Veronica was Henry’s secretary. Now that he was senior partner, and had to address “gender issues,” he’d asked her if she wanted to be called his “executive assistant.” She hadn’t. “I’m old-fashioned,” she’d said. Whatever that meant.

  “Gender” was of course a misnomer, Henry said to himself on the train back to Rye, where they lived so his wife could have a garden. “Gender” was a grammatical term. Nouns had genders. A human being had a sex. But that word made people uncomfortable, so the human resources people had replaced it with jargon. Henry disliked jargon. I’m old-fashioned too, he told himself proudly.

  Part of old-fashioned, in Henry’s view, was being courteous. So every so often, when Veronica was very busy, he took something to the copying machine himself. There were often younger secretaries there. Please let us help you, they would say. And he’d let them, because he enjoyed being fussed over, and also because he didn’t completely understand the copying machine, which paused at unexpected moments and made strange noises. “I remember when there was carbon paper,” Henry would say. And because he was senior partner, none of the young secretaries ever said, “I’ll bet you do.” Which was nice.

  It was clear to Henry that he liked being treated like a small child, which Elizabeth did very well, by the way, so long as the small child in question was sufficiently important that allowing himself to be treated that way was his choice, could perhaps be regarded as a form of good manners. Henry reckoned that upper class Englishmen who stuttered were playing a version of that game. Their disability gave them control of the conversation, if you thought about it.

  Part of being senior partner was having sandwich lunches with small groups of young associates. Henry would tell them about the history of the firm. Some of the associates would ask him questions about politics, his Washington connections being common knowledge, and some would essentially ask for career guidance. “Honest ass-kissing,” was how he thought of it. “Nice young people” was what he said to Elizabeth.

  The fearless ungrammatical girl eventually showed up. He’d been wondering about her—wondering if she was an associate or just a paralegal. There were so many young women in the office now.

  “What’s the deal about sex,” she asked.

  “I’m for it,” said Henry, and was gratified to get a laugh from the group. Small boy was not the right persona for this group.

  “At the firm, I mean,” said the girl. “Are we not supposed to go out with each other? I can’t get a straight answer out of human resources.”

  “Ah,” said Henry. “We don’t have a rule.”

  “That doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” said the girl.

  “You will go far,” said Henry, and then looked down at his sandwich because he was suddenly afraid he was blushing.

  “Because I asked or because I knew I needed to?” she said.

  Henry realized that her contemporaries were enjoying the show, and that the girl—she must have a name—was probably already famous among them. “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”

  “Millie,” she said. “Short for ‘Millicent,’ if you can believe it. And be sure you remember it.”

  Back in Rye, Henry explained to his wife that he had tried to give Millie sound advice.

  “I’m sure you did, dear,” said Elizabeth. She said it with deadpan seriousness, which was her way of being ironic.

  “Number one,” he’d told Millie, “Life is easier if you keep things on a professional basis at work. Number two: that requires that you have a life outside of work. Number three: what you do outside of work is none of the firm’s business, provided you don’t draw attention to yourself or the firm.”

  “Thanks, Henry. We figured we’d have to take you out for a drink to make you talk about romance.” She gestured to the others around the table, several of whom nodded agreement. Millie paused and then shrugged. “Can we take you out anyway?”

  So that very evening, Henry found himself with six associates at an expensive bar being prevented from paying for the drinks and telling stories about the first time he argued a case before the Supreme Court, and about an unidentified United States Senator of his acquaintance who had “zipper trouble,” and probably other things he shouldn’t have mentioned.

  Henry supposed that qualified as talking about “romance.” The Senator himself referred to it as such. He was one of those charismatic politicians with a good deal of sentimentality in his make-up. The objects of the Senator’s serial attention didn’t always see it that way, however, as Henry knew from “coping” with one of them for the Senator. “It’s not the ‘60s anymore,” the young intern had said. “All I want is a good reference and bragging rights.” Conquest. Henry skipped that part of the story. The young associates would probably think it was normal behavior, he told himself. It would just prove he was old-fashioned. Henry only enjoyed being old-fashioned when it was his choice.

  Millie walked Henry to Grand Central, gracefully preventing him from stepping in front of several taxis, and delivered him to the platform the train for Rye left from. “I hope you won’t hold it against me, being so direct,” said Millie when the train was announced. “I can’t help myself.” She kissed him on the cheek, gave him a little hug and walked away.

  It had never occurred to Henry in his life to keep things from Elizabeth, so he admitted to the “too many Scotches” that would have been obvious to her, and also to the kiss. “I think that’s just what young people do now days,” said Henry. He and Elizabeth had never had any children.

  “So I understand,” said Elizabeth, as if young people were an undocumented species.

  The very next day, Henry was sitting at his desk pondering the ways of the young when Veronica came in. She’d been at lunch longer than usual, which wasn’t an issue because she typically worked many more hours than she was paid for. “Can I do anything for you?” she said. Her perfume washed over the desk like foam from the sea. He had a sudden vision of her as a mermaid, coming out of the water onto his desk.

  “What?” said Henry.

