Read Online The House Girl by Tara Conklin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Tara Conklin
Ads: Link
the other junior associates circled, sharp-eyed and wary. But Garrison’s calm chattiness seemed removed from all of that, as though he had worked out his own set of rules for navigating Clifton. Yes, maybe she could grow to like him.
Lina turned and headed toward the elevator bank. The layout of every floor at Clifton & Harp was the same. The secretaries, paralegals, and assistants sat in a warren of cubicle space located in the center of any given floor. The lawyers resided along the building’s perimeter in square-box offices with doors that closed and one wall of floor-to-ceiling window that opened them up to sunshine and vertigo. Like a gnat on an SUV windshield, that’s how Lina had felt when she first walked into her office. Like if she chanced too close to the glass wall, she would tumble noiselessly out into open air.
Lina exited the elevator and walked the east corridor toward her office. To her left, the secretaries buzzed and clacked and sipped. The secretaries were an exotic, unfathomable breed, prone to wearing elasticized waistbands and acrylic fingernails that clattered in a high-pitched musical way across a keyboard. The secretaries never asked questions. They deciphered the lawyers’ scrawl as best they could, settled into their ergonomically correct workstations, suspended all independent thought, all personal convictions, and typed.
To Lina’s right, half-open office doors allowed her glimpses of heads bowed over papers or fixed tightly to the glow of a computer screen or cradling a gray telephone headset between shoulder and ear. A whispery quiet prevailed. The wall outside each associate’s office was adorned with a black plastic placard grooved in style-free white lettering that announced the resident of each particular zone, good solid names like Helen, Louise, Ted, James, Amanda, Blake. Lina’s ex-boyfriend Stavros had interviewed at Clifton but had not received an offer, an event that had seemed mystifying and tragic for a few short weeks but that Lina now considered to be for the best. Stavros had gone to a small intellectual property firm in San Francisco and seemed happy there—at least that’s what he’d said in the two e-mails he’d sent since starting work last fall. None of Lina’s law school friends had ended up at Clifton either; most were at other firms in New York though she rarely saw them. Everyone was hectic, overextended with cases, deals, billable-hour targets. Although born and raised in New York, Lina often felt now like a solitary newcomer to a thrilling, strange city, the City of Law.
Lina arrived back at her office. The perpetually poised Meredith was speaking loudly about hedging the yen, her voice echoing out of her office and down the hall. Sherri, Lina’s secretary, perched in her cubicle wearing a fluffy yellow sweater and large hoop earrings; she appeared to be reading the newspaper. Sherri’s dark hair flounced over her forehead and ears and down her back in a series of complicated layers and curls, a thing so large and effortful that Sherri’s head seemed more a display case for the hair than the hair an accessory to the head. Sherri was secretary to five other lawyers, all senior to Lina. Lina never asked much of Sherri, only to answer Lina’s phone when she wanted to avoid speaking to someone and, once, to proofread a two-page letter for typos. (Sherri had found none.)
“Oh, Lina,” Sherri called.
“Yes?” Lina paused by the entrance of Sherri’s cubicle zone.
“Two things. One, the Yankee broke up with Meredith!” This Sherri mock-whispered, one hand held to the side of her mouth. “Just this morning, first thing! You should have heard the cussing!” And here she was: gleeful Sherri, joyful and enthusiastic, brown eyes bright, cheeks aglow. Only in moments like these, when juicy office gossip was in desperate need of dissemination, did Sherri’s default posture of bored disinterest fall away. The secretaries had full access to the e-mail
Lina turned and headed toward the elevator bank. The layout of every floor at Clifton & Harp was the same. The secretaries, paralegals, and assistants sat in a warren of cubicle space located in the center of any given floor. The lawyers resided along the building’s perimeter in square-box offices with doors that closed and one wall of floor-to-ceiling window that opened them up to sunshine and vertigo. Like a gnat on an SUV windshield, that’s how Lina had felt when she first walked into her office. Like if she chanced too close to the glass wall, she would tumble noiselessly out into open air.
Lina exited the elevator and walked the east corridor toward her office. To her left, the secretaries buzzed and clacked and sipped. The secretaries were an exotic, unfathomable breed, prone to wearing elasticized waistbands and acrylic fingernails that clattered in a high-pitched musical way across a keyboard. The secretaries never asked questions. They deciphered the lawyers’ scrawl as best they could, settled into their ergonomically correct workstations, suspended all independent thought, all personal convictions, and typed.
To Lina’s right, half-open office doors allowed her glimpses of heads bowed over papers or fixed tightly to the glow of a computer screen or cradling a gray telephone headset between shoulder and ear. A whispery quiet prevailed. The wall outside each associate’s office was adorned with a black plastic placard grooved in style-free white lettering that announced the resident of each particular zone, good solid names like Helen, Louise, Ted, James, Amanda, Blake. Lina’s ex-boyfriend Stavros had interviewed at Clifton but had not received an offer, an event that had seemed mystifying and tragic for a few short weeks but that Lina now considered to be for the best. Stavros had gone to a small intellectual property firm in San Francisco and seemed happy there—at least that’s what he’d said in the two e-mails he’d sent since starting work last fall. None of Lina’s law school friends had ended up at Clifton either; most were at other firms in New York though she rarely saw them. Everyone was hectic, overextended with cases, deals, billable-hour targets. Although born and raised in New York, Lina often felt now like a solitary newcomer to a thrilling, strange city, the City of Law.
Lina arrived back at her office. The perpetually poised Meredith was speaking loudly about hedging the yen, her voice echoing out of her office and down the hall. Sherri, Lina’s secretary, perched in her cubicle wearing a fluffy yellow sweater and large hoop earrings; she appeared to be reading the newspaper. Sherri’s dark hair flounced over her forehead and ears and down her back in a series of complicated layers and curls, a thing so large and effortful that Sherri’s head seemed more a display case for the hair than the hair an accessory to the head. Sherri was secretary to five other lawyers, all senior to Lina. Lina never asked much of Sherri, only to answer Lina’s phone when she wanted to avoid speaking to someone and, once, to proofread a two-page letter for typos. (Sherri had found none.)
“Oh, Lina,” Sherri called.
“Yes?” Lina paused by the entrance of Sherri’s cubicle zone.
“Two things. One, the Yankee broke up with Meredith!” This Sherri mock-whispered, one hand held to the side of her mouth. “Just this morning, first thing! You should have heard the cussing!” And here she was: gleeful Sherri, joyful and enthusiastic, brown eyes bright, cheeks aglow. Only in moments like these, when juicy office gossip was in desperate need of dissemination, did Sherri’s default posture of bored disinterest fall away. The secretaries had full access to the e-mail
Similar Books
