For Franca, and for Kiki

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading

Praise

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

“All rise! All persons having business before this Honorable Judge of the United States District Court are admonished to draw near and be heard!” trumpets the courtroom deputy.

Instantly, sports pages vanish into briefcases and legal briefs are tossed atop the stock quotes. Three rows of pricey lawyers leap to their wingtips and come to attention before a vacant mahogany dais. Never before has a piece of furniture commanded such respect.

“The District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is now in session! God save the United States and this honorable court!” The deputy casts an eye in the direction of the dais and pauses significantly. “The Honorable William A. Bitterman, presiding.”

Judge Bitterman sweeps onto the dais on cue and stands behind his desk like a stout regent surveying his serfdom. His eyes, mere slits sunk deep into too-solid flesh, scan the courtroom from on high. I can read his mind: Everything is in order. The counsel tables gleam. The marble floor sparkles. The air-conditioning freezes the blood of lesser life forms. And speaking of same, the lawyers wait and wait.

“You won’t mind the delay, counsel,” the judge says indifferently, sinking into a soft leather throne. “After all, waiting is billable too.”

An uncertain chuckle circulates among the crowd in the back of the courtroom. None of us defense lawyers likes to admit it, but we will bill the time—we have to bill it to someone and it might as well be you. The plaintiffs’ bar doesn’t sweat it. A contingency fee has more cushion than an air bag.

“Well, well, well,” the judge mutters, without explanation, as he skims the motion papers on his desk. Judge Bitterman might have been handsome in a former life, but his enormous weight has pushed his features to the upper third of his face, leaving beneath a chin as bulbous as a bullfrog’s. Rumor has it he gained the weight when his wife left him years ago, but there’s no excuse for his temperament, which is congenitally lousy. Because of it my best friend, Judy Carrier, calls him Bitter Man.

“Good morning, Your Honor,” I say, taking my seat at counsel table. I try to sound perky and bright, and not at all how I feel, which is nervous and fearful. I’m wearing my navy-blue Man Suit; it’s perfect for that special occasion when a girl wants to look like a man, like in court or at the auto mechanic’s. The reason I’m nervous is that this oral argument is only my second—the partners in my law firm hog the arguments for themselves. They expect associates to learn how to argue by watching them do it. Which is like saying you can learn to ride a bike by watching other people ride them.

“Good morning, Your Honor,” says opposing counsel, Bernie Starankovic. Starankovic blinks a lot and wears a bad suit. I feel a twinge of guilt for what I’m about to say about him in open court—that he’s too incompetent to represent our client’s employees in a class action for age discrimination. If I win this motion, the class action will evaporate, our client’s liability will plunge from megabucks to chump change, and its aged ex-employees will end up living on Social Security and 9-Lives. Defense lawyers consider this a victory.

“Good morning, class,” replies Judge Bitterman.

I force a fraudulent chuckle. The boys in the back do likewise.

“Ha-ha-ha!” Starankovic laughs loudly. “Ha-ha-ha!” The bogus sound caroms harshly off the walls of the cavernous courtroom, ricocheting like a subatomic particle long after everyone has fallen silent.

“Duly noted, Mr. Starankovic,” says Bitter Man dryly, and Starankovic wilts into his chair. The judge’s eyes shift in my direction. “Miz DiNunzio!”

“Yes, Your Honor!” I pop up and grin, like an overeducated jack-in-the-box. Popping up and grinning isn’t something they taught me in law school, but they should have, since it’s a damn sight more useful than Property. I learned it on the job, and it’s become a conditioned response to more stimuli than you can count. I’m up for partnership in two months.

“You’ve done your homework for this morning, haven’t you, Miz DiNunzio? I expect no less from a former student of mine.”

Bitter Man’s chubby lips part in a smile, but it’s not a friendly one. I recognize the smile from when I did time as his research assistant, during my second year at Penn. I spent three afternoons a week finding cases for his soporific article on federal court jurisdiction. No matter how good the cases, they were never good enough for him. He always smiled that smile right before he tore into me, in the true Socratic tradition, asking me question after question until he had proven, as a matter of logic, that I was taking up too much space in the universe.

“Miz DiNunzio? Are you with us?” the judge asks.

I nod, in a caffeinated way. My nervousness intensifies. Red, angry blotches burst into bloom, one by one, beneath my starchy blouse. In two minutes, my chest will look like a thatch of crimson roses on a snow-covered field. Very attractive.

