The Partner Track: A Novel (19 page)

“Rach, I know. Dating a colleague in my own department. It’s in the bad-idea handbook, right?”

“It’s not just
in
the book, sweetie,” Rachel said gently. “It’s on the cover.”

I sighed.

I knew she meant well. But sometimes I felt that Rachel—beautiful, happily married, stay-at-home Rachel, who had never been without a man for longer than a month (and that was during finals)—had married dependable Josh and left the corporate world so long ago that she’d simply forgotten what it was like for us single professional women still flailing around out here, trying to make it on our own.

When in the world would I
ever
have time to meet someone outside of Parsons Valentine? Even if I did, I had been on enough blind dates and setups in my lifetime to know that whenever a man starts off a conversation with
Yeah, so I’m already practically heading up my group over at Weil, and I’m up for partner next year
—trust me, they did
not
want to hear you say,
Me, too.

With Murph, I didn’t need to worry about any of that. He was someone who understood and empathized with my crazy hours and erratic work schedule, who never took it personally when I had to cancel plans at the last second because a deal was heating up, who wasn’t the least bit threatened by my job or how much money I made because he did it, too, and who understood exactly what I was talking about when I described the headlong adrenaline rush of closing a billion-dollar acquisition and seeing the headline the next day in the paper. Murph and I had sort of grown up together, side by side, at the firm. We trusted each other.

Still, I knew that Rachel cared about me. She was only trying to help.

“I’ll be careful, Rach. I’ll play it close to the vest, okay?”

“There are some things you should keep to yourself,” said Isabel sagely.

“You are absolutely right, honey.” I leaned over and tousled her hair, then gave her a big kiss on the top of her head.

Rachel looked a little sheepish. “Look, I don’t mean to be a downer. It’s just—God, you’re
so
close, Ingrid. Why do anything that could jeopardize your chances now? All you have to do is stick it out a few more months. Think of all the women who’d kill to have made it this far. You’re this close to being the first
ever,
Ingrid! You have a responsibility!”

A responsibility to whom? To me, or to Rachel?

I thought of Dr. Rossi, and the fight I’d just had with Tyler over speaking out.
You have a responsibility.

Once again, I wondered why so many people felt entitled to project their own particular choices onto everyone else. It ended up making things much more confusing for us all.

Back in law school, I’d had a professor named George Tanaka. He was an extremely good, extremely popular professor, and his classes were always full. I’d taken his Civil Rights Law survey course and seminar on Critical Race Theory and gotten A’s in both. My third year, after the school published an alphabetized list naming each 3L student’s employer after graduation, I received a scrawled note from Professor Tanaka, saying he’d like to speak with me at my earliest convenience. I assumed he wanted to wish me luck in my future endeavors. But when I dropped by his office, Professor Tanaka gave me a tight-lipped smile before saying, “I’ll be frank. I was surprised to learn that you’ll be heading to Parsons Valentine this fall.”

I was stunned. And he could see it, because he smiled hastily and shook his head. “Don’t misunderstand me. Parsons Valentine is one of the best firms in the country. It’s just that I was curious whether you’d considered other avenues. Like public interest law. A federal clerkship, or the Justice Department. Perhaps, eventually, academia.”

He looked at me hopefully.

“Well, I—I’m…” I was speechless. He was being presumptuous. He was putting me on the defensive, and he had no right. “I appreciate your thinking of me, Professor Tanaka, and of course I was aware of the clerkship process and the Justice Department, but I—I really enjoyed my summer at Parsons Valentine, and for now I think I want to try the law firm route.”

“I see.” He sighed a drawn-out, world-weary sigh that seemed to signal the end of our conversation. As I was turning to go, Professor Tanaka murmured, “Sometimes, Ingrid, in the grander scheme, it behooves us to do certain things not because we
want
to, but because we are among the very few who
can
.”

Rachel’s fervent wish—that I make partner on behalf of all the women lawyers who’d gotten mommy-tracked over the years—was Professor Tanaka’s grave disappointment that I was selling out. There really was no pleasing everybody. Maybe there was no pleasing
any
body.

