The day stretched out like an impossibly long blank canvas before me. As I sat on the corner of the bed, I searched the plank wood floors for dust and the ceilings for cobwebs, but saw none. The cleaning lady we had once a week would be in Monday anyway, and she’d also do all my laundry from the Miami trip. Food shopping was pointless because I’d inevitably eat at my desk all week, and Sam liked to buy his own food. I was too hungover for the gym. I opened my phone to review my texts—the first twenty text conversations were all to and from Sam, my parents, and Klasko people. My friends from college hadn’t been in touch in weeks—they had grown tired of my delayed responses. It was just too easy not to respond to people in different cities, especially when their questions weren’t time-sensitive like the ones from work. I breathed in deeply, trying to suppress the uncomfortable feeling that I had no life outside of the office, and refreshed my work email again.
This time, I was relieved to see a few new messages from Matt asking for some follow-up items to send to clients we’d seen and potential clients we’d met in Miami. The tightness in my chest dissipated as I opened my laptop and dove into the tasks at hand, welcoming the calm of purpose and productivity.
Part IV
Attempted Closing
An attempt to conclude the merger process and legally transfer ownership through signing and recording of all documents.
Q.Was your relationship with any of your colleagues ever sexual in nature?
A.[Mr. Abramowitz] That is beyond the scope of the trial. My client’s relationship with Gary Kaplan is the only relevant relationship here.
Q.The question of your actions with clients and colleagues is highly relevant to the scope of the trial and provides valuable insight to the veracity of your accusations as well as motivation for truthfulness or lack thereof.
A.Klasko, like all large law firms, is a high-stress environment. When attorneys aren’t working, they often find outlets for their stress. Often in substances. Sometimes in one another.
Q.Could you please be more specific?
A.My relationships with many of my colleagues changed over the course of my first several months at the firm, be it through regular evolution of a friendship or a rumored sexual relationship or, in one case, an actual one.
Q.Could you please provide some specific examples of the latter two? The rumored sexual relationship and the actual one?
Chapter 14
“Come to the associate happy hour tonight! It’ll be fun!” Carmen stood in my office, arms folded over her chest. I readied my polite excuse. “Free booze! You can’t turn that down.” The firm believed that we needed to know each other personally to work well together, and so our bar tab was picked up each Thursday at the bar across the street to encourage us to get drunk with one another. “Plus, the older associates are really cool. You should meet them! The ones you haven’t already gallivanted around Miami with.” She overshot her attempt at a smile, and bared her teeth ever so slightly for just a moment. I should have told her I was going to Miami, I thought, so she didn’t have to hear it from somebody else.
“I was going to tell you—”
Carmen shook her head to stop me. “I’m happy for you,” she assured me, sounding convincing. “Come tonight!” I found it remarkable how quickly people forgave me when I didn’t apologize. Her placid face no longer betrayed underlying resentment. Perhaps she was angrier that I hadn’t told her than jealous that I’d gone. I watched her, trying to trust her. But on some level, I knew that Carmen was masterful at presenting herself exactly as she intended to.
“I’ll come to the first one in the new year. Seriously, I’ll kick my year off right and start showing up to these things. But we have the holiday party at the end of the week, and I cannot . . .”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Who knows how busy you’ll be next week, let alone next year!”
I pulled up my Outlook calendar and looked up at Carmen with a confirmatory grin. “Fine.”
* * *
I squeezed in between two large men in suits standing right in the entrance to the bar, who were too engaged in a heated conversation about a potential trade war to pay me much attention.
“Ahhhh! You’re here!” Carmen said, hugging me. She was standing with Kevin and two men I’d seen around the office. “I totally thought you were going to bail.” She turned back to the men around her. “Guys, this is Alex—I was just telling you about her.” She looked at me. “I told them you were my best friend at the firm!” I smiled back at her and then at them.
The two guys, who I guessed were fourth-year associates, maybe, looked like twins whose mother dressed them in different-colored shirts to help tell them apart. One wore a blue collared shirt, the other a pink collared shirt. Other than that, they looked identical: pale-skinned, with chests indicating long hours at the gym (where did they find the time?), close-cropped dark hair, and smooth, clean-shaven faces. They were good-looking, but in a completely unremarkable way—barely distinguishable from the other men in the bar.
As I took them in, they both scanned me up and down. I squirmed under their gaze, but smiled.
I then turned my attention to Kevin, who now blended in too. His no-longer-gelled hair now fell easily over his brow and into his cartoonishly—but like one of those very attractive male cartoon characters from Disney movies—large brown eyes. His loosely knotted pink tie rested easily on his chest, which was far more defined than it had been in September. I didn’t know when he had found time for the gym either, but he looked good.
“Hi!” I hugged him. Seeing him had spurred nostalgia for my first-day jitters, which now seemed so very long ago.
A warm smile spread across his face as we released from the hug. “Hey.”
“So, you’re working for Jaskel?” Pink Shirt asked, while Blue Shirt gulped at his drink. I felt an odd vibe coming from them.
Why were they staring at me? Were they trying to flirt? Or had Carmen told them that Matt had invited me to Miami? I couldn’t even tell if they were impressed or judging me. Or is it that I have something stuck between my teeth? The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I ran my tongue along my teeth.
“Yup!” Screw it. It didn’t matter what they thought of me—I knew how to deal with these kinds of guys, how to win them over. The past few months had taught me nothing if not that. “Guys, I have some catching up to do. Let’s get me drunk!” I commanded, pointing a finger in the air.
“Yaaaaaaas.” Carmen threw a solitary fist toward the ceiling, and the three boys grinned. I peered into their short glasses. “What are we drinking?”
“Johnnie Walker Blue,” Pink Shirt responded.
“Oh no no no,” I said, then shook my head and pursed my lips. “Gross. I’m going to stick to vodka.”
Blue Shirt protested. “It’s good! Try it!” he said, shoving his glass at me and looking briefly down at my chest, which was luckily covered by a collared shirt I’d buttoned right up to the neck.
I felt Kevin tense, about to interject on my behalf, but I leaned into Blue Shirt’s glass playfully, inhaled, and then scrunched up my nose. “No way. That smells like battery acid.”