Prodigal

by T M Heron

  But even worse, underneath it, the look she’s giving me, there’s a lack of respect. It’s subtle, but it’s there. I find myself having to hold back from slamming her with a backhander.

  Maybe she’s contemptuous that I’ve been involved in a skirmish with a small woman and come out on the lesser side? That would be understandable, almost forgivable.

  She’s dialing on her mobile and I realize she’s saying something about calling the police. She’s finally on my side. But this is the absolute worst scenario imaginable.

  “No, don’t call the police. I’m too busy. I don’t have time for this,” I say. “Besides, it’s none of your business.”

  “Your arm,” she says.

  I look at my arm and sure enough it’s hemorrhaging away.

  “I have an appointment at Bakers,” she says. “Come up to reception. They can sort something out.”

  “I’m with Bakers,” I tell her.

  But I feel a little angry or disappointed for some reason that she’s prepared to pass me off onto someone else so readily.

  We ride the elevator up in silence. I’m still bleeding through my shirt like a stuck pig and my leg doesn’t feel so great. I’ve forgotten to eat lunch. I have clients turning up in half an hour. This woman I want to violate yet whose sympathy I suddenly want has all but forgotten me. And if I ever run into that girl again who attacked me from out of the blue, she’ll wish she was dead.

  4

  By 2 p.m. I am back at my desk. Pristine in another suit I keep at work for occasions nothing like this one. My arm stings and my leg throbs but someone in HR has done an excellent job of bandaging both. My 2 p.m. appointment, the Archers, are one minute off being late.

  The Archers own a large chain of budget motels that are doing very well. They have heard a rumor that an American outfit is seeking to buy them out, along with another similar motel chain that is operating successfully throughout Australasia. The Archers plan to purchase as much of the second motel chain as they can, then ratchet up the overall price to the Americans.

  They are not yet a Bakers client. But our pitch, pretty much all done by me, virtually guarantees they will be. Our previous work in this industry is better than any other firm I can think of. Our mergers and acquisitions division is one of the most prestigious in the city.

  As I sit and think about this it strikes me yet again that I’m bringing more work into Bakers than some of the partners. I’m an exception. Based on what I’m bringing in I should be a partner.

  As long as I’m a mere senior associate someone else is reaping the rewards for the new work I bring in. It eats away at me. I’m a casualty of my own brilliance. I have to mentally shake myself out of it just to be in a civil state of mind for the Archers.

  At 2.15 p.m. Jo shows George and Lillian Archer into my office. With clients around Jo is all solicitousness and congeniality, just how you’d expect a fat, plain woman in her mid-forties to be.

  I talk them through the pitch document. In particular, the fee structure, which George is having a hard time coming to terms with. Ironic given the millions we are about to earn him but not atypical of wealthy people. Not a huge problem, either, as any top-tier firm pitching for this job will have identical charge-out rates.

  The watery winter sun filters through the window behind me, warm on my back. It’s probably shining directly in the Archers’ eyes, which means I’ll be looking like a silhouette. This doesn’t particularly bother me, given George is pissing me off with his petty preoccupation with fees. You don’t walk through the doors of a law firm in this city without expecting to feel at least a little overcharged. It’s probably not a good firm if you do.

  George’s monologue is interrupted by a tap on the door. Jo walks in carrying an embellished silver tray with coffees and teas and all kinds of edible delicacies.

  Then, from out of bloody nowhere, the girl from the parking lot earlier this morning bursts past Jo and into my office. She halts wild-eyed and hyperventilating in front of me.

  I have an involuntary moment of primal fear where I forget I’m in my office and that help is nearby, as every cell in my body remembers the screwdriver she buried in my thigh and the knife slicing through my arm. Then a streak of fury runs through me, more related to the fear than the fact she’s just burst into my office in front of clients.

  “Rapist!” she suddenly starts screaming. “Rapist! Rapist! Rapist!”

