Текст книги "Practice Makes Perfect"
Автор книги: Julie James
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
“Everything’s fine,” he assured her, lest there be any doubt about it. “I was just wondering whether your fellow feministas would approve of you using your sexuality as bait.”
Payton pulled back. “I’m sorry?”
She appeared pissed. Good—this he knew.
J.D. pointed to the could-I-sneak-a-peek? V-neck of her shirt. “Planning on showing off the girls tonight, are we? Is that how you plan to impress the Gibson’s execs?”
He regretted the words the moment they came out of his mouth.
He saw the flash of hurt in Payton’s eyes, but she quickly looked away to cover it up. When she turned back to him, her gaze was icy.
“We’re asking Gibson’s to give us twenty million dollars in legal fees,” she said coldly. “If you think my boobs are going to land this deal, then they must be even more spectacular than I thought. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” She brushed past him in a hurry.
J.D. tried to stop her. “Payton, wait. I didn’t mean—”
“Well, there you are! We were startin’ to wonder what happened to you two!”
Payton and J.D. turned at the sound of Jasper’s voice.
Payton quickly regained her composure. “Jasper—we were just coming to join you,” she said calmly. “Did you save one of those cigars for me?” With her head held high, she followed Jasper to join the other men out on the terrace.
She didn’t look once at J.D. for the rest of the night.
DURING THE RIDE home, Payton’s mood was subdued. Tired and lost in thought, she’d barely realized that the cab had stopped, arriving at its destination, until the driver glanced over the partition and asked if there was somewhere else she wanted to go. After quickly paying the fare, she hurried up the front steps of the quaint two-flat row house she had bought and rehabbed three years ago. It was a cozy place, nothing extravagant, but the mortgage was in her budget and the place was within walking distance of the “L.” Most important, it was all hers. To her, home ownership was about stability and investment, and definitely not about hot trendy neighborhoods for which one paid a premium.
Payton let herself inside, tossed her keys on the side table by the front door, and headed back to her bedroom. Her heels clicked on the restored oak hardwood floors.
She didn’t know why she let it bother her so much, what J.D. had said. Yes, it was insulting of him to suggest that she was playing up her sexuality to entice the Gibson’s reps. The comment had come way out of left field—she had never done anything even remotely unprofessional to deserve such an attack on her character. But what bothered her even more was the fact that she had been completely unprepared for the insult. Normally she had her guard up around J.D., but tonight she had thought they were getting along—or at the very least, that they were tolerating each other, that they had put away the boxing gloves for the evening in the spirit of working together.
Boy, had she ever been wrong about that.
An oval full-length mirror stood in the corner of her bedroom, an antique she had inherited from her grand-mother. Before changing out of her clothes, Payton paused before the mirror. She self-consciously fingered the neckline of her button-down shirt. It wasn’t that low-cut, was it?
She stopped herself right there and stared defiantly in the mirror.
The hell with him.
FOR HIS PART, J.D. was not exactly in a celebratory mood when he got home, either. Over and over, his mind ran through the same debate.
He could call her, to apologize.
She’d hang up on him, no doubt.
And why should he bother, anyway? So she was pissed at him . . . big fucking surprise there. She lived to be pissed at him. In fact, it probably had made her night, what he’d said. With his comment he had single-handedly given her the logs of legitimacy to fuel her fire.
But still.
He had crossed the line. Over the years the two of them had traded innumerable barbs and insults, but he knew he had gone too far that evening.
So J.D. settled it in his mind. He would call her.
He looked up Payton’s phone number in the firm directory. This certainly had been a night of firsts for them, all starting with the complimentary things they had said about each other to Jasper. And now he was going to call her? They’d never even spoken on the phone before, outside of work.
Sighing to himself—not relishing this task he was about to undertake—J.D. reached for the phone. It was then that it occurred to him that he was about to call Payton at home. He tried to picture her in her . . . apartment? Condo? House? He wondered what it looked like, the place she lived.
Then he wondered why he wondered that.
Mere curiosity, J.D. assured himself.
He pictured her place as being a tad . . . plebian. That probably wasn’t the most politically correct way to say it. What word did liberals prefer nowadays? Granola? Organic?
In reality, however, Payton was none of those things. In fact, if she never spoke, one might actually think she was quite normal.
Then a second thought suddenly occurred to J.D.
Maybe she didn’t live alone.
