There was a knock at the door when the fifteen minutes had elapsed.

Alma was a handsome woman. Handsome was precisely the right word.

If Tony Tolomei was honest with himself—and today he was—he had to admit that at one time he had been, to some degree, in love with Alma. She was everything he was not: a woman of colour, a Protestant, entirely self-made, brave, forthright, and as solid as an oak.

And Johnsson-Little.

Tony Tolomei had hired Johnsson-Little two years earlier under the title of Assistant Administrative Secretary to the Imports Department. In practice, this meant that he did whatever Alma or Tony Tolomei told him to do.

It was only a few months ago, after realising that he himself would have to leave, that Tony Tolomei noticed the overgrown student was a red-haired version of his Uncle Franco. Not a perfect likeness, but close enough that sometimes, when Johnsson-Little left the room, an angel’s wing brushed against Tony Tolomei.

Maria entered last.

Maria was tall for a Latina, lived with a Norwegian woman whose name sounded like a threat, and had a son who had just started university.

Tony Tolomei addressed Johnsson-Little first.

“Take these papers to Harmon, Lionard & Roscow after two fifteen, but no later than two forty-five.”

Tony Tolomei handed him a folder.

“And this afterwards, to Powell, Dietz & Marcus, no later than three o’clock. It is to be delivered by hand, either to Dietz or to Marcus. They know to expect it.”

Tony handed the man an envelope.

Both ladies and Johnsson-Little raised their eyebrows, but said nothing. The instructions were not unusual. The addresses were.

When Johnsson-Little nodded, Tony Tolomei dismissed him.

After Johnsson-Little had left, Tony Tolomei looked at the women kindly, almost tenderly, and said:

“Mrs Weiss, Mrs da Silva, please sit down.”

He indicated the small conference table near the window.

Alma Weiss could not suppress a raised eyebrow, but Maria da Silva smiled and gave Tony Tolomei, and then Mrs Weiss, a significant look.

For as long as women had worked in the company’s offices, secretaries had been addressed by their first names. Although men now also worked under the title of secretary, the practice had continued to apply only to women, without anyone ever having made a formal decision on the matter.

“Yes, Mrs da Silva already knows. One of the last matters I have managed to settle is our form of address. From Monday onwards, everyone will be addressed by their surname.”

Tony Tolomei met the eyes of both women.

“I know. A small step, far too small a step, and far too late. But it is a step nonetheless. And I should not be surprised if, by the end of next year, there were a woman on the board. My departure from it will open a Pandora’s box that the gentlemen in management cannot begin to imagine.”

Maria da Silva heard in her superior’s voice an emotion rarely detectable there: excitement.

“Yes, Mr Tolomei… everyone—or rather, a great many people in the company, meaning the department and certainly all the secretaries—believes that you have been treated unfairly.”

“Well, I don’t know. I am a dinosaur, a dinosaur who inherited his position and would never have reached it through his own abilities. And is there not something poetic in my being swept away under the very clause in the company agreement that my father once managed to slip into the merger terms in order to sweep away the dinosaurs of his own generation?”