by Erica Katz
“Enchanté, mademoiselle,” he said. Matt coughed, sounding uncomfortable. “Madame or Mademoiselle?”
I pulled my hand away with a big smile. “Mademoiselle.”
“Parlez-vous français?”
“Didier, please, have a seat.” Matt sounded more desperate than generous as he gestured to the empty seat across the table in an obvious attempt to end the bizarre flirtation.
“I should sit next to the one member of the Klasko team I haven’t met yet,” Didier insisted, nodding in my direction.
“You’ve met Derrick?” Matt asked, and I could hear a slight challenge in his voice.
Didier turned to Derrick. “Do you do M&A?” Derrick shook his head, and Didier turned back to me.
“I’ll move,” KJ offered, rising from his seat. I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive an entire meal beside Didier, but I felt Matt looking at me, and as I turned to lock eyes with him, I immediately understood that I was to keep the client entertained.
The waiter started to pour Didier a glass from the table’s bottle of wine, but he shook his head decisively. “I want to taste what you’re tasting,” he said, leaning in toward me. He smelled of cigarettes and gin. I felt my upper lip curling at the smell and coughed to mask it. KJ and Taylor laughed, apparently accustomed to their boss’s antics. Derrick looked momentarily as if he was considering intervening on my behalf and then seemed to think better of it. Jordan raised his glass to me with a small smile. I couldn’t tell whether he was wishing me luck, congratulating me on capturing Didier’s attention, or preemptively thanking me for model behavior, but whatever he was gesturing, I took it to mean I was about to begin a test of sorts.
I sat up straighter and adjusted my expression to telegraph to my colleagues, This is nothing I can’t handle. I noted the heightened alertness of my senses, a weaker version of what I used to feel right before a swim meet. It seemed odd for my body to be producing adrenaline in that moment, but right then I realized how much I had missed it coursing through my veins.
Didier took my wineglass, stuck his nose in it, and breathed in deeply. He took a long sip and swirled the liquid around in his mouth. I watched him carefully as his blond mop flipped forward over his eyes, marveling that he must be worth at least forty million and yet didn’t get regular haircuts.
He looked at me and smiled. “Ah. Sauvignon blanc. The most wonderful hint of citrus. I love the lime. Only the French can do wine.”
I turned to the waiter, who was mercifully passing by. “May I see a wine list?” I pivoted in my chair toward Didier. “I prefer a California white, actually. Please, you keep that. I’m going to order something else.”
I saw Jordan looking nervous.
But Didier laughed boisterously, slapping his palms to his gut. “She knows what she likes!”
Just as I thought. A little boy in banker’s clothing who only wanted somebody to stand up to him.
We were interrupted by the arrival of the appetizers, which the waiters presented with ceremony. Matt had ordered almost every starter on the menu for the table, and I watched as more sea urchin, crudos, oysters, and caviar than we could ever eat were laid down in front of us.
Jordan took the opportunity to order another round of drinks. “Skippy?” he asked in my direction. I shook my head, but he scowled and turned to the waiter. “She’ll have another too.”
By the time dessert finally rolled around, everyone else was on their fourth or fifth round of drinks, and in no rush to leave with the rain still pounding outside. I pretended to sip my wine, grateful nobody had noticed that my glass remained almost full. KJ and Didier wanted all of us to take them out to a bar after dinner, and Taylor was easily convinced to join. Matt scribbled in the air to ask for the check. I watched as he signed the $3,200 dinner bill without flinching, also signing an “esq” after his name, a ridiculous affectation.
“Skippy! Drink!” Jordan pointed at my wineglass from across the table.
“Why do you guys sign ‘esquire’ after your names?” I asked, making sure everybody else was engrossed in their own conversations.
“We do what now?” He furrowed his brow and leaned closer to me.
“You sign ‘esq’ after your names.”
Jordan took a look at Matt’s bill and laughed. “No, we don’t.” Apparently finished with the conversation, he leaned away from me, and since the meal was over, I took a large gulp of wine to wash down the procession of uncomfortable conversations that I had just endured.
