Six weeks earlier
On Monday morning Clare’s phone woke her from a deep sleep. It was her boss, Carlton Henning, calling her at seven to tell her to get in the office on the double. Her stomach soured at the sound of his voice. She grabbed her pillbox from its hiding place beneath her couch and took two tablets of speed with her to the bathroom, washing them down with a glass of water. The thought of facing Henning without some pharmaceutical help was unimaginable. She put on her business suit and heels and left by seven thirty. She’d been in the office all weekend, trying to keep up with Henning’s assignments, which was like swimming against Category 4 rapids. It was all she could do not to drown. She was chattel, otherwise known as a first-year associate, and her hours ran from sixty to eighty a week. She was always desperately behind, no matter how much she worked. And for this she’d gone to three years of law school.
She dropped off her briefcase and coat before walking to Henning’s corner office. The sound of him barreling down the adjacent hall was like a locomotive. He was a pudgy man, with dimpled fingers and a double chin. He was always out of breath but had the energy of an Olympic sprinter. He caught sight of her.
“Well, it’s about fucking time,” he said as he passed into his office without stopping. Clare followed him in, the proverbial fly to his evil spider. “Lehane, I just got back from a meeting with Dave Novak where I was systematically fucked in the ass. He’s taken two associates from me on the Walker case. You’re not one of them, more’s the pity, so now I have to rely on you to do twice the work.” He stood behind his massive desk, his crisp white oxford shirt straining at the belly.
She was horrified. “I don’t think it’s physically possible. I already work seven days a week.”
“I don’t like complainers. Deal with it or I’ll have you transferred to bankruptcy.”
From what she’d heard, the bankruptcy department was a killing field, headed by a partner even nastier than Henning. At least in litigation she occasionally got into the courtroom and traveled on document productions.
“I’ll give it my best.” She tried to sound determined and slightly enthusiastic, but her acting skills fell short of the mark. Her head ached from a mild hangover.
He sat. “What are you working on now?”
“I’ve got five assignments on my desk, working on them as prioritized. I have to get that motion for extension of time done and also the memo on the new statute of limitations argument.”
“Be sure you do the memo. I need it for the hearing on Monday. But before you get to either of those, I’m giving you a top priority, must be done today upon pain of death assignment.” Her heart sank. “I want you to create a chart of the actual damages of the five named plaintiffs in the Walker case. Medical bills, lost time from work, you know what to do. Meet me back here by the end of the day.”
She fought the desire to tell him she quit. She could almost feel the breeze in her hair as she escaped the building into liberty. But now wasn’t the time financially. Her savings were nonexistent, and her money seemed to go primarily to drugs. Her job was less than secure—she’d been written up two months earlier for failing to make a court date after sleeping through her alarm clock. Too much speed had kept her up all night. It was a costly mistake, one she was still embarrassed by.
As she walked back to her office, she saw Alice Parker coming toward her down the hallway. She was a veteran paralegal, competent as hell, and as no-nonsense as they come. How she managed her life with being a single mother and working as many hours as Clare, she’d never know. Clare had a brainstorm and stopped as Alice grew near.
“Alice, how are you?” She smiled as warmly as she could.
Alice stopped because she was unfailingly polite, but her face said she wanted to get to where she was going. “Going crazy with the Walker case.”
“Glad you mentioned Walker because I have an assignment for you.”
She looked alarmed. “I can’t handle another assignment. You’ll have to find someone else.”
“Sorry. You’re the one. Henning just gave me the project and said to find the best paralegal to work on it. That’s you.”
Flattery wasn’t melting the ice on Alice’s face. “What is it?”
Clare detailed the project and tried to make it sound as easy as possible. “There’s no getting around it. We have to have it done today.”
“Christ.” Alice was starting to look resigned. “I don’t suppose I can talk to Henning about it?”
“I wouldn’t go near him if I were you. He’s in one of his moods,” Clare said, keeping it friendly.
Alice sighed. “I’ll do my best.”
