one hot summer (19 page)

Less than an hour later, I stepped out of the elevator and into the reception area at Weber, Miranda, et al. I knew that office gossip traveled fast, but it was measured in nanoseconds that day, because Ashley was already up and waiting to greet me when I arrived.

Ashley had chosen to come to work dressed as her own version of Carmen Miranda, the “Brazilian Bombshell.” Her body was poured into a tight-fitting, long green-sequined dress adorned with flourishes and ruffles that accentuated her curvaceous figure—especially her breasts, which were struggling to break free from her bodice with every breath of her healthy lungs. I tried to hide my disbelief as I took in her costume—and that was the only possible word to describe it. I actually found myself feeling a bit nostalgic for her micro-minidresses. The only thing she needed was a basket of fruit on her head, and a toucan sitting on her shoulder. I felt positively dowdy in my two-piece, light gray gabardine suit.

“
Hola,
Margarita,” Ashley called out in a bright, but slightly nervous tone as I crossed the reception area. Something sounded false in her greeting. No question, she had heard that the partners were interviewing.

“Hi, Ashley,” I replied evenly. “How are you?”

Asking in such a disinterested manner was my way of trying to avoid a prolonged conversation. I wanted to say something about her outfit, but I couldn’t think of anything sufficiently neutral. In the years since she started at the firm, I could never remember her wearing anything that outrageous. If I hadn’t been so infuriated about what my partners were trying to do, I’d have been more in the mood to stop for a chat.

Looking at Ashley, I was reminded of how speechless I felt when, a couple of years ago, I went to visit a friend and her newborn baby. It wasn’t just any baby, I realized when he was shown to me, it was actually the ugliest baby in the history of the world. He had slitty eyes, a scrunched-up face, sallow skin, and a blotchy bald head. I was left stumped for what to say. All I could muster was “What a baby!” In Ashley’s case, I couldn’t trust myself to get away with “What an outfit!” so I knew I should move on quickly.

I hustled to the door leading to the partners’ offices, and punched in my security code. I heard a familiar click, which meant they hadn’t gotten rid of me yet. The door opened. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and began my campaign.

Instead of going straight to my office, I made a point of slow-walking the entire corridor, greeting each and every secretary, clerk, and paralegal by name. I even chatted with the repairman in the copy room. I felt like a politician courting voters. After this performance, it would be impossible for anyone not to know I was in the office.

Maria had watched me silently, following as I made the rounds. Once we were back in my office, the door closed, she gave me a sly smile.

“Going for the Oscar?” she asked. Her eagle eyes had already taken in my new Armani suit, my black stilettos, and my flesh-colored stockings—all clear signs that I was dead serious about my mission that afternoon.

“Hey, this is war,” I told her. Then I added, “You know what this means as much as I do. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to return to the secretarial pool.”

Maria blanched, then composed herself. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t.”

I sat down heavily at my desk. “I’m sorry, Maria. I shouldn’t have said that,” I smiled wanly. “I guess the stress is getting to me. I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

“It’s okay.” She sat down on one of the green and white chairs in front of my desk. “I’m worried, too.”

“So. What’s the latest?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Maria reached into the pocket of her severe navy-blue shirtwaist dress and pulled out a pack of Kools. She held it out to me with a questioning look, and I nodded and reached over the desk to accept one.

Our office was a smoke-free environment, and each office was equipped with a detector. But we had been in crisis mode before, and I knew what to do. I dragged a footstool until it was just under the detector, climbed up to it, and covered the electronic device with a black pashmina shawl I kept for whenever the air-conditioning was turned up too high. Then I went back to my desk and cracked open the window. These two precautions, I knew, would spare us the humiliation of being busted for smoking at work. I took the ashtray out from the bottom drawer of my desk and put in on the windowsill. Maria and I took position on either side of the ledge.