  “Sorry,” said Veronica. “You looked like you needed something and were waiting for me to get back.”

  “I was just thinking,” said Henry. “But what I do need is the file I had yesterday, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  She was back in a moment and so was her smell. Henry reckoned that if he objected to human resources substituting “gender” for “sex,” he ought to say “smell” instead of “fragrance”—at least to himself. And there were several smells, actually. There was soap. She must have washed her hands when she got back from lunch. And it was just possible she’d had a glass of wine with her meal.

  Henry wondered briefly about the life Veronica lived away from the firm. At forty and a bit she would have made a very presentable mermaid.

  “I had lunch with Elizabeth,” she said, as if reading his thoughts.

  “Really?”

  “Spur of the moment. We do it a few times a year.”

  Henry knew that his wife and his secretary had lunch from time to time. What was interesting was that Veronica thought he didn’t.

  “She was in town to get something repaired,” Veronica went on. “A leather purse, I think.”

  “Elizabeth can get anything fixed,” said Henry vaguely. She knew all the artisans in New York, it sometime seemed. She knew Manhattan inside out. Henry had a brief vision of Manhattan as a leather purse, with Elizabeth turning it inside out to show the mayor what needed to be stitched up. Henry though his wife had decided to throw that purse out, but evidently not. She was old-fashioned about not wasting things.

  Elizabeth had grown up in the city of course, but didn’t for some reason want to live there. Her father had been a professor at Columbia Medical School and they got faculty housing, a grand apartment on West Side Drive. Henry remembered picking Elizabeth up for a date and being growled at by her father about when she had to be home. She’d been serenely beautiful that night. They’d kissed in the taxi. A really good one. She hadn’t wanted him to see her upstairs. “My father will be there,” she’d explained. “It would detract from the pleasure of the evening.”

  Veronica broke into Henry’s thoughts. “That cheeky associate wants five minutes of your time, by the way.”

  Veronica belonged in a 1960s movie. Early ‘60s. She hadn’t gone to college, though she clearly would today, clearly had the brains for it. She had a gone-to-a-good-public-high-school-in-New-York style about her: clever, proud, cynical, defensive maybe. She also had an aged parent she took care of, somewhere on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Henry’s recollection was that it was her mother, that Veronica was the last of five children, that her brothers and sisters all had families of their own, had moved away, hated their mother, loved their mother but couldn’t be bothered, had plausible excuses.

  On reflection, Henry decided Veronica probably liked the situation she was in or she wouldn’t have put up with it so long. “Old-fashioned.” Every day she could tell herself she was the responsible one.

  The thing about mermaids is they can’t have sex. All they can do is be desirable.

  “By cheeky associate I assume you mean the one who asked all the questions at the sandwich lunch yesterday?”

  “And got you drunk, as I understand it.”

  “Just . . . cheerful,” said Henry. “Word travels fast. Has she announced that she kissed me when she put me on the train for Rye?”

  “I doubt she remembers,” said Veronica, walking toward the door.

  “Well, if you’ll do the same, I’ll buy you a drink tonight,” said Henry. “Get me on the train for Rye, I mean.” Omigod, he thought. “Oh, but wait. Is Second Friday today?”

  Veronica stopped and turned around and nodded first no and then yes. “It’s not,” she said. “It’s the first Friday of the month. And . . . 5:30. You have to be on the 6:42 for Rye.”

  The main thing about mermaids is their breasts. Henry had avoided noticing Veronica’s for years. But standing next to her in a crowded bar, and then sitting on a couch when another couple got up and left, it was impossible not to brush against Veronica once or twice while reaching for the peanuts or paying for the second round of drinks.

  “We’ve worked together for how long and never had a drink before?” said Henry, by which he possibly meant that their relationship was changing in some unspecified way and that that was fine with Henry.

  “Sixteen years,” said Veronica. Her smile was eager, nervous.

  “Is it really that long?”

  “It is,” she said. “And it is time for me to get you on your train. As I promised.”

  It was, as Henry told himself all the way to Rye, “foreordained” that he kissed her on the lips when they parted. He chuckled. I have to stop doing this, he said to himself. Two nights in a row. At least Elizabeth seemed to be in a tolerant mood. He told her he’d kissed Veronica. “Of course you did,” said Elizabeth. “Just don’t get testosterone poisoning.” The phrase was one he hadn’t heard before but it reminded Henry of Elizabeth’s father so he didn’t question her.

  It seemed to Henry, waking up slowly, as he allowed himself to do on Saturdays, that there had been a lot of “New Age” conversation in the bar with the young associates. It also seemed to him that all the young associates had been women. Could that be true? Maybe there were boys at the start but they left early. Anyway, the young women the firm now recruited seemed to put a lot of store in having lime juice with hot water when you got out of bed and finding time for daily meditation.

  “As if you could,” one of them had said.

  “Do it on the subway,” said another. “And it works best late at night.”

  “Oh, right,” said the first one. “I’m happy to meet Jesus but not on the A Train through Harlem.”

