The Boys' Club

by Erica Katz

  She winked. “Love your bag.” I smiled back at her and made my way toward the elevator bank serving floors 35 to 45, where three women in suits waited. I prayed they weren’t going up to the forty-fifth floor. I should have worn a suit. I’m going to be the only one in business casual except Carmen. All the men will be in suits. Where is Carmen, anyway? I should stand next to her so I don’t stick out.

  “Alex!” the tallest of the trio sang in my direction.

  I stared at her. “Carmen! Hey!”

  I felt the heat rise from my chest up to my cheeks as I took in her perfectly tailored navy-blue Theory suit—one I’d tried on but decided was too expensive.

  She pulled me in for a hug as I stood with my hands awkwardly plastered to my sides.

  “You went with a suit,” I said, forcing calm into my voice.

  “I texted you! You look amazing though!” Carmen beamed. Her pale, almost clear, blue eyes scanned me up and down. I looked down at my phone and saw a text from her, from four minutes back. I guessed she’d sent it while I was in the subway. When it was already too late. I don’t know why I listen to my mother, I thought. She has no idea.

  Before I could respond, Carmen turned to her friends. “This is Jennifer and Roxanne. We went to undergrad together.”

  “Hi,” Jennifer said warmly, her large brown eyes seeming to betray a certain anxiety below her chunky blond bangs.

  “Hey!” Roxanne said with a wave. “I’m so nervous for some reason!” She laughed as she brushed her auburn hair away from her eyes. She was petite and adorable—like the redheaded Cabbage Patch Kids doll that sat on my bed when I was a child.

  “Me too!” My shoulders dropped, grateful for her admission. Two men in suits sporting Klasko name tags approached us, laughing with one another, and warm embraces between the other five ensued while I stood off to the side, watching the poised young professionals as they caught up with one another.

  “Hey! I’m Kevin,” one of the guys said, turning to me as he extended his hand. I forced myself to maintain eye contact despite his prickly gelled hair. Do men really still spike their hair?

  “Alex.” I smiled, but felt envious of the summer they had spent getting to know one another, and getting to know how things worked at Klasko, all the while earning six times what I had at my nonprofit internship.

  Even though twelve years had passed since seventh grade, and I now had a healthy social life, a law degree, and reasonably toned arms, I felt the same way I had when I was forced to eat turkey sandwiches on a toilet seat every lunch hour for a week in seventh grade when Sandy Cranswell, our class’s queen bee, had decided she detested me because I had “man shoulders” from all of my swimming, so no one would sit with me in the cafeteria. It hadn’t lasted long, since Zach Schaeffer befriended me on the coed bus to state finals, and his eighth-grade posse had quickly followed suit, putting me back into Sandy’s good graces, but I still remembered the sting.

  The six of us crowded into the elevator with a few others, and while the rest of them chatted excitedly, I stood in the back and allowed my eyes to close for a moment, desperately willing the bead of sweat dripping down my spine to evaporate before it bled through my blouse.

  As soon as our elevator emptied onto the forty-fifth floor, we saw wide-planked oak floors supporting a modern marble reception desk surrounded by rich brown leather couches and armchairs. I remembered the space only vaguely from my callback interview almost a year before. But I had been too nervous that day to appreciate how beautiful the office space was. Two women and one man, all seemingly in their twenties, sat behind the desk, wearing headsets. They plastered smiles on their faces when they saw us, without pausing their choruses of “How may I direct your call?” and “One moment please.” A sign reading “First-Year Associate Orientation” directed us down a hallway lined with glass-walled conference rooms.

  The doors to our meeting room had been propped open to welcome us, and the curtains had been pulled back to expose the south-facing view, which seemed to span all of Manhattan below Fifty-Fifth Street. The MetLife Building, front and center, relished the spotlight; the Freedom Tower stood reflective and resolute in the distance; the Empire State Building seemed to rush with impossible confidence skyward, as if challenging the Chrysler Building to a battle of wills; and off to the left, the Brooklyn Bridge yawned sleepily out over the silver waters of the East River.

