“Okay. And back at you,” Ogarkov added, even though she’d told him not to. She made a face at him over her shoulder as she hurried toward the elevators. She almost didn’t need them, she was flying so high.

When she’d floated up to the sixth floor, her secretary greeted her with a wide-eyed stare and careful refusal to point out that she was – by the clock – thirty-three minutes late. Instead, she said in her breathy Southern California starlet’s voice, “Oh, Ms. Gunther-Perrin, Mr. Rosenthal’s been looking for you.”

Nicole nodded and bit back the silly grin. “I know,” she said. ‘I saw Gary downstairs, smoking a victory cigar.” That came out with less scorn than Nicole would have liked. She had as little use for tobacco as she did for alcohol, but when you made partner, she supposed you were entitled to celebrate. “Can he see me now, Cyndi?”

“Let me check.” The secretary punched in Mr. Rosenthal’s extension on the seventh floor, where all the senior partners held their dizzy eminence above the common herd, and spoke for a moment, then hung up. “He’s with a client. Ten-thirty, Lucinda says.”

Cyndi down here, Lucinda up above. Even the secretaries’ names were more elevated in the upper reaches.

Nicole brought herself back to earth with an effort. “Oh,” she said. “All right. If Lucinda says it, it must be so.”

Nicole and Cyndi shared a smile. Sheldon Rosenthal’s secretary reckoned herself at least as important to the firm as the boss. She was close enough to being right that nobody ever quite dared disagree with her in public.

Something else caught Nicole’s eye and mind, which went to show how scattered she still was after her morning from hell. She pointed to the photographs on her secretary’s desk. “Cyndi, who takes care of Benjamin and Joseph while you’re here?”

“My husband’s sister,” Cyndi answered. She didn’t sound confused, or wary either. “She’s got two-year-old twins of her own, and she stays home with them and my kids and her other sister-in-law’s little girl. She’d rather do that than go back to work, so it’s pretty good for all of us.”