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smackenzieVal gave him a thumb's-up and headed off to his own desk. He hadn't been lying about needing to prepare himself for whatever Catherine wanted.
He didn't run into Catherine between Aidan's desk and his, which meant he had time to settle in, turn on his computer, and check his email. Whatever part of the network was down, or whatever the IT guys were doing, it hadn't affected him as far as he could tell, because there was the usual collection of first-thing-in-the-morning email, a lot of which didn't really need his attention. Internal emails tended to be brushed with a faint sheen of paranoia and ass-covering, so in any given batch of mail, you were guaranteed a high number of messages you'd been copied or blind-copied on for no other reason than the sender needed everyone to know he or she had sent them. And Caswell Velez Malcolm and Simonson was not a small firm, so there was a lot of unnecessary mail traveling to people's inboxes.
Val felt like he had to at least skim everything, though, just in case. He didn't want to miss the one important email because he'd thought it was just inter-office spam. There was also an outside chance his mom would forget he'd told her not to send him personal mail to his work address, and write him a long chatty email he'd have to read. The IT guys had put some heavy-duty filters on all the firm's computers to try and prevent this kind of thing from happening - the partners were convinced that every minute someone was online doing something not work related was a wasted, unbillable minute, so a lot of web sites were blocked - but you couldn't filter out your mom using the law firm's email address to send you personal email.
Val got most of the way through the morning's nitpicky administrative stuff before Catherine appeared at his desk looking annoyed. Although, to be fair, she usually looked annoyed when dealing with someone lower down in the firm hierarchy.
"Didn't Maggie tell you I was looking for you?" she asked.
"She did," he said.
"So why didn't you come looking for me?" Thankfully, before Val could think of a good answer - even though there really was no good answer - she went on. "Greg's been moved to my case so you don't have to worry about doing his work any more. Theo can ask someone else. You're on my team for the foreseeable future."
Which meant Val would be doing a lot of heavy lifting and not getting any credit. He wondered who else Catherine had cornered into assisting on her case, and then he wondered if she'd only gotten the one job, or if she was working several cases at once. He wasn't sure he was interested in helping on everything she was involved in.
On the other hand, he hadn't liked working with Greg either - Greg was an asshole and expected you to be able to read his mind, because he thought he was too important to have to explain himself to lowly law clerks - and now it sounded like Catherine was the primary lawyer on this case and Greg was just assisting her, which meant Val would ultimately be taking orders from her, which meant he might be able to ignore Greg. And that was a plus.
He hoped there was some way he could still assist Theo, though, and the other lawyer he'd been working with, an older guy named Ira. Ira was very low-maintenance as a supervisor and trusted you to be able to do what he needed you to do without him having to either hang over your shoulder or give you excessively detailed instructions.
"You and Chad are researching for me today," Catherine went on. "I sent you an email with the cases I need information on and examples of the kinds of decisions I want. I need everything summarized and organized by date, with the most recent first."
"Ok." Val started scrolling through his inbox to find any emails from her that might contain these instructions, so he could (theoretically at least) print out whatever it was she needed him to find.
"Now, Val," she snapped. "Tell Chad as well."
Val heaved an internal sigh. "Ok. I'll go find him."
Catherine stood there and waited for him to close down the email program on his computer and get out of his chair before she walked away. At least she wasn't planning to follow him around until he'd found Chad and gone to the firm's library.
Chad was talking to one of the secretaries, a pretty blonde girl who was giggling at something he'd said to her when Val found them.
"Did Catherine talk to you?" Val asked.
"Nope," Chad said. "Was she supposed to?"
"She has work for us."
"'Us'?"
"Yeah. You and me. Research. In the library. With the... uh... highlighter. Pen. Copy machine."
Chad sighed a put-upon sigh.
"I have things to do anyway," said the secretary.
"We'll do lunch," Chad told her, winking. Val tried not to roll his eyes. Chad wasn't a bad guy but he was kind of a slacker, and if there was a pretty blonde girl within fifty feet of him, he'd find her and flirt with her, especially if she was blonde.
