Practice Makes Perfect

by Carsen Taite

  Grace smacked her hand away. “Stop it. I know where I’m going. Aren’t you supposed to be concentrating on the pitch?”

  Campbell started to spout off a sharp retort, but Abby’s hand on her shoulder stopped her.

  “We got this,” Abby said, her voice sure and calm.

  “Sorry,” Campbell said, wishing she was as relaxed as Abby seemed. “This is a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal, but Abby’s right,” Grace said. “We got this. We’re as prepared as we could possibly be, and you’ll be your usual rock star self once you get started.”

  Grace was right, at least about the prepared part. Between the three of them, they’d managed to put together a sleek presentation that was custom-tailored to Braxton Keith and his board. Abby had prepared an interactive multimedia presentation, and Grace had thoroughly researched every one of the board members so they could incorporate key points that would touch on their individual concerns. While the overall composition of the board tended to lean toward stuffy rather than hip and trendy, they’d come up with a plan of attack that combined traditional litigation strategy with innovative ideas that Campbell hoped would please the lot. “You’re right. We do have this. Let’s go be brilliant.”

  The Leaderboard campus was hipster deluxe. On their way from the parking lot to the front door, they passed a food truck serving third wave coffee and artisanal donuts. A small crowd of twenty somethings hung out by the truck waiting on their orders. Campbell stood in place and stared at the truck. She remembered reading something about it during their night of research, but whatever it was had gotten lost in the jumble of ideas she’d assembled for the pitch. “Hang on a second,” Campbell said to Abby and Grace who were a few steps ahead. When they turned back, she pointed at the truck. “Donut?”

  Abby stepped toward her and waved a hand in front of her face. “Deny your nature and look away from the donuts, dear one. After we’re done with the meeting, I’ll buy you all the donuts you want.” She rejoined Grace, and they started to walk toward the building.

  “Wait,” Campbell said. She knew they would think she was crazy, but her gut told her to go with it. “I have an idea.” Before they could protest, she walked over to the truck, happy to see there was only one person in line ahead of her. She watched carefully as dreadlocks surfer dude asked a bunch of questions about the recipes and the cooking method, and then selected both a bacon crusted Long John and a vegan apple fritter.

  The woman running the operation asked, “Separate bags?” to which surfer dude smiled and nodded.

  Campbell had a million questions. Was this truck here every day? Did surfer dude always get the same thing, and why the strange mix? Maybe he was buying the bacon one for a carnivorous chick for whom he had an unrelenting office crush. Or maybe he just liked an occasional taste of bacon with his plant-based breakfast. But more importantly, Campbell smelled fresh-made donuts, and donuts represented all that was good in the world.

  “Looking for something sweet or savory?”

  Campbell reined in her thoughts and looked up at the woman who looked slightly familiar. She stared for a moment, and although she couldn’t place where she might know her from, she did observe that she was surprisingly trim for someone who was surrounded by donuts on the daily. “I’d like a little of everything, please. Say, two dozen.”

  Donut lady pointed a pair of tongs at her and grinned. “You look like a woman who likes to try things.”

  What did that mean? Was donut lady flirting with her? Hell, she was cute and she had a truck full of donuts. For those reasons alone, Campbell was tempted to marry her on the spot. She smiled back at her future wife. “I’ve been told I’m adventurous.”

  Donut lady started boxing up various donuts, taking her time to select each one before she placed it in the box. Campbell glanced over her shoulder to see Grace and Abby standing behind her, looking impatient. Donut lady paused. “Are they with you?”

  “We’re here to perform an intervention,” Grace said. “Campbell, remember the time donuts almost caused you to fail your CivPro exam?”

  Campbell hung her head in mock embarrassment. “I do.” She looked up at donut lady. “I allowed a donut to almost ruin my future. I stopped for donuts on the way to our exam.” She motioned to Grace and Abby. “I did it for them, but instead of appreciating my good deed, they scolded me for almost being late for the test. Almost,” she added pointedly.

