“If? Of course I will! But what about Stephanie and Lois? Won’t they get their noses out of joint if I—”
“No, no, no,” Charlene insisted. “This is all going to work out fine. And I want you with me on this. Like you’ve been with me on everything. I couldn’t have built this practice without you, Pam.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you will.”
“Of course,” she said, flattered. “When is this going to happen?”
“I don’t know. In a few weeks. I have about four major crises to work out before I can think about the actual event, but once I get things under control, I’ll make some arrangements. Something very small, very quiet, very quick.”
Pam smiled lazily. “Quick? Are you pregnant?”
“Ha-ha.”
“And you are doing this quickly because…?”
Charlene stopped shuffling papers, put her briefcase under her desk and took a seat. “Now that we’ve decided, we’re anxious to have the formalities out of the way. But there is another matter that concerns me. My mother is experiencing some memory problems. Some confusion. I’d hate to call it dementia, but until she sees a doctor, I have no other terminology.”
“So the call from the grocer was the real McCoy,” Pam observed.
“I didn’t want to admit it. I was hoping he was just overreacting, but she was confused. It’s possible she really couldn’t find her way home from the store and had to be rescued by a bag boy. I have no better explanation because she can’t remember much about the incident.”
“My goodness, how scary,” Pam replied, as surprised now as Charlene had been yesterday.
She nodded. “I owe Mr. Fulbright an apology. And a debt of gratitude. I hope these aren’t the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s.”
“And that’s why you’re going to hurry and—”
“That’s a factor, not a reason. My mom has a problem, and I don’t know how serious it is, but before things get any worse, if they’re destined to get worse, and while everyone in my family and in Dennis’s family are all relatively healthy and alert, we’re going to have a small, pleasant ceremony.”
“Well, this must be the right decision, it sure has worked wonders on you. You look positively radiant. How do you feel?”
Charlene folded her hands together on top of her desk. “I can’t explain it, but if I’d known I was going to feel this great, I’d have accepted Dennis’s proposal years ago. I’ve never felt so comfortable…so serene. I have total peace of mind.”
Pam leaned back into the folds of the chair, stretched her long legs out in front of her and admired Charlene’s shimmer. “You’re glowing. It’s amazing.”
“I can feel it.”
“You and Dennis must have had some romantic night last night—the sparkles are still floating all around your aura.” Pam’s eyes became moist. “I’m so happy for you, Char. No one deserves this more than you. I’d be honored to witness for you.”
Pam stood, dropped her notebook on the ottoman and moved toward Charlene. She opened her arms to embrace her, tears glittering in her eyes.
But Charlene didn’t cry. She was a little embarrassed by what Pam had said…and its contrast with the truth. There were no sparkles of romance glittering around her, but rather the warm glow of complete contentment. There had been no sex, no breathless passion in the wake of a profession of the truest love, but rather the intimate dialogue of close friends as they comforted each other after their terrible day.
But wasn’t that what true love really was? Friendship and trust? Knowing the person you counted on was there? And being there for him?
So, Charlene asked herself, what exactly was she glowing about? She frowned over Pam’s shoulder as she admitted to herself that it felt vaguely like relief.
Charlene patted Pam’s back and said, “There, there.” Then she handed Pam a tissue and said, “High on my list of priorities, after a nice little wedding, is a week off. Not a honeymoon, but rather a vacation. Sometime later this spring possibly, after we’ve tied the knot, had Peaches to the doctor, cleared some time from our schedules and have things under control. We’re talking about a cruise. Dennis and I have both been under so much pressure lately, I’m surprised we even have the energy to get married. To that end, I’d like to make a dent in the ‘pending’ list and clear some time.”
“When are you going to tell Stephanie and your mom?”
“Well…”
“That’s not much of an answer,” Pam said. “What’s going on?”
“To tell the truth, I’m a little miffed at them both. Peaches knows she has a problem that could be serious, and she told me to butt out. Said she was sorry to be losing it. Her exact words were, ‘I’m sorry that obviously I’m losing it.’ Jesus. As for Stephanie, she doesn’t stop talking about herself long enough to check and see if anyone else has a life. She’s so self-absorbed….”
“She’s twenty-five.”
“And spoiled and selfish. But I will have to speak to her about Peaches. You know how close those two are. And hopefully we will tell them both this weekend.”
“How do you suppose they’ll react?” Pam said, a devilish flicker sparkling her eyes.
“Hmm. Peaches will probably be astonished and Stephanie will…Stephanie will probably be relieved that I’m not going to die an old-maid divorce lawyer.” She shook her head while Pam laughed. “So,” she went on, “I have a full calendar today, culminating with a meeting this evening here with Bradley himself of Bradley & Howe regarding the Omagi custody. I doubt I’ll get home before ten. I’m due in court in an hour. Child Protective Services continue to harangue Leslie and Tom Batten, and I’ve filed an injunction to hold them off until we can have a hearing. Then I have a lunch and a meeting with Carl Dena regarding the transfer of one of his companies into his son’s name, since his son’s been managing it for about ten years anyway. Can you see to these items, please?” She passed a neatly printed list to Pam. “And will you please add one item?”