(Val wondered if Chad was just on the prowl for girls who looked like female versions of himself, because he was the only person he was really attracted to. "So, what," Aidan had said when Val mentioned it to him, "Chad having sex is just disguised masturbation?" Val had shrugged and said maybe, yeah, that's all it was.)
Chad made them take a detour past his desk because he thought he'd left his phone there - he hadn't - and then they had to take another detour through the kitchen because Chad wanted a muffin, and then Val realized he'd never printed out Catherine's email with her no doubt highly detailed instructions of what they were supposed to look up and how she wanted the material presented to her, so he and Chad swung by his desk so he could do that. Someone had dropped off a binder with a Post-It that said "Read this. Might be useful. Ira" stuck to the front.
"You're still working with him?" Chad asked.
"Who?" Val answered, scrolling through the approximately seventy billion emails that had appeared in his inbox in the past twenty minutes.
"Ira. I thought he'd retired."
"No, he's still here." He scanned the email Catherine had sent. "Catherine wants a lot from us." Not that this was any surprise.
"Well, maybe you...."
"She asked you to help her too," Val said. "The email's printing. Work's waiting. Let's go."
"I hate Mondays," Chad sighed, following Val down the hallway towards the library.
The internal library at Caswell Velez Malcolm and Simonson was packed with reference books and binders. Once upon a time, or so Val had been told, there was also a microfiche machine and folders full of microfiche so you could look up case law and verdicts and opinions from practically the turn of the century, but now a lot of that was either online or reproduced and reprinted (probably at great expense) in thick volumes bound in dark red with "Caswell Velez Malcolm and Simonson library" bookplates.
Val started pulling books and binders and looking up cases with Chad's help, but after about an hour Chad gave up with "I can do this shit from my desk."
"Do the first half," Val said almost absently, wishing he'd brought some Post-Its to mark the relevant passages that Catherine wanted. He wasn't looking forward to hauling all these books to the nearest copy machine to make her copies.
Chad took Val's printout of Catherine's email and wrote "C" next to half the decisions she wanted information on. "I'll do these," he said. "Don't forget to eat." And he left.
Three and a half hours later, Chad was back, sticking his head into the library and telling Val "Hey, dude, your lunch date's looking for you."
"My what?" Val suddenly realized he was hungry. "What time is it?"
"Lunch time. Aidan said you had a date." He leered.
"He has a girlfriend."
"So? Maybe he wants a bit on the side."
There was no response to that that would shut Chad up, so Val didn't even bother. He did mark his place in the book he was reading, though, and try to make a neat stack of the information he'd gathered so far. He wrote "DO NOT TOUCH" on a spare piece of copy paper and put it on top of the stack, then stood up, cracked his back, and followed Chad out of the library. Chad veered off towards the lobby and presumably lunch outside the office, and Val headed back to his desk to call Ira and ask if there was a deadline on reading whatever was in the binder that Ira had sent him. Ira wasn't there. Val left a voicemail.
Aidan wasn't at his desk. Val went to the lobby to ask Maggie if she'd seen him, but she was apparently out too because there was a different person sitting at the reception desk, a brown-haired girl who was closer to Val's age than Maggie's and who looked familiar although Val couldn't immediately think who she was or where in the firm she might normally work.
"Have you seen Aidan McInerney go by?" Val asked her.
"Who?" she asked. "I've only been here a couple weeks, I don't know anyone. Maggie's at lunch, do you want me to leave her a note?"
"Uh, no, that's ok. I was supposed to meet him for lunch."
"Someone left a few minutes ago, maybe that's him? Is he tall?"
"A little taller than me, yeah. Brown hair, pretty short? Kinda skinny, narrow shoulders?" Val had been told that most people looked at faces when they met someone, but he always looked at shoulders.
"I think that was him." She nodded.
"I thought he was going to wait for me. Ok, thanks."
"Hey, what's your name?" she called, as he turned towards the elevators.
"I'm Val," he called back. "Research monkey." At least that was what Aidan called him.
"Hi Val. I'm Lena. It's nice to meet you."
"You too." And then the elevator arrived and he got in, rode it down to the first floor, and went to the atrium to find his lunch date.
