Big Law by Lindsay Cameron

the hall, burning trash can in hand.” He mimed the actions, holding an imaginary trash can in his hand and waddling around the office. Sadir was always at his most animated when telling a story about associate torture. “He ran all the way to the bathroom and threw the can in the shower.” Sadir dramatically threw his imaginary trash can. “He totally drenched himself. Had to walk out of that bathroom looking like a dog that had been hosed down for picking at trash.” He snorted and laughed at the memory.
    My eyes widened in horror.
    “So, yeah, consider yourself lucky.” Sadir sat back down and began pecking away at his keyboard, leaving me to mull that over.
    More troubling than the fact that Saul had just torn up my document was that Sadir was starting to make sense to me. When I’d first met him, his point of view always sounded so negative and depressing, but now I wondered if he’d adopted that mentality in order to survive here. Maybe Sadir had started out energetic and eager to please too.
    Am I going to end up just like him? I pictured myself, the female version of Sadir, sulky and objectionable with an extra fifteen pounds of Seamless dinners on my frame, dispensing my cynical wisdom to the next crop of incoming associates. Was I going to wind up with the same personal hygiene deficits too? It was too horrible to imagine.
    Thankfully, my nightmare was interrupted by a thick Long Island accent. “Knawwwk, knawwk!”
    “Hi, Rita,” I sighed dejectedly. I knew she was checking in on me, just like she did after all of Saul’s public tongue lashings. Shewas like a mother bear protecting her cubs, not that “motherly” is the first word that would come to mind when looking at her. She was a petite woman in her early forties with long, bleached blonde hair that, judging from her dark roots, hadn’t been colored for a few months. Her skin tone can only be described as “tanning salon brown” and today she was showing off her thin, muscular legs in a micro-mini leather skirt. And despite what it said in the “managing your secretary” section of the Lawyer’s Manual, she was not the type of secretary that would tolerate being “managed.”
    “I’m sorry, hon,” she said softly, putting her hand on my shoulder. My eyes prickled with tears. Her simple sympathetic gesture penetrated the emotionally detached wall I was struggling to preserve. I was beginning to feel like a wishbone, with Saul and Ben tugging violently on opposite sides. Any minute I was going to snap.
    “Don’t let it baw-tha you. He’s just an asshole.”
    I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in my throat, and nodded in agreement.
    “Listen, do ya guys wanna a piece of Sherry’s birthday cake?” She tried to put some cheeriness into her tone. “There’s lots left.”
    “We celebrate birthdays around here? Since when?” Sadir responded as he stood up to take her up on her offer.
    “Not you lawyahs because you guys will nevah pony up for cake.” She rubbed her thumb back and forth against her four fingers. “You’re all too cheap. Make all that money and you’re still all cheap.”
    “You could go broke with all the solicited donations around here,” Sadir replied as he headed out the door for his slice of free birthday cake.
    “Pfffffffff … cheap ass,” Rita muttered after him. She turned back to me. “Mackenzie, cake?”
    “Sure. Why not?” I grabbed a ten dollar bill from my wallet and handed it to Rita to donate to the communal cake fund and followed Sadir out the door to Rita’s cubicle. Nothing a piece of cake can’t fix.

    “Lucky?” Jason repeated in amazement.
    “That’s what Sadir said—consider myself lucky that he ONLY tore up my document rather than burning it.”
    Jason and I were perched on my couch digging into General Tso’s chicken and chow mein. I’d planned on working late to finish up a document I was working on for Sarah, before I delved back into Saul’s operating agreement