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smackenzieVal went swimming early Friday morning as usual, took the bus as usual, hit the normal amount of Friday morning traffic, and still got to the office late as far as Catherine was concerned. (He still beat Chad, though.) She repeated in some detail a rundown of all the work her team had to get done by Tuesday, suggested he shunt everything else he was working on to the side – as if he hadn’t been doing that all week – and reminded him she expected to see him at nine-thirty at the lastest tomorrow morning.
“I know you think you have more important things to do,” she finished, “but this is your career. You’ll have time to see your friends later.”
“Not my friends,” he muttered, after she left. “My sister. Who is a lot less forgiving.”
Later that day, when he was taking a break to find a snack (someone had brought muffins for a morning meeting and had put the leftovers in the kitchen), he found himself bitching to one of his fellow law clerks, a guy named Lin who admitted he was thinking about becoming a paralegal or maybe even a court reporter, something law-related that wasn’t actual law practice. Lin had worked for Catherine before.
“She’s trying to prove herself,” he told Val. “She thinks she has to be tougher than the boys, because she’s a woman, and she wants to be a partner so she’s busting her butt to not just get the good cases, but win them. But really, I think she’s just trying to prove she can work as hard as anyone.” He shrugged. “I don’t know who’s doubting her.”
“I thought it was just because she didn’t have her own life,” Val said. “So she has to make ours miserable. Is she really that driven?”
“I guess so. I thought you were too.”
“I thought I was. Maybe I’m burning out, I don’t know.”
“You’ve been here longer than I have, and I already decided I don’t want to practice law any more. I don’t know why you’re still here.”
“College loans.” Val stuffed the rest of a blueberry muffin in his mouth and brushed stray crumbs off his shirt. Whoever supplied the food for morning meetings had good taste, but the muffins they got were always really crumbly. He couldn’t take them back to his desk because he’d end up with crumbs in his computer keyboard, and IT got pissy when you tried to clean your keyboard yourself, but hated even more having to come out and do it for you.
“Me too,” Lin said, “but why haven’t you burned out on doing someone else’s research and busting your hump for someone else to take credit.”
“I don’t know. I’m stubborn?” Lin looked skeptical. “No, huh.”
“Could be. Lots of people are.” He drained his coffee cup and made a pleased and vaguely surprised face. “Someone bought the good beans this week. I’m impressed. This was a nice break. Don’t take Catherine personally. She’s like that with everyone.”
“Yeah, I know. I better get back to work. Later.”
Aidan came by his desk at one to see if Val wanted to come to lunch with him, and seemed disappointed when Val said he couldn’t.
“Catherine?” Aidan asked, leaning against Val’s desk.
“Yeah. It’s going to be crazy at least until Tuesday.”
“You have my sympathies. You want me to bring you something from the café?”
“No, thanks, I’m not even sure I have time to eat.”
“You’re nuts,” Aidan said. “Totally nuts.”
“Yeah, I know. Getting stuff done, though. Eat a cookie for me.”
“Will do. Don’t forget about Saturday.”
Val wouldn’t. If nothing else, he thought he might need someone to bitch to who wasn’t Catherine, anyone on her team, or his sister. And he knew he could always complain to Aidan and Stella, and not only would they listen sympathetically, they wouldn’t offer him advice if he didn’t want it. And he didn’t think he’d want it.
He didn’t need advice on how to deal with Morgan, anyway. But he didn’t want advice on dealing with Catherine to boil down to “Have you thought about maybe another career path?” He was already wondering about that and wasn’t ready for anyone else to bring it up unprompted.
Aidan brought him lunch after all – a roast beef sandwich with a pickle and a bag of potato chips from the café. Val hadn’t even realized he was hungry until Aidan appeared with a paper bag and a handful of napkins.
“Don’t worry about it,” Aidan said, when Val thanked him and tried to give him money. “I’m racking up all this dinner karma from having you over for food, anyway. You’ll have to cook for me and Stella to make it up to us.”
“I’ll try. I order a mean pizza.”
“We have a recipe for quickie pizza dough. We’ll make that. Cheaper than ordering out, and you can put weird toppings on it. Stella doesn’t like corn on hers.”
“Corn?”
“Corn. Like canned corn. Corn on the cob. Sweet corn. Boone used to make it that way when I was in high school. He probably still does.”
Boone was Aidan’s mom’s boyfriend. They’d been together probably fifteen years and were apparently in no hurry to even move in together. According to Aidan, Boone still had his own place, and Aidan’s mom still lived in the house that Aidan and his sisters had grown up in.