  It had been important not to be dismissive of his employees’ beliefs but also not to be taken in. These girls could easily have been trying to make him agree to foolish notions, just to see if they could, just as they’d conspired to get him drunk. So Henry avoided signing up for the detoxifying benefits of going barefoot or the importance of chakras, despite how pleasant it might have been to have Millie reach out and put her hand on his arm and say, “Henry, you get it. Listen, guys, Henry gets it.”

  Or maybe that had happened. Would Odysseus, having heard the sirens sing, have been able to remember accurately, or would their song have become a dream? And maybe he had been kissed. On a train platform as if in an old movie. Yes, that had happened.

  In this haze of pleasant and embarrassing recollections, one phase kept beckoning: “going into the forest.” It had to do with a group of Buddhist monks whose rule was particularly severe. “Forest monks,” they were called, even though they seemed to live in places you would have expected monstrous flowers and hanging vines. Henry had a brief vision of “the Buddha,” as the girls all called him, meditating among the pines and birches of New Hampshire.

  Henry sat up in bed. There were no sounds downstairs. Elizabeth had presumably gone to buy muffins at a local bakery, as she did most Saturday mornings. The thing about these “forest monks” was that they introduced the notion of unfamiliar terrain. Which had some resonance for a man of his eminence who has allowed half a dozen young women to get him drunk, and the next night kissed his secretary of sixteen years. If Buddhists could go into the forest, presumably Presbyterians could go into the jungle—and undertake the transformation “going in” was a metaphor for.

  Henry had never done that. He’d never meditated “as such.” He’d certainly thought deeply, if that counted. As a younger man he had worked hard enough with little enough sleep to expect hallucinations, but they never came. His whole life, in fact, had been organized to avoid unfamiliar terrain. That was why he’d married Elizabeth. At 22 as much as now, she looked and behaved exactly like someone who could be married to a senior partner.

  Up the stairs came the sounds of Henry’s perfect wife, now back from the bakery, making the coffee, talking to the cat. He reminded himself of his intention to actually buy her a birthday present this year. He usually forgot—and she always turned out to have gotten herself something practical, something she actually needed, and they’d treat it as his present. “More efficient,” she’d always say.

  Veronica called in sick Monday morning. She’d called the services supervisor before Henry arrived. Henry hoped he hadn’t suddenly made her uncomfortable working with him. Someone was assigned to fill in who had no idea how to find the files he wanted or even how a senior partner’s telephone ought to be answered. He was quite dependent on Veronica, he acknowledged to himself. Shouldn’t have kissed her, though.

  Henry decided to take advantage of Veronica’s absence to go see his doctor. He pleaded an unspecified emergency and Dr. Thompson said she would squeeze him in. Making doctor’s appointments—and for that matter seeing that he went—was one of those matters Veronica looked after. Veronica in collaboration with Elizabeth. But Henry wanted to make this a private visit. He wanted to ask about this “testosterone poisoning.” He’d taken a hard look at himself while he was shaving that morning and decided he was losing his grip.

  And then Millie had shown up for her “five minutes” and it felt like she’d propositioned him. Maybe he’d made it up. But that didn’t matter. What worried him was how much he liked her suggestion.

  What she’d actually said was that as they seemed to get along, she thought he should make her his “private secretary—in the British sense.” She probably had him pegged for an anglophile. “Better term is probably ‘special assistant,’ or plain ‘assistant.’ ”

  “An assistant to the President is essentially the top rank you can have on the White House staff,” said Henry. “Special assistant is a lower-level title, at least in Washington.” Was he showing off or stalling? Why hadn’t he just said “no”?

  “Can’t be ‘executive assistant,’ ” Millie continued, “because that’s what important people’s secretaries get called now.”

  “Veronica doesn’t.”

  “Good for her. And I don’t particularly care what you call me as long as you work me hard.”

  What was that supposed to mean? Henry said to himself. Inappropriate answers immediately presented themselves in his brain.

  “I could travel with you,” said Millie, “which I assume Veronica couldn’t without it causing a stir.”

  “Travel isn’t part of Veronica’s job description, and anyway she has a bedridden mother she takes care of.” Why was he telling her this?

  “Mostly what I’d do is manage your in-box, read memos and tell you what you needed to read, read legal journals you can’t possibly have time for. And I could tell you what was happening on the shop floor—in the firm I mean. I’m extremely good at finding out what’s going on in a place.” She paused. “See, I think you probably could be a lot more efficient with someone quite junior but very discreet as your ‘maneuver element.’ Sorry, that’s an Army term. My father was a career officer. That’s probably why I’m not shy. We moved so much, I had to get good at making new friends, and look, you and I are friends, now, sort of, and none of the other associates will have the balls—sorry, another Army expression—to suggest it . . .”

  “What’s in it for you, Millie?” said Henry.

  “Well, if you get appointed to the Court as everyone expects, I will have worked for you. It will look good on my resume even if you don’t. I’ll need a good resume in a few years when someone takes me out to lunch and tells me I’m unlikely to make partner. But mostly, I kind of think you’re . . . interesting, and I’d like to sit at your feet for a year or two. If I embarrass you, you can fire me. And I won’t ever kiss you again in public.”

 

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