She returned to her office to get started on her memo, plowing her way through her research, her focus sharp, her thinking clear, her hangover forgotten. She almost didn’t mind working. Moments like this, when she felt extraordinarily smart and productive, she was reminded of why she got into law in the first place. She’d been a political science major in preparation for law school, taking her altruistic goal of “helping people” into her first year at Northwestern. Now she was in a firm that represented the corporate bad guys. They paid a ridiculously high salary in return for the vast majority of her waking hours. She had no social life. Golden handcuffs, she’d heard it called.
At five, she walked down the hall to check on Alice’s progress on the medical bill chart but didn’t find her in her office. She went to her large document room and found it empty. Nor did she see documents on the table that would indicate the chart was being worked on. She called reception and had Alice paged. Two minutes later, she called back.
“What is it, Clare?” She sounded harried, but this was the norm for Alice.
“I’m wondering if you’ve finished the chart we talked about this morning. Henning will be looking for it about now.” She hadn’t thought of the chart since she passed the assignment on to Alice that morning.
“I couldn’t get to it,” Alice said. Clare’s gut dropped, as if she’d hit a sudden pocket of turbulence.
“What do you mean? Please tell me you’re teasing me.”
“Do I sound like I’m teasing?” Alice said dryly. “I got pulled away by Richards. What could I do? I’m not saying no to a name partner in favor of an associate.”
“Fuck! You could have told me, for one thing. Henning will kill me.” She was approaching panic.
“I tried calling you once, but got interrupted. I forgot to call again. Sorry.” Alice didn’t sound very concerned. Her position in the firm was much stronger than Clare’s. There were partners and senior associates who couldn’t do without her. Clare was increasingly expendable.
Maybe she should run away. There was no excuse that would get her off the hook. The real reason the chart wasn’t done—that she’d passed the assignment off—would get her into even more trouble. She fished in her pocket for her pillbox and swallowed a Valium dry. Her heart was racing and she was alarmingly agitated. This pill was medicinal. As she was taking a few deep breaths, she heard her name being paged. The receptionist told her to get to Henning’s office ASAP. She knew for whom the bell tolled. It tolled for her. She wondered if she could even make the walk down the hallway. Her legs were unresponsive, as if she’d had a mild stroke. Every second she wasn’t in Henning’s office made the situation worse. It wasn’t until she heard her name paged again that she managed to leave her office and walk down the hallway.
The moment she entered, Henning looked up from his desk, his eyes focused on her empty hands.
“Where’s the chart?” He stood from his desk, as if getting ready to fight.
“I don’t have it.” She sounded calmer than she was. She looked around the room, taking in the perks of partnership, which she clearly would never enjoy. The giant mahogany desk, the private washroom, the drinks cart, the couch and chairs. Henning was silent for a moment before he steeled his voice.
“You don’t have it as in it’s not done?”
“That is correct.”
He exploded. “What the fuck? Did I not say it had to be done today? I’m talking to the plaintiff’s attorney tonight.”
“Yes, that’s what you said.” She felt physically threatened by his heavy body leaning toward her, his red face and beady eyes. She wondered at this world she worked in, where Mondays were neither the beginning nor end of a work week, where life outside the firm became a tiny part of her existence. Where a partner became judge, jury, and executioner.
“Then what possible reason do you have for not doing it? I’m curious what would cause you to shoot yourself in the head.”
She wouldn’t throw Alice under the bus. She should have been checking on her progress throughout the day, but she’d simply forgotten to. “None that will make me look any better than I do now.”
He ranted and raved for several minutes, even coming around from his desk to stand closer to her. She stood her ground and stared back at him. Finally, he returned to his desk. “I’m writing you up. This’ll be your second in a year, if I recall correctly. It’ll be up to Novak to decide what to do with you.”
The tranquilizer kicked in and she felt a muted euphoria. Whether it was the drug or the possibility of being done with this nightmare of a law firm, she didn’t know or care. She smiled pityingly at Henning, as if he were the one in deep trouble and not her.
“You know what? Don’t bother, Mr. Novak.”
“What do you mean?” he looked at her suspiciously.
“It means I quit, you fucking bastard.” She turned on her heel to leave the office, but not before she saw the shocked look on his face.