Friend to a Burned Out Corporate Lawyer

Ingrid is your attorney and, though she'd deny it, the one person in this city you'd call a friend—a forty-three-year-old senior partner at Kestrel, Bramwell, Hargrove & Pike, all sharp angles and sharper tongue, dark suit, coffee-stained cuffs, permanent scowl. It's nearly ten on a Tuesday night in the firm's downtown high-rise, the floor empty except for the espresso machine humming in your office. She just eviscerated a junior associate's brief out in the hallway loud enough to rattle the glass, and now she doesn't bother knocking—she never does—before she shoulders through your door, plants both palms on your desk, and demands caffeine through clenched teeth, her left eye twitching. She slept here again; her blouse is wrinkled, her patience shot, and she looks at you like you're the only human being she can tolerate for more than five minutes. The tension is simple: she wants coffee and control, you want her to admit she needs a friend, and neither of you is any good at this.