by Erica Katz
“What?” he asked, looking at me. I narrowed my gaze slightly. His arms were in the sleeves of his T-shirt, and he was just about to pull it over his head.
“I’m not hungry just yet,” I said softly.
His eyes widened. “No?” he asked.
I shook my head once and let the right corner of my lip curl upward. His arms still in the sleeves, his strong, smooth chest still bare, he made his way over to me. He raised his arms and pushed them over my head, pulling me close with his T-shirt as a lasso. I craned my neck up to him, and he kissed me slowly. When Sam kissed me, I could feel his goodness wash over me.
“I’ve missed you,” I whispered. He kissed me again. I placed my hands on his chest and let my fingers creep down to where his towel folded in on itself. With a little pressure to the half-knot, his towel dropped to the floor. He pulled my hips in toward him and rested his hand on my backside. I felt his shirt drop away from his hands as he undid the zipper of my skirt. It slipped down to my heels. I locked eyes with his and raised my arms above my head. He obliged my request with a boyish grin and pulled my button-down up over my head.
I shifted my weight only slightly and lifted a leg.
“Leave the heels on,” he whispered. I smiled as I dropped my raised foot back to the floor. “The only thing I can stand about you working so much is how good you look in work clothes. Also, fair warning, I can’t really bend at the knee—I’m so sore.”
I threw my head back and laughed, feeling my hair on my back. I expected him to pull me onto the bed, but instead he pushed me up against the wall, where my heels made me the perfect height.
I can absolutely handle this job, I thought before I allowed myself to get lost in him.
Part II
The Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA)
A written legal agreement between two or more parties entered into in order to protect the sensitive information each party will become privy to as negotiations are entered.
Q.Would you say your professional relationships extend beyond the confines of the office?
A.I’m not sure I understand the question.
Q.Did or do you socialize with colleagues? Did you socialize with clients?
A.Yes. Yes.
Q.Can you please elaborate?
A.Klasko not only encourages socializing but often funds it in the form of happy hours and retreats. I didn’t go to undergraduate or graduate school in New York, so many of my friendships were formed at Klasko.
Q.I see. And what about with clients?
A.Actually, a large part of the job at Klasko is entertaining clients. In a legal market like New York City, there are so many law firms with excellent reputations to choose from, and the idea is that a client hires lawyers they also enjoy spending time with, as the hours required to close a deal are quite long.
Q.How do you socialize with colleagues and clients?
A.What do you mean, “how”? What does anybody do with their friends? What do you do with your friends?
Q.Ms. Vogel, I’m not the one testifying here. What types of activities do you engage in with clients and colleagues outside of the office?
A.Anything. Lunch, dinner, bars. I don’t know. Stuff friends do.
Q.Have you ever been to a strip club with a colleague or client?
A.No.
[Defense counsel confers]
Q.Is there any difference in how you socialize with your friends and with your clients?
A.Aside from the fact that the firm picks up the tab, there is a difference in general topics of conversation. Dinner with clients is professional. We often discuss work.
Q.Is that so? Topics of conversation are relegated to work? And you, what, limit your alcohol intake?
A.Not always, no.
Q.Perhaps it would help if you elaborated on client development endeavors.
Chapter 6
As we shuffled into our weekly Monday-morning first-year training, a bottleneck was forming at the sign-in sheet, and I heard chatter swirling around me:
Fuck! I can never remember my attorney ID number.
Just write your name, they’ll fill it in.
Who is “they”?
They! The firm!
I was so drunk that I gave the cabdriver the address of the office instead of my apartment building.
I’ve done that. Because we fucking live here.
My girlfriend is going to break up with me if I don’t come home before ten o’clock one night this week.
Tell her to chill out. We’ve only just started. When we get paid tonight, buy her Louboutins. The price is nothing if it means no more nagging.
