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