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total words: 3800
He didn't run into Catherine between Aidan's desk and his, which meant he had time to settle in, turn on his computer, and check his email. Whatever part of the network was down, or whatever the IT guys were doing, it hadn't affected him as far as he could tell, because there was the usual collection of first-thing-in-the-morning email, a lot of which didn't really need his attention. Internal emails tended to be brushed with a faint sheen of paranoia and ass-covering, so in any given batch of mail, you were guaranteed a high number of messages you'd been copied or blind-copied on for no other reason than the sender needed everyone to know he or she had sent them. And Caswell Velez Malcolm and Simonson was not a small firm, so there was a lot of unnecessary mail traveling to people's inboxes.
Val felt like he had to at least skim everything, though, just in case. He didn't want to miss the one important email because he'd thought it was just inter-office spam. There was also an outside chance his mom would forget he'd told her not to send him personal mail to his work address, and write him a long chatty email he'd have to read. The IT guys had put some heavy-duty filters on all the firm's computers to try and prevent this kind of thing from happening - the partners were convinced that every minute someone was online doing something not work related was a wasted, unbillable minute, so a lot of web sites were blocked - but you couldn't filter out your mom using the law firm's email address to send you personal email.
Val got most of the way through the morning's nitpicky administrative stuff before Catherine appeared at his desk looking annoyed. Although, to be fair, she usually looked annoyed when dealing with someone lower down in the firm hierarchy.
"Didn't Maggie tell you I was looking for you?" she asked.
"She did," he said.
"So why didn't you come looking for me?" Thankfully, before Val could think of a good answer - even though there really was no good answer - she went on. "Greg's been moved to my case so you don't have to worry about doing his work any more. Theo can ask someone else. You're on my team for the foreseeable future."
Which meant Val would be doing a lot of heavy lifting and not getting any credit. He wondered who else Catherine had cornered into assisting on her case, and then he wondered if she'd only gotten the one job, or if she was working several cases at once. He wasn't sure he was interested in helping on everything she was involved in.
On the other hand, he hadn't liked working with Greg either - Greg was an asshole and expected you to be able to read his mind, because he thought he was too important to have to explain himself to lowly law clerks - and now it sounded like Catherine was the primary lawyer on this case and Greg was just assisting her, which meant Val would ultimately be taking orders from her, which meant he might be able to ignore Greg. And that was a plus.
He hoped there was some way he could still assist Theo, though, and the other lawyer he'd been working with, an older guy named Ira. Ira was very low-maintenance as a supervisor and trusted you to be able to do what he needed you to do without him having to either hang over your shoulder or give you excessively detailed instructions.
"You and Chad are researching for me today," Catherine went on. "I sent you an email with the cases I need information on and examples of the kinds of decisions I want. I need everything summarized and organized by date, with the most recent first."
"Ok." Val started scrolling through his inbox to find any emails from her that might contain these instructions, so he could (theoretically at least) print out whatever it was she needed him to find.
"Now, Val," she snapped. "Tell Chad as well."
Val heaved an internal sigh. "Ok. I'll go find him."
Catherine stood there and waited for him to close down the email program on his computer and get out of his chair before she walked away. At least she wasn't planning to follow him around until he'd found Chad and gone to the firm's library.
Chad was talking to one of the secretaries, a pretty blonde girl who was giggling at something he'd said to her when Val found them.
"Did Catherine talk to you?" Val asked.
"Nope," Chad said. "Was she supposed to?"
"She has work for us."
"'Us'?"
"Yeah. You and me. Research. In the library. With the... uh... highlighter. Pen. Copy machine."
Chad sighed a put-upon sigh.
"I have things to do anyway," said the secretary.
"We'll do lunch," Chad told her, winking. Val tried not to roll his eyes. Chad wasn't a bad guy but he was kind of a slacker, and if there was a pretty blonde girl within fifty feet of him, he'd find her and flirt with her, especially if she was blonde.
(Val wondered if Chad was just on the prowl for girls who looked like female versions of himself, because he was the only person he was really attracted to. "So, what," Aidan had said when Val mentioned it to him, "Chad having sex is just disguised masturbation?" Val had shrugged and said maybe, yeah, that's all it was.)