  A woman in a gray pantsuit stood at the podium, watching us with a small smirk as we took it all in. “Pretty impressive, right?” she announced into the microphone. Some of my fellow first-years took their seats, some chatting, and I realized that none of the others were marveling at the view. They must have become accustomed to it while they interned as summer associates. I relaxed slightly, though, as I noted with relief that several of my fifty-two new colleagues were wearing skirts with blouses, too. I surreptitiously slipped away from Carmen, Roxanne, and Jennifer so I wouldn’t stick out as underdressed and took a seat between Kevin and an African American man wearing a navy suit with a red bow tie speckled with little yellow flowers.

  The guy in the bow tie leaned over me and pointed to Kevin’s tie, an orange number with little puppies tied in a double Windsor that made his neck appear even skinnier than it actually was. “Ferragamo?”

  “I . . . um . . .” Kevin flipped over his tie and looked down at the label. “Yup! I guess I’m wearing the uniform!” He laughed and extended his hand. “I’m Kevin.”

  The other man shook it with a wink. “I dig your spikes, man.” I cringed, though he didn’t appear to be making fun of Kevin at all. “I’m Derrick. I summered last year out of the LA office, so I’m the new guy,” Bow Tie explained, leaning back and putting his hand to his heart before extending it to me. He was handsome, with sharp cheekbones and a square jaw, but he also had style, and a broad smile that released the knot that had been forming between my shoulder blades.

  “Alex,” I said, taking his hand. “I spent last summer at Sanctuary for Families.” He gave me a short nod, acknowledging our common ground as newcomers.

  “Good morning, everybody.” The woman in the gray pantsuit at the front of the room spoke into the microphone, and we all quieted down obediently. “I’m Eileen Kasten. I’m a litigation partner and head of your first-year training program. For your first eight months at the firm, you will have a training each Monday morning on general firm practices. We hope you spend these first months learning as much as you can about as many different practice areas as you can so that you can make an educated decision about what you’d like to work on for the rest of your career. In eight months, you will match into a practice group which will be responsible for training you on the specifics of their practice. You rank them. They rank you. You match. Everybody, all fifty-two of you, ends up happy.”

  Derrick snorted and rolled his eyes. “At least half of us will be disappointed,” he whispered to me. “There’s not enough space for everybody in the best practice groups.” I hadn’t realized that any of the practice groups were considered better than others, only that M&A was considered more intense.

  She went on. “For today, I want you to take note of one another. Look to your right.” I looked at the shiny, gelled back of Kevin’s head. “That person was in the top fifteen percent of one of the top fifteen law schools in the country. Look to your left.” I turned to see Derrick, his eyes crossed and his tongue stuck out just inches from my nose, and covered my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. “That person was in the top ten percent of one of the top ten law schools in the country.” She gave a dramatic pause. “How do I know that to be true?”

  “We’re all in the top ten percent of the top ten law schools,” Derrick shouted up toward the podium.

  “What’s your name?” the woman asked.

  “Derrick Stockton,” he said with a confidence I envied.

  “That’s exactly right, Derrick Stockton. This is not meant to intimidate any of you. Quite the contrary, it’s meant to put you at ea
se. You belong here. But it is also a warning that you will not be differentiating yourself here on intelligence alone. Not easily, at least.”

  I swallowed hard and picked at my cuticle.

  “What a load of horseshit. So cliché,” Derrick muttered under his breath. He took a mint out of his pocket and popped it in his mouth. “Want one?”

  “Oh god.” I cupped my hand over my lips. “Do I need one?” Derrick stared at me for a moment and then narrowed his eyes playfully.

  “You’re a little nuts, huh? I like it,” he whispered. “Your breath is fine. I was just being polite.”

  “I’m nervous,” I admitted, taking the mint.

  “Who’s not?” He grinned, instantaneously calming me.

