I walked up and down the aisles, trying to jog my memory, before buying a pack of gum and walking the fifty yards to my apartment building. Sam was already asleep when I crept into the bathroom, and as I plunked down on the toilet, the cool porcelain shocked the back of my thighs. I placed my elbows on my kneecaps and my head in my hands to rest for a moment, then reached for the toilet paper to find only an empty cardboard roll.
Fuck.
I found myself continually forgetting things like what I’d run to the drugstore to buy, whether I’d showered the previous morning, and any and all plans I made that weren’t reflected in a calendar invitation. I thought about running back to the drugstore, just to avoid Sam’s judgmental stare when he woke to realize I’d failed to run the one domestic errand he had asked me to do in over a month. But instead I put some takeout napkins on top of the cistern and crawled under the covers beside him, promising myself I would be more present in my personal life, beginning in the morning.
When just a few nights later I woke up from a nap on the floor of my office to a string of angry texts from Sam that he was waiting at the restaurant, that he couldn’t believe how late I was, that he was irate that I wasn’t responding, and that he was eating alone and going home, I made the decision to take a break from killing myself to get into M&A.
Come mid-November, I’d stopped asking Matt and Peter for more work, I’d told the staffing partner I needed to lighten my load, and I found myself staffed on just one active M&A matter. I knew I’d soon have to fill my plate again to maintain my competitive position in the running for an M&A match, so I took full advantage of the downtime before it disappeared. I went to Bloomingdale’s with Carmen during a long lunch break, and for the very first time in my life, I didn’t head straight to the sale rack. I made dinner plans with Sam that I actually kept. I took his nephew Lucas on a date to Ninja—a subpar sushi restaurant in Tribeca with above-average prices where the waiters dress and act like ninjas. I gave him second and third birthday presents to apologize, and reapologize, for sleeping through his party. “You made his year,” Sam’s sister had told me. “Miss his birthday anytime.”
The strangest part of working so hard the past few months was that long days had quickly become my baseline. I felt as though I was somehow cheating when I “only” worked from ten in the morning to eight at night. I began to remember the parts of myself that got lost in the endless markups and interminable exhibits to our agreements, like the physical grooming rituals in which many human women partake, such as eyebrow plucking and haircuts. But I also noticed that I quickly became present again during social interactions, and that I wasn’t nearly as forgetful.
It seemed I wasn’t the only attorney in the office who was working at a slower-than-usual pace. Vivienne had rescheduled our mentor/mentee lunch—and this time she hadn’t canceled. I sipped my water as she put her personal phone facedown on the white tablecloth and turned her attention to her work phone. I stared at her phone case, which featured a photo of her and her very attractive husband and three boys at the beach. Their hair blew to the left and their smiles curved slightly right as they braced themselves against a breeze.
“So, where were you in law school?” she asked abruptly.
“Harvard,” I said, and she nodded dismissively, keeping one eye on her work phone. Her platinum hair was pin-straight and tied into a short ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her nails were long and painted white. She wore a white silk blouse with a thick red pinstripe tucked into a navy pencil skirt with four-inch nude heels, which only made her about five-four. Her skin was perfectly pale and flawless. I need to stay out of the sun, I thought. Her makeup was minimal. I wonder if my eyeliner is smudged. My eyeliner is always smudged. She couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. I need to stop eating carbs. If I hadn’t known her name, I might have guessed it was Vivienne. It suited her.
“Did you enjoy your time there?”
“I loved it.”
She looked up at me skeptically, and I realized my mistake. We were supposed to portray an unruffled, contemplative, skeptical, calm-in-the-face-of-chaos persona at all times.
“It was a great education,” I said, correcting myself. She clicked one more button and then put her work phone facedown next to her personal cell. She looked as though she was momentarily contemplating dislocating her jaw and devouring me.
“That was schooling. This is an education,” she said, her attention now fully on me. I thought for a moment she was referring to our lunch. I suppose she might have been. But I thought it more likely that she meant working life more generally. “Anyway, I’m glad we finally got to do this. Sorry for the delay. I’m a crappy mentor, but they keep giving me mentees.”
I laughed politely, at a loss for a more appropriate reaction.
“What have you been working on?” she asked, picking up her phone. “I’m listening.”
“I’m doing almost all M&A these days. I did a few real estate deals when I first arrived.” I was talking to fill the silence, quite certain she wasn’t hearing a word I was saying. “I like M&A. I think it’s more my speed than real estate.”
“What do you mean?” She looked at me squarely, her hands still.
My heart rate increased. I felt my knees go slightly rubbery. “Oh. I just felt like I was more on the periphery of deal-making or -breaking decisions when I worked in real estate.”
Fuck. Is she a real estate lawyer? No. Capital markets. I’m sure of it. Shit. Am I offending her?
“But then again, the deal I was on was an acquisition, so obviously I wasn’t part of the core team doing real estate,” I blabbered on. “Anyway, I enjoy the more centralized vantage point I have from the M&A platform.”
She looked back down at her phone and resumed typing. I had the sense that she not only resented having to be my mentor but also simply didn’t care for me at all.
“I totally get that. I feel the same way. That’s why I do capital markets,” she said without looking up. “I see a lot of myself in you, actually. So sorry. After this, I’m done. I swear.”
I wondered just how I was presenting myself if she thought we were similar, but I reassured her as best I could. “Please. Don’t apologize. I get it. Maybe a couple months ago, I didn’t, but now I do.”
“You think you do.”
Her condescending tone knocked me off balance yet again, and two simultaneous but disparate emotions cropped up in my chest: terror that if I continued in BigLaw, I’d inevitably become cold and rigid like Vivienne, and exhilaration that if I continued in BigLaw, I’d become a fashionable, beautiful, intelligent, and successful partner like Vivienne.
“Okay. I’m back.” She looked up at me and set down her phone again. “By the way, nobody outside BigLaw will ever get it. Maybe investment bankers. But they’re the client. They have the luxury of not responding. We don’t. Doctors keep horrendous hours, but they at least know when they’re going to be on call. There’s no predictability with us. No ability to unplug. Do you know how many vacations I’ve taken where I haven’t left my hotel room? I haven’t been anywhere without an internet connection in sixteen years. Planes used to be the only time I really slept, and then the airlines went and got fucking Wi-Fi. The ironic part is, I did the IPO for GoGo—the company that delivers it to them.” She smacked her head dramatically. “If anybody tells you they ‘get it,’ they’re lying. And they probably hate you for being on your phone so much.”