Blue Angel (15 page)

“I can’t. I have to get up really early,” she said. “But thank you for everything. It was amazing.”

“Aside from your little freak-out, you did good. I think Agnes likes you. I’ll talk to her—see if she wants you back this weekend.”

“Oh, Bette, I don’t know. This was just a onetime thing. You know, to have the experience.”

Bette gave her a look she couldn’t begin to decipher.

“Hey, are you coming out with us? I want to buy you a drink,” Kitty Klitty said. She was such a pretty girl—and would be beautiful if there had been even a hint of intelligence in her wide green eyes.

“Oh, no. Thanks, Kitty. Not tonight.”

“Having you step in tonight made me feel like a real performer,” Kitty said to her. “If one of the other girls had to take my job tonight instead of performing, I wouldn’t have felt as good about it.”

“Maybe we can convince her to do it again,” Bette said with a wink.

“Of course she’ll do it again! It’s the Blue Angel.”

The elevator door slid open, and Mallory stepped onto the fifteenth floor of Reed, Warner with relief. It had been an excruciating ride up from the lobby. She thought of the book
The Devil Wears Prada,
in which the editor-in-chief of the magazine made people vacate the elevators for her to ride alone. She wished Harrison had that policy. Because she had been stuck on the elevator with him after everyone else vacated for their floors, and either she was paranoid, or he had been looking at her with disgust.

“Good morning, Ms. Dale,” Blanca greeted her.

“Good morning, Blanca.”

Maybe everything would be fine. Maybe Patricia Loomis was just as embarrassed to be busted at a burlesque club as Mallory was upset about being busted performing at one. If Patricia told the partners about it, she would have to admit to being there herself.

Unless . . . Again, Mallory thought of the smirk on Poppy’s face. But it was unfathomable that Poppy would somehow get Patricia to the club just to make trouble for Mallory. She would have to be truly paranoid to believe that.

She logged onto her computer, fighting the urge to check her BlackBerry for the twentieth time since waking up at 5:30 in the morning—nothing from Alec. And now she had twelve hours of research ahead of her. At least she could just throw herself into work and try not to think about him until she crawled into Julie’s sofabed, exhausted. Maybe that was what her life would be for a while—working until she was too exhausted to think about Alec.

“Good morning,” Patricia Loomis said, barely two steps into her office. She peered in like someone visiting a patient in quarantine.

“Oh, hi, Patricia . . . I’m just working on the . . .”

“Harrison would like to see you in his office.” She turned on her heel before Mallory could say a word.

This is not good, Mallory said to herself, over and over like a mantra as she looked around her office.

It was possible he was calling her in to talk about the Koomson memo. She’d done a pretty good job on that—even in her ultracritical mind-set about her legal work lately, she was proud of the Koomson research.

Harrison’s office was on the twenty-first floor. The reception area had more flowers than most weddings, and his secretary, septuagenarian Erma Gold, was a stern gatekeeper.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked, glancing at a wide DayMinder calendar on her desk. Erma refused to use a computer, so she had an assistant to handle all of Harrison’s e-mails.

“Patricia said he wanted to see me.”

“I haven’t even had my coffee yet,” Erma grumbled as she picked up the phone, as if this was Mallory’s fault. “Do you want to see Mallory Dale?” she barked. Harrison clearly gave her an earful, or at least more than a simple yes, because she nodded and made thoughtful little noises and, Mallory was certain, even a clucking sound.

“Yes, Mallory,” she said, focusing her milky brown eyes on her as if seeing her for the first time. “Please go right in.”

Patricia was already seated in one of the chairs facing Harrison’s desk. How she got there so quickly was beyond Mallory—she must have used her broomstick.

“Have a seat,” Harrison said, from behind his desk.

Harrison Reed was as round as he was tall, with a surprising amount of silver hair. He wore small, clear glasses perched on the bridge of his sharp nose like a prop, and she had never seen him wear anything but a gray or black suit.

“I assume you know why we are here,” he said.

“To talk about the Koomson memo?” she said hopefully, feeling more naked than she’d ever felt at the Blue Angel.

Harrison and Patricia exchanged a look.

“No, Mallory. We are not here to discuss the Koomson memo. Obviously, Patricia told me that she saw you performing at a strip club last night.”

Mallory’s first impulse was to tell him that the Blue Angel was not a strip club. But she didn’t think that would do much for her case.

“This is disturbing information, Mallory. As I’m sure you can imagine.”

Yeah, she bet he liked imagining it.

“Well, Patricia, I hope you also told him that I did not strip or take my clothes off in any way. I was just there helping a friend—filling in for someone who couldn’t help out between acts.”

Harrison leaned forward, placing his hands on the desk with his palms flat.

“Mallory, perhaps I need to explain this to you, although one would think this would not require explanation: Reed, Warner is one of the oldest law firms in this country. We service some of the largest and most prestigious corporations. This firm has employed Vanderbilts, Astors, and Rockefellers. We are awarded the business of companies like Koomson—which provides us with millions in billings each year because of our reputation and our pedigree. Are you following me?”

“Yes,” Mallory said.

“How do you think Paul McGowan, CEO of Koomson, would feel knowing that one of the attorneys we placed on his team was a sex worker?”

Oh, my God, he had to be kidding. And a company that manufactured paint that made people sick—or dead—was going to judge her for wearing a skimpy outfit on stage?

“I am not a sex worker! Look, with all due respect, I understand that you’re not happy about my being at that club, but I object to the way you are categorizing . . .”

“How do you think Anderson Blount, opposing counsel for
The People versus Koomson,
would categorize it in court?”

Mallory slumped back in her seat. On the plus side, she wouldn’t have to worry about the bar exam anymore. “I understand your concern. I’m just wondering why Patricia was at the club if it’s such a bad reflection on the firm.”

