Back in Sacramento with the woman he had dumped her for, the jerk.

After two years of “serious commitment,” as he had labeled it, Bradford Enright had dropped her like a hot rock. He had already moved in with Ms. Junior Partner before he bothered telling Mari about her demotion. Their relationship had suddenly become null and void in the face of more advantageous opportunities. Ms. Junior Partner was more in tune with him, he said. Ms. Junior Partner shared his goals and his philosophies.

Their parting argument played through her mind like a videotape that had been shown and rewound again and again over the course of the past two weeks.

“What philosophy is that, Brad? Screw everybody and bill them for double the hours?”

“Jesus, Marilee, what a bitchy thing to say!”

“Well, excuuuse me! Getting dumped has that effect, you know. It makes me cranky.”

“It wasn’t working, Mari, you know that. It hasn’t been working for the last six months.”

“Coincidentally, about the same amount of time has passed since the iron bun joined your firm.”

“Leave Pauline out of this.”

“That’s kind of hard to do, seeing as how the two of you have been playing merger games after hours for-how long now?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“I wasn’t getting much here, Marilee. You’re always too tired or too stressed or-”

“You! You have the gall to complain to me about our sex life?”

“What are you saying? Are you saying I didn’t satisfy you?”

“I’m saying I’ve had better orgasms by myself!”

“Fine. Reduce the conversation to a gutter level. The bottom line is we don’t have a future together, Marilee. We don’t want the same things professionally or socially. There’s no point in going on with it.”