in love … with himself. He had a hot- and cold-running stream of women, all of them financial executives in size six Prada suits. That wasn’t mentioning the shoes they wore, which cost more than Claire earned in a week. Michael dated them serially, replacing an investment banker with a broker with a fund manager. Secretaries like Tina and analysts like Claire were not his style. Many of them hated him, many admired him, but Claire was the only one who was in love with him. Of course, she wasn’t stupid enough to betray that information to any of her coworkers, not even Tina.
Michael Wainwright had spoken to Claire exactly four times in the eighteen months she’d worked at Crayden Smithers. The first time he’d asked, ‘Would you make five copies of this right away, please?’ The second time he’d said, ‘I need these numbers crunched by this evening.’ The third time – Claire’s favorite – was when she’d delivered a report to his office and he’d said, ‘Thanks. Nice dress.’ The last time was a little over two weeks ago when he had brushed against her on his way out to lunch and said, ‘Oh, sorry.’
They got to Tina’s desk. Claire glanced at the office behind her but couldn’t see Michael Wainwright. ‘I’m meetin’ Anthony tonight,’ Tina said. ‘We’re goin’ to the bridal registry at Macy’s. You wanna go?’
Claire doubted that even Anthony wanted to go. Was the choice that or garroting (something Tina’s uncle might know about)? She just shook her head. ‘No. I want to get home. I have a book to finish.’
Tina shrugged. ‘You and the books.’
Claire shrugged back and refrained from saying ‘You and QVC.’ Then she began the unpleasant route which made her disappear down the corridor like Alice down the rabbit hole.
‘He ain’t gonna get away with it. Someone should tell him ta get ovah himself,’ Michelle D’annunzio said.
‘Yeah,’ Marie Two agreed, then laughed. ‘But he thinks he’s so big he’d need to mountain climb to get ovah Mr Michael Wainwright.’
Michelle, Joan and Marie Two giggled. Marie One shook her head.
There were three Maries in the office – four if you counted Marie LaPierre, but nobody counted her – so the Maries were called One, Two and Three to avoid confusion. Two of them, along with Joan, Michelle, Tina and Claire, were having their lunch together. It was interesting to Claire to watch how the secretaries’ status was a reflection of whom they worked for. Marie One worked for Mr Bataglia who was middle management – nothing much – and she didn’t get much attention or respect. Marie Two worked for Mr Crayden, Junior who was one of the Craydens of Crayden Smithers. That meant Marie Two was considered much more important than Marie One or almost anyone else. Tina’s work for Mr Wonderful, the golden boy of the firm for the last few years, made her number two or three with a bullet. Michelle worked for the semi-retired David Smithers who was more a phantom than a physical presence. Everyone, it seemed, was more important than Claire, who only worked for Joan. It was a race Claire didn’t mind losing. She actually enjoyed watching the sudden shifts in power that change at the top wreaked on those at the bottom.
‘I don’t think he’s goin’ to get away with it this time,’ Marie One said. She put down her salami and egg sandwich. Then she picked up her Diet Coke and took a slug right from the can. Why, Claire wondered, did people who ate two thousand calories for lunch bother with diet sodas? Marie was still as large as the day that Claire first entered this lunchroom.
‘No. He ain’t,’ Michelle said, then took a bite of her triple-decker sandwich, followed by a potato chip. She didn’t have a problem with weight – she always had all the carbohydrates she desired and never put on an ounce.
‘Sure he will,’ Tina told them. She pushed some of her dark hair back over one ear and took a bite of her turkey club. ‘Hey, his social life is as busy as Grand Central Station, but I’m a great conductor. I keep all the different trains on separate tracks. They never crash into each other.’
Claire didn’t bother to point out that that wasn’t a conductor’s job. Actually, she thought the conductor analogy was an apt one but she would have used the metaphor of a symphony orchestra, not a commuter station. Michael Wainwright had a complicated and splendid private life that, without his knowledge, was public to all of the clerical women on the thirty-eighth floor.
Marie Two gave Tina a sour look. ‘Hey. Tell Mike Engineer that someday two of those engines will crash. And we’ll all be readin’ about it in the Wall Street Journal.’
Joan, the head of the analysts and – aside from Claire – the only woman at the table who wasn’t either a secretary or Italian-American, shook her head. She was a divorced single mother in her mid-thirties and, in Claire’s opinion, justifiably bitter. ‘From your lips to god’s ears,’ Joan said. ‘The bastard deserves it.’
But Claire didn’t think that was fair. Though Michael Wainwright certainly played fast and loose, he could afford to. It wasn’t just the looks, brains and schooling. He was also socially connected. Claire, via Tina, had an almost daily update on whom he was seeing, whom he was about to drop, whom he was adding to his conquest list, and where he was taking his latest date. Claire’s mental calendar, empty of engagements, was full of Mr Wonderful’s life. She wasn’t sure if Tina’s ongoing conversation was good or bad for her private obsession, but she certainly couldn’t ask Tina to stop talking without raising Tina’s always-acute suspicions when it came to romance. And it wasn’t as if Claire even dreamed of any real connection to Michael Wainwright. She knew he traveled in a world of money, entitlement, and the natural aristocracy of beauty and that she didn’t belong in any of those categories. Michael Wainwright was not a romantic possibility and she had no illusions otherwise. But it didn’t mean that she didn’t have feelings. She just kept them to herself. Her interest, she thought, was a kind of hobby – like bird watching.
Tina put down her sandwich and angrily wiped her mouth with a Subway paper napkin. ‘Why does he deserve it?’ she demanded of Joan. ‘He never promises any of them anything. They’re big girls. They can take care of themselves.’ Claire smiled. In public Tina was loyal to Michael but Claire knew that she sometimes warned him of the dating Armageddon that she so nimbly put off.
‘It’s time to get back,’ Joan said primly and looked at Claire. Claire nodded and put her untouched apple back into her bag. Unlike the others, Claire didn’t work for an investment banker. And reporting to Joan didn’t always make life pleasant. She stood up and smiled at Tina, who flipped a bird behind Joan’s back.
Claire’s afternoon was spent doing what seemed like endless revisions to spreadsheets of figures. The worst part about her job was also the best. There were no changes, no surprises, no peaks and valleys. She knew that as soon as she completed an assignment, Joan would hand her another one. Unlike Tina and the three Maries, Claire didn’t get to glimpse the drama going on in and around the windowed offices: she didn’t see the clients arrive, the meetings held in the glass-enclosed conference rooms. She didn’t witness the hirings and firings. But she heard all about them. Sometimes Claire felt her imagination was a better place to view the dramas than in reality. Tina was a kind of human radio – all Tina, all the time – and Claire saw the wins and losses, the corporate coups and the promotions and demotions more vividly in her imagination than if she had seen them in reality.
The problem was that she had time to daydream – too much time – and too many of her daydreams centered around Mr Wonderful. She wondered uncomfortably
