Big Law (7 page)

Five glorious hours of sleep later, I rolled over and fumbled around my nightstand for my BlackBerry. Nearly knocking over a glass of water that I was unsure how long had been there, I finally located it and typed in my password. Scanning my inbox, a wave of choking panic suddenly washed over me. Ben had emailed at 2:14
A.M
. He needed to see a summary of the supply agreement between Serta Mattresses and Highlander Hotels. ASAP.

Oh, fuckity fuck.
It was like someone threw a bucket of ice water on me. “ASAP” was the absolute kiss of death in Biglaw. No matter how quickly you respond, it is never ASAP enough. Judging from the tone of Ben’s email, he fully expected that I should be in the office, able to fill his request immediately.

The large red numbers on my clock—
6:35 a.m
.—seemed to be screaming at me as I leapt out of bed, bolstered by the huge shot of adrenaline.

“Is everything okay?” Jason croaked, his sleepy eyes squinting at the light.

“Fine, fine, everything’s fine,” I said breathlessly, as I threw on some clothes and ran a brush through my hair.

“Didn’t you just get here?” Eddie called out as I flew through the lobby. I was in a cab, on my way to the office, in seven minutes flat.

The trip to Midtown was pure agony. I leaned forward, peering out the windshield, willing the gridlocked traffic to move faster. How could this many people possibly all be going in the same direction? Wasn’t it the driver’s JOB to know the quickest route? How can I be expected to do my job when this guy can’t do his? I glared at the driver, who was tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel to the beat of a song on the radio looking like he had all the time in the world. My stomach churned with frustration.
Come on, buddy, come on, buddy—Drive! Step on it!

Seeing the light turn yellow I subconsciously pressed my foot on an imaginary gas pedal. But instead of speeding up, Mr. Safety did something I’ve never seen a New York taxi driver do—he stopped at a yellow light. Bubbling over with aggravation, I could barely keep
still in my seat. “I’ll get out here,” I barked to the driver two blocks away from the F&D offices. The meter read $10.80, but I threw a $20 bill into the front seat and dashed towards the office and into a closing elevator where I manically pounded the buttons in an effort to make the doors close faster. Catching my breath, I pulled my BlackBerry out of my pocket to see if Ben had emailed again. No email. Maybe there was still time.

I located the document in the data room, summarized it, and sent it to Ben by 7:57
A.M
. It was the best I could do. Staring at the sent email, I breathed deeply, trying to get my heart rate to return to normal.
Good enough
, I reassured myself, leaning over to open my snack drawer, searching for a breakfast bar in the mix of empty wrappers.
Good enough
. It was only then that I looked down and realized the boots I’d put on in my haste didn’t even match. One brown, one black. Not even close.

One hour later, Ben sent me an email asking me to come to his office immediately. The face-to-face was never, ever a good sign. That meant they needed to reassert their authority by reprimanding you and witnessing the look of deference and remorse on your face. Knowing that, I put on a pair of matching shoes from the stack underneath my desk and, like a soldier that straightens his uniform before heading out over the trenches and into the battlefield, I smoothed my hands over my pencil skirt, brushed my hair, and headed down the hall to face my fate.

When I arrived at his office, Ben was sitting behind his desk with his phone pressed to his ear, looking tense. Seeing me standing hesitantly at the door way, he gestured for me to come in and close the door.

Uggg. Not the closed door. An even worse sign. I shut the door and tentatively sat down, bending my head as if readying myself for the guillotine.

I could tell from the tone of his voice it had to be his wife on the line. “Do we really need a six burner oven with a warming tray?” Ben asked, impatiently. The Russian heiress was redecorating apparently. “Okay, you’re right. I could see where that would come in handy.”
Pause. “HOW much?” Pause. “I understand, you’re right, quality is expensive.” He gave me a tight smile. “Right, right … okay … love you too … bye, bye.” He hung up the receiver and turned his attention towards me.

“Mackenzie, I’m extremely disappointed in your response time,” he opened with, in a completely different tone than he’d just been using with his wife. “I needed to read that summary before the 8
A.M
. conference call. You left me completely unprepared. COMPLETELY unprepared,” he repeated. “I specifically said I needed it ASAP. What the hell happened? Were you
asleep
?” The tone of his voice and look on his face indicated he couldn’t imagine anything less appropriate to be doing at 2
A.M
.

