The Partner Track: A Novel (12 page)

I wasn’t thrilled to see him, but I was in too good a mood to really mind. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

Murph came into the room, spotted me, and smiled. I smiled back at him, and my face grew warm as he walked toward us.

“Hey, guys.”

“Hi,” I said, trying to sound casual.

Murph studied me. “You look happy. What’s the occasion?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said demurely. I picked up a starched napkin and silverware and used a pair of silver tongs to convey a dinner roll onto my plate.

Murph had gotten a haircut. There was a faint tan line by his ears where his dark blond hair used to be a little longer. He had just shaved. And oh, he smelled good.

The Monday morning after the outing, I’d gotten to work, turned on my computer, and saw an e-mail waiting from
jdmurphy,
no subject. I purposely made myself go through the normal motions of any other morning—getting my coffee, playing my voice mails, reading the
Journal
and the
Times
business section—before I couldn’t stand it any longer and opened his e-mail.

Hey. So how was your hangover on Saturday? Must have been rough.

My heart filled. I leapt out of my swivel chair and practically floated over to the window, looking the thirty-one stories down at the tiny yellow rectangles moving up and down Madison.
Here we go! Our office romance commences!

I stood there at my window mentally auditioning a dozen clever, breezy, flirty replies before finally flopping back down at my desk and typing.

Yeah, pretty brutal. Thanks for putting me in the cab, btw. My hero. How was the rest of your weekend?

The answer came back in two minutes.

Eh. Jury still out on Anna Jergensen. Anyway. Jury Box at 12:30?

Just like that, I deflated. Just like that, Murph had told me that, as far as he was concerned, the old equilibrium had been restored between us. Here was the old kidding-around, paper-football, a-girl-a-month Murph. I wanted the Jeff Murphy from the clubhouse, but he was letting me know gently that I wasn’t getting him back.

Murph and I didn’t talk about what had happened between us. Which I now realized was, actually, nothing. It’s not like Murph and I had hooked up. He hadn’t come back to my place. We hadn’t even kissed. So why was I so nervous? Why was I so worried over how we would act or what we would say to each other once we were back at the office? Well, Murph had done the humane thing by quickly putting any ambiguity to rest. Besides, guys like Murph weren’t interested in someone like me. By rights, the firm’s golden boy should be with someone like Cameron Alexander. So whatever there’d been the potential for last Friday, or however many signals I’d misread, it was over now, and there was nothing to do but follow his cue and pretend that everything felt completely normal to me, too.

But it didn’t.

I knew I was being ridiculous. Here I was, a grown woman, working on a billion-dollar acquisition for the firm’s biggest new client, about to make history at one of the most powerful firms in the world. Yet for over a week now, I had been lying awake at night wondering why Jeff Murphy hadn’t kissed me that night when he’d had the chance, and realizing with a surprising and sobering clarity that I had really, really wanted him to.

Marty Adler got in line behind us. He gave me a quick smile—almost conspiratorial. I felt a little better.

Adler surveyed the buffet table. “Anything good on the menu?”

At this, Hunter perked up and sidled around Murph and me, installing himself directly in front of Marty Adler. “Hey, Marty,” said Hunter, “I saw your great golf game last week.”

Murph shot me a look. Generally, it was considered uncouth to try to schmooze a partner in front of your friends. Yet Murph and I didn’t really mind when Hunter did it, because—let’s face it—Hunter’s employment here was kind of a joke.

“When he’s done giving Adler his tongue bath, ask Hunter if he’s in for bingo,” Murph said in a stage whisper.

We’d started playing Conference Room Bingo back when we were all first-year associates. The object of the game was simple. Before a meeting began, each player would choose a “phrase that pays”—lines of MBA-speak or sports metaphors worked best—and someone would write them down. Whoever’s phrase got spoken aloud first during the course of the meeting was the winner. We played for twenty-buck stakes.

We sat down. Murph whipped out his Montblanc and took a business card from his wallet. He flipped it over and paused, pen in air, like a waiter taking an order.

“So? Yung? Ladies first.”

“I’m going with ‘kick the tires,’” I said.

Murph nodded approvingly. “Good one.” He scribbled this down. “Okay, I’m down for ‘circling the wagons.’”

