Judith Tarr: Household Gods

It was going to feel wonderful to tell him she was a partner now. Even if -

She quelled the little stab of anxiety. He had to keep paying child support, as much as he ever did. That was in the divorce decree. She was a lawyer — a partner in a moderately major firm. She could make it stick.

The clock on the wall ticked the minutes away. At ten twenty-five she started a letter, hesitated, counted up the minutes remaining, saved the letter on the hard drive and stood up, smoothing wrinkles out of her skirt. She checked her pantyhose. On straight, no runs — thanks to whichever god oversaw the art of dressing for success. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, and forayed out past Cyndi’s desk. “I’m going to see Mr. Rosenthal,” she said — nice and steady, she was pleased to note. Cyndi grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.

Nicole took the stairs to the seventh floor. Some people walked all the way up every day; others exercised on the stairs during breaks and at lunch.

Nicole never had understood that, not in a climate that made you happy to go outside the whole year round — even on days when the smog was thick enough to asphyxiate a non-smog-adapted organism. People who’d been born in L.A. didn’t know when they were well off.

She stood in the hallway for a minute and a half, so she could walk into Sheldon Rosenthal’s office at ten-thirty on the dot. It was an exercise in discipline, and a chance to pull herself together. She thought about ducking into a restroom, but that would have meant heading back down to the sixth floor: she didn’t — yet — have the key to the partners’ washroom. Her makeup would have to look after itself. Her bladder would hold on till the meeting was over.

Then, after what felt like a week and a half, it was time. She licked her dry lips, stiffened her spine, and walked through the mock-oak-paneled door with its discreet brass plaque: Sheldon Rosenthal, Esq., it said. That was all. No title. No ostentation. Noble self-restraint.

That restraint was, in its peculiar way, as much in evidence inside as out. Of course the office was a lot more lavishly appointed than anything down on her floor: acres of deep expensive carpet, gleaming glass, dark wood, law books bound in red and gold. But it was all in perfect taste, not overdone. It was a perk, that was all, a symbol. Here, it said, was the founding partner of the firm. Naturally he’d surround himself with order and comfort, quiet and expense, rather than the cheap carpet and tacky veneer of the salaried peon.

Lucinda Jackson looked up from the keyboard of — of all things — an IBM Selectric. Not for her anything as newfangled as a computer. She was a light-skinned black woman, the exact shade of good coffee well lightened with cream. She might have been fifty or she might have been seventy. One thing Nicole did know: she’d been with Mr. Rosenthal forever.

“He still has the client in there, Ms. Gunther-Perrin,” she said. Her voice was cultured, soft, almost all traces of the Deep South excised as if by surgery. “Why don’t you sit down? He’ll see you as soon as he can.”

Nicole nodded and sank into a chair so plush, she had real doubts that she’d be able to climb out of it. Her eyes went to the magazines on the table next to it, but she didn’t take one. She didn’t want to have to slap it shut all of a sudden when she received the summons to the inner office.

Twenty minutes slid by. Nicole tried to look as if she didn’t mind that her life — not to mention her day’s work — had been put on hold. When she was a partner, she would be more careful of her schedule. She wouldn’t keep a fellow partner waiting.

At last, with an effect rather like the parting of the gates of heaven in a Fifties movie epic, the door to the inner office opened. Someone her mother had watched on TV came out. “Thanks a million, Shelly,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m glad it’s in good hands. Say hi to Ruth for me.” He waggled his fingers at Lucinda and walked past Nicole as if she’d been invisible.

She was almost too bemused to feel slighted. Shelly? She couldn’t imagine anyone calling Sheldon Rosenthal Shelly. Certainly no one in the firm did — not even the other senior partners.

“Go on in, Ms. Gunther-Perrin,” Lucinda said, at the same time as Rosenthal said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“It’s all right,” Nicole said, carefully heaving herself up and out of that engulfing chair. It wasn’t all right, not really, but she told herself it was — the way hazing is, a kind of rite of passage. And after all, what could she do? Complain to his boss?

Rosenthal held the door open so that she could enter his sanctum. He looked like what he was: a Jewish lawyer — thin and thoughtful type, not fat and friendly — in his mid-sixties, out of the ordinary only in that he wore a neat gray chin beard. He waved her to a chair. “Please — make yourself comfortable.” Before she could sit down, however, he pointed to the Mr. Coffee on a table by the window. “Help yourself, if you like.”

The mug on his desk was half full. Nicole decided to take him up on his offer — a show of solidarity, as it were; her first cup of coffee as a partner in the firm. She filled one of the styrofoam cups by the coffee machine. When she tasted, her eyebrows leaped upward. “Is that Blue Mountain?” she asked.

“You’re close.” He smiled. “It’s Kalossi Celebes. A lot of people think it’s just as good, and you don’t have to rob a bank to buy it.”

As if you need to rob a bank, Nicole thought. Her office window looked out on the street, and on the office building across it. His offered a panorama of the hills that gave Woodland Hills its name. He had a mansion up in those hills; she’d been there for holiday parties. Serious money in the Valley lived south of Ventura Boulevard, the farther south, the more serious. Sheldon Rosenthal lived a long way south of Ventura.

He made a couple of minutes of small talk while she sipped the delicious coffee, then said, “The analysis you and Mr. Ogarkov prepared of the issues involved in the Butler Ranch project was an excellent piece of work.”

There. Now. Nicole armed herself to be polite, as polite as humanly possible. Memories of Indiana childhood, white gloves and patent-leather shoes (white only between Memorial Day and Labor Day, never either before or after), waylaid her for a moment. Out of them, she said in her best company voice, “Thank you very much.”

“An excellent piece of work,” Rosenthal repeated, as if she hadn’t spoken. “On the strength of it, I offered Mr. Ogarkov a partnership in the firm this morning, an offer he has accepted.”

“Yes. I know. I saw him downstairs when I was coming in.” Nicole wished she hadn’t said that; it reminded the founding partner how late she’d been. Her heart pounded. Now it’s my turn. Let me show what I can do, and two years from now Gary will be eating my dust.

Rosenthal’s long, skinny face grew longer and skinnier. “Ms. Gunther-Perrin, I very much regret to inform you that only one partnership was available. After consultation with the senior partners, I decided to offer it to Mr. Ogarkov.”

Nicole started to say, Thank you. Her tongue had already slipped between her teeth when the words that he had said — the real words, not the words she had expected and rehearsed for — finally sank in. She stared at him. There he sat, calm, cool, machinelike, prosperous. There was not a word in her anywhere. Not a single word.

“I realize this must be a disappointment for you. ‘ Sheldon Rosenthal had no trouble talking. Why should he? His career, his life, hadn’t just slammed into the side of a mountain and burst into flames. “Do please understand that we are quite satisfied with your performance and happy to retain you in your present salaried position.”