TM Topic: What one person was thinking...
The Senior Partners. Does she have to pick one or can they just count as a singular entity?
They would be the obvious answer. The smart answer for anyone who had signed that employment contract. And Lilah was smart - she'd known what she was signing up for, there had been no misapprehension on her part. Lilah Morgan had read the fine print several times over, she had made amendments and even negotiated a better package. But some things were not negotiable: confidentiality clauses, non-compete agreements... perpetuity clauses. There were some things that just came with the job and you accepted them because of the other things that came with the job - no such thing as a free lunch and all that jazz.
But, perhaps what she hadn't known, was the thing no careful detail to the fine print could tell you. She had never known how it would feel. You never do know that, not until the moment when you're sitting in your office and an intern comes in. It's her expression that is familiar, not her face - it's that strange expression where her face manages to be flushed and pale all at the one time. Lilah remembers that look from way back when she hadn't learned to conceal her own expression.
"It's a sweep." She tells Lilah. "The mind readers - random checks."
She looks frantic. Lilah understands. It's like if the cops start driving behind you on the highway, you start to get nervous even if your tail-light isn't broken, you're not drunk and you're no where near the speed limit. This is the same, but so much worse. Everyone has a guilty conscience when they're lined up against that wall. Even as they try to clear their minds of any indiscretion that could implicate them they find they're think of anything they could have done that would be interpreted as disloyalty.
What Lilah doesn't understand is how the intern could have spent near a whole summer with the firm and not have developed any semblance of a poker face. If she can't fake it, she won't last around here. Law firms eat their young. Wolfram and Hart takes that fine tradition somewhat literally.
"Damn." Lilah says. "There goes my lunch meeting."
Lilah is a decent poker player. Not the best in the firm, but she can hold her own. Still, standing there in the line against the wall, she does wish she knew what the Senior Partners were thinking. Even what just one of them was thinking. It doesn't matter which one - they're equally merciless.
Lilah Morgan
AtS
428 Words
They would be the obvious answer. The smart answer for anyone who had signed that employment contract. And Lilah was smart - she'd known what she was signing up for, there had been no misapprehension on her part. Lilah Morgan had read the fine print several times over, she had made amendments and even negotiated a better package. But some things were not negotiable: confidentiality clauses, non-compete agreements... perpetuity clauses. There were some things that just came with the job and you accepted them because of the other things that came with the job - no such thing as a free lunch and all that jazz.
But, perhaps what she hadn't known, was the thing no careful detail to the fine print could tell you. She had never known how it would feel. You never do know that, not until the moment when you're sitting in your office and an intern comes in. It's her expression that is familiar, not her face - it's that strange expression where her face manages to be flushed and pale all at the one time. Lilah remembers that look from way back when she hadn't learned to conceal her own expression.
"It's a sweep." She tells Lilah. "The mind readers - random checks."
She looks frantic. Lilah understands. It's like if the cops start driving behind you on the highway, you start to get nervous even if your tail-light isn't broken, you're not drunk and you're no where near the speed limit. This is the same, but so much worse. Everyone has a guilty conscience when they're lined up against that wall. Even as they try to clear their minds of any indiscretion that could implicate them they find they're think of anything they could have done that would be interpreted as disloyalty.
What Lilah doesn't understand is how the intern could have spent near a whole summer with the firm and not have developed any semblance of a poker face. If she can't fake it, she won't last around here. Law firms eat their young. Wolfram and Hart takes that fine tradition somewhat literally.
"Damn." Lilah says. "There goes my lunch meeting."
Lilah is a decent poker player. Not the best in the firm, but she can hold her own. Still, standing there in the line against the wall, she does wish she knew what the Senior Partners were thinking. Even what just one of them was thinking. It doesn't matter which one - they're equally merciless.
Lilah Morgan
AtS
428 Words