  “Oh sure, blame us,” Abby said. “I hate to break it to you, but as much as I’d love one of those chocolate cake rings of wonder, we’re actually going to be late if we don’t get moving.”

  In perfect timing, donut lady handed over the box, holding on for an extra few seconds before she released it to Campbell’s grasp and handed her a glazed donut nestled in wax paper. “For you. Pay me on your way out and I’ll give your friends here a couple of the chocolate cakes. I’d like your visit to be a good memory and not the tragic donut incident of the year.”

  “Deal. Wish us luck,” Campbell said, knowing her request was silly since donut lady probably didn’t have a clue why they were even there. Still, it made her feel good to ask. And she felt good about being here. For good measure, she took a bite of the gratis donut and moaned as the glaze and yeasty goodness melted on her tongue. She had her best friends by her side and a plan of attack that included a box of donut glory. What could go wrong?

  They’d barely made it into the lobby before Campbell’s rhetorical question got a real life answer. Jerry Stoltz was pacing in front of the reception desk looking like a bull in search of a matador to gore. Campbell handed the donuts to Grace and dodged Jerry’s moving form to get to the young receptionist who was somehow ignoring Stoltz’s antics. She spotted a large coffee cup from the donut truck on the desk with the word Prairie scrawled where the name would go and took a chance. “Good morning, Prairie. I’m Campbell Clark, here to see Mr. Keith.”

  No sooner was the word Keith out of her mouth before Jerry came to an abrupt halt inches away from her.

  “He’s busy.”

  Campbell inched forward, closing the already tight space between them, but instead of moving back like she’d hoped, Stoltz stood his ground. “I have an appointment,” she said.

  “So do I,” he growled.

  Campbell’s mind started spinning with possibilities. Was it possible Braxton had scheduled a meeting with his current counsel and the firm he was considering to take over at the same time? Were they supposed to fight to the death in a lawyer’s version of the Hunger Games? She wanted to ask Stoltz what he was doing here, but decided it was better to act as if she was nonplussed in order to demonstrate confidence.

  The receptionist was looking between them with a mildly curious expression, like she was going to wait until they’d worked things out between them, but when it became clear there was a standoff, she picked up the phone. “I’ll let Brax know you’re all here.”

  Satisfied she’d at least accomplished a truce, Campbell turned to join her friends, but stopped in her tracks when she spotted Wynne Garrity approaching from the other side of the lobby. When Wynne noticed her, she froze in place, and Campbell debated ignoring the sighting or facing it head on. She knew from her post reunion snooping that Wynne worked for the same firm as Stoltz, so chances were good she was here with him. With a glance at Abby and Grace, she walked up to Wynne to acknowledge their new status as rivals. “Hello again.”

  “Hello.” Wynne looked her up and down and nodded. “Guess you recovered from your reunion night fun.”

  Campbell hid a frown and injected her voice with what she hoped was a bright and cheerful tone. “Fun is not something you recover from. It’s something you embrace.” She jerked her chin at Jerry Stoltz who was pacing in front of the receptionist as if he could conjure Braxton with a high step count. “But I’m guessing if you work for that guy, fun is a foreign concept.”

  A shadow passed across Wynne’s face, and Campbell felt a twinge of regret for the sucker punch.
It wasn’t that long ago that she’d worked for a hard-assed, irritable, unable to be pleased law partner. If it wasn’t for Abby and Grace agreeing to her crazy idea, she might still be under his thumb, staving off her frustration with the promise of a partnership.

  “Brax will see you all now,” the receptionist said, her voice shaking Campbell out of her musings. There was no time for sympathy. It was game time, and she was ready. If Clark, Keane, and Maldonado, didn’t land a big case soon, she might be back in Wynne’s position, having to grovel for crumbs in hope of someday earning the big prize.

  “See you inside,” she said to Wynne, resisting the urge to say “good luck” before turning back toward Abby and Grace. If there was any luck to be had today, she hoped it would be squarely on her side.

