburban families and couples, raising the noise level and steaming up the front window. It wouldn’t be the peaceful meal Bennie had pictured. She was turning to leave when a waiter in a black jacket grabbed her elbow. “One seat at bar,” he said, urging her with a pushy little yank.
“Is it ready now?”
“Right now,” the waiter replied, and Bennie followed him through the packed restaurant to a seat at the bar, which was busy since this was one of the few Chinese restaurants with a liquor license. The waiter read her mind. “You want drink?”
“Please, yes. A glass of zinfandel.” The waiter nodded and took off, and Bennie set her briefcase at her feet and glanced around. The lights were low, but she could make out some familiar faces at a long table in the back of the restaurant. There was Judge William Tepper, of the federal district court, his glasses reflecting the tiny white lights at the center of the table, near a huge pu-pu platter. Next to him sat Judge Lynne Maxwell, also of the district court, then Judge Lucien Favata and Judge Ernest Calhoun Eadeh. It was a huge party, full of judges from the Eastern District bench. Judges often lunched in Chinatown because it was so close to the courthouse, but Bennie wouldn’t have expected to see them here on a Sunday night.
Damn. She looked away, but thought better of it. The St. Amien complaint would be randomly assigned to one of these judges. She should start politicking if she wanted to be approved as class counsel. And her seat was close enough to the table that she couldn’t avoid being seen. In fact, Chief Judge Kathryn Kolbert was already motioning to her to come over.