I make a habit of currying easy favor with Alice by agreeing with her that these parties are tedious and insisting that I attend them only in the interests of good office feeling. Yet the fact is that I enjoy them very much. I like to drink, and I have a strong head; I relish the mild humming in my temples aroused by seven or eight gins. It never interferes with my concentration on the revelations of my usually inhibited fellow associates, both male and female, as they open up under the influence of alcohol. This sounds as if I were spying on them, but it is more than that. A law firm becomes the bulk of one’s life if one gives oneself to it—and one must do that to get on—and it is only sensible to want to know all one can about one’s own life. We always start by talking shop at these parties, but after a few drinks we get on to personalities, and that is when I learn things. And why not learn things? What kind of a sot would want to spend his life in a pit before a lighted stage and never go behind the scenes?
Glenn at last took Alice away from me into another room. He had drunk a lot; he may have tried to pinch her, I don’t know. He has rather a thing about her, but Alice can take care of herself, and she never bothers me with these things. But when the guests had at last departed, and the Deanes and Services sat down to hamburgers and red wine, Lynne gave my poor wife some undeserved dirty looks.
Our topic of discussion was Paul Merton, one of the tax partners, a handsome, youthful-looking man still on the sunny side of fifty, who was thought to have jeopardized a career launched twenty years back with his marriage to a senior partner’s daughter, by his leaving her now for a young female associate. His unfortunate wife was an object of pity among the partners and scorn among the clerks. The topic was of inexhaustible interest to the entire office family—with the exception of Alice.
“It shows there is something stronger than ambition, after all,” Glenn observed. “As a young man Merton would swallow any shit to get ahead. But in the end Eleanor’s huge ass and stringy tits proved too much for him. He had to find something gamier.”
I dared not look at Alice. Glenn was always crude, but after drinking he became impossible.
“Was it that his ambition had its limits?” I inquired. “Or simply that it had been achieved? For what can his elders and betters do to him now?”
“They can block him from being senior partner.”
“I wonder. How long are these things remembered? And Mrs. Merton is a born loser. People don’t sympathize forever with losers.”
“She’s served her purpose and now can be cast aside,” Lynne Deane commented grimly. “Merton’s like a husband in old China selecting a concubine. I suppose his wife is lucky not to be thrown down a well.”
“He’s even making her go out to Reno for the divorce,” her husband added. “Because he’s too busy to take the time. That’s really rubbing the old girl’s nose in it.”
“Then why does she do it?” Alice demanded indignantly. “Has she no pride? Or if there has to be a divorce, why can’t she get it right here for adultery?”
“As I certainly should!” Lynne cried, glancing across the table at her husband. “If I found myself in her shoes!”
“Why, Lynne,” I remonstrated gently, “we thought you supported Glenn in everything.”
“Not in that department! It’s hard to imagine any woman crawling so low. Do you suppose Merton has something on her?”
“You mean, does she have a lover?” Glenn demanded with a hoot. “Another associate? Surely that would revive my flagging faith in the supreme force of ambition. For if Paul could bring himself to Eleanor’s mattress twenty years ago without gagging, think what kind of a boar it would take to mount her today!”
“No, no, she gave in for the good of the firm,” I hastened to explain, uneasily aware that Alice was perilously close to an explosion. “The good lady did not want the partnership that bore her father’s proud name to be mixed up in a sordid domestic relations case.”
“A case of being too proud to fight?” Lynne sneered.
“Or was it really to do her poor bastard of a husband in,” Glenn suggested. “What could more appeal to his outraged partners than the spectacle of a wronged wife bearing her woes in dignified, stately silence? And not stooping to besmirch the office they all adore? May the good Lord spare me from the malice of so sanctimonious a bitch!”
