Rough Trade

delighted at the idea.
    Mother hated that she had to pay her staff when she and my father were away. Having Chrissy at the house appealed to her perverse sense of thrift. Chrissy would have a cook and hot and cold running maids to help her with the baby while Mother would be spared the anguish of knowing that her servants were slacking off while she was yachting in the Caribbean.
    It was a strange homecoming nonetheless, greeted by Mrs. Mason, the same cook who’d fed us grilled cheese sandwiches and her own peculiar brand of Baptist spiritualism as children. I left Chrissy and the baby in her hands to be cooed and fussed over and went upstairs to do what I could to make myself presentable. I washed my face as gently as I could and gingerly brushed the dried blood out of my hair, leaving it down to cover the rapidly spreading bruises on my neck. I took off my blouse and examined myself in the mirror. I couldn’t tell where the Jester’s handiwork ended and the damage from my stunt with the car began. Not that it really mattered.
    I found a high-collared blouse in my Mother’s closet and paired it with her favorite red Ralph Lauren suit, taking another minute to try my best to camouflage my swollen lower lip with concealer. Fortunately, the worst of the damage to my mouth seemed to be on the inside. Then I threw my dirty and bloodstained clothes into the trash and headed downtown to my office.
    When I arrived back at the firm, the receptionist’s subdued greeting tipped me off that a war party was waiting for me. Whatever had happened was big and I was being blamed.
    Walking down the dark paneled corridors to my office, I knew exactly how Jeff Rendell would feel if he took a walk down the street in Milwaukee. It was almost funny— the way the secretaries ducked down into their cubicles to avoid meeting my eye. I had been gone for less than forty-eight hours—long enough to turn into a pariah.
    When I opened the door into my office, I found Skip Tillman’s formidable secretary, Doris, sitting at Cheryl’s desk, loading Avco files into a cardboard document box.
    “Hello, Doris,” I said. “What’s going on? Is Cheryl sick?”
    “She’s been reassigned to the word processing pool effective immediately,” Doris informed me, “and Mr. Tillman is waiting to see you in his office.”
    “Are you going to tell me what I did to earn this trip to the woodshed, Doris?” I asked.
    “You’d better hurry,” she said kindly. “You know he doesn’t like to be kept waiting when he’s in a bad mood.”
    I nodded as she got up and left. Then I took off my coat, hung it carefully in the closet, pausing briefly in front of the full-length mirror that hung inside the door. With my hair down and dressed in her clothes, the resemblance was unmistakable.
    “Oh my god,” I thought. “I’m turning into my mother.” Somehow the thought of that was much scarier than the prospect of what was about to happen to me.
     

CHAPTER 17
     
     
    Of course, I wasn’t about to make it easy for them. Instead of going straight to Tillman’s office I ducked into the library and slunk down the circular staircase that, hidden in the back of the stacks, connects the forty-second to the forty-first floor. Used exclusively by associates and other lowly library dwellers, I knew that by taking it I insured that I wouldn’t bump into Tillman or any other person of importance.
    I braved the furtive glances of the secretaries in the tax department and made my way into the firm’s equivalent of the boiler room—the word processing pool—where Cheryl now toiled in newfound exile.
    I walked slowly past the temporary workstation where she labored under a set of headphones, typing the turgid memos of green associates. I was careful not to slow my stride as I passed, but instead merely caught her eye and silently mouthed the words ladies ’ room as I continued on my way. The entire exchange was as quick and slick as a drug deal and every bit as subversive.
    Only support staff used the lavatory at this end of the forty-first floor, and it reeked of illicit cigarettes and strawberry disinfectant. There was an old tweed sofa in a particularly rancid shade of green with burn marks on the arms and a stack of dog-eared Cosmopolitans on the scarred plastic table next to it. It was the favored refuge of sobbing typists who’d been yelled at by their short-tempered bosses.
    I paced until Cheryl arrived. She looked rattled.
    “What happened?” I