She was 33, and the phone never rang. She was a brilliant lawyer, and the phone never rang. She was a success -- respected and admired -- and the phone never rang. Somehow life had passed her by. The phone rang now but her secretary was not answering.

"Sally?" Marilyn called out.

Why would some call during the time period generally accepted as lunch? A common ploy, one of the many common ploys for returning phonecalls without having to speak to the other party. Commitment has been met -- as the people at Federal Express (the law firm's chosen overnight package carrier though why Marilyn couldn't imagine: deliveries were not on time, and they charged extra for a redelivery on Saturday) were fond of saying. The firm's voice mail had logged calls as late as nine o'clock for some of the partners. But not for Marilyn. She circumvented this ploy because of her early arrivals, her late hours, and the known fact that she habitually worked through lunches. Opposing counsel had often been surprised to discover Marilyn answering her own phone at these times. They got the live person, no recording there.

The phone shrilled again but the secretary did not answer. Marilyn dropped the contract onto her cluttered desk and pushed back from the desk.

The trip outside and down the corridor to her secretary's work station comprised twenty-five steps. Marilyn's stride length was 3 feet. The whole journey lasted six seconds, far less time than it will take you to read this on the page and visualize the layout: desk, the high-back chair pushing back on a worn plastic mat, the transfer of weight from the buttocks to the feet, the shift in balance as the muscles engage and the body pulls upright, Marilyn undergoing a transition through the stages of human development, ape to woman, Ramapithecus, Australopithecus, Homo habillis or Homo erectus (who was the first man archaeologists cannot decide), Neanderthal Man, Cro-Magnon Man, Marilyn -- the first firm step forward (she has by now moved past the edge of her desk).

In story terms, conflict has not yet been articulated and we hover at the end of the beginning, poised for the middle. The trip into the hallway to still the ringing phone will set us at the beginning of the middle. That assumes the basic linearity of story telling. But this is a hypertext story whose design is web-like. A forward progression is possible but there is not the same correlation with commencing at page 1 and concluding at page 48 -- beginning, middle, end -- as there is with a conventional piece. (Marilyn by now in the hallway, halfway to her secretary's workstation. High wood dividers of dark polish separated the workstations. The opposing walls were upholstered, padded to absorb sound as did the thick pile carpet, the special ceiling tiles installed for their acoustic efficiency. The padded walls, decorative as they might be, had always given Marilyn the impression that she had entered an expensive and discreet "facility," an asylum nonetheless.) Under this definition of fiction as linked hypertext, Marilyn's move into the corridor carries the same weight as any other link: we stand in a perpetual middle.

An important question arises if you read along carefully: why is the phone ringing at the secretary's desk and not in Marilyn's office as well? A recognition of this small tick shifts the balance of possibilities in the callers. The call may be internal, for the secretary only. Or a personal call for the secretary, though she has been having problems as of late. Her boyfriend and her younger sister, caught, together. Hard to believe so much betrayal in one relationship. Every ring of the phone carried potential with it, an infinity of possible callers, possible conversations, possible outcomes (Marilyn rounds the opening of the workstation, pushing in the secretary's chair, noting that the computer has been left on and a document she considers sensitive visible on the screen. Company policy dictates that employees must log off when they leave their immediate areas for any reason. The policy causes delays but it has been implemented for security reasons. Marilyn will speak to her assistant. Policies matter. Policies must be followed.) The phonecall was a text waiting to be brought into existence as a work of finite dimension. Until then, Marilyn could only guess at the caller, not bothering to consider why the phone rang here and not there.

At the deserted secretarial station, Marilyn picked up the phone but the caller had given up.

This may seem anti-climatic to you after all the build-up that brought Marilyn outside her office, away from the door. There are reasons. Marilyn makes other notes while standing in her secretary's workstation. Papers that should have been filed some time ago have not. Inefficiency? Or overwork? Marilyn's assistant racked up the most overtime of any assistant and Marilyn had been spoken to about the charges. How does one bill 100 hours a week and do so without assistance? The partners were money-grubbers. They were honest men. They were money-grubbers. They expected miracles.

Marilyn stands in the secretarial station while this internal dialogue goes on. Though it is obvious to you and I, loyalty and rebellion co-exist within her. She went to a small law school in San Diego charging a tuition within her means. The partners demean her for this, those that went to UCLA or Stanford or Harvard. They come from money and she does not. She passed the bar on the first try. Not only does she test well, but she has made the leap from legal concepts to legal practice. She grasps the complete picture in any negotiations as if the details are part of a flow-chart. Changing one changes all, a formulation she can hold in her mind.

And she knows she is taken advantage of but all associates are taken advantage of. The training ground is a gauntlet, a winnowing process.

Privy to this interior, you can now perceive that the trip into the hallway is not wasted time, not a digression. Background has been offered, character made more round. Still the story does not "move forward" while the filling goes on.