“I really cannot sit here and hear you say such horrible things about poor Mrs. Merton!” Alice had at last erupted; her face was paler than ever, but her eyes glowed. “To me she has always been far too good for the lawyers with whom she has had to pass her life. She strikes me as someone high and noble, a kind of proud Roman princess in the late days of the Empire. She might have had to oblige her imperial father by giving her hand to a barbarian chief, an Alaric or Attila, whose bloody sword was needed to bolster his tottering throne. Oh, it’s very fine! And how is she rewarded? Just as one might expect from a vulgar and ruthless killer!”
Alice seemed elated; even she, usually so abstemious, was feeling the effect of the prolonged cocktail period.
“So that’s how you see us all,” Glenn mused. “As a bunch of barbarians. Well, I guess we’ve asked for it.”
“Well, do you ask for anything else?” Alice continued boldly. “Do you ever ask yourselves, ‘Is there a life after partnership?’ What will any of you have at Merton’s age but some little cutie?”
“And Glenn damn well isn’t going to have that!” Lynne cried hoarsely.
“Who’s going to stop me, I’d like to know?” her husband roared. “If that’s all the reward there is, I’ll be blowed if I don’t have it! Don’t worry, Lynne. We’ll get a young gladiator for you. We’ve agreed those barbarians can stomach anything.” Here he shouted with laughter, and his poor wife was obliged to take it as a joke. “But what was so great about your Romans, Alice? Think of all those banquets and debauches!”
As Alice’s eye involuntarily turned to the living room with the unremoved litter of the cocktail party, Lynne, finding an object on which she might vent her wrath, cried out, “Are you comparing our party to a Roman debauch, Alice?”
But it was not necessary for Alice to reply. Glenn, who had for some time been becoming angrier with his wife, decided to bat her down.
“Holy God, Lynne, you don’t presume to compare your squalid little suburban cocktail affair with the glorious decadence of the lords of the ancient world! Wake up, woman, and try to see what I am faced with, day after dreary day! Forgive me, my friends, if I embarrass you, but there are moments when I cannot but scream at age and custom for not withering or staling my wife’s infinite middle-classitude!”
Lynne, her hands on her mouth, stumbled from the room, and we heard her heavy steps and sobs as she stamped upstairs.
“She’ll sleep it off and be fine in the morning,” Glenn assured us casually. Alice at this retired in disgust to the guest room, which was on the main floor, protesting that she, too, was tired.
Glenn loved to sit up late, drinking whiskey, as did I. Besides, I had my plan. While I now proceeded to relate to him the results of my analysis of our firm, department by department, he remained very still and somber. From time to time his hand would, as if automatically, raise the dark drink to his lips.
“And what is your deduction from all of this?” he demanded at last.
“That the firm is on a downward path that is probably irreversible unless both the present and immediately future managements are replaced. And managements are not disposed to replace themselves. Of course, the decline could be long. It could be like the Roman Empire of which we were speaking. But declines have a way of accelerating.”
“They do indeed. And when you and I are partners we’ll be too junior to arrest this one.”
“Precisely.”
“So we’re in the wrong firm. That’s great. Where do we go from here? The big firms won’t employ laterally. They like to train up their own partners. I suppose we could find a corporation. Or even a smaller firm.”
“Or
start our own.”
Glenn took a deep breath; he was too concerned now even to swear. “Go on.”
“There are fifteen associates working on the Celebes antitrust case. The consent decree is due any day now. The firm won’t lay them off—it’s too gentlemanly for that—but we know there isn’t enough work for them all, and some are bound to be looking around. I think we might line up the whole bunch.”
“And they’re the cream of the firm!”
“Except for thee and me.”
“But what about the cost of a new firm? The library, the computers, the space. Do we get all that from a bank?”
“No. From Peter Stubbs. If he joins us, and I think he will. He got millions from his old man. I’m sure he’ll stake us.”
“Jesus! You have got it worked out.”
“But I’ve told no one. You’re the first. I want you to think it over closely in the next week. If we decide to strike it must be worked out in advance: just what associates will go with us and what clients we can take. But I’ll tell you one thing. I think we can start with a promise of one major suit for Atlantic Rylands. It should pay two years’ rent.”
