The Partner Track: A Novel

by Wan, Helen

  I shrugged. “It’s been great experience. SunCorp’s obviously a terrific client to work with.”

  Murph sat silently, looking from one to the other of us. He cleared his throat. “BOR-ing. Let’s not talk shop. Hey, Gavin, you coming out to the last softball game tonight?”

  “Can’t. Too much work.”

  “What? It’s the All-Stars game!”

  Gavin shook his head. “I really can’t. But hey, when you see Hunter, tell him congrats for me, will you?”

  Murph laughed. “For what? Being such a brilliant coach?”

  “Nah. I’m not talking about softball, for fuck’s sake. You didn’t hear the news?”

  “What news?” Murph said.

  “Hunter got the Great American Trust business. He actually won the damn beauty pageant. Beat out five other firms.”

  Murph hesitated before letting out a snort. “You’re shitting me.”

  Gavin shook his head. “Nope. Listen, no one was more surprised or happy than Marty Adler. We all thought Hunter was going to fuck this up for sure. But he’s smarter than he lets on.” He winked at me, letting me know he wouldn’t normally talk about other associates behind their backs, but this was Hunter, after all. Gavin looked at his BlackBerry. “Gotta run.” He left his tray with his half-eaten lunch on the table.

  Murph caught me staring at him and grinned. “That’s pretty fucking unbelievable, isn’t it? Who knew?”

  I laughed. “What, you mean about Hunter? Not that surprising. Maybe Hunter’s not as dumb as he looks. He did, after all, marry well.”

  “Heh. That’s true.”

  “Anyway, at least we were able to hold on to the client. I’m sure that’s got to be a relief. Even to Adler. Maybe especially to Adler.”

  “Yeah,” said Murph.

  I made sure no one was looking over at us. I lowered my voice and looked hard at Murph, forcing him to make eye contact with me. “So listen,” I said. “I’m not mad about last night, you know. I was just irritated because—”

  “Last night?” Murph asked. “Oh, yeah, right. Look, I’m sorry. I know I was being kind of a jerk.”

  I had to smile. “Forget it,” I said, and meant it. Then I added, “Just be glad you never have to deal with any of this diversity stuff. I mean, the whole thing … it’s just such a charade.”

  Murph smiled absently. “A charade. Right.”

  “Seriously. Take last night. So the evening starts with Adler making this big speech about how this firm embraces diversity, blah blah, and then he starts introducing all these big-deal speakers, right? Like Charlton James Randall, to give you an idea.”

  “Who’s Charlton James Randall?”

  I laughed and playfully nudged his arm. “Right. Who’s Charlton James Randall. You’re kidding, right?”

  He frowned. “No, not kidding. Who is he?”

  “Only one of the best constitutional scholars of our time. And if you ever read any critical race theory, his work’s everywhere.”

  “Must be my public school education showing,” Murph snapped. “Sorry.”

  “Whoa.” It was as if he’d stung me. “Um, hello? Where did that come from?”

  “Just forget it.”

  Murph was being very confusing.

  “And by the way, what public school education?” I said. “Last time I checked, Williams College cost about fifty grand a year.”

  “Not when you’re on financial aid, it doesn’t,” he muttered. “Anyway, I was talking about high school.”

  “I went to a public high school, too,” I said, not really sure why I felt compelled to tell him this, why I was so defensive all of a sudden. How did I get into this pissing contest? Were we going to argue next about who walked farther to school? Uphill in the snow?

  “Look, just forget I brought it up.”

  We were quiet for a moment, and then Murph said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m blabbering about. I’m just really tired. I’m operating on, like, three hours of sleep. The partnership vote is coming up. It’s a lot at once.” He reached for my knee beneath the table and gave it a squeeze. “Sorry, okay?”

  I brushed his hand away, looking around over my shoulder again. “Okay, okay.” This felt like we were on a chaperoned junior high school trip, this furtive, sneaking-around-at-work thing.

