I showered and slept and showered again before I returned to work the next day, but I had given up on trying to deny what had happened.  I wasn’t ready to talk about it, however.

After lunch Yvonne came into my office and closed the door, then sat down.

“Did you meet with Olivia yesterday?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“How’d it go?”

“Fine.  She just needs me to look up some case law.”

“Zorah is going around saying to went into Olivia’s office and never came out.  She’s saying Olivia must have sent you somewhere.”

I exhaled sharply, summoning all my disdain for Zorah.  “She’s crazy,” I said.  “I was in there for less than five minutes.”

“She says she saw you go in and you hadn’t come out when she went in there half an hour later.”

I tried not to show the horror I felt at the thought that Zorah had been that close by when I was tiny and servicing Olivia.

“She’s either an idiot or a liar,” I said.  “She was probably peeing when I came out.”

Yvonne didn’t say anything and just examined my face for a moment.  “Okay,” she said finally.  “I just got worried, is all.”

“Thanks,” I said quite sincerely, “but I’m alright.”

She gave me a tight smile, then got up and returned to her office.  She hadn’t been gone for two minutes before she called me on the phone.

“Are you doing anything after work?” she asked.

I was totally unprepared for this question.  “Uh, no,” I blurted.

“Meet me at Six Bells, then,” she said, and hung up.

Whatever sense of balance I might have hoped to keep was lost.  Not only did Yvonne never participate in office Happy Hour gatherings, she always went home an hour earlier than anyone else.  I had never heard of her staying late for any reason.

I busted my ass to get Olivia’s case law done on time, and I just routed it upstairs so I wouldn’t have to visit her office again.  Then I grabbed my bag and coat and headed out.

McNalley’s was the usual watering hole for people at the firm, but it was in the opposite direction as Six Bells, which was dead when I got there.  Yvonne had taken a booth in the corner, and she already had a beer that she had barely touched.  A single waitress was perched up at the bar, but no other souls were in evidence.

I sat down across from Yvonne and obtained a beer of my own.  Yvonne looked rather out of place in the gloomy pub.

“What gives?” I said.  “I thought you always had to catch your train.”

“There are other trains,” she replied, taking a large sip of beer.

“So who does that bitch Zorah think she is, anyway?” I sallied.

“An attention whore,” said Yvonne.  “Probably the other kind, too.”  I think Yvonne knew I liked it when she got all judgy.  I had some beer, overpriced but drinkable.

“How’d you know about this place?” I asked.

“I used to come here all the time after work,” she said quietly.

“But not anymore.”

Yvonne looked into her glass for a moment, then back at me.

“Remember Bill Mathers?” she asked.

“Sure.  Retired a couple of years ago.”

“I had a case with him once.  The trial was back in New York, and I worked like a dog to get him ready.  The week before he left, he told me that I would need to be at the office by 6:00 am every day in case he needed something.  I thought he was joking.”  A haunted look came over her face.  “I told him that I partied too late to be in by six in the morning,” she continued.  “That night at 8:30 I became instantly drowsy.  I collapsed on my living room couch and went right to sleep.  It happened again the next night.  And the night after that.  The first day of the trial, I showed up at work at 6:00 am.  Bill didn’t call for anything that day, but I kept coming in early.  I think once he needed a clearer copy of something he already had, but that was it.”

She paused to finish her beer before continuing.  “After the trial ended, I thought I would be able to stay up late again, but nope, still out like a light at 8:30.  Then Bill retired, and I thought it might end then, but no.  So I got my hours officially changed, and that’s why I leave early every day.”

I just stared at her for a minute.  Finally all I could say was, “Shit.”

“Yep,” she said.  “Shit.”

“These fuckin’ people,” I said, looking up at the ceiling.  I glanced down to see Yvonne looking at me, and I could tell she knew I had lied about my encounter with Olivia.  I had some more beer.

“Olivia,” I began, “actually...”

“Olivia what?” she asked gently.

“She did a number on me yesterday.”

“So Zorah was telling the truth?”

“Zorah has her head up her ass,” I said, “but I didn’t get out of that office for over an hour.”

“What did Olivia do to you?  Where did you go?”

“She, um, made me, um, small.”  It sounded so ridiculous.

“What do you mean, she made you small?”

“Just that.  She shrunk me.”

“How?”

“How did Mathers put you on Eastern Standard Time?  Magic; I don’t know.”

Yvonne just stared at me as I had stared at her.  I took a big gulp of beer.

“Like, how small?” she asked finally.

“I. . . I don’t know.  She didn’t get out a ruler.  Probably three or four inches tall.”

“Three inches tall?”

“I got better.”  Yvonne didn’t even smile.

“I’m sorry,” she said, growing visibly angry.  “You’re fucking with me.  I don’t know why I did this.”  She started to collect her purse and coat.

“I’m not fucking with you,” I said, momentarily raising my voice.  “Please stay.  She said a word and I was tiny and afterward she said a different word and I was big again.”

Yvonne gave me a wary look but sat back down.

“After what?” she asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“You said, afterward she said a word and made you big.  After what?”

“She, um, you know that glass bowl on her shelf, sort of like a small fish bowl?  She put me in there.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, she put her face next to the bowl so it looked even bigger, and then she. . .” I trailed off, shifting uncomfortably on the booth bench.

“Then she what?”

“She told me that she could do anything she wanted to me and I couldn’t do anything about it.  She told me how powerless I was, that a single one of her fingers was stronger than me.”

“What’s the point of that?”

“I don’t know, to demonstrate her control over me.”

“But why?”

“I guess she gets off on it.  You know these people.”  I had been displaying signs of increasing discomfort, and I slumped defeatedly back against the booth.

Yvonne’s expression slowly shifted from impatient bafflement to appalled concern.

“Is that where you were when Zorah went in there?” she asked.  I tried to retain the momentum of my revised version of events.

“Yeah,” I said.  “She just dropped some files off on Olivia’s desk and left.  It’s relatively dark on that shelf, and I froze as soon as the door opened, so she didn’t see me.  That would have been even worse.”  There was nothing contrived about my shudder.

Yvonne nodded.  “Well, at least it’s over now,” she said.

I wanted to take comfort from this, but I knew it wasn’t over.  At that point I was just relieved to have satisfied Yvonne’s curiosity without having to go into the really degrading parts.

“Thanks for listening,” I said.  “I didn’t think I would ever be able to talk about this.”

“It’s that damned office,” she said.  “It’s us against them.”

“But which side is Zorah on?”

“Not ours, that’s for sure.”

Yvonne had already stayed downtown for later than she had intended, and she let me pay for the beers.  On my way home, I tried to savor the relief that I knew would be short-lived.