The Underwriting by Michelle Miller

going to send him home, right in the middle of a civil war that was the culmination of everything Charlie had dedicated his life to understanding? Fuck that.
    His phone rang in his headphones and he stopped on the side of the pavement.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œIt’s Raj.”
    â€œWhat the hell was that e-mail?” Charlie snapped.
    â€œI’m just calling to see how you’re doing.”
    â€œHow I’m doing?” Charlie guffawed. “I’m pissed. I want to go back to Syria.”
    â€œCharlie, what are you doing?” Raj’s voice was soft.
    â€œMy job!” he said. “Have you forgotten we’re in the middle of a civil war?”
    â€œYou need a break.”
    â€œSyrians need a break,” Charlie said. “I’ll take mine when the violence has stopped.”
    â€œThe violence isn’t going away whether you’re there or not,” Raj said. “Go home and be with your family.”
    â€œI’ll see my family at Christmas, like I always do.”
    â€œJesus, Charlie. How hard has this place made you?”
    â€œHard enough to go back to Talmenes and figure out what the fuck is going on there before another hundred civilians die. I know my e-mail was forward, but we have to—”
    â€œAre you seriously not even going back for the service?”
    â€œWhat service?”
    Raj was quiet.
    â€œWhat service?” Charlie repeated.
    â€œFuck,” Raj said, “I thought you—”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYour sister,” Raj said. “Your sister’s dead.”
    Charlie’s arm dropped from his ear, letting the phone fall to the grass as the call to prayer rang from the mosque behind him, stretching out across the Bosphorus to the sun setting on the horizon beyond, deafening him like an explosion detonating in his brain.

AMANDA
    W EDNESDAY , M ARCH 12; N EW Y ORK , N EW Y ORK
    Amanda refreshed her browser.
    Nothing.
    She stared at the message icon.
Just one more time then back to work
. Her finger hovered above the mouse, willing a red box to appear. A simple
Todd Kent has accepted your friend request
was all she needed.
    Click.
    Refresh.
    Red box!
    Her heart beat heavily in her throat. Who said positive imagery didn’t work? She opened the message, feeling the sweat in her palms.
    Harold Hammonds has invited you to the event I WON A FREE HAPPY HOUR AT MAGGIE’S!!! MARCH 26, 5-7PM!!!!
    â€œUgh,” she said out loud, turning back to the printout of the shareholder agreement she was proofreading.
    She was at her cubicle on the fifty-eighth floor of Crowley Brown. She read two pages of the document, willing herself to concentrate on the activity that made up the majority of her time at the bottom ladder rung of a top-tier New York City law firm. She found a misplaced comma and circled it with satisfaction: “Gotcha!”
    The key to being a successful attorney, Amanda had discovered in her two years as a paralegal here, was to not dwell on the lack of importance of anything you did. Rather, you had to focus on creating more complication to breed more unimportant work so you had so many unimportant things to do you didn’t have time to think about their unimportance.
    Maybe she should go to the party, she thought. Harold Hammonds was one of the least cool guys she knew from Penn undergrad, but she was pretty sure he’d gone to work at a hedge fund, so maybe he’d have cool coworkers?
    She looked up Maggie’s: it was on Forty-seventh Street, three blocks from L.Cecil. Her throat tightened again: maybe Todd would be there. Maybe that was his local bar, his after-work spot. Maybe he’d walk in and she’d be at a table, looking professional but sexy, with her jacket off and her head back, laughing at something Harold had said. And Todd would see her, having fun with all of Harold’s hedge fund colleagues, and then he’d be jealous and finally see what he hadn’t seen