  We regarded each other silently. In that moment, I managed to convince myself that everything was normal between us. Murph was just in a mood. What we needed was to be able to really talk and be alone together again.

  “Listen, Murph,” I said gently. “We should make some plans away from the office. Just the two of us. What are you doing tomorrow night? Adler and I have the big pre-close meeting with SunCorp tomorrow, but after that, I’m going to be in the mood for some celebrating.” I looked at him hopefully.

  He seemed to be focusing somewhere else. “What? Oh. Tomorrow night. Sure. Okay.”

  I told myself we would straighten things out once we were in more intimate surroundings than the Jury Box. Murph and I were so good together—or could be—but we were best when we were one-on-one, away from the bullshit and corporate politics of the office. As soon as this SunCorp deal was over, as soon as I got off the Diversity Initiative, as soon as Murph and I were both officially invited into the partnership, we would simply take it from there. Everything would be just fine.

  FIFTEEN

  Justin yawned. “I think that’s everything.”

  We were sitting together at the long mahogany table in Conference Room 3201-A amid a sea of red, yellow, green, and blue tabbed folders. We’d just set them up into shiny metal accordion files and painstakingly arranged them two inches apart down the length of the conference table. Everything looked perfect. We were ready.

  As usual, I’d stayed late the night before, proofreading every pre-closing document to make sure it was flawless. To my surprise, Justin had stayed late with me. He didn’t leave. He didn’t even complain about not leaving. Even Justin had his moments.

  Justin and I had come in early this morning, printed off fresh sets of all the documents for review by the clients, and brought them up here to the conference room. Ted Lassiter and Mark Traynor would be here at eleven, and I would walk them through the closing agenda.

  As usual, Adler hadn’t prepared anything himself. He seemed perfectly content to sit back and have me take the lead.

  Stratton and Thornwell had sent back their comments on our redline a day earlier. Basically, their response was no to everything. They were still asking for a reduction in the termination fee, and they were still asking for a number of inexplicable exclusions from our MAC clause. We were at a standstill. This was what Marty Adler wanted me to explain to Lassiter.

  Lassiter, as always, greeted me like I was an old army buddy. “How’re we doing, Slugger?” he asked, as he clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Just fine, Ted. Good to see you.”

  Adler looked on, beaming like a proud father.

  We all took our places around the conference table, Justin sitting in an outer chair to my right.

  Adler began. “Okay, now Ingrid will take us through the term sheet page by page, Ted. She’s pointed out some curious positions Binney’s trying to take, and I want you to hear directly from the expert what we think the potential risks are here.”

  The expert was me. I felt my cheeks flush with pleasure.

  “Thanks, Marty,” I said. “Ted, Mark, if you’ll turn to page eight of the draft term sheet, I can take you through the first of the exclusions that Binney—”

  “Before we do that, Ingrid, what does it say here on the first page?” Ted Lassiter was peering closely at the document in front of him.

  Marty Adler leaned forward quickly, scrambling to put on his reading glasses. “Where are you looking, Ted?”

  “Right here, where it says ‘Purchase Price.’ There’s a typo. It says ‘$990.5 billion.’ That should say ‘million.’” He looked at Mark Traynor, who was looking puzzled, and kind of laughed.
But you could tell he was taken aback. “That’s a pretty damn big typo there.”

  “Heh. Yes, I’m sorry about that, Ted.” Adler looked sharply at me. “Ingrid? Can you please make sure to fix that immediately?”

  My mouth hung open, and I quickly closed it. There was no way this had been in the draft that Justin and I reviewed, together, last night. No way. I had meticulously proofed each line. I glanced over at Justin. He looked as dumbstruck as I did.

  But it was a basic rule never to argue or make excuses in front of a client.

  “Apologies, Ted, Mark. I honestly don’t know how that got in there. But we’ll correct that right away,” I said.

  “Yes, we’ll make absolutely sure that gets fixed,” Lassiter said, flipping the pages. “Now then, Ingrid, where’d you want us to look?”

