Page 2 of Throwing Shade
My skin was hot and itchy, my throat tight with a torrent of curses.
“I’m Miriam,” I said, evenly.
“Yeah, so?”
“You called me Mara. You sent the email to the wrong person.” I could just shove the law dictionary so far up his ass he tasted paper for a week. Or better still, follow the ancient Chinese practice of Lingchi, death by a thousand cuts. The classic tortures were the best.
Blake turned red and puffed out his chest like a blustering bagpipe. “Whatever. Get it done or I’ll take this to HR,” he said.
Chanting “performance review” like a mantra, I pasted a pleasant smile on my face. “You got it.”
I’d have to stay late to get everything accomplished, so I fired off a quick text to my kid, grateful she was sixteen and self-sufficient, and pulled relevant law books off the walnut bookcases. I wanted to throw something or stomp between the stacks, but the idea of damaging a book in my collection was anathema and my heels sank into the thick carpet that absorbed sound.
Days like today, I felt like I was being absorbed, especially when, hours later, I had yet to see another person.
By three o’clock, my eyes swam from reading small print, so I grabbed the Book Wizard mug and headed into the staff kitchen for a much-needed caffeine jolt.
“Miriam!” Fahim, a bright-eyed and eager recent hire, flagged me down. “I just sent you an email requesting you pull work safe standards on containing cast-in-place concrete on construction sites.”
“You mean, safety procedures for watching cement dry?”
He frowned. “Concrete and cement aren’t the same thing.”
Sighing, I cut him off before he could launch into an explanation. “I was kidding,” I said gently.
“Oh. Good one.” He sounded dubious.
I refrained from shaking my head. Law school had destroyed any sense of humor in our current batch of Associates. “I’ll get what you need.”
“Thank you.”
The staff kitchen was fairly quiet, with only one person ahead of me for the cappuccino machine: Mara.
The machine clicked twice and burst into a loud hum, firing two thin streams of espresso into the mug.
“A double?” I raised my eyebrows. “That kind of day?”
“Every day is that kind of day around here.” Mara patted a strand of gray hair back into her bun, watching the frothed milk dispense. “I blame my husband. If he hadn’t been so supportive of me going back to work after our sons were born, I’d have enjoyed a long and leisured career as a trophy wife.”
“Please. If you didn’t have all the lawyers to boss around on a regular basis, life wouldn’t have that same sparkle.”
She rolled her eyes, then grinned. “How’s my favorite librarian?”
“Eh.” I took Mara’s place at the machine, setting my cup under the nozzle and hitting the selection for an Americano. “Did you hear? Poor Blake suffers from acute myopia. Except with age not distance. He chewed me out for failing to follow instructions in an email that he’d sent to you.”
“Ah. I wondered about that. Well, fair’s fair, I guess. All those youngsters look alike to my feeble old brain,” she said, with calculating shrewdness. “I hope I don’t confuse him with someone else the next time he needs to see Daniel.”
“That would be a pity.” I grabbed my coffee.
“Wouldn’t it, just?” Mara patted me on the shoulder. “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.”
I laughed. “Fake phrase, but good sentiment. To you as well.”
The caffeine put a spring in my step as I returned to the library, and my work smile reached my eyes when I saw the visitor in my office.
“I bring you glad tidings. And food crack.” My best friend, Judith Rachefsky, rubbed Vaseline on her red dry potter’s hands, avoiding the wrist brace she wore for her carpal tunnel. It was the major downside of working with clay, along with constant smudges of dust across her black T-shirts and jeans.
A familiar brown bakery bag sat on my desk.
