All good secretaries will eventually find truth in the hearts of men. Winona Bartlett, Win to her friends, might not have been the world's best secretary, but her nature was such that serving, subservience, and coffee service came easily, and, in fact, she felt there was an inherent good in doing things well, and this determination more than equaled her actual interest in the long-term prospects at Grecko Mauster Grill. She practiced her secretarial role as a Zen meditation; what role she was more suited to remained a mystery, though she was now nearly thirty. She held on to the notion that one day she might make a living by creative, individualistic endeavor. It was her belief that if she in fact made the pretty God's eye with purple and orange yarn and winsomely presented her creation, the judge would be charmed, and she would get a gold star.

Or so it seemed to have been promised to our heroine, who at this moment was standing on an elevator, soaring up to the Chrysler Building's 58th floor.

That's not to say she wasn't smart in the world --- Winona had done fine in school and by the time she landed at the law firm, she had revised her résumé at least twenty times, honing it and adding to it carefully, as if it were a house of cards. But some of her greatest moments of glory weren't in there. For instance, in college, when the DJ invited her to co-emcee the dance with him and she wore a swirling ‘50s dress and red lipstick and said sassy and amplified things to throngs of bisexual castabouts. You could say she considered it a triumph when she cast surly, unpleasant Ronald in her "Avant-Garde Film History and Techniques" final project, a Super-8 film about a woman who is "afraid to be revealed" and ultimately disappears when she throws her diary into a river. Or perhaps you might consider her interview techniques a plus. When she bluffed her way into the film program, for example, or when she put on a long floral dress and matching green pumps from Shoe Town and told the lawyers, I am a good secretary, and then asked for twice as much money as she'd ever made as a waitress or as the assistant to the assistant at the bookstore.

If you are wondering if she is pretty, this is the story. When she was in eighth grade she'd speculated on this subject, twice in particular: once, upon being surrounded and interrogated by a group of girls in her new school, she said yes, she thought she was pretty. Later that same year, in a more casual moment with a friend and a camp counselor, she revealed that actually she thought she was, well, pretty pretty She didn't stand out as a bombshell --- maybe a Miss Moneypenny. Her hair was cut in a bob, and she sometimes flipped a section over to the other side in a happy and unruly flop. She wore a little makeup, eye pencil and a touch of lipstick, and today, her Queen Elizabeth perfume (some scents said stay away, some said come closer). Even in her well-matched outfit and pantyhose, she looked slightly out of place in the business world. She was no East Village leather mama; no strange-fruit lipstick or ball-and-chain fashion statements on Winona. But she was willowy, and she moved like a gazelle, and there was about her, you couldn't miss it, a betraying twinge of bohemia.

It was reassuring to be on the elevator with the goers and getters of the universe, to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the gleaming enclosure, a worker bee like all the others. Still, Winona stood rather rigidly in her new, like-everyone-else trench coat --- waist, toes, underarms itchy with Monday-morning alarm.

Law office decor: dark, manly. A brown leather couch took up one side of the reception area, and on the other you had a pair of armchairs and a sleek coffee table, The New Republic, Time, and Fortune arrayed there like a spread hand of winning cards. Lucy's desk was empty --- she was almost never on time --- and an ominously large oil painting of one of the firm's founding partners loomed over her unattended phone and paperclip holder: Anthony Grecko, Esquire, sitting cross-legged in a high-backed chair, his hands folded, his head teetering forward. A lone windbreaker hung from the coat stand in the corner, as it had for months. (As per Nancy's request, employees hung their coats in the storage room, by the photocopier.)

"Good morning, Nancy," Winona said, peering into the first office down the hall. A fecund haze surrounded the door.

Nancy Hobbs, office manager, raised orchids on her windowsill, and the flowers exuded a tropical torpor, some sort of barely contained hothouse hysteria. Winona liked but was disconcerted by the heat and odor, the orchids tangled and sexy in a Southern Belle/Catholic guilt sort of way. And then there was something about the way Nancy was about the orchids, or, just to be honest, about Nancy.

"Good morning," the older woman said, leaning for ward, clasping her hands together.

