by Erica Katz
Had he just called me Skippy?
From that morning on, my in-box remained perpetually full. Nine weeks in at Klasko, I started sleeping with my work phone set to vibrate on my chest, to Sam’s obvious displeasure. I ate dinner with it on the table. I showered with it on the toilet. “Busy” took on an entirely new meaning. I began to block out time in my calendar each day to go to the gym—an appointment I rarely kept. That block slowly became the block of time in which I tried (and sometimes failed) to fit in a shower.
“Hi, Lara,” I answered my extension perkily.
“Hi.”
Shit. She sounded pissed. What had I done? What had I forgotten to do? I would have forgotten I was working for her entirely if she hadn’t called.
“Did you send those leases to local counsel?”
I put her on speaker as I rapidly searched my sent mail. I didn’t even know which deal she was talking about. Lara. Real estate. I thought I had. Fuck. Had I forgotten to hit send? Here they were.
“Yes. I did. I sent them last night at eleven oh two.”
Silence.
“Alex. You didn’t cc me,” Lara said, forcing calm into her voice.
My heart sank. She was right—the cc line was blank. “Oh god. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” Please don’t fire me. Please don’t fire me.
“See that it doesn’t, please. If you cannot handle this in addition to your M&A matters, I can ask for alternative staffing.”
I breathed in sharply. “That won’t be necessary. It won’t happen again.”
I heard a mechanical pulse on the other end of the phone. “I have to grab this,” Lara said, and the line went dead.
I dropped my head into my hands; my lunch was in my throat. I couldn’t believe I had done that. I never made careless mistakes.
“Happens to the best of us.” I spun around in my chair to see Peter Dunn leaning against my doorframe, arms crossed over his chest.
Shit, I thought. I need to start closing my door when I’m on speaker.
“Shake it off, kiddo,” he said with a smile, and I forced myself to exhale as I fought back tears. “Either you’re going to be perfect or you’re going to be alive. Can’t be both.” He watched me carefully for a moment longer before taking one step farther into my office. “When I was a second-year associate—longer ago than I care to disclose—I sent the second-to-last version of a merger agreement to be signed, instead of the final, and it had a bunch of stuff in it we had successfully negotiated out of. Basically, I undid all of our work. And our client didn’t even read it. He just signed it. And obviously the other party signed it because the terms were better for them. Such a mess.” He shook his head and laughed.
“What happened?” I asked, feeling both horrified and comforted.
Peter shrugged. “The partner I was working for called me into his office. He said he’d take care of it, and that I should let it be a lesson in two things: One, ATD is king. And two, there’s almost no mistake a good lawyer cannot manage. Understand?”
I nodded.
“You should ask questions if you don’t understand.”
“I’ll work on my attention to detail,” I said, showing that, yes, I’d understood the acronym.
Peter smiled, putting a finger to the side of his nose and then pointing it at me. “Smart,” he said. “That was before everybody checked email every three seconds! Waiting it out was fucking agony. You can just email everybody again, saying, ‘Inadvertently left Lara off the email. Looping her in here.’ That’s it.” He turned on his heel to leave before pausing and looking over his shoulder. “Oh, and I’ll get you on one of my deals asap. Better to diversify your experience out of real estate.” Was he telling me that my mistake didn’t really matter because it was for real estate? “Oh, and don’t say ‘sorry,’” he called over his shoulder as he was halfway out the door. “Not ever.”
I stared at the empty doorframe, feeling slightly confused, then turned back to my computer.
“Yo!”
I looked up again to see Carmen, and waved her in. “Hi!” I really needed to start closing my door.
She took the seat across from me. “Was that Peter Dunn leaving your office?”
I nodded.
“You know him?”
I nodded.
“He knows you?” She raised her eyebrows. I laughed and nodded.
“He’s, like, a big deal.”
I laughed again, uncomfortably this time. “I’m doing M&A now. And still trying to pretend I have time for the real estate deal I’m on.”
“I heard.”
“How? We don’t even have water coolers.” I gestured to the large glass bottles of still and sparking water placed on my desk every morning by the food services fairies.