Maria lit both our cigarettes with the gold lighter she always carried. We both took drags, inhaling deeply. I felt better instantly, and the thought crossed my mind that I might be turning into a closet smoker. Dying of cancer was, for the moment, a secondary preoccupation. For the moment, the most important concern was making sure that my position in the firm wasn’t being sabotaged by my own partners.

“I wanted to tell you about all this yesterday, but you weren’t here,” Maria said. “You said you were coming back, but then you didn’t.”

“I know, I got held up,” I told her. “I’m sorry about that.”

Maria always softened in the face of groveling. It was part of our dynamic, and she required a certain degree of subservience from me. I wondered what she would think if she knew what I had really been doing the afternoon before.

Which reminded me. Luther.

Maria took another drag. “I’m friends with Susanna, Luis Miranda’s secretary,” said Maria. Miranda was the senior managing partner at the firm. I knew Susanna, a serious fiftyish woman who always seemed to be carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. I had heard a vague rumor once about her being engaged, then left at the altar.

“Well, she asked me to take a break with her yesterday after you left—only not in the office,” Maria said. “She wanted to meet outside, in the plaza, at two. And in this heat!”

I was hanging on Maria’s every utterance. No one, and I mean no one, ever sat at the four cement picnic tables on the plaza behind our building unless they were absolutely forced to. The tables were aesthetically striking and modern, inlaid with chips of colored glass, but in reality they were so uncomfortable that no one ever used them. The tables were out in the open air, with no shade for protection from the sun—not to mention the frequent contributions from the pigeon population out there, which made the place a disgusting mess more often than not. Most everyone at the firm took breaks and ate lunch in the office, especially during the hot summer months. There were two conference rooms: one formal, used by the attorneys for meetings, and another just off the kitchen that attorneys and staff used as a lunchroom. The kitchen was also fully equipped, and a lot of people used it.

“What did Susanna want?” I asked Maria. I pictured the two middle-aged women sitting at the picnic tables in the sweltering July heat, trying to avoid the pigeons as they ate their lunch and traded information.

“First she swore me to secrecy. She said she could get fired for talking to me.” Maria puffed on her cigarette, waving the smoke away with her free hand. “I agreed to keep things private, but I told her that if it concerned you, then I was going to have to use my judgment about what to tell you.”

“What did Susanna say to that?” I asked.

“She thought about it, and she agreed,” Maria told me. “She understands there are some things that I wouldn’t keep from you.”

“I appreciate that,” I told Maria.

“Just remember,” Maria warned, “we have to keep Susanna out of this.”

“I promise.”

“Well, a couple of weeks ago three of the partners met in Luis’s office,” Maria told me. “They didn’t close the door all the way, and Susanna was able to overhear what was going on. She listened to pretty much the whole meeting.”

I suppressed a smile. Any attorney who thinks her support staff doesn’t know what’s going on is deluding herself.

“The partners were talking about whether or not you’re going to come back to the firm after your leave of absence,” Maria explained. “They were asking each other what they thought, and whether any of them had talked to you about it.”

I frowned as I listened. “Maria, you know the terms and conditions for a partner’s leave of absence,” I said. “I don’t have to notify the firm about my intentions until the day before the leave is up.”

“I know,” Maria replied. “And I also know you’re the only partner ever to actually use the leave this way. It shouldn’t be like that, but it’s the truth.”

“You’re right,” I admitted.

“Susanna told me the partners met again a couple of days later,” Maria said. “This time it was in the conference room, with all the partners. Susanna had overheard that one of the main items on the agenda was to discuss your status at the firm.”

“My status at the firm!” I repeated, outraged. “Just what the fuck is that supposed to mean? I’m a partner!”

Maria ignored my outburst; she obviously was prepared for a strong reaction from me.

“Apparently, they don’t think you’re coming back,” she explained. “And they don’t want to be left high and dry when you get around to making your decision.”

“But I don’t have to—”

“Margarita, listen, I’m on your side,” Maria said. “Susanna told me that they talked about the new case that’s coming in, and how it needed an immigration law expert. They didn’t want to have to tell the client that the firm can’t handle the case because they don’t have a qualified partner to deal with it. I asked Susanna for more information, but that’s all she would tell me. And, believe me, I owe her one for what she did tell me.”