“Boone’s weird.”
“He kind of is. But the point is, if you make your own pizza dough, you can put corn on it. Ok, I can put corn on it. You can have whatever you want. Ham and pineapple, olives, tunafish, whatever. Stella likes tuna on hers. That’s gross.”
“I like tuna. Corn, maybe not.”
“Someday we’ll make it. You’ll try it, you’ll like it. Trust me.”
“Yes mom.” Val grinned at Aidan’s insistence.
Chad picked that moment to walk by and start complaining, so Aidan took his leave and Val spent the next fifteen minutes trying to get rid of Chad so he could get some work done.
He got home late that night and did his own bitching to Kirk for probably half an hour. Kirk listened patiently and offered to mix Val a drink. Kirk was taking a bartending class. Sometimes Val let himself be the drink guinea pig, although after Kirk almost set the apartment on fire trying to make a flaming something-or-other, there was a lot less DIY bartending in their kitchen.
“Why are you still there?” Kirk asked when Val finally wound down.
“Besides the fact that it’s a pretty decent paycheck and I have loans and rent and car insurance to pay for? I’m starting to wonder. How long do I have to clerk before I get more responsibility? Am I going to be researching for people like Catherine and Theo and Ira for the next ten years?”
“I sure hope not. I’ll have to drag you out of there myself if you are.”
Kirk was a firm believer in doing what you loved and everything else would follow. He was a bike messenger because he loved the adrenaline rush he claimed you got from biking in city traffic. He was normally fairly calm and Val had never quite understood where the adrenaline junkie came from, but maybe that was Kirk’s meditation. Maybe that was where he found his zen, like Val found it swimming laps in the YMCA pool. Fighting buses for the right to travel the same roads made Kirk a more relaxed, chill human being.
“Sure you don’t want a drink?” Kirk asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m just going to watch some TV and check my email and go to bed.”
“Suit yourself, man. I mix a wicked martini.”
Morgan called to tell him that she and Billy had made it onto and off the plane and then to the hotel in one piece, and she’d see him tomorrow at two, she’d find Caswell Velez Malcolm and Simonson herself, and he shouldn’t freak out. He promised he wouldn’t. She called him a terrible liar, told him she loved him, and hung up.
“I think I hate my job,” Val admitted to the phone. “Why didn’t I realize this before?”
It wasn’t a conversation he could have with himself now. It probably wasn’t a conversation he could have with himself until after Tuesday, at least.
* * *
Saturday felt just like a weekday, and Val hated that feeling. He put on jeans and a shirt after his swim, figuring that no one got dressed in work clothes to work on Saturday – he’d worn casual clothes every other weekend he’d worked, so why change now – managed to concentrate on his book on the bus, and got to Caswell Velez Malcolm and Simonson to find Catherine and Greg already hard at work. Yeah, it really did feel like a weekday.
Morgan called him at his desk at two, surprising the hell out of him because he didn’t remember ever giving her his work number.
“I’ve had it for a year and a half,” she said. “I’m standing outside your lobby. The door’s locked!”
“It’s Saturday, Morgan,” Val told her. “The door’s locked when the receptionist leaves.”
“Whatever. Where are you? I’m hungry.”
“I have to finish this one – “
“No you don’t. Your sister came to see you and she’s already kind of pissed she had to entertain herself this morning, so you can turn off your computer and come out here and say hi to her.”
“Ok, ok, fine, I’m coming. I have to tell Catherine first and I’ll be right out.”
“I’ll be here.” She hung up.
Val saved the summary he was writing, turned off his computer, shrugged into his jacket, and went to find Catherine to tell her he had to leave. She was, as expected, less than pleased. She tried to give him a hard time, but he held his ground and just kept saying he’d told her his sister was going to be in town and he only had today to see her and he really, really had to go.
“What took you so long?” Morgan demanded, when Val finally got out of the office. “Can I see the lobby?”
“I think Catherine’s pissed at me,” he explained. He opened the door to the lobby and let her. She sat in one of the chairs in the waiting area, checked out the magazines, and peered at some of the art. She knocked on the top of the reception desk. “Why are you doing that?’
“To see if it’s real wood or just a veneer. Nice.” She nodded approvingly. “Now we can go. Take me somewhere nice for lunch.”
