Gabe shut Sarah's door and crept to the other end of the hall. Inside the master bedroom, the window fan was on full blast. The whirring white noise dominated the room, masking anything that could wake his wife. She was always asleep beneath the fan in summer when he came home from work, and tonight was no different. He stood next to his king bed with the six-hundred-thread-count sheets and the goose-down pillows and the Italian velvet throws Rachel had spent a fortune on at ABC Home and Carpet. He didn't know how long he stared at his wife, wondering what he should do. He couldn't help himself from wanting her more now because she obviously didn't want him.
Rachel was snoring lightly, which she only did after a few glasses of wine. She rolled over, and he saw that she was sleeping naked, her round hips and toned thighs falling out of the sheets. She worked out every day and looked half her age.
"You awake?" Gabe whispered. He wanted to get on top of her, to sleep with her, strangle her, smother her pretty face in an expensive pillow, tell her he knew while she begged for air. But he was beginning to doubt his desire to blame her.
He smiled at the innocent look on his wife's face when she slept, her lower lip pouting like a child. Her face looked almost the same as when he'd met her at Binghamton. The only differences were the crow's feet around her green eyes and the sag of loose skin on her neck.
She was a freshman when they had first met, hoping to get degrees in art and philosophy. Gabe was a fifth-year senior defender on the Colonials soccer team that had won the school's first conference championship. She had gone to a soccer game with a few friends to avoid studying for an exam and to watch boys run around in shorts, and there was Gabe, the toughest guy on the field. He'd seen her watching him and, afterwards, asked her to go see a movie. Standing over her now, Gabe thought of that first date. He'd never forget it. They saw The Way We Were, and Rachel was wearing a flower above her ear, in the silk rope of her hair. He couldn't stop looking at her in the theatre, and she kept telling him he looked like Robert Redford. She was a wonderful liar. Better than he knew apparently.
They spent the rest of the year together, and, when Gabe had gone to Fordham, Rachel followed him to Manhattan. She transferred to Fordham as a sophomore and studied art history and took care of him while he slaved away for three years in law school. She did his laundry, made sure he ate well, though the only thing she could cook was spaghetti. She'd kept him going, and they were an inseparable team then.
But now. Now another man's pants were on the floor, and she was sleeping soundly, contently, never worrying for a moment that her self-absorbed husband would ever come home.
He sighed, reaching out for her hair.
"Rachel," was the only word he managed to get of his mouth, but she didn't hear him.
Thank God. He didn't know what he would have said.
He quietly collected the man's clothes from the floor and slipped out of the bedroom.
5 (12 months ago)
* * *
Micah stumbled on the wet floor between moving boxes. The window-unit air conditioner was rattling like a machine gun and sweating condensation on the warped hardwood. Low rays of sunlight passed through the soot on the windows, brightening the wall above the mattress he'd just made up with a new set of sheets.
He shook like an addict with the DTs, knotting his tie, staring at the mirror next to the bed. The Firm had paid for his moving expenses and the broker who had found this fourth-floor walk-up studio with a view of East Midtown and the Revlon Lipstick Building. The apartment was near the subway, and all Micah had to do was walk a few blocks and take the "S" or shuttle train west, across 42nd Street, and he'd be in Times Square in minutes.
He tried calling Ashley's cell phone, hoping to hear her voice, but the call went straight into voice mail. He sat on a brown plaid sofa he'd brought from law school, stared at the TV without cable yet, watching the only channel he could get with an antenna, a Spanish language network. It was only 8:00 a.m., still an hour and a half to kill. He couldn't sit still and decided to walk around his neighborhood, past the sushi restaurant, the Taiwanese laundry, the Lebanese bodega, the Indian adult video store, the English pub, the Ukrainian nail salon, the Greek diner.
"New York's version of A Small World," he mumbled.