“Matt Jaskel is my partner mentor. He mentioned it when I last saw him.”
“Wow, he’s a big deal. You must have impressed somebody in your interview,” I said, echoing what she had said to me about Vivienne White.
She gave a short, approving laugh. “Have you lost weight?” It didn’t feel like a compliment. “How’s Sam? Can we do lunch tomorrow?” She didn’t wait for any answers as she took out her phone. “Noon? I figure we better start sharing our M&A war stories if we’re going to survive.” She smiled from ear to ear, and I noticed again how especially attractive Carmen was when she smiled; it seemed to iron out all of her sharp edges.
I opened my calendar to check whether I could have lunch, then realized that I was about to be late to my next meeting.
“Anna! Can you grab me the documents I printed?” I yelled out my door. So much for not asking her to do anything menial. I looked back at Carmen. “I can’t do noon. Late lunch at two?”
“Can’t. I have a call at two, and my dad is in town this weekend, so I want to try to get ahead with work. Coffee at four?”
“Done! I’ll send you a calendar invite.”
“Hello!?” Carmen and I both grabbed at our chests as a third voice echoed through my office. “Hello?!” We stared at my phone as Lara’s voice emanated from it. “Fucking first years,” she muttered before hanging up.
“Did you forget to end your last call?”
“Shit.” I shook my head, panicking as I wondered just how much of our conversation Lara had heard. “Today needs to be over. I can’t do anything right.”
“Happens to everybody. Was that an M&A partner?” Carmen asked. I shook my head. “Whatever, then! Who cares? Gotta run, see you tomorrow,” she said, ducking out of my office.
Jordan was already sitting in one of the two guest chairs when I arrived at Matt’s sun-drenched corner office. I paused at the door and waited for Matt to wave me in, and as soon as he saw me, he gestured to the empty guest seat. “Give us a second. We just need to finish up on this other matter.”
Jordan acknowledged me with a nod and turned back to Matt. “The calculation is kinda fucked because those figures really should have been above the line,” he mused.
I knew I should have paid attention to the conversation, viewed it as a learning opportunity, but I let my gaze drift around the room. Little Lucite plaques filled every single inch of windowsill space, touting all the impressive deals Matt had done: a Newton’s cradle for Criterion, Inc., a skyscraper for Upwards Partners, an oil well for EarthBound LLC.
Deal toys, one of the other first-years had told me they were called.
“I have so much on my plate. You deal with this.” Matt’s voice drifted into my ears, and I flashed him a grin, knowing my job would be much easier if he liked me. Matt smiled back at me. This was going to be much easier than it was with Lara. Guys are simple, I thought.
Jordan continued to brief Matt. “And the buyer sent through the target list for us to . . .”
“Do you know what a target list is?” Matt asked me, interrupting Jordan. I nodded, grateful that I had looked it up that morning after I’d been cc’ed on an email mentioning it.
“The list of potential targets in the market
. Prospective acquisitions for the buyer,” I answered, trying to hide my smugness.
“I see a potential issue with Tremor, Elite Metals . . . ,” Jordan went on without acknowledging me.
I turned my attention back to Matt’s office decor. There were classic 1990s black-and-white professional photos of Matt with his wife and three boys, all wearing jeans with white collared shirts and bare feet. There were classic 1980s portrait pictures of his family with fading oval borders, in which the youngest child was still an infant. And one of Matt being swallowed up by the poufy white sleeves of his wife’s wedding dress, her with a short, feathered bob and him with thick brown locks and a full beard.
“Hard to believe I ever had that much hair,” Matt said, following my gaze. He laughed and brushed his hand over his scalp gently, as though running his fingers through his hair plugs would rip them out.
I narrowed my eyes playfully at him. “Are you saying this job causes hair loss? You’re making M&A sound more appealing by the second.”
He looked surprised for a moment before letting out a deep belly laugh, just as my eyes settled on his whiteboard, whose right side listed the names of twenty or so deals in green dry-erase marker. On the left side was a list of what I soon gathered were last names. “Vogel” had a check mark next to it, as did a few others, including “Greyson.”
