by Wan, Helen
The waiters came around to take our orders for either steak or salmon. Everyone got the steak except for Andrea Carr. When our entrées arrived, the steak was melt-in-your-mouth delicious—center-cut filet, cooked to rare perfection, served with the chef’s award-winning Béarnaise sauce. Appreciative murmurs were making their way around the table when, across from me, Caleb Sweeney raised his hand to flag down a retreating waiter. “Yes, sir?”
Harold Rubinstein, Gavin Dunlop, and Murph, who were busily arguing about the Yankees’ abysmal record this season, glanced over at Caleb.
“When you get a chance, could I get some A.1. sauce over here?” Caleb said.
“Excuse me?” asked the waiter.
Gavin Dunlop was staring at Caleb, his fork stilled halfway to his mouth.
“A.1. sauce. For my steak?” Caleb repeated, gesturing toward his plate.
“Sir,” began the waiter in a patient voice, “perhaps, if you don’t care for Béarnaise, we could offer you the black peppercorn sauce instead? The black peppercorn is also superb.”
Harold Rubinstein cleared his throat and waded in. “Yes, Caleb, I’d highly recommend that—I’ve had it myself, and it’s excellent.”
“No, I’d really just like some A.1.,” Caleb continued, oblivious.
Right then, though, in the split second after, you could see the corners of his mouth go slack, as the realization slowly dawned on him that somehow, without his even noticing it, something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. And it was too late to turn back. The peppercorn life raft had been thrown out and cruelly reeled back in.
The waiter sighed softly. “Very well. We’ll see what we can do.” He turned on his heel and walked away.
Harold and Gavin exchanged a brief, pointed glance.
Andrea, Nate, and everyone else at the table pretended to concentrate on their dinners. For several moments the only sound was the delicate clinking of forks on china dinner plates.
My heart was breaking for Caleb Sweeney. I realized that I was actually holding my breath. I wanted to reach out, give him a hug, and march him out of that tent and back to the safety of the NYU Law dorm where he was living that summer. I know, I wanted to tell him. It’s not fair, and it’s not easy. But you’ll learn. You just practice until it looks natural, that’s all. Fake it til you make it.
After a few minutes our waiter bustled back to our table clutching something in a neatly folded white cloth. He made a big show of setting the single bottle of A-1 sauce down on our table with a flourish. Then he hurried away without a word.
Caleb Sweeney looked shell-shocked. He sat staring at that bottle of A.1. sauce. I could see him actually turning over and over in his mind what he’d done, how he was going to recover from this later, how hard he’d have to work to make people forget. That is, if he ended up getting an offer from the firm at all.
Murph was engaged in a lively conversation with Harold and Gavin about the Yankees’ pitching so far this season. “Yeah, yeah, I know, they never should have traded DeSoto, but they’re making up for it with Sanchez. Seriously, look out for him later this season…” Still talking, without breaking stride, Murph reached out to the middle of the table, grabbed the A.1. sauce, uncapped it—still making his point about the Yankees’ latest trade—and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, proceeded to pour a glob of the salty brown stuff onto his beautiful, perfect center-cut filet.
After a moment, Caleb Sweeney—the redness already beginning to recede, just a little, from his face—reached out for the bottle and poured a river of the stuff onto his own plate. He polished off his steak in three minutes flat. He even managed to look cheerful again by dessert.
I took another sip of my wine and looked at Murph. Really looked at him. He was still talking baseball with Harold and Gavin, but now they’d moved on to the Mets. My head felt a bit light, and I let myself sink back in my chair and enjoy the warm buzz of the room and the soft candlelight that made everyone look like they were glowing, like old-fashioned movie stars in a black-and-white movie. I was happy.
There was something else I was feeling, something I couldn’t quite name at that moment if you were to ask me. When I looked back at Murph, he was looking at me. I was so full of appreciation for him just then. I suddenly wanted him to know that I loved what he’d just done for that kid. I flashed him a big warm smile. Murph glanced away from me, replying to something Harold Rubinstein had just said, but underneath the table, I felt him reach over and lightly pat my knee. It was a reassuring, brotherly pat. Just an I see you, too.