“Do you think Susanna was holding out on you?” I asked. “I mean, has some kind of decision been made?”

“I’m not sure.” Maria stubbed out her cigarette. “Susanna and I have been friends for a long time. I think she just wanted to make sure we had fair warning. She knows what bringing a new immigration attorney into the office could mean for me. She doesn’t want to see me go back downstairs. I mean, it isn’t a given that I’d be reassigned to the new attorney.”

I nodded. Maria’s thought process made sense, and I appreciated the candor with which she described her own interests. It was best to get everything out on the table.

“So that’s why they interviewed the other attorney,” I said, calming down. I put out my own cigarette. “But, Maria, they could have just called me to come in and work the case for them. They know I would have done that.”

I was angry about being screwed over by my partners, but I also had to admit I understood their motivation. Their concerns were always, above all, practical. If they thought I was going to resign, it made sense to have a replacement ready to start. They wouldn’t want me to take a case in an ad hoc manner, start working on it, and then resign. The next attorney would practically have to start all over again. This was a big case, from the sound of it, one that the firm couldn’t turn down. And in my lame-duck condition, I represented the most ghastly specter a law firm could ever contemplate: down time, with no hours being billed to a major client.

I had been able to manage my leave so far. In fact, I thought I had done pretty well given my indecision. But now this case had forced the issue. The firm needed an immigration attorney, and it needed one right away.

What I wondered was when the partners planned to tell me about all this. They were, after all, actually considering bringing in an immigration lawyer as a partner. If they hired him and I stayed, there would be two partners specializing in a kind of law that was normally not vital to the firm. There simply wasn’t enough work to keep two full-time attorneys busy.

I was going to have to read my partnership agreement very closely, and figure out what my rights were. I knew I was going to have to walk a thin line between exercising my rights and alienating my partners. I certainly didn’t want to have an antagonistic relationship with my partners. But I also wasn’t about to become a doormat.

News traveled fast at a firm, and even though Susanna had sworn Maria to secrecy, I wouldn’t be surprised if word had already spread that there were changes in store. Each partner had a secretary, and they all talked to each other. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but I remembered Ashley’s reaction when she saw me that morning. Maybe I had imagined it, maybe I was being paranoid. One thing I knew: No one was going to force me out of the firm. If I left, it would be on my own terms.

Maria, apparently feeling there was nothing more to discuss, stood up slowly. “Sorry to give you bad news,” she said. She walked toward the door. “You know where I am if you need me.”

I sat there and lit another cigarette from the pack Maria had left on the window ledge. I realized I no longer had the balance of my leave in which to decide what to do. I had to figure out what to do and tell my partners right away, for their sakes as well as my own. And I had to be careful not to reveal how I found out what I knew, because Susanna would be in deep trouble if the leak was traced back to her.

I smoked the cigarette down to the filter, then waited for the butts in the ashtray to cool before I poured them onto a sheet of typing paper and rolled the ashy mess into a ball. I climbed back onto the stool and took the pashmina shawl off the smoke detector. I sprayed some air freshener, then waved the shawl around to circulate the air in the direction of the open window. Soon there was no noticeable trace of the cigarettes Maria and I had smoked.

After I was satisfied that I would not be busted for smoking, like a girl in a high school rest room, I sat down at my desk and took my cell phone out of my purse. I punched in a now-familiar number and waited for Luther to answer. I wondered how he was doing, and what he thought about the events of the afternoon before. And I wanted to hear his voice.

I listened to the phone ring, and slumped with disappointment when his voice mail picked up.

“It’s Margarita,” I said. “I was…calling to say hello.”

Then I hung up.

I said a brief prayer to the Virgin de la Caridad del Cobre, the patron saint of Cuba. Then I got up, deciding to pay each of my partners a nice long visit. Until I decided what to do, I would kill them with kindness.