I grabbed a mug, filled it with black coffee, and grabbed a seat in the back row. In our first two sessions, I had only half listened as I busied myself with the flood of Monday-morning emails streaking into my phone. I knew I wouldn’t get in trouble—M&A associates were almost expected to have their phones out during these trainings—but that day my absentee partner mentor, Vivienne White, was presenting. Figuring that she deserved my full attention, I left my phone facedown on the table. Vivienne was small and severe, beautiful with a certain frost that made me want to stare at her from a distance. Everybody was supposed to have lunch with their partner mentors in the first week of work, but I had yet to meet her face-to-face and I was just entering my third month at the firm. I had, however, emailed with her—she had canceled the very lunch dates she had requested on three separate occasions.
I saw the guy to my right checking his email, and managed to resist the urge for a few moments before following suit. Project Hat Trick still hadn’t quite heated to a boil, and I hoped to take full advantage of the simmer. A bunch of us were supposed to celebrate surviving the first couple months of work that Friday, and logistical emails eagerly anticipating our dinner at the end of the workweek, even though it was only Monday, had already begun.
* * *
“To payday!”
Derrick, Jennifer, Kevin, and I clinked the thick, ridged rims of our steins together and dropped our shots of sake into them. I reveled in the familiar sensation of malt on the back of my tongue, which tasted all the better because of my knowledge that it would barely put a dent in the $3,700 that had appeared for the fourth time now in my checking account—my biweekly take-home pay, even after the government took its share and I maxed out my savings contribution.
I wiped at my lip as the steam from the hibachi table hit my cheeks. It was my first time at Benihana, which Jennifer had insisted was the perfect place because none of the tourists infiltrating the midtown branch of the chain would bat an eye if we got too rowdy. I gazed at the couple across the table, the frames of their bodies wavy through the heat as they giggled and groped one another. Derrick followed my stare.
“We should have gone to EMP and blown it all,” Derrick groaned as he watched our chef, in an impossibly tall hat, greet us with a theatrical display of his knife skills.
“You’re the most gluttonous human I’ve ever met!” Jennifer laughed. I had no idea what EMP was, but assumed it was some unbelievably fancy restaurant.
“Are you kidding me? I can barely afford this after taxes!” Kevin complained.
“Right!? Half our paycheck gets stolen from us to pay for a government that does almost nothing I agree with!” Jennifer pouted. To me, complaining about getting half one’s paycheck stolen was an exercise reserved for those people in the highest tax brackets, a group that I was exceedingly grateful to be a member of.
“Where are Roxanne and Carmen?” Kevin asked.
“Roxanne’s stuck in the office, and Carmen’s father is in town,” I said, then took a long sip of my beer.
“From Singapore? Or he was already in the States?” Derrick asked. I shrugged. I knew Carmen had grown up in Los Angeles, but I didn’t know where her parents lived. “You know, he started the Singapore office of Travers Cullen before he moved to LA? Impressive guy. He moved back to Singapore recently. That office needs him.”
Travers Cul
len was one of the largest law firms in the world. I had no idea Carmen was from a family so heavily entrenched in BigLaw. But it certainly made sense that she seemed so comfortable in the environment.
“How do you know all this?” Jennifer asked.
“Below the Belt,” Derrick said, taking a sip of his beer. “Not all legal gossip is salacious. There’s plenty of innocent stuff about job moves and stuff.”
Kevin was watching me intently. “What?” He pointed at my furrowed brow. I shook my head, trying to make sense of my own thoughts.
“It’s so weird . . .” I took a long sip of my beer and touched my temple. “Carmen told Matt Jaskel that my whole family went to Harvard and donated a library. Meanwhile, my dad is an oncologist in a small town in Connecticut and my mom volunteers at the library but definitely never donated one. Turns out Carmen is the one with the important family. I just don’t get why she’d say that.”
I looked at my friends’ faces for an explanation, but they all seemed to be looking beyond me.
“Alex! Hi!”