Glenn whistled. “What will Blakelock say? I’d hate to be the laundress who gets his underpants after he gets that message.”
“Blakelock is going to yell his head off. He’s going to shriek and scream about treason and honor. They all will. But they’ve had their chance. They’ve taken our lives for eight years, night and day, and now they offer us a place on the bridge of a sinking vessel. If they would allow us to be the pilots, even now, I might stay. But no—we must go down with them. It’s sauve qui peut!”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me, pal,” said Glenn, rising to replenish his glass. “I’m not in the least concerned about those old farts. I agree that anything they get, they’ve begged for. But you’re going to have a hell of a row with Alice, unless I very much miss my guess. She worships old Blakelock. She was telling me so only tonight.”
“Alice will certainly be a problem. But she will be only my problem. And perhaps my only one. And she’ll have to go along in the end. What else can she do?”
Glenn and I wrestled with our project into the small hours. I continued to enjoy the prospect intensely. Indeed, I felt so excited at one point I had to go out to the porch to cool my flushed countenance in the night air. Now why should I have derived such pleasure at the prospect of putting into action a plan that might backfire and result in my finding myself not only unemployed but unemployable? Have I ever been one to court danger? No! Certainly not if there is danger of death. One of my nightmares as a boy was that I was living in the age of dueling and passing a sleepless night before having to meet my adversary in a deserted park on a chilly dawn and risk a bullet through my heart because he had chosen to misconstrue an innocent joke at a party. Whenever things go badly in real life I try to console myself with the thought that at least I am not being burned at the stake or eaten by big cats in an arena or shivering in a trench full of vermin in the hell of the first world war. I have an imagination easily inflamed by horrors. But when the penalty is not physical and where there is a reasonable chance that victory in the game will go to the player who is most skilled, then I find it high and exhilarating sport to gamble for high stakes.
When I went at last to bed I found Alice awake and reading.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I feel I’ve been unfair to you. You work hard and then come home to face my preaching. And when we come out here and have to stay through that ghastly party, I don’t know why I assume it’s all so much harder on me than you. Of course, you have to do these office things, and of course you don’t enjoy them any more than I do! But you don’t get snippy with Lynne Deane; you have the patience of an angel!”
As I went to the bathroom to get into my pajamas I reflected that the last thing I was going to do was to admit to Alice that I had enjoyed the “ghastly” party. I was going to need every bit of credit that I had with her; I couldn’t afford to waste a smitch.
“Don’t worry about Lynne,” I told her as I emerged. “I thought you were very patient with her. God knows she is impossible. And of course you were fine with Glenn; he was ogling you all night. That’s what peeved her.”
“He’s much worse than she is, really. She’s coarse and ill-tempered, but her heart’s in the right place. But he’s mean, Bob; he really is!”
“Anyway, I thought you looked stunning. You were certainly the belle of the ball.”
“Oh, darling, you’re being ridiculous. And I love it!”
Alice was in one of her melting moods, anxious to make up to me for all her criticisms, seeking, as she sometimes did, to drown her doubts and misgivings about me in her memories of the blue-eyed idealist she thought she’d married. I knew that I should have to make love to her, and although I was tired and wished we could put it off till the next night, she was indubitably beautiful and so ready for love that she wouldn’t mind a performance somewhat impaired by whiskey.
So we made love, and it was well enough. Why does Alice think it is cold and hard of me to understand her and wonderfully passionate of her to misunderstand me? If she would only stop to study the nature of love she would realize that I do love her. And that there may even be some doubt about what she feels for me.
6
GLENN AND I were agreed that we would have to move quickly to win over the four key associates of the group of fifteen that we proposed to detach from the firm. By the time we should have secured this vital quartet the project would have begun to leak, and it would then be essential to have an airtight plan, including the necessary financing, before the firm began to fight back.
