The Love Wars Read Online Free PDF Page A

cheek.
    “Lillian Starling. Oh, yes, hello. Tell her I’ll call her back after three.” She taps the end call button with a flourish. “Sorry. Where were we?”
    “I was say—”
    “Oh, great bag, Molly.”
    “This? Thanks.” I look at my red tote. I am pretty sure roughly ninety percent of the female associates at Bacon Payne, as well as thousands of office workers everywhere, own a similar bag. It has handy internal pockets but isn’t winning any design innovation awards.
    “You know Theora Fredericks gave me a rouge Hermès leather tote bag that looks pretty similar to that. She was my first big client.”
    I had bought my bag at a boutique on Columbus Avenue during my first year, after reading about the store in a
New York
magazine blurb. I had circled the shelves for several weeks, initially fleeing whenever the pixie-haired salesclerk interrupted my browsing to offer guidance. Eventually, though, I convinced myself that I
needed
a bag from this store—a real New York boutique—to legitimize my big-city experience. The least expensive one in the shop was four hundred dollars, which still seemed outrageous, but it was red, instead of black, which made me feel bold. Splash of color aside, Pixie Hair was disappointed.“Nice for the office,” she had said with a shrug, as though offering consolation. The bag is a far cry from Hermès.
    “You represented her?” Theora Fredericks recently passed away, but she had been one-half of the power couple that owned the boutique chain of Fredericks Hotels. Theora and her husband had divorced and reconciled decades ago, but all the newspapers were dragging out the story again as part of her obituary.
    “I did. I had a nice little practice before, lots of bankers and professionals, but that was my first case where the whole city was watching to see what happened.”
    “How did you get the case?”
    “I had represented her oldest friend from childhood and done a great job, so she referred Theora to me.”
    Our salads arrive and Lillian pours a dollop of dressing on hers.
    “Was it stressful?”
    “It was terrifying, but I loved every minute of it. And after my name got in the papers, the phones started ringing off the hook.”
    “Wow, what a break.”
    Lillian fixes her sharp dark eyes on me. “Oh, no, Molly. I know you know the value of hard work, so don’t tell me you really think that. I busted my ass for that moment.” She pours the rest of the dressing on the salad and swishes it around with her fork. “It’s like everything in this world. The winning formula is singular focus and wanting it more than anything. Period.”
    She continues, “I’d done a lot to prepare for Theora Fredericks. I put myself through City College and New York Law School. I slaved away at Myers Greenspan and then when it merged with Bacon Payne, I billed twenty-four hundred hours a year so that I wouldn’t be pushed to the curb like the other associates I came in with. I treated every single client like the most important one, so that when one of them knew a Theora Fredericks, I was right there, the natural choice.”
    I nod and do some quick math in my head. Billing twenty-four hundred hours translates into billing well over forty hours a week, which means working an estimated sixty or seventy hours per week, fifty-two weeks a year. Not much time left over to spend with family members. I know from office gossip that Lillian has a grown daughter whom she never mentions and three divorces under her belt. Husband number four is a Columbia biology professor named Roger Fields, whom I had met briefly one evening when he came to pick her up for an event. Tall and lanky, he has flaky skin and an absentminded, laconic manner that contrasts with Lillian’s intense energy. Purportedly, he is the world’s leading expert on elongated insects. I can easily imagine him contentedly spending his days with praying mantises and grasshoppers.
    “And we all have to have each other’s backs. No