What Doris Knows

"To Doris," said Priya Nandan, lifting her glass, "who has forgotten more about how this firm actually runs than any of us will ever learn."

Someone in the back — one of the summer associates — called out, "She probably knows where all the bodies are buried!" and the room laughed the easy laugh of people who think they're joking.

I laughed too. It's a skill, laughing at the truth like it's fiction. I'd had forty years of practice.

Harlan raised his glass along with everyone else. "To Doris," he said, looking straight at me over the rim of his champagne. "Who always knew exactly what to keep off my calendar."

Only I would have heard the edge under that sentence. Only I would have understood it as a warning dressed up as a toast — a reminder, in front of thirty witnesses, that he knew I'd spent decades quietly steering things around him, and that tonight, my last night with a badge that opened these doors, he wanted me to remember he'd noticed.

I held his gaze until he looked away first. That was new. Harlan Voss had never once looked away from me in thirty-eight years.

Priya found me by the coat rack twenty minutes later, her voice dropped low. "You okay? You went somewhere for a second."

"I'm fine."

"You didn't look fine when Harlan walked over to Talia." She said it carefully, watching my face for something. "You've never looked fine when he walks over to any of them. I've noticed that for two years, Doris. I just never asked why."

I looked at her — smart, careful Priya, who'd spent two years in HR without once getting a formal complaint filed against Harlan Voss, because informal was the only kind that survived contact with him.

"Ask me at midnight," I said. "After the cake's gone. I'll still be here."

She frowned. "Why midnight?"

Because by midnight, I thought, it will already be too late for him to stop it.

"Because," I said instead, "some things you only get to say once, and I want to say it right."