Then came a loud squawk at the opposite end of the tent. Dave Cavender, a tall, affable partner in Corporate Tax, was standing on a narrow raised platform, adjusting the mike stand. I’d heard that Dave Cavender was friends with Conan O’Brien from back when they’d been on the Harvard Lampoon together, and had never quite gotten over the fact that Conan hosted his own TV show while Dave had wound up a goddamn tax attorney.
Across from me, Pamela Karnow pushed back her chair and stood. “Excuse me, folks,” she said genially. “It’s showtime!” She threaded her way through the tables to join Dave Cavender up on the stage.
An expectant hush fell over the crowd. People angled their chairs toward the stage. Whistles and catcalls sprang from the tables down in front.
The annual Parsons Valentine Law Revue—a hallowed firm tradition—was a rare chance to laugh, let loose, and see your buttoned-up, straitlaced colleagues make fools of themselves in a way that was not only spectacularly public but also ordained by the firm.
Dave Cavender had been the official emcee of the Law Revue for the last three years, ever since the summer he’d unveiled a spectacularly hysterical short film he’d written, directed, and shot himself that spoofed The Godfather. He’d even managed to get Marty Adler to swivel slowly around toward the camera in his massive green leather chair, holding a cigar and a Scotch, and say in a low, gravelly voice: Never go against the firm, Dave. The firm is family.
“We’ve got a great show for you this year, folks! Great show!” Dave was up at the mike, wearing a top hat at a jaunty angle, holding both palms up in the air. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
Pamela Karnow stood next to Dave, beaming. She had donned a matching top hat and was holding a set of index cards and a PowerPoint clicker.
Offstage, Ann Trask was sitting at a small table with a sound system and speakers. I liked Ann Trask—even before I’d found out that she’d once nixed the Management Committee’s idea of making the cafeteria staff dress in traditional ethnic costume for “International Food Day.”
The lights dimmed. Pamela looked over at Ann and nodded, and she cued the music at full blast. I laughed, recognizing the first few notes of a cheesy pop song I hadn’t heard in years, something about a guy on a catwalk and being too sexy for—what? His pants? His shirt? I looked over at Murph. Too sexy, indeed. He laughed, too, and nudged my arm.
A video began to play. Pamela Karnow shouted into the mike, “And now, ladies, for your viewing pleasure, may I present—the men of Parsons Valentine!”
We whooped and applauded.
It was a Chippendales-style video calendar. The first image announced MR. JANUARY! followed by a beefcake photo of Lincoln Forster, a popular, lanky, redheaded Tax associate in his sixth year, whom everybody called Link. In the shot, Link was standing outside by the bronze corporate sculpture in front of the Parsons Valentine building, turning to the camera with a shy smile, fully dressed in a crisp shirt and tie, with his gray suit jacket hooked over one shoulder. He was adorable. The pose sort of made him look like England’s Prince Harry, and this was not exactly a bad thing.
The room erupted in laughter, whistles, and applause. Everyone was in hysterics. I glanced around, looking for Link Forster. He was sitting a few tables away, at a table crowded with tax partners and summer associates. His male colleagues were convulsing with laughter and clapping him on the back as Link grinned and blushed profusely.
The image
s on screen shifted. Phil Calabrese, a new lateral partner in Private Equity, was Mr. February. Phil had been photographed in his corner office, standing by the windows in a kind of power stance, feet planted widely apart, arms crossed over his chest, eyes boring into the camera lens with a challenging, I mean business expression. Actually, it was distinctly sexy.
Mr. March was some third-year Litigation associate I didn’t know, but Mr. April turned out to be none other than Murph.
I fell over laughing.
Beside me, Murph pretended to be insulted. “Come on, Yung, it’s not that funny.” But he was nearly doubled over in hysterics himself.
In a classic Murph move, he’d decided to camp it up for his photo, actually allowing himself to be photographed shirtless, emerging from a glassed-in shower, with damp hair and a white towel wrapped loosely around his waist. You could tell he was trying for a steamy, fuck me expression in the eyes, an effect that was spoiled by the huge goofy grin on his face.