I waited a beat, hoping the question was rhetorical, but he was clearly waiting for a response. The truth was when Sarah told me to go home and sleep, that sounded rational. Wasn’t rational thought what separated us from the animals? But I didn’t think a discussion about anthropology would have gone over too well. I was going to have to come clean and admit my dirty deed—that yes, I was asleep at 2:14
A.M
. “Ssssorry, I didn’t realize that you would need anything more last night so I … I … fell asleep.”

The apology slipped out before I could help it. You’ll never find a man saying “I’m sorry” to his boss—it would make him appear weak. But women did it all the time. I once worked with a woman who started all of her sentences with an apology.
“Sorry, I have a question.” “Sorry, I’m going for lunch.” “Sorry, do you have the time?”
It was really annoying and I was trying to eliminate the word from my professional vocabulary. “Sorry” wasn’t a word spoken in Biglaw.

Ben glared at me as if there could never be enough apologies for the misunderstanding. For him, there was simply no reason for your BlackBerry to go unanswered. Ever. “I had my BlackBerry on vibrate,” I continued, “but I must have slept through it.” Okay, that was a lie, but I was grasping for a life preserver.

“Do you realize what the Highlander deal is? Do you realize what an opportunity it is for this firm? For
you
?”

“Of course I—”

“When I agreed to let you work on the Saul deal, I thought I made it clear that it could not interfere with your responsibilities on
this
deal.”

When he
agreed
to let me? It sounded like Ben was referencing a conversation that never actually occurred. I certainly would never have jockeyed to work with Saul. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I fell back on some advice Sadir had given me on my first day at F&D—when in doubt, nod remorsefully.

“I thought you understood the timeline with this deal, but apparently not, so let me be crystal clear. We require your full commitment in order to get this done. We ALL need to make personal sacrifices. Sometimes that means not sleeping when we want to.”

I felt as if he’d just punched me in the gut. There are a lot of things I wanted to do—go for coffee with a friend, have a meal outside of the office, maybe go to the gym or pick up my dry cleaning, but I hadn’t done any of that because of this deal.

“It won’t happen again,” I said firmly, finally disarming his assault.

“Well, it had better not. Look, you have to be available when I need you. At
any
time. That doesn’t mean that you need to be in the
office
all the time,” he added, with a tone that I’m sure he thought was reassuring. “You just need to have your BlackBerry on you.”

“Your wife’s on the phone,” Ben’s secretary called out from her cubicle, thankfully knocking Ben off his soapbox. “She needs your credit card number.” Ben winced and picked up the receiver.

“Yeah,” he said impatiently. I took it as my cue to leave and slunk back to my office, leaving him to negotiate the cost of kitchen appliances.

Painfully aware that I needed to brush up on my relaxation techniques if I was going to survive the next few months, I ducked out of the office at 7
P.M
. for a one hour Vinyasa yoga class, leaving my BlackBerry on vibrate, of course.

“Exhale in the mountain pose … inhale stretch up … exhale down into a forward bend … remember your breath …” the yogi purred.

“So it was Sarah who told you to go home for the night?” Kim whispered, moving into her forward bend. We were situated in our
favorite spot (back row in the far corner) where the buzz of the heater drowned our whispers out.

“Yeah, she said that I needed the sleep. It was kind of novel hearing something come out of her mouth that I actually agreed with.” I’d filled Kim in on the way over about my reprimanding at the hands of Ben this morning. It was selective disclosure, of course. I couldn’t give her the details of the transaction, but described my recent highs and lows in my quest of making a good impression.

“And Sarah was in his office when you had that great moment when you wowed Ben?”

“Yes! It made the moment even sweeter.”

“Inhale and step the left leg back … exhale back into downward dog.”

I did as the yogi instructed and the gnawing pain in my permanently tense shoulders lessened. It felt so good to be working out again. I hadn’t exercised since before the Highlander deal (unless you count running out of Saul’s office in fear). The pocket of my Lululemon pants buzzed, so I took a quick glance at my BlackBerry, ignoring the yogi’s stern glare, before returning it to the zippered pocket on my way into downward dog.