He should know things like this, shouldn’t he? He should at least know the basics, have some inkling of what her life was like when she wasn’t busy being her.
Realizing he was stalling, trying to avoid apologizing to Payton, J.D. grabbed the phone. He was about to dial her number when he noticed that he had a new message. He entered the code to access his voice mail, then heard a familiar deep voice as the message began to play.
“J.D., it’s your father. I thought I’d check in and see if there’s any news on the partnership front. I’m guessing no, otherwise we would’ve heard from you already.” There was a preemptory disappointed sigh. “I suppose if you don’t make it, I can always call my old firm. But maybe you’re going to surprise me for once, son. Although—no offense—I bet your mother a new mink that you’ll be calling me to bail you out by the end of the month, ha-ha. And that woman really does not need another fur coat.”
When J.D. heard the beep, signaling the end of his father’s message, he hung up the phone. He sat there, in the leather armchair in his living room, staring out the windows and their sweeping view of the city at night, but not seeing.
After a long moment, he put the phone receiver back in its cradle.
This thing with Payton was a distraction. And he certainly did not need any distractions right now. It would be best if he put her out of his mind entirely. He simply needed to stay on track for the rest of the month, doing everything exactly as he had done for the past eight years.
If anything, it was a good thing Payton was giving him the silent treatment. Ha—if that’s all it took, he should’ve been a rude bastard years ago. Maybe now he’d finally have some peace at work. No more pissed-off hair flips, no more covert you’re-such-a-wanker-J.D. glares, no more secret arguments in back hallways over feminist and right-wing agendas.
These were things J.D. certainly would not miss.
Not at all.
Seven
“I FOUND THE perfect guy for you.”
Payton barely looked up as Laney strolled into her office and plunked down in one of the seats in front of her desk.
“Hmm, that’s nice,” Payton said distractedly. “Can we talk about this in say . . .” She checked her watch. “Three weeks?” Putting aside partnership issues, she had a trial starting in two days.
“I’m excited about this, Payton. Don’t ruin the moment with sarcasm.”
“Oh, well, then.” Payton pushed aside the mound of files on her desk with a grand flourish. “By all means—continue.”
Laney looked at her pointedly. “Career or not, a single woman in her thirties cannot neglect her personal life forever.”
“Sorry, Laney, you’re right. I had forgotten that we’d traveled back in time to 1950.”
Another look from Laney. “May I continue?”
“Does Mr. Perfect have a name?”
“Chase.”
“And what makes the Perfect Chase so perfect?” Payton asked.
Laney leaned forward, eager to share the details. “He was in Nate’s fraternity in undergrad,” she began, referring to her husband. “He just moved here a few weeks ago. He’s a lawyer, too—and you’ll love this—he does pro bono work with the Chicago Legal Clinic. He went to Harvard Law School, he was president of both the Harvard Law chapter of the ACLU and the Harvard Law Advocates for Human Rights—”
Payton raised a skeptical eyebrow at this. “Harvard Law School?” She already knew one Harvard Law graduate and that was one too many.
Laney held up a hand. “I checked it out. He went there on scholarship and paid the rest with student loans. And he’s good-looking, too. Nate and I met him for dinner last night, and I subtly learned that he’s looking to meet someone.”
“How did you learn that?”
“I asked him if he was looking to meet someone.”
“That is subtle.” Payton shook her head. “You married people are always trying to set us single people up.”
Laney nearly jumped right out of her chair. “That’s exactly what he said! See—you two are perfect for each other.” She paused deliberately. “So? Should I tell him to call you?”
The timing wasn’t exactly the greatest, but Payton found her friend’s enthusiasm hard to resist. And the Perfect Chase did sound somewhat promising. Career-driven. Interested in politics. Passionate about his beliefs. True, these were all things she found attractive in a man. And she certainly wouldn’t hold being good-looking against him.
“Okay,” Payton agreed. “Tell him to call me.”
“Good. Because I already gave him your number.”
Payton mulled things over. “Harvard Law, huh?” She couldn’t help it; she glanced across the hall to J.D.’s office. They hadn’t spoken since the night of the Gibson’s pitch.
Over the last few days, to the extent possible, she had avoided walking by J.D.’s office and had been using the internal stairwells for all trips under five flights (normally two up, three down was her limit in heels) in order to minimize the risk of being stuck in the elevator with him. Because as far as she was concerned, she was done with J.D.
Not to suggest that she had ever begun with J.D., of course.