“Somewhere nice for lunch” was a cute little place where Morgan could get a chicken sandwich and Val got a burger and fries. They talked about a random collection of topics, including Billy’s surprisingly calm behavior on the plane – “Thank god for drugs,” Morgan said – and how easy the training course was to find, crazy Yankee drivers compared to crazy Texas drivers, the hotel breakfast, the nurses at the doctor’s office where Morgan worked, Kirk’s adventures in bartending, Val and Morgan’s mom, and if Val had found a nice girlfriend yet.
“I don’t have time for a girlfriend,” he said. “I mean, if you weren’t visiting, I’d still be at work.”
“Yeah, I want to talk about that,” she said.
“I don’t. Seriously, Morgan, I don’t. I think I might be burning out and I just... I don’t want to talk about it. Ok?”
“Ok,” she said grudgingly. “I think you should talk to this Catherine woman about overworking you, and I still think you should be getting compensated.”
“I know. Can we talk about something else? Did Mom tell you she started quilting? It turns out the woman who bought the house next door is a champion quilter or something. She got Mom into it. She’s so happy she has a new friend to do stuff with.”
Arlene Brody wasn’t without friends, but Val was always pleased when she met someone new. She liked to complain about her circle, so it was kind of a relief when she found a new person to like and hadn’t been around them long enough to have anything to complain about. She’d only been trying to quilt for about a month, and so far the lady next door, whose name was Serena, was very nice and very patient and very understanding of Arlene’s newbie quilting mistakes, and Arlene was really happy.
And when Arlene was happy, Arlene’s kids were happy. Val had spent enough of his childhood and adolescence knowing his mom was unhappy for one reason or another. It was nice to know she could be pleased with her life now.
He and Morgan wandered around town for a few hours, chatting and sightseeing and window shopping until it was time to pick Billy up after his training course. They fetched him and went on to Val’s apartment so he could get his car and drive them around before they had to go to the airport. They’d checked out of the hotel after breakfast, having packed a small enough overnight bag that Morgan could carry it around all day. Taking his sister and brother-in-law for an earlyish dinner at a neighborhood Italian restaurant not far from his apartment and then driving them to the airport were the least stressful couple of things Val had done all day. It was a really pleasant way to end their trip.
He dropped them off at the airport, kissed Morgan goodbye, clapped Billy on the back in a manly fashion, and drove on to Stella and Aidan’s to potentially load up on chili for his own freezer and, who knew, maybe have dessert and play Guitar Hero and bitch about his job. He didn’t really feel a need to bitch about his sister.
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“I know you think you have more important things to do,” she finished, “but this is your career. You’ll have time to see your friends later.”
“Not my friends,” he muttered, after she left. “My sister. Who is a lot less forgiving.”
Later that day, when he was taking a break to find a snack (someone had brought muffins for a morning meeting and had put the leftovers in the kitchen), he found himself bitching to one of his fellow law clerks, a guy named Lin who admitted he was thinking about becoming a paralegal or maybe even a court reporter, something law-related that wasn’t actual law practice. Lin had worked for Catherine before.
“She’s trying to prove herself,” he told Val. “She thinks she has to be tougher than the boys, because she’s a woman, and she wants to be a partner so she’s busting her butt to not just get the good cases, but win them. But really, I think she’s just trying to prove she can work as hard as anyone.” He shrugged. “I don’t know who’s doubting her.”
“I thought it was just because she didn’t have her own life,” Val said. “So she has to make ours miserable. Is she really that driven?”
“I guess so. I thought you were too.”
“I thought I was. Maybe I’m burning out, I don’t know.”
“You’ve been here longer than I have, and I already decided I don’t want to practice law any more. I don’t know why you’re still here.”
“College loans.” Val stuffed the rest of a blueberry muffin in his mouth and brushed stray crumbs off his shirt. Whoever supplied the food for morning meetings had good taste, but the muffins they got were always really crumbly. He couldn’t take them back to his desk because he’d end up with crumbs in his computer keyboard, and IT got pissy when you tried to clean your keyboard yourself, but hated even more having to come out and do it for you.
“Me too,” Lin said, “but why haven’t you burned out on doing someone else’s research and busting your hump for someone else to take credit.”
“I don’t know. I’m stubborn?” Lin looked skeptical. “No, huh.”
“Could be. Lots of people are.” He drained his coffee cup and made a pleased and vaguely surprised face. “Someone bought the good beans this week. I’m impressed. This was a nice break. Don’t take Catherine personally. She’s like that with everyone.”
“Yeah, I know. I better get back to work. Later.”
