1
Riona
I’m sitting in my corner office, working on land purchase documents for the South Shore Development. People think that being a lawyer is all about arguing, but in fact you only spend a tiny percentage of your time in court or in settlement negotiations. The vast majority of my hours pass by right here in this room, writing, reading, or editing.
I don’t mind being alone in here. It’s my sanctuary. I have control over everything inside these doors. I have my desk set up just the way I like it, facing the two-sided view of the Marina City Towers, Michigan Ave, and the Chicago River spread out below me.
Everything in my office is pewter, brass, cream, and blue—shades I find soothing.
I’ve got three watercolors by Shutian Xue on the walls, and a sculpture by Jean Fourier in the corner. It’s his piece called Building Blocks, which is supposed to represent the interior of an atom. To me, it looks more like a model of a solar system.
I watch most everyone else finish their work and leave for the night. A couple of my colleagues poked their heads in my door on the way out to give me a message—some work-related, and some just nonsense. My paralegal Lucy lets me know she’ll finish the stack of lease agreements I gave her as soon as she gets back in the morning. And Josh Hale tells me I came in second in last week’s Pick‘em league, which means I won a whopping twenty dollars.
“I didn’t think you even liked football,” he says with a condescending smile.
“I don’t,” I say sweetly. “I just like winning your money.”
Josh and I are not friends. In fact, we’re direct rivals. The eldest of the firm partners is about to retire. When Victor Weiss leaves, either Josh is, or I am is the most likely choice to replace him. And we both know it.
Even if we weren’t in competition for the partnership position, I’d still detest him. I’ve never liked the kind of person who pretends to be friendly, while scavenging for information they can use to hurt you. I’d respect him more if he were an honest asshole, instead of a fake nice guy.
Everything about him annoys me, from his too-tight suits to his aggressive cologne. He reminds me of a TV show host. In looks, maybe a Ryan Seacrest. In personality, more like a Tucker Carlson—always thinking he’s twice as smart as he actually is.
Taking the opportunity to snoop, I see him scanning my office, trying to read the headings on the documents spread out on my desk. He’s relentless.
“Okay, bye,” I say to him, pointedly. Telling him to leave.
“‘Don’t work too hard,” he replies, shooting a little finger gun in my direction.
After he leaves, his cologne lingers twenty minutes longer. Ugh.
The last to depart is Uncle Oran. He’s the managing partner of the firm and my father’s half-brother. He’s always been my favorite relative. In fact, he’s the reason I became a lawyer in the first place.
At family parties I’d corner him and demand to hear another story of odd and interesting legal cases, like the man who sued Pepsi for refusing to provide him with a $23 million dollar fighter jet in exchange for Pepsi Points, or the time that Proctor & Gamble tried to argue in a court of law that their own Pringles were not, in fact, potato chips.
Uncle Oran is an excellent storyteller, well able to milk drama out of even the most convoluted cases. He’d explain to me precedent and statutes, and how important even the tiniest of details could be . . . how even a comma in the wrong place could invalidate an entire contract.
I found Uncle Oran fascinating not only because he’s funny and charming, but because he’s so similar and yet so different from my father.
They both dress well, in fitted suits, but Uncle Oran’s look like something a Trinity professor would wear—always tweed or wool, with wooden buttons and elbow patches—while my father looks like an American businessman. They’re both tall with the same thick graying hair, and long, lean faces, but Uncle Oran has the coloring they call “Black Irish”—dark eyes, and an olive tone to his skin. My father’s eyes are cornflower blue.
Oran’s accent fascinated me the most. He’d lost some of it, living in America for years. But you can still hear it gilding the edges of his words. And he loves a good Irish saying:
“Forgetting a debt doesn’t mean it’s paid.” Or, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, except your own obituary.”
He’s a version of my father who grew up in Ireland—an alternate reality, if we’d all been raised there instead of Chicago.
Tonight he knocks on my doorframe, saying, “You know we don’t pay you by the hour, Riona. You can go home once in a while and still have plenty of money for those fancy shoes.”
The shoes in question are a pair of oxblood Nomasei pumps, set neatly to the side under my desk. I take them off when I know I’ll be sitting a while, so they don’t get creases across the toes.
I smile up at Uncle Oran. “I knew you’d notice those,” I say.
“I notice everything,” he says. “Like the fact that you’ve got all the South Shore land purchase agreements in front of you. I told you Josh was going to handle those.”
“I had already started them,” I say, shrugging. “I figured I might as well finish.”
Oran shakes his head. “You work too hard, Riona,” he says seriously. “You’re young. You should be out with friends and boyfriends. Once in a while, at least.”
“I have a boyfriend,” I say.
“Yeah? Where is he?”
“About five miles that way.” I nod my head toward the window. “At Mercy Hospital.”
“Oh, the surgeon?” Oran sniffs. “He’s still around?”
“Yes,” I laugh. “What’s wrong with Dean?”
“Well . . . ” Oran sighs. “I wasn’t going to say anything. But I saw he sent you roses the other day. Red roses.”
“So?”
“Not very imaginative, is he?”
I shrug. “Some people like the classics.”
“Some people are intellectually lazy.”
“What’s the right flowers to send a woman?”
Oran grins. “I always send whiskey. You send a woman a bottle of Bunnahabhain Forty-Year Single Malt . . . then she knows you’re serious.”
“Well, we’re not,” I tell him. “Not serious.”
Oran strides into my office and scoops up the stack of folders off my desk.
“Hey!” I protest.
“This is for your own good,” he says. “Go home. Put on a nice dress. Go get your man from the hospital. Enjoy a night out. Josh will find these on his desk tomorrow morning, the lazy shite.”
“Fine,” I say, just to placate him.
I let Oran carry the folders away, and then I watch him head over to the elevators, leather satchel slung over his shoulder in place of a briefcase. But I have no intention of actually leaving. I’ve got a million other projects to work on, with or without the purchase agreements.
And this is my favorite time to do it—after everyone else had left and the lights have automatically dimmed across the floor. In total silence, the rest of the office dark, and only the city lights sparkling below me. No interruptions.