It was a man's world, but Maxine Milagra intended to change that.
She stood with her arms folded, looking out the window of her 37
th
floor corner office. A panorama of high-rise buildings spread out in all directions.
Maxine looked upon the view with satisfaction. It was the best in the city.
"I earned this view," she said to herself. "Damn right."
This office was one of the many perks of being the managing partner of Dunbar, Warshein & Masterson, one of the city's preeminent law firms. Maxine had won the position four months earlier.
Maxine was the first female managing partner in the firm's history. She knew what some of the older male partners - the Old Boys, she called them - thought of that, and of her. Maxine was not one of the boys. She was not smooth. She did not come from money. She was not clubby. Instead, she was abrasive and aggressive, and she was constantly hustling. While those qualities did not endear her to the firm's old male guard, they made her a great lawyer. By her twentieth year in practice, she had established herself as one of the best and most feared plaintiff's discrimination lawyers in the city, and one of the biggest rainmakers in the firm.
She loved fighting battles in court. She loved fighting of any kind. She loved taking down big corporations for discriminating against the weak and the helpless, and she fought against every kind of discrimination: gender, race, nationality, you name it. Recently she had won an important judgment against a company for illegally discriminating against the disabled. The company had an employee of 20 years who had become blind because of a long-term illness. The company refused to make a reasonable accommodation that would allow him to continue doing his job by reading company documents in braille. Since he could not do the job without the accommodation, the company fired him. So, he went to Maxine Milagra to represent him. She did. She won at trial, and she won the appeal as well. The case set an important legal precedent for how employers must provide reasonable accommodations for their disabled employees. Maxine took enormous pride in having advanced the law to accommodate people with disabilities. Her partners took enormous satisfaction in the very large contingency fee that resulted from the huge money judgment.
To Maxine, the best part had been the cross-examination of the company's CEO, an old white privileged male that Maxine had beaten into the ground with four hours of relentless questions. By the time he had left the witness box no one in the courtroom had any doubt what the jury would do. Maxine saw to it the jury would see him as a sniveling, lying pile of goo. The only question was how much the company would pay. In the end, they paid a lot for fighting against Maxine Milagra.
Maxine's partners were so happy with the great press and huge end-of-the-year bonuses that followed her victory that they decided to make her the managing partner. They did it even though most of them did not like her.
Ballcrusher, the men called her. She loved that. In fact, she loved it so much she had commissioned a sculpture of one of her shoes stepping on top and squashing several balls. It was on display on a shelf in her office.
No, Maxine was not loved, even in her own firm. But she was respected and feared. She knew those Old Boys worried that she might sue them if they passed over her. So, they had made her managing partner despite their biases and fears.
Once she had the power, she began to use it. The first order of business was to lay down new intra-office rules to keep the men from harassing and mistreating the women. She established an office conduct committee, with a majority of women. She established a policy against intra-office fraternization. She appointed other female attorneys as committee chairs.
The most important part of her plan, however, was to hire more women. Women made up only a quarter of the firm's attorneys, and less than a tenth of its partners. Maxine thought that was disgraceful. If she could hire more women and see to it that enough women were made partners of the firm within six years, then her power would be secure. Maxine could be the managing partner for another twenty years.
And with that pleasing thought in mind she ran her hands down her navy-blue pantsuit and strode in her fake leather flat-heeled black shoes back to her desk. In a few minutes, she was scheduled to interview a new job prospect. A very promising one at that.
The prospect arrived right on time. Her name, according to the resume that lay before Maxine on her vast mahogany desk, was Deirdre Reichert. The resume was impeccable: Phi Beta Kappa in college, Stanford Law School, editor of the Law Review, straight As. Maxine also was delighted to see that Deirdre had spent time working at an indigent women's law clinic. Hiring young women out of law school like Deirdre was a key to Maxine's strategy to increase the role of women in the firm and expand her power.
Maxine was seated at her desk when the prospect arrived. A junior partner named Ron escorted her to Maxine's office. Maxine's door was open, but Ron knocked on the open door before entering.
"Maxine, hi! I've got Ms. Reichert with me, ready for her interview."
Ron stepped aside and let Deirdre step forward.
Maxine had to suppress her surprise at Deirdre's appearance. Like Maxine, Deirdre was dressed in navy blue. But that was where the similarity ended. Deirdre wore a tight-fitting blue jacket over a crisp white blouse, with a matching blue skirt that ended well above her knee. The form-fitting suit did little to hide Deirdre's ample bust and slim, shapely legs. Maxine observed that her black pumps, with 3-inch heels, were expensive and well-shined. Her black-rimmed glasses and hair, done up in a tight ice-blond bun, somehow accentuated, rather than offset, the sexiness of her outfit.
Maxine was conflicted. On the one hand, she had an aversion to women who dressed like "barbies", as she called them. Maxine couldn't stand women cultivating the attention of men, wittingly or unwittingly. If she had her way, she would ban entirely men noticing or commenting on the appearance of female coworkers.
