Scot on the Rocks

of those first nights that promise the coming of spring with a little kiss of warm weather. I took a deep breath and enjoyed the fresh air.

“What are you doing?” Jack called to me from the inside of the car.

“Billing Janobuilder Corp. for my time. Only it’s more fun to do it out here, watching the stars.” I heard Jack’s car door open. I took off my suit jacket and threw it into my window as Jack joined me on the hood, taking his jacket off, too, and loosening his tie.

“It’s beautiful out here,” he said and I nodded in agreement. “But what do we do if we’re still out here when the traffic starts back up?”

“I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about that,” I said, looking at my watch. According to my count, we’d been outside waiting for twenty minutes already. A gentle drizzle started to drop and the crowd cheered as if Jim Morrison himself had descended from the heavens and brought the rain with him. I put my hands out to feel the drops while Jack tried to cover his head. Jack, seeing that his fight with the drizzle was futile, finally gave in to the night and started to show me some constellations. Somewhere between the Big Dipper and my zodiac sign, we saw our plane leave for New York City without us.

We got back to the hotel around 9:00 p.m. and the only place still serving food was the piano bar in the lobby. The singer was dripping from the piano, dressed from head to toe in red satin and black lace like a modern day Mae West, with the cleavage to really back it up. From the looks of things, it seemed as if she and her piano player had a thing going on. Jack and I sat at the bar and ate burgers and drank beers and started to sing along as best we could with Mae’s showtunes. Only Jack didn’t really know any of the words, so I had to quickly tell him each line of the song — from Cats to Pippin — before it played. He kept leaning in real close, way too many beers on his breath, and I would whisper the lyric, way too loud, into his ear. The piano player moved on to West Side Story and Jack’s face lit up — announcing to anyone at the bar who would listen that he played Tony in high school. He and Mae did a daring rendition of “America” before Mae took “A Boy Like That” as a solo. Then it was Jack’s turn to shine. Mae sat down on the piano bench while the piano player cued up Jack’s big number. Jack sang “Maria” to me in perfect pitch, except on the parts where he should have said “Maria,” he instead inserted “Brooke Miller.”

“Brooke Miller, I just met a girl named Brooke Miller. And suddenly that name will never be the same to me!”

He came over to the bar and grabbed me to dance. He held me close to his chest, my hand in his.

“Brooke Miller, I’ve just kissed a girl named Brooke Miller, and suddenly I found how wonderful a sound can be.” He twirled me around and then sat me back on my bar stool.

“Brooke Miller, say it loud and there’s music playing,” he sang to me, “say it soft and it’s almost like praying. Brooke Miller,” he sang, leaning in tight for his big finish, “I’ll never stop saying Brooke Miller, Brooke Miller, Brooke Miller. The most beautiful sound I ever heard, Brooke Miller!”

Is it any wonder that we ended up kissing by the time the bar closed? Truth be told, I’d secretly wanted to do that all day. There was something very sexy about Jack doing his job all day. Doing his job so well all day. Who knew he was so smart?

The following Monday morning, Jack came into my office looking dead serious.

“Are you quitting or am I?” he asked me. I laughed and he didn’t laugh back.

“No one’s quitting anything,” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m talking about…” he said, brushing the shaggy hair from his baby blues.

“The kiss,” I said, cutting him off. “I know.”

“Shhh!” he said, jumping up and slamming my office door shut. “Someone will hear you!” I couldn’t help but laugh at how cute he was when he was trying to be serious. I had the sudden impulse to kiss him again.

“No one’s going to hear me,” I said, jumping on the desk and crossing my legs, trying to look seductive, like Heather Locklear in Melrose Place.

“One of us has to quit,” he said, and as he got closer to me I wrapped my legs around him. “Are you listening to me?” I pulled him to me and tried to kiss him. He pulled away.

“No one has to quit,” I said, still perched on the edge of my desk, legs now dangling over the side like a little girl whose chair is too high for her.

“You know the firm’s policy,” he said.

“I guess I don’t care about it that much.”

“Well, I do. We work on every case together. I don’t want to get fired. My father would kill me,” he said. “So, then, maybe you should quit.”

“Me, quit?” I asked. “I just got here seven months ago! I’m not going anywhere! Maybe you should quit!”

“Okay, then. I’ll quit.”

“Oh, my God! You can’t quit! Not because of me, anyway. Are you insane?”

“Well, what then?” he asked and I didn’t know what to say.

I was still puzzling over it that day at lunch. As I sat at my usual table in the Gilson Hecht cafeteria with Vanessa and seven of our closest friends from the first-year associate class, all I could think about was Jack. Vanessa and one of our other friends were engaging in a lively debate about whether or not the fat-free balsamic vinaigrette the firm stocked at the salad bar was, in fact, fat free.

“Which is why,” Vanessa summed up her case, “there is no possible way that the vinaigrette is fat free.”

“Bet I know what you’re thinking about,” our friend Sandy whispered to me from across the table. I smiled and tried not to react, instead feigning interest in the Great Fat-Free Balsamic Dressing Debate. Sandy could be such a troublemaker when her billables were low and she didn’t have a lot of work to do. “Who you’re thinking about, I should say.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I whispered back and put my head down into my salad. I took a bite and determined that Vanessa was right — there was no possible way that the dressing could actually be fat free.

“Jack,” Sandy said out loud and the entire table turned to look at us. Everyone except for Vanessa.

“What about Jack?” I said, tearing my whole wheat roll in half. I dipped it into my dressing and took a bite.

“It’s too late, Brooke,” Sandy said, “everyone’s talking about it.”

“Talking about what?” I asked, looking her dead in the eye. When the vicious Denise Rosen turned her sights on me in the first grade, my father told me that the best way to get a bully to back down was to stare her dead in the eye and fight back.

“You and Jack,” Sandy said simply, not backing down one iota. I then realized that it would take more than a firm stare to get a first-year litigator to back down as opposed to an insecure first grader. “Keith in the file room told Ilene in corporate that you guys were totally making eyes at each other when you brought your documents back from South Carolina on Saturday afternoon. And then Ben Harper’s secretary saw you having a lover’s quarrel in your office this morning.”

“A what?” I said. “That’s ridiculous.” I couldn’t believe how fast the gossip was circulating around the firm. At this rate, people in our San Diego office would know the news by 4:00 p.m., their time. Who else knew and how were people finding out so fast? Was this information up on the firm’s Web site under the “What’s New at the Firm” section or something?

“You know what?” Vanessa asked from the other side of the table. “We should have the dressing sent out to a lab for testing so that we can figure it out for once and for all. Then we could bring it up as a topic at the next associate’s meeting.” I looked at Vanessa and for a second, actually deluded myself into thinking that the conversation could turn back to condiments.

“I can’t believe you told Vanessa and you didn’t tell us!” one of the girls yelled out. I can’t remember who it was. The entire table turned toward Vanessa like an angry mob.

“Well, there isn’t anything to tell right now,” I said.

“Don’t listen to them,” Renee said from two seats down from me. “I think it’s great. Who cares if this stupid firm has a policy or whatever? It’s your life.” Renee had recently told me that, despite the fact that we had only been at the firm for seven months, she was two months pregnant and planned to leave the firm entirely after she had her baby.