"The usual, Jim?" the barman says, wiping a glass as the man slides himself onto the high stool.

"Please." Jim looks around. It's quiet for a Wednesday. There's a slightly rowdy group crammed in a booth by the window, but aside from them, the only other occupants are a couple enjoying a date, and a young woman in a rumpled white shirt and worn skirt, hunched over a mug of beer a couple of seats down the counter. She looks vaguely familiar, and as Jim wonders where he's seen her before, her phone rings. She startles, looks down at the screen, sighs, and takes a morose sip of her beer before sliding her finger across the screen.

"Yes, Pauline speaking," she says, and Jim remembers with a jolt. Of course. Pauline Chang. The upstart lawyer who's been in the news recently for representing a motley crew of residents at a dilapidated residential building in the court case against a gargantuan real estate development company, represented by a top-notch law firm. It was a classic case of David and Goliath, and little wonder that it captured the public's interest. Jim, himself an attorney, also followed the case closely, and was deeply impressed by the young woman's persistence and arguments. But the case had no happy ending - the developer was able to disprove the residents' claims of being blackmailed and threatened, and the case was subsequently thrown out of court.

Now Jim listens as Pauline speaks pleadingly in the phone. "I swear, I'll pay you next week, Mrs Lim. I'll pay you all the rent you're owed, and two more months besides. I promise."

Jim hears a high-pitched, tinny sound issue from the phone, and the only plausible deduction is that Mrs Lim is giving an earful of whatever she thinks the young lawyer's promise is worth. Pauline closes her eyes, passes a hand over her haggard face. "Yes. I'll shift out if I don't make the rent this month. I understand. Thank you, Mrs Lim."

She puts down the phone then, and, again, sighs deeply. The barman sets down Jim's cognac before him, and Jim slides the drink across the table next to the young woman's beer and shifts one seat down towards her.

"Bad month?" he inquires pleasantly.

"Bad year," Pauline says with a bitter laugh.

"I've been following the news on your case," Jim says. "You fought really well."

"Doesn't matter," says Pauline, raising the tankard to her lips. "Lost anyway."

"And unable to make the rent for the month," Jim says quietly.

Pauline wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and glares at Jim. "What do you want?"

"I want," says Jim, "to give you an opportunity."

Pauline's eyes lose their fierceness. Jim hides a smile, and continues. "An opportunity at the law firm I work in. I think you've got talent, and I like you. One of my underlings has just tendered his resignation, and we're looking for a replacement. You'll be able to make rent next month and every month thereafter."

It's easy to read the expressions that flicker in Pauline's eyes now. Hope. Hunger. But then she blinks, and her eyes are unreadable. "What firm are you at?"

And Jim replies. It's the very same law firm whose lawyers have brought about her resounding defeat.

Pauline throws her head back and laughs, and it is brittle. The rowdy group next to the window quiets, looks over for a bit, before starting up their chatter again, at a lower volume.

"You're kidding," Pauline says.

"I'm not."

"Well, I would never in a thousand years join that firm. Not even if my life depended on it."

"Pauline," says Jim silkily. "I had ambitions once, you know. I wanted to change the world, make it a better place... but life hit me, knocked me down again and again, put me in my place. And now I work at a dead-end job, helping someone make the world worse, but it pays the bills, you know? I have a home to return to, which I won't have to vacate at all."

Again, he sees a snatch of longing, burning sharp and bright in her eyes, and he smiles inwardly, before delivering his closing argument.

"The power in the hands of that development company - you'll never have that if you keep going on your path. I never had that. If only I had real power, back then -"

"What if you did?" Pauline interrupts.

Jim is taken aback. It has been a while before anyone cut him off before he's finished speaking. "Sorry?"

"What if you did have real power?" she asks. "You did, you know. Still do. As do I. I may not have the type of power it takes to " (- her lip curls -) "pay exorbitant bribes to have people lie in court, but I do have power over myself - not to descend to the level that the attorneys in your company have sunk to, in the name of winning."

Jim opens his mouth, but she raises a hand and says, "Joining a large law firm like that, I know they probably have no choice but to take whatever clients they are assigned to. And it's fine - we all choose what we can live with, and we adapt. And it's clear, looking at you," she says, her eyes roving up and down the well-cut tailored suit that Jim has felt so smug putting on that very morning, "that you have adapted. I don't think I could, though.

"So thanks, but no thanks. I'll shift out next month if I have to, and maybe I'll never have a home to call my own, but at least I know I'll have something that you no longer do."

Jim is rarely rendered speechless, and he's pleased to find that he can eke out a laugh. "Surely you're not going to be cliched, and say 'a conscience'?"

"I was going to say autonomy," says Pauline with a smile, draining the last of her beer. "But that, too."

And, robbed of all words, Jim watches as she sets some money on the counter, shoulders her bag, a warrior countenance on her face as she marches out, anything but gently, into the good night.