If Oscar has to say he is certain, that means she had better be careful whom she asks. I won’t be needing any references.

I slide the Davis file over to him. Too late I realize it has my yellow pad with Chapman’s name on it. Perhaps he won’t notice it.

Oscar talks about the secretaries being available to update our resumes, but I tune him out. All I want is my check and out of here. My mind goes back to the document that Martha and I signed when we started: any client that we saw is a client of the firm’s. Well, I haven’t seen Chapman yet. Some body must have clipped them pretty good. I can’t wait to get to the jail.

Finally, Oscar takes two checks from his desk and slips them to us like he’s ashamed of them. I look at mine. He should be. It’ll cover the mortgage and utility bills. I wonder if I qualify for food stamps. I was beginning to have my doubts about the firm even before the cases were reversed.

Still, it was a living and held out the hope of something better down the line. Now I know I should have checked them out better. Yet, at the time I was under some pressure to get out of the PD’s Office. “If you want to drop by later this afternoon,” Oscar mumbles ‘we’ll have your personal items from your office boxed up at the front desk.”

I’ve had it.

“You run a class act, Oscar,” I say, letting Martha precede me out his door. I give him a look of pure hatred. I hadn’t realized until now how much I have sucked up to the partners. It feels good not to have to smile anymore.

Oscar’s face turns the color of a bruised peach, but he doesn’t have the nerve to respond, and I don’t blame him.

Thirty seconds later, unemployed for the first time in my life, and beginning to realize it, I am standing on the side walk in front of the Blair Building, as stunned as a witness to a bomb blast. I look up at the eighth-story windows, wondering if this is a bad dream. Martha is inside, presumably still crying in the bathroom, where she fled after leaving Oscar’s office. At least she has a husband. Where am I going after I leave the jail? I don’t have an office anymore. Dr.