The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan
Chapter Nine
‘As requested,’ Benjamin says flatly, plonking a hefty bundle of documents on Fia’s desk, all freshly photocopied. Five copies per page, she asked for. One never could tell when they might need extras.
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘Did you paginate them?’
‘Sure did!’ he replies, injecting a plainly false brightness into his voice as he sits down at his own desk.
Fia just nods, feeling the wind taken out of her sails a little bit. He had forgotten to, last time. She isn’t above admitting that she had a bit of fun with that, with the sheer frustration that was written across his face as she sent him right back out to the reprographics station.
More than halfway through their second week in captivity now, it’s turned out that Kavita was right: it has been somewhat satisfying, finding opportunities to have Benjamin Lowry chase his tail for her. At this point, though, she’s in danger of running out of tasks, even semi-bullshit ones. And if he starts to get better at them? If it becomes merely a process of him easily providing things for which she must then express gratitude? That doesn’t seem quite what she’s after. It’s bad enough knowing that he’s allegedly a boy genius. How can that be?
In any event, over the past day or two, it’s actually become somewhat difficult to nab him. Benjamin has begun spending what seems to Fia more time than must strictly be necessary up on the fifty-ninth floor, assisting on some big merger thing. Needless to say, there are ways in which this suits her just fine. The less time she has to deal with the sight and the sound and the scent of him, the better. However, at least right now, she’s grateful to have some overlap in their little office. There are certain communications that just do not belong on a company server.
‘How’re things upstairs?’ she enquires, attempting civility.
His only response, though, is an indistinct mumble. Already, he’s engrossed in reading something, his brow furrowed slightly in concentration. Fia watches as – amid the carnage that continues to be his workspace – he reaches blindly for some other document. After more than a little kerfuffle, he unearths it from under a mug, a block of Post-its, a stapler.
‘That’s my stapler, by the way,’ she tosses out. For some reason, having restrained herself for over a week, she just cannot resist it in this moment.
He pauses, looks up at her. ‘It’s not,’ he says, ‘but whatever.’
‘It is,’ she insists, and then she mimics his tone of voice, ‘but whatever.’
He takes a deep breath in and out, as though to make very clear the extent to which his patience is being tried. ‘Well, how about this, Fia? You call it, and then I’ll call it, and we’ll see which one of us it comes to.’
Fia just glowers in response. It’s the strangest thing, though – the sensation that in other circumstances, she might have laughed out loud at that. She moves to bury it – and swiftly.
‘So, I found someone who can help us with our situation,’ she says.
Benjamin, reabsorbed in his task, looks up at her once more, a blank expression on his face.
‘A divorce lawyer, Ben,’ she says plainly. ‘I found a divorce lawyer.’
Their office door is wide open, the atrium populated as usual by all the paralegals and admin staff at their desks, plus passing pedestrians. Benjamin lets his gaze travel out there deliberately, a half-smile pulling at his lips.
‘What’s that, Fia?’ he says, raising his voice a little. ‘You found us a divorce lawyer?’
And it’s just a joke, really. He’s not loud enough to genuinely attract attention. From outside, nobody even glances in their direction. Nonetheless, this time around, Fia cannot remotely see the funny side – not even secretly.
‘Yes!’ she replies, her own voice lowering to a hiss. ‘Her name is Susan Followill. She said she could squeeze us in next Monday at lunchtime – assuming you can fit that into your, uh … busy schedule.’
It’s perhaps a little unnecessarily caustic, the way she says that, given that he actually does appear to have a pretty busy schedule at this point. Alongside his genuine work assignments, plus the various jobs she’s been manifesting for him, he’s also expected to attend all manner of seminars, training sessions and ‘opportunities to get to know one another in a less formal setting’. She’s heard on the grapevine that, last night, a bunch of summer associates, including one Benjamin Lowry, were invited to the theatre with all the real estate partners. Fia cannot personally imagine any faster way to ruin Dear Evan Hansen than the insertion of what amounted to a mini job interview over Chardonnay at the interval, but that is neither here nor there.
‘There’s a workshop on client management, I think,’ Benjamin replies. ‘But I can probably skip it.’
‘Great,’ she says shortly, considering the matter dealt with. When she turns back to the lengthy agreement on her screen, though, there’s some sense of lingering discomfort. She can still feel his eyes on her. She looks at him once more, and it prompts him to speak again.
‘I guess I’m still trying to figure out why the hell you would even want …’ He trails off then, reroutes – perhaps because of what Fia can only imagine to be the perplexed expression on her face. ‘Whatever. Your funeral. So, that’s how you want to do this, huh?’
Still, Fia does not follow.
‘As in, together,’ he clarifies. ‘One lawyer for both of us. Can one lawyer even do that? Wouldn’t that be a conflict of interest?’
Fia sighs deeply, deliberately. ‘Family law not quite your speciality, eh?’ she asks. An unprofessional response, perhaps, but then, the same could be said of the face Benjamin makes right back at her.