“But why was Sarah in Ben’s office? Is it possible he’s considering her for the secondment too?” Kim raised her eyebrows, giving a significant look.

Caught off guard, I lost my balance and nearly face planted into the mat. I’d been so laser focused on impressing Ben, I hadn’t even considered my competition. In my mind, Sarah had already had her chance to earn StarCorp and now her time had passed. I rooted my hands and feet on the mat and pushed my torso into the air. This was quickly spiraling into the least Zen yoga class ever.

“Forget I said that,” Kim interjected before I could answer, inhaling forward into the push up position. “That job is yours for the taking. Nobody works harder than you, Rocky.”

I smiled, but couldn’t help thinking about the fluorescent lights that still glowed on the twenty-seventh floor of Death Star whenever I left for the night. No matter how hard you worked, someone else always worked harder.

T
HE BEST PIECE OF
advice I received in law school came from my roommate, who’d spent a summer working in Biglaw a year before I did. “The one thing you should never do is cry,” she’d warned. “The men who work in Biglaw are offended by human weakness.” I’d snickered, but late that night I quietly Googled ways to prevent yourself from crying. “Create a slightly painful sensation to redirect your attention,” the article from Glamour suggested. “That way your mind focuses on physical pain rather than an external stressor.” I remember looking in the mirror that night while biting the inside of my cheek, ensuring it was an innocuous method to keep myself from letting the tears flow. Since then I’ve only had to enlist the method a few times, but today the inside of my mouth was chewed raw.

“You got off easy, Mackenzie.” Sadir popped his head over the partition.

“Easy?” I repeated in astonishment, my voice shaky from the latest tirade I’d just endured in Saul’s office. “How do you figure?”

I thought I’d finally gotten used to Saul’s yelling, the way someone with a backache gets used to dull, constant pain. Today he’d upped the ante, though, ripping up the document I’d spent hours drafting into tiny pieces, while screeching “REDO IT! REDO IT! REDO IT!” I’d never seen anything like it. His entire face and neck were crimson red, except for the purple vein throbbing in his forehead, as he scattered the tiny pieces around his office wildly. He looked completely unhinged. Thankfully, my primal survival instincts took over and I
slowly edged out of his office backward, not taking my eyes off him for fear of him throwing something at the back of my head on the way out. I had quietly returned to my office, not mentioning what had just happened with Saul, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if Sadir had been crouched down behind some inconspicuous planter watching the entire scene.

“Well.” Sadir cleared his throat, readying himself to dispense his perceived wisdom. “Last year Saul took a document Russ Tornelli drafted, crumpled it up, tossed it into his trash can and lit it on FIRE. Then he ordered Russ to remove the burning trash can from his office immediately. Poor Russ.” Sadir stifled a chuckle. “He ran so fast down the hall, burning trash can in hand.” He mimed the actions, holding an imaginary trash can in his hand and waddling around the office. Sadir was always at his most animated when telling a story about associate torture. “He ran all the way to the bathroom and threw the can in the shower.” Sadir dramatically threw his imaginary trash can. “He totally drenched himself. Had to walk out of that bathroom looking like a dog that had been hosed down for picking at trash.” He snorted and laughed at the memory.

My eyes widened in horror.

“So, yeah, consider yourself lucky.” Sadir sat back down and began pecking away at his keyboard, leaving me to mull that over.

More troubling than the fact that Saul had just torn up my document was that Sadir was starting to make sense to me. When I’d first met him, his point of view always sounded so negative and depressing, but now I wondered if he’d adopted that mentality in order to survive here. Maybe Sadir had started out energetic and eager to please too.

Am I going to end up just like him?
I pictured myself, the female version of Sadir, sulky and objectionable with an extra fifteen pounds of Seamless dinners on my frame, dispensing my cynical wisdom to the next crop of incoming associates. Was I going to wind up with the same personal hygiene deficits too? It was too horrible to imagine.

Thankfully, my nightmare was interrupted by a thick Long Island accent. “Knawwwk, knawwk!”

