Chapter 4 — Wrong Curtain
At Pearson Hardman, lunch was a theoretical concept.
You thought about lunch. You planned lunch. You occasionally ordered lunch, watched it go cold on your desk while you were on a call, and then ate it at three p.m. standing over your trash can. This was, as far as Martin could tell, considered normal.
At twelve forty-five, Rachel Zane appeared in his doorway.
She was dressed the way she always seemed to be dressed — like she'd made a series of very deliberate choices that morning and every single one of them had paid off. Dark blazer, fitted, structured. Hair down. The kind of effortless professional polish that made the office look slightly worse by comparison.
She was carrying a stack of folders approximately the thickness of a brick, which she deposited on the left side of his desk with the controlled precision of someone who'd learned early that slamming things was satisfying but counterproductive.
Then she sat down across from him, crossed her arms, crossed her legs, and looked at him with the expression of someone who had opinions and was deciding how many of them to share.
"Martin Scott," she said. "Congratulations on the Kowalski win. The court transcript's already been circulated firm-wide as a training case study, which means you've been here less than a week and you're already required reading. How does that feel?"
"Ask me after I've read all of those." He picked up the top folder without looking up. "Help yourself to coffee. There's a machine behind you."
Rachel did not move toward the coffee machine. "I read the case summary. You never once considered a settlement. Why not?"
"A settlement wouldn't have protected my client's interests. Pullis would've taken a payout and stayed in the building."
"What if you'd lost at argument?"
Martin turned a page. "Then I would've deserved to lose my law license."
He said it the way other people stated weather forecasts — factually, without drama. Rachel's expression didn't change, but something behind it shifted slightly.
She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. "Jessica says you want me as your secretary."
"I do."
"I have a private office right now. Small, but mine. You're asking me to move to an open desk in the associate corridor."
"I'm asking you," Martin said, finally looking up, "to stop being the person everyone on this floor calls when they need something done and can't be bothered to do it themselves. You organize half the active caseload for lawyers who don't credit you, you manage document reviews that should have three people on them, and you do all of it while fending off a level of workplace commentary that technically stays below the HR threshold but is genuinely exhausting. I've been here four days and I've noticed it. You've been here three years."
Rachel was quiet.
Martin held her gaze for a moment, then went back to his document. "With me, you run the office. Your call on how that happens. I'm not a micromanager. I need someone who can anticipate problems before they land on my desk, keep my schedule from becoming a disaster, and tell me when I'm about to do something tactically stupid. That's a different job than what you're doing now, and it pays better."
The silence stretched.
"I need three days to hand off my current work," Rachel said.
Martin looked up again, this time with a brief, genuine smile. "You're my secretary as of right now, Rachel. That means you manage your own handoff timeline."
Her composure flickered — just slightly. She covered it quickly with a raised eyebrow. "So if I decide it takes two weeks?"
"Then it takes two weeks. But you seem like someone who does things in three days when she says three days."
Rachel stood, straightened her blazer, and gave the stack of folders on his desk a pointed look that clearly communicated those won't read themselves. Then she turned and walked out, heels precise on the floor, the particular exit of someone who has just agreed to something and is still deciding exactly how she feels about it.
Martin watched the doorway for approximately two seconds longer than was strictly professional, then looked back at his documents.
The Duchess, he thought, with a private sense of the absurdity of his life. Working for me.
He left the office at nine forty-seven that evening.
The folders Rachel had left him contained three legal aid cases — no upfront fee, five percent of any awarded compensation — two paid matters, and a roster of seven clients needing general counsel contracts signed within the week. The paid cases were the more interesting ones: a civil property dispute and a criminal matter where his client was the defendant, facing a second-degree murder charge that was going to require significantly more than three days of prep.
The consulting clients were, on paper, unremarkable. Five individuals and their families, a small restaurant owner in the West Village, a neighborhood supermarket operator in Astoria. Law-abiding, cautious people who hired a lawyer the way you kept a fire extinguisher — you hoped never to need it, but you wanted it there. They wouldn't generate the kind of billing hours that made a partner's quarterly report look good.
Martin didn't mind. Small clients were loyal clients. And loyal clients talked to their friends.
He took the subway home, which was an experience that never fully normalized no matter how long you lived in New York, changed out of his suit in the elevator lobby for no reason except that the building had no elevator and three flights of stairs in a three-piece suit was a commitment, and pushed open the apartment door.
The living room was occupied.
Sheldon was at the whiteboard, which covered roughly forty percent of the available wall space and was currently dense with what appeared to be tensor equations. Leonard and Howard were hunched over the dining table in the particular way that meant they'd been in the middle of a thought for probably two hours and interrupting it would be like unplugging a hard drive during a transfer.
Howard Wolowitz, in his characteristic turtleneck and too-tight jeans, glanced up long enough to acknowledge Martin's existence, then went back to whatever Leonard was showing him.