Bitter Man turns to Starankovic. “Mr. Starankovic, we’ve never met, but I trust you’ve done your homework too. After all, you’re fighting for your life today, aren’t you? Or at least the next best thing—a very large contingency fee.”

Starankovic springs to his feet, blinking rhythmically. “The fee is of no moment to me, Your Honor, I can assure you. My only concern is for my clients, a veritable generation of golden-agers who have been ruthlessly victimized by defendant corporation, at a time in their lives when they should be able to relax, relying on the fact that their hard-earned pensions—”

“Very good, Mr. Starankovic. You get an A for enthusiasm,” Bitter Man snaps, which shuts Starankovic down in mid-homily. Then the judge studies the motion papers before him, ignoring us both.

I’m not sure whether to remain standing, so I steal a glance at Starankovic. He’s swaying stiffly, like a sunflower before a thunderstorm. I take a chance and sit down.

“Miz DiNunzio!” says Bitter Man.

“Yes, Your Honor!” I pop up and grin.

“Approach the podium!”

I hear Starankovic snicker, which proves he doesn’t deserve my sympathy. I walk to the lectern with apparent confidence and adjust the microphone to girl height. “May it please the Court, my name is Mary DiNunzio—”

“Miz DiNunzio,” Bitter Man says. “I have your name, remember?”

“Yes, Your Honor. Sorry, Your Honor.” I clear my throat to the sound of muffled laughter. “As you may know, Your Honor, I’m presenting this Motion to Strike Class Action Allegations on behalf of Harbison’s The Hardware People. Harbison’s is a national chain of hardware stores. It employs over—”

“I don’t need the prospectus, Miz DiNunzio. I’ve heard of the company.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“I’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to have heard of the company, after that inane jingle of theirs. You know their jingle.”

“Their jingle?”

“Yes, their jingle. Their anthem. Their team song. I hear it everywhere—on my television, on my car radio—every fifteen minutes. You said you represent them, Miz DiNunzio, so I’m sure you know it. Do you?”

I nod uncertainly.

“Then sing it.”

“Sing it, Your Honor?”

“You heard me,” he says evenly.

A hush settles over the back of the courtroom. Each one of them is thanking God he’s not in my pumps. I look down at the podium. My heart is pounding, my ears tingling. I curse Bitter Man, for humiliating me, and Richard Nixon, for appointing him to the federal bench.

“Pretty please? With a cherry on top?” The judge’s voice is thick with sarcasm.

Not a soul in the gallery laughs. The courtroom deputy avoids my eye, busily examining the buttons of the tape recorder. Christ. It’ll be on tape. “Your Honor—”

“Miz DiNunzio!” Bitter Man is suddenly furious; he looks like a volcano about to blow. “Sing!”

The courtroom is as quiet and stone-cold as death.

I close my eyes. I want to be somewhere else, anywhere else but here. I’m back in my girlhood, back in midnight mass on Christmas Eve, lost in the airy heights of “Ave Maria.” I open my mouth and the notes fly out, unexpectedly clear and strong. They soar high over the congregation like the hymn, lovely and resonant in the wintry air. “Harbison’s The Hardware People. We take the haaaaaard out of hardware!”

When I open my eyes, Bitter Man’s anger has evaporated. “That was quite … beautiful,” he says.

I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic, and I don’t care. “May I begin my argument, Your Honor?”

“You may.”

So I do, and the argument sounds punchy and right, fueled by my fury at the judge. I rattle off the local court rules that Starankovic has broken, then segue into my cases, transforming each into the parable of the Careless Lawyer Who Undermined Our System of Justice. Bitterman begins to bare his canines in an encouraging way, which means he’s either happy or hungry. I finish my argument and return to counsel table.

“Your Honor, if I may respond,” Starankovic says. He pushes down the shiny pants that are static-clinging to his socks and walks to the podium like a Christian into the Roman Colosseum. “May it please the Court, I’m Bernard—”

“Save it, Mr. Starankovic. We both know that defense counsel is right on the law. Your conduct as class counsel has been a disgrace—even my law clerks could do better. How could you miss the deadline on your motion for class certification? It’s the one thing you have to do and you couldn’t even do that right.”

