The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman Page 0,41

had given her the heads-up. He already knew about the meeting.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Thank you.” The lawyer did sound relieved, and Nina wondered what he was scared of. “My assistant will contact you with details.”

Dammit. Now she was going to have to change her planner. Nina hated changing her planner.

The lawyer’s office was in a glintingly tall glass and granite building on the corner of Wilshire and Crescent Heights. While not exactly forbidding and Borg-like, it was dark enough that should a battalion of Stormtroopers have emerged from the parking lot, Nina wouldn’t have been surprised. Well, she would have been surprised by the Stormtroopers per se, obviously, but it would have made sense they were coming from that building. The point is, the lawyer’s building was intimidating and Nina was intimidated.

While the firm didn’t have their name on the outside of the building, a quick glance at the lobby directory showed they had three floors all to themselves, which meant this was no Podunk operation, no, sir. The receptionist was clearly on top of her game, because when Nina walked up to her, she rose and said, “Right this way, Ms. Hill.”

“How did you know who I was?” Nina asked. She should have shrugged it off, but she was rattled; see earlier comment re: Stormtroopers.

The receptionist smiled at her as they headed down a long and plushly carpeted corridor. “I have a list of people attending your meeting, which is the only one involving clients right now, and I signed everyone else in already.”

“Oh,” Nina said. “So, professionalism and logic.”

The woman nodded.

“Well played, madam,” Nina said, and then wished her head had exploded instead. Why did she say these things? Why did her mouth open and this stuff come out? AIs like Siri and Alexa sounded more relaxed and human than she did.

The woman opened a door, but as the sound of many conversations rolled out, Nina hesitated.

“I think there might be a mistake. Mr. Sarkassian said it was immediate family only.” The room was filled with people. Enough food had been laid out on a deep shelf on one end of the room to feed a football team. After the game.

The receptionist shook her head. “No mistake. This is the immediate family.” She moved her head slightly to indicate Nina should go in because she was holding the door and it was heavy, so Nina stepped into the room.

Nina had always been comfortable with the fact that she was not gregarious. Not every interaction needed to be a party, right? Her Room 101, for those Orwell fans among you, would simply contain a couple of people whose names she couldn’t remember. Walking into a room full of strangers was about as comfortable for her as putting on a hat full of wasps and tugging it down firmly. But in she went.

“Nina!” Peter stood and came over to her. He took her hand and leaned in close. “Don’t pay any attention to this; let it wash over you.” He pulled back a bit and looked at her, smiling. “Lydia is not speaking for most of us.”

Nina nodded and caught sight of Archie over his shoulder. He was also smiling at her, so maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. She took a seat in the total silence that had fallen and felt several pairs of eyes trained on her. She tried the in through the nose, out through the mouth breathing a long-ago therapist had suggested. The table was very nice, so she looked at that. Spruce, if she wasn’t mistaken.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” asked Peter. “It’s terrible, but there’s alcohol in it.”

Nina nodded, and he got her a glass that, as he had warned, was pretty bad. Nina wasn’t a wine snob or anything, but she was a millennial, and as you’ve probably heard, they drink more wine than any generation in history. This would probably be disputed by the ancient Romans, but the Internet doesn’t check sources very thoroughly. Nina had a policy of treating the Internet the way she might treat a guy in a bar, one who’s wavering gently on his stool and holding a honey mustard pretzel nugget. He might be an expert in international arbitrage or arms dealing or the history of Catholicism, but it’s more likely he isn’t. But anyway, she did drink wine, so the Internet nailed that one.

Sarkassian arrived and threw a haunch of dead lamb on the table, and the lion feeding began. The haunch came in