I recognized the setting. Murph’s shower photo had been taken in the firm’s infamous “R&R suite” up on the fortieth floor—a pair of cool, dark rooms with cots and pillows, like in a school nurse’s office, and an adjoining bathroom with real bathing facilities. These rooms were provided for the “convenience” of Parsons Valentine attorneys pulling all-nighters in the office, to catch a wink of sleep or freshen up before a morning closing. But the suite had all the ambience of a prison cell, so being there felt less like R&R and more like detention. Luckily, I’d never had to avail myself of the Parsons Valentine shower facilities—I lived close enough to cab home in those silent, wee hours of the morning, take a fast shower in my own bathroom, blow-dry my hair, and change into a fresh suit and clean underwear before turning around and cabbing straight back to the office.
To the crowd’s disappointment, the slides stopped abruptly after Mr. October. As the end credits rolled and the lights came back up, Pamela Karnow returned to the mike.
“Hey, what gives?” a male Litigation partner heckled from the front row. “What about Mr. November and December?”
Pamela deadpanned, “Well, the plan was to have a different photograph for all twelve months, but unfortunately we were not able to locate twelve hot guys who actually work at our firm.”
At this, every single woman in the audience burst out laughing, cheering, and clapping. I let out an appreciative whoop.
“Amen, Pam!” somebody else hollered.
Murph leaned over to me, grinning, and stage-whispered, “Um, isn’t this, like, sexual harassment or something? There’s no way we could talk about any female attorneys like that!”
I shouted happily above the din, “Come on, Murph, can’t you take a joke?”
Pamela Karnow bowed dramatically and exited the stage. Dave Cavender returned to the mike, clapping.
“Thanks, Pam! I’ll try not to take it personally that I wasn’t asked to pose. I must have been away that week.”
The audience tittered appreciatively.
“Next, ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment, the musical stylings of Matt McCallum, Kyle Latham, and Hunter Russell!”
Murph and I hooted in delight.
“Oh, now this I’ve got to see!” he laughed.
“Hunter? Can sing?” I leaned over and elbowed Murph happily.
Harold Rubinstein glanced at us with a mock horrified expression. “Musical stylings of Hunter Russell?” he shouted over the noise of the crowd. “I think we should all be very, very afraid.”
Murph grinned, cupped both hands around his mouth, and chanted “Russ-ell!” at the stage.
The lights dimmed.
I was taking another sip of wine when I sort of felt, rather than heard, a low, excited murmuring, followed by a few barks of raucous laughter coming from a few tables behind ours. Beside me, Murph had a mildly shocked look on his face. “Oh, shit. Oh, no, they did not.”
I looked toward the stage.
I didn’t actually understand what I was seeing at first. Well, I mean I knew what I was seeing, but I didn’t really believe it. Hunter, along with Kyle and Matt, both fifth-year associates in the Securities Litigation group, were standing in a row onstage, next to a huge, old-school boombox stereo. Kyle and Hunter, arms crossed defiantly across their chests, their lips curled into insolent snarls, were both wearing dark, baggy tracksuits, ropes and ropes of gold chains around their necks, and dark glasses. Hunter wore a Lakers baseball cap turned to the side. Kyle had put on a do-rag and two ostentatiously fake gold-capped teeth, and he was holding something that looked suspiciously like—No! They wouldn’t, would they?—a crack pipe.
Matt McCallum was dressed in a black T-shirt and extremely baggy jeans, which he had pulled halfway down his ass, so that his abs and the top of his briefs were showing. He, too, wore tons of heavy gold jewelry and had given himself huge fake tattoos of Chinese characters up and down both arms. Like Hunter and Kyle, Matt was wearing dark sunglasses, but—unlike the other two—he had added a wig.
Matt McCallum had given himself fake cornrows.
“Yeeeeah, yeeeeah!” Matt screamed into the mike. “A’ight, fools! Me and my homies are in the house!”
Oh my God. This could only end badly.
