LITMIR.BIZ

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Joan and Marie Two giggled. Marie One shook her head.

      There were three Maries in the office – four if you counted Marie LaPierre, but nobody counted her – so the Maries were called One, Two and Three to avoid confusion. Two of them, along with Joan, Michelle, Tina and Claire, were having their lunch together. It was interesting to Claire to watch how the secretaries’ status was a reflection of whom they worked for. Marie One worked for Mr Bataglia who was middle management – nothing much – and she didn’t get much attention or respect. Marie Two worked for Mr Crayden, Junior who was one of the Craydens of Crayden Smithers. That meant Marie Two was considered much more important than Marie One or almost anyone else. Tina’s work for Mr Wonderful, the golden boy of the firm for the last few years, made her number two or three with a bullet. Michelle worked for the semi-retired David Smithers who was more a phantom than a physical presence. Everyone, it seemed, was more important than Claire, who only worked for Joan. It was a race Claire didn’t mind losing. She actually enjoyed watching the sudden shifts in power that change at the top wreaked on those at the bottom.

      ‘I don’t think he’s goin’ to get away with it this time,’ Marie One said. She put down her salami and egg sandwich. Then she picked up her Diet Coke and took a slug right from the can. Why, Claire wondered, did people who ate two thousand calories for lunch bother with diet sodas? Marie was still as large as the day that Claire first entered this lunchroom.

      ‘No. He ain’t,’ Michelle said, then took a bite of her triple-decker sandwich, followed by a potato chip. She didn’t have a problem with weight – she always had all the carbohydrates she desired and never put on an ounce.

      ‘Sure he will,’ Tina told them. She pushed some of her dark hair back over one ear and took a bite of her turkey club. ‘Hey, his social life is as busy as Grand Central Station, but I’m a great conductor. I keep all the different trains on separate tracks. They never crash into each other.’

      Claire didn’t bother to point out that that wasn’t a conductor’s job. Actually, she thought the conductor analogy was an apt one but she would have used the metaphor of a symphony orchestra, not a commuter station. Michael Wainwright had a complicated and splendid private life that, without his knowledge, was public to all of the clerical women on the thirty-eighth floor.

      Marie Two gave Tina a sour look. ‘Hey. Tell Mike Engineer that someday two of those engines will crash. And we’ll all be readin’ about it in the Wall Street Journal.’

      Joan, the head of the analysts and – aside from Claire – the only woman at the table who wasn’t either a secretary or Italian-American, shook her head. She was a divorced single mother in her mid-thirties and, in Claire’s opinion, justifiably bitter. ‘From your lips to god’s ears,’ Joan said. ‘The bastard deserves it.’

      But Claire didn’t think that was fair. Though Michael Wainwright certainly played fast and loose, he could afford to. It wasn’t just the looks, brains and schooling. He was also socially connected. Claire, via Tina, had an almost daily update on whom he was seeing, whom he was about to drop, whom he was adding to his conquest list, and where he was taking his latest date. Claire’s mental calendar, empty of engagements, was full of Mr Wonderful’s life. She wasn’t sure if Tina’s ongoing conversation was good or bad for her private obsession, but she certainly couldn’t ask Tina to stop talking without raising Tina’s always-acute suspicions when it came to romance. And it wasn’t as if Claire even dreamed of any real connection to Michael Wainwright. She knew he traveled in a world of money, entitlement, and the natural aristocracy of beauty and that she didn’t belong in any of those categories. Michael Wainwright was not a romantic possibility and she had no illusions otherwise. But it didn’t mean that she didn’t have feelings. She just kept them to herself. Her interest, she thought, was a kind of hobby – like bird watching.

      Tina put down her sandwich and angrily wiped her mouth with a Subway paper napkin. ‘Why does he deserve it?’ she demanded of Joan. ‘He never promises any of them anything. They’re big girls. They can take care of themselves.’ Claire smiled. In public Tina was loyal to Michael but Claire knew that she sometimes warned him of the dating Armageddon that she so nimbly put off.

      ‘It’s time to get back,’ Joan said primly and looked at Claire. Claire nodded and put her untouched apple back into her bag. Unlike the others, Claire didn’t work for an investment banker. And reporting to Joan didn’t always make life pleasant. She stood up and smiled at Tina, who flipped a bird behind Joan’s back.

      

      Claire’s afternoon was spent doing what seemed like endless revisions to spreadsheets of figures. The worst part about her job was also the best. There were no changes, no surprises, no peaks and valleys. She knew that as soon as she completed an assignment, Joan would hand her another one. Unlike Tina and the three Maries, Claire didn’t get to glimpse the drama going on in and around the windowed offices: she didn’t see the clients arrive, the meetings held in the glass-enclosed conference rooms. She didn’t witness the hirings and firings. But she heard all about them. Sometimes Claire felt her imagination was a better place to view the dramas than in reality. Tina was a kind of human radio – all Tina, all the time – and Claire saw the wins and losses, the corporate coups and the promotions and demotions more vividly in her imagination than if she had seen them in reality.

      The problem was that she had time to daydream – too much time – and too many of her daydreams centered around Mr Wonderful. She wondered uncomfortably if it was becoming closer to an obsession than she admitted to herself.

      While Claire had the title of ‘analyst’ she wasn’t much more than an educated clerk. Of course none of the secretaries were called secretaries, either. They were ‘Administrative Assistants’ (though they all expected gifts and flowers on Secretaries’ Day). But the two groups had something important in common: there was nowhere for either analysts or administrative assistants to advance to within Crayden Smithers. After a decade of service you weren’t promoted to investment banker. At best, you might get Joan’s job. Not that Claire wanted it. Joan was the sphincter muscle in the bowels of Crayden Smithers.

      That evening at five to five she was almost finished compiling a statistical table – she hated typing statistics – and stayed until a quarter after to get it done. It was unusual because, unlike the secretaries, the analysts had scheduled hours and usually left on the dot of five. Only Joan had to stay on to complete paperwork and arrange for temps or overtime work.

      Now, as Joan put on her coat, she eyed Claire. ‘Don’t stay past six,’ she warned.

      Claire smiled and nodded. The rule at Crayden Smithers was that an hour or more of overtime guaranteed a car service ride home. Of course, a ride to Tottenville meant going through Brooklyn, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and half of Staten Island. It was a two-hundred-and-ten-dollar fare in a chauffeured Mercedes. ‘We don’t have the budget for that,’ Joan told her as she walked out the door.

      ‘I know,’ Claire called after her. There, alone for the first time in more than eight hours, she took a deep breath. The commute this evening would be less brutal than at peak hours, though the wait would be longer. Getting to Tottenville after rush hour was the slow hour – or maybe two or three. Ferries, trains and buses didn’t run frequently. Everyone in Tottenville called Manhattan ‘The City’ – even though Staten Island was part of New York. Staten Islanders felt forgotten and inferior to the other boroughs. They were always coming up with new resentments and plans to secede. Her father had always said the place was too small to be a city but too large to be an asylum. Despite the four hours a day, lots of people made the long commute because they wanted to live in what seemed like – and what had once been – a small, waterside town within the New York City boundaries. But for Claire it was all tiresome, with nothing much waiting for her at either end.

      Now she decided she would stop in a diner near the ferry terminal, have a salad for dinner, and then, she thought guiltily, maybe pie à la mode. Well, with or without dessert she wouldn’t go home until the rush was completely over. She was too tired to fight the crowd, for the long wait to board and perhaps having to stand for the whole ride. If she waited that would also mean

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