  * * *

  Holy shit. Wynne barely registered the receptionist’s words as she scrambled to process why Campbell Clark and her pals were standing in front of her holding a giant pink box. Wynne had excused herself to the ladies’ room when they arrived at Leaderboard, and she’d only been gone a few minutes, but apparently in that span of time, Campbell Clark and her entourage had sprung up like weeds in the garden of her big case.

  Her instinct had been right after all. Campbell was after Braxton’s business and there’d been nothing innocent about Campbell running into Braxton at lunch yesterday. How long had this been going on?

  “You want to explain that?”

  She turned at the sound of Stoltz’s whispered growl and feigned innocence. “What?”

  Stoltz walked alongside her, keeping his voice low. “Don’t what me. Clearly, you know that woman. Who is she and why is she here?”

  Wynne took a breath while deciding how to spin the news that they were here for a competition instead of a simple smoothing the client over session. “That was Campbell Clark. She used to work for Hart and Dunn, but she recently struck out on her own. She’s here to meet with the board as well.”

  “How did that happen and why didn’t we know about it?”

  Wynne wanted to ask if those were rhetorical questions, but she knew she’d only be poking the bear. “I don’t know. Campbell and I went to law school together, but other than that, I don’t really know her. Braxton didn’t mention anything about another firm when I met with him yesterday. Ask Daniel.” She motioned to the intern who nodded in agreement. Wynne hated resorting to appealing to Stoltz’s ugly habit of giving deference to a man’s opinion, but she wanted him off her back to give her time to think. While Stoltz fumed behind her, she followed the receptionist into the boardroom.

  Brax was standing at the front of the room, looking like a college kid who’d completely forgotten he had a presentation scheduled, while the other eight board members were seated around the conference table. Wynne surmised by the half empty coffee cups and scattered papers, that the board meeting was already underway. She had never met the Leaderboard directors, but she’d done her homework. With the exception of Logan Rampart, one of Braxton’s pals who’d worked with him when Leaderboard was run out of Brax’s apartment, all of them had been appointed by Braxton’s father who held the purse strings that had seeded Brax’s big dreams. She’d read a few articles about how Brax chafed against the restraints of the board, but on the cusp of going public, he didn’t want to risk making future stockholders uneasy by creating a lot of upheaval. Which was probably why he was chafing against his lawyers instead.

  And there were a lot of lawyers in the room. In addition to her, Stoltz, Campbell, and her law partners, there were two first years Stoltz had insisted on bringing along despite her gentle warning that when it came to lawyers and Braxton less was more.

  She’d run into Abby and Grace a few times at various functions, but she doubted either one of them remembered her. Like Campbell, they were social and she was not. She wondered if it was their superior social skills that had appealed to Brax. She knew she had to work on the fact that she was all business when it came to meeting with clients, eschewing small talk as a waste of time for her and them. In her view, she was offering them expedient and economical service, but her annual evaluations all pointed to the fact that she hadn’t used her allotted networking funds, and mingling with clients was just as important as getting them a good result. Unspoken was the fact that the faster she closed out a case, the less money the firm made. Seth called networking the people tax, and he was right. Unlike her though he embraced the ability to take clients out for a nice steak dinner, followed by an evening spent in the firm box at a sporting event at one of the local arenas or stadiums, all on the firm’s tab. She’d rather be stabbed in the eye than spend what little free time she had with the people she worked for, so she had to make up for her lack of desire to schmooze by being the best at her job. Being the best today meant making sure Stoltz was prepared for whatever questions the board might ask, and she’d done her part, staying up half the night to prepare a lengthy dossier she hoped he’d read.

  “I’m going to be perfectly honest,” Braxton said. “I have concerns about Rhea Hendricks’s lawsuit, not because it has merit, but because of the bad publicity, and I want to be able to trust that the law firm that represents us can handle the litigation both inside and outside the courtroom.”

  Wynne could feel Stoltz bristle beside her, and she knew from experience that any moment he might leap out of his chair and launch into self-serving oratory. What she wanted to do was reach over, pat him on the head, and say, “I got this,” but she also wanted to keep her job, so she fixed her expression into what she hoped looked like genuine concern.

