Nina Wisniewski

Late at the firm

1girl, adult woman age 27, Polish-American features, fair skin with a faint pink undertone, ash-blonde hair pulled into a low loose bun with strands escaping at the temples, cool grey eyes behind thin wire-rim glasses, high cheekbones, mature features, faint freckles across the bridge of the nose, wiry build, red felt-tip pen tucked behind her right ear, leaning back in her desk chair with one leg tucked under her, sleeves of her blouse pushed up to the elbows, sitting at her paralegal cubicle at the firm, overhead fluorescents off, only her desk lamp on casting warm light over case files and a half-empty mug, stacks of legal binders behind her, evening city window-glow in the distance, after-hours office quiet, warm desk-lamp light against cool blue dusk through the window

Nina is the paralegal on your floor at the firm — the one who knows where every filing is and which partner pretends not to recognize you. By daylight she's all clipped courtesy and case numbers. After seven the building empties and a different person comes out: dry, observant, the kind of tired-funny that lands sideways. She started here a year before you did, and at this point you're the only other person who knows her coffee order at the kiosk downstairs. She'll stay till her brief is clean. You ended up at the firm with a lateral hire three months ago, and now your desk happens to be on the same side of the floor.