“He still has the client in there, Ms. Gunther-Perrin,” she said. Her voice was cultured, soft, almost all traces of the Deep South excised as if by surgery. “Why don’t you sit down? He’ll see you as soon as he can.”

Nicole nodded and sank into a chair so plush, she had real doubts that she’d be able to climb out of it. Her eyes went to the magazines on the table next to it, but she didn’t take one. She didn’t want to have to slap it shut all of a sudden when she received the summons to the inner office.

Twenty minutes slid by. Nicole tried to look as if she didn’t mind that her life – not to mention her day’s work – had been put on hold. When she was a partner, she would be more careful of her schedule. She wouldn’t keep a fellow partner waiting.

At last, with an effect rather like the parting of the gates of heaven in a Fifties movie epic, the door to the inner office opened. Someone her mother had watched on TV came out. “Thanks a million, Shelly,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m glad it’s in good hands. Say hi to Ruth for me.” He waggled his fingers at Lucinda and walked past Nicole as if she’d been invisible.

She was almost too bemused to feel slighted. Shelly? She couldn’t imagine anyone calling Sheldon Rosenthal Shelly. Certainly no one in the firm did – not even the other senior partners.

“Go on in, Ms. Gunther-Perrin,” Lucinda said, at the same time as Rosenthal said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“It’s all right,” Nicole said, carefully heaving herself up and out of that engulfing chair. It wasn’t all right, not really, but she told herself it was – the way hazing is, a kind of rite of passage. And after all, what could she do? Complain to his boss?

Rosenthal held the door open so that she could enter his sanctum. He looked like what he was: a Jewish lawyer – thin and thoughtful type, not fat and friendly – in his mid-sixties, out of the ordinary only in that he wore a neat gray chin beard. He waved her to a chair. “Please – make yourself comfortable.” Before she could sit down, however, he pointed to the Mr. Coffee on a table by the window. “Help yourself, if you like.”