  “I’m considering a change,” Brax said to the board. “And I’ve invited the partners of Clark, Keane, and Maldonado to the meeting to give us some contrast. Each firm will have fifteen minutes to present their best case for why we should select them to defend this lawsuit.”

  An older gentleman seated near the head of the table that Wynne pegged as Artie Fairbanks, the oldest board member, cleared his throat and said, “This seems like a waste of time. Don’t we already have a top tier law firm on retainer?” He pointed at Stoltz who sat up straighter in his seat. “Do you have a specific reason for thinking they can’t handle the job?”

  Wynne watched as Stoltz, unable to resist an opportunity to showboat, sprang from his seat. “We can absolutely handle whatever you need in the way of legal representation.” Stoltz turned to Braxton. “You have concerns about how this litigation will affect Leaderboard in the court of public opinion.” He thumped his chest. “I get that, and speaking of top tier, we have a public relations firm on retainer that can assist with getting your side of the story, front and center.”

  “And how would you characterize our ‘side of the story’?” Braxton asked. “By the way, your fifteen minutes starts now.”

  Stoltz strode to the head of the table and very nearly edged Braxton out. “Leaderboard is the gem in the crown of social media. It was inevitable that someone would mount an attack to try to topple its popularity, but Leaderboard will not bow to pressure or alter the way it does business. You have an obligation to your users, to your future shareholders, to provide the very best social media platform, and you will not let its integrity be compromised either by being forced to reveal your confidential algorithms or by altering those algorithms to cater to individuals who are not happy with their experience through no fault of yours.”

  Wynne kept her face impassive during Stoltz’s speech, but inwardly she winced at the way too vague description. Stoltz was probably proud of himself for using the word algorithm twice, correctly, but she doubted he had a clue how Leaderboard actually worked and apparently didn’t care enough to learn. To him, all cases were the same and he knew better than his clients, assuming that what they really needed was to be listened to, but never heeded.

  “What’s the most popular feature of Leaderboard?”

  Braxton’s question dropped like a pebble in the pond, and the ripples of silence were painful to watch. Stoltz repeated the question back to him
like a kid stalling for time, but then nothing. Wynne watched as long as she could stand it, but she could not sit idly by and watch her chance at partnership fizzle away because Stoltz had been too proud or apathetic to read the material she’d prepared for him.

  She stood and said, “It’s the anonymity of the background program that calculates the results. No one knows exactly how it works, so it’s not possible to game the system. Your users, sorry, leaders, do their part by making connections, but the exact formula is top secret. While users would love to be able to crack the code, there’s value in having a level playing field, the theory being that anyone can rise to the top of the Leaderboard, not just those who are already popular or well connected. I suppose the allure is similar to telling kindergarteners anyone can be president of the United States. Not entirely true, and unlikely for most, but the idea that you can rise to the top, no matter what your situation, is the embodiment of the American dream.”

  She finished talking and looked around the room to see everyone’s eyes on her, reflecting various reactions. Stoltz looked like he wanted to throttle her, Braxton was grinning, and the rest of the board were a mixture of approval and confusion, but it was Campbell’s reaction that caught her attention. She looked surprised, like she hadn’t thought Wynne had it in her to distill down the essence of Leaderboard, and Wynne was both annoyed at being underestimated and excited she’d drawn Campbell’s attention. Well, Campbell better think again if she thought they were going to give up this client without a fight. Wynne soaked up her moment in the spotlight, surprised to find she didn’t hate it.

  “Exactly,” Braxton exclaimed, fist pumping the air. “Everyone can rise to the top.”

  Wynne resisted pointing out the irony of his statement considering she was currently in a fight to be at the top of Leaderboard’s business and only one firm could win. She looked over at Stoltz who shook his head and motioned for her to keep going, and she spent the balance of her fifteen minutes outlining all the strengths their law firm brought to the table. While she talked, she couldn’t help but notice Campbell looked like she didn’t have a care in the world. God, how she wished she could feel the same way.