Take that, bee-atch.

Harrison sighed deeply, as if the labor of continuing the conversation was almost too much to bear.

“Ms. Loomis was at the club because she was told you would be there. She did not believe it, of course, but knowing what a sensitive matter this would be if it did turn out to be true, she used her extremely valuable time to see for herself before leveling such serious allegations against a member of this firm.”

“Someone
told
you? That’s ridiculous,” Mallory said, turning to face Patricia directly for the first time since stepping into Harrison’s office.

“It
was
quite ridiculous, actually. I had to take the call for someone looking for you, who said your voice mail was full, but she had to get you the urgent message to . . .” She unfolded a piece of paper in her lap. “Quote ‘not forget my pasties again. The club can’t risk getting busted if she shows her tits again’ unquote. And when I inquired where I might catch your performance, your colleague was kind enough to inform me.”

Mallory resisted the urge to put her head in her hands.

“Security will escort you out,” Harrison said. “Your office is being boxed up as we speak, and your belongings will be sent via messenger. Do you have any questions?”

“Just one,” she said, turning again to Patricia. “Did you enjoy the show?”

“I’m glad you find this amusing,” Patricia said.

“Amusing isn’t the word I’d use.”

“Oh? And what word would you use?”

“Svoboda.”

T
he bravado Mallory had showed in Harrison’s office lasted approximately fifteen minutes after she walked out the front doors of Reed, Warner, Hardy, Lutz, and Capel for the final time.

By the time she reached the subway she was fighting back tears. Her only consolation was that she didn’t have to go home and admit this debacle to Alec.

“Julie, it’s me,” she sniffed into her cell phone.

“What’s wrong?”

“I got fired.”

“What? Why on earth would they fire you?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Come to my office—I can’t sneak away for coffee or anything but we can talk in my cube.”

Mallory reversed direction and walked the few blocks to the HarperCollins building at 53rd between Fifth and Madison, where Julie was the assistant to a top editor who published literary fiction. Julie’s boss was often out of town, joining famous authors at their readings or taking them up on invitations to visit the sets of the films that were being adapted from their books or traveling to foreign rights book conferences in London and Frankfurt. It seemed incredibly glamorous to Mallory, though Julie assured her it wasn’t.

“Andrea works like a dog, believe me,” she’d said more than once.

Mallory signed in with security.
I wonder what he’d think if he knew security had just escorted me
out
of a building
.

“So what happened?” Julie said, pulling her into Andrea Tolen’s office and closing the door. Mallory immediately began examining the wall of books.

“Can I take one of these?”

“Yeah, but first things first—what
happened?
This wasn’t because of the bar exam, was it?”

“I wish,” Mallory said. “Are you sure we can sit in here?”

“Yes—stop talking about Andrea’s office and spill it.”

“Okay, here goes.” She gave the unabridged version of the events—including her theory that Poppy had gotten her busted.

Julie looked slightly shell-shocked.

“Mal, this might seem like an obvious question—but what possessed you to
do
that?”

“I don’t know. I was curious, I guess. And it was fun—if this hadn’t happened today, I’d be really excited about it.”

“Okay, this is what we need to do. We’re going to call Allison and get her new hotshot boyfriend who is majorly connected in this city to find you a job with a new firm. I’m sure he has some favor he can call in.”

“I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know? Don’t worry about it—that’s the way things happen. It’s no big deal.”

“I mean I don’t know if getting another legal job is what I should do. Maybe this is a sign.”

“Yeah, a sign you should stop hanging out with those crazy dancers before you ruin your life!”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“How can you say that? In the few weeks you’ve been hanging out at the Blue Angel, you and Alec have broken up, and you’ve lost your job. Even I can do that math.”

“There were problems with Alec and with my job before I ever set foot in the Blue Angel. I just didn’t realize how bad the problems were.”

“Well, now you know, and now it’s time to fix them. So go to my apartment; get your resume in order. We’ll ask Allison how to deal with this Reed, Warner fiasco, because she is good with damage control. And get some sleep. You look like shit.”

“Gee, thanks.” Her BlackBerry rang. “Oh, my God, it’s Alec.”

She put her fingers to her lips for Julie to be silent, and answered with her heart pounding.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey. How are you?”

“I’m okay. How are you?”

“Okay. I got your messages. Sorry it took me a while to get back to you.”

“That’s okay.”

“I’ve just been thinking a lot.”

“Me too.”

“Maybe you’re right. We should talk.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Come to the apartment tonight after work?”

After work. Oh, what had she done!

“Um, sure. See you later.”

She put her phone back in her bag and looked at Julie.

“Alec?” Julie said. Mallory nodded.

“Why do you look so upset? I thought you were dying to talk to him.”

“I was. . . . I am. But now on top of everything else, I have to tell him about getting fired.”

“It’s just a job, Mal. You’ll find another one.”

“You’re not listening to me. I seriously don’t think I want another job in law. It sounds crazy, but I think all this stuff happened for a reason.”

“Just talk to Alec tonight. Fix that. The rest will follow.”

Mallory wasn’t so sure. But then, she wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

The minute she set foot in the apartment, she ached for Alec in a way she had managed to stave off for the past few days. Every part of her wanted him. She couldn’t sit still waiting for him to walk through the door. She retouched her eyeliner, rinsed the dishes in the sink, paced the living room, flipped through ninety cable channels. And when she finally heard the key in the lock, her heart started racing.

He dropped his gym bag on the floor and moved toward her, pulling her into his arms without a word. A sob caught in her throat. She hadn’t forgotten the way he smelled, but it was as overwhelming and surprising as if she were experiencing it for the first time. She had told him not too long ago—and this was true—that if someone could bottle and sell his scent, it would be the best aphrodisiac for her. He had replied, “That’s love, baby.”