A lapis necklace hung around Nancy's neck, beads strung like captives from an exotic land. Her short hair curled in troubled wisps under her ears. Nancy was half- administrative and half-professional. This made her crazy; it was the curse of the ill-defined. It was impossible not to be saddened by the sight of Nancy scurrying about, pinning lavender to bulletin boards.

"How was your weekend?" Winona asked.

The question seemed to surprise, or at least vaguely offend. Perhaps Nancy didn't want to think of her weekend anymore. Some people like Monday morning most of all. She turned her head toward the windowsill, to her delicate, moss-scented flowers. Her hands were too firmly clasped together.

"Too short," she finally said.

"So true," Winona said.

"It's going to be a busy day," Nancy commented. "I've been here since seven, working away like a little mouse in her corner, a little spinning mouse who never has a moment to spare."

"Ahh," said Winona.

Rex wasn't at his desk, but his jacket was half falling from the back of his chair. Umar's office was empty (Of Umar, anyway --- a footpath to the chair was the only clear space in the room; everything else was stacked with correspondence, pleadings, rulings, depositions, affidavits, requests, motions, briefs, interrogatories, agreements, disagreements, contracts, and magazines, mostly --- to Winona's consternation --- Penthouse.) At the end of the hall, in the corner office, William Mauster hunched over his desk like a creature from Where the Wild Things Are.

Winona's Workshop, they might have called her room, or Winona's Catch-All Area. This was where Grecko Mauster Grill stored the file cabinets, printer, secretary and scanner. Doorless, its architecture emphasized accessibility: the back of the room was open to the hall, and above Winona's desk a large window had been cut out of the white plaster. Winona called this her Mr. Ed window, the place where lawyers could lean in, survey, and query. From it, she could see through the conference room and out the window to another skyscraper.

She dropped her purse in the warren between printer and workstation, then sat down on her swiveling chair. Her computer played a familiar song as it booted up, a reveille for the office worker. The phone rang; it was ‘Winona's sister.

"Hello, Liz," Winona said with a slightly false breeziness. She had last spoken to Liz the night before.

She could almost tell Liz's mood from the pause be fore she spoke, let alone from the tone of her voice. She could tell her sister's mood with her eyes closed, ears plugged with Play-Doh, and French fries up her nostrils.

"What are you doing?" Liz asked.

"Well, I just got to work."

"I know this is totally crazy, but I've got my tennis lesson tonight, and I can't decide whether to wear my hair up, in a ponytail out the back of my cap, or down, with no cap."

"I'm sure either way would look very nice, Liz."

"If I wear the ponytail, maybe Kevin would think I was trying to look younger. But I am proud of my age --- and fuck him!"

"Um --- good point!"

"Are you listening? It sounds like you're doing some thing else."

Winona took her hands off the keyboard.

"I'm listening."

"Maybe I should call back when you can pay attention. Will you be home later? Around six?"

Winona was afraid she probably would be home. Home was a studio apartment with one large clock her mother had given her. It was a white clock with imposing black numerals. It hung in the kitchen area (the wall clustered with a little refrigerator, sink, and stove --- a Dolly Madison Play Kitchen). The clock ticked too loudly for comfort and, worse, it ticked faster on the downswing. Tick. Tick. Tick. TICKTICKTICK It was slowly driving Winona insane. She sometimes wondered if she should take it down, not for her own sake, but for Fruit Bat's. Fruit Bat was a cat, a good cat --- she had told him so just that morning, whispering in his black, bat-wing ear.

"Sure, I'll be there."

"Okay, well, I'll talk to you then."

"Okay, bye."

She hung up and stared, briefly, into empty space, a distinctly non-breezy feeling in the air. She snapped out of it and checked her e-mail --- nothing to speak of. One from the bookkeeper, one from her mother.

Bill was standing, leaning toward the phone in a way that made it seem he was about to get off. He was obviously talking to Doug Sandwitz, the Stratosphere lawyer.

"Yeah, we all love settlement. Settlement is beautiful. Communication is beautiful. But you fucked us over, remember? Stratosphere has no right to any of that market. Not any of it. Generosity? Goodwill? Market share? Ha! Ha! Ha! Lisa Box didn't just start the beauty kiosk, Lisa Box is the beauty kiosk."

