Shining Through Read Online Free PDF Page B

space, either. So you couldn’t stare at him. And you couldn’t give the Life Saver you were hiding a fast suck during pauses; I had a puddle of lime Life Saver juice under my tongue.
    But in one pause, he seemed to be looking away, thinking about something else, so I took the opportunity to really check over his desk. Maybe John and Nan’s wedding picture was just a teeny one, and I’d missed it. But it wasn’t there. I felt so sad, as if I’d just had a loss.
    “Miss Voss.”
    “Oh, sorry, Mr. Leland.”
    “…We are assuming that all terms have been met and appropriate contracts including purchase orders will be forwarded within several days for execution by Volkswerke A. G.,” he went on. “On behalf of both my clients and myself, I would like to thank you for your courtesy and efficiency in helping to bring this negotiation…”
    My pencil was going fifty miles an hour; I could have gotten the Billy Rose Stenography Prize for 1940. Because I knew Mr.
    Leland had definitely been onto exactly what it was I’d been looking for on his desk—and hadn’t found. You don’t get to be Edward Leland, talking to presidents of Chase Bank and Ford Motor and the United States, for nothing. So I wrote like mad, which nudged him into dictating faster.

    24 / SUSAN ISAACS
    But Edward Leland wasn’t in business to miss a trick. I think he knew what my sudden speed was about. And not only did he know what I’d been looking for, but he probably even knew why I’d been looking.
    My hands got so wet my pencil almost slipped, but I kept on writing. Yes, he knew. But he wasn’t going to make a federal case of it. Why should he? He saved his federal cases for when he had dinner with his dear old chums, the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
    But just for a second, Mr. Leland looked me straight in the eye. A kindly look on that messed-up face. A little sad for me.
    And then he just kept talking.
    As we left the office that day, I waved a copy of the World-Telegram in front of Gladys’s face. “Look at this. You think Hitler’s playing games? He’s just given Goring total control of the whole German war industry.”
    Gladys said, “Quiet! I have real news. You’re going to die when you hear it. And not a fast heart attack. A slow, painful, hysterical death.”
    “Oh, sure,” I said, positive it was going to be some gossip about Mr. Hastings in Litigation.
    Gladys clutched her coat around her. A little dramatic. Although it was January, with that cold dampness that makes your toes ache, there wasn’t even a snowflake swirling under the streetlight, much less the blizzard she seemed about to brave.
    But that was the wonderful thing about Gladys’s theatricality.
    How many old maids are there who can watch life from behind a typewriter and find passion, thrills and chills in a law office?
    Me, you say? No. I didn’t just want to watch. I wanted to have .
    Gladys didn’t. She savored it all, but from a distance. “When you hear this, you’re going to say, ‘Take me to the hospital. I’m having a stroke from shock.’”
    “Gladys, tell me!”
    “When you were in Mr. Leland’s office today…” She smiled for a moment. I knew what she was doing: remembering when she had started at Blair, VanderGraff, when Mr.

    SHINING THROUGH / 25
    Leland had gone from being a loving husband to being a young widower with a small child. That had been great drama. “Right after his wife died,” she said, “Mr. Leland turned gray. His hair, I mean.” She paused. “What do you think he looked like when he was young? Before it happened with the land mine.”
    “I don’t know. Forget Mr. Leland. Tell me: What’s the big secret?”
    “How was Mr. Leland today?” Gladys insisted.
    “The usual. He wanted to gossip about Carole Lombard and Clark Gable and—”
    “Come on. Didn’t he seem at all funny?”
    “Yeah, Gladys. He told me three jokes. Very dirty. About filthy things you never even heard