Girl Walks Out of a Bar (8 page)

“Check out that guy,” I said to Randi, my best friend from high school. “He looks like Michael Hutchence. Hotness.” I was pointing my chin toward him, hoping he could see I was talking about him.

“Oh, great. Here we go. See you later,” she said, waving as she headed back to the dance floor to join our friends who were jumping around and snarling to Billy Idol's “White Wedding.”

As soon as Randi was gone, my latest target slinked right up to me, all business. “Hey, I'm Kevin. What's your name?” He stared into my eyes with a shifty squint. Kevin reminded me of all the sexy bad boys who used to ignore me while I watched them hit on my cute friends.

“Lisa,” I said.

There was something overtly sexual and a little aggressive about the way he leaned right in close to me next to the bar, his hip lightly touching mine. “You live around here?” he asked.

“Yeah, not far.” I tried to be vague. No way I was going to unsexy the moment by telling him I'd moved back in with my parents for the summer. “Another shot?” I asked. If this was going to happen, I needed more booze.

“Sure,” he said, signaling two more shots to the bartender. “And two more beers,” flipping his credit card onto the bar. We clinked and downed the shots. Then I guzzled most of the beer and felt the click in my brain that signaled the end of good judgment.

“And you?” I asked. “What brings you to a random club on Route 17 on a Saturday night?” I was wearing a low cut, silky, green button down shirt I'd never returned to one of my college roommates. Kevin focused on the black lacy bra that peeked out from behind the green.

“I'm local,” he said. “I do real estate development around here. I have a place in Fort Lee.” A little shady, I thought. Maybe mafia? Whatever. This wasn't husband hunting, this was getting bombed and going home with the hot guy. Because I could.

Two more tequila shots later, Kevin put a hand on my hip and pulled me toward him, rubbing my jeans, as if we were dancing. “Do you want to go to my place?” He asked, one eyebrow raised. His lips were full and pink and I pictured kissing him hard. I was sure he'd have liquor at home.

“Yeah, definitely,” I answered without hesitating.

When we got to Kevin's building, he waved hello to his doorman who smirked from underneath his straight-browed cap. We rode up several floors, and when Kevin opened his
door the lights of Manhattan glittered for miles beyond his floor-to-ceiling windows. “This is it,” he said as we stepped onto the balcony and stared into the sparkling lights.
Wow. This place makes him even sexier, if that's possible.

“You want a beer?” he asked.

“Sure, great.” He returned with two Heinekens and pulled me by the hand toward the dark bedroom. I chugged as much as I could during the stumble to the bed.

He clicked a very dim lamp on his bedside table. His furniture was dark wood with dark bedding that gave the room a cave-like feeling. There were framed black and white photographs on the walls, and the smell of the room matched the musky smell I'd picked up while standing close to him in the bar.

He turned to me and dug a hand deep into my hair while pulling my head back and then started roughly kissing my neck. He suddenly stopped and took a step back, looking me up and down. “Take off your shirt,” he ordered. Without breaking eye contact I did as I was told, feeling a rush of cold air from the air conditioner on my bare abdomen. “Come here,” he said. I took one step forward and he jerked me against him.

With one flip he unhooked my bra and both of his hands were on my breasts. Then he pushed me down onto the bed on my back, and I could feel his hard-on through both of our jeans. His hair was mixing with mine around the sides of my face.

He kissed me deeply for a while, grinding himself against me and getting harder. His breathing became more and more urgent, and he bit my lower lip a few times as we kissed.

“Put your arms over your head,” he commanded into my hair while he unzipped my jeans and slid one hand between my legs. He held my wrists together with the other hand. I moaned and arched my back, feeling like I was about to come when he
pressed his wet mouth to my ear and said, “I could fuck you right now.”
Please!
I thought. “Or I could kill you.”
Wait, what
? He said it with the cool of a movie murderer. If I needed to, there was no way I could escape him. But I was drunk enough for my fear to take a back seat to my audacity.