“But Your Honor …”

Bitter Man holds up a hand that looks like a mound of Play-Doh. “Stifle, Mr. Starankovic, as Archie Bunker used to say.” He glances around the room to see if anyone appreciates his joke. The gallery is too terrified to laugh, but the courtroom deputy smiles broadly. Your tax dollars at work.

“Yes, Your Honor.” Starankovic bows slightly.

“Now, Mr. Starankovic, even though Miz DiNunzio thinks she has you, you and I know that I have total discretion in deciding whether to grant her motion. I may grant it or I may deny it purely as a matter of my own inherent powers. Am I right?”

Starankovic nods.

“Of course I am. So your work is cut out for you. Your job is to give me your best argument. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t grant Miz DiNunzio’s motion.”

Starankovic blinks rapidly. “Your Honor, if I may, the class is composed—”

Bitter Man holds up a finger. “I said, one good reason.”

“I was about to, Your Honor. The class is composed of some five hundred employees, and counting—”

“No. No. You’re not listening, Mr. Starankovic. Repeat after me. ‘The one good reason …’”

Starankovic licks his dry lips. “The one good reason …”

“‘You shouldn’t grant the motion …’”

“You shouldn’t grant the motion …”

“‘Is …’” Bitter Man finishes with a flourish, waving his hand in the air like a conductor.

“Is …”

“No, you idiot! I’m not going to finish the sentence for you. You finish the sentence.”

“I knew that, Your Honor. I’m sorry.” The man is sweating bullets. “It’s hard to explain. I—”

“One good reason!” the judge bellows.

Starankovic jumps.

The courtroom deputy looks down. The gallery holds its breath. I wonder why judges like Bitter Man get appointments for life. The answer is: because of presidents like Nixon. Someday the electorate will make this connection, I know it.

“I made some mistakes, Your Honor, I admit it,” Starankovic blurts out. “I was having a rough time, my mother had just passed, and I missed a lot of deadlines. Not just on this case—on others too. But it won’t happen again, Your Honor, you have my word on that.”

Bitter Man’s face is a mask of exaggerated disbelief. He grabs the sides of the dais and leans way over. “This is your best argument? This is the one good reason?”

Starankovic swallows hard.

I feel awful. I almost wish I’d never brought the motion in the first place.

“This is the best you can come up with? The one good reason I shouldn’t grant the motion is that you were making a lot of mistakes at the time—and this was just one of them?”

“Your Honor, it’s not like—”

“Mr. Starankovic, you said your only concern was for your clients. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Do you care enough to give them the best lawyer possible?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Would the best lawyer possible fail to file his motion for class certification on time?”

“No … Your Honor.”

“But you failed to do so, didn’t you?”

Starankovic blinks madly.

“Didn’t you?”

Starankovic opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Didn’t you fail to do so, Mr. Starankovic? Yes or no will do.”

“Yes,” he says quietly.

“Then you are not the best lawyer possible, are you?”

There is silence as Starankovic looks down. He can’t bring himself to say it. He shakes his head once, then again.

Socrates would have stopped there, but Bitter Man is just warming up. He drags Starankovic through every deadline he blew and every phone call he failed to return. I can barely witness the spectacle; the back rows are shocked into silence. Poor Starankovic torques this way and that, eyelids aflutter, but Bitterman’s canines are sunk deep in his neck, pinning him to the floor. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There’s only pain and suffering.

When it’s over, Bitter Man issues his decision from the bench. With a puffy smile, he says, “Motion granted.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” I say, dry-mouthed.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” says Starankovic, hemorrhaging freely. He shoots me a look that could kill.

“Next!” says Bitter Man.

I stuff my papers in my briefcase and turn to go, as another corporate shill takes my place at counsel table. The pews are jam-packed with us, padded shoulder to padded shoulder, because the argument schedule is so late. I hurry by the freshly shaved suits in rep ties and collar pins. I feel like I’m fleeing the scene of a murder. I avoid the eyes of the men in the gallery, some amused, others curious. I don’t want to think about who sat among them at this time last year.

I promised myself.

I’m almost past the back row when someone grabs my elbow. It’s the only other woman in this horde of pinstriped testosterone, and her red-lacquered nails dig into my arm.

“This has gone far enough!” the woman says.

“What do you mean?” My chest still feels tight, blotchy. I have a promise to keep and I’m failing fast. I try to avoid looking at the pew where she sits, but I can’t help it. It’s where my husband sat with his first-grade class and watched me argue my first motion. The rich mahogany of the pew has been burnished to a high luster, like a casket.