Grecko Mauster Grill was a small, general practice, and most of its clients were run of the mill: you had your basic pizza franchise, your doctor with his investments, your real estate transfers, corporate setups, a handful of pro bono criminals (sometimes they'd come in wearing jeans and smelling like vodka --- didn't these boys know how to pretend?). Then you had Lisa Box, Inc. --- the big, the glorious, the innovative, and now, the nearly bankrupt. Every time Bill talked to Sandwitz, the lawyer for Lisa Box's main rival, it sounded like this. Ravenous.

Then again, Bill's sweetie-pie skills were a bit lacking in general.

He fumed while Sandwitz, apparently, made some retort. Then: "Mall schmall...you know and I know what your client is trying to do --- what you're trying to do, my friend." Click.

"Good morning, Mr. Mauster."

Winona stood poised at his door, nearly tiptoeing, nearly falling over. It was an eager stance, the stance of the over-pleaser. She was presenting herself: a young woman doing unflaggingly well in her role, taking her job extremely seriously, not even feeling overeducated or misplaced or any of those troublesome responses likely to plague the artsy English-major types who find their way into the secretarial paddock. Everyone has to make a living, even fledgling filmmakers. Is there one kind of job that's better than another? At least she was no longer duetting with a yellow plastic bucket on wheels and a hairy mop like she did at the restaurant. She stood like the thirty-ninth runner-up in a beauty contest, professional in her black skirt and black-and-white gauzy blouse, even fashionable --- her square-toed pumps topped with whimsically large buckles, her nail polish a cunning shade of silver.

"Morning," said the lawyer, searching his desk for something.

Remember Bleak House, three thousand pages long and featuring thirty or forty lawyers? Winona read it in school, though she didn't recall much of it, except for the peculiar admiration it evoked in her pink-cheeked professor. Still, there was a resemblance to one shadowy lawyer from that novel in Mr. Mauster. He was shaped like a hill in a bog. He was shaped like Sasquatch, humped and hunkered over in a mythical brooding funk.

"Would you like some coffee? I've got a fresh pot on."

"That would be..."

Bill Mauster started reading a letter and trailed off.

When she first came to the firm, Winona had been instructed by Bill Mauster on the exact strength at which he preferred his coffee. If she didn't mind, could she please make a pot every morning? He told her about the nine teaspoons, all heaped just so, not towers, per se but mounds of Colombian. She encountered mystifying, unnerving inconsistency with the method. Mr. Mauster would sometimes complain, sometimes praise, but she always did it the same way. She'd take the first sip in the morning and a small, undeniable clutch of anxiety would take hold of her if it seemed too weak or too strong. This morning, as all mornings, he would say yes, bring him the coffee. Still, it was Winona and Bill's ritual to make a question out of this answer. As a successful secretary, she initiated the communiqué.

Winona scanned the sprawl of windows behind Bill. Manhattan, a Mondrian checkerboard of grays, a jigsaw of blue. Her gaze returned to the brooding lawyer.

"Sir?" she prompted.

"Yes?"

"Coffee?"

"Yes, wonderful, terrific."

Bill's favorite mug was missing from the storage room shelf; and this gave Winona pause. Should she go back and bother him, looking around his office to find the mug, possibly left from Friday, a pox of mold floating on an inch of dead, cold coffee? Or should she give him his second-favorite mug, the burgundy-and-white one with the Harvard insignia? Boldly, Winona made her decision --- she took the Harvard mug off the shelf. She retrieved the milk, deftly pouring in the required amount enough to besmirch, not to cool down. Then a teaspoon --- a level teaspoon --- of sugar. She glided back down the hall.

The weekend had been filled with the chaos of loneliness: transplanting a geranium, not going to the block party, avoiding close encounters with Jeremy the Sincere. Winona walked down the hail and felt a surge of emotion: I belong here. All would be right in the world if Mr. Mauster liked his coffee this morning, if she had gotten the proportions right on the milk and sugar.

Excerpted from The Anxiety of Everyday Objects © Copyright 2012 by Aurelie Sheehan. Reprinted with permission by Penguin. All rights reserved.