Without blinking I said, “Why don't you fuck me then?”

For a few seconds he stared back with no expression. Then he laughed and started moving his hand in my pants again. Almost immediately I came hard for the first time that night.

I woke up in the middle of the night. Kevin had rolled over and I studied his muscular back and wide shoulders. If he had decided to kill me instead of fuck me, I might have already been dumped in the Hudson River. What would my parents do as the crew dragged my bloated body ashore? I pictured my mother weeping into my father's chest while my friends gathered around, wondering if they should tell Mom and Dad about the drunken party tramp their daughter had become.

Still naked, I slipped out of the bed and over to the dresser where I grabbed my beer and chugged the rest of it along with what was left in Kevin's bottle. Then I climbed back into bed and passed back out.

5

“What was our first mistake?”
my friend Jane asked me one day at work after we'd both pulled all-nighters on separate projects. “Getting good grades?” We laughed the laughs of women digesting an unpleasant reality on too little sleep. I laid my head on my desk.

“You know what they say,” I answered. “If we don't want these jobs, there's a whole line of law school grads out there happy to take them.”

It was 1991, and I was twenty-five years old, straight out of Rutgers Law School. It never occurred to me to shoot for anything less than the best grades, a coveted spot on the
Rutgers Law Review
, and a job with a New York City megafirm. To be offered a well-paying job by one of the big-name firms was the ultimate stamp of approval for a law school grad. And there was nothing more consistent in my life than my need for other people's approval. Wouldn't I love for those little camp fuckers to see me now.

Big law firms were partnerships, and becoming a partner meant everything. To get there, an attorney had to begin as I
did, as a “junior” associate, the lowest life form on the lawyer food chain. Those who lasted beyond three years became “midlevel” associates, and if they made it to their seventh year, they became “senior” associates, eligible for partnership consideration. Some who didn't become partners but were exceptional lawyers stayed with the firm as “counsel,” often for the rest of their careers.

I was in the Environmental Group, and our offices were on a midlevel floor of a skyscraper on the east side of Midtown Manhattan. The firm had about eight hundred lawyers, five hundred of them in New York and about half of those in our building. The firm's elite corporate teams were in a building directly across East 53rd Street, in newer, nicer offices.

Several people in my starting “class” of about ninety lawyers, with the ink still drying on their law school diplomas, became hyper-competitive in their quest for the most prestigious work for the highest-ranking partners. Inevitably, at around seven o'clock each night, one of these masochists would stroll into my shared office waving the giant binder full of menus for restaurants that delivered. “Well, it looks like I'll be here until at least midnight,” he or she would say with a fake eye roll. “Who else is in for ordering dinner? It's going to be a late one.”

“Not me,” I'd answer with optimism. “I'm going to plow through and hopefully get out of here in the next two hours.” If I was lucky, I'd be able to have a few drinks with some of my friends who worked normal hours. If not, I'd go straight home and pound a couple of beers in front of the open refrigerator. Beer was the only thing guaranteed to be in my refrigerator, and I found the choice easy to justify. First, I really did need to be able to fall asleep quickly so I could get up and exercise. Exercise was nonnegotiable. Second, any normal person would have had a couple of beers or glasses of wine over dinner, so
this was no different. And third, fuck you, I've had a long day and I want beer.

My work friend Jessica and I bonded quickly. She was a University of Chicago Law graduate and a year ahead of me; both facts made her infinitely wiser in my eyes. When I was at Northwestern, I had seen the intensity of the University of Chicago and its students. They spent Saturday nights solving complex math problems and making scientific discoveries while my friends and I played Trivial Pursuit for shots before bouncing between frat parties. I imagined the University of Chicago's Law School to be equally intimidating. I never would have made it out of there. Or in, for that matter. My law degree from Rutgers felt embarrassingly inferior, but if Jessica shared this opinion she never let on. She and I laughed at the same jokes, liked the same people, had similar taste in clothes, and even sounded so alike that her father confused me for her when I answered her phone.

