James is quietly grumpy, as usual. Exquisitely critical. He’s sitting in his new office, gazing without intention at the dictionary stand near the doorway, resisting the “assignment” he’s been given to work on this week. He considers the Portals Program, with its seminar training toward self-actualization, and he diverts himself by paraphrasing the claim so familiar to his generation: “Aura flossing has been shown to be an effective, despair-preventive artifice that can be of significant value when used in a conscientiously applied program of psychic hygiene and regular professional care.”  He almost grins as he conjectures that the Crest paragraph, or the Superman prologue, or the introduction to the old Star Trek show, are our culture’s “oral tradition,” but he overpaves that smile with a straight-lipped frown at the realization that those shabby TV bits are as close as our culture can come to a glorious oral tradition. “Pathetic,” he spits within, as he swivels his chair a bit to the left. “Pathetic like Portals.”

James takes a deep breath and settles his chair facing forward again. He looks at the dictionary with momentary appreciation. It’s a 1903 Funk & Wagnalls, in well-thumbed but otherwise good condition. It sits open on an antique walnut stand. It doesn’t have definitions for new-fangled words like airplane or fax machine, but its pages have a lovely, parchment-like quality, and the book has the feel of history. So many hands have turned the pages, so many eyes have searched the print: how many minds have grown upon it? Then James recalls its most recent historical place, and he sours again.

He inherited the dictionary and the office three months ago. Its former inhabitant died unexpectedly in the place, at the age of 48. Rich Adams had been an asshole. James always despised him, and can’t regret his demise.

Rich, like James, was a word-junkie. Many lawyers are wordsmiths, but some are more precise than the rest. They’re the ones who gravitate to tax work. It was perfectly logical for James to assume Rich’s partnership position as well as the office. And James doesn’t disagree with the positioning of the antique dictionary. Rich put it on the stand by the door as a sign of his belief in defining terms before proceeding with argument. He used to make underlings look up words in the book before he’d allow them to present a murky position. James might have continued the tradition, except that the dictionary now signifies nastiness to most of the firm. Rich was never discreet about his womanizing. Far from being sensitive to issues of sexual harassment, Adams had been the sort of man who found a woman’s relative powerlessness arousing. He was a hound around secretaries, paralegals, even the occasional associate, but he steered clear of his peers. He’d been very driven and successful in his field, so his wife hadn’t had to work, but James was convinced that Rich wanted it that way. He and Hannah spent enough time talking with Mrs. Adams at firm functions that they knew she didn’t have to stay home to cook or care for kids, and they read in her the despair of a wasted woman.

Rumor had it that Rich used that dictionary stand as an apparatus, and rumor was confirmed three months ago. James won’t ever know whether it was true that Rich did paralegals frontally and secretaries doggie-style, but half the fourth floor will never forget the Thursday afternoon when they heard odd hysterical yells, and tracked them to Tracy, bent over the dictionary stand in Rich’s office, skirt up and pantyhose down, with dead bare-assed Rich collapsed on her back and pinning her panicked self. Tracy is so short her feet barely touched the ground. Rich was so big there was no way she could get his dead weight off her without help. The scene was so bad it was comic, but James doesn’t share that opinion with anyone except Hannah.

Tracy is still with the firm. She came through the experience surprisingly well. James first assumed he’d have to dump the dictionary and stand, which he would have regretted; they are attractive and occupy a spot in the office which won’t serve for anything else. But the consulting psychologist said no: this is almost like getting back on the proverbial horse – the furniture isn’t the issue.

James certainly isn’t going to direct employees to use that book. Nowadays, they settle their semantics by reference to the e-version of the Oxford English Dictionary, on James’s computer. He longed for the OED when it was thirteen volumes and he had neither the shelf space nor the money, back in the early 70s. Now he had both, but the set was up to twenty books; he traded the dream of fondling the actual pages for the portability of electronics.

He’s using his OED now. The only unpleasant condition to his promotion is the Portals Program. All of the senior partners agreed that James was Rich’s proper successor, but two of them expressed concern about James’s management abilities. James didn’t argue about that. He knows himself, and he’s never taken or given supervision well. His people skills could always use a bit of polishing, but James has other interests. His flaw is nothing compared to Rich’s, but the partners were being very careful, and one of the two complainers was evangelical about some program he had just completed. They made a condition and James agreed; now he’s three sessions into a ten week seminar on Understanding. This week’s homework is to consider (for sharing discussion) the theme: My Favorite Illness.

The topic first made him think about Hannah’s little toe. The woman who would be his wife, if either of them believed in the institution of marriage, his life partner (as he thought of her), his Hannah has a tendency to rush around. She doesn’t often relax. Even their vacations are planned to the minute, so they see a lot but the pressure never lets up. Sometimes there isn’t even time allotted for lunch. Hannah tends to diet so that may be deliberate on her part, but James has a fast metabolism; he needs to eat every four hours.