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office and I’ll get you a copy of the letter from Lydia’s investment bankers. They’ve asked for a ridiculous amount of information. You’re going to have to tell me how much of this stuff I really have to provide. If I give them everything they’re asking for, it’ll take weeks to get it together. I’ve also had Cecilia run off a copy of our most recent financials.” She stood up and stretched. “That feels so good. I think I’ve been in that chair since ten o’clock this morning.”
    I followed her through a series of narrow passageways that were all paneled in the same imitation woodgrained stuff that seemed to have been indiscriminately applied to every surface in the fifties. She led me into a small suite of offices. I have a terrible sense of direction, but I guessed we were adjacent to the reception area where I’d come in.
    Dagny’s office was off by itself at the end of the hall. At the threshold she stopped so suddenly that I literally ran into her. My automatic apology dried up in my throat as I saw what it was that had stopped her dead.
    “Oh my God,” said Dagny, the rising note of alarm in her voice turning my stomach to lead.
    Facedown on the blue carpet in front of Dagny’s desk, her hair splayed around her head and her short skirt hitched up to reveal red satin panties, lay the inert form of her secretary, Cecilia.
     

4
     
    “Cecilia?” called Dagny, her voice hovering somewhere between bewilderment and alarm. “Are you okay?”
    There was no response from the motionless figure on the floor. For a minute we just stood there, two women in business suits caught completely off guard. Then Dagny ran to her desk and picked up the phone. Silently praying that Cecilia had just fainted or, better yet, had passed out drunk, I dove and knelt beside the prone figure on the blue carpet.
    Shaking her gently, I called out her name. Nothing. I shook harder. Her body was inert, eerily unresponsive. I felt a tightening in my chest and knew that it was fear.
    “Call nine-one-one,” I commanded Dagny, who by then was already on the line with the police dispatcher.
    I checked Cecilia’s wrist for a pulse and found none. Pushing aside her long hair, I searched frantically for the carotid artery. I found the spot but there was no pulse.
    I took hold of her shoulders. She was surprisingly heavy, and as I turned her over onto her back, her head lolled sickeningly to one side. I bent my face over hers but felt no whisper of breath. Her skin was pink and felt warm against my hand. But there was something about her eyes, open yet unfocused, that chilled me.
    Trying not to think, I checked her mouth for foreign objects. Then I pinched her nose closed with one hand, placed my lips over hers, and exhaled. I moved both my hands over her breastbone, wondering desperately if I was even close to the right spot, and began the series of compressions I’d learned in CPR.
    When they brought in the Red Cross to teach classes in cardiopulmonary resuscitation at Callahan Ross, everyone joked that it was a clear case of self-interest. The older partners just wanted to make sure that when they had their big heart attacks everyone would know exactly what to do. I swear that when I signed up for the course I never dreamed that I’d ever use what I’d learned.
    “One and two and three and four and five,” I counted out loud. “Go to the front of the building and wait for the paramedics,” I ordered Dagny. She hesitated. Then, nodding tensely, she disappeared out the door as I began the next set of compressions.
    I do not know how long it took. At some point, like a distance runner in “the zone,” the world just went away. I was aware of nothing, not the passing of time or the accumulating ranks of Superior Plating employees who began crowding into the doorway. Five compressions and a breath, five compressions and a breath, that was what my world had narrowed down to—my face pressed against the face of a woman I’d