JOHN STEADIED HIS HANDS AS HE READ THE TERM SHEET. HE expected the outcome when Walter told him that they preferred to meet him outside the office. But the terms of the firm’s offer were insulting. He placed the paper on the table in front of him.
“No,” John said.
Geoff, the firm’s managing partner, blinked once behind his thick glasses. His bushy eyebrows furrowed. His mouth, a permanent frown, didn’t move.
Walter leaned forward. “John, think about the good of the firm. You know you can’t come back.”
John didn’t take his eyes off Geoff. “This is insulting. My share of the firm is worth three to four times this amount.”
“John,” Geoff cut in. He spoke slowly, with great authority. “You slept with an associate. Who was murdered. We could force you out. But that won’t be the end of it. We can sue you for damages. Take everything you have.”
John didn’t look away. There had been a time for John when the only acceptable thing for him to say to Geoff was “Yes, Mr. Moore,” and later, after he made partner, “Yes, Geoff.”
Geoff was the age John’s father would have been if he hadn’t died while John was in law school. There were two times in John’s life he remembered his father expressing satisfaction—pride was an overstatement—with him: the day he graduated college and the day he got into law school. John knew that was because it meant that his life would be better than his father’s. That he wouldn’t have to work in some restaurant kitchen, live in a shitty apartment, deal with the indignity of being a human water pipe—something everyone needed and nobody ever paid attention to. Things they buried in the walls and in the ground.
That’s what he’d been at the firm, toiling away in his office, trotted out to clients to render an opinion on an obscure Treasury regulation. John dreamed of the day when he might be a peer of the firm’s elite, the rainmakers, when they would bring him onto deals or refer matters to him. When he wouldn’t be subject to the whims of an opaque compensation committee that paid Walter more even though he billed fewer hours at a lower rate than John. When he didn’t have to chuckle with a small bow of his head when Geoff quipped, “Got in late, huh? Was there a sale on dog meat?” or with Alan every time he asked him to “whip up some chow mein” when they worked past dinner. Even in those fantasies, John hadn’t imagined being in a position where defiance was an option.
Even now, at this shitty wooden table in the room that Walter arranged through the bar association so that John wouldn’t be seen walking into the firm’s offices or dining with them at the Down Town Association or the Harvard Club, the inculcated hierarchy pressed at the back of John’s head, telling him that the emasculation was a gift—because the scraps of the firm’s bounty were better than the alternative. John had no doubt that these men—and the lone woman—who had been his partners would be willing to do what Geoff threatened, whether for the good of the firm or to keep Geoff from turning on them.
“Geoff, there is nothing you can do or threaten that would be worse than what I’ve already gone through.” John hurled each word out—not in anger, but in the way a man bails out a sinking boat. “More to the point, you didn’t make me partner because I’m an idiot or because I roll over. How many associates and secretaries have you fucked and fired or paid off? I know of at least three women in my years at the firm. How many before then? I’m not a trial lawyer, but I can’t imagine a jury is going to like that.”
An eyebrow rose on Geoff’s otherwise-stone face. John felt lighter, reckless. He wanted to crumple the term sheet up and throw it at Geoff, but then the deal would never get done. Instead, he slid the paper across the table.
“I won’t ever sign something like this.”
“You won’t get this deal again,” Geoff said.
“You’re right. It will be higher.”
John stood to walk out of the room. As he did, blood rushed to his head in a wave, forcing his consciousness up and out of his body. He banished every other thought to get out of the room without collapsing. The sensation was like being carried on the swell of a wave. In the hallway, after the conference room door closed behind him, he braced himself with a hand against a marble column.
He was halfway down the block before he realized he didn’t know where he was going. Then Walter appeared with a light tap on his arm. John turned slowly. Walter was slightly winded.
“You didn’t run after me, did you?” John had a hard time imagining Walter running and possibly scuffing his shoes.
“I walked very quickly.”
“Where’s Geoff?”
“In a car headed back to the office.”
“You guys had it wait? Thought it would be an in-and-out meeting? That I’d kneel that fast?”
Walter sighed. “It wasn’t like that.”
John started walking again. Walter followed.
“I’m trying to get you a fair deal, John.”
“So, what happened, Walt? Between that fair deal and what you just handed me?”
Walter huffed but stayed even with John. They passed an Irish pub.
“How about a drink?” Walter asked.
It was 11:00 a.m., but John followed Walter inside anyway.
Cigarette smoke diffused the daylight streaming in from the windows. The bartender was a heavy white-haired guy with rolled-up sleeves, a faded dagger tattoo stark against the pale skin of his forearm. John and Walter sat in beaten wooden stools and ordered martinis.
“You going to be able to work after this?” John asked.
“I’m drunk half the day now, anyway. This is just taking the edge off.”
“So what do you want, Walt?”
“I want to know how you’re doing. We haven’t talked.”
“We’re not going to talk. If you wanted to get me drunk, have me make admissions or whatever you think you’re going to get out of this conversation, you should have tried before you gave me terms.”
“I didn’t give you terms. Those were the firm’s terms.”
“You just carried them.”
“I came so you would have a friendly face in the room.”
Walter did not have a friendly face on his best days. But he and John had met their first day at the firm. John stood out as the sole minority in a room of twenty new lawyers. Walter looked like a guy who picked his nose. They weren’t ignored as much as politely shunted to one side by the others.
“I’m telling you this as your friend, John. Geoff and the executive committee want your blood. The firm took a hit.”
“Profits were up this year. Fifth consecutive year.”
“I’m not talking about money. They had to apologize for you. To the clients. To the associates. To their spouses when they went home to questions like, ‘How many of your partners are having affairs? Are you having an affair?’”
“You’re boring me, Walt. What’s the point? I don’t give a shit about Geoff’s fucked-up marriage or what he told Manhattan Trust. And the associates all know you’d drink their blood if it made you a buck. Geoff, the firm, you—you all fucking hung me out there.”
“You were accused of murder.”
“Before, Walt. Before that.”
Walter turned away, looking through the window to the street. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re sticking with that?”
“Why did you have to sleep with her, John? Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, found one of those Asian places?”
“Was it that we were having an affair or that she was white?”
Walter rolled his eyes. “Jesus, John. You’re not Black.”
“You think Geoff sees any shades past Greek?”
“He’s not going to move off that offer.”
“I want my fair share. That’s all. This money means a lot more to me than it means to the firm, so the firm loses more than it gains by lowballing me and pissing me off. And whatever Geoff thinks he can take away from me, remember how much more you all stand to lose.”
“Geoff doesn’t lose.”
“Anything else?” John asked, standing up.
“Remember I’m your friend,” Walter said. “I’m trying to get you to a good place here. You’re making a mistake.”
On the street, John fully pulled off his tie and let it dangle, both the fat and skinny ends on equal footing for once.