As Didier, KJ, and Taylor huddled at one end of the table, looking at a new email that had just come in, Derrick was eagerly rattling off the names of all the clubs he could get us into. “. . . Goldbar or Death & Co. or Acme. I can absolutely get us in to Acme,” he was saying. Matt and Jordan stared at him, slack-jawed, but he didn’t seem to notice.
Matt cleared his throat and spoke in a low voice. “Derrick, you’re a guest here. Act accordingly.”
The energy around the table dropped off a cliff. I checked to confirm the clients hadn’t heard and was relieved to see that they were still huddled in their own conversation.
Derrick’s face fell, and I wanted to defend him, but couldn’t figure out how to do it without overstepping myself, or embarrassing him even more.
KJ broke the silence. “Let’s get out of here!” he said, loosening his tie as he rejoined the rest of us.
Derrick politely indicated that he needed to get home, making eye contact with the napkin in his lap, and nobody argued with him.
“Same—I need to wake up early to wrap up some postclosing matters for all of you on Hat Trick,” I said, scanning the table with an apologetic smile, grateful to have a legit excuse.
No! Come! Skippy, you can’t leave! the rest of the table chorused.
I squirmed at the stark contrast between the responses to my excuses and Derrick’s, and went on slightly too long about the closing checklist and the documents I needed to send to firm records for posterity, and then added a lie about a 7:00 a.m. spin class.
When Derrick and I stepped outside, it had stopped raining. He continued forward on the sidewalk, which was still covered in puddles, looking down the street for an available cab and ignoring me.
I stood still for a moment, uncertain whether I should say anything.
“D? What was that in there?”
“What?” He stuck out his hand to hail a cab, barely acknowledging me.
“I just mean . . . are you okay?”
He didn’t look back at me. I stood by his side and watched the back of his head as he looked west on Central Park South.
“I’m fine. I guess it was a mistake to put my own spin on ‘black man at dinner’ tonight. I’m sorry if not everybody enjoyed the performance.”
“Jeez. What are you even talking about? You were—”
“What am I talking about? I was only at that dinner to be the black guy. Don’t be so naive, Alex. I don’t even do M&A.”
“Don’t be so self-deprecating, Derrick,” I snapped. “You were invited because people like you.”
Derrick whipped his head around and stared at me. “I’m not only self-deprecating. You were there because you’re a woman. An attractive, well-behaved, goody-two-shoes woman. You think they always invite first-years to these dinners?”
I narrowed my eyes at him before my heart sank. Oh god. He’s totally right.
“It’s the same shit all over again. It happened when I was a summer associate in LA too, but I just hoped when I was an actual employee they might treat me like everybody else. Especially in New York City. But no. Whatever! I just forgot which black guy I was playing tonight. All the associates expect me to be the black playboy. Partners expect me to be the black intellectual.”
“Nobody expects you to be anything,” I argued half-heartedly.
“Doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause I can’t get fired. Guess that’s the upside to being their black poster boy.” He spun back toward the street, formed a circle with his thumb and
index finger, and whistled, and a cab screeched to a halt. “Get home safe, Skippy,” he said, my nickname sounding like an insult. He lived in the West Village, and though he knew I was on his way home, he didn’t offer me a ride.
I stood for a moment staring after Derrick’s cab before snapping out of it to hail my own.
“Skippy! Join us!” Matt and Didier were leading the pack out of the restaurant. A sense of sadness nestled into my throat. Derrick had shattered any illusion that tonight’s invitation was a result of them actually enjoying my company. It was all about optics, I understood that now. “Wasn’t a question,” Matt continued, smiling broadly. Maybe they did actually want my company, even if it was just so I could entertain Didier. And I really did want to see what it was like to party without thinking about the tab. How would somebody with no budget spend an evening in New York City?
“But hey, remember, what happens out with clients, stays out with clients,” he warned, putting a finger to his lips.