I turned to the voice over my shoulder, realizing where my friends’ gazes had been directed, and looked up at Peter Dunn with a somewhat stupefied expression. “Hi! Peter! What are you doing here?”
“I’m waist-deep in ten-year-olds.” He pointed across the room to a table of children in party hats. “My son’s birthday. What are you doing here?” he asked, a playful flicker in his eye.
“We’re having dinner. Actually, I don’t know if you know everybody, but this is Jennifer Goodman, Kevin Lloyd, and Derrick Stockton. We’re all first-years.” Jennifer and Derrick stared up at Peter, looking slightly bewildered.
“Hysterical,” Peter said. I wondered if he was referring to their expressions or the fact that we were four adults having dinner at Benihana, but I assumed the latter. The embarrassment made me start to sweat, and when Peter put a steady palm on my shoulder and turned to leave, then allowed his hand to linger for a moment behind him, my pulse almost stopped.
Derrick and Jennifer turned to me.
“What?” I leaned backward, feigning confusion as they leaned in toward me.
“You work for him?” Derrick asked.
I shook my head.
“How do you know him?”
“How does he know you?” Jennifer corrected him.
“He sits on 41 with me. So we’ve chatted. I haven’t worked for him. Yet!”
“I’ll tell you what I would not be doing if I worked with a guy who looked like that,” Jennifer said. “Working! I wonder if he has any female associates working for him. Must be wildly inefficient!”
I shrugged. “I barely remember to eat at work. I’m too busy to notice anybody’s looks.”
Derrick smirked. “Mm-hmm. Not buying it.”
The clatter of metal on metal cut their attention from me back to the chef. He chopped an onion on his board with a knife in each hand at such speed that the thin blades appeared as just vertical silver streaks in the air before he tossed the rings onto the hibachi grill with a sizzle.
I watched out of the corner of my eye as Peter took his seat next to a woman with her back to me. Her posture was perfect, and the blond hair cascading down around her shoulders was silky and straight, the kind I’d always wished for. I often was complimented on my hair, but I still often scrutinized my split ends, thinking they were broken and limp because my hair was naturally curly and I destroyed it by blow-drying and then ironing it every time I washed it. Peter placed his hand on the back of her chair as she took a video with her phone of the children at the table, clapping in delight at the spectacle of their food being cooked.
I looked around the restaurant—at the mom-jeans wearers, the underage drinkers, and the younger children with their parents. It no longer seemed an appropriate way to amuse ourselves now that we had growing bank accounts that we didn’t need to watch carefully and professional reputations that we did. I stared at Jennifer as she opened her mouth and the chef flipped a piece of shrimp into it. She and Kevin giggled childishly, and I was reminded of a fourth-grade trip to SeaWorld. I took a long sip of my Sapporo, which suddenly tasted bitter.
I angled myself awkwardly toward Derrick so that I could keep Peter in my peripheral vision as Kevin recounted his conflicted feelings over his latest date.
“. . . and what was I supposed to say? You know? So, I said of course she could come over. But I don’t want to see her again because she came over on the first date.”
Peter had disappeared from my view, and his wife now sat beside an empty chair. I scanned the restaurant.
“At least she’s not the only girl I’m seeing,” Kevin continued. “Do you know anybody for me, Alex?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, have to pee,” I said, already walking toward the restroom at the front of the restaurant, my legs wobblier than they should be after a few shots of sake and a beer.
I’d lied to my friends, but I’d been suddenly overcome by the desire to be in Peter’s line of vision—to remind him I existed. I placed my phone to one ear and plugged the other one with my finger as I walked up and down the dead-end corridor housing the women’s and men’s rooms, furrowing my brow to appear focused. My knees weakened as the door to the men’s room swung open. I corrected my posture and said “Yes” into the phone, even nodding for emphasis, but it was a large man in pleated khakis and a white T-shirt who exited into the hallway.
