The Partner Clause

I sat in my car three blocks from the hotel and argued with my reflection in the visor mirror. Cammie Bartholomew, forty-three years old, twelve years on the force, and I could not get a blouse to sit right under a blazer. The blazer was borrowed, I should note, from my sister-in-law's closet, which is a sentence I never thought I'd say about myself.

"You look fine," I told the mirror. The mirror did not agree.

The problem wasn't the clothes, really. The problem was Selina. We'd been together two years, and in all that time I had met exactly three of her coworkers, all briefly, all at a coffee place where nobody made eye contact. She was a corporate lawyer at Hollis and Frey, and apparently her firm had rules about the annual partner gala that I still didn't fully understand. Something about appearances. Something about Louise, the senior partner, who was deciding who moved up this year.

So Selina had asked me to come. Asked, plainly, over dinner on Tuesday. "Will you be my date? It matters, and I want you there." I'd said yes before I finished chewing. Now here I was, adjusting a blouse like it had personally wronged me.

I checked my badge one more time, out of habit, then left it in the glove box of my car. Wrong venue. I got out, locked the car, and walked the three blocks in shoes I'd bought specifically for this and already regretted.

The hotel lobby was all marble and money. I gave my name at the check-in table and the woman there found it on her list without any trouble, which surprised me more than it should have. "Cammie Bartholomew, guest of Selina Palmer," she read, and I felt oddly official.

Selina was waiting near the elevators. Thirty-nine years old and she wore a navy dress like she'd been issued it at birth. She was already scanning the room, I noticed. Not for me. For colleagues. Then she saw me and the scanning stopped and something in her face let go, just a little.

"You came," she said.

"You asked."

"You look..." She stopped, tilted her head. "Actually very good. The blazer works."

"It's borrowed. Don't get attached."

"Then I'll return it personally." She took my arm. Her hand was cold, which meant she was nervous, which meant the whole polished-lawyer thing was a performance even now. Good. I wasn't the only one acting.

"Fair warning," she said, low, as we joined the line of people funneling toward the ballroom doors. "Louise will assess you. Politely. She assesses everyone politely, it's her whole method."

"Assess me how?"

"Whether you're stable. Whether I'm stable. Whether having you around makes me more or less promotable." She squeezed my hand. "Just be yourself, but maybe don't mention the time you Tasered a guy in a tuxedo."

"That was one time, and he was committing fraud at a wedding."

"And yet it's the story you lead with at every dinner party."

"Your dinner parties are boring, Selina. I'm providing value."

She laughed, quick and quiet, and we walked in.

The ballroom looked like someone had taken a courthouse, a wedding, and a bank, and shaken them in a bag. Chandeliers. Round tables with place cards. A string quartet playing something that cost extra. Maybe two hundred people in suits, and every one of them glancing around to see who was watching them glance around.

"Champagne first," Selina said, and steered me toward a table where a tall woman with silver hair stood like she owned the chandeliers personally.

"Cammie," Selina said, "this is Louise Watkins. Louise, my detective, Cammie Bartholomew."

My detective. I'd heard her use the phrase twice before, once on the phone and once to a waiter, and both times it had done something warm and embarrassing to me. It did it again.

"Detective." Louise shook my hand with a grip that was probably a personality test. "Homicide?"

"Robbery, mostly. Occasionally a guy in a tuxedo."

Selina made a small strangled sound beside me. Louise, to my genuine surprise, smiled.

"Selina warned me you had a sense of humor. She didn't warn me it was a good one." She turned to Selina. "You'll sit with us at dinner. Table three. Constance will be there too, so brace yourselves."

When she'd moved off, Selina exhaled like she'd been holding air for a week. "That went well."

"She liked me?"

"She didn't dislike you. At Louise's firm, that's a standing ovation."

We got champagne. I learned the rules fast: stand near Selina, hold her elbow, laugh when the partners laughed even though the jokes were all inside references about mergers. Easy enough. I've worked worse undercover.

The interesting part, the part I hadn't expected, was watching Selina work the room. At home she was quiet, liked takeout and old movies, fell asleep on the couch by ten. Here she was something else. Sharp, quick, a little ruthless in a way I'd only seen glimpses of. She disagreed with a partner about a case and did it so smoothly the man thanked her for it.

"Who is that?" I asked, nodding at a woman across the room who was watching us with the expression of someone taking notes. Young, maybe thirty-two, blonde, drink untouched.

"Constance Maher. Associate. My competition for the promotion, sort of." Selina's voice flattened. "Don't trust her. Don't be rude to her either."

"Why not rude? Seems efficient."

"Because she collects things, Cammie. She collects what people say and she keeps it." Selina turned back to me, and for a second the room-mask slipped and I saw my Selina again, tired under the polish. "Two years ago she dated a partner's son and it ended badly, and now she thinks everyone is a chess piece. Including me."

"Does she have anything on you?"

"She has the fact that I've never brought anyone to one of these. Until tonight." She looked at me then, really looked, and said, "Which is the whole point. You're here so she has nothing to collect. A closed file."

"A closed file," I repeated. "Romantic."

"I never said I was romantic. I said I was thorough."

The dinner was long. The speeches were longer. At some point a man I later learned was a managing partner made a joke about billable hours that got a laugh like a landslide, and I laughed too, on cue, and Selina's hand found my knee under the table and stayed there. Not pushing anything. Just there. I put my hand over hers and she didn't move it, and we sat through another speech like that, and I thought, this is a strange way to fall a little further for someone, at table three, next to the chandelier.