The way she saw it, she had put herself out there the other night at the restaurant. She had made an attempt to be friendly and—to put it mildly—he had not reciprocated. She had allowed herself to be caught off guard, to be momentarily vulnerable in front of him, and she would not make that mistake again. And now she just wanted to forget the whole thing.
It had been a foolish thought, anyway, her thinking that they could ever get along. At least the Gibson’s pitch was over, putting an end, albeit perhaps temporarily, to their work together. And if the firm did indeed land Gibson’s as a client, she and J.D. would likely both be partner by the time they started working on the case and she would find some way to staff it so that they encountered each other as little as possible.
Of course, there was that small part of her, the teeniest, tiniest part of her, that was disappointed J.D. hadn’t apologized. If anything, he seemed to be avoiding her, too, and that Payton couldn’t understand. She may have had her faults, but at least she owned up to her mistakes. He apparently didn’t feel the same way. Unless he didn’t think he had made a mistake, in which case she had even bigger problems with him.
Not that she had spent any time thinking about these things.
Payton turned her attention back to Laney, who was already thinking ahead to where she and the Perfect Chase should first meet.
“It should be drinks, not coffee,” Laney was saying. “Too much caffeine makes you quippy.”
Payton looked over, offended by this. “Quippy?”
They were interrupted by a knock at her door, and Irma poked her head into the office. “Your mother’s on my line. Should I transfer her over to you?”
“Why is my mother on your line?”
Irma cleared her throat awkwardly. “She said she had been thinking about me and, um, wanted to discuss something before I transferred her over to you.”
“What did she want to talk to you about?” Payton asked.
“She wanted to ask whether I had ever considered trying to unionize the secretarial staff.”
Payton rolled her eyes. Her mother had done the Norma Rae routine on her a million times. Apparently Irma was her newest victim.
Payton waved to Laney, who was already on her way out, and told Irma to put her mother through. She picked up the phone, bracing herself. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hey, Sis,” came her mother’s familiar greeting. In Lex Kendall’s mind (formerly Alexandra, but that name was too bourgeois), all women were sisters under the same moon.
“How’s my girl?” Lex asked.
“Fine, Mom. I hear from Irma that you’re trying to rally the troops against The Man.”
“See, I knew you’d get all uptight if I called her.”
“Yet still, you did it.”
“I just thought that she and the other laborers at your firm might want to know that they have rights. Not everyone there makes a six-figure salary, Payton.”
Payton sighed. Her mother was the only person she knew who was disappointed that her child was financially successful. “Irma could get in a lot of trouble, if the wrong person overheard your conversation and misunderstood. You forget that I’m a labor and employment lawyer.”
“No, I haven’t forgotten,” her mother said, as if recalling some heinous crime her only child had committed years ago. And in Lex Kendall’s mind, Payton’s sin was egregious indeed.
She had become a yuppie.
Payton had been raised to “live and think freely”—a sentiment that sounded great in theory, but, as she discovered by a very young age, actually meant she was supposed to “live and think freely” exactly the way her mother told her to.
Barbie dolls were sexist. (“Look at her vacant expression, Payton—Barbie doesn’t care about anything other than shopping.”) Fairy tales—in fact, most of children’s literature—were also sexist. (“Look at the message in these picture books, Payton—that beauty is the only important quality of a woman.”) Even Disney movies were the enemy. (“I know that Lisa’s mother lets her watch Cinderella, Payton. Lisa’s mother obviously has no problem teaching her daughter that women must wait passively for a man to bring meaning to their pathetically lonely lives.”)
Yes, Lex Kendall had a reason to protest just about everything.
It wasn’t that Payton didn’t agree with her mother’s principles. She did agree with some of them, just not to the same degree. For example, she was absolutely against people wearing fur coats. Which meant that she personally did not wear one. It did not mean that she stood outside Gucci on Michigan Avenue throwing buckets of red paint on exiting shoppers. (Oh, yes, her mother had, several times, in fact, and had even twice gone to jail for her renegade artistic endeavors, necessitating several of young Payton’s many overnight stays with her grandparents.)
In her mother’s eyes, Payton knew, she had sold out. In fact, when Lex had found out that Payton planned to defend Corporate America as part of her law practice, she had refused to speak to her daughter for two straight weeks.
Ah . . . Payton still recalled those two weeks fondly. It had been the most peaceful 336 hours of her life.
