Chapter Eighteen
The office tower’s elevator door slides open, and Mallory steps onto the fifteenth floor of Reed Warner with relief.
It had been an excruciating ride up from the lobby trapped in the car with one of the partners, Harrison.
She thought of the movie The Devil Wears Prada, where the Meryl Streep character made her underlings vacate the elevators for her to ride alone.
She wished Harrison had that policy. Because either she was imagining things or he looked at her with disgust.
Or maybe she’s just exhausted. She wasn’t able to sleep all weekend. Every time she tried to relax she had an image of Patricia Loomis in the Blue Angel audience. It’s a waking nightmare.
“Good morning, Ms. Dale,” Blanca greets her.
“Good morning, Blanca.”
Maybe everything will be fine. Maybe Patricia Loomis could be just as embarrassed to be caught at a burlesque club as Mallory was upset about being busted performing at one. After all, if Patricia tells the partners about it, she’ll have to admit to being there herself.
Unless … Again, Mallory thinks of the smirk on Poppy’s face. But it’s unfathomable that she could somehow get Patricia to the club just to make trouble for her.
She closes the door to her office and logs in to her computer, fighting the urge to check her phone for the twentieth time since waking up at five-thirty in the morning.
Still nothing from Alec. Not since the night she left.
And now she has twelve hours of work ahead of her.
She decides she will just totally throw herself into the tasks at hand and try not to think about Alec until she crawls onto Julie’s couch, exhausted.
Maybe that’s what her life will be for a while—working until she’s too exhausted to think.
Her office door opens.
“Good morning, Mallory.” Patricia Loomis peers in like someone visiting a patient in quarantine.
“Oh, hi, Patricia … I’m just working on the—”
“Harrison would like to see you in his office.” She turns on her heels, leaving Mallory’s office door open.
This is not good.
It’s possible he’s calling her in to talk about the Koomson memo. She did a pretty good job on that—even in her ultra-critical mindset about her legal work lately, she’s proud of the Koomson research.
Harrison’s office is two floors up. The reception area has more flowers than most weddings, and his septuagenarian secretary, Miriam, is a stern gatekeeper.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asks, unsmiling.
“Patricia Loomis said Mr. Harrison wants to see me.”
“I haven’t even had my coffee yet,” Miriam grumbles as she picks up the desktop phone to announce her arrival. Then, focusing her milky brown eyes on her as if seeing her for the first time, she says, “Please go right in.”
Mallory straightens her skirt.
Inside Harrison’s office, Patricia is already seated.
“Come in and close the door,” Harrison says, from behind his desk.
Harrison Reed is as round as he is tall, with a surprising amount of silver hair. He has round frameless glasses perched on the bridge of his sharp nose like a prop, and wears only gray or navy suits.
“I assume you know why we’re here,” he says.
“The Koomson memo?” she says, feeling more naked than she felt at the Blue Angel.
Harrison and Patricia exchange a look.
“No, Mallory. We are not here to discuss the Koomson memo. I’ve been informed that you performed at a strip club over the weekend.”
Mallory’s first impulse is to correct him: The Blue Angel is not a strip club. But she doubts that will help her. It is, in legal parlance, a distinction without a difference. At least to someone like Harrison.
“This is disturbing information, Mallory. As I’m sure you can imagine.”
Yeah, she bets he likes imagining it. And with that thought, her fear is replaced by irritation.
“Well, Patricia, I hope you also told him that I didn’t take my clothes off onstage.” Then, to Harrison. “I was just there helping a friend—filling in.”
Harrison leans forward, placing his hands on the desk with his palms flat.
“Mallory, perhaps I need to explain this to you, although one would think this would be self-evident: Reed Warner is one of the oldest law firms in this country. We service billion-dollar corporations. This firm has employed Vanderbilts, Astors, and Rockefellers. We are awarded the business of companies like Koomson—who provide us with millions in billings each year, because of our reputation and our pedigree. Are you following me?”
“Yes,” Mallory says.
“How do you think Paul McGowan, CEO of Koomson, would feel knowing that one of the employees on his team is a sex worker?”
A sex worker? He can’t be serious. And as for Koomson—a company that manufactured toxic paint—they’re in no position to be the morality police.
“I am not a sex worker. Look, with all due respect, I understand that you’re not happy about me being at that club, but I object to the way you’re categorizing it.”
“How do you think Anderson Blount, opposing counsel, would ‘categorize’ it in court?”
Mallory slumps back in her seat. She knows she shouldn’t say anything, that the impulse to fill the silence is a bad one. And yet she says, “So if it’s such a bad reflection on the firm, why was Patricia at the club?”
Take that, bee-atch.