“Those are the first-years who indicated an interest in M&A. Want to get them all some experience,” Matt explained, following my gaze. “Checks are for those who we’ve staffed up on matters.”
I wondered what they had Carmen working on, and if her deal was bigger or more important than mine, but I realized she had a leg up anyway, with Matt as her mentor.
“Okay,” Jordan said, stretching his neck from side to side as though stretching before a workout. “Project Hat Trick. You’re up.”
They both turned to me, and I felt a rush of stage fright but forced my mouth to open.
“Okay. So our preliminary bid was accepted.”
“I’m aware,” Matt said dryly, but Jordan nodded encouragingly.
“I just gained access to the due diligence materials on Monday, so I’m not quite finished reviewing them, but I’m moving along. There’s a solid nonassignment provision in one of the Freestyle contracts.” As I’d learned that morning while reading Investopedia on a lurching E train, this was a problem because when our client bought the company, that contract would become void instead of being transferred to us. I’d spent hours last night coming up with three possible solutions to present. As I prepared to share my rehearsed recommendations, I reminded myself to act as though they were off the top of my head.
Matt looked at Jordan. “Get it waived,” he said calmly. Jordan nodded and made a note. They looked back to me, ready to move on. It occurred to me then just how little I knew about what I was doing.
“I’ve already started preparing the offer letter, just so we don’t get behind the eight ball,” I said, regurgitating the language Jordan had used when he asked me to prepare the letter, “but I’ll update it as we go, and Jordan is reviewing my changes to the purchase agreement. I noted some concerns on the balance sheet, but Jordan will discuss them if need be, I guess. Committed financing is locked up.” I exhaled and looked up.
Matt looked at me seriously. “Good,” he said flatly, with no hint of praise, then turned back to his computer and began typing.
I allowed my shoulders to relax and looked at Jordan, who gave me a small wink. I couldn’t keep the corners of my lips from curling skyward.
“Skip, you’re killing me. I can never fucking find the attachments to your emails,” Matt said, not looking away from his monitor. “Attach them right below your text. Not at the bottom of a forty-email chain.”
I turned around and looked over my shoulder, but when I looked back at Matt, he was staring directly at me.
“Yes. You’re Skippy. Skip for short,” Matt said.
I opened my mouth and shut it, deciding to stop asking questions.
“Why is this deal called Project Hat Trick anyway?” Matt muttered to himself. “Stupid name.”
Because it’s the third attempted acquisition for the company. I need to start taking notes in pen. My notes in pencil are smudged. Am I forgetting something?
“What?” Matt’s voice broke through my thoughts.
I looked up from my notes. “Sorry?” They were both looking at me.
“What did you say?” Matt asked.
Shit. Had I just said all of that out loud? “I . . .”
“Why is this called Project Hat Trick?” he asked.
“Oh, I have no idea. I thought maybe because it’s the third time they’ve explored acquisition of this company. I didn’t realize I had—”
“Are you an athlete?” he asked.
“I was.” Though since I didn’t play a sport where you could have a hat trick, it didn’t really seem relevant.
“Where did you go to law school?” Matt asked. Was he asking me because that was a stupid or a smart thing to say?
“Um . . . Harvard?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” Matt seemed entertained by watching me squirm.
I shook my head, suddenly dizzy. “Harvard.”
“Oh, that’s right. I knew that.” Matt waved me away. “You’re from a Harvard family, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t your whole family go there? I thought there was a library or something named after you guys.”
“No.” I shook my head slowly, though Matt had spoken so confidently that I found myself momentarily wondering if he was correct. “Nope. I’m the only one who went there, and I can say with some degree of certainty that we didn’t donate a library.”
Matt and Jordan looked at one another, and Matt smirked.
“Let the games begin,” Jordan muttered under his breath.
“Up?” Matt asked, pointing at Jordan.
“Nah. I’m good. I slept last night. Gonna just power through.”