He barely noticed the sonic assault of Third Avenue traffic and Con Ed jackhammers as he made sure he was walking in the right direction. Skyscrapers shaded one side of Lexington Avenue and kept him from drenching his suit. But the massive piles of garbage bags oozed in the curbside swelter. The stench turned his empty stomach. He followed the morning stampede of people descending into the cavernous subway tunnel. The smell of thousands of perfumes and deodorants in the waiting crowd melded with urine on the platform. Micah covered his nose, looked around at all the faces. How could they not notice that some bum had just emptied his rotten bladder into a trashcan? Everyone was looking down at cell phones and handhelds, waiting for the train. Like the hardened stable hands who swept out horse stalls back home.
Micah wedged himself into the next S train, barely able to breathe in the crush of bodies. After a few claustrophobic minutes, the train pulled into Times Square, and he emerged from the subway into the human sea flowing over the sidewalks. On Broadway, he stood outside of the Sullivan & Adler office tower and admired the silver façade.
He took a deep breath, walked through the chilly lobby, exchanging a nod with a security guard at a black marble counter. There were modern art canvases on the walls, and Muzak piping in from somewhere in the thirty-foot ceilings. People with ID cards buzzed their way past automatic security turnstiles.
Micah tried to follow them, but set off a beeping alarm and flushed with embarrassment.
"Your ID please." An elderly security guard with the name tag, "Edgar," hovered like a store owner eyeing a shoplifter.
"I don't have one. It's my first day. My name's Micah Grayson."
"Uh-huh, you look like a greenhorn." The Security Guard stepped back behind his counter, eyed a sheet of paper. "New Attorney Orientation is on 37, Reception, young fella."
"Thanks." Micah hung his head, quickly slipped through the turnstile.
Lenore Spetzel met him at the thirty-seventh floor elevator bank.
"You're the first one here," she said. "Most lawyers in the New York office, especially litigators, don't come in too early." She led him to a fluorescent classroom with a towering view of West Midtown. Lenore reminded him of the nice church ladies from home who always pulled their hair back so tight they looked like plastic surgery victims. She even wore the church lady uniform, although with a little more designer panache. A plain dress suit with a high collar and a gaudy gold brooch on the lapel. She chattered and pointed out the desks, PCs, and flat panels facing a dry erase board.
"You look worried, Micah. Don't be. We're not a sweatshop anymore. You're going to love working here."
He confessed, "I'm as jumpy as a long-tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs."
Lenore Spetzel cackled. "I've never heard that one before. Very quaint."
A dozen other new lawyers began trickling in, shaking hands, joking like frat brothers. They must have "summered" together at Sullivan & Adler and gotten their offers as law students. None of them said anything to Micah.
"Good morning, everyone, and welcome to orientation," Lenore said, moving to the dry erase board. "As you know, Sullivan & Adler is listed in The National Law Journal as one of the most prestigious law firms in Manhattan and the world, with two thousand lawyers and offices from New York to Rome to Hong Kong. This year, the Firm was recognized as the top merger and acquisition firm in Manhattan…"
While she spoke, a mustached man in his seventies with a pearl-handled cane entered the room slower than Plate Tectonics. He shuffled toward Lenore, waived his cane to say hello. The young lawyers watched him amble up to the front of the room with a nose ruddier than Ted Kennedy's and an opulent three-piece suit hanging off a decrepit frame.
Lenore said, "Before I
defer to Mr. Sullivan, one quick note about perks. . ."
As she droned on, Micah stared at The Jerome Sullivan. The old coot who looked like a vaudeville magician was actually a legal titan. Micah hadn't recognized him because the picture on the Firm's website must have been from thirty years ago.
"If you work ten hours in a day," Lenore continued, "the Firm provides a sixty dollar allowance for dinner. And if you work after eight at night, the Firm gives you a car service home. But guess what? You must have a client charge or you won't get dinner or a ride home. We'll talk more about client billing later. Now, it's my pleasure to introduce the 'Sullivan' in Sullivan & Adler, Mr. Jerry Sullivan."
The other associates clapped and Micah was late to follow, clapping by himself.
"Thank you, dear." Sullivan kissed Lenore's hand and scanned the room slowly, resting his palms on his cane. "They get younger every year. All right, boys and girls, pop quiz. What's the most important thing a lawyer should know? A hundred bucks for the right answer."