On the other hand, Maxine was not, herself, above noticing the charms of especially attractive younger attorneys. Maxine had cultivated charming, young, female attorneys in the past, and she had discreetly indulged in relationships with those attorneys despite her public views about office fraternization. It was a well-known, but never-discussed, office secret. Maxine from time to time identified a promising young ingenue, and slowly cultivated a relationship until the young apprentice could give her the physical satisfaction she craved. It was risky, because she was violating her own policy, but so far, her office dalliances had escaped widespread notice. There were whispers, here and there, but people at Dunbar were loath to spread gossip about Maxine out of fear of what might happen to their jobs.
Maxine stepped from behind her desk and welcomed Deirdre with a firm handshake.
"Welcome to Dunbar, Marshein, and Masterson, Deirdre."
"Thank you, Ms. MIlagra! I'm delighted to be here."
"They've given you the run of the place?"
"They've showed me a lot. I'm impressed."
Maxine ushered Deirdre to her chair and took her own seat behind the desk.
"We've been around for a while," she began, "but the truth is this firm is anything but stuffy or old guard. Certainly, some of our attorneys fit that mold, but we have a bold, progressive vision for the future."
"I'm glad to hear that, Ms. Milagra."
"Excellent! And you can call me 'Maxine.'"
Maxine had carefully placed Deirdre's chair far enough back from the desk that she had an unobscured view of Deirdre's long, shapely legs below the hem of the short skirt, which, after Deirdre sat, had ridden pleasingly far up Deirdre's well-toned thighs. Maxine did everything possible to soak up the sight of Deirdre's legs as much as possible without being obvious about it. Women noticed gawking, and no doubt a woman as attractive as Deirdre had long since grown accustomed to men staring at her.
"What practice department are you interested in?" Maxine asked.
"Definitely employment discrimination law," Deirdre said, crossing her legs in the most delicious way. "I read the case decision you litigated to success, and I wrote a law review comment about it."
"That's flattering!" Maxine beamed. They chatted more about Deirdre's interests and Maxine mixed in stories about her various successes and her hopes for the firm. By the end of the half-hour, when Deirdre stood up to leave, turning to reveal an ass that made Maxine think of a ripe peach, Maxine was ready to hire her.
The offer went out five days later, after the firm had completed the interviews. Deirdre accepted at once. Maxine was delighted. She looked forward to Deirdre being a new foot soldier in her campaign to transform the firm. She also looked forward to the sight of Deirdre stretched over her desk with her blue suit on the ground.
A week later, Deirdre walked into the firm and took her office as the firm's most junior member of the Employment Department. Maxine saw to it that she was assigned to some cases she supervised, but she took care not to show too much interest in Deirdre right away. She did not want to arouse suspicion.
Something about Deirdre stirred conflicting feelings inside Maxine: the brevity of her skirts. The firm had long since abandoned strict dress codes as sexist and outdated, but women attorneys still more or less observed a custom that skirts would fall only so far above the knee. Deirdre stretched the custom past the breaking point. Her skirts were shorter than any other attorney's. Maxine wasn't sure what she thought about that. On the one hand, she hated the idea of Deirdre putting on a show for the lecherous, predatory, sexist men in the office. But on the other hand, . . . her legs sure were nice to look at. Every time Deirdre entered Maxine's office to talk to her, it was all Maxine could do to stop her eyes from sweeping over the magnificent curves of Diedre's thighs and calves, and that perfect, smooth, supple, glowing skin. Maxine's insides tingled every time Diedre crossed her legs. Her heart beat louder every time Diedre stood up to leave and walked away, showing those gorgeous and endlessly long stems under the hem of her short skirt.
Maxine dwelled on these thoughts one Tuesday morning as Deirdre entered her office and sat down in a chair next to her to discuss her research on a particular legal question in disability discrimination questions.
Maxine tried to concentrate on Deirdre's presentation of her research, but she found it increasingly difficult to prevent her gaze from straying to Deirdre's legs, especially on those few occasions when Deirdre crossed and re-crossed her legs. Maxine worried that her attention would be obvious, but if Deirdre noticed, she gave nothing away.
"This is impressive work, Deirdre," Maxine said at last. "You seem to have hit the ground running here. Are you enjoying the work?"
"Thank you, Maxine," Deirdre replied. "I'm enjoying everything about working here."
With that, Deirdre re-crossed her legs once more, this time more widely and conspicuously than before, and Maxine almost fell out of her seat.
She could have sworn Deirdre was not wearing any panties—that she caught a brief, fleeting, shadowy—but unmistakable--glance at Deirdre's vulva, shaved and bare, under the skirt.
Maxine struggled to maintain her composure. Deirdre's face remained impassive and inscrutable.
Maxine fumbled her way through the rest of the discussion, barely aware of what she or Deirdre were saying.
