“Am I being clear?”
He had never taken this particular tone with me—condescending and formal—and it infuriated me. I looked from his white shirt to his navy pinstripe suit jacket. I felt my eyes widen despite my attempt to maintain a poker face. I felt my gaze drift down to his wedding ring as he clasped his hands together, and then I locked eyes with him and nodded. My heart sank as I realized that the possibility that he and Nancy had gotten together for the first time tonight was remote at best.
“I didn’t see any . . . yes. Clear.” I forced my rubbery legs out of his office, then returned to my desk and tried to figure out how I had missed what had been happening right in front of my face.
“Hello?” I heard Taylor from National’s voice through the receiver before realizing that I had called his cell.
“Hey. It’s Alex from Klasko. Did I wake you?”
“I wish. I’m actually still in the office. What’s up?”
“DuVont disclosed the asset sale at their shareholder meeting today,” I told him.
“Fuck. It’s always the ones you file as ‘closed’ in your brain.” He sounded calm enough, though, I noted with relief.
“Yeah, so we need to rerun the valuations by one a.m.” I gave myself an hour cushion in case he was late getting me the projections. “Two scenarios . . .”
I slept in the office the next two nights, and we ended up closing the deal on Friday morning instead of Wednesday. The moment we did, there was a flurry of emails from National thanking our team for its diligence and efficiency in the face of complications, and I replied-all with a quick email telling them they were my favorite client before hopping in a Quality car home. As soon as I was in the car, I recalled my last bizarre encounter and stiffened. My eyes went to the rearview mirror, where I was relieved to see an unfamiliar face. He barely looked back at me as he started down Fifth Avenue.
* * *
I returned to the office on Monday after a weekend of sleep, having decided I’d reach out to Jordan first thing and smooth over any awkwardness, letting him know that as far as I was concerned, the incident never happened. Little did he know, I was in no position to judge. Before I could dial his number, though, he called me.
“Hey.” I tried to sound nonchalant, but overshot a bit.
“Hey, Alex.”
Why was he using my real name? He hadn’t called me anything but Skippy in months.
“Matt just got off the phone with the National crew. They are so happy with how the deal turned out and the job we did for them that they want to celebrate with a night out. Tonight is the only night they can do in the next few weeks. We’re going to take them for dinner at The Grill. So . . . yeah . . . you’re coming.”
“Okay!” I said, feeling the tension through the phone and wondering for a moment whether I should say something about the stairwell to try to dispel it before thinking better of the idea. “Sounds fun!”
“K, bye.” He hung up, and I winced at his abruptness.
I pulled up the collar of my shirt to just below my eyes, as if it could hide me from the awkwardness I felt, then popped my head back out and dialed his number.
“Hello?” He sounded confused.
“Hey. So, do you want to meet me at the bar in The Grill at like seven and grab a drink before we meet up with everybody else?” I squinted as I waited for his response, imagining that it was exactly how it must feel to ask somebody out on a date.
“Yeah.” He sounded relieved. “Yeah, I would. Good call, Skip.”
Dreading a sober walk with Jordan over to The Grill, I told him I needed to run a quick errand and would meet him there. When he arrived, I was already at the bar sipping a martini. I didn’t know how to greet him, but he plunked himself down on the stool next to mine and ordered a drink before even saying hello. We made small talk about his Christmas vacation until the bartender finally gave him his scotch neat.
I waited until he took his first sip. “What happened never happened as far as I’m concerned,” I began. “We never need to talk about it.”
Jordan nodded slowly and then looked up at me. “But what if . . .” He paused. “Can we talk about it?” I nodded gently. “It’s happened three times. But now it’s over.”
“That’s good. I mean, that it’s over. Not that it happened,” I stammered, and we both smiled at my nervous chatter.
“But she still calls me like . . . all the time. It’s a mess. Look, I know I never should have done it. But when it first happened, I hadn’t slept with my wife in like five months. I was losing my mind.”
I coughed as I took a sip of vodka. “Wow. I mean . . . why?”
“She wants a baby. I want to make partner first. She wouldn’t use protection. It turned into a fight every time we were about to have sex, so we just stopped having it. And stopped talking about babies. And finally, stopped talking. And then we were just—”
“Roommates,” I finished his sentence, wondering if Sam and I would still be sleeping together if my guilty conscience wasn’t driving me toward it.
“Roommates,” Jordan confirmed. “But I love her. So much. And I don’t know why I feel the need to wait to bring a kid into the world until I’m fully secure. Maybe because I grew up with no money and around people with money. And I still wake up sweating, feeling like somebody could take it away any second.” He took a long sip of his scotch, leaving only a thin amber layer at the base of his glass. “I’m a shitty person.”
“You’re not.” I meant it. I was certain of it. “If you want to be with your wife, continue to ignore Nancy. She’ll leave you alone eventually. Tell your wife you want to make it work. She doesn’t want a divorce. She wants a baby. And it sounds like you do, too. You can figure it out. Okay?”
He nodded.
“Everybody will be here soon. Are you good? Should we blow everybody off?”
“I’m good. I just want to get really drunk right now.”
“I’m in!” I signaled to the bartender for the bill, then grabbed it before Jordan had a chance. “My treat.”
Jordan watched me sign my name, then took the pen from me and added three letters after my signature.
“Expense this. You’re in the club now,” he said with a smile.
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t need to write ‘esquire’ to expense something. Accounting knows we’re all lawyers.”
“No. But if you write ‘est,’ they’ll know that you work for Matt, and you will never, ever get questioned about an expense, no matter how big, and you’ll get the money in your checking account within forty-eight hours. That’s a t, by the way, not a q.” He pointed at the last letter. “Seriously, I mean, don’t test the boundaries, but I once took five clients to Vegas for a night to watch a fight. It cost about six grand a person, all in. The money was back in my account before we landed the next morning.”
“What does ‘est’ stand for?”
“The partner Matt used to work for invented it like forty years ago. Just means we work the hardest and longest and we should be entitled to the best when we go out. It’s corny, but it’s tradition.”