I resumed my pacing, but as I turned for the tenth time, I realized how simultaneously pathetic and bizarre my actions were. I took my phone away from my ear without hanging up on my imaginary correspondent and noticed a hint of perspiration at the nape of my neck. It felt unbearable, and I dropped my neck forward and scratched the skin under my hair hungrily.
“Do you know why we scratch itches?” Peter appeared at the other end of the hallway by the entrance to the restaurant, slipping his phone into his breast pocket with one hand. His nose was slightly red from the breezy night air. I placed my hand as nonchalantly as possible on the wall beside me for support.
“Lots of theories. One is that we scratch at a tingle as a reflex to prevent bugs and stuff on our skin. Amazing how we know to snatch our hand away when we feel something too hot. But we scratch it when we feel a tickle. Right? Our bodies are pretty remarkable,” he said, and I had to fight the urge to scratch up and down my arms and stomach. “Some nerves cannot sense itch and pain at the same time, so it relieves the itch when we scratch it. Some say pain is more tolerable than itching.”
“I have a high tolerance for pain,” I said, surprisingly steadily.
Peter winked. “Don’t all lawyers? I think itchiness is much worse. Anyway, enjoy your dinner. I’m back to Dad duty.”
I managed a wave only after he had already turned. Then I walked back and took my place between Jennifer and Derrick.
“All good?” Derrick shot a sideways glance at Peter returning to his table. “You’re just a work crush wrapped up in puppy love and tied with a little obsession, aren’t you?” He playfully tapped the tip of my nose.
“You’re annoying.” I chugged the remainder of my beer and dove into my shrimp fried rice, then forced myself to focus on the knife tricks our chef performed. I lost myself in the charade so successfully that I forgot to look at my phone for a good thirty minutes. When I finally did, my stomach sank. I had missed thirty-seven emails in that period. The Stag River deal had clearly reached boiling point, and the latest email from Jordan told me to “call as soon as you can, no matter the hour.” I excused myself before dessert, leaving cash for the check and multiple apologies.
“Get out of here,” Derrick said, throwing my hundred-dollar bill back at me as though it repulsed him.
“Go!” Jennifer agreed encouragingly. I guess with our new account balances, they could afford to cover me.
It was ten o’clock on a Friday, so I opted to hop in a cab home rather than to the office. Sam was already in bed, his deep snoring indicating that he had already been aslee
p for some time, when I got there. I logged on to my computer at our dining table and dialed Jordan’s cell phone.
“Hey,” he answered. “Can you call me in the office?”
“Yup.” He didn’t sound angry that he was in the office while I was not, but still, it worried me. I should have never left. He was going to think I was a slacker. Should I head back there right away? But then I’d waste the commute time. I dialed him back on his work line.
“Hey. So, we got comments from Onyx’s lawyers, and they’re a mess. It’s like these guys have never done a merger. Which is . . . annoying. But the bad part is, their timeline is completely out of control. They just moved closing up a month. That means we need to put together the offer . . .”
Jordan instructed me to get started on the stock purchase agreement, and from the alertness of his tone, I gathered that he had no intention of leaving the office anytime soon. He didn’t mention when he would need the draft, but I decided to give myself twenty-four hours, to prove my work ethic. I put my head down and worked through most of Saturday on my couch, struggling to respond politely to Sam as he came and went from our apartment. I sent the documents to Jordan just before midnight, when Sam was already asleep. I woke up Sunday morning to an email with Jordan’s markup attached, his scan showing large blocks of red ink. Does this guy sleep? I wondered, perusing the angry red strike-throughs of the language he wanted removed and scribbles of the language he wanted to replace it with. Did he have a scanner at home, or was he still in the office?
“I can barely read Jordan’s handwriting,” I explained to Sam, who pouted as I dressed in jeans and a sweater and called a car in to the office around ten in the morning. In truth, I needed him not to distract me. The double-wide screens and high-speed printers would help too. I worked through most of the day until the agreement was in good shape.