Martin had been living with Sheldon and Leonard for just over two years now. He'd learned the rhythms. He set his briefcase quietly by the door, loosened his tie, and headed for his room.
Suit jacket. Vest. Dress shirt. Cufflinks into the small dish on the dresser. He'd been wearing tailored three-piece suits five days a week for the better part of a year and he still sighed with physical relief every time he took one off. They looked exceptional. They felt like being professionally gift-wrapped.
He grabbed his towel, padded down the hall in his undershirt and boxers, and pushed open the bathroom door.
The shower curtain was drawn. Water running. Steam already fogging the mirror.
Martin stopped.
He looked at the closed curtain. He looked back down the hall toward the living room, where he could hear Howard's voice explaining something to Leonard with characteristic overconfidence. He looked at the curtain again.
Raj must've come in while I was getting changed.
Rajesh Koothrappali — the fourth member of the group, astrophysicist, chronically unable to speak to women without alcohol — was the only person in their social orbit who used their bathroom without much announcement. He had a thing about his own apartment's water pressure.
Martin reached over and pulled the curtain back.
It was not Raj.
Penny — their new neighbor, the one from Nebraska, who had moved in approximately twelve hours ago — was standing in their bathtub, staring at him with an expression that in the half-second before the screaming began could only be described as mortified.
"OH MY GOD—"
The scream was operatic. Martin had a brief, wild thought that Penny had chosen the wrong career — forget acting, that was a voice that could fill Carnegie Hall without a microphone.
He yanked the curtain back closed, took two large steps backward, and hit the towel rack with his shoulder blade.
Down the hall, there was a rapid shuffling of chairs. Thirty seconds later, three physicists appeared in the bathroom doorway simultaneously, which would have been impressive if any of them had looked remotely threatening. Leonard had his fists raised. Howard had assumed a stance that suggested he'd once watched a martial arts movie. Sheldon was simply there, the way Sheldon was always simply there — present, observant, and completely detached from the emotional register of the situation.
"Whoa, whoa—" Martin held both hands up, suddenly very aware that he was standing in his own bathroom in his boxers while his neighbor screamed behind a shower curtain. "Nobody do anything. This was an accident."
"An accident," Leonard repeated, in the tone of someone weighing a legal defense.
"I saw Howard come in earlier, I didn't see Raj, I assumed it was him in the shower." Martin lowered his hands and looked directly at Leonard and Sheldon. "Back me up. You both know Raj does this."
Leonard thought about it. Sheldon, who was already scanning the bathroom with the academic interest of an anthropologist visiting a new culture, nodded once. "Rajesh does have a documented preference for our shower due to what he describes as superior water pressure. Statistically, the assumption was not unreasonable."
Howard, meanwhile, had gone slightly pale. "Wait. He met her before me?"
"I ran into her this morning before court," Martin said quickly. "It was thirty seconds in the hallway."
"He met you first," Howard said, to no one in particular, with the mournful energy of a man watching a sunset he'd been too late to photograph. "It never ends."
"Why is she showering here?" Martin asked Leonard.
Leonard peered at the curtain with what he was presumably trying to make look like casual concern. "Her bathroom's not finished yet. There was an issue with the fixtures when she moved in, apparently."
"Okay." Martin ran a hand over his face. "And is she staying with you tonight, or—"
The shower curtain snapped open three inches.
Penny's face appeared in the gap. Her cheeks were extremely pink — steam, presumably, combined with what appeared to be equal parts fury and embarrassment.
"Gentlemen." The word came out with a precision that suggested she'd taken a breath first. "I am still in here. Can you please take the 'where does Penny sleep' conversation to the living room?"
Four men looked at each other.
There was a brief, undignified scramble for the door. Martin, being closest, made it out first. Howard caught his elbow on the door frame. Sheldon navigated the exit with the efficiency of someone for whom physical spaces were primarily logistical problems.
"And close the door!"
Leonard grabbed the handle and pulled it shut.
The four of them stood in the hallway, not quite looking at each other.
"She's very loud," Sheldon observed.
"She really is," Martin agreed.
"I think I'm in love," Howard said.
From behind the closed bathroom door, the water turned back on. The tension in the hallway dropped about forty degrees.
Leonard leaned against the wall and exhaled. "So. Guest situation."
"She can take the couch," Martin said. "I've got an air mattress somewhere in my closet. That's probably more comfortable anyway."
"I have a sleeping bag," Howard offered immediately.
"You don't live here, Howard."
"I'm here constantly."
"That's a different thing."
Down the hall, Sheldon had already drifted back toward the whiteboard. From the living room, the quiet sound of marker on whiteboard resumed. Some things, apparently, were more pressing than the neighbor situation.
Martin went to find the air mattress.
This was, he reflected while digging through his closet, going to be an interesting building to live in.
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