“Can I call you back later this evening, when I get home?” she asked her mother. “I’m pretty busy at work these days.”
“With the partnership thing,” her mother stated in a tone that was, at best, disinterested.
“Yes, the partnership thing.” Payton bit back the urge to say anything further. Was it really that difficult for people to understand what she was going through? Did no one get the amount of stress she was under?
“You don’t need to call me back,” her mother told her. “I can hear the tension in your voice. Are you keeping up with your yoga practice? You probably need to liberate your chakras.”
Payton put her head on her desk. Yes, of course—the tension in her voice had nothing to do with the fact that she hadn’t taken a vacation in nearly four years. The problem was that her chakras were unliberated.
She could hear her mother rambling on through the receiver she held in her hand.
“. . . talk more when I come into town later this month—”
At this, Payton sprung back to life. “You’re coming to Chicago?”
“Steven plans to visit Sarah and Jess in L.A. for Father’s Day,” her mother said, referring to Payton’s two stepsisters. “I thought I’d come to Chicago so we could spend the weekend together.”
Payton peered over at her calendar. She had been so busy she’d completely forgotten about the upcoming holiday. And, despite the rocky start to their conversation, she suddenly felt a rush of affection toward her mother. Lex Kendall could be a difficult woman no doubt, but she had never once let Payton spend a Father’s Day alone, not even after she and her husband Steven had married and moved to San Francisco several years ago. Though they’d never discussed it openly, Payton knew it was her mother’s attempt to compensate for the fact that Payton hadn’t heard from her father in years.
“I’d like that, Mom,” Payton said. They discussed briefly what they might do that weekend. Keeping her fingers crossed, Payton hoped she might have some good news to share by then.
After a few moments of chatting, Payton saw her other line ringing. Through the glass door of her office, she watched as Irma intercepted the call, nodded, then got up and signaled for her attention. Payton wrapped up the call with her mother, sensing it was something important.
“What is it?” she asked when Irma stepped into her doorway.
“That was Ben’s secretary, Marie. He wants to see you in his office.” Irma lowered her voice. “Marie says she heard him on the phone earlier this morning, with Tom Hillman from the Partnership Committee. She heard him tell Tom that he wanted to give you and J.D. the news early.”
Payton felt a thrill of excitement run through her.
This was it.
With a faint smile on her face, Payton got up from her desk and thanked Irma for the message.
Then she headed out the door to Ben’s office.
Eight
WHEN PAYTON GOT to Ben’s office, she found J.D., alone, sitting in front of the partner’s desk. He had his back to the door, unaware she stood there. She noticed that his leg bounced anxiously as he waited.
She cleared her throat. J.D. immediately stopped bouncing his leg and watched her take a seat in the chair next to him.
“Ben’s not here yet?” Payton asked coolly.
J.D. shook his head. “Marie said he should be in shortly.”
An awkward silence fell between them.
Payton glanced around the room. She suddenly was very aware of her hands; she tapped them against the arms of her chair, then stopped, then folded them in her lap.
More silence.
And then . . .
Still more silence.
“It’s this job, you know.”
Payton had been gazing out the window. She turned her head to J.D.
“We argue with people—that’s what we do. We strategize against them, we try to get the upper hand. Sometimes, I find it hard to break away from that.” He turned to face Payton and looked her straight in the eyes.
“I was very rude to you at the restaurant. I owe you an apology.”
Caught off guard, Payton said nothing at first. Direct and unwavering, J.D. held her gaze.
He really did have the most amazing blue eyes.
Payton had no idea why she just thought that.
She nodded. “Okay.”
J.D. seemed to have been bracing himself for something far worse. “Okay,” he said, and Payton thought she saw him exhale in relief. Then he smiled. Genuinely.
“So . . . do you know why we’re here?”
“I have a guess,” Payton said.
J.D. leaned forward in his chair, his eyes lit excitedly. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you make partner?”
Payton hesitated, still feeling superstitious. Then she thought—what the hell—why not enjoy the moment? They both knew why they had been called to Ben’s office.
“Sleep,” she said. “For a week.”
J.D. laughed. “And no voice mail.”
“Or email.”
“No BlackBerry.”
“No cell phone.”
“No laptop,” J.D. said with a wink, knowing there was no way she could top that.
Payton thought for a moment. “Actually, I think I’ll take a few weeks off. I’d like to travel.”
“Where?” J.D. asked.
“Bora-Bora,” she decided.