It has gone so far with astonishing speed and luck. Atlantic Rylands has privately promised me a large retainer, and Glenn has received commitments from two important corporations. Three of our four key associates have responded with enthusiasm, and the fourth, Peter Stubbs, has agreed to give it serious thought. Stubbs, of course, is actually a cornerstone of my plan. He has recently inherited four million dollars from a toy manufacturing father, and Glenn and I have elected him to be our banker.
What about the morality of our lining up clients while still acting as supposedly loyal clerks of our old firm? Without question it is improper, but this gives me no trouble at all. It is universally done, and no one who knows the practice of law in America today carps at it. It is considered bad for a partner to do it—though this rule, too, is widely breached—but we are not partners. I have been virtually promised a partnership, it is true, but that is not the same thing. Any more than an engagement is a marriage.
Since entering the above I have had my crucial lunch with Peter Stubbs. It also went well. Peter is a dark, moody, rather handsome man who regards the world with an apprehensive eye that seems to be always questioning its motives. Were people after his money? Did they really respect him for himself? Would he not have to be tougher than the next guy to keep the next guy from finding him too soft? I suggested that he needed a cocktail, knowing that he would not take one. Then I ordered one for myself, so that I would be on a lower level. I wanted him to feel superior.
“If you made partner at Hoyt Welles, Pete—and you would, I’m sure—aren’t people going to say you made it because of your old man’s estate? But if you come with us, they’ll know you’re on your own.”
“How is that true if I take Dad’s estate with me? Be frank, Bob, isn’t that the real reason you want me?”
“No! Leave the estate with Hoyt Welles. Everyone knows Al Hoyt was your dad’s oldest friend as well as his lawyer. It would create a smell to take it away from him.”
Peter now allowed a frank surprise to permeate his almost sullen expression of habitual reserve. “You mean you’d give up that fee?”
“We’re planning a brand-new firm with brand-new business. We don’t need a bunch of moldy old estates and trusts!”
“And you want me for … for…?”
“For yourse
lf, old boy!” I finished for him exultantly. “For the smart, hard-hitting shyster that you are.” I reached over now to strike him smartly on the shoulder.
It was really too easy. Peter’s gratitude was almost pathetic. I shall not even have to ask him to buy the library now, or pay the first year’s rent. When I tell him to sign, along with the other new partners, our loan application to Citibank, he will at once see the advantage of becoming his own creditor on easier terms.
“Bob, I believe we’re going to be everything you say!” he exclaimed. “I think I will have that drink, after all.”
We now have six Hoyt Welles associates, including Glenn and myself, “pledged” and our first year’s expenses assured. When will the thing begin to leak? For when it does, it will rapidly become a flood that may sweep us all away before we’ve signed up the other eight. But it won’t, Deo volente. That is, assuming there’s a God and he wills it.
Well, it is out now. And it has gone well enough, in one respect, if horribly in another. Horribly for me, anyway.
I learned of the discovery of our “plot” from Blakelock himself. I still don’t know how he discovered it but I suspect Glenn Deane’s loud mouth.
I heard the unusual click of my door being closed and looked up to see my boss standing before me. His face was drawn, but there was an odd twinkle in the eyes that he fixed on me. I had to infer that it was a sinister twinkle.
“May I sit down, Robert?” He did so without waiting for my answer. “I have come to congratulate you on the formation of your new firm.”
“I wonder if you can possibly understand why I had to do this to you, sir.”
“Oh, I think I can.” Blakelock removed his pince-nez and rubbed his eyes forcefully, as if he were trying to dislodge some intrusive object beneath the eyelids. “I have given the matter considerable thought since I learned of it two days ago. I even took yesterday off to play golf alone and ponder it. You younger men must see me, I concluded at last, not only as a man who is out of date but who is a hypocrite. You hear me invoking the ideals of the past while trying to garner the profits of the present. It is not an attractive picture, and I at first resisted it. I think I even at last rejected it. But that is not the point. The point is: do you honestly believe it to be true? And I concluded that you do. So that putting together a law firm in petto out of our employees while ostensibly working loyally for us becomes the only logical course of action to protect yourself and others.”
Diary of a Yuppie Page 4