Goodnight June: A Novel Read Free Page B

bowling ball attached to my neck, which strains under the weight. What’s wrong with me? My scalp begins to tingle next. The heavy feeling dissipates and my head begins to feel like a balloon, one that’s floating above my body. I should be invested in this discussion with Arthur. I should be approaching each case with my usual zeal.
Why can’t I?
My heart beats faster, and I clutch the edge of my seat. The numbness in my fingers has spread to my hand, and I can barely feel my palm.
It’s happening again.
    I eye the door. “Arthur,” I say quickly, “I think I ate something funny.” I clutch my stomach for believability. “I’d better excuse myself.”
    He shrugs, collecting the folders into a neat pile and then handing them to me. “OK, well, it is getting late. You can go over the files this weekend. I flagged the ones that need the special June Andersen touch.”
    I force a smile. “Right. Of course.”
    By the time the cab drops me in front of my building, I’ve gotten control of myself, sort of. The numbness, except for a slight tingling sensation in my left pinky, is gone. I check my mail in the lobby and take the elevator to the seventh floor, then slip my key into No. 703.
    I think back to that horrible biology teacher I had in my junior year of high school. I got good grades, mostly, but I’d always struggled with science. After I’d failed an exam, he called me to his desk and told me, “You know, your mother was a student of mine. She wasn’t good at science either. If you don’t study harder, you’re going to turn out just like her. Do you want to spend your life working at the checkout counter of a grocery store?” I hated the look on his face: condescending, cavalier. My eyes stung, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I saved that for later. If Mr. Clark could only see me now. If he could see the career I have, the apartment I own (mortgaged to the hilt, but so what—my name is on the title).
    Sure, I don’t have a husband, kids, a dog. But how many thirty-five-year-olds can say they purchased their own two-bedroom Manhattan apartment with parquet floors, a chef’s kitchen, and windows with peekaboo views of Central Park?
    I throw my coat on the upholstered bench in the entryway—
take that, Mr. Clark
—and set my keys on the glass table against the wall (the decorator insisted on it, and yet every time I hear my keys click onto its surface, I hate it all the more), then sort through the mail. I recognize the handwriting on the letter atop the stack and inwardly wince. Why is
she
contacting me again? I have nothing to say to her. I walk to the kitchen, where I toss the envelope, unopened, into the recycle bin. It’s too late for I’m-sorrys.
    I slump down onto the couch and sort through the rest of the mail: bills, a few magazines, a postcard from my old friend Claire, in Seattle. She and her husband, Ethan, and their baby son, Daniel, are in Disneyland. “Greetings from Cinderella’s castle,” she writes. “Sending you lots of sunshine! xoxo”
    It’s sweet, of course, but if I’m being completely honest, sentiments from blissfully happy friends only feel like daggers in my heart. I stopped going to weddings, and now I only send presents to baby showers. My assistant wraps them beautifully with lots of ribbons and bows. It’s easier this way, managing friendships from afar. No one gets hurt, especially not me. The only person outside of work I keep in touch with anymore is my accountant friend, Peter (smart, kind, handsome, and, I might add, very gay). And I can’t even take credit for our continued friendship; Peter does all the calling.
    I sigh. Beneath a Victoria’s Secret catalog is a manila envelope from the Law Offices of Sherman and Wills. It looks official. I tear open the edge cautiously, the way I always do when inspecting legal papers, and pull out a small stack of pages with a cover letter paper-clipped to the top:
    The Law Offices of Sherman