I craned my neck and scanned the surrounding tables, looking for Tyler. It was too dark with the dimmed lights. I couldn’t see him. I turned back around and screwed my eyes shut tight for a second. Please, please don’t. I sent up a fierce, desperate prayer.
Onstage, Hunter knelt down and pressed a button on the boombox. In the next instant, a thick, pulsing beat shook the entire tent. We could feel the earth beneath us throb along with the deep, steady bass. Then a familiar swelling of orchestral strings began to sing up top, and I recognized the song immediately. It was a popular hip-hop song from years ago, the soundtrack to a Hollywood movie. It had been one of the earliest rap songs to cross genres and hit the top of the mainstream pop charts.
It was, in other words, a rap song that rich white people had heard of.
Hunter, Kyle, and Matt swayed their bodies to the beat of the low, steady bass, their palms open and swinging in front of them, swiping at the air in random arcs. Both Hunter and Kyle were comically awkward dancers, but then I realized that they were doing this deliberately, poking fun at themselves, purposely stepping on the offbeat, playing directly to the stereotype of clueless white guys attempting to rap.
But Matt McCallum seemed really into it. Matt was pumping his fists in the air and violently jerking his body in time to the music. He had a steely, pissed-off death glare in his blue eyes and a convincing sneer on his face. Matt McCallum was not going for comic effect. He was in character.
I strained to focus on the spoof lyrics they were belting out:
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I take a look at my life and see there’s not much left
’Cuz I’ve been working at this firm for so damn long,
Even my mama thinks my mind is gone
But we keep billing and billing, we can’t ever stop
If one of these days we want to wind up on top
You better watch how you’re talking, and watch how you’re walking
Or you and your homies might never get made
Now I’m the kinda guy the little homies wanna be like
Dinner at Luger’s, weekend house at the seaside
But ninety-hour weeks they go down kind of hard
They never told us any of this back in Harvard Yard!
Now Matt took a step backward to join Hunter and Kyle and, still swaying in unison and waving their arms in the air, the three of them launched into the chorus, singing at the top of their lungs:
Been spending most our lives, working in a partner’s paradise
Been spending most our lives, working in a partner’s paradise
Been spending most our lives, working in a partner’s paradise
We’ll keep spending most our lives, working in a partner’s paradise
Oh my God.
The tent felt like it was closing in on itself; the air around me was still and very close. Slowly, taking care to have a neutral expression on my face—as neutral as possible—I glanced around the table. Gavin Dunlop was grinning and nodding his head in time to the beat. Andrea Carr’s forehead was furrowed. She looked grim. I knew I liked that Andrea Carr. Caleb and Nate, meanwhile, just looked bored.
I snuck a look at Murph. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he had a quiet, thoughtful look on his face, but it was impossible to read. I couldn’t tell if Murph looked thoughtful because—like me—he was contemplating the idiocy of three incredibly privileged lawyers spoofing a song that was a lament to the destructive cycle of gangster violence in the inner city, or because he was thinking that he could have come up with way funnier lyrics.
As casually as I could, I looked around at the neighboring tables. Many of the senior partners were laughing and actually tapping their toes and slapping their thighs in time to the throbbing bass beat. Most of them didn’t seem aware that anything unusual was happening. A few younger lawyers did look uncomfortable, though, and just offstage, Pam Karnow looked downright pissed.
I finally spotted Tyler. He was seated a couple of tables behind me, with his arms hanging limply at his sides, making no eye contact with anyone at his table. The summer associate sitting next to him looked mortified. Tyler looked both sad and utterly unsurprised. I willed him to look over at me, but he didn’t.
I turned back toward the stage. I watched helplessly as Hunter, Kyle, and Matt anchored their arms about each other’s shoulders and belted out the next verse:
Power and the money, money and the power
Minute after minute, hour after hour
You accumulate your riches
Grab your hos and your bitches
Now that me and my homies got made
And so our wives get younger
Our cars get bigger
Gotta run a lot faster
To catch up with this n____!
Except they didn’t say “N____.” I couldn’t believe it. They actually sang the word that rhymes with “bigger.”