I Regret Everything Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’ve done and the nature of your clients your name is in the hopper.”
    â€œReally?” I said, stupidly.
    â€œYour work has been exemplary. No promises, though. But if you don’t get it this go-round, right now I’m not telling tales out of school when I say your future at T.S.&S. is bright.”
    â€œI’m remarkably glad to hear that.”
    â€œOne thing to be aware of, Kevin Pratt has a year of seniority on you. He’s an excellent attorney and Trusts and Estates can’t absorb two new partners.” This was the Raptor on full display—dangle a reward, snatch it away. Or not. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking other than he enjoyed befuddling the associates. “It may just be a numbers game.”
    â€œSo, Trevelyan. What are you going to tell him?”
    â€œI’m not going to tell him anything, Jeremy,” he said, going in for the kill. “This is your chance to shine.”
    A day after the lunch with Ed my memory of our encounter commingled with images of his droll daughter and the perplexing question of why the Bartok Duo had brought me to tears. Was it the crippling beauty of the music? Fear that the swelling I’d discovered indicated cancer when it was probably just a swollen gland? The answer remained obscure but the desolation I experienced felt bottomless. This is why a person learns to compartmentalize. I was on my way to see Dirk Trevelyan and needed to focus.
    It had rained again since I had returned to the office from my afternoon stroll in the park and great puddles massed in the gutters. I delicately stepped over one, taking care not to get my wingtips wet, and slid into the backseat of the waiting town car just before the clouds opened again and rain battered the windshield. The Jamaican driver greeted me in a mellifluous baritone. A peaked chauffeur’s cap crowned his short dreadlocks. He introduced himself as Joseph and his serene aspect guaranteed me a quiet hour in which I could work. When he eased the car into traffic I opened my briefcase.
    We hadn’t driven half a block when I looked out the window and through a curtain of rain spotted a soaked Spaulding marooned under the awning of a boutique. I told Joseph to stop. At the curb, I rolled down the window.
    â€œWould you like a ride?”
    Spaulding brightened when she saw me and with her sweater over her head like a cowl ran to the car. I swung the door open and she slid in, raindrops coursing down her face, the lenses of her glasses dripping.
    â€œIt’s as if the sky was pregnant and her water burst,” she said.
    â€œThat’s disgusting,” I said. She laughed. “Where are you going?”
    The moisture must have released the molecules in the residue of her shampoo or the soap she had used that morning and caused them to effervesce because a lovely natural scent now misted the backseat. In the office I thought I’d sensed pine and ginger. Now what? Orange peel? Cinnamon? I had no time to waste on this—
Orange peel? Cinnamon? Get a grip, Jeremy
. Her hair was damp. She took her glasses off and brushed it out of her luminous eyes.
    â€œWould you mind untucking your shirttail? I need to dry my glasses and I’m kind of wet.”
    This was not the kind of request made of a person one barely knew. The driver’s dark eyes regarded me from the rearview mirror. Was he amused? Did he know this girl was the managing partner’s daughter? I was never someone who treated anyone working for me as if they were invisible and while Spaulding’s request would have unnerved me were we alone, Joseph’s presence heightened my discomfort. But it did not heighten it enough to stop me from removing my shirttail from my pants. Spaulding took it and dried her glasses, polished the lenses, held them up to inspect, then rubbed them once more, her tapered fingers mere inches from my lap. It was an intimate act and while it occurred I