  I stumble up, knocking over my chair in my haste to get to her. Then as I hurry towards her, she braces herself, draws back her arms, and hurls something at me. Instinctively my arms fly up to protect my face as I wait for the inevitable pain of connection.

  Instead I feel myself surrounded by a strange but familiar chemical smell. It’s paint. It flows over me like warm oil. Through thick black fronds of paint, I see both Archers sitting frozen in horror. But they are perfectly safe. The girl took good aim and the only person covered from head to toe in paint is me. And the wall behind me. And the floor around me.

  Jo does not come to my aid in any way. She just stands watching.

  The girl goes to run, and I grab at her arm. The paint is slippery, and I have no traction. I want to get a more secure hold on her but with the Archers as an audience I can’t exactly take her in a headlock. She yanks her arm free and tries for the door again. I jerk her back by her jacket, which comes off in my hand.

  “Somebody, help!” yells Mr. Archer. He crouches down to tend to Mrs. Archer who has now wedged herself on the floor between the wall and my desk as if we’ve been invaded by the Armed Offenders Squad.

  “I’ll call Security,” says Jo in no particular hurry.

  Security is the last thing I want. If they interview this girl and she knows what I think she knows . . .

  “Don’t call Security, I’ve got it,” I snap, and lunge once again at this bitch who is trying to ruin my life. Then I twist my ankle and slip on the paint, falling heavily and taking out a chrome corner of my godforsaken modern desk with my head on the way down.

  ◆◆◆

  It’s an hour later and I’ve showered and been relocated to the office of an associate from another division who is on maternity leave. Her office is much smaller than mine which in no way makes up for what I have gone through to discover this. It doesn’t have a window, and although her PC is a more recent model than mine it’s also smaller.

  But she’s the sort of employee the decorators were thinking about when they changed our traditional gentlemen’s club décor into something more ‘modern.’ She has taken the genderless chrome-and-glass minimalistic look and made it her own.

  There’s a photo on the desk of her husband, a horsey-looking man with a slightly wall eye. And another cheap photo booth shot of two children who’ve both had the great misfortune to inherit their father’s eye. I briefly curse the short-sightedness of anyone clever enough to specialize in intellectual property who then procreates with a man with such an obvious defect.

  Maintenance, or whatever that department is called, is cleaning my office. Anthony Hartman, the managing partner, is soothing the Archers. And I’m now dressed in tennis whites although I’ve told Jo to call the Renouf Centre and cancel my evening game. The lump on my forehead looked in the mirror as if I’ve been on the wrong end of a bar fight and although I shouldn’t, I can’t stop touching it.

  The story of the paint attack will be right round the firm by now and I’m certain that Jo is having to restrain herself from calling the Dominion Post. This day is, and probably will remain, the highlight of her career.

  The door opens and Henry Finch walks in. Finch is head partner of our public-sector division. He’s a slightly built, very ordinary-looking man with zero x-factor. Probably because of, rather than despite, these variables Finch’s client list reads like a who’s who of government departments. If they’re a large government department heaving at the reins of a short-sighted politically driven management team with millions of dollars for a compensatory consulting budget
, they’re a client of Finch, and they use Bakers.

  Finch’s family has been with Bakers since the firm’s inception. His grandmother was a Baker before she married and upgraded to being a Finch. To add insult to injury, Finch is from an old and prominent family. His grandfather on the other side was knighted by the Queen herself. So despite his outward appearance and total lack of personality, Finch behaves like royalty.

  Finch wears what looks like a $300 suit. It’s grey and likely to be the suit he wore on his first day with Bakers twenty years ago. I guess we’re lucky he doesn’t turn up in a brown cardigan and matching zip-ups. Despite his utter devotion to our firm I resent Finch. Prominent family aside, he is a cheap stain of tastelessness and mediocrity on the superior Bakers brand.

  “Security didn’t get the paint lady,” he says.

  “‘Lady’ is a stretch,” I say. “But it’s got nothing to do with Security. It’s a personal matter.”

