“What’s your maiden name?” he asked.

My birth name, I thought, but this was not the time to school him on gender politics. “Chance.”

“Chance? Like gamble?”

Like possibility, I used to like to retort, but not this time. I nodded.

Next he asked about employment, and I confirmed that I worked for CDMI, in its Law Department, and yes, I was a lawyer.

“Where’d you go to law school?”

“In the city. Columbia.”

“When did you graduate?”

“Two thousand six.”

“Wait.” He flipped some pages. “You’re thirty, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Most people don’t finish law school until they’re twenty-five. You were twenty-three?”

I shrugged. “I skipped a couple grades.”

“Wow,” he said. Then, “Where’d you go to undergrad?”

“Brown. That’s in Rhode Island?” I wondered if next he was going to ask for my résumé and two letters of recommendation.

“Ever work in a machine shop?”

“What?” I said, baffled. If we were in court, I would have said, Objection. Relevance? But I was here to cooperate. “No.”

“Any experience in machining?”

“No. I’m not even sure what that means.”

“Working with metal parts. Cutting, boring, assembling.”

“Then definitely no.”

“What about your husband?”

“David?” I couldn’t help a short laugh. “No.”

“You went to the office this morning—I mean, yesterday morning—at what? Six thirty?”

“About that, yes.”

“And stayed until nine p.m.”

“Yes.”

“Long hours.”

“Yes.”

“And on Super Bowl Sunday.”

“I don’t really follow sports.”

“What was the big crisis that made you work—what, fourteen hours?—on Super Bowl Sunday?”

“It wasn’t any crisis. It’s just a big case. And I’m still new to the company. I want to make a good impression.”

“What’s the case?”

“Palmer v. Duvall. It’s a shareholder derivative action against the company’s top executives, alleging waste and mismanagement in the operation of our overseas production facilities. The company’s only a nominal party, so we’re not exactly defending against the lawsuit. The executives have their own outside counsel for that. But we—the company, that is—have to respond to discovery requests, and that’s what my assignment is. To go through all of the documents from the factories in Southeast Asia and organize them to produce to the plaintiffs’ attorney. It’s kind of a massive undertaking.”

That was more than Cruz wanted to know. He stroked his beard while he skimmed his notes. “When did you start working at CDMI?” he asked next.

“Just last month. January second.”

“Did you practice law anywhere before that?”

“Yes, at Jackson Rieders LLP.”

“That’s the big law firm on Wall Street?”

Big law firm, period. It had a roster of Fortune 500 clients and offices all over the world. “Yes,” I said.

“When did you start there?”

“September fifth, 2006.”

“Until?”

“December nineteenth . . .” My voice trailed off.

“Twenty thirteen,” he finished for me.

“No, 2008.”

“Five years ago?”

“Yes.”

“Where’d you go from there?”

“I took some time off.”

Cruz paused and shuffled some papers. “What time did you arrive at the office yesterday?”

Asked and answered, I would have said if we were in court. Instead I said: “About six thirty a.m.”