While Jessica didn't drink the way I did, she and her husband Russell liked to go out and run around New York City on weekend nights. Neither of them judged me when I got drunk and did stupid things, like leave my wallet in a cab or wave my arms and knock over a full round of martinis. Still, I was somewhat aware that the “STOP, you've had enough” mechanism in my brain was faulty because not even after extraordinary amounts of drinking did I ever tell a waitress, “No more, thanks, just water for me.” I wanted another, I needed another, and I was always going to have another. As a result, there was no place in my life for anyone who criticized or even questioned my drinking. If someone dared to speak their concern, I simply changed the subject and then cut them from my life. My universe shrank as a result, but I didn't mind. During my nonworking hours, all I wanted to do was relax, and for me relaxing meant drinking as much as I wanted as often as I could.

One Friday afternoon late in the winter of my first year as an associate, I sat in Jessica's office making plans for the night. “So, I brought my play clothes. I'll change here. We can take off around seven for your place, right?” I asked, fidgeting with the fake gold buttons on my Ann Taylor jacket.

“Yeah, I spoke to Russell. He's going to be late, so you and I can stop at Food Emporium and pick up a munch. We have cocktail stuff at home.” Russell, also a Chicago Law graduate, was slogging it out at another major firm in their Corporate Finance group. All I knew about Corporate Finance was that it was stock market stuff and that associates in those groups worked harder than anyone else in a law firm.

Jessica's phone rang and she sat up rail straight. She looked at the caller ID and we both saw that it was Doug, the head partner in our group. She cleared her throat and picked up the phone, suddenly sounding cheery. “Hi Doug. Yes, of course, I'll be right there.” She hung up.

“Doug wants to see me. Why does he always come up with new assignments at five o'clock on Friday?” she said, reaching into her desk drawer for her purse. She pulled out a small lipstick case for a quick reapplication. “Do I look OK? Anything in my teeth?” she asked, baring her teeth at me.

I squinted close to examine her mouth. “Nope, you're good.” She straightened her funky, square glasses and smoothed her pin-straight blonde bob. As she got up, she grabbed a legal pad and a Cross pen.

“Let me know what's up when you get back. I'll be in my office,” I said getting up with her as she left, resenting the fact that this call could jeopardize my weekend.

All week I had been looking forward to my Friday night drinking, but since about ten o'clock that morning I'd been
obsessing over it. How many more hours? Where would we go first? What should my first drink be? Should I go wine or booze? Should I stick with one alcohol? Where should we end up? Doug's call threatened all of that. Now I might get pulled in on whatever project was about to appear. Selfish friend that I was, I thought that if Jessica got hit up with work and I didn't, I could still meet other friends and salvage the night.

“Lisa, oh my God.” It was about fifteen minutes later when Jessica appeared in my doorway. “You're not going to believe this.” She dropped into a chair in front of my desk.

“What?” I asked, assuming that she'd been fired and I was next. I felt faint.

“They're moving us. They're moving us to Corporate Finance,” she said, stunned.

“What are you talking about?”

“For real,” she said. “Starting Monday, this coming Monday, you and I are going to the Corporate Finance group. They're going to tell you any minute.”

“What? No way! I don't even know what Corporate Finance lawyers do!”

Mike, my officemate and a badly overworked antitrust lawyer, stopped pretending he wasn't listening. “They do securities offerings, mostly representing underwriters. You know, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs,” he said. “Those guys work like animals! You're screwed. I'm so sorry.” Coming from a guy who hadn't had a full weekend off since joining the firm six months ago, this was particularly brutal.

“Thanks, Mike. That's helpful,” I said, sounding meaner than I intended.

I turned back to Jessica. “They're not even in our building. I don't want to go over to the corporate side!” In that second,
I shifted from anticipating after-work drinks to needing booze immediately. Could I leave right now and go drinking? Pretend I had already left the building?

My phone rang just then and Doug's number came up. “Motherfucker,” I said before straightening up and taking a breath. “Hi Doug,” I chirped. “Sure, I can come by. I'll be right there.”