Constance found us during the dessert course. She appeared the way lawyers appear, already mid-sentence.

"Selina. And you must be the famous date." She put out her hand. "Constance. I hear you're a detective."

"Robbery detail."

"Exciting work."

"It's mostly paperwork."

"Everything is paperwork," she said, and smiled, and the smile had math in it. "Selina never mentioned you before this year. I was starting to think she'd invented you."

"Why would she invent me?" I asked. "She can't even invent a good excuse for being late."

Selina choked slightly on her wine. Constance's eyes flicked between us, recalculating something, and then she said, "Well. Enjoy the dessert," and drifted off toward another table.

"That was a test," Selina murmured.

"I know. I passed, right?"

"You made her laugh. That's either very good or very bad."

"So you've mentioned."

After dinner people migrated to the balcony for air and cigars, and Selina pulled me out there. The city spread out below, all lit windows and cold air, and somewhere off to the left I could see the courthouse, which felt like the universe making a joke at my expense. Two of my worlds, forty stories apart.

"You did well tonight," she said.

"I Tasered nobody."

"Growth." She was quiet a moment, breath fogging. "Louise asked me about you. At dinner. She asked if this was serious."

"What did you tell her?"

"That it was." She turned to face me, and the wind moved her hair and she didn't fix it, which she would have done an hour ago. "That it's been serious for two years and I've been hiding it like a liability."

"Why'd you hide it?"

"Because this place eats soft things, Cammie. I've watched it happen." She took my hand. "But tonight I watched you make Louise Watkins laugh, and Constance walk away confused, and I thought, maybe I've been protecting the wrong thing."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean I like introducing you as my detective. I liked it the first time and I liked it tonight." She stepped closer. "So here's my offer. A standing arrangement. Every event, every dinner, every awful gala, you're there. Not as a performance."

"And the kissing part?"

"That's not part of the arrangement," she said, and then, quieter, "that part I'm asking about right now!"

I looked at her for a moment. The balcony was loud behind us, all laughter and cigar smoke, but the corner she'd pulled me into was quiet enough.

"Yes," I said. "You don't have to ask twice."

She smiled, and it wasn't the gala smile. It was smaller and it reached further. Then she kissed me, one hand on my collar, careful at first, like she was still checking whether the balcony counted as work. I decided it didn't and kissed her back properly, and she made a small sound against my mouth that I would think about for the next three days.

"Okay," she said when we broke apart, slightly breathless. "That was unprofessional."

"Of us both. I'm off duty, though."

"Lucky you."

We stayed out there a while, her arm threaded through mine, watching the traffic crawl below. It was cold and I didn't care. Around us lawyers talked about mergers in the tones other people use for sports.

"Heads up," Selina said. "Louise is coming over. Be charming but not too charming."

"Is there a dial for that?"

"There is now. You're on three!"

Louise had drifted over while we weren't looking, silver hair, tall, probably mid-forties, the kind of posture you can't buy.

"There's my favorite introduction from this evening," she said. "Your detective. Camille, was it?"

"Cammie," I said. "Bartholomew."

"Bartholomew. Good name. Firm name." She sipped. "Selina tells me you've been together two years and I'm only hearing about it now. That stings a little, I'll admit."

"I told her you were intimidating," Selina said.

"I am intimidating. That's never stopped anyone from complaining to me." Louise turned to me. "So. Detective. How do you two manage it? The hours. Selina works like a woman being chased."

"She does," I said. "She falls asleep on the couch by ten and I throw a blanket on her. That's most of the mystery solved."

Louise laughed, a real one, which surprised me. "And the rest?"

"The rest is hikes. We hike on weekends. There's a trail up near Ridgefield, about four miles, nothing dramatic. We go, we argue about where to get lunch after, we get lunch anyway."

"Every weekend?" Louise asked, and it wasn't small talk. It had the tone of a deposition.

"Most. If it rains we do the indoor thing, which is takeout and an old movie. She picks the movie. I pick the takeout. We've had the same three takeout places for two years and we'll die before we try a fourth."

"Cammie," Selina said, in a tone that meant something.

"What? It's true."

"It is true," Louise said slowly, "that I have never once heard Selina describe her weekends. In nine years at this firm I could not tell you one thing she does on a Saturday." She looked at Selina, and something in it was almost fond. "Ridgefield. Four miles. I may verify this."

"Please don't," Selina said.

"I might. I like the detective." Louise raised her glass a fraction and moved off toward another cluster of partners, and I watched Selina exhale like she'd been holding it since the salad course.

"That was a lot of detail," she said.

"You told me to be on three."

"You were on nine. Ridgefield."

"It's a real place. We've been there."

"I know. That's the alarming part. You made it sound like a life."

"It is a life, Selina. Ours."

She didn't answer that. She looked out at the city instead, and I let her.

I went back in for another drink, mostly to give her a minute alone, and that's when Constance found me at the bar. She materialized the way she had at dinner, already leaning, already smiling.

"Detective Bartholomew."

"Constance."

"Two gin and tonics," she told the bartender, then turned back to me. "You're doing very well tonight. Better than well. I'm curious about you."

"Nothing to be curious about."

"See, that's where I'd disagree." She took her drink. "Selina has worked here nine years and nobody knows anything about her. Where she lives, what she does, who she goes home to. And then tonight there you are, fully formed, with hiking trails and takeout orders." She sipped. "It's rehearsed, is what I'm saying.