“Why Bora-Bora?”
Payton shrugged. “I don’t know. It just sounds like someplace I’d like to go.”
J.D. grinned, and it occurred to Payton that she was babbling on about Bora-Bora when someone like J.D. had probably vacationed in places like that his whole life. Hell, his servants probably vacationed in places like that. She must’ve sounded very unworldly to him.
But if he thought that, he didn’t say it.
“Bora-Bora sounds great,” he agreed, easing back in his chair. Then he snuck another glance at her. “You know, Payton, now that this is all over, I was hoping we could put aside our d—”
At that moment, Ben walked into his office.
He sat down at his desk. “Sorry to keep you guys waiting,” he said. “My lunch ran later than I had expected.”
Ben sat upright in his chair, hands resting firmly on his desk. “So. I have great news. Jasper Conroy called me earlier this morning. He’s chosen our firm to represent Gibson’s. He told me he was very impressed by you both. I knew you two would deliver.” He paused. “Which brings me to some other news.”
Payton held her breath. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw J.D. inch forward in his seat.
“It goes without saying that you’re both aware the firm makes its partnership decisions at the end of this month,” Ben said.
“The Partnership Committee’s policy has always been that no one is supposed to leak early information about its decisions. But, in light of your stellar performance in landing the Gibson’s case—and, in fact, the stellar work you’ve both done throughout your careers here—I think you’ve earned the right to a little advance notice. I know how eagerly you both have awaited this.”
Payton’s heart began to race. Holy shit—this really was it.
Ben cleared his throat. “Which is why what I’m about to say is going to come as a surprise.”
Payton blinked. Surprise? That wasn’t the word she wanted to hear right then.
“You both are aware of the EEOC’s age discrimination lawsuit against Gray and Dallas,” Ben said, referring to another of the top law firms in the city. “And as you know, one of the claims in that lawsuit is that the firm chases out older partners in favor of younger ones.”
Ben looked to Payton for help. “You’re an employment lawyer. You know how closely all the other firms in this city have been watching that case. Including us.”
Payton answered him cautiously. “I’m familiar with the case, Ben. What I’m trying to figure out is how it has anything to do with me and J.D.”
Ben chose his next words carefully. “The Partnership Committee has decided that we need to strategically leverage ourselves in order to avoid similar intrusions from the EEOC. We simply can’t afford to have too many partners under the age of forty. Now, we obviously aren’t going to take away the shares of anyone who already is a partner . . . so instead there will be cutbacks in the number of associates made partner this year.”
J.D.’s jaw was set tensely. “You still haven’t answered Payton’s question. What does this have to do with us?”
Ben paused to look at each of them. “We’ve decided to name only one litigation partner this year. Only one of you will make it.”
It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room.
Only one of them.
Her or him.
Payton finally spoke. “Is this a joke?”
Ben shook his head. “I’m afraid not. You two are lucky you’re hearing this from me now.” He pointed to himself as if expecting gratitude. “I insisted on that. I wanted to give the one of you who won’t make it at least some warning.”
“The decision hasn’t been made yet?” J.D. asked, his tone incredulous.
Ben—the cocky bastard—actually had the audacity to laugh. He held his hands out before him. “What can I say? You’re both just so good. You have no idea how hard this is on us.”
Hard on you? Payton nearly leapt out of her chair and strangled him.
J.D. appeared no less furious. He stared Ben down coldly. “This is bullshit. Just last week you were practically promising that Payton and I were both locks.”
Ben shrugged this off, far too dismissively in Payton’s mind. After all, this was only her life—and J.D.’s—that they were talking about.
“So I embellished a bit . . .” Ben conceded with a self-satisfied grin. “We’re lawyers, that’s what we do.”
“How convenient that you tell us this after we land the Gibson’s case,” Payton said. “You used us, Ben.”
Ben held up a finger, point of fact. “Technically, I only used one of you. Because one of you is still going to make partner, and that person will lead the Gibson’s trial team as promised. As for the other of you, well . . .” he trailed off pointedly.
Payton didn’t need Ben to finish. She, like every other lawyer there, knew about the firm’s unwritten “up or out” policy. Associates who did not make partner were quickly transitioned off their cases and given a short grace period to “voluntarily” resign and find another job.