The room was deathly silent until one overenthusiastic associate raised her hand. "Never reveal your client's confidences?"
"No." Sullivan chuckled. "The most important thing a lawyer needs to know is . . . input your time at the end of each day. I'm going to repeat it. Bill your time. Don't wait until a few days later or you'll forget it. When you wake up in the morning and you think about a case, bill your time. If you're on the train to work and a thought pops into your head, bill your time. If you're on the toilet. . ." He grinned beneath his dyed-black mustache. ". . . write it down on tissue paper."
Micah laughed along with everyone else in the room.
"Now. . ." Sullivan picked up a new red book, waved it like Billy Graham waved the New Testament. ". . . we have a nice computerized system to bill clients, but you should still use this standard time diary to record your billables every day. This is your Bible from now on because, if the system goes down, we go to the books. And if you don't write your time in the books, then we can't bill the clients." He squeezed his cloudy eyes at the young lawyers, and Micah felt as if he were looking directly at him. "And if we can't bill the clients, then no one gets paid. 'No one' means you. Got it?"
After Sullivan limped out of the room, Lenore gave a long history of the Firm and its office procedures before passing out piles of forms to fill out. Two hours later, Micah wandered down a hallway, trying to find his new office, sifting through direct-deposit bank forms, tax forms, 401K plans, and HMO and dental policies. He'd have to sign up to take a Westlaw class, a fitness center tour, and a sexual harassment quiz, everything in short order. At the top of the stack of papers was a typed memo that read: Micah Grayson, General Litigation, Office 42-07. Senior Associate Liaison: Raphael Bianco. Partner Mentor: Stu Greenbaum. There was also a handwritten note: Please call Raphael Bianco for your first assignment on a new matter.
Micah found his undecorated office on the forty-second floor and admired the name plate on his door. He practiced reclining at his desk, spinning in his chair, taking in his view of Times Square. Then he surfed online, finding the Firm's website, private intranet, and a digital photo album of the lawyers. Micah clicked on a photo of Raphael Bianco, his portrait grim like a mafioso with a head of slick dark hair. Micah thought he looked cool, like a character from The Sopranos.
"It's Christopher Moltisanti."
Micah clicked Bianco's profile to find his phone extension.
6 (12 months ago)
* * *
Raphael Bianco was looking over the rote responses of a fifty-eight page draft Answer and Counterclaims, shoeless smelling feet propped on his pig-sty of a desk. He was scanning the internet at the same time, distracted by exhaustion and A.D.D., and bored with drafting the same phrase over and over again: Denies all allegations in paragraph blank of the Complaint. His phone rang, and a familiar extension appeared on the caller I.D. screen.
He answered, "What's up, Elliott?"
"Hey, I need a break from this deal. What are you doing?"
"Drafting an answer for Vader. I've got a meeting with him on another case in about five minutes. Hey, you want my Knicks tickets for tonight?"
Without knocking, Raphael's secretary, Angel, walked in. She was a buxom Dominican girl. Raphael stared at her, listening to Elliott's voice on the other end of the phone babbling through the receiver.
Raphael said into the phone, "Why am I in the mood for two scoops of caramel vanilla right now?" He grinned at Angel's push-up bra.
"What do you mean?" Elliott's voice faded in the receiver.
"Hold on a sec, Elliott." Raphael covered the phone with his palm. "What's up, Angel? You must have fallen from the sky, baby."
"You got an eye problem," she said, curtly handing him a memo.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, if you keep staring at me, I'm gonna take your eye out."
He smiled and whispered, "Wanna get a drink later?"
She smirked. "Sure, Raphie. When you make partner."
"I don't think our love can wait." He watched Angel turn, flip her middle finger, and exit his office. He took his hand off the phone, said to Elliott. "I'd smack that ass so hard, CSI could lift my handprints."
"Raph, this is an office. Remember your last secretary? You can't-"
"Calm down, jackhole. She knows I'm just fucking around."