“Sure.”
“I ran into Jake last night. He wanted a favor, but we got sidetracked talking about Stephanie and he forgot to ask me. Will you give him a call? Ask him what he needs?”
“Sure.”
“And if it sounds like too much trouble, tell him you can’t fit it on my calendar. I’ve already done plenty for him and I don’t—”
“He probably just wants some simple legal thing for free, like a paper filed for a friend,” Pam said as she scribbled, not even looking up from her notebook. “If so, I can probably get it done without even bothering you.”
“Your discretion,” Charlene said dismissively. “I’ve got less than an hour to go over my notes for court, so let’s get to work.”
“Gotcha. Coffee?”
“Hey, that would be great. I forgot to grab some as I passed the pot.”
“You have a lot on your mind. By the way, will you be living in your house or Dennis’s?”
Charlene responded with a blank stare, her mouth slightly open. How could that have not even come up in the conversation that followed “Do you still want to get married?” “Um, my house, of course,” she said to Pam unconvincingly.
“You didn’t even talk about it, did you?”
“You know, we talked about so many things….”
“Oh brother,” Pam said, heading for the coffeepot.
One of the things Pam London appreciated about working for Charlene Dugan was the quality of the work environment and the high measure of independence and responsibility Pam was afforded. She was an experienced paralegal, an executive assistant, and passed off secretarial work to office clericals and legal research to law clerks. Pam had helped build Phelps, Dugan & Dodge; she’d been with Charlene for sixteen years, beginning in the early, lean years.
Pam remembered with nostalgic fondness the old brick walk-up they started in, when they both were young and energetic, when Stephanie was just a bitty little thing with freckles. They couldn
’t afford a secretary so Lois, who was about to retire, helped out with typing and filing in the evenings and on the weekends.
They’d been through a lot since then, both professionally and personally. Pam had lost her mother to cancer and eventually moved back in with her father. She told herself she did it for him, but it was as much for herself. Meanwhile, Charlene finally moved out of her mother’s house. Together they built a strong reputation in the legal community. The work was challenging, the pay excellent, the people were of the highest caliber and her days flew by.
Pam and Charlene were too busy to worry that they didn’t have dates. And now, against all odds, Charlene was actually getting married.
It was 7:00 p.m. when the door to Charlene’s office opened and she came marching out, briefcase in one hand, sheaf of papers to drop on Pam’s desk in the other, coat over her shoulders. And a scowl on her face. “Last-minute change of venue,” she said. “I’m going to Bradley & Howe.”
“When did this happen?” Pam asked.
“About ten minutes ago, when I called to confirm our meeting here. It’s a sleazy trick. This guy is creating diversions, pretending the meeting was always scheduled for his office. What bullshit. I left a message for Sherry Omagi on her voice mail, but if she shows up here, tell her she can drive over to Bradley & Howe if she wants to, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll meet with the attorney whether she’s there or not, and I’m not backing down.”
“Go get ’em, tiger.”
“You ever get through to Jake?”
“Oh, yeah. There’s some woman he met…I think he said he met her in a bar…?”
“No,” Charlene said facetiously. “Jake? In a bar?”
“She’s divorced, has a couple of kids by two exes, neither of whom share custody or pay child support. Now ex number one wants custody of child number one. And of course she’s broke.”
“Does the ex have money?”
“Don’t know that yet.”
“Well, I can’t see a judge handing over a child with a lot of back support owed. Abuse?”
Pam shrugged. She didn’t know the answer to that either. “He abandoned them…as did ex number two. I put her on your calendar for next week.”
“Why’d you do that?” Charlene asked.
“Because you just can’t say no to Jake,” Pam returned, smiling gently.
“That’s what you’re for! You can!”
“Char, it’s easier this way. Believe me. It’ll take hours of pestering off the clock.” She glanced down at the papers Charlene had given her. “Where are you with CPS versus Batten?”
“We’ll revisit this issue in one month with a hearing in family court. We’ve got a TRO. The CPS has been temporarily restrained. They’ve been told to leave the Battens alone unless they have a police matter to investigate.”
“In the hot file it goes. You’d better hurry.”
“Don’t work too late,” Charlene said.
“Since there’s no meeting here, I’ll close up in ten minutes.”
“Have a nice evening,” Charlene said, pulling the door closed.
“You bet,” Pam said to the closing door. “You bet,” she said more quietly to the empty room.
She cleaned off her desk at a leisurely pace, giving that last client who might show up at the wrong place for the right meeting a few more minutes to appear. She cleared her computer screen, locked her desk drawer and placed her calendar open on top of her desk, scanning tomorrow’s schedule. Yes, yes, I love working here, she said to herself. I’d be lost without this place.
Lost.
Pam pulled her gym bag from the cupboard behind her desk and went into Charlene’s executive bathroom; she only used this private facility when Charlene was out of the office. There she affected a transformation—from sophisticated career woman in light wool suit, silk blouse and pumps, to weight trainer in spandex, sports bra and cross-trainers.