I looked at Rachel now, sitting across from me, trying to interest Isabel in her oatmeal and strawberries. Rachel, who professed to live vicariously through me, who claimed to be jealous of everything I was about to achieve at Parsons Valentine, the very things she had once dreamed of achieving herself, back when we were both bright-eyed, idealistic young law students. We’d been so brash, so full of ambition. We had not come to law school to get our MRS degrees. No, we were there to kick some ass.

Rachel and I had both grown up in that fortunate class of American women who had been taught that, at last, we could truly have It All. For years, a cheerful chorus of Ivy League professors had insistently painted us glowing pictures of our futures as one great big, fat, glistening, juicy oyster. But, one by one, as all the women I knew dropped out of their high-powered careers, or let their last few childbearing years slip away with resignation, or married men they didn’t love simply because they felt they were
running out of time
—I was realizing that we had not quite been told the truth. It wasn’t that we had been lied to, exactly. Rachel and I
were
extremely privileged women in many ways. We could definitely have A Lot. Many of us even managed to have Quite A Good Deal of It. But we were all finding out that, no, actually, regrettably, painfully, we had not quite figured out how to have It All. At least not All at the Same Time.

For the moment, at least, you still really did have to choose.

I thought about the handful of precious Saturdays I’d taken Metro-North up to Westchester to babysit at Rachel and Josh’s house. These were evenings I enjoyed, not just for the sheer pleasure of seeing those two beautiful, tousle-headed kids, but for the chance to get away from the hustle and relentlessly expectant pulse of Manhattan, the modern starkness of my immaculate, brand-new condo, to sit in somebody’s real live living room, with a deep, fluffy sectional couch and a wood-burning fireplace and stuff scattered everywhere and family pictures cluttering the mantel and actual
sconces
on the walls. This felt like a place where
lives
actually happened.

After I tucked Isabel and Jacob into their beds, I would creep quietly about the warm, comfortable family room, feeling a little like an intruder, carefully examining each framed photograph in turn—a laughing Rachel and Josh feeding each other pieces of wedding cake; Josh relaxing on a porch swing with Jacob sleeping on his chest; Isabel and Rachel hugging each other and beaming in front of a Cinderella castle—and I would wonder to myself about which one of us was luckier.

ELEVEN

I pulled the fresh pages off the printer and walked them back into my office, closing the door. I’d been working balls-out—so to speak—on the SunCorp acquisition, and everything was clicking. For weeks, I’d been practically living in the office, making sure we stuck to Lassiter’s accelerated timetable. Now we were ready to send a last round of the term sheet and pre-close documents over to Binney’s lawyers at Stratton and Thornwell—right on schedule. I just needed Adler’s final okay and then I’d pitch them over to the other side. Next week, Ted Lassiter would be coming into the office, and Adler and I would walk him through the pre-close documents in person.

I glanced at my phone display. 5:09
P.M.

I’d been up for thirty-four hours straight. My silk tank was clammy and stuck to my back. I was sure I must stink, but I felt terrific. There was nothing like getting a document out to the other side late on a Friday afternoon. This bought me a free weekend and a blessedly quiet week ahead, although it ruined the same weekend and upcoming week for our counterpart lawyers at the opposing firm.

I felt kind of sorry for the unsuspecting sap over at Stratton and Thornwell who was no doubt getting ready to call it a week. I imagined him lazily surfing the Internet in these golden late Friday afternoon hours, on his cell phone to a wife or girlfriend, negotiating where to have dinner and what movie to see. I knew exactly what would happen tonight and how it would all go down—the phone on his desk ringing just as he was walking out the door, the guy glancing at his caller ID, seeing the partner’s name flash across the screen, his heart sinking, his weekend dreams dashed, the wife or girlfriend throwing a fit.
Fuuuuck.

“Just got the revised draft in from Parsons Valentine. Would you stop by my office, please? I’d be very grateful if you could review it over the weekend and get your preliminary markup to me by Monday.”

It was vaguely ridiculous, this
I’d be very grateful
aspect of the partner-associate relationship. I always preferred it when people spoke their subtext. And the law firm subtext for
I’d be very grateful
was
You will lose your job unless.