Raphael glanced at the memo that Angel had handed to him. It was the resumé of a new associate named Micah Grayson. "Holy shit, dude, my new mentee is from Kentucky."
Elliott said, "Another call, gotta go."
Raphael hung up. He leaned back in his chair, tried to exhale. A nice long nap would be good, but his couch was covered with Westlaw research and greasy boxes from a week's worth of pizza slices. A moment of exhausted calm hit him, his breathing like lead, eyelids fat curtains. He slowly walked to his doorway and stared at Angel's missile-shaped breasts as she bent over her desk in the secretary's quad and answered the phone. Raphael lingered, entranced, imagining her genuflecting like a good Dominican Catholic school girl and unzipping his pleated suit pants.
He went back inside his office and locked the door, fantasizing about Angel. His fist was bouncing furiously over his lap when a knock came at the door.
"Fuck… what? Who is it?"
"It's me," Angel said through the door. "Gabe Weiss's secretary called. They're waiting for you in the conference room next to his office. Raphael?"
"Tell them I'm coming," he said. And did.
$ $ $
Raphael washed his hands and went straight to a conference room on the top floor between Gabe Weiss's office and Jerry Sullivan's. Between Vader and the Emperor, he thought. He was surprised to find the door open and silence inside. A man and woman were sitting at one end of a twenty-foot long granite oval beneath a series of original cartoon sketches from The New Yorker. Jerry's wife had bought the sketches at a Christie's auction for a small fortune.
Raphael politely knocked twice on the door, then entered the room.
The first one to stand and shake his hand was a middle-aged blond in a French-cuff shirt and short navy skirt. He noticed her gold cuff-links were tiny war hammers.
"I'm Raphael Bianco," he said, "I work with Gabriel Weiss."
"Nice to meet you. Ani Panosian." She squeezed his hand hard. Raphael recognized her name now. She was an up-and-coming lawyer to the stars, usually representing white collar crooks, rap impresarios, and the occasional pro athlete who had the misfortune of being arrested in New York City when their concealed weapons accidentally discharged. She was once quoted as saying she'd never represent anyone in a Red Sox uniform, which got her a lot of press.
Ani gestured toward a black man, gangly like a praying mantis. "This is my colleague, Fred Holcomb, formerly of the Jets and Toronto Argonauts."
He stood up from his chair, about six foot six, enormous hand saluting hello.
"Hey, Fred." Raphael moved around to the other side of the table, facing the doorway. He sat down an
d felt a sudden shiver, realizing he was underneath an air vent. Gabe always ran hot and kept the room freezing cold.
Raphael said to Fred, "What position did you play?"
"Freddy played wide-out," Ani answered. "Back in the day, when I got him out of a few jams before he tore his ACL and retired. Right, Freddy?"
"Yeah," Freddy said in a surprisingly soft voice, "she hooked me up with the NYPD where I eventually worked the Polygraph Unit."
"Now he's in the private sector as a certified polygraph examiner, P.I., and expert witness."
Raphael noticed that the only life Freddy showed was in his stare, like keeping his eyes on an airborne football.
Gabe Weiss strode into the room, closing the door behind him. In his head, Raphael always played the "Imperial March" theme from Star Wars whenever Gabe made an entrance. Gabe wasn't carrying anything, except a pen in his shirt pocket. This time, Ani and Fred both stood deferentially and shook hands with Gabe.
Fred even said, "How do you do, Mr. Weiss?"
Gabe sat down at the head of the table between the visitors on his left side and Raphael on his right, hooking his thumbs under his suspenders. "Sorry I'm late. I had a litany of conference calls. The last one I was on, I dialed the wrong access code and ended up eavesdropping on a call where everyone was speaking Mandarin. But I only spoke Cantonese and Yiddish, so everyone was sufficiently pissed off."
Ani and Raphael laughed.
Fred smiled in his chair behind an open briefcase, typing on a Blackberry.
"Let's get down to business, Ani." Gabe tucked a strand of his slick hair behind his ear. "What's a nice criminal defense attorney like you doing in a dive like this?"
PLUMMET: A Novel Page 4