Silver Fox Hunting 2

Of course Nicholas would have the sniveling gall, the insolence, to be in my presence, breathing my air, during a moment of personal crisis. Like an emotional anti-support animal, he sniffs out my distress and somehow makes it worse.

“What’s with the coin toss?” He asks through a paper-thin smile.

“It’s nothing.” I say. I tuck my hair behind my ears as if I hadn’t just spent a moment gleefully imagining staying at the firm to become the architect of his destruction. The wind shifts and a spray of polluted fountain mist finds its way up my sinus. I gag and cough.

“You were looking pretty serious.” He says. I see his practiced frown of concern. I see the slight sneer at the edge of his smile that he’s trying to hide. As if he thinks I’m funny, but funny at my own expense. “Are you… using a coin toss to make major life decisions again?” He bends over me to remind me I’m not that tall.

I’m not imagining his condescension. No one is this bad at flirting. But this isn’t what he did to earn the number one position on my list. We had a law school rivalry. And before that an undergrad rivalry. We have what some might call a history.

He likes to poke at my seams like a coyote searching for a weak link in the fence, and right now I don’t have the energy to stab him, not after my terrible morning. So I move to get away from his noxious existence when a gaggle of fresh-faced interns approach from our building. He glances at them and then to me, big smile and eyebrows raised like he’s the proud father of the bunch, and, as they wave eagerly to him and not to me, my stomach sinks.

There are different paths to success at the firm. At the end of the day, it’s all about having loyal, deep pocketed clients with an enthusiasm for closing deals. The litigators might argue that they matter, too, and we pretend they do when we need their help after a deal gone sour. But, more than the litigators, firm management goes gaga over charismatic attorneys who can draw promising, young talent in so that the firm can squeeze all that talent out–a process that usually takes three to five years unless that talent is partnership material, in which case they can stay.

We attract these students with promises of wealth and fancy parties, and they come like moths to an open flame. The ones behind Nicholas are part of this summer’s batch. All top in their class. All members of their respective law school’s prestigious journals. All conventionally attractive. I used to be endlessly impressed with those who could check some of these boxes–I like to give credit where it’s due–but less impressed having watched Nicholas glide through undergrad and law school with no first, second and third jobs. And let’s not pretend the private tutors and rhinoplasty didn’t help, too.

Like their mentor before them, this bunch poses casually behind Nicholas, hands in pants pockets, one foot out and languid as if they carried no spine–a posture that Nicholas had perfected during our college days in the middle of the lawn. Their inadvertent imitations of his movements confirm my suspicions: My little star mentor moment, gleaned from numerous teaching hours with most of them, was brief. I’ve lost my crown, if I even had it to begin with. The firm has a new prom king.

I mutter “fuck” under my breath.

In one of the corniest gestures I’ve ever seen, one of them steps up to give my nemesis some sort of fist bump passed down from their same childhood boarding school. Lick shoes much? I’m hiding my growing revulsion as a brave gosling steps out of Nicholas’ shadow. Blue pants, white button-up and nice shoes. “Hi Julia.” She reaches out a hand. I nod so I don’t have to take it.

“Hi.” I force a smile. Mentally, I am accepting my losses like a mature person, by visualizing a fist and punching through a wall. I had taken time between meetings to show this particular one the best hidden sushi spot in our area. I had spilled the beans on delicious, limited seating sushi, and this is the price I pay for yet another good deed–a Nicholas crony in my sushi seat. You think I’d learn my lesson.

“I’m Amelia, if you remember me. Thanks again for letting me sit in on that negotiation. Really eye opening.” I remember the meeting. It was a complete waste of time. They wanted off-market terms, and we stared blankly at them until they stopped asking for stupid things.

I nod again, determined to keep that smile on my face. “No problem.”

“Everyone, this is Jewls.” Nicholas announces this for the benefit of no one, since they’ve all met me, and my nails curve into claws at the old nickname. “Don’t let those big innocent eyes fool ya, she’s a gunner.” He turns to me with a teasing grin because he knows he’s poked old wounds, but I’ve had enough of today and I refuse to flinch. “We have an extra seat at Le Rock. Join us?”

Ah, the firm-sponsored lunch to woo the interns. I’d rather lick G train subway tiles. Fortunately or unfortunately for me, I have a date–no, a not-date, damn it–with firm manage–god damn it, Mark. His name is Mark. At Rose M, one of Manhattan’s many indistinguishable steakhouses. Lucky me.

I once told Nicholas at a drunken law school party that my motivation to carry on in life is to live long enough to dance on his grave, and the disdainful look I shoot him now repeats the sentiment. I check my watch and give Amelia an apologetic frown and say “sorry, can’t join.” And because I’m too busy and important to explain myself further to any of them, I turn to leave.

But Amelia reaches out to me. “Wait, please.” She gestures for the others to go ahead of her. I eye her hand on my arm. She lets go. “I know you’re into pro bono.” No, I’m not. “I’m on this asylum case, and the attorney I’m working under is leaving the firm.” I don’t think to ask which attorney is leaving because I have no sympathy for quitters. “Do you want to take the case on with me? I think I can learn a lot from you.” I pause at the flattery before quickly brushing it away.

“You’re only here for a couple more months,” I respond, which is true enough. These kids leave, finish law school, take the bar exam, and then typically return to join the firm full time unless they did something ridiculous during their internship like get caught having sex in a firm partner’s closet. “Just let the staffing coordinator handle this. They’ll put another attorney on the case,” I say.