I nodded in total understanding.
Two hours later we were in a dark corner of the Boom Boom Room in the Standard Hotel. When Matt had flashed his black AmEx to the bouncer, we’d been ushered past the line and up to the fourteenth floor, where we were shown to the plush red couches around a corner table—the only suits in a sea of skinny jeans, short dresses, and silicone cleavage. By the time I’d taken my third shot at Jordan’s command, I was struggling to hold my head upright on my neck, which had dissolved to putty in the grip of vodka. The two-drink-maximum warning played on a loop in my pulsating eardrums.
“I bet it’s hard for you at work, getting hit on all the time,” KJ slurred, leaning over Jordan to talk to me. I shook my head playfully, hating that I was flattered. The offense I might have taken when sober to not being treated professionally dissolved and was replaced by some shallowly buried middle school complex about being the broad-shouldered girl when skinniness was in and the outspoken one when guys liked passive girls.
“I really don’t.”
“Tell her,” Taylor growled at Jordan.
“Tell her what?” Jordan asked dryly, staring straight ahead.
“Carmen does!” I insisted, trying to turn the attention from myself.
“Does what? Who is Carmen?” Taylor asked Jordan with a nudge, but Jordan ended the conversation with an almost imperceptible shake of his head. I looked at Jordan’s complete composure with envy. How does he do it? He’s been pounding wine and shots all night. Matt leaned his head against the armrest on the opposite end of the couch as a scantily clad cocktail waitress refilled the drink in his almost lifeless hand, and Didier plunked his massive frame down beside me, resting the edge of his left leg atop my right. He snorted and then hacked back up whatever had been pushed down from his nose, only to swallow it back down again. Unwilling to catch the Plague, I tried to wriggle out from under him without success.
“Have you met this Carmen girl?” Taylor asked Didier.
Didier nodded. “She’s on the Trinity acquisition.”
My neck suddenly felt solid, and I snapped up my head. She is? She didn’t tell me that.
“Is she hot?” KJ prodded. I looked for Didier’s response, feeling slightly slimy for wanting to know what he thought.
“Yeah. But in a way that makes you want to treat her like shit.” Didier’s voice was clear, and he seemed more sober than just a few moments ago. He let out a burp under his breath, and I smelled rancid chemical waste. “You’re hot in a way that makes everybody want to take care of you,” he yelled, barely audible over the music.
“You have issues,” I mumbled.
“You have no idea.” His shoulder bounced as he laughed. “But you know, I don’t give a fuck how hot you are. None of us do. You get good deals because you do good work. If you were just hot, I’d just hit on you. Not work with you.”
I didn’t know what to say. Part of me wanted to tell him he couldn’t speak to me that way—that it was harassment. But it didn’t feel like harassment. It felt like a compliment. I wasn’t even certain if a client could harass me—he wasn’t my employer, after all. I struggled to see the downside to having a client express interest in me, and although my vision was cloudy from alcohol, I could see what lay ahead: staffing on the best deals, positive performance reviews, a smoother path to success than I would have if Didier never knew my name or wanted me to like him back. The drinks suddenly hit me again, and I closed my eyes for a moment.
“Up or down?” Didier asked me.
I looked at him blankly. “What?”
He laughed. “You’re cute.”
This is flirting. Granted, flirting with a fat, old Frenchman I’d never consider touching. But still. I rolled my eyes at him but was smiling as he took out a travel-size Advil bottle from his suit pocket and a small glass vial from his pants pocket.
“Up?” he said, holding up the vial, which was filled with white powder. “Or down?” He held up the Advil bottle.
I stared at the vial. “What is it?”
“What the fuck, Didier?” Jordan was suddenly leaning over me, his speech deliberate and irritated. “She doesn’t need that shit.”
“What is it?” I pouted.
“She’s so cute,” Didier whined to Jordan, but Jordan took my arm and pulled me up off the couch, freeing my skirt from Didier’s leg as he did so. Didier was already focused on the breasts of the waitress refilling our ice bucket.
