Hubris. I’d been lousy with it.

I could have collected unemployment, but I never bothered to apply for it, so certain I was that I wouldn’t be unemployed for long. Besides, unemployment was only welfare for losers and meth heads and fat slobs who watched TV all day. I had my image to think of. I also didn’t bother to apply for any jobs at second-tier firms because I was certain to be hired again by a first-tier firm, and again, image. But that year and the next, the first-tier firms were hiring only the newly minted lawyers right out of school, the shiny bright graduates with no shadows on their résumés. The years of experience I’d already acquired, all my stellar evaluations, counted for nothing against the fact that someone had once found me disposable.

I landed a job, finally, doing document review for a litigation firm defending a Big Pharma company against thousands of product liability claims. It was trained-monkey work and nothing I could ever put on my résumé. I sat in a subbasement in Newark with dozens of other unemployed young lawyers all scanning medical records for certain keywords. The documents numbered in the millions, and each new batch was brought in by forklift. We sat at long communal tables and punched timecards like factory workers. I can’t believe I got a law degree for this, my coworkers groused to one another. But they should have kept their mouths shut. We were all laid off when the work was outsourced to India later that year. The year after that, the Indians were laid off, too, displaced by robots.

My hubris was gone by then. I took any work I could find. I lied about my education and experience and pretended to be a young mother returning to the workforce. That landed me some clerical positions, then retail jobs, and finally warehouse work. But my loan defaults trailed after me like a bloodhound. Within weeks of starting each new job, a wage garnishment order was served on my new employer, commanding it to turn over ten percent of my gross pay. It never went over well. Nobody liked to employ a deadbeat, and besides, the garnishment paperwork was such a headache. My services were always dispensed with shortly thereafter.

The only solution was to work off-book, and that was what I’d been doing for the past year. My hubris was gone and so was my pride. Now I worked for tips only, serving drinks and getting my ass fondled night after night in a dingy bar. If Mrs. Casco could see me now.

“Ms. Lambert?”

Another woman materialized in the reception area. This one was older but just as stylish as the three mannequins out front. Her hair was cut in a sleek silver bob, and she wore what looked like a Chanel suit but was more likely a CDMI derivative. She introduced herself as Mr. Barrett’s executive assistant, Marcia Post. Mr. Barrett was just finishing up his morning call to Paris, she explained with sublime composure, and would join me shortly in the conference room. If I didn’t mind waiting?