  “Not when it happens here. We can’t have that sort of thing happening here.” He glances at the framed photo on the desk and gives me a strange look as if it’s my photo and my lop-faced husband and my wall-eyed children. “We need to know if there’s any basis for it.”

  “There’s no basis whatsoever,” I say dismissively. “It was a misunderstanding.”

  I badly want to touch the lump on my forehead. My fingers seem to gravitate to it. My face. The thought of it being damaged scatters my thoughts.

  I want Finch to leave. Who the hell does he think he is turning up like this?

  “Nothing that can come back and bite us?” Finch looks at the photos again.

  I realize he doesn’t care if I’ve raped the girl (which I haven’t), just whether anything resulting from it could bring his precious Bakers into an unwanted spotlight.

  My stomach curdles with disgust at him, his dreary life, his ball-breakingly boring clients, and his cheap old suit. I’d like to pick up his milky-soft little hand and slowly squeeze it until small bones start snapping. That would relieve some tension.

  “Get out, Finch,” I say instead. “I’m not answerable to you.”

  Finch stands at the door and throws one final insult before he leaves: “It’s just as well you’ll never make partner.”

  “Partnership is only viewed as a pinnacle by those with limited lives,” I reply.

  Before the door is even shut behind him my hand flies straight up to my forehead to re-examine the bruise. It feels bigger and I’m not sure that all the touching hasn’t caused the already damaged skin to break.

  I look at the desk photos and it’s almost as if they are complicit in this whole set up that’s making me look so bad. I pick the larger one up, of the two children and snap it in two. Then I hear someone else outside the door and hurriedly stuff it into my tennis bag.

  Anthony Hartman walks in and his eyes go naturally to the tennis bag I am hastily zipping up. “Leaving?” he asks.

  “Not even close,” I say.

  Anthony is head partner of corporate division as well as managing partner of the entire firm. Unlike Finch he has every right to be here demanding an explanation.

  Anthony is the kind of partner I deserve to be. Like me, he epitomizes the Bakers brand. He’s drinking buddies with the mayor and related to the Police Commissioner and has connections beyond most men’s wildest dreams. I’ve heard the rumors, though, of Anthony when he was younger. His liaisons with summer clerks. His wife finding out and doing nothing. His mistress finding out and confronting him in the foyer.

  “How are the Archers?” I say.

  “Irretrievable,” says Anthony. But in an un-accusatory manner. “Shame. Packer was already doing the numbers.”

  “Packer should probably try and bring in some of his own new clients then,” I say sharply before I can stop myself.

  I’m in no position to be talking like this at this precise moment but Leo Packer is the partner directly above me. The one getting fat on all the new clients I’ve brought into the firm. It’s the same bone of contention I was gnawing on while waiting for the Archers to arrive.

  Bakers has an “eat what you kill” profit-distribution mechanism. After a certain level of profit-sharing, additional profits are allocated to the partner who originally brought in the client. Only, because I’m not a partner, all the new clients I bring in are assigned to Leo Packer. The only thing that can fix this for me is partnership.

  “I hear you,” says Anthony. “You know what you have to do to fix it.”

  He means I know what I need to do to make partner.

  And I do know. I’ve always known. It’s something totally undoable. And so I’ve never aimed for partnership. Instead I swan around being the wildest cash cow our firm has ever known and infuriating people like Finch.

  Anthony sits down where Finch sat, only he fills the whole chair. Looks at the desk. “You know I never did like what they did with the re-vamp,” he says. “All this glass. Someday someone’s going to fall through one of these desks and get hurt.” Then he looks directly at my head. “What the hell went on in there today?”

  I shake my head, which hurts. Look away and laugh softly. “This is a bloody ridiculous situation.”

  Anthony nods.

  “I met her at a French Sector party,” I say.

  Anthony’s eyes widen. “You go to those things?”

  “When I was single.”