The cruel beauty of this system was that the other guy’s loss was my gain. Now I actually had a whole weekend off, to do with what I pleased. Even better, Murph and I were planning to spend the entire weekend together. I didn’t really think of Murph as my boyfriend yet, but I certainly did think of him. All the time.

I picked up the phone and dialed Justin Keating’s extension. I needed him to stick around until Marty Adler had had a chance to approve the pre-close documents and help me send the distribution to the client and the lawyers on the other side.

Justin picked up the phone at the end of the fifth ring.
No, please, don’t trouble yourself, Justin, no need to rush.

“Yeah?”

“Justin, can you come to my office, please?”

He sighed. “Yeah.” And hung up.

In another minute he was standing just outside my door.

I cleared my throat. “Okay, listen,” I said briskly. “I’m going to head up to Adler’s office and make sure he signs off on this. Then I’m going to need you to help me proofread the revised docs one last time and send them to the other side.”

“Um, it’s Friday night. Isn’t that, like, what a secretary’s for?”

“Um,” I said, “it’s actually, like,
your
job to assist me on any aspect of this deal that might require your help.”

Justin’s lips parted in a small
O
of surprise. He looked at me for a long moment. Then he rolled his eyes. “Fine. You know where to find me.” He slouched off down the hall.

My phone rang. It was Adler.

I grabbed up the receiver before the first ring had finished. “Hi, Marty.”

“Ingrid!” said Adler. He chuckled. “Should have known I’d find you on the first ring. Hard at work, as always.”

Good of you to notice.

“Were you still going to show me the SunCorp docs tonight? I thought I’d call to check, since I’ll be heading out pretty soon. My wife and I have opera tickets.”

Of course you do.

“Yes, actually, I was just on my way up when you called. I’ll be there in a second. If you could take a look and make sure all looks good to you, then Justin and I will be sure to get this out to Stratton tonight.”

Marty Adler paused.

“Justin? You mean the
Keating
kid?” he said. “Don’t tell me you asked
him
to stay late on a Friday just to send out some FedEx for you.”

I frowned at the receiver. “Well, yes, Marty, actually I did ask him to help proof the documents with me before they go out,” I said slowly. “Didn’t you tell me to show him the ropes?”

“Hell, I meant be
nice
to the kid, not make him work all hours of the night. Couldn’t you have gotten some random floater secretary or paralegal instead? Give Justin a break?”

I took a deep, calming breath. Marty Adler was getting on my last nerve. It was lovely that he was so concerned about ruining Justin Keating’s weekend when I was the one who’d been up for thirty-four hours straight, who’d been working late nights all week and all day Sundays and ordering greasy takeout at 3:00
A.M.
to sit here in my office, exhausted and haggard and bleary-eyed, to review draft after draft marked up with endless comments and questions from seller’s counsel at Stratton, and Mark Traynor at SunCorp, and even Ted Lassiter himself. I was the one single-handedly bringing this deal in for an on-time close. Not Marty Adler, and certainly not Justin.

I couldn’t help thinking about the countless times, as a junior associate, that I’d been forced to wait around til midnight or one on a random weeknight only to have the partner or senior associate call—as an afterthought—from home to say, “Sorry, I thought someone else had already let you know. You can go home. We won’t be sending anything out tonight after all.” So many weekend mornings, I’d been called in at 8:00
A.M.
just to fetch things or correct typos for the clients and senior partners—
Casual Saturday,
went the office joke—and I’d never heard anyone complain on my behalf.

“Marty,” I said evenly, “just so you know, I never ask anyone to come in or work overtime if I don’t really need their help. Since this draft’s gone through so many revisions, I thought I could use the extra pair of eyes before it went out. I’m not sure you realize, but I’ve been here since eight in the morning—”

“Well—”

“
Yesterday
morning,” I said.

This shut Adler up for a moment. “I see.” Then he said, “Look, Ingrid, I know you’ve been working flat out on this SunCorp deal. And your efforts certainly aren’t going unnoticed. My point is, let’s not make a habit of these late nights for Justin Keating. It would be best for all concerned not to let him start hating his job quite so soon.”