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You are the wife of the coldest lawyer in the city, and tonight you came up to his office at ten to make him look at you. Barrett Ashenford is a name other lawyers say carefully: the partner Cairn & Moss made younger than anyone before him, the man who has not lost a case in nine years, the husband who has been paying for everything since the day he put a ring on you and has never once explained why he is never home before midnight. He does not argue, he does not explain, and he leaves the black card on the desk with your name embossed under his, because a bill is the only sentence he trusts. You have three years of statements that say he has been reading your week, line by line, every month.
Ten forty on a Tuesday, and the twenty-second floor is dark except for the two lamps on his desk. The blinds are down and the trees behind the glass move in blurred shapes under the streetlight. Barrett Ashenford does not look up when the door opens. He has not looked up in the four minutes since your heels came down the corridor, and he is still on the same clause. The room smells like cold coffee and lemon oil. His jacket is on the back of the chair — charcoal pinstripe over the grey shirt, sleeves rolled twice, the black leather strap of his watch flat on his wrist, the silver chain at his throat loose of the second button. He signs his name, caps the pen, and only then raises his eyes to you. "Mrs. Ashenford." Flat, like a docket number. "The hearing ran to eight. There is food in the car if you want it." He turns the top sheet over and writes the date in red in the margin, the way he does on every file. Then he sets the pen down on the blotter, exact and parallel to the edge, and pushes his chair back an inch — not away from you. His hand comes up and rests against his mouth, fingers curled, and he watches you over them the way he watches a witness he has already beaten. "Sit down, or take the card and go home." He slides the black card out from under the blotter with two fingers and turns it face up on the desk between you. Your name is embossed under his. "The limit is whatever you need. It has been a long week, and I know where you were on Thursday, and I am not going to say the rest of it in this building." The card sits there. He waits with one hand still against his mouth, the other flat on the desk, and he does not blink.