  “. . . we will be looking for you to demonstrate work ethic. Drive.” The woman at the podium moved her head mechanically from one side of the room to the other. “Tenacity. We’re looking for you to be sponges. You’re here because you’re the best the American law school system has to offer us. The same holds true, by the way, for the local law school systems in the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil, and Australia that have educated your international colleagues. By the way, you’ll have the opportunity to meet all of your fellow first-years at First-Year Academy in LA in early February. As you might know, we’re not only the largest, but we’re arguably the best law firm in the world. We are twenty-five hundred lawyers strong in thirty-seven offices across the globe. Our litigation chair was the former director of enforcement of the SEC. We took Facebook public. We are the firm that defended affirmative action for the University of Michigan. We . . .”

  “They fucking love to tell everybody they defended affirmative action. Like it makes them not racist or something,” Derrick whispered as he leaned into me.

  As Eileen droned on at the podium, I glanced around the room, feeling the nervous energy of my new colleagues despite their placid faces. I marveled at their new ties and well-tailored suits, their shiny heels and pressed collars—the adult equivalents of sparkling white sneakers on the first day of kindergarten. I looked ahead at the Columbia girls sandwiching Carmen in their subtly different suits and instinctively smoothed my blouse in response.

  I caught Derrick eyeing me knowingly. “You’re lucky,” he said quietly.

  “Hmm?”

  “Nobody really knows what ‘business casual’ means for girls. You can wear whatever you want. For all anybody knows, it’s a fashion statement.” He paused for a moment. “But for the record, you’re right. Suits are business attire. You’re in business casual.”

  “You’re in a suit!”

  “I’m all business all the time, baby.” He winked; another laugh slipped out of my closed lips. I didn’t hear the end of the simultaneously intimidating and motivational speech, but we were suddenly dismissed to the fortieth floor for technology training. As we shuffled en masse down the hallway to the elevator, we passed a glass-enclosed conference room where six white men in dark suits sat around a glossy, hulking wood table.

  “Those guys are probably in M&A,” Derrick said with a cock of his head.

  “How can you tell?” I asked, staring through the glass.

  “The way they sit. What they wear. How they look.” I looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Like total douchebags. The highest-paid, most well-respected douchebags at Klasko. It’s the most competitive group to match into. It was the same in the LA office. And everywhere else, I think. What groups did you say you were interested in on the questionnaire they sent around?”

  “I put real estate,” I muttered, hoping that would pass muster. I looked back at the men in the conference room and the intermittent strobes of light thrown off their wrists by their watches and cuff links. They were all well groomed and well dressed. Their gazes were focused, and they seemed to be playing a part in the exact scene one might picture when asked to imagine a meeting taking place in corporate America. Perhaps because of this, they made me feel slightly starstruck.

  One of them, who seemed younger than the others, still had an expertly cut suit, shiny hair, and perfectly tanned skin. I saw then that Derrick was right. It wasn’t just their attire or just the intensity in their eyes or just the way their knees spread confidently apart under the table. It was the combination of it all. They somehow seemed more important than the rest of us—than me. I struggled to peel my eyes away from them as Derrick and I drifted down the hall, my neck rotating to keep them in my sightline. When I finally turned my head forward, I reminded myself of the rumored astronomical hours they billed and demanding clients they catered to. As I continued to our next session, their sheen dulled in my memory.

  Chapter 2

  The technology training room we were led into was a dimly lit interior space with at least a hundred computers and phones lined up in neat rows. Frigid air blasted down on us from overhead vents, keeping the machines cool and our bodies shivering. Derrick pulled a seat out next to his for me, and I gratefully plunked myself down into it.

  A woman with a long, frizzy braid down to her waist paced the front of the room, then cleared her throat to speak. “The computers and phones at your stations are designed to look just the way the ones in your offices do. We’re going to start with the phone . . .”

  “Ten bucks says no other living thing has been inside her apartment this decade,” Derrick whispered.

  “Harsh!” I whispered through a laugh. “You’re on.”

