Amanda Brown

comforter on her bed,

The melee in the courtyard

Drifting past the sign

“When you said you’d always love me were you just being optimistic? And when you said you’d never felt this way about anyone before were you lying? And how could you make a decision about your life, our lives, like law school without telling me? How long have you known?” Her voice was shaky and suddenly her sobbing was uncontrollable.

Although her mother ran one of L.A.’s most successful galleries, she had always told Elle that a woman’s most exalted achievement was in landing a moneyed husband and maintaining a successful marriage.

Elle thought about her parents, who couldn’t bear to see her “wasting her talents at law school.”

Kiki called only on women. In her introductory monotone she was making the point that women have to balance work and family life, whereas men, presumably like her husband, are free from this dual responsibility.

The prize for law school success was this: an opportunity to slave away in a law firm library researching obscure legal issues, perfecting a nervous twitch, and checking the clock in obsessive fixation on billable hours in order to make money for someone else, more specifically, a partner. This was called the “partnership track.” You sold your right to light and freedom for seven to eight good years, all in the name of an equity share and free time for golf

Elle laughed. “You’re like Christopher Columbus. Right direction, but you landed about five hundred miles too far north!”

The scarcity of respected blonde business leaders would be evidence to use in workplace discrimination claims of BLDF clients. Elle could just see squirming employers justifying the promotion of a brunette over an equally competent blonde: “But, Your Honor, it’s only fair—blondes have more fun.” And herself, lead counsel, fighting on: “Objection. Irrelevant and prejudicial.”