  “Ah, if you could please turn to…” I fumbled through the document, looking for the section I’d had my thumb on before. The mishap had thrown me. My game was all off.

  “Page eight,” Justin stage-whispered to my right.

  “Right. Thanks. Page eight. Seller’s reps.”

  There was the sound of pages rustling as we turned to that section.

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “Here we are. Now, you’ll see that in the MAC clause, we’d wanted to say that—”

  Mark Traynor cleared his throat. He looked at me almost apologetically. “I hate to interrupt, but I think I see another typo here at the top of the section.”

  Adler shot me a look. A very dark look.

  “Oh, is there?” I chirped. My response to disaster like this was to be preternaturally cheerful. “Where?”

  “Right here, under the breakup fee.”

  “Oh, we’ll get to that. That was one of their asks. They want to increase it to five percent,” I said.

  “Five percent would be fine. But this says fifty percent,” Traynor continued. “A breakup fee of fifty percent of the purchase price, Ingrid?”

  Lassiter looked at me. “Ingrid, is this some sort of joke? What the hell’s going on here?”

  I felt like I was in a dream, standing apart from myself. I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn’t work. I tried to take a deep, calming breath. This is not happening.

  I looked at the page. Mark Traynor was right. Where it was supposed to say 5 percent—and where it had said 5 percent just last evening when I’d double-checked it—well, it now read 50 percent. Clear as day.

  “Gentlemen, I’m very sorry. There’s got to be something odd going on with our document retrieval system.” Adler was pacifying them, but staring me down. “We’ll get to the bottom of it right after the meeting. Again, I apologize.”

  Ted Lassiter was stony-faced. “Ingrid, this isn’t the kind of work I’ve come to expect of you.”

  “I know it isn’t, Ted. And I’m not quite sure what to tell you. I looked at these documents myself, proofed each page last night, and I can assure you, these numbers reflected the deal correctly.”

  “Let’s not waste time pointing fingers,” Traynor said. “Let’s just make sure these all get corrected before the next round goes to Binney.”

  The rest of the meeting proceeded without incident, but I was stammering and flustered the whole time. Even Justin gave me a holy shit, she’s totally losing it look before slinking around the corner and disappearing into his office.

  As soon as we walked the clients to the elevators and saw them out, Adler turned to me and barked, “My office. Now.”

  I followed him down the corridor, my hands curled into sweaty little fists.

  “What the hell was that?” he said, as soon as he’d closed the door.

  “Marty, I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I was here til midnight, and I proofread each and every line of that term sheet. Those mistakes weren’t in the last version I saved.”

  “Are you sure you actually saved the last version?” he snapped.

  “I back up my documents every thirty seconds.”

  He harrumphed.

  “And besides, you know me.” I struggled to keep my voice at a normal octave. “You know the quality of my work, Marty.”

  He glared at me. “I thought I did.”

  It was the worst thing he could have said to me. I felt just like a teenager, bringing home an F or a wrecked car, getting the I’m terribly disappointed in you speech from a revered parent. But Adler was not a revered parent. His love was conditional.

  “You know I’d never let a mistake like that slip by me.”

  “Well, it would appear you just did, Ingrid.”

  I thought for a moment. “What if someone else accessed the document and was screwing around with it?” I said slowly. “That’s possible, isn’t it?”

  Adler took off his glasses and pointed them at me. “What in the world are you talking about? Who could you mean?”

  “I—I’m not sure. I mean, I just don’t know how else this—”

  Adler shook his head and walked around behind his desk. “There’s no need to go making accusations, Ingrid. It’s very simple. I never want to hear about this kind of error happening again.”

  “It won’t. I’m sorry, Marty,” I said, already forgetting that I had promised myself I would stop apologizing for things that weren’t my fault.

  I walked zombielike back to my office, my head buzzing. My chest felt tight, like it was going to burst. Margo was just putting on her coat. “Oh, there you are,” she said. “Did you need anything else from me tonight?”

  “No, nothing, thanks. Have a good night, Margo,” I said, deflated.

