I picked up my own phone and frowned as I spotted the most recent message. “My partner mentor canceled our lunch tomorrow,” I announced. “Again.”
“Who is your partner mentor?” Roxanne asked.
“Vivienne White,” I said.
“Wow,” Carmen said, her brow raised. “She’s a big deal. You must have impressed them in your interview. Somebody wants you taken care of.”
“Really? I haven’t laid eyes on her yet.”
Derrick looked down at his phone and burst out laughing. “Check out the email Noah Gellman sent to the whole firm.”
We refreshed our in-boxes.
From: Noah Gellman
To: FIRM-ALL
Subject: URGENT! DOES ANYBODY HAVE CHAPSTICK!!!!
“Somebody must have gotten to his phone or computer before it locked,” Derrick explained. “All the M&A associates mess with each other like that.”
Carmen didn’t seem all that amused. “So, are you going to do international arbitration?” she asked Derrick, then turned to us. “Derrick was telling me last night at happy hour that his father is the Ghanaian ambassador to the US.”
“Probably. What about you?” he asked Carmen.
“I put down real estate and M&A,” she said.
“Shit!” Roxanne announced as she stood and, eyes still on her phone, left the table and her food behind. Nobody reacted besides Carmen, who stole a grape from Roxanne’s untouched fruit cup. In the past few weeks we had become accustomed to work emergencies trumping social niceties.
“I put real estate, but I’m going to request M&A too before our deadline. I hope that we’ll be working on similar stuff. I need somebody to answer all my dumb questions!” I said, turning to Carmen.
A cloud seemed to pass over Carmen’s face, and her spine slumped slightly forward. Her expression remained completely placid, but her eyes grayed over. I coughed and took a sip of my water. When I looked back up at Carmen, her eyes were soft blue again. What the hell was that? Did I imagine it?
“Great minds.” She tapped her temple. “There’s more than enough work for both of us to be in real estate if we want,” she went on. “If we’re both trying to join M&A, we might have a problem.” She wasn’t lying about the competitive streak. It rang like a bit of a warning to me.
“No desire, really,” I assured her. “Just want a bit of diversity in my experience.” I pulled on the hem of my skirt, suppressing the urge to accept her words as a challenge. “I’m only doing real estate now. Might just stick with it.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I’d try to get onto M&A deals as well. I never could turn down a challenge.
Derrick’s head ping-ponged between Carmen and me, a smirk playing on his lips as he watched the sparring we were desperately attempting to conceal as idle chitchat.
That evening I shut down my computer at five thirty, changed into my workout clothes in the bathroom, and ducked into the elevator, praying I could make it out into the lobby without being seen. Even though I’d finished all my work for the day, I still didn’t want anyone thinking I wasn’t working hard—or that I had enough time to be staffed on more real estate deals. The elevator paused on the thirty-fifth floor, and the anxious blonde I’d encountered on the first day of work entered, looking me up and down. To be fair, I did the same to her. She looked pure, somehow younger than the rest of us, with large eyes. She wore no makeup, and her long hair was pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a pearl necklace, pearl earrings, and a neat white cotton cardigan, but when she turned to push the button to her floor, I saw that her black pencil skirt had a long thread hanging down the back like a tail. As she turned to me, we locked eyes.
“Hey,” I said, forcing my voice up an octave.
She stared back at me, looking puzzled. “The employee handbook says we need to wear business casual attire when we’re in the office, meeting clients, or otherwise representing Klasko in an environment where business casual attire is appropriate,” she recited. I examined her expression for any sign of cattiness, but came up empty.
“I know, I’m just running to the gym,” I told her, shrugging. “Sometimes you have to bend a rule to stay sane.”
She nodded, looking serious. “But how do you know which ones you can bend?”
I shrugged again and gave her a friendly good-night wave as the elevator opened to her floor. She exited reluctantly, as though not wanting to let me go until I answered her question.
I made it to my gym’s 6:00 p.m. spin class just as it was starting, throwing my Klasko-branded bag in a locker and slipping onto my bike as the warmup was concluding. When the lights dimmed and the instructor asked us to focus on our breathing, I allowed a smile to spread across my face, a moment of private pride. See? I’m a lawyer. And I have a life.
Q.Miss Vogel? Are you all right?
A.Yes. Yes. Can you please repeat the question?
Q.Had you heard of Gary Kaplan prior to meeting him?
A.I had heard his name, yes.
Q.What did you hear about him? Did you have any impression of him professionally, personally, or any other way before you actually met him?
A.I’m not . . . I don’t recall the specifics of my impression prior to meeting him.
Q.Do you recall the first time you heard the name Gary Kaplan? Do you recall who said it? Do you recall what they said about him?
A.I can’t be certain this was the first time anybody said his name to me, but the first time I recall anybody saying his name was at the beginning of my first year. When one of the real estate partners asked me if I knew who he was, I remember them being shocked that I didn’t because he was such a big name at the firm and in the finance world. But that was definitely the first time I remember hearing Gary Kaplan’s name.
Q.Would you say that you first came to know Gary Kaplan through third-party accounts from the real estate lawyers you mentioned?
A.No, I wouldn’t say that. You asked me the first time I heard Gary Kaplan’s name, so I explained my recollection. I came to know him firsthand soon after that through working with him.
Q.How did you come to know him professionally? Is it common for real estate attorneys on a deal to develop relationships with the M&A folks at private equity firms?
A.I actually don’t know what’s common for them. I would assume sometimes, if real estate is a big enough component of the transaction, then yes.
Q.Let me be more direct: as only a junior associate in the real estate group, how did you come to know Gary Kaplan personally?
A.I only worked briefly in the real estate group before transitioning to working exclusively with the M&A team. Gary was the biggest client of the group.
Q.Who introduced you to Gary Kaplan?
A.Peter Dunn.
Q.Who is Peter Dunn?
Chapter 4
A few days after my early escape from work, I was sitting in Lara’s office, as she debriefed the M&A team that was on the phone about the real estate portion of their deal before the closing. I watched her curiously as she stiffly responded to the rapid-fire questions emanating from the speaker phone from the senior associate on the M&A team, nervously pulling at a strand of her hair. It was odd to see a partner act deferentially to an associate, to somebody her junior.