Harrison sighs deeply, as if the labor of the conversation is almost too much to take.
“Ms. Loomis was at the club because she was informed you would be there. She was incredulous, of course, but knowing what a sensitive matter this was if it turned out to be true, she took her extremely valuable time to see for herself before leveling such serious allegations against a member of this firm.”
“Someone told you? Who?” Mallory says, turning to face Patricia directly for the first time since stepping into Harrison’s office.
“I don’t know who. I took a call from someone looking for you, who said your voicemail was full but had to get you the urgent message to …
” She unfolded a piece of paper in her lap.
“Quote, ‘not forget her pasties again. The club can’t risk getting busted if she shows her tits again,’ unquote.
And when I inquired where I might catch your performance, your colleague was kind enough to inform me. ”
Poppy. Wow. She knew she didn’t like her, or was jealous, or whatever her issue was. But she never imagined she was capable of something so devious.
“Security will escort you out,” Harrison said. “Your office is being boxed up and your belongings will be sent via messenger. Do you have any questions?”
“Just one.” She turns to Patricia. “Did you enjoy the show?”
“Do you find this amusing?” Patricia says.
“‘Amusing’ isn’t the word I’d use.”
“Oh? And what word would you use?”
“Svoboda.” Mallory stands up. Maybe Poppy did her a favor.
For the first time in her life, she is free.
The bravado Mallory showed in Harrison’s office lasts approximately three minutes.
By the time she reaches the subway she’s in tears.
Her only consolation is that she doesn’t have to go home and admit this debacle to Alec.
Instead, knowing Julie’s boss is away, she sends her a text and goes straight to the midtown office tower.
Julie works for a powerful book editor. Her boss is often out of town, joining famous authors at their readings or taking them up on invitations to visit the sets of the film adaptations of their books, or traveling to book fairs in London and Frankfurt.
Mallory signs in with security. I wonder what he’d think if he knew security had just escorted me out of a building.
“So what happened?” Julie says, pulling her into her boss’s vacant office and closing the door.
They’re surrounded by shelves full of books, and Mallory spots a row of one of the company’s recent bestsellers.
Usually, she loves visiting Julie at work.
Being surrounded by her favorite authors’ work is thrilling.
Julie always gives her a few free copies. But today, there’s no frivolity.
“This isn’t because of the bar exam, is it?” Julie says, closing her boss’s office door.
“I wish,” Mallory says. “Are you sure we can sit in here?”
“Yes. Stop stalling and spill it.”
“Okay, here it goes.” She gives the unabridged version of the events—including her theory that Poppy got her busted.
The appalled look on Julie’s face is not comforting.
“Mal, this might seem like an obvious question—but what possessed you to do that?”
“Go onstage? I don’t know. I was curious, I guess. And it was fun. Or at least it would have been if my boss hadn’t shown up.”
“Okay, this is what we need to do: We’re going to call Allison and get her new hotshot boyfriend who is majorly connected in this city to get you a job at a new firm. I’m sure he has some favor he can call in.”
Mallory shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know? Don’t worry about it—that’s the way things happen. It’s not a big deal.”
“I mean I don’t know if getting another legal job is what I should do. Maybe this is a sign.”
“Yeah, a sign you should stop hanging out with those crazy dancers before you ruin your life!”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“How can you say that? In the two weeks you’ve been hanging out at the Blue Angel, you and Alec have broken up, and you’ve lost your job. Even I can do that math.”
Mallory shakes her head. “There were problems with Alec and with my job before I ever set foot in the Blue Angel. I just didn’t recognize it.”
“Well, now you do and it’s time to fix them. So go to my apartment, get your résumé in order—we’ll ask Allison how to deal with this Reed Warner fiasco because she’s good with strategic thinking—and get some sleep. You look like shit.”
Mallory’s phone rings. Alec!
She put her fingers to her lips for Julie to be silent and answers, heart pounding.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey. How are you?” he says, and the sound of his voice is like a balm for her soul.
“I’m okay. How are you?”
“Okay. I got your messages. Sorry it took me a while to get back to you. I’ve just been thinking a lot.”
“Me too,” she says, suddenly missing him so badly it’s almost a physical pang.
“We should talk,” he says.
She nods, remembers he can’t see her, and says, “I’d like that.”
“Can you come home after work?”
After work. Oh, what has she done?
“Um, sure. See you later.”
She puts her phone back in her bag and looks at Julie.
“What did he say?” Julie asks.
“He wants to talk.”
“Why do you look so upset? I thought you were dying to talk to him.”
“I was … I am. But now on top of everything else I have to tell him about getting fired.”
“Alec loves you, Mallory. He’ll understand.”
She’s not so sure. But then, she’s not sure of anything anymore.