“It might not be so bad,” Jessica offered as I gathered up a pen and pad. What was wrong with her? This was horrible news. Only getting fired would be worse. “Russell will help us. He knows everything,” she said.

My everyday drizzle of fear about being discovered as a fraud who knew nothing took on the intensity of a summer downpour when I considered life across the street. I had no corporate law training at all, having avoided those classes like infectious diseases. I couldn't even balance my own checkbook, let alone understand a corporate balance sheet. And the corporate lawyers were just obnoxious, all hair gel, Italian leather loafers, and summer-share houses in the Hamptons.

As I neared Doug's office, I put my hand to my forehead like a headache sufferer on an aspirin commercial. As a first-year associate, I knew I was trapped if a final decision had been made about my transfer. No other firm would hire me for an environmental group with less than a year of experience. My plan had been to spend two years at the firm getting serious environmental law experience from the point of view of the big-money corporations. Then I would defect, hopefully to a nonprofit, pro-conservation organization that would find me an invaluable weapon against big companies. If I had to transfer now to Corporate Finance, my whole strategy would be blown. The sweat beaded around my hairline as I got to the door of Doug's office. A drink. A drink. I really needed a drink.

Doug was in his early forties with a slight build, a thick head of black hair, and black-rimmed Elvis Costello glasses. He had an engaging smile that put people at ease. His spacious corner office was strewn with expensive area rugs and other mementos from trips around the world.

Partners seemed to believe that the more exotica they had on display, the more sophisticated they appeared to be. “Wow, that's a really interesting mask,” I had remarked once to a partner as I examined a deep-red clay piece on his credenza.

“Do you know where that's from?” he asked blankly.

“No, I'm sorry, actually I don't,” I answered. Apologies were expected when you didn't have an answer to a partner's question. And it didn't matter what kind of question; I would have apologized just as quickly if he'd asked me if I knew his mother's maiden name.

“Well, you should know about that mask,” he said, as he arched his back and puffed his chest. “Top Brazilian government officials presented me with that rare Amazon tribal mask when we completed the debt-for-nature swap transaction. As I'm sure you
do
know, that was a major deal for the firm.”

After that, I learned not to comment on partners' office decor. In Doug's office, I knew about his wife and two kids only because of their silver-framed snapshots from clambakes on the beach and ski trips in the mountains.

In one of the two sturdy leather wingback chairs opposite his desk, sat Penny, the other partner in our group and the one for whom I did most of my work. Penny was about forty years old, a human firecracker with lots of red-brown hair and the body of a Rockette. She had worked her way up the ladder in a decidedly male-dominated field, and I wondered if that's why she had such a toughness to her personality or whether she had brought it with her. Penny was always clear about what she
wanted which was a relief from the senior attorneys who regularly expected juniors to be mind readers. To add to our all-day stress, we young lawyers feared both getting it wrong and looking stupid by asking the senior lawyers for clarification.

Seeing Penny sitting there that afternoon, smiling with Doug, I felt as if I'd been punched in the windpipe. Don't cry, I told myself. Keep a straight face, keep a straight face. Just get through this and then you can drink. . . . and drink and drink.

Doug spoke first. “So, you probably think we called you here on a Friday evening to fire you.” He looked at Penny and they both laughed, her head rocking back a little.
Ha ha. Fucking hilarious.

“No, of course that's not it,” Penny said quickly. “Quite the opposite. We have a great opportunity for you, and we hope that you're going to be as excited about it as we are.” She sounded like a parent about to tell her delinquent teenager just how great life was going to be at that work camp four hundred miles away. “Please, sit down,” she said gesturing to the empty wingback chair next to her.

“OK,” I said, parking myself across from Doug. I sat up telephone pole straight in an attempt to mimic Penny's good posture. It felt like I'd been plugged into a socket flowing with anger and fear, mostly fear. Only an immediate infusion of straight vodka might have calmed me down.