Goodness. It's been two months since I spoke a word here at all. I have indeed been pushed out of two places to live in the meantime, so if anyone was wondering where I've been, I've been itinerant.
Today I'm sitting in a ghost world.
I work with a law firm - I fill in for secretaries when they aren't here, among other tasks. I dislike it, and I dislike the firm more and more as time passes. When first started here, I was full-time, and I worked for two lawyers, mainly, with some extra tasks thrown in by other people. One of them was the reason I was hired here. I temped for Ric for two days in December of 2001, and as I hadn't done much legal work, I kept my mouth shut and tried to follow his corrections. He was an graying, bespectacled man given to wearing bow ties and his fedora, and his bookcases were full of Best Short Story collections or philosophy books or new fiction like The Life of Pi. Not law books. I thought he was very business-like and serious but couldn't help making a sidelong comment about the case we were drafting documents for - two brothers in an all-out fight for control of the family company. Ric was at the marble counter by this desk, and he stopped for a second and looked at me, with an impish grin, and said, "Oh, yes, the furniture is FLYING."
And eventually, months later, he talked me into coming to work for him, which I never did like, not even a little. But he turned out to be a very interesting guy - well-read and interested in people, and taking all of life with that wry sense of humor that a man who wears bow-ties must have. I quit a years or so into it, but needed the money enough to keep working at the firm on a part-time, flexible basis.
I never missed his frantic pace or his incessant waste of paper or his occasional stress blowups, but I missed chatting with him day to day, and he always had a sly smile and a joke for me when we crossed paths in the office. He was one of the few lawyers who was truly good to his secretary on a daily basis, even if he rarely put much effort into secretaries day or Christmas. He spent time on pro bono cases, did favors for friends, threw a surprise birthday party for his wife, doted on his only son. He had a sense of humor, and a feeling that the world was much much bigger than his law office. He did not compromise who he was but he was willing to learn and grow and experience something new.
A year ago, he died of a heart attack, quite suddenly, while on vacation with his family. He was 57, I think. His son was 21. The partners of the firm called us into the conference room and told us what they knew, and a week later we all went to the visitation and funeral. He'd been cremated and his signet ring and glasses were on the table behind his wife. I told her I used to work for Ric and she immediately exclaimed, "Oh, you're the actress!" The idea that he'd gone home and told his wife about the secretary who was really an actress was touching.
I find it much harder to work here without him. But today, of all days, I'm back at my "old" desk, which is right outside his old office. His elegant, tasteful furniture is gone, and the room is piled with extra files and chairs and cabinets that the office doesn't have any other place for, but from here I can only see the edge of the door, like always. I want him to be in that office, and come out with yet another draft for me. No, I don't, not really. Because I don't like working here and if I were to wish him alive, I'd give him the option of retiring. But I do wish that he could be here on earth somewhere, so that when I spy a fedora or a bow tie, it might be him after all.
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