“I’m in for ‘slippery slope,’” said Hunter. Murph and I both looked at him. Not a bad entry, especially for Hunter.

Tyler Robinson walked in. I waved at him. He quickly nodded a greeting, then, after seeing Hunter and Murph sitting beside me, chose a seat by himself on the far side of the conference table.

Tyler and I had not spoken about the “Partner’s Paradise” skit. When I’d tried calling him on Monday, he’d simply said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” I had to respect that.

Adler stood up and clapped his hands together to get our attention. “All right, people. Let’s get started. We’ve got a lot on the agenda today.”

The room quieted. Stragglers got their cod filet and roasted potatoes and filled in the empty spots around the conference table. I sat with perfect posture, my hands clasped neatly in front of me, ignoring my lunch. I didn’t want to be caught with a mouthful of cod filet when Adler began his big pitch about me.

“I’m passing around the meeting agenda,” said Adler, “and you’ll see that after our usual order of business, I’m going to introduce a very special guest.”

Huh? Heads swiveled toward a stranger seated in the back: a trim, bespectacled man, maybe fifty years old, with a neat salt-and-pepper beard and thinning hair on top. He wore a tweed blazer, white shirt, corduroy slacks, and no tie. More professorial than lawyerly. I twisted in my seat to look at him, and he nodded at me, as if we knew each other. I looked away, embarrassed.
He
was the “something special” on the agenda, not me. I leaned forward and stuffed a forkful of salad into my mouth.

Adler raced through the deals that had been brought into the firm since last month—four high-tech IPOs, two leveraged buyouts, a hostile takeover defense. When he got to SunCorp, Adler said, “Everything’s moving at a fast clip. The term sheet’s nearly signed up, and Ingrid and I are working on the purchase agreement.” As he paused, I drew myself up, expecting him to acknowledge me. “It goes without saying, of course”—he looked meaningfully around the room—“that the terms of this deal are still highly confidential.”

No acknowledgment. I should have known better.

Harold Rubinstein nodded. “How much time are you looking at, Marty, to get the purchase agreement put to bed? I mean, assuming everything’s kosher after we’ve gone down there and kicked the tires?”

Ha. I shot Murph a victorious smile and mouthed,
Bingo.

Murph mock-scowled and narrowed his eyes at me. Hunter twitched in his seat and pounded his fist lightly on the table.

Easiest forty bucks I ever made. I did dearly love to win.

Tim Hollister strode to the podium. He was looking adorable today in an earnest, Ivory-soap kind of way. I wished that Tyler had sat next to me. He was the only person at the firm with whom I could share this kind of observation.

This year, Tim was in charge of Continuing Legal Education options for the attorneys—one of the grunt jobs the senior partners farmed out to the younger ones. He rattled off a list of upcoming CLE seminars.

“In addition to the in-house lunch on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on the twenty-eighth, there’s a breakfast program at the Princeton Club next Tuesday addressing director and officer liability. It’s called ‘The Evolution of Dodd-Frank: The Current Rules of Financial Oversight and What They Mean for You!’” He looked up at us. “Now don’t all run out and register at once.”

A couple of people laughed. Murph tapped quietly on his BlackBerry, then nudged me in the ribs. I looked down at his message:
Kill me now.

Adler reappeared at the podium. “Thanks, Tim.” He remained silent for a moment. “And
now,
” he said, beaming beatifically around the room, “I am pleased to introduce our very special guest. Dr. Rossi, would you join me up here, please?”

The bespectacled Dr. Rossi walked through the room with a determined stride. He stood slightly to the left of and behind Marty Adler, gazing out at us with a benign expression, like a vice presidential candidate.

“As all of you are aware, there is a growing imperative at the nation’s top law firms to ensure diversity and sensitivity in the workplace,” Adler began.

I knew exactly where this was going. I sank a few degrees down in my seat, hoping to blend into the furniture.

“Obviously,” Adler continued, “this has recently become a hot-button issue for us because of certain unfortunate events that occurred at last week’s outing.”

More than a few heads swiveled in Hunter’s direction. His cheeks were bright red. Amazing. I had never seen Hunter Russell embarrassed before. So the bad press had gotten even to him.