“Hi, Rita,” I sighed dejectedly. I knew she was checking in on me, just like she did after all of Saul’s public tongue lashings. She
was like a mother bear protecting her cubs, not that “motherly” is the first word that would come to mind when looking at her. She was a petite woman in her early forties with long, bleached blonde hair that, judging from her dark roots, hadn’t been colored for a few months. Her skin tone can only be described as “tanning salon brown” and today she was showing off her thin, muscular legs in a micro-mini leather skirt. And despite what it said in the “managing your secretary” section of the Lawyer’s Manual, she was not the type of secretary that would tolerate being “managed.”

“I’m sorry, hon,” she said softly, putting her hand on my shoulder. My eyes prickled with tears. Her simple sympathetic gesture penetrated the emotionally detached wall I was struggling to preserve. I was beginning to feel like a wishbone, with Saul and Ben tugging violently on opposite sides. Any minute I was going to snap.

“Don’t let it baw-tha you. He’s just an asshole.”

I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in my throat, and nodded in agreement.

“Listen, do ya guys wanna a piece of Sherry’s birthday cake?” She tried to put some cheeriness into her tone. “There’s lots left.”

“We celebrate birthdays around here? Since when?” Sadir responded as he stood up to take her up on her offer.

“Not you lawyahs because you guys will nevah pony up for cake.” She rubbed her thumb back and forth against her four fingers. “You’re all too cheap. Make all that money and you’re still all cheap.”

“You could go broke with all the solicited donations around here,” Sadir replied as he headed out the door for his slice of free birthday cake.

“Pfffffffff … cheap ass,” Rita muttered after him. She turned back to me. “Mackenzie, cake?”

“Sure. Why not?” I grabbed a ten dollar bill from my wallet and handed it to Rita to donate to the communal cake fund and followed Sadir out the door to Rita’s cubicle. Nothing a piece of cake can’t fix.

“Lucky?” Jason repeated in amazement.

“That’s what Sadir said—consider myself lucky that he ONLY tore up my document rather than burning it.”

Jason and I were perched on my couch digging into General Tso’s chicken and chow mein. I’d planned on working late to finish up a document I was working on for Sarah, before I delved back into Saul’s operating agreement and Ben’s due diligence, but when I did a lap of the floor at eleven, all three of their offices were darkened. I knew I had to seize the opportunity to get out of there, unnoticed, and spend some time with Jason. I deserved it after the day I’d endured. So, at eleven thirty I ordered my Seamless meal (I was allowed to expense $40 for dinner—enough for two with leftovers), slipped my BlackBerry in my pocket, and hoped I wouldn’t hear from anyone until the morning. Sitting in the Town Car on my way uptown to meet Jason with a bag of greasy Chinese food beside me, I silently congratulated myself for not crying and for holding onto my last shred of dignity by resisting the urge to bend down and pick up the shreds of paper on my way out of Saul’s office.

“Wow. That guy is a sociopath masquerading as a lawyer.” Jason exhaled a tiny snort and speared a piece of chicken before passing the take-out box to me.

“And you should’ve seen how crazy he looked! Completely insane.” I shook my head in disbelief, picturing his deranged, crimson face. “Unfortunately for me, the inmates are running the asylum at F&D.”

“In your department they sure are.” Jason snickered.

“Speaking of inmates, have you seen my BlackBerry?” My eyes darted around, suddenly fearful that I would miss an email from Ben demanding an immediate response. Saul may be making me lose my mind, but I wouldn’t let him cost me the secondment too.

“Oh yeah, it’s right here.” Jason picked it up off the side table and peered down. “No new emails,” he reported before tossing it to me.

“How did it get all the way over there?”

A funny look flickered across his face. “I just needed to text Alex when you were in the bathroom.”

“Why didn’t you use yours?”

“My battery was dead and I didn’t think using yours would be a problem. Is that okay?” He drew out the word “okay” in a tone that was uncharacteristically condescending.

“Of course. I know you two can’t go more than a minute without contact.” I tried to lighten the mood that suddenly prickled with an inexplicable hostility.

“Very funny.” He grinned, squeezing my hand. “So are you going to tell me anything about this mystery deal other than Saul’s atrocities?” He jammed a forkful of chow mein noodles into his mouth and passed the container to me.

“I wish I could, but you know the rules of the Chinese Wall. I can’t utter a word to anyone that isn’t working on the deal. I even have to use codenames in internal emails. It’s all very James Bond.”

“Ah, okay, Double O Seven.”

