Shining Through Read Free

could; it was the talk of the law firm. But because of who his wife was, the talk was very respectful: Oh, what sublime taste! She’d picked out everything for him. Black furniture so shiny, every time you lifted a pencil it looked as though another hand, trapped inside the desk, was doing the same thing. Ultra-ultramodern design. His carpet and chairs were somewhere between brown and gray, the color of new sidewalks. The walls were such a bright white that even if you worked forty-eight hours straight, you couldn’t doze off.
    Like the office she’d designed, Nan Berringer had no soft edges: no lace around her neck. I’d only seen her twice, but both times she’d worn those severely plain, fantastically expensive dresses classy fashion magazines call simple. But if that makes her sound hard, she wasn’t. Even if you’re like Nan, aristocratic and intellectual, it’s hard to be hard at twenty-one. And besides, she was terrific-looking.
    John stopped dictating and cleared his throat. “I have to be away from the office this afternoon. And probably tomorrow as well.” He sounded a little stiff, but that was because he was still talking German; sometimes when he finished dictating in it, he’d forget he was still speaking it. “I hope you will have time to finish all the work I have given you.” Was his accent great! Before law school, he’d spent three years at the universities in Cologne and Heidelberg. He spoke the language as if he’d been fraternity brothers with Goethe.
    My accent was nowhere near so hotsy-totsy. It was pure berlinerisch , courtesy of my grandmother. People always say that berlinerisch is to German what cockney is to English. For all I know, they could be right; I never met a cockney. “Is there anything special you’d like me to do?”
    “No. Nothing special,” John answered. What did I expect him to say? Take off your clothes? “I know I’ve given you too much.”
    When he smiled his eyes crinkled, so you couldn’t see their glorious dark blue, but the smile made his face glow; it made you feel you had your own sun to warm you.

    SHINING THROUGH / 9
    I popped back into English, where I sounded as well-bred as I had in German (that is to say, as far from being a Vanderbilt as a human being can get), but in which I felt much more comfortable. “Really, that’s okay, Mr. Berringer. I’ll try to get everything done by the end of the week.”
    Fat chance. We’d stopped being swamped six months earlier.
    Now we were drowning. The great thing about being one of the top Wall Street firms is you have the top clients: the biggest corporations and banks in the world. The bad thing is that before they pay you, you have to do work for them. Since John’s work was representing their interests in Europe, they all wanted ninety-seven times more work done than had ever been done before in the course of legal history.
    Half of them said, Get us (and our holdings) out of Germany.
    Now. The other half said, Hey, look at what those Nazis are spending! It costs a fortune to conquer Europe. Get us a piece of it. Now.
    “It would be great if you could catch up,” he said in English.
    “Oh, I forgot. Mr. Leland wants to borrow you this afternoon.
    He has a letter to go to Germany. Very simple. You can translate it yourself and send it off. Could you fit that in—without hating me forever?”
    “Yes, Mr. Berringer.”
    “And still be caught up by Friday?”
    “Sure.”
    “Wonderful!” He looked up at me. “Miss Voss…”
    He stopped for a second, maybe to think what else he wanted.
    I didn’t care. I’d wait. While his mind was someplace else, I could study him. His mouth was open, just a little. What a mouth! Beautiful, not one of those thin, mean men’s mouths that look like an appendix scar. Full, but not too full. He’d be on top of me, roughing up my face with his, but then he’d bring his mouth over mine and—
    “Miss Voss.”
    “Yes, sir?”
    “Thanks. You can go back to your