“I know this news probably comes as a shock to you both,” Ben said. “And it is extremely unfortunate that circumstances have caused things to end this way, but that is the Partnership Committee’s decision. I want to emphasize, however, that the choice between the two of you has not yet been made. It’s going to come right down to the wire. So for what it’s worth, I urge each of you to give it all you’ve got for these remaining couple of weeks.”
Payton resisted the urge to laugh bitterly at that. Give it all she’s got? What more could she give? A kidney? Her firstborn?
She glanced at J.D., sitting next to her. He looked over and met her gaze, and Payton could tell from the look in his eyes that they shared the same thought.
Only one of them would make it.
After eight years of practice, they were now truly adversaries.
J.D. MANAGED TO maintain an expression of unconcern the entire walk back.
When he got to his office, he stepped inside, shut the door behind him, and immediately began to pace. He was having trouble thinking straight. He took a seat at his desk, ignoring the blinking message light on his phone.
Merely ten minutes ago while sitting in Ben’s office and joking with Payton, he would’ve put his chances of making partner at about 99.99 percent.
Suddenly, those odds had plummeted. To 50 percent. At best.
He’d been torn, on the one hand wanting to yell at Ben, wanting to tell him what a chickenshit weasel he was, and on the other hand—cognizant of the fact that the decision had not yet been made and that he had not yet definitively lost out on making partner—he had felt pressed to continue playing along, to continue being the good little associate he was.
But the truth of the matter was, he couldn’t fucking believe this was happening.
Through the glass on his door, J.D. could see Payton hurrying into her office. He watched as, like him, she immediately shut the door behind her. It provided him no consolation that she had obviously been as stunned by Ben’s news as he.
After eight years, it had finally come down to this.
Him versus her.
The buzz of the telephone intercom, his secretary’s call, momentarily startled him.
“Yes, Kathy,” he answered in a clipped, brisk tone. He needed a few moments alone to think.
“Sorry to bother you, J.D.,” came Kathy’s voice through the speakerphone. “Chuck Werner asked that you call him as soon as possible to discuss next week’s deposition schedule.”
J.D. pinched between his eyes. He felt a headache coming on and was not at all in the mood to deal with his opposing counsel. “Thanks, Kathy. I’ll get back to him.”
“And one other thing,” Kathy added quickly, seeming to sense his eagerness to get off the phone. “Your father called and asked me to give you a message. He said you would understand.” She spoke slowly, confused by the message. “He said to tell you that he heard the firm was making an announcement today and wanted to know whether your mother just got her new mink coat.”
J.D. closed his eyes. His headache had suddenly gotten much worse.
PAYTON LEANED AGAINST her office door with her eyes shut. She slowly breathed in and out, trying to steady herself.
She wasn’t in her office five seconds before her phone began to ring. She tried to ignore it.
Then her second line rang.
Payton opened her eyes and headed to her desk. Glancing over at her computer, she saw that she had twenty-five new email messages.
There was a knock at her door. Without hesitation, Irma popped her head into the office.
“Oh, good, I thought you were here—you have Mr. McKane holding on line one, and Eric Riley waiting for you on line two. He wants to talk about the Middleton trial.”
Payton couldn’t breathe. She felt as though the walls were closing in around her. A third call came in, and the ringing of her phone seemed deafening.
She needed to get out.
Now.
She slid past Irma. “Tell everyone I’ll call them back. I . . . have to take care of something. An urgent matter.”
With that, she took off in a hurry toward the elevators.
THE FIFTY-FIFTH FLOOR housed the firm’s law library. With grand cathedral ceilings and sunlit stained-glass windows, the library’s grandeur befitted a different era, a time when—egads—lawyers consulted books for information. In the post-Internet days of online research, however, it was rare to find a living soul amongst the library’s elegant two-story mahogany bookshelves—save for Ripley & Davis’s lone librarian, Agnes, who had been with the firm since its inception.
Nearly six years ago, getting lost while looking for the accounting floor, Payton had stumbled upon the law library (it wasn’t even included in the new associate tour anymore) and had been charmed by its quiet calm. It was an oasis of serenity amid the chaos and bustle of the firm’s other floors.
Truthfully, it was also pretty much the only place in the entire building to which an associate could escape without being called, emailed, beeped, sent for, paged, or otherwise hounded by ne’er-do-well partners trying to pawn off emergency TROs at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon. Not that Payton—the highly industrious associate she was—had ever personally utilized the library for such nefarious purposes. She could just surmise that the library would be great for hiding out, if one so happened to be inclined.