  The story develops easily. I relax back in my chair, hopefully looking convincingly relieved now that I’ve decided to tell all. “We didn’t hook up at the party, but she followed me home.” I sigh and allow a look of embarrassment to cross my face.

  Anthony swallows.

  “It was only ever going to be a one-off. But . . .”

  Anthony waits. I think he’s stopped breathing. He wants details, but because I’m so “appropriate” I’ll supply only a sketchy outline. He can embellish the rest in his head. Often things are better that way.

  “So, the next morning,” I continue smoothly, “when I reinforce the fleeting nature of our tryst, she tears up half my kitchen and tells me I’m going to pay. She says she never would have slept with me if she’d thought it was a one-night stand. Which makes what happened rape.”

  I exhale, and I think so does Anthony.

  “Now she won’t leave me alone.” I shrug. “Maybe I should take out a protection order for here?”

  Anthony shakes his head. “Not necessary. We’ll make sure Security keeps her well away. But what happened, with the two of you, is something we’ll have to explain to the cops if she pushes charges.”

  “Pushes charges? At me?” I realize too late I’m almost shouting. “Has she gone to the cops?”

  Anthony interprets my alarm as righteous anger. “We don’t know what she did afterwards. Security were attending other matters and she got away. Jo logged it with them much later. But don’t worry if she goes to the cops. It’ll never stick,” he says calmly. “I’ll have a word with my brother-in-law. This won’t go anywhere.”

  “It’s great you’re tight the Commissioner,” I say. “But I’d prefer to keep this as low-key as possible. I don’t want my girlfriend to hear.”

  “We’ll take care of that. It never happened.”

  Anthony is one hundred percent confident now. He has an explanation and yet another great story about me for the national partners’ mid-year conference.

  I, on the other hand, am deeply troubled. What does this girl know? Because of course she’ll tell the cops. But why hasn’t she told them yet? The most vexing question of all. And just whose fault is it that this thing has blown up into such a big deal? Why Jo’s, of course, for logging it with Security.

  Anthony shakes his head and stands up. “You should go home. You’ve had one hell of a day. The Archers, well, that’s plain unfortunate.”

  “I’ll get them back,” I say. “I can still land them.”

  “They’re patrons of Women’s Refuge,” says Anthony. “They just watched a woman accuse you of being a
rapist. You don’t have a snowball’s chance.” He stops with his hand on the brushed-chrome doorknob. “Leo’s on teleconference but I imagine he’ll want a word when he’s done.”

  He stands in the doorway oozing confidence and capability. “I get where you’re at with Leo and the new work you’re bringing in.”

  I just about lose it. Normally I manage these situations well. But after everything that’s happened today, then Finch rarking me up, and now the thought of Packer doing the same thing? Men so inferior. I’m about to self-detonate but I rein myself in and the words come out cold. As though they’ve been squeezed through half a kilometer of frozen pipe.

  “Senior associates in my position should get a profit share like partners do,” I say. “I’m making the firm more money than a lot of them.”

  Anthony nods. “I know.”

  I sit simmering and for a long moment Anthony says nothing. Then he says, “I don’t understand why you don’t want to make partner.”

  ‘I don’t need the bullshit that goes with it.”

  This is a lie. But I became reconciled to the variable that will prevent me from making partner a long time ago. Now all I want is to be paid as much as the partners, for the amount of new work I bring in.

  “There’s no bullshit. All we ask is that you bring Harry Ray on board.”

  And there it is. The variable. It’s never been said outright before, but it’s always been there in the background. Festering away.

  Anthony smiles. He’s textbook-handsome in his Working Style shirt with the platinum cufflinks pulling back just enough sleeve to show a bit of forearm, tanned even in winter. He exudes intelligence and credibility, and his smile alone has probably won Bakers millions in fees.

  “I shouldn’t have to do that to be offered something I’ve already earned.”

  And this is why I actively show a lack of interest in the partnership I so badly want. I’m not going to have this impossible condition dangled over me. I stare at the desk in front of me.