“So they’re just going to fire one of us? I can’t believe it.”

“Here we go. I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”

“How are they going to choose between the three of us? We all have the same evaluations, and we all bill over two thousand hours a year. We’ve indentured ourselves to this fucking firm, now they’re gonna lop one of us off?” I rub my forehead on the front, where it’s beginning to pound. I’m convinced that this is the partnership lobe. It’s right next to the bar exam lobe and the SAT lobe.

“It won’t be you, Mare. You just won a big motion.”

“What about Judy?”

“Judy’s got it made. They need her to crank out those briefs.”

“And Ned Waters, what about him? I don’t want to see any of us fired, for Christ’s sake. It’ll be impossible to get another job. It’s not like the eighties, when you could pick and choose.”

“Listen to me, you’re working my last nerve. Are you having lunch with Judy today?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Go early. Talk it over with her. She’ll straighten you out.”

And she tries to, as we sit at a wobbly table by the wall in the Bellyfiller, a dingy restaurant in the basement of our office building. Judy drags me here all the time because the sandwiches are huge and the pickles are free. She doesn’t mind that the atmosphere is dark and cruddy, the bigscreen TV attracts all the wrong people, and the sawdust on the floor sometimes crawls.

“You’re letting this make you nuts, Mary!” She throws up her long arms, with their Boeing-sized wingspan. Judy Carrier is six feet tall, and from northern California, where the women grow like sequoias.

“I can’t help it.”

“Why? You just won a motion, you dufus. You’re undefeated. We should be celebrating.”

“How can you be so relaxed about this?”

“How can you be so worried about it?”

I laugh. “Don’t you ever worry, Judy?”

She thinks a minute. “Sure. When my father is belaying. Then I worry. His attention wanders, and he-”

“What’s belaying?”

“You know, when you climb, you designate one person to-”

“I’m not talking about rock climbing. I mean about work, about partnership. Don’t you ever worry about whether we’ll make it?”

“Making partner is nothing compared with rock climbing,” she says earnestly. “You make a mistake rock climbing and you’re fucked.”

“I’m sure.”

“You should come sometime. I’ll take you.” She turns around and looks for our waitress for the third time in five minutes.

“Right. When pigs fly.”

She turns back. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. So you really don’t worry about making partner?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re both good lawyers. You do the discrimination defense and I’m the entire appellate brief department. We’ll make it.” Judy grins easily, showing the many gaps between her teeth, which are somehow not unattractive on her. In fact, men look her over all the time, but she disregards them cheerfully. She loves Kurt, the sculptor she lives with, who has most recently hacked Judy’s buttercup-yellow hair into a chunky Dutch-boy cut. She calls it a work in progress.

“You think it’s that easy?”

“I know it is. Do the work, the rest will come. You’ll see-”

“Here it is, ladies,” interrupts our waitress, who hates us. Not that we’re special; the waitresses here hate all the customers. She slides the plates off her arm and they clatter onto the center of the table. Then she stalks off, leaving Judy and me to sort the orders. We move the heavy plates around like bumper cars.

“Girl food coming at you,” Judy says, pushing the garden salad and diet Coke to me. “Yuck.”

“Gimme a break. If I were ten feet tall I could eat like a lumberjack too.” I slide her the hoagie with double meat, a side order of potato salad, and a vanilla milkshake.

“But you’re not. You’re a little Italian shortie. Where I come from, we use you people for doorstops.” Judy bites eagerly into her hoagie. She starts at the end, like the sword-swallower in the circus. “Actually, thereis one thing I’m worried about,” she says, chomping away.

“What?”

“You. I’m worried about you.”

“Me?” I can’t tell if she’s kidding.

“Yes.”

“The phony phone calls?” I take a gulp of soda. It tastes like aspartame.

“No, they’ll go away. I’m talking real danger,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows comically. “Ned Waters is after you.”

“Oh, jeez. Don’t start, Jude.”

“He wants it, Mare. Better buy some new undies.” Judy likes sex and talks about it frankly and naturally. Since I was raised a Catholic, I know her attitude is perverted and evil. Faxed from Satan himself.

“Judith, keep it clean.”

She leans over confidentially. “Be prepared to deal with the man, because it’s true. I heard it from Delia the Stone Fox.”

“Delia? Berkowitz’s secretary? How does she know?”

“She heard it from Annie Zirilli From South Philly.”

I laugh. Judy loves to make up nicknames. Half the time, I don’t know who she’s talking about. “You mean Barton’s secretary?”

“Right. Annie saw him mooning around his office yesterday and started up a conversation with him. He told her he’s interested in someone but won’t say who. He said the girl-that’s what he said, too, thegirl -doesn’t even know herself, because he’s too scared to tell her. Tooscared, can you believe this guy? What a horse’s ass!” She stabs at her milkshake with a straw.

“He’s shy.”

“In a kid, it’s shyness. In a man, it’s dysfunction. And I bet money you’re the lucky victim, because he always tries to sit next to you at department meetings. Plus I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” She makes googly eyes.

“Bull. If he were interested, he would have followed up in law school. After our big date.”

“But you met Mike.”

“Ned didn’t know that. He didn’t even call back.”

Judy shakes her head. “Sounds just like Waters. A torrid love affair of the mind. This guy has intimacy issues out the wazoo, I’m telling you. He’s too cool. Cool Waters, that’s him. Run for cover.” She plows into her potato salad with a soupspoon, like a bulldozer clearing heavy snow.

I watch her eat, thinking about Ned Waters. I still say he’s shy, but it doesn’t square with how handsome he is. Strong, masculine features, a smattering of large freckles, and unusual eyes of light green. “He has nice eyes.”

“If you like Rosemary’s baby.”

“Come on. He was a hunk in law school.”

“It’s tough to be a hunk in law school, Mare. If your pupils respond to light, you can screw half the class.”

I smile, remembering back to school when I had dinner with Ned. I was surprised when he asked me out, but not when he didn’t call back, because he was so quiet on the date. He barely said a word; I yammered away to fill the silences. Of course, I didn’t sleep with him or anything; that would have required 12,736 more dates, and even then I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. Enjoying it didn’t happen until Mike.

After lunch, Judy and I take a walk around the block, since it’s a warm day in spring and Philadelphia’s infamous humidity has yet to set in. We window-shop, checking out the displays at Laura Ashley, Banana Republic, and Borders, a chic bookstore on Walnut Street. I like Borders, because it’s made reading fashionable, and I like to read. Judy likes Borders because it has an espresso bar with big cookies. Big as flapjacks, she likes to say. I treat her to a big cookie, and we walk back to the office, with me feeling like the stumpy mommy to a child on growth hormones.