Q.I was asking about your first encounter. Please focus your responses on the questions asked. Now, I’d like to ask how this dislike came to manifest itself—what exactly did Gary do to cause you to seek vengeance against him?
[objection] [stricken from record]
Q.Where did this dislike come from, if not from the first encounter?
A.If you had let me simply elaborate rather than explaining I should only answer within the scope of the question, I’d have gotten to that.
Chapter 9
I glanced at the time in the lower right-hand corner of my computer screen.
3:07 AM
I tried Jordan. No answer. I hung up the phone and rubbed my eyes with my fists.
Even before my deal with Peter had closed, I was staffed on a new deal, Project Duke, for National Bank with Matt and Jordan that would close on an accelerated timeline. The days leading up to Project Duke’s closing were a mess of greasy hair and stacks upon stacks of paper teetering like the tower at the penultimate move of a Jenga game on my desk. I had closed the blackout curtain to my office because I found that the rise and fall of the sun messed with my brain, signaling that I should be going to bed when work commanded otherwise. I had no idea whether I was supposed to send the term sheet I had spent the last three hours on out myself, or whether Jordan wanted to review it again.
I tried Jordan again. No answer. Why wasn’t he answering? I knew he was there. His firm instant messenger light was still green. Maybe he just went to take a nap. I could use one myself.
I looked at the other names on my instant messenger. The circle next to Derrick’s name was green too. I dialed his extension.
Derrick picked up halfway through the first ring. “I was just about to call you!”
“I’m dying. I’m so tired.”
“Come down to my office! I have coke!” he sang.
I paused, providing him with a beat to see if he was kidding. “Pass. I was more thinking a walk around the block to wake myself up.”
“Uh, pass. I can’t take a real break. I have to get something out.”
“Okay, talk soon.” I aimed for cheery, but heard the worry deepen my voice.
“Yes. Soon. Call you tomorrow,” Derrick assured me.
I slumped forward, resting my cheek on my desk, where it met the cold, smooth wood, and slid my palms under my face. I was exhausted, anxious, and uncomfortable, and I couldn’t stop wondering if I should pop into Derrick’s office to ask him how he was doing. Instead, I stumbled out of my door and down the hallway to the “restoration room.” The thought of collapsing onto the cool leather cot and snuggling up under one of the fleece blankets was so delicious that I was almost salivating, but when I reached the door I saw the red “Occupied” indicator in the half-moon above the lock. I wilted in disappointment; the idea of traveling to another floor to lie down felt so burdensome that I nearly collapsed. But I was only a first-year associate, and I felt certain that whoever was sleeping in the room needed it more than I did. He or she had probably been tired for the better part of a decade, whereas I only had a few months of late nights under my belt.
I leaned sideways into the door until it touched my ear, only to be greeted by the sound of male and female grunts and moans coming from within. I slammed my fist on the door. I might have been willing to forgo horizontal, comfortable sleep for somebody who needed it more than I did, but not just so two associates could get laid.
“I’ll be back in twenty! I need sleep!” I announced through the door, feeling slightly out of line, but emboldened by the thought that my colleagues wouldn’t want to be found out and would make themselves scarce before I returned.
When I returned, the room smelled of Clorox and the linens looked fresh, but I changed them and wiped everything down again anyway, then fell asleep immediately, jerking my eyes open at the hum of a vacuum outside the door the next morning.
I looked at my phone to see that Jordan had responded to emails while I was sleeping, sent the term sheet out himself when I hadn’t done it within an hour of him telling me to, and instructed me to sleep a few hours and call him as soon as I woke up. I dialed his number.
“I just want to make sure nothing can hold up closing,” he said without so much as a hello. “It cannot slip past today because then we need to wait for all the funds to transfer until Monday. Disaster. Have you confirmed with the real estate team that they’ve filed . . .” I could hear the stress in his voice as he rattled off the laundry list of administrative details I needed to take care of.
A preview of a new email from Carmen popped up in the lower right-hand corner of my screen as I struggled to write down everything Jordan was saying, and I glanced briefly at it.
I signed you in. Saving you a seat in the back.
“Shit,” I whispered to myself as I continued to write. When Jordan finished, I cleared my throat. “So . . . I completely forgot we have the mandatory monthly business development training right now, and—”
“Skip it,” he said tersely.
“Matt is doing the training, and . . .” I knew I wouldn’t need to say more. Supporting Matt in any and every capacity trumped anything and everything else.
“Oh. Okay. Yeah. Go. I got you covered for the next hour. You’ve done all this anyway, I’m just paranoid the day a deal closes. But be on email. If this deal doesn’t sign by this afternoon, I’m jumping out of my fucking window.”
“Why do you think our windows don’t open, genius?” I asked dryly, the auto-generated response he had come to expect from me during Project Hat Trick.
He snorted. “Keep it up, Skip, and I’m requesting Carmen on my next deal.”
“You suck.” I hung up.
I raised my chin toward the ceiling with my palm and felt the pleasant pop of a joint somewhere at the base of my skull. I stacked the six empty coffee cups on my desk into one another and threw them into the bin below my desk. I made my way slowly to the elevator and rubbed my finger under my eyes. I felt like a fraud. It was the first true all-nighter I had ever tried to pull, and I couldn’t even make it the whole night without passing out in the restoration room.
I let my back rest against the wall of the elevator until the mechanical ding of the doors opening on the conference room on the forty-fifth floor yanked me from my half sleep. A woman with a binder was staring at me, and I gave a small, embarrassed laugh as I brushed by her. I opened the door to the conference room as quietly as possible and slipped inside. Fortunately Matt was speaking, and all eyes remained on him as I let the door ease closed behind me and made my way to the open seat next to Carmen, who looked up at me with concern on her face.
“Skippy! Nice of you to grace us with your presence!” Matt called out.
All fifty-two of my fellow first-years turned to look to me.
I felt the blood rising up from my neck, but I could register that they were more envious of than disgusted by my rapport with the co-head of M&A.
“Your deals don’t close themselves, boss,” I said with a two-finger salute, and slid into the seat next to Carmen, embracing my greasy hair and my wrinkled shirt as a badge of honor. Matt cackled before continuing with his due diligence training, clicking through slides.
Carmen leaned in to me as if to tell me something, then recoiled. “Oh my god, Alex, you need to shower.” She blocked her nostrils with her fist. “No joke.”