  She paused, her coat half on, elbows raised. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? You’re white as a ghost.”

  “I’m fine, really. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Margo.”

  She turned around to stare at me as I disappeared inside my office and closed the door. I sat down, hard, at my desk. After a moment—after I heard Margo’s footsteps going toward the elevator—I picked up the phone and dialed Justin’s extension. No answer. Of course not! What a surprise. At the beep, I said, “Justin, Ingrid. Can you come to my office as soon as you get this? It’s five forty. Thanks.”

  I sat there and stared blankly out the window.

  I did not make these kinds of mistakes.

  I’m not saying I wasn’t capable of making mistakes—of course I was, I was only human. What I mean is that I physically did not allow myself the room to make mistakes of this sort. Not when I had come so far and worked so hard. Not when I was finally this close.

  I reviewed the events of last evening. This just wasn’t possible. It wasn’t technically possible. Justin Keating and I had stayed til midnight working in my office. Together, we had personally proofread each and every line of those goddamn documents before leaving for the night. I had turned off my computer and locked my office door behind me. I had double- and triple-checked them to make absolutely sure. In my eight, almost nine years as a lawyer, I had never—never, not once—allowed a document to go out the door with a glaring error like that staring me in the face.

  It’s not that I thought I was perfect. It would simply never occur to me to allow myself the luxury of failing. When other people failed, they failed alone. When I failed, I let down everyone I had ever carried on my back. I failed all of them.

  And I was sick with the burden. I was collapsing under its weight.

  I was sick and tired of saying yes to everyone but me.

  ENOUGH.

  I swiveled back around to my desk. I clicked on the icon for the firm’s internal document management database. Entering my username and password, I searched for “Project Solaris Draft Term Sheet.” Project Solaris was the firm’s internal code name for the SunCorp deal. This was Corporate Department protocol for every major transaction, for purposes of confidentiality.

  The file appeared on my screen, and I clicked on “Document History.” I looked up the last users’ names, expectant, holding my breath. As if—what? What was I loo
king for? I didn’t know, exactly. I was suddenly Nancy Drew and John Grisham rolled into one, waiting for an aha! moment—the breakthrough clue. The music would swell, the mystery would unravel. Once again, I would be the hero of my own tale. I was used to this. It was the starring role that had found me.

  When you stuck around at a dysfunctional, gossipy workplace like Parsons Valentine for as long as I had, and when you stood to gain as much as I did, there were plenty of people who might hold a grudge. Maybe Justin really resented me for having bossed him around all summer. Maybe Hunter hated that I was on the Diversity Initiative and drawing attention to his crazy racist skit. I didn’t know. But I wasn’t really one for conspiracy theories.

  I checked the electronic document history and found—with equal parts relief and dismay—that, sure enough, the document had last been opened by user isyung yesterday evening at 11:44 P.M.

  No one had been screwing with the file. No one was out to get me. I had no one to blame but myself.

  What I now had was cause to doubt myself … and whether I really wanted to be here, doing this.

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head all the way back against the top of my swivel chair. A very unpleasant, very unnerving thought had begun to develop in my mind, like a Polaroid, and I had been trying to force it out, to keep the image from coming into focus. There it was, though, lumpy and misshapen, but still coming into view. Had I somehow done this to myself?

  I was not going to allow my subconscious to sabotage myself, it was that plain and simple. It was of absolute importance—it was crucial—that nothing more go wrong on my watch between now and the announcement of partnership decisions next week. I was so, so close. And I did not have the luxury of giving up.

  My phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID screen and saw that it was Murph.

  I grabbed up the receiver before the first ring finished. “Hey.”

  “Hey. So. You celebrating yet? How about a drink? I can be ready to leave in five minutes.”

  Something about the juxtaposition of the SunCorp meeting disaster with Murph’s breezy tone broke my heart a little.

  “Not celebrating yet,” I said quietly. I heard my own voice catch at the end. “Actually, things didn’t go so well today.”