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 himself 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 tacitwhoooo! 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? Wewon?”
“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, becauseTHOU 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.
I should feel happy, but I don’t. The victory lights up my Partnership Tote Board big-time, but it comes at a price. If Brent’s information is right, my partnership could cost the firing of either of two fine lawyers, one of whom is my best friend.
And don’t forget about the Harbison employees, says the little Mike-voice, come back again.They were fired just when their pensions were about to vest, and the only mistake they made was choosing a lousy lawyer. Now they don’t even have him anymore. Is that what you went to law school for?
I try to shake off the voice when I hit my office. 2:25. I run out the day’s string, listlessly dealing with the mail. I ask Brent to divide it into Good and Evil, with Good on the right and Evil on the left. The Good mail is advance sheets, which are paperback books summarizing recent court decisions. I’m supposed to read the Good mail, but if I did, cobwebs as heavy as suspension cables would grow from my butt to the chair. Instead, I put them in my out box so the messengers will shovel them onto someone else’s desk. That’s why they’re Good.
The Evil Mail is everything else. It’s Evil because your opponent’s trying to fuck you. There’s only one lawyerly response: Fuck back. For example, last week, in a case for Noone Pharmaceuticals, opposing counsel tried to fuck us into a settlement by threatening to publish company memoranda in the newspaper. So I’m writing a motion asking the Court to restrict the use of company documents to the lawsuit and to award Noone my fees in preparing the motion. This is primo fucking back, and you have to fuck back. If you don’t fuck back, you’ll get fucked.
Believe it or not, I usually enjoy this aspect of my profession, the head-banging and the back-fucking, but not today. Anxiety gnaws at the edges of my brain and I can’t focus on the Evil mail. I turn to the unfinished brief for Noone. I read it over and over but the argument sounds like a verbal Mobius strip: Judge, you should restrict the documents to the lawsuit because documents should be restricted to lawsuits. I can’t tell if it’s a failure of concentration or of writing. I pack the draft in my briefcase and leave the office at dusk.
The remainder of the day’s sunlight is blocked prematurely by Philadelphia’s new and improved skyline. Developers went crazy after City Council permitted buildings to be taller than William Penn’s hat, with the result that the city streets get dark too soon and there’s a lot of empty office buildings sprouting like mushrooms in the gloom.
The air cools down rapidly as I reach Rittenhouse Square. I’m shivering like all the other superannuated yuppies, except that I refuse to wear Reeboks. If my shoes were too uncomfortable to walk in, I wouldn’t buy them.
The square looks just like it does every evening this time of year. The old people huddle together on the benches, clucking worriedly about the young people, with their orange-striped hair and nose rings, as well as the homeless, with their shopping carts and superb tans. Runners circle the square for the umpteenth time. Walkers stride by in fast-forward, plugged into Walkmans. A pale young man on a bench looks me up and down, and then I remember.
Is someone watching me?
I look backward over my shoulder at the pale man on the bench, but he’s joined by a girlfriend in a black beret. I look at the other people as I pass through the square, but they all look normal enough. Is one of them the someone? Does one of them call me and do God-knows-what when I answer? My step quickens involuntarily.
I hurry inside when I reach my building. It’s quiet in the entrance hall, the kind of absolute silence that settles in when a big old house is empty. I’m the only tenant here. My landlords are an elderly couple who live on the first two floors of the house. They’re nice people, hand-holders after fifty years of marriage, off on another Love Boat cruise. I pick up my bills and catalogs from the floor and make sure the front door’s locked.
I climb the stairs, wondering if the telephone will ring after I get in. I unlock the door and switch on the living room light. I glance at the telephone, but it’s sitting there like a properly inanimate object. I breathe a sigh of relief and drop my briefcase with a thud.