“That wasn’t Advil,” Jordan yelled over his shoulder as he forged a path toward the bar through the swaying figures surrounding us on all sides. “It was Xanax. And coke. And you don’t need either.”
“Oh.” As I allowed Jordan to lead me through the crowd, the bass from the speakers rattled my chest. I stared up at the short-haired singer in the band, kicking her fishnet-covered legs out from under her flapper dress as a brassy trumpet blared. “I don’t do drugs,” I said, almost apologetic. I’d never expected the most successful lawyers in Manhattan to unwind with anything but alcohol. Bankers, yes. But lawyers surprised me. It can’t be all that bad for you, I thought, if all these guys do it on a random Tuesday and go home to their young children and houses in Westchester after.
“I know, I know, Skip. Drugs are frowned upon at the country club,” he said with a smirk. My parents weren’t country-club people, but I didn’t have the chance to correct him before he pushed through to the bar and ordered us two waters. We put our lips to the large glasses dripping with condensation and tilted our heads skyward. I sucked hungrily at an ice cube, then spit it back into my glass, not worrying about seeming ladylike in the moment.
“Do you and Matt do coke?”
“Next question.” Jordan smiled. I rolled my eyes, annoyed I had broken down and finally asked to clarify what the “up” that people were always offering each other actually was.
“You and Matt are like . . .” I intertwined my fingers and held them up.
Jordan laughed and nodded. “You get it. I didn’t know you got it.” I stared back at him, inviting him to continue. “You understand client development. You made Didier like you. And it’s Matt’s job to keep Didier happy.”
“I have a question,” I mumbled.
“Shoot.”
“Remember when . . . Why do you think Carmen told you guys my whole family went to Harvard? And like . . . donated a library?”
“Hmm. Did you ask Carmen?”
“Yeah. She said it was to make me look good.”
Jordan nodded, as though he assumed she’d have said as much. “Look, Skip. The worst thing you can be when you’re in this business is somebody who was given what everybody else needed to earn. Makes people think you’re not as smart or as hardworking as the rest of us. Look at Peter. That’s why . . .”
Jordan registered the confusion in my eyes and trailed off. “Shots!” he declared, attempting to change the subject.
“What about Peter?”
“Never mind, Skip. Shots.”
I rolled my eyes in reluctant c
apitulation.
“You never answer my questions. And no shots. We’re not supposed to do shots. And we’re only supposed to have two drinks! That’s what they told us ten times in our business development training.”
“There are rules for everybody else, and then there are rules for M&A. Matt brings in more business than anybody else at the firm. We have a different set of rules.” Jordan signaled the bartender. “Two shots of Casamigos, por favor.”
“Didier said I do good work,” I said defensively.
“You do. Stop fishing,” Jordan said and handed me a shot. “Usually first-years are just the people who schedule our meetings and do our slides. You do real work. I mean, we let you do real work. Because you’re good.” He remembered himself and repeated, “Stop fishing.”
Q.Based on what you heard about Gary Kaplan, what preconceived notions did you have before meeting him?
A.I cannot say that I had any preconceived notions about him personally. I really didn’t. I did have preconceived notions of how he would be professionally: highly successful and intelligent and somebody I should try my best to do good work for if ever given the opportunity. I thought that somebody in Gary’s position could make or break a person’s career at a law firm.
Q.Would you say that your preconceived notions of Gary Kaplan would have influenced how you perceived him?
A.Again, I didn’t have any idea what he would be like or how he would act. I just knew he was an important client.
Q.But you said you had heard about his reputation. Did you simply disregard this information while considering his professional reputation?
A.No. I wouldn’t say that. I would say that I heard things about him, all of which could have been dispelled or corroborated upon meeting him. I try to reserve judgment before meeting somebody. I hope we all do.
Q.You went in to your first meeting with Mr. Kaplan with no preconceived notions of who he was or how to behave toward him?