Two In The Bush

“Damn! Damn! Double damn!” Melony Shepherd leaned on the intercom buzzer once again. Where was the Nelson file? And where in the hell was her secretary?

No answer came from the silent intercom or her racing thoughts. Swearing again, she pushed her half-eaten pastrami over the edge of her desk and into the wastebasket. After scrubbing at the orange coagulated grease spot with a paper napkin, she tossed that into the can too.

Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly through gritted teeth. Rearranging the mess on her desk from one side to the other and back again still didn't turn up the elusive file.

Melony held a fist to her stomach and grimaced as red-hot lava shot up from her intestines and into her esophagus. Reaching for her roll of antacids, she popped two, chewed, and washed the gruesome, mint-flavored chalk down with the remains of her cold coffee.

“The girl can't even make a decent cup of coffee,” she grumbled, adding the Styrofoam cup to the small but ever-growing mountain of garbage at her side, unobservant of the fact that California pushed a strong Save-the-Earth campaign.

Maybe Brenda could give her some clue as to where her secretary was, or perhaps, help her locate the missing file.

“Brenda!” Melony stalked into her best friend and partner's office, barging right through the door, oblivious to the fact that the other woman was on the phone and would probably appreciate some privacy.

Brenda placed a flat palm over the mouthpiece on the phone after asking the person on the other end to hold. “You bellowed?”

“Where in the effing hell is that secretary of mine?” She flailed a hand through the air. “What was her name?” She snapped her fingers as the woman's name came back to her. “Lisa!”

“Have you forgotten, O Volcanic One, that you fired her,” Brenda tipped her head back to view the clock on the wall, “two hours and fifteen minutes ago?”

Melony slumped against the doorjamb, removed her reading glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose with a thumb and forefinger. She closed her eyes tightly as she felt her anger slipping away, threatening to turn into that all-too-familiar feeling of weakness that she despised so much. “I fired her?”

“Uh-huh,” Brenda confirmed. She directed her attention to the person waiting on the line, saying she would call them back later, and hung up. “That makes over a dozen in the past year, Mel.” Melony’s best friend of seven years, and law partner of three, leaned back in her red leather chair, chewing on the end of her pen. “What did this one do, forget to water your plants?” Her tone was dry and teasing, yet held an air of truth to it. Melony often fired employees for the smallest reason or provocation.

Dropping her arm to her side, she cast Brenda an indignant look. “I've never fired anyone over something that trivial.”

“Oh, no?” Brenda challenged her friend's memory. “What about Howard Burns?”

“Who?”

“He was approximately twenty, short black hair, brown eyes, wire rim glasses and always wore screaming Hawaiian print shirts to the office.”

“He sounds vaguely familiar.” Melony strove to hold on to her patience, pulling her baby-fine blond hair back into a tight ponytail and securing it with an elastic band she fished out of her pocket. She had no idea why they were having this conversation, she needed to find a missing file, not reminisce over some guy she had let go.

“You remember the coffee incident?” Brenda raised her dark brows in inquisition. “About six months ago?”

“Oh, him?” She gave a dismissing little snort. “That was different.”

“How so?”

Melony let out an impatient breath and stood in the doorway with her hands planted on her slim hips, her black pleated slacks doing nothing to hide her slight figure. “He spilled coffee on my best silk blouse, for shit’s sake!”

Brenda gave a little shake of her head. “That's only because you bumped into him since you felt he was taking too long to bring you your coffee and went storming out of your office looking for him,” she quietly reminded.

“Well—well this is different!” she sputtered, going to stand behind one of the chrome and leather chairs provided for Brenda's clients.

Her partner gave up the old argument. “For seven years now I’ve been trying to get you to relax and not be so high strung and bitchy all of the time. As always, my friendly counseling goes in one ear and out the other.”

“Oh, stuff it. I know I have a type-A personality, I know it’s a problem, I know I need help ... but not right now!”

Brenda sighed and got to her feet. Tossing the pen into a drawer, she asked, “What do you need? Maybe I can help you find it.”

“We can try.” She started for her office that sat across the short hall. “I don't think we'll find it, though.”

“What?” Brenda stood at the threshold of Melony’s office. “You probably can't find anything in this place. When was the last time you cleaned off your desk?” She walked over to the chaos in question. “Or anything in here, for that matter?”

“You know me.” Melony looked in the one file drawer that didn't look as foreboding as the others. “I'm working on a few cases, and—”

“That's just your trouble, Mel.” Brenda turned around and leaned against the desk, arms folded over her ample chest as she watched Melony's futile attempt to come up with the missing file. “You're always pushing yourself to the limit and way past. I go home around six and you're still here burning the oil until one, sometimes two, in the morning.”

Melony closed the drawer after squeezing the folders back inside. “Let's not start that again. I need to work.”

“Why? You've already made a name for yourself, got more money than most people know what to do with. There's no reason for you to still be working around the clock like we did back when we were starting out.”

Melony had met Brenda while they attended and ultimately graduated from the same university and had hit it off right away. When they found this office for rent on one of the busiest streets in Los Angeles, they had jumped at the chance to become business partners. They'd had big dreams of becoming successful lady lawyers. Brenda felt they had achieved that success a year ago and had settled into a comfortable niche. Melony still wasn't satisfied, though. She worked longer and harder, taking on several cases at once. As much as she hated to admit it, it was taking its toll on her.

She rummaged around her cluttered desk for the fifth time, sending a few papers fluttering to the floor. “Maybe you're happy with where you're at,” she picked the papers up and tossed them back on her desk, “but I have bigger and better plans for myself.” Her tone was caustic, but she knew Brenda had learned long ago to deflect nine-tenths of what she said. Only within the walls of Shepherd and Zimmerman was she an angry, raving tyrant such as now.

“Mel,” Brenda's tone was consoling as she placed a hand over her partner’s to stop her agitated movements. “When are you going to stop beating yourself against a brick wall? Your dad died nearly a year ago. He saw what you made of yourself.”

Melony slumped into her wingback chair, staring at the pen and ink sketch on the wall across the room. “Yeah,” she gave a short laugh, “and it was never good enough.”

“When are you going to start living for yourself and stop living for your father's ludicrous idea of what he thought you should have been all along: a man?”

Melony cringed at hearing those words. Yes, nothing she did was ever good enough for Simon Shepherd, only because she was never good enough. He had wanted a boy thirty years ago, and though Melony had tried to mold herself into the image of what Simon Shepherd perceived to be as the ideal offspring, she was born without a penis, therefore she simply wasn't good enough.

Raised by her father single-handedly since her mother had died during labor with her, she was always trying to live up to his high expectations. But the only thing she had managed to do was become feared within her own office building and an emotional and social cripple once she passed through the front door and went home.

“Is this what you were looking for?”

Melony snapped out of her somber musings, grateful to have her mind diverted from those depressing thoughts. “Where did you find it?” She snatched the folder away and clutched it to her breast as if it were a long-lost lover.

“In the trash can.” She pointed a peach-tipped nail in the direction stated.

“I need these notes for the Nelson case tomorrow.” She sifted through the neatly typed pages, printed out by some secretary of hers she had long forgotten the name of, brows bent in concentration.

After a few minutes of intense absorption in her notes, Brenda pulled the file from Melony. “When are you going to stop? Look at you. You must have lost twenty pounds in the past year. Twenty pounds your body can’t spare.”

“Thin...