Chad made them take a detour past his desk because he thought he'd left his phone there - he hadn't - and then they had to take another detour through the kitchen because Chad wanted a muffin, and then Val realized he'd never printed out Catherine's email with her no doubt highly detailed instructions of what they were supposed to look up and how she wanted the material presented to her, so he and Chad swung by his desk so he could do that. Someone had dropped off a binder with a Post-It that said "Read this. Might be useful. Ira" stuck to the front.
"You're still working with him?" Chad asked.
"Who?" Val answered, scrolling through the approximately seventy billion emails that had appeared in his inbox in the past twenty minutes.
"Ira. I thought he'd retired."
"No, he's still here." He scanned the email Catherine had sent. "Catherine wants a lot from us." Not that this was any surprise.
"Well, maybe you...."
"She asked you to help her too," Val said. "The email's printing. Work's waiting. Let's go."
"I hate Mondays," Chad sighed, following Val down the hallway towards the library.
The internal library at Caswell Velez Malcolm and Simonson was packed with reference books and binders. Once upon a time, or so Val had been told, there was also a microfiche machine and folders full of microfiche so you could look up case law and verdicts and opinions from practically the turn of the century, but now a lot of that was either online or reproduced and reprinted (probably at great expense) in thick volumes bound in dark red with "Caswell Velez Malcolm and Simonson library" bookplates.
Val started pulling books and binders and looking up cases with Chad's help, but after about an hour Chad gave up with "I can do this shit from my desk."
"Do the first half," Val said almost absently, wishing he'd brought some Post-Its to mark the relevant passages that Catherine wanted. He wasn't looking forward to hauling all these books to the nearest copy machine to make her copies.
Chad took Val's printout of Catherine's email and wrote "C" next to half the decisions she wanted information on. "I'll do these," he said. "Don't forget to eat." And he left.
Three and a half hours later, Chad was back, sticking his head into the library and telling Val "Hey, dude, your lunch date's looking for you."
"My what?" Val suddenly realized he was hungry. "What time is it?"
"Lunch time. Aidan said you had a date." He leered.
"He has a girlfriend."
"So? Maybe he wants a bit on the side."
There was no response to that that would shut Chad up, so Val didn't even bother. He did mark his place in the book he was reading, though, and try to make a neat stack of the information he'd gathered so far. He wrote "DO NOT TOUCH" on a spare piece of copy paper and put it on top of the stack, then stood up, cracked his back, and followed Chad out of the library. Chad veered off towards the lobby and presumably lunch outside the office, and Val headed back to his desk to call Ira and ask if there was a deadline on reading whatever was in the binder that Ira had sent him. Ira wasn't there. Val left a voicemail.
Aidan wasn't at his desk. Val went to the lobby to ask Maggie if she'd seen him, but she was apparently out too because there was a different person sitting at the reception desk, a brown-haired girl who was closer to Val's age than Maggie's and who looked familiar although Val couldn't immediately think who she was or where in the firm she might normally work.
"Have you seen Aidan McInerney go by?" Val asked her.
"Who?" she asked. "I've only been here a couple weeks, I don't know anyone. Maggie's at lunch, do you want me to leave her a note?"
"Uh, no, that's ok. I was supposed to meet him for lunch."
"Someone left a few minutes ago, maybe that's him? Is he tall?"
"A little taller than me, yeah. Brown hair, pretty short? Kinda skinny, narrow shoulders?" Val had been told that most people looked at faces when they met someone, but he always looked at shoulders.
"I think that was him." She nodded.
"I thought he was going to wait for me. Ok, thanks."
"Hey, what's your name?" she called, as he turned towards the elevators.
"I'm Val," he called back. "Research monkey." At least that was what Aidan called him.
"Hi Val. I'm Lena. It's nice to meet you."
"You too." And then the elevator arrived and he got in, rode it down to the first floor, and went to the atrium to find his lunch date.
words: 1733
total words: 3800
no subject
Date: 2008-12-02 07:27 pm (UTC)