The Associate Read Free

Lincoln freed the slaves.”
    “The Thirteenth Amendment doesn’t apply to associates at Reed, Briggs.”
    “You’re hopeless”—Molinari laughed as he levered himself out of the chair—“but you know where we are if you come to your senses.”
    Molinari disappeared down the corridor and Daniel sighed. He envied his friend. If the situation had been reversed Joe wouldn’t have hesitated to go for a drink. He could afford to give the finger to people like Arthur Briggs and he would never understand that someone in Daniel’s position could not.
    Molinari’s father was a high muck-a-muck in a Los Angeles ad agency. Joe had gone to an elite prep school, an Ivy League college, and had been
Law Review
at Georgetown. With his connections, he could have gotten a job anywhere, but he liked white-water rafting and mountain climbing, so he had condescended to offer his services to Reed, Briggs. Daniel, on the other hand, thanked God every day for his job.
    On one wall of Daniel’s narrow office were his diplomas and his certificate of membership in the Oregon State Bar. Joe and some of the other associates took their education and profession for granted, but Daniel had made it through Portland State and the U. of O. law school the hard way, earning every cent of his tuition and knowing that there was no safety net to catch him if he failed. He took pride in earning a spot in Oregon’s best law firm without Ivy League credentials or family connections, but he could not shake the feeling that his hold on success was tenuous.
    Daniel’s office wasn’t much, but no one in his family had ever even worked in an office. His mother waitressed when she was sober and serviced long-haul drivers when she was too drunk to hold a job. He phoned her on her birthday and Christmas when he knew where she was living. He’d had six “fathers” to the best of his recollection. The nice ones had ignored him, the bad ones had left him with night sweats and scars.
    Uncle Jack, father number four, had been the best of the lot because he owned a house with a yard. It was the first time Daniel had lived in a house. Most of the time he and his mother stayed in trailers or dark, evil-smelling rooms in transient hotels. Daniel had been eight when they moved in with Uncle Jack. He’d had his own room and thought this was what heaven was like. Four months later he was standing half-asleep on the sidewalk at four in the morning listening to his mother’s drunken screams as she pounded her hands bloody on Uncle Jack’s bolted front door.
    Daniel had run away from home several times, but he’d left for good at seventeen, living on the streets until he could not stand it, then joining the army. The army had saved Daniel’s life. It was the first stable environment in which he had ever lived and it was the first time his intelligence had been recognized.
    Daniel’s dark jacket was hanging from a hook behind his door, his paycheck sticking out of the inside pocket.
Ninety thousand dollars!
The size of his salary still amazed him and he felt incredibly lucky to have been chosen by the powers at Reed, Briggs. Every day he half expected to be told that his hiring had been a cruel practical joke.
    Daniel had talked with the recruiting partner who visited the law school only to practice his interviewing technique. His invitation to a second interview at the firm had come as a shock, as had the offer of employment. Reed, Briggs’s hires were graduates of Andover and Exeter; they attended Yale and Berkeley as undergraduates and went to Harvard and NYU for law school. Daniel was no dummy—his undergraduate degree in biology was with honors and he had made the
Law Review
—but there were still times when he felt out of his league.
    Daniel swiveled his chair toward the window and watched the darkness gather over the Willamette River. When was the last time he had left these offices when it was still light out? Molinari was right. He did have to learn to say