The First Councel

“I do my best,” he says as the door to my office opens. Pam sticks her head in.

“Listen, I better go. I’ll talk to you later.”

I hang up the phone and Pam hesitantly asks, “Is now a good time, because… ”

“Don’t worry-c’mon in.”

As she steps inside, I notice the sluggishness in her walk. Usually bouncy with a tireless stride, she’s moving in slow motion, her shoulders sagging at her side. “Can you believe it?” she asks, collapsing in the seat in front of my desk. Her eyes are tired. And red. She’s been crying.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

The single question causes a relapse in emotion that wells up her eyes with tears. Clenching her jaw, Pam fights it back down. She’s not the type to cry in public. I reach into my desk and look for a tissue. All I have are some old presidential seal napkins. I hand them over, but she shakes her head.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“She hired me, y’know.” Clearing her throat, she adds, “When I came through for interviews, Caroline was the only person who liked me. Simon, Lamb, all the rest, they didn’t think I was tough enough. Simon wrote the word ‘Whitebread’ on my interview sheet.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Sure did. Caroline showed it to me,” Pam says with a laugh. “But since I was going to be working for her, she was able to pull me through. First day I started, she handed me Simon’s evaluation and told me to keep it. Said one day, I was going to shove the whole sheet down his throat.”

“Did you keep the sheet?”

Pam continues to laugh.

“What?”

A wicked smile takes her cheeks. “Remember that victory party we had when Simon gave his congressional testimony on alcohol advertising?”

I nod.

“And remember the victory cake we served-the one Caroline said we made from scratch?”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes,” Pam adds with a wide smile. “On my hundred and fifty-second day here, Edgar Simon ate his words.”

I laugh along with her. “Are you telling me you put your old evaluation in the cake?”

“I admit nothing.”

“How’s that even possible? Wouldn’t he taste it?”

“What do you mean he? Trust me, I watched the whole thing-you ate quite a nice piece yourself.”

“And you didn’t stop me?”

“I didn’t like you as much back then.”

“But how’d you-”

“We wet the sheet, ripped it into small pieces, and threw it in the blender. That sucker puréed in no time. Best cooking lesson I ever took. Caroline was a mad genius. And when it came to Simon-she hated that bastard.”

“Right up until the hour before she di-” I catch myself. “I’m sorry-I didn’t mean… ”

“It’s okay,” she says. Without another word, the two of us spend the next minute in complete, stark silence; an impromptu memorial for one of our own. To be honest, it’s not until that moment that I realize what I’d left out. Through the two hours of questioning, and the worrying, and the angling to protect myself, I forgot one key thing: I forgot to mourn. My legs go numb and my heart sinks. Caroline Penzler died today. And whatever I thought of her, this is the first moment it’s actually hit me. The short silence doesn’t make her a saint, but the realization does me a world of good.

As soon as Pam looks up, she sees the change in my expression. “You okay?”

“Y-Yeah… I just can’t believe it.”

Pam agrees and shrinks back in her seat. “How’d she look?”

“What do you mean?”

“The body. Weren’t you the one who found the body?”

I nod, unable to answer. “Who told you?”

“Debi in Public Liaison heard it from her boss, who has a friend who has the office right across from-”

“I got it,” I interrupt. This isn’t going to be easy.

“Can I ask you a separate question?” Pam adds. From the tone in her voice, I know where she’s going with this. “Last night-whatever you got into-is that why Caroline died?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t do that to me, Michael. You said it was cover-of-Newsweek big. That’s what you went to see her about, isn’t it?”

I don’t answer.

“It was about Nora, wasn’t it?”

Still, nothing.

“If Caroline was killed for some-”

“She wasn’t killed! It was a heart attack!”

Pam watches me carefully. “You really believe that?”

“I actually do.”

When we first got assigned to the same office, Pam described herself as the person in fifth grade who got left behind when her friends got popular. It was a self-effacing icebreaker, but I have to say, even then, I never believed it. She’s way too savvy for that-she wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t. So even if she loves to play the underdog and put herself down-even if she constantly feels the need to lower expectations-I, until today, have always thought she was a guru of interpersonal dynamics.

“So the little psycho’s really worth that much to you?” she asks.

“You may have a hard time believing this, but Nora’s a good person.”

“If she’s so good, where’s she now?”

I look over at the toaster. Nothing’s changed. In green digital letters are the same three words: Second Floor Residence.

***