“Hey, haven’t you heard ‘loose lips sink ships’?” I teased, pointing my chopstick at him.

“Only in times of war, Mac.” He winked.

“Well, if word gets out that this company is being purchased and the stock price runs up there’s a good chance Saul will start a war.”

“Are you’re worried I’m going to pick up my direct line to Reuters and leak the news?” He smirked.

“Hey, I don’t make the rules, I just follow them.”

“My little Girl Scout.” He rubbed my knee. “Either that or you have a God complex and just love knowing what’s going to happen before the rest of the world does.”

“Ha, ha,” I responded dryly, but there was some truth to what Jason said. One of my favorite parts of the job was being part of a select inner circle of knowledge. The first time I worked on a high-profile deal was thrilling. Billions of dollars at stake meant the business media was hungry for details.
Is Keystone Foods for Sale?
was splashed on the business section of national papers, flooding me with a giddy jolt of pleasure. I, Mackenzie Corbett, was in on a secret that not even reporters from the
Wall Street Journal
were privy to. But now I was more concerned with avoiding the wrath of Saul than the thrills of a secret.

“I know you want to follow the rules, but I’m just worried you’re keeping it all bottled up. I can see the stress on your face, Mac. You can’t take it all so seriously.”

I nodded thoughtfully. Jason’s laid back attitude towards life had always been appealing to me. He was the tranquil Yin to my over-anxious Yang. But sitting there, watching him chew his food without a care in the world, I felt a twinge of resentment. Jason was always relaxed, like he was living a life of leisure, which, when I thought about it, he was. His father had founded the Kermode Company, the world’s largest maker of GPS units, and made millions in the process. His parents gave him everything he wanted, he didn’t have to choose a college based on how much scholarship money they offered, and he got this job through his father’s connections. His life had been a series of easy choices. He never wasted time grappling with which path to take like I’ve always done. He simply selected the path of least resistance, purposely creating an undemanding, uncomplicated life. His BlackBerry battery was dead, yet he wasn’t the slightest bit concerned. I, on the other hand, would break out into the shakes if my BlackBerry was out of my sight.

“Well, I can’t exactly take my one source of income lightly,” I responded in my best passive aggressive voice.

Before Jason could reply, a familiar buzzing sound filled the room. A look of uncertainty flashed across his face, but only for a second.

“Ah ha!” He put the take-out container down and began rooting through the coat draped across the arm of the couch. “I knew it was around here somewhere.”

“I thought your battery was dead.” I peered over his shoulder as he pulled his BlackBerry out of the inside pocket.

He shrugged. “I tried calling it earlier to find it, but it didn’t ring. I figured the battery must be dead. I guess I’d just left it on vibrate and couldn’t hear it.” He did a quick check before stuffing it back in his coat pocket. “Enough talk about BlackBerries for one night.” He pulled me towards him and nuzzled my neck. “Listen, I’ve been thinking,” his sleepy voice growled in my ear. “We should make this official.”

“This?” I giggled.

He pulled his head back to look me in the eyes. “This.” He gestured to each of us with his chin. “Let’s move in together.”

“Really?” My heart rate sped up.

“With the way you’ve been working, it just makes sense. That way there’ll be a reason I’m camping out on your couch waiting for you.”

For a moment my mind whirred through the possibilities—falling asleep and waking up together every day, not having to worry about which apartment we were staying at each night, or whose stuff was where.

“Where would we live?” I asked. Jason hated my neighborhood, preferring to live near the action of the East Village instead.

He shrugged. “You could move in to my place.”

“But my lease …” I trailed off.

“Geez, this is like pulling teeth.” His tone was light, but I detected an irritated edge to it. “When does your lease end?”

“April.”

“Then we can do it in April.” He rubbed his hand along my back, giving me goose bumps. “And we can pick a new place. Our place.”

A wide smile broke across my face. “Our place” had a very nice ring to it. Any momentary hesitation I felt floated away and excitement took its place. “Let’s do it,” I gushed, nodding enthusiastically. “Let’s move in together in April.”

Jason pulled me close, his tired eyes crinkling into a smile. I inhaled the scent of him, thinking I soon would have the pleasure of sleeping beside him every night. “April can’t come fast enough,” he murmured.