Aidan came by his desk at one to see if Val wanted to come to lunch with him, and seemed disappointed when Val said he couldn’t.
“Catherine?” Aidan asked, leaning against Val’s desk.
“Yeah. It’s going to be crazy at least until Tuesday.”
“You have my sympathies. You want me to bring you something from the café?”
“No, thanks, I’m not even sure I have time to eat.”
“You’re nuts,” Aidan said. “Totally nuts.”
“Yeah, I know. Getting stuff done, though. Eat a cookie for me.”
“Will do. Don’t forget about Saturday.”
Val wouldn’t. If nothing else, he thought he might need someone to bitch to who wasn’t Catherine, anyone on her team, or his sister. And he knew he could always complain to Aidan and Stella, and not only would they listen sympathetically, they wouldn’t offer him advice if he didn’t want it. And he didn’t think he’d want it.
He didn’t need advice on how to deal with Morgan, anyway. But he didn’t want advice on dealing with Catherine to boil down to “Have you thought about maybe another career path?” He was already wondering about that and wasn’t ready for anyone else to bring it up unprompted.
Aidan brought him lunch after all – a roast beef sandwich with a pickle and a bag of potato chips from the café. Val hadn’t even realized he was hungry until Aidan appeared with a paper bag and a handful of napkins.
“Don’t worry about it,” Aidan said, when Val thanked him and tried to give him money. “I’m racking up all this dinner karma from having you over for food, anyway. You’ll have to cook for me and Stella to make it up to us.”
“I’ll try. I order a mean pizza.”
“We have a recipe for quickie pizza dough. We’ll make that. Cheaper than ordering out, and you can put weird toppings on it. Stella doesn’t like corn on hers.”
“Corn?”
“Corn. Like canned corn. Corn on the cob. Sweet corn. Boone used to make it that way when I was in high school. He probably still does.”
Boone was Aidan’s mom’s boyfriend. They’d been together probably fifteen years and were apparently in no hurry to even move in together. According to Aidan, Boone still had his own place, and Aidan’s mom still lived in the house that Aidan and his sisters had grown up in.
“Boone’s weird.”
“He kind of is. But the point is, if you make your own pizza dough, you can put corn on it. Ok, I can put corn on it. You can have whatever you want. Ham and pineapple, olives, tunafish, whatever. Stella likes tuna on hers. That’s gross.”
“I like tuna. Corn, maybe not.”
“Someday we’ll make it. You’ll try it, you’ll like it. Trust me.”
“Yes mom.” Val grinned at Aidan’s insistence.
Chad picked that moment to walk by and start complaining, so Aidan took his leave and Val spent the next fifteen minutes trying to get rid of Chad so he could get some work done.
He got home late that night and did his own bitching to Kirk for probably half an hour. Kirk listened patiently and offered to mix Val a drink. Kirk was taking a bartending class. Sometimes Val let himself be the drink guinea pig, although after Kirk almost set the apartment on fire trying to make a flaming something-or-other, there was a lot less DIY bartending in their kitchen.
“Why are you still there?” Kirk asked when Val finally wound down.
“Besides the fact that it’s a pretty decent paycheck and I have loans and rent and car insurance to pay for? I’m starting to wonder. How long do I have to clerk before I get more responsibility? Am I going to be researching for people like Catherine and Theo and Ira for the next ten years?”
“I sure hope not. I’ll have to drag you out of there myself if you are.”
Kirk was a firm believer in doing what you loved and everything else would follow. He was a bike messenger because he loved the adrenaline rush he claimed you got from biking in city traffic. He was normally fairly calm and Val had never quite understood where the adrenaline junkie came from, but maybe that was Kirk’s meditation. Maybe that was where he found his zen, like Val found it swimming laps in the YMCA pool. Fighting buses for the right to travel the same roads made Kirk a more relaxed, chill human being.
“Sure you don’t want a drink?” Kirk asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m just going to watch some TV and check my email and go to bed.”
“Suit yourself, man. I mix a wicked martini.”
Morgan called to tell him that she and Billy had made it onto and off the plane and then to the hotel in one piece, and she’d see him tomorrow at two, she’d find Caswell Velez Malcolm and Simonson herself, and he shouldn’t freak out. He promised he wouldn’t. She called him a terrible liar, told him she loved him, and hung up.
“I think I hate my job,” Val admitted to the phone. “Why didn’t I realize this before?”