“He hates us! He hates women lawyers!” she says. She punches the bridge of her glasses with a finger. “I think it’s high time we did something about it.”

I only half hear her. All I can think about is Mike. He sat right in this row and had to quiet the class as they fidgeted, whispered, and giggled through the entire argument. He sat at the end of the pew, his arm rested right here. I touch the knobby arm rest with my fingertips. It feels just like his shoulder used to feel: strong, solid. As if it would never give way. I don’t want to move my hand.

“We have to file a complaint of judicial misconduct. It’s the only thing that will stop him. I know the procedure. You file the complaint with the Clerk of the Third Circuit, then it goes to the Chief Judge and …”

Her words grow faint. My fingertips on the shoulder of wood put me in touch with Mike, and in touch with that day. It was a morning like this one. My first argument in court. I remember my own nervous excitement, presenting the motion almost automatically, in a blur. Bitter Man ruled for me in the end, which caused the first-graders to burst into giddy applause. Mike’s face was lit up by a proud smile that didn’t fade even when Bitter Man went ballistic, pounding his gavel. …

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Reality.

I pull my hand from the cold, glossy wood of the pew. Mike isn’t here, Mike is gone. I feel my chest flush violently. “I have to go.”

“Wait? How will I find you? I need you to sign the complaint,” the woman says, grasping at my arm. “I have at least two other incidents. If we don’t do something about this, no one else will!”

“Let me go, I have to go.” I yank my arm from her grasp and bang through the courtroom doors.

My promise is broken; my head is flooded with a memory. Mike and I celebrated the night I won the motion. We made love, so sweetly, and then ate pizza, a reverse of our usual order. Afterward he told me he felt sorry for the employees whose discrimination case I had gotten dismissed.

“You’re a softie,” I said.

“But you love me for it,” he said.

Which was true. Two months later, Mike was dead.

And I began to notice a softer-hearted voice than usual creeping into my own consciousness. I don’t know for sure whose voice it is, but I think the voice is Mike, talking to me still. It says the things he would say, it’s picked up where he left off. Lately it’s been whispering to me that my on-the-job sins are piling up. That each hash mark for the corporate defense is a black mark for my soul.

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 big-screen 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 sequoias.

“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 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 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.

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.

“Honey, I’m home.”

The tabby cat doesn’t even look up from the windowsill. She’s not deaf, she’s indifferent. She wouldn’t care if Godzilla drove a Corvette through the door, she’s waiting for Mike to come home. In winter, the windowpane is dotted with her nose prints. In summer, her gray hairs cling to the screen.

“He’s not coming back,” I tell her. It’s a reminder to both of us since the episode this morning in court.

I kick off my shoes and join her at the window, looking out at the apartments across the street. Most have plants on their windowsills, starved for light in the northern exposure. One has a turquoise Bianchi bike hanging in the window, like an advertisement to break in, and another has an antique rake. Most of my neighbors are home, cooking dinner or listening to music. The window directly across from mine has the shade drawn; it looks dark inside. I wonder if the person who lives there is the one who’s been calling me. It’s hard to imagine, since Mike knew all our neighbors. He was the friendly one.

“Come on, Alice. Let’s close up.” I nudge the cat and she jumps to the living room rug, her hindquarters twitching.

I yank on the string of the knife-edged blinds, which tumble to the windowsill with a zzziiip. I pad over to the other window, flat-footed without my heels, and am about to pull down the blinds when I hear the ignition of a car outside the window.

Strange. I didn’t see a driver walk to the car, and it’s not a car I recognize.

I let down the blinds but peek between them at the car. It’s too dark out for me to see the driver.

The car’s headlights blaze to life as it pulls out of its parking space and glides down the street. I don’t know the make of the car; I’m not good at that. It’s big, though, like the boats my father used to drive. An Oldsmobile, maybe. Before they tried to convince us that they’re not the boats our fathers used to drive.

I watch the car disappear, as the telephone rings loudly.

I flinch at the sound. Is it the someone?

I pick up the receiver cautiously. “Hello?”

But the only response is static—a static I hear on many of the calls. It’s him. My heart begins to pound as I put two and two together for the first time.

“Is this a car phone, you bastard? Are you watching my house, you sick—”

The tirade is severed by the dial tone.

“Fuck you!” I shout into the dead receiver.

Alice blinks up at me, in disapproval.

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