  “. . . and believe it or not, the most common mistake people make with the phone is not hanging it up. You’ve been warned.” She smiled broadly. “Let’s start with how to place a call. It’s the easiest thing we’ll do today, but let’s get in the habit of practicing absolutely everything. I’ve turned off my cell phone, and written my number on the board behind me. You dial nine for an outside line and a one, so to call me it’s 9-1-9-1-7-6-1-2-3-1-4-2. Everybody practice calling it now, but do me a favor and don’t leave a voice mail.”

  We laughed courteously as we picked up our receivers and dialed. I waited for her outgoing voice mail to come through.

  “Nine-one-one emergency response, what is your emergency?” the voice on the other end asked. I looked at the receiver in horror and then slammed it down in the cradle.

  “What happened?” Derrick leaned over, looking at my phone, but I was too mortified to answer.

  “Very good. Okay. Let’s move on to transferring calls.” We all turned our attention to the front of the room. “You’ll note the hold button—”

  Suddenly, my phone rang, interrupting our instructor.

  The entire class turned toward me; Derrick even rotated his chair to stare me down. The instructor frowned, gesturing at my ringing phone, and I grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello, everything is fine . . . I’m fine . . . I just misdialed,” I stammered into the phone, then hung up before the caller could say a word. I could feel my cheeks radiating, confirming that I had turned a humiliating shade of crimson.

  “Who was that?” the instructor asked, sounding more curious than accusatory.

  I stared at her, unable to invent a story quickly enough. “I must have dialed an extra one after the nine-one,” I said quietly.

  “You called nine-one-one?” Derrick hooted. There was a brief silence in the room, followed by an eruption of laughter. I looked up from my white-knuckled fists resting on my thighs and was surprised to see a roomful of sympathetic faces. Derrick threw an arm over my shoulder, and I melted into his side with a dramatic pout.

  “Whatever, I just called the managing partner of the firm by accident,” somebody called out from the back of the room. I looked toward the voice and met Carmen’s eyes.

  “You called Mike Baccard?” the instructor gasped.

  “At least nine-one-one can’t fire you!” Carmen said, and the room erupted into laughter again. I nodded gratefully at her.

  The instructor smiled. “Oh, you really are a special class. But let’s move things along. At this rate, we’re not getting o
ut of here before the end of the day, and I have three new kittens at home who aren’t going to feed themselves!”

  Derrick and I locked eyes. “I’m pretty sure pets count as living things,” I said.

  “You have me there, Vogel.” He smiled. “I owe you a drink.”

  We were given offices with unobstructed views of Manhattan, firm email accounts, firm cell phones, firm laptops, firm credit cards, firm 401(k)s, firm health insurance, Equinox gym memberships, and firm gym bags to encourage us to use them. I met my secretary, Anna, who showed me the picture of her grandchildren in the locket around her neck and proudly told me that her oldest son had just joined the clergy. I liked her immediately. She asked me about my message-taking preferences, offered to turn my changes to documents, and insisted she’d keep me fed even when I thought I was too busy to eat. I didn’t know what “turning changes” meant, and I couldn’t fathom living in a world where work ever trumped the demands of my growling stomach, but I thanked her profusely, and silently vowed to never ask her for a single thing I could manage to do myself.

  “I come in at nine each morning to get your affairs and schedule in order,” she continued. “Most attorneys come in between nine thirty and ten thirty, but there’s no rule for you. I leave at five thirty, and the night secretary covers you until I come back in the morning. Sound good?”

  I nodded, and she returned to her cubicle outside my office to allow me to get settled.

  “Let me know if you need anything, anytime!” she yelled to me. “I take care of you and the two attorneys on either side of you, but I’m never too busy, even if I seem it.”

  I smiled gratefully and sat back down at my desk, scanning emails from the training coordinator about our schedule for the coming week. To pass the time until our lunchtime ethics training, I called Carmen’s extension to practice joining a conference call. The rest of the day flew, and when our benefits training ended at four thirty, I returned to my office, feeling it was too early to leave. Soon after five, I looked up and locked eyes with Anna, who was packing up to leave for the night just outside my office. She nodded knowingly and walked toward me, leaned her shoulder against the doorframe.