“Which brings me to our special guest, Dr. Stephen Rossi.” The professor stepped forward and acknowledged us with a curt nod as Adler read in a monotone. “Dr. Rossi is founder and president of the consulting firm Diversity Scorecard LLC. Before that, he was the director of diversity and inclusion at a number of top national law firms, most recently Foster Cowan and Mays.”

I raised my eyebrows.

Adler looked around the room and beamed at us. “I’m thrilled to announce that we have engaged Dr. Rossi to examine how well we are doing as a firm to increase diversity and inclusion among our ranks, and to recalibrate our business to better leverage our diverse talent pool. We will also be hosting a large-scale diversity-themed event later this summer, to which clients and friends of the firm will be invited. I expect all of you to welcome Dr. Rossi warmly, and cooperate with him in any way you can as he tackles this very important task. Stephen?”

A smattering of applause followed Dr. Rossi to the podium. Many attorneys’ eyes had already glazed over. A few partners, including Gavin Dunlop, looked annoyed or skeptical, but not Harold Rubinstein, who stared attentively at Dr. Rossi. This made sense. Rubinstein and Adler were the Corporate partners who sat on the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

“Thank you, Marty.” Dr. Rossi smiled. “For the next two months, I will be studying the unique corporate culture at Parsons Valentine, and formulating new strategies to better attract, retain, and develop diverse talent, particularly at the very top levels of management. Toward this end, I will conduct a series of confidential interviews of our partners and associates, particularly minorities, women, and our LGBT colleagues.”

Someone to my left gave an audible snort.

If Dr. Rossi heard this, he ignored it. “This information will be thoroughly analyzed and collected in a comprehensive report, with prescriptive recommendations, that I will present to the firm’s Management Committee at the conclusion of my engagement.” He paused, and when he spoke again, he sounded serious and deliberate. “I cannot emphasize enough that anything you tell me will remain strictly confidential. No statement will be attributed to any particular lawyer, and all responses will be kept anonymous.”

I
snorted then. It wouldn’t exactly take a genius to figure out where any statements from a female, Chinese American senior M&A attorney had come from. Tyler Robinson was going to have the same problem.

“I look forward to meeting as many of you individually as I can in the coming weeks. Thank you.”

I might have imagined it, but it seemed that Dr. Rossi was looking directly at me as he finished his statement. Well, he could forget it. I wasn’t about to contribute an interview for his little report, “confidential” or not. I wasn’t about to rock the boat. Not this close to shore.

As Dr. Rossi walked back to his seat, the din of voices and clink of silverware rose again around the conference table. People ambled over to inspect the desserts.

“I’m going to get a brownie or something,” I told Hunter and Murph. “You guys want anything?”

Hunter shook his head. “I gotta take off,” he mumbled. He was out of the room like a shot.

I wandered over and made myself a little plate with some fruit salad and a chocolate chip cookie. When I returned to the table, Murph and Gavin Dunlop were talking and laughing quietly. A waiter was clearing plates and blocking my path to my chair, so I stood behind him, waiting for him to finish.

“I can’t believe we’re wasting so much time and money on this,” Gavin sighed.

Murph laughed and said in a low voice, “Well, no one told those idiots to get drunk and carried away at the summer outing.”

I stopped short.
Carried away?

“Seriously,” Gavin said. “What do
we
need diversity training for? Why the hell are we even still talking about this? Didn’t we just name
two women
in a row to the Supreme Court?”

Yep. And three white men in a row before that. But who’s counting?

Gavin shook his head. “I mean, for Chrissakes, look who’s sitting in the freaking White House! What more do they want? What’s next, maybe a wise Latina?” Gavin cracked himself up.

I coughed loudly, and they both looked up at me. Murph seemed startled.

“Oh, hey, no brownies today?” he said, shooting Gavin a warning look.

Gavin didn’t catch it. “It was a harmless skit. In bad taste, yes, but just a joke. Don’t these people have any sense of humor? I mean, can you imagine the uproar if
I
decided to start a White Male Eating Club at the firm?”

I couldn’t help letting out a quiet snort.

Gavin looked at me. “What?”