Household Gods

Nicole started to say, Thank you. Her tongue had already slipped between her teeth when the words that he had said – the real words, not the words she had expected and rehearsed for – finally sank in. She stared at him. There he sat, calm, cool, machinelike, prosperous. There was not a word in her anywhere. Not a single word.

“I realize this must be a disappointment for you. ‘ Sheldon Rosenthal had no trouble talking. Why should he? His career, his life, hadn’t just slammed into the side of a mountain and burst into flames. “Do please understand that we are quite satisfied with your performance and happy to retain you in your present salaried position.”

Happy to retain you in your salaried position? Like any attorney with two brain cells to rub against each other, Nicole knew that was one of the all-time great lies, right up there with The check is in the mail and Of course I won’t come in your mouth, darling. If you weren’t on the way up, you were on the way out. She’d thought she was on the way up. Now -

She knew she had to say something. “Could you tell me why you chose Mr. Ogarkov” – formality helped, to some microscopic degree – ”instead of me, so that… so that I’ll be in a better position for the next opportunity?” Rosenthal hadn’t said anything about the next opportunity. She knew what that meant, too. It was written above the gates of hell. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

He coughed once, and then again, as if the first time had taken him by surprise. Maybe he hadn’t expected her to ask that. After a pause that stretched a little longer than it should have, he said, “The senior partners were of the opinion that, with your other skills being more or less equal, Mr. Ogarkov’s very fluent writing style gives the firm an asset we would do well to retain.”

“But – ” Nothing Nicole could say would change Sheldon Rosenthal’s mind. That was as clear as the crystal decanter that stood on the sideboard in this baronial hall of an office. Nicole could do the mathematics of the firm, better maybe than anybody in it. She was five times the lawyer Gary Ogarkov would ever be – but Gary Ogarkov had ten times the chances. All it took was one little thing. One tiny fluke of nature. A Y chromosome.

They all had it, all the senior partners, every last one of them. Rosenthal, Gallagher, Kaplan, Jeter, Gonzalez Feng, and most of the junior partners, too. A precise handful of women rounded out the firm, just enough to keep people from raising awkward eyebrows. Not enough to mean anything, not where it counted.

Class action suit? Discrimination suit? Even as she thought of it, she looked into Sheldon Rosenthal’s eyes and knew. She could sue till she bankrupted herself, and it wouldn’t make the least bit of difference.

Men, she thought, too clear even to be bitter. They would not give a person her due, not if she was female: not as a woman, not as a partner, not as a professional. All they wanted to do was get on top and screw her, in bed or on the job. And they could. All too often, they could. In the United States at the end of the twentieth century, in spite of all the laws, the suits, the cases piled up from the bottom to the top of an enormous and tottering system, they still had the power.

Oh, they paid lip service to equality. They’d hired her, hadn’t they? They’d hired half a dozen other peons, and used most of them till they broke or left, the way they were using Nicole. Hypocrites, every last one of them.

“You wished to say something, Ms. Gunther-Perrin?” Rosenthal probably didn’t get into court once a year these days, but he knew how to size up a witness.

“I was just wondering” – Nicole chose her words with enormous care – “if you used anything besides the senior partners’ opinions to decide who would get the partnership.”

However careful she was, it wasn’t careful enough. Sheldon Rosenthal had been an attorney longer than she’d been alive. He knew what she was driving at. “Oh, yes,” he said blandly. “We studied performance assessments and annual evaluations most thoroughly, I assure you. The process is well documented.”

If you sue us, you’re toast, he meant.

Performance assessments written by men, Nicole thought. Annual evaluations written by men. She knew hers were good. She had no way of knowing what Gary’s said. If they were as good as hers… If they’re as good as mine, it’s because he’s got the old-boy network looking out for him. There’s no way he’s as good at this as I am.

But if Rosenthal said the process was well documented, you could take it to the bank. And you’d have to be crazy to take it to court.

“Is there anything else?” he asked. Smooth. Capable. Powerful.