"I haven't been in there since they had the time for the governor back in Eighty-eight. Five hundred a head for cocktails and peanuts, not even cashews for Christ sake, and then the bastard's a no-show. No wonder he lost. But they've still got that hush, like a shrine."
Merrion and Hilliard had the bar at Grey Hills to themselves that evening, the honor system operating on weekday nights that attracted few members in the off-season. "Still very classy. Maybe even a bit deeper, more luxurious, like they had it reupholstered in a heavier fabric. They must have to have somebody come in every year or so to clean it, don't you think? "First of May again, Fleason. Time to call the hush-cleaning people; steam all the wickedness out, freshen up the deception area."
About half a minute earlier the receptionist, a light-skinned middle-aged black woman with a blunt haircut and a hangdog expression not quite masking undifferentiated hostility had patronizingly taken his name, nodding, 'to see Mister Pooler."
"Not actually saying, but obviously meaning," Merrion told Hilliard, '"Oh, well, then, you must be in one heavy peck ah shit there, chile, you here to see Mister Pooler."
She had responded by keying a button on her telephone desk set when the light glowed steady red, in a tone verging on insolence she said: "A Mister Merrion to see you, sir." Then she had said haughtily to Merrion: "Mister Pooler will see you shortly. If you'll just have a seat."
Merrion told Hilliard 'the attitude's about the same as ever, too, I'd have to say. Every time I've had any kind of contact with Butler, Corey no more'n two or three other times in my life; don't see much of their ilk in the lowly district court I've always kind of wondered what gives with that bunch. They've got more attitude'n the fuckin' IRS.
What is it with a law firm that looks down on people who've got problems like they're dirt? They should be glad to see us. Isn't that what they're for, for the luv va Mike? Help people with their problems if they've got 'em; help them not to get 'em if so far they've been lucky isn't that what lawyers do?" '"Do," yes," Hilliard said. "Talk about, no. The good ones're sort of like successful call girls. Truly elegant call girls never took many calls anyway, even before they moved up. They considered themselves "models" or "actresses," sometimes "flight attendants." In Europe a century ago they were "courtesans." Their looks brought them to the attention of refined gentlemen. Their skills prompted the gentlemen to display them to their friends, also gentlemen of taste and breeding. If fate was kind, one of them made a flattering offer of an exclusive arrangement. The working girls became fine ladies, far above their previous calling, so far above it they may never've done it. They live at stylish addresses, two or three of them: city; winter; summer. Their clothes are in excellent taste. They have cars and drivers, to carry them to shops and lunch. They arrange formal but intimate dinners for thirty or forty, all without batting an eye. They talk about the theater and the ballet, and what's going on in the art world. What they do for what all of this costs still goes for about the same price they charged while they were on a fee-for-service basis, now under exclusive long-term contract to the one refined gentleman, one of marriage. What they act as though they do and prefer to talk about are not that sort of thing at all. Your top law firms behave the same way."
The slope-shouldered younger man had a manila folder thick with yellow papers in his left hand. Pooler was talking as the two of them walked up the corridor toward where Merrion sat in a red leather wing chair next to a reading table with a brass lamp. He could not recall ever having seen Pooler when he had not either been talking or else waiting with poorly concealed impatience for someone else to finish saying whatever was taking so long. Then Pooler would expel "Yes," from his mouth in a whinnying sigh of relief implying: regardless of that and resume talking.
The younger man, three to five inches taller than Pooler at five-eight or so like nearly every normal adult male, Merrion thought, with what he recognized as mean pleasure was stooping slightly, inclining his shiny head so as to hear clearly what Pooler was saying. That made it look as though he was deferring to Pooler.
That was the way Pooler wished it. He deliberately inflicted that discomfort upon everyone he talked to, speaking so softly that anyone taller would have to bow slightly to hear him. He did not look up while talking with anyone, even when he was seated and his listener was standing. He believed that the person inducing another to adopt a posture of deference dominated every situation. He sought dominance at all times, regardless of the apparent absence of any subject in contention or under negotiation.
