Chapter 11
Eventually, it was time to leave, and despite how reluctant I had been in the very beginning about this meeting, I couldn’t help but admit that I was looking forward to seeing Judge Hillard. We went way back since my first case and have had many run-ins with each other since then that had demanded concessions to help the other out of one mess or another. So, he was a familiar face to stop by to see in his chambers in the building.
The unfamiliar face, however, I was currently having to deal with as I walked out of my office, was Hannah”s. She was at her desk this time around, which was a welcome change. She was, however, looking so worried and lost that for a moment I wondered what was wrong with her. She had the phone pressed to her ear and seemed to be flipping through stacks of folders across her desk. I wondered what she was looking for. I wanted to ask, but ultimately, and as was the plan, I ignored her and walked out.
George had told me of what he had assigned her to do, however, and as I recalled just how confused she looked, I wondered if she even knew anything about being a legal secretary, not to mention being my legal secretary. And so, before I headed over to the elevators, I decided to briefly stop by Gloria’s office. She was on her way to lunch, so she got up, put on her jacket, and in no time, we were walking side by side and headed down.
“What”s her experience?” I asked. “Which firms did she work for previously?”
“Hmm…” Gloria considered this, and at her prolonged hmm, I turned to her in shock.
“You brought a novice to my office?”
She couldn’t even meet my gaze.
“I swear to God I didn’t think it would be too much of a problem. We talked about it yesterday; she expressed her surprise that we had called her over for an interview so quickly, and then I was so eager to show her to you. You’d rejected everyone else, so I thought if you accepted her, then that would be good. She would need to learn for sure, but her experience is vast, and thus far, she has been able to adapt quickly.”
I couldn”t believe her words.
“I’m a named partner,” I said, and she nodded, squeezing her eyes shut.
“I know, I know, I know what”s at stake, but I was going to assign one of the other secretaries to help her out for a little bit and show her the ropes until she lands on her feet.”
“The others previously who got fired had experiences with being legal secretaries. But not only did you send someone who doesn”t have that to me, you also put a ban on me firing her for the next three months?”
She went silent.
“You know this takes away your leg to stand on, right?” I asked, and she sighed.
“I know, but you have to give me time. Give me a week to work with her and get her up to speed, and if she still sucks by then, then you can fire her.”
“Being a legal secretary is not a walk in the park. She can”t just-”
“I’ll assign someone permanently to her. Even if it takes her a year, as long as she works extremely hard, she”ll get the hang of it in no time, or at least know how to ask questions and quickly search for the information she needs.” As if on cue, the elevator arrived on the ground floor, and we both stepped out into the lobby.
“You really went haywire with this hire,” I said. “I just cannot understand why.”
“I don”t know either,” she said. “You just seemed to be a little drawn to her at the restaurant, and given your dissatisfaction thus far with every other secretary, I couldn’t help testing the waters with her.”
“Of course, you couldn’t,” I said, just as we strolled out of the building. “After all, I’m your constant case study for everything negative.”
“Not true,” she laughed, just as my car pulled up to the curb. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me, and I turned to Gloria.
“Since she’s such a novice in all of this, shouldn’t she be following me around and learning names and faces and everything else as much and as quickly as she can?”
She stopped in her tracks then and considered my suggestion for a moment.
“You’re right,” she said, and then she gave me an apologetic look. “She’ll be down in five minutes tops,” she said, “I’m placing the call to her right now.”
My natural inclination was to reject waiting and to reject her, yet as I closed my door, I realized that I wasn’t quite ready to leave just yet. I watched from the tinted windows as Gloria began to pace and speak rapidly on the phone. It indeed took less than five minutes for her to arrive as promised by Gloria, but by then, my patience was already wearing thin. And this was because, in the silence and given the time to think, I finally realized and had to admit to myself that I had done this to more or less see her and get to know her beyond her awkward and painful visits to my office.
Shaking my head, I released a heavy breath and thought of changing my mind. This was sure to torture her a bit more and increase her desire to leave on my own. But as I watched Gloria speak to her, I realized that she would see through this right away and would be incredibly displeased with me. And from experience, she was never able to hide her displeasure, so even if I was her boss, she only held back when it was needed.
Soon, there was a knock on the door, and I rolled down the window. Hannah went around, and then she too knocked on the door slightly.
“We’ve discussed things,” she told me. “I’ll assign her to someone as soon as you two get back.”
“Alright,” I nodded and turned to see that she was once again doing that overly polite thing where she wouldn’t enter a space until she was explicitly and loudly told to. It especially made no sense now and annoyed me even further because we had invited her here, so why was she hesitating?
I gave Gloria an irritated look, which she immediately understood. In response, she said something to Hannah, and the door was pulled down. She got in, and although I tried to bemoan her presence in the space with me, I couldn’t help but admit that I liked the effect her flowery scent brought to the otherwise usual tobacco and coffee scent of the car. She smelled clean and sweet, and once again, it brought me back to the time in the shower when I had come to think about her. I wanted to do it, truly; the desire I had been trying my hardest to suppress once again arose. It was all me, and so in order to keep my hands to myself, I turned around and focused my gaze on the vibrant city outside as we drove.