‘There are two kinds of divorces,’ she continues briskly. ‘Courtroom divorces, and conference room divorces. If you end up in a courtroom, you need a lawyer for each party. But if you can just reach a settlement via mediation, one person can handle that – they’re called an attorney mediator.’
Fia pauses for breath. Before she agreed to become a mentor this summer, she’d wondered whether she really had sufficient expertise for the role. Celia assured her she did, and Fia was comforted. Yes, she told herself staunchly. I know things. I could pass along some wisdom.
She had not anticipated that it would be in quite this context.
‘Anyway, basically, I think let’s just get one person to handle it fast and split the cost,’ she continues. ‘Unless you plan on gunning for 50 per cent of my …’ She pauses, struggling even to come up with a hypothetical asset to her name. ‘I don’t know … clothes, I think we should be good. I mean, this is essentially an administrative matter, right?’
‘Right,’ he agrees. ‘Still, though, I’m not so sure how I feel about having your buddy as our mutual divorce lawyer. Or our … attorney mediator.’
‘What? Susan’s not my buddy,’ Fia replies, and the word – which had sounded perfectly normal in his accent – sounds faintly ludicrous in hers. ‘I found her on the internet.’
How aggravating, that she has done all the legwork on this thing, that she has spent the past ten days relentlessly emailing suitable-seeming strangers, praying they would get back to her, all to have him wilfully assume the worst of her.
Over at his desk, Benjamin says nothing for a moment, before offering a nonchalant shrug.
‘Well, I’ll think about it,’ he replies, and it’s enough to get Fia’s blood boiling – just the notion that, somehow, he still feels like the control ultimately rests with him.
‘You’ll thinkabout it?’ she repeats.
‘Yeah. I’ll think about it. I’ll keep it under advisement,’ he says loftily.
In a flash, Fia is truly a new level of livid. Before she has time to say anything further, though, a figure appears in her doorway, stooped but dapper as ever.
‘Mr Zelnick!’ she says, pasting on a pleasant expression. ‘Hi!’
‘Top o’ the morning to ya, Fia!’ he replies, as he very often does. If this man were not pushing eighty and a dote and, technically speaking, her Big Boss, Fia would have a lot less time for it. As things are, her smile doesn’t waver.
‘What can I do for you?’
‘Got a case for you! Olivia Chestnut’s the name. She’s from your neck of woods, so naturally I thought of you.’
Fia’s expression shifts a little in surprise. ‘She’s Irish?’
Mr Zelnick hesitates. ‘Well … close enough. Anyhow, she’s a client up in corporate – she’s one of these online businesswomen – I don’t know, I just handle the taxes. Seemingly things aren’t going so well on the home front, though.’
‘Oh?’
‘Thought I’d send the divorce your way if you can squeeze it in? The husband’s already filed, and he wants custody of the son. I have to say, he sounds like a real piece of work – the husband, I mean. I can’t say I know much about the son!’ Mr Zelnick twinkles at his own little joke, and Fia fights the urge to wince.
Quite why, she couldn’t exactly explain. There is, after all, nothing inherently unusual about what Mr Zelnick seems to be requesting of her. On an ordinary day, she would probably have considered it good news to have even crossed his radar.
This is not an ordinary day, though, and instead Fia finds her whole body suddenly seized with tension. It must, she knows, be on account of Benjamin.
The instinctive desire she feels to bring an end to this interaction can only be on account of Benjamin – the very definite sense she has of him, three feet away and suddenly vastly more curious about her work than he’s ever been before.
‘Um, okay,’ she hears herself offer disjointedly. ‘I just … I’m not sure if I have capacity at the moment. Maybe Jeff or Soo-Yin could—’
‘Ah, hogwash!’ Mr Zelnick interjects, all cheerfulness. ‘Surely you wouldn’t turn an old man down, Fia? You wanna know the real reason I thought of you for this case?’
At this juncture, Fia isn’t all that sure she does want to know. But nonetheless, it seems very much like Mr Zelnick is going to tell her.
‘I went to Celia Hannity,’ he continues, ‘and I said, “who’s my best bet?” – and you know what she told me?’
‘What?’ Fia asks, her voice coming out laced with something like dread. She’s just so acutely aware of Benjamin’s presence, of the completeness of his attention now.
‘She said that when it comes to divorce cases, there’s no one like you. She said you’re forensic, ferocious … a “total shark”, I believe was the phrase.’
And, again, in usual circumstances, Fia would have no trouble taking this as the compliment it is intended to be. As things are, she finds herself with absolutely no idea of what to do with her face, much less what to actually say in response.
Across the room, she’d swear she can hear Benjamin breathing, the sound of it seeming to magnify in the silence. Seconds stretch out before his input arrives at last, his voice coming out soft – but all the more loaded for that, all the more dangerous. ‘Is that so?’ he asks.