It wasn’t a conversation he could have with himself now. It probably wasn’t a conversation he could have with himself until after Tuesday, at least.
* * *
Saturday felt just like a weekday, and Val hated that feeling. He put on jeans and a shirt after his swim, figuring that no one got dressed in work clothes to work on Saturday – he’d worn casual clothes every other weekend he’d worked, so why change now – managed to concentrate on his book on the bus, and got to Caswell Velez Malcolm and Simonson to find Catherine and Greg already hard at work. Yeah, it really did feel like a weekday.
Morgan called him at his desk at two, surprising the hell out of him because he didn’t remember ever giving her his work number.
“I’ve had it for a year and a half,” she said. “I’m standing outside your lobby. The door’s locked!”
“It’s Saturday, Morgan,” Val told her. “The door’s locked when the receptionist leaves.”
“Whatever. Where are you? I’m hungry.”
“I have to finish this one – “
“No you don’t. Your sister came to see you and she’s already kind of pissed she had to entertain herself this morning, so you can turn off your computer and come out here and say hi to her.”
“Ok, ok, fine, I’m coming. I have to tell Catherine first and I’ll be right out.”
“I’ll be here.” She hung up.
Val saved the summary he was writing, turned off his computer, shrugged into his jacket, and went to find Catherine to tell her he had to leave. She was, as expected, less than pleased. She tried to give him a hard time, but he held his ground and just kept saying he’d told her his sister was going to be in town and he only had today to see her and he really, really had to go.
“What took you so long?” Morgan demanded, when Val finally got out of the office. “Can I see the lobby?”
“I think Catherine’s pissed at me,” he explained. He opened the door to the lobby and let her. She sat in one of the chairs in the waiting area, checked out the magazines, and peered at some of the art. She knocked on the top of the reception desk. “Why are you doing that?’
“To see if it’s real wood or just a veneer. Nice.” She nodded approvingly. “Now we can go. Take me somewhere nice for lunch.”
“Somewhere nice for lunch” was a cute little place where Morgan could get a chicken sandwich and Val got a burger and fries. They talked about a random collection of topics, including Billy’s surprisingly calm behavior on the plane – “Thank god for drugs,” Morgan said – and how easy the training course was to find, crazy Yankee drivers compared to crazy Texas drivers, the hotel breakfast, the nurses at the doctor’s office where Morgan worked, Kirk’s adventures in bartending, Val and Morgan’s mom, and if Val had found a nice girlfriend yet.
“I don’t have time for a girlfriend,” he said. “I mean, if you weren’t visiting, I’d still be at work.”
“Yeah, I want to talk about that,” she said.
“I don’t. Seriously, Morgan, I don’t. I think I might be burning out and I just... I don’t want to talk about it. Ok?”
“Ok,” she said grudgingly. “I think you should talk to this Catherine woman about overworking you, and I still think you should be getting compensated.”
“I know. Can we talk about something else? Did Mom tell you she started quilting? It turns out the woman who bought the house next door is a champion quilter or something. She got Mom into it. She’s so happy she has a new friend to do stuff with.”
Arlene Brody wasn’t without friends, but Val was always pleased when she met someone new. She liked to complain about her circle, so it was kind of a relief when she found a new person to like and hadn’t been around them long enough to have anything to complain about. She’d only been trying to quilt for about a month, and so far the lady next door, whose name was Serena, was very nice and very patient and very understanding of Arlene’s newbie quilting mistakes, and Arlene was really happy.
And when Arlene was happy, Arlene’s kids were happy. Val had spent enough of his childhood and adolescence knowing his mom was unhappy for one reason or another. It was nice to know she could be pleased with her life now.
He and Morgan wandered around town for a few hours, chatting and sightseeing and window shopping until it was time to pick Billy up after his training course. They fetched him and went on to Val’s apartment so he could get his car and drive them around before they had to go to the airport. They’d checked out of the hotel after breakfast, having packed a small enough overnight bag that Morgan could carry it around all day. Taking his sister and brother-in-law for an earlyish dinner at a neighborhood Italian restaurant not far from his apartment and then driving them to the airport were the least stressful couple of things Val had done all day. It was a really pleasant way to end their trip.
He dropped them off at the airport, kissed Morgan goodbye, clapped Billy on the back in a manly fashion, and drove on to Stella and Aidan’s to potentially load up on chili for his own freezer and, who knew, maybe have dessert and play Guitar Hero and bitch about his job. He didn’t really feel a need to bitch about his sister.
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