“Okay!” Matt said as he turned his back to us and picked up his phone. “Thanks, guys!”
We were dismissed, and we walked down the hallway together. What the hell had just happened? My job felt like a conversation in a familiar but somehow unintelligible tongue, like Scottish.
“You did good,” Jordan said, and I looked at him, wondering where to begin.
“Skippy?” I asked.
“We think you look preppy. Like a skipper.” I looked down and smoothed my white collared shirt into my lavender skirt. “It’s a good thing. He doesn’t think anything at all about most first-years.”
I nodded. “Why does he think my whole family went to Harvard?”
“Carmen said something that we must have misunderstood. No big deal. I have to jump on a call.” He ducked into his office without another word.
Hours later, I was struggling to keep my eyes open as I scanned the minutes of a board meeting for the company Stag River was acquiring, barely knowing what I was looking for but hoping I would recognize a red flag if I saw one, when my ringing phone jolted me from my trance.
“Hi Matt!” I said, forcing cheer into my voice.
“Go home, Skip. I’m going home. I told Jordan to do the same.”
I looked at the lower right-hand corner of my monitor. It was only seven o’clock.
“Thanks, Matt. I’m just going to finish—”
“I’m not asking you.” His words were sharp, but his tone was kind. “This deal is going to blow up in a few weeks. I’ll expect you here at all hours then. For now, go home.”
He hung up before I could thank him, and I grabbed my phone and texted Sam.
On my way home! Yayayayay.
The ellipses appeared immediately. I smiled as I thought of him typing.
Yaaaaaas. Hurry!!!
I was just about to shut down my computer when something from before popped into my mind. I picked up my office phone and dialed Carmen’s extension.
“Hey!” s
he said quickly. “What’s up? I’m swamped.”
“I have a random question.”
“Shoot.”
“So, um, I know this is weird, but did you tell Jordan and Matt that my family donated a library to Harvard?” I cursed the apprehension in my voice.
“Yeah,” she said without a pause. There was no surprise or apology in her tone, and I could hear her still typing in the background.
“Um . . . why? It makes me sound like I couldn’t get in there on my own.”
“Oh, I just know their type, and they totally have a hard-on for that New England Ivy old-money thing. I thought I was doing you a solid.”
Her response sounded benevolent enough. It left me no option other than to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Thanks. I cleared it up with them.”
“Okay, cool. Listen, I gotta run. Are we still on for coffee tomorrow?”
“Yup!”
“Great. See you then.” She hung up.
I shook my head to shake out the bizarre conversation playing on a loop in my brain, and packed my things to go.
When I opened the door, the faint hint of humidity in the apartment indicated that Sam had just emerged from one of his marathon showers. I inhaled deeply as I made my way to the bedroom, letting the sweet floral scent of Dove soap wash over me. He poked his head out of our bathroom, towel around his waist.
“Babe! I can’t believe it. You’re rocking M&A and still making it home early!” He came over to me, leaving wet footprints as he went, and gave me a kiss as he lightly tapped my backside. Ducking back into the bathroom, he called out, “How was work? I jogged ten miles today, so I’m starving. Do you want to go out for dinner or order in?”
“It was good. Really good. I think the key to this job is taking advantage of the slower nights and coming home to you whenever I can.”
I put my bag down on the bed, feeling the rush of control over my life as I came home from a long day of work to my boyfriend, happy to see me, in the beautiful apartment my job allowed us to rent. Sam reemerged and picked out a T-shirt from a drawer, and watching him, I felt completely at peace. I knew Sam—really knew him. I could always tell what he thought of someone new by gauging his posture when he spoke to them. I knew that his favorite meal was grilled cheese and tomato soup. I knew the face he made in the mirror when he shaved. I suddenly appreciated that with him things were almost always what they seemed, and I knew how much he adored me. At Klasko, I didn’t really know my friends at all. It didn’t matter at all to me that he couldn’t yet pay rent or take me to nice dinners. I’d turned down a job at Sanctuary so I could do those things for myself, and for him. I knew one day soon Sam’s company would be successful, that it would all even out in the end.