She pulled her shoulder-length auburn hair into a clip and couldn’t resist the urge to preen a little in front of Charlene’s mirror. She was cut; nicely muscled, her percentage of body fat low. Looking fine. Weight lifting was more than just a hobby, more than a means of staying in shape. It was something she did to keep her spirits from sinking.
It wasn’t as though she had a bad life. In fact, by almost anyone’s standards she had a great life. She loved her job, was in outstanding health and had a terrific home life with her Great Dane, Beau, and an elderly but extremely fit father who traveled quite a bit, leaving her to enjoy the luxury of free rent in three thousand square feet with hot tub. And she had friends, from work, from the neighborhood and from the club where she exercised.
But there was no man in her life and there hadn’t been in years. Years! And she was no longer too busy to notice.
She also remembered the ones that hadn’t worked out, the ones who did come around but were completely wrong for her and the ones who caught her eye and already had the stamp of another woman on them. She was luckless in this department. What was worse, she had absolutely no idea why. If her father asked her one more time, “Any new prospects, honey?” she might strangle him. As objectively as she could judge, she thought herself to be of at least average attractiveness. Oh hell, above average! She was intelligent, industrious and clean. She had a sense of humor, she read good books and, unless she was missing some vital signal, she was actually popular. She got along with everyone, on both personal and professional levels. In fact, she was one of those women who, after writing of her dilemma to Ann Landers, was likely to get the response, “If what you say about yourself is true, you’d have been snapped up years ago. There must be some little thing you’re overlooking.”
It wasn’t like Pam to sulk. In fact, it was rare for her to give in to this sense of disappointment, this feeling that she had somehow failed. She’d stopped trying to figure out what terrible flaw she had long ago. Was this because Charlene was getting married? But that was silly. Charlene and Dennis had been together for years and, as she’d said, this was really only a formality.
Pam had accepted that not everyone gets a partner and she knew a lot of single people who were not looking, were not trying to find a mate. She was thirty-nine and had stopped allowing herself to be set up at about thirty-five. She wasn’t interested in making man-hunting a life’s work.
The paperwork she would take home was already packed into her briefcase. As she pulled her raincoat out of the closet, there were two short taps at the outer office door before it swung open. “Locking up, Ms. London?” Ray Vogel asked her.
“As we speak,” she said, taking her coat off its hanger.
“Whoa, Ms. London,” he said, grinning. “Look at you! I always figured you for a gym rat.”
“A what?” she said, laughing in spite of herself.
“Wow, look at that six-pack,” he said, referring to her muscled abs. “Where do you work out?”
“Just a neighborhood tennis and fitness club.”
“You compete?” he asked.
“Me? Get serious!” But she had an unmistakable urge to flex.
She slipped into her coat, pulled the strap of her tote over one shoulder, gym bag over the other, followed that with her handbag strap, then grabbed up her briefcase and suit-on-a-hanger. Keys in hand, she joined him at the office door. He took the keys from her hand, eased her out the door, flicked off the lights and locked up for her. “You could compete,” he said, handing her back the keys. Then he took some of her burdens. “Come on, I’ll make sure you get to your car.”
“You don’t have to do that, Ray. I get myself there every night.”
“Tonight’s my treat,” he said. “You know, I could tell. That you work out. I thought about just asking, but I didn’t want to, you know, be…um…” He was clearly searching for a word.
“Nosy?” she supplied, humor in her voice.
“That’s not what I mean. I was working on a way to ask you if you were, you know, married. Or involved.”
She a
lmost dropped her suit. She stopped walking and turned toward him with a look that verged on alarm. “What?”
He shrugged. “Married? Involved?”
“Why?” she said, confused—and very shocked.
“I thought we could grab a drink some night. Maybe something to eat.” He took her elbow in hand and led her the rest of the way to the elevator. He pressed the down button. “You know, a date.”
It was almost scary, the way he proposed this only minutes after she’d been flexing her thirty-nine-year-old muscles in front of the bathroom mirror, bemoaning her absolutely solitary life. She was going to be a long time in recovering from the sheer blow. “Are you serious? You have a thing for older women?”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious? How much older can you be?” he countered.
The elevator arrived and they stepped inside.
“I could be a lot older, Ray. I could be your mother!”
“Come on,” he said, brushing her off.
“How old are you?” she demanded, feeling a blush rise up her neck.
“Now, if I’d asked you that question, I bet you’d get all piss—All bent out of shape,” he said, correcting himself. “I’m almost twenty-eight.”
“I could be your much older sister,” she said. “I’m almost forty.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, looking pleased with himself. “How almost?”
“Thirty-nine and three quarters.”
“No shit. I mean, no kidding!”
“How ‘almost twenty-eight’ are you?”
“Twenty-five,” he said. He grinned devilishly. Handsomely. “I took you for about thirty.”
“Ray.” She laughed at him. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“Okay, thirty-one. No more than thirty-three, tops. So, about that drink—”