veryone knows the front-desk girl, and everyone is busy. But today they halt their activities to watch her pass, her unerring smile gone grim and her studied saunter supplanted by a step so swift it flutters the hem of her dress. Lainie comes at Bernie’s secretary at such a march that the secretary, well-trained, responds defensively, “He’s not in.” Lainie presents roadblocks to clients all day; she knows how to dodge them, too. She swerves around the secretary, snatching the knob of Bernie’s door and pulling it open.

Bernie Clay is kicked back in his leather chair, ankles crossed atop his desk, a highball in one hand, face stretched in a laugh. Relaxed on the sofa are the copy chief and lead media buyer, chuckling over look-alike drinks. Too late, but bound by protocol, the secretary buzzes Bernie to say that Elaine Strickland is entering. Bernie’s smile fades to a look of perplexity. He gestures with his drink at the other men.

“This is called a meeting, Elaine.”

She’ll faint, she’ll be fired, she’s so stupid, what was she thinking?

“Mr. Gunderson … is waiting for you.”

Bernie squints, as if hearing Chinese.

“Right. But I’m in an important meeting.”

The copy chief snorts. Lainie looks at the sofa. Both men are smirking. A cold marble of sweat plummets down her backbone, even as she feels an angry roil at how these men just sit there, half-drunk and entitled. She holds tight to the resentment. If she must faint, let her do it from a respectable height. She plants her feet.

“He’s been waiting for an hour.”

Bernie rocks his chair to an upright position. Liquor slurps over the rim of his glass, hits the carpet. Not his concern, Lainie thinks: a janitor, one more of the overlooked, will take to her knees to do the scrubbing. Bernie sighs at the men and cricks his head at Lainie, as if to say, Let me deal with this. They stand up, buttoning jackets, not bothering to hide the collegial grins of watching a buddy butt heads with a strident female. The copy chief winks at Lainie as he passes. The media buyer brushes so close that Lainie is certain he can hear, if not feel, the crash of her heart.

“I know I offered you full-time employment,” Bernie says, “but let’s not let that go to our heads. Do your job, Elaine. And I’ll do my job. I’ll come and get Mr. Gunderson when I’m ready. I hope that’s before closing time, but we’ll see.”

“He’s a nice man.” Lainie despises the tremor in her voice. “He waited two weeks to get an appointment—”

“This is what I’m saying. You don’t really know what you’re talking about, do you? Everyone who walks through that door has a history. Don’t you? Let me tell you something about nice old Mr. Gunderson. He used to work here. Until he got arrested for moral depravity. Surprise. So when you charge in here, with other people in my office, and say Mr. Gunderson, that’s what they think of. It doesn’t make my life easier. I’m the only one in town who’ll work with Mr. Gunderson. I do it out of the goodness of my heart. Let me tell you something else. His work? It’s useless. Sure, it’s good. But it’s antique. It doesn’t sell. Two weeks ago, he brought me this big red monstrosity and I had him redo it green. I did it because I don’t have the heart to tell him the truth. He’s finished in this biz. At least my way he gets a kill fee. So, really, Elaine, who’s the nice one now?”

Lainie no longer knows. Bernie exhales indulgently, gets up, puts his arm around her, and guides her to the door, where he instructs her, tolerantly, she has to admit, to tell Mr. Gunderson that Mr. Clay had an emergency, and that he’s to leave his painting behind. That way the hard hearts in accounting can deliver the bad news later. Lainie feels like a child. She nods, a good girl, her forced smile crimping her face in a way she associates with home, the dinner table, pretending everything is all right.

When she returns to the lobby, Giles stands up, straightens his jacket, and strides forward, portfolio case swinging. Lainie scurries behind the desk as a soldier might into a foxhole, and selects from her inventory a tone of apology and the script that goes with it. Mr. Clay is busy handling an unforeseen event. I didn’t know. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry. Won’t you leave your work with me? I’ll make sure Mr. Clay sees it. She wonders if this is what it feels like to be Richard, to feel your heart harden to stone with every word. Giles shatters that stone by beginning to unbuckle the portfolio case without protest, accepting her blatant lie, not because he believes it, but because he doesn’t wish to cause her further upset. Forget what Bernie said about moral depravity. Giles Gunderson is the kindest man Lainie has ever known.

“Stop.” It sounds like her voice. It feels like her voice, too; her lips feel the plosive pop. But how can such an insubordinate sound come from a woman blinded by Spray ’N Steam vapor, weighed down by a beehive hairdo, deafened by the repetitive thwack of a headboard against a wall? Still the voice continues, over the belligerent telephone and the harrumphs of the waiting room’s latest arrivals, so that she, just this once, might prioritize a man who is no one else’s priority.

“They don’t want it,” she says.

“They…” Giles adjusts his glasses. “I’m sorry?”

“They won’t tell you. But they don’t want it. They’ll never want it.”

“But it’s … they asked for green and—”

“If you leave it with me, you’ll get a kill fee. But that’s all.”

“—and it’s as green as can be, it can’t get any greener!”

“But I don’t think you should.”

“Miss Strickland?” Giles is blinking hard. “Mrs. Strickland, I mean—”

“You deserve better than this. You deserve people who value you. You deserve to go somewhere where you can be proud of who you are.”

The voice, Lainie realizes, feels sovereign from her because it’s not only speaking to Giles Gunderson—it’s speaking to Elaine Strickland. She deserves better; she deserves to be valued; she deserves to live in a place where pride is not an exotic gift. Once more, the young wife and doddery gent are one and the same, stamped as deficient by people who haven’t the higher ground to make the accusation. Klein & Saunders is a start but only that: a start.

He’s fussing with his bow tie, searching the corner of the room for clues, but she keeps nodding, harder and harder, urging him to do the right thing, to walk out of the room. He exhales with a weak shiver and stares down at his portfolio case. Then he inhales sharply and looks right at her, his eyes sharp with tears and his mustache quivering with a brave smile. He holds out the case. Not the painting—the whole case.

“For you, my dear.”

She can’t accept it. Of course she can’t. But Giles’s arm shakes the very same way her voice had shaken; he’s matching her impulsive heroism with that of his own, begging her to take the burdensome baggage of his life off his hands. Lainie takes the case, her fingers settling into grooves shaped by his fingers over the years into soft red leather. She sees the shifting of Giles’s shadow as he moves away, but she doesn’t look up. It would only make it harder for him, she senses, and besides, she’s looking for a place to set down the case so that it, heavy with significance, doesn’t crash through three floors of the building.