She wrings her hands. “I know, it’s just that…” She looks around. Understandably, she’s reticent to talk case details surrounded by tourists and private equity bros and polluted water fountain water, which sprays the back of my head as the wind shifts yet again. I don’t learn. “The family is here in New York. And I checked your credentials on the firm website. My father was a diplomat, you see. I grew up abroad. And you and I are the only attorneys in the New York office who can speak their language.”

There’s a pinching near an old tear in my heart. A piece that used to care about stuff like this. “A family? What are they fleeing?” I ask.

“Two adults. Two kids. Political violence.”

Immediately, I regret asking. I wipe their faces from my head. Best to keep them faceless. “They can get a translator.”

“You know it’s not the same…”

I inhale, long. “I get it, Amelia.” I say it in the tone of a well-meaning person who doesn’t get it and doesn’t try to. Like someone saying “oh that’s terrible” about an event on the other side of the world, in a country they can hardly pronounce, that they think has no effect on them. It creates a layer between me and what I’m about to say next. “They can find a translator. I’m booked.”

The one summer intern who may have liked me notices the distance I’ve placed between us and looks visibly upset. I take another slow inhale. I’m a little annoyed, too. Amelia was perfectly happy to like Nicholas for taking her to lunch. And me? Apparently I have to work an asylum case to get that kind of respect. This is all too familiar, and I’m tired. I hide my exhaustion and anger while I contemplate booking a rage room somewhere in Brooklyn. I hear keeping this stuff pent up causes breast cancer or something.

Amelia and I part ways with rigid courtesy and I find myself still taking deep breaths at the entrance to Rose M for my not-date. Younger me, the one who used to be a Nicholas doormat, would have found these latest events surprisingly unfair. Adult me knows nothing about this world is fair, which doesn’t actually help because the anger is still there. I push open Rose M’s gilded doors. As if these doors were the golden gates of heaven, I’m momentarily blinded as silver fox what’s-his-name is sitting, hands clasped before him, in the middle of a vast room with a balconied second story. Light comes in through forty feet of glass panels, angled to reflect the sun like jewelry. He sees me interacting with the restaurant host who leads me to him, and he tilts his head in hello and at the perfect angle so that the sunshine reflects from his silver temples like a halo. He looks like a fucking angel.

I hide my stare. Someone tell me his secret, already. How did he beat the Nicholas’ of this world with that warm, naive grin wrapped around his face. Without losing himself. How did he do it because, honestly, fuck him, too.

As if he knew I was thinking unkind thoughts, and with no hint of buttering me up before sticking in the knife, he smiles as I settle into my seat and says, “Great that you could join me, actually. Just got the news that an asylum case opened up. You’d be perfect for it.”

“And,” he continues in the midst of my grim silence as this haloed Lucifer murders me with word stabs. “Nicholas mentioned wanting to help out more on pro bono. Let him shadow you.” Stab. Stab.

Our teams run lean, so I’ve never had to actually work with my nemesis or anyone else at my same level of the hierarchy. So, am I in hell? I briefly wonder if the earlier blood drive really had killed me and big sky daddy had forgotten to mark my sins forgiven before I was dropped, until the mistake is rectified of course, into Lucifer’s domain. Or if I had passed out and am dreaming, or if I’m awake but walking around processing an incoherent reality filled with nightmarish delusions as a result of significant blood loss from that same regrettable blood donation. Yet another good deed that didn’t go unpunished.

For a second time today, silver fox crinkles his brown eyes at me in concern as I do my best to hold in the scream. And in a surge of commendable restraint, even for me, I hold my breath and pretend to be interested in the menu instead of knocking over my chair and bolting for the exit. I eye today’s special, a singular stuffed oyster, and fantasize seeing a super urgent client email and then rushing out of the restaurant before this firm manager can pull a “yes” from me. I fantasize surging through Rose M’s exit amidst surprised tourists who have decided that, yes, yet another steakhouse is the perfect meal choice in one of the world’s best food cities, while I hail a cab for the nearest Brooklyn rage room, shouting my freedom down Broadway. 

But, instead, I stay sitting, smiling politely, and I croak a “sure” through barely working vocal chords in response to everything the firm manager proposes, unable to think of an excuse to say no, as an old feeling of nausea and helplessness creeps up my spine. It was the same feeling during college graduation when Nicholas cupped my face, tilted it to see my wide, almond-shaped eyes look up at him from his “favorite angle,” and said, “We had a good time. A really good time. But the tree that bends to the wind doesn’t break.” He took a class on East Asian philosophy and still managed to mutilate the famous idiom. “So we must remain flexible. Must move on.”

Some might call it being flexible. Right now, I call it biding my time.

The lunch itself doesn’t last long. Firm manager ends up being the one to leave early just as a waiter sets down the food, responding to a client call. He gives me one last stab of the knife while he neatly organizes his napkin and utensils for easy cleaning and politely pushes in his chair: “You and Nicholas are great associates and I’m excited for you to work together. I’m confident you’ll do a great job.” 

I linger, staring at my plate despite my turning stomach because, even now, I still struggle to waste food. The lunch rush passes me by and the tourists at the next table are surprised to learn that this steakhouse is like literally every other steakhouse to have ever steakhoused, with the same cuts and the same sauces and the same sides, just served in a room decorated in gold and fiery sunlight. One of them, a tall, attractive brunette, catches my eye and grins at me, which surprises me because my face is screwed into determined, disgusted discontent. Maybe she’s laughing because we both see the flame trap we both flew into. You know what, fuck her too.

I don’t appreciate her knowing smile, as if she understands more than she really does. This is New York City, lady, we mind our own business. I push my chair back, still nauseous, leaving the single stuffed oyster untouched.

Photo by Tomasz Brengos on Unsplash