Chapter Twenty-One
“So what you’re saying is, I’m the reason you’re making partner. In fifteen years,” Charlie said triumphantly as he chewed the rim of his glasses.
“If I pull this off, yes.”
“Well DeFiore, I’m humbled that my daily slog was the source of your creative genius.”
I proudly held up the piece of paper I’d found after three hours of digging, my fingers covered in ink. “The smoking gun.”
Charlie clapped. “This job keeps getting sexier.”
I stared in disbelief at the yellow notepad covered in my left-handed scribble. “This piece of paper just gave me what I needed to do this math equation.”
Charlie peered over the desk divider. “The work of a mad genius.”
I sank into my chair. “I killed thousands of brain cells trying to figure out the movie budgets without having to file a complaint. And each brain cell was worth it.”
“So you figured it out?”
“Lawyer 101. You can’t subpoena information or documents without filing a lawsuit. But we can’t file a lawsuit, because his case sucks. And the only way to scare them into settling is to prove we know the movie budgets were more than $5 million, because that’s the max he agreed to for each movie.”
“I see.”
“Enter Exhibit A. The New York State tax filing that the producers filed, claiming a thirty percent tax refund on the total budget of the film. And see this number here?”
He squinted. “Too small.”
“$3.6 million. That’s the refund they requested in the tax filing.” I held up the notepad. “And this is the sixth-grade math that tells me $3.6 million is thirty percent of $12 million. That’s sixty percent of his total investment in just one movie. Which was not the deal.”
He stood up. “Boom!”
“I would have never gotten the idea for the FOIA request if you hadn’t called me the other night to complain.”
“Glad my misery could be helpful.”
My cell phone vibrated somewhere under a stack of papers.
“Hey, Em,” I picked up, trying not to lose my train of thought.
“Hey. Can you meet me for lunch? Please say yes.”
I cradled the phone with my shoulder. “Is everything okay? You never leave the office to eat lunch,” I said suspiciously.
“No. I’m just . . . I don’t know. I’m freaking out a little. I know we haven’t really talked much lately, but work’s been such a nightmare. I actually think I want to quit,” she said, her voice sounding small and strained.
I leaned back in my chair and stared down Park Avenue, wishing I hadn’t picked up the phone. I’d experienced a few of Emilie’s panic attacks in law school, and they were usually short-lived.
“I can’t really leave right now. I have two feet of documents to get through. What happened?”
“There’s a Sweetgreen three blocks from your office.”
“You’re not really thinking about quitting, are you?” I said distractedly, organizing documents to send to the copy center to be scanned. “Does your dad know?”
I’d only met Emilie’s dad once, but I knew he was usually the source of her anxiety. He would be apoplectic if she quit her job after just a few months.
Emilie breathed heavily into the phone. “There’s just constantly another emergency coming down the pipe.
I can’t deal with the nonstop panic. I’ve been having the ‘Sunday scaries,’ or whatever it’s called, ever since I started.
I thought about going back on my anxiety meds, but they make me feel foggy, and I can’t write when I take them.
This morning, I freaked out and told the partner I needed a mental-health holiday.
And I’ve only been there a month. I know they’re going to sack me if I don’t buck up. ”
“Is that a thing? A mental-health holiday?”
“Probably not. But if I don’t figure it out, I’ll snap. I feel like I have the makeup of a tiny little bird, and the wind might just blow me out to sea if I’m not careful.”
“Remember that time you freaked out right before our Torts final? You took one Ativan and were fine. Try taking, like, half.”
She was quiet, and I stared impatiently at the stack of documents I still had to get through.
“I know you, and I know you’re killing it. Even if you don’t feel like it. Just take some deep breaths and maybe a walk around the block.”
“I wanted my friend to meet me for a salad,” she snipped.
“I know. I’m just in the middle of something timely. Can we talk more this weekend?”
“My dad will kill me if I quit,” she said, her voice quiet again.
“So don’t tell him anything yet. Just do what you have to do to get through it.”
I looked down at my phone to remind myself what day it was. “Hey. Let’s go out tomorrow night. Caroline booked a table for eight people at this restaurant on Bond Street, and she only has five others confirmed so far. Let’s take the last two spots. Her friends are always a good time.”
Emilie scoffed. “Meaning she just makes a big reservation and assumes people don’t have plans?”
“People like us?”
“Ha. Okay, fine. I can’t remember the last time I had Saturday night plans.”
Charlie and I worked in comfortable silence the rest of the afternoon. I started drafting a proposed settlement memo for Leo, explaining how we could use the FOIA evidence to allege fraud, the only claim that might intimidate the other side into settling.
At seven o’clock, I slid my laptop and charger into my Longchamp. Charlie was playing poker on his phone with Bob Dylan blasting from his earbuds.
“Is this what you do all day when I’m not here? Send me desperate text messages and play poker?”
Charlie smirked. “Work is weirdly slow today. Want to grab sushi?”
We hadn’t spent time together outside of the office since my birthday weekend. I was worried things would change after my big confession about what had happened with Ben. I didn’t want him to see me differently.
“I could. But can we go somewhere besides Hatsuhana? I don’t want to run into anyone from the office. I’ll feel like I should be working late.”
Charlie raised his eyebrows up and down. “You do know it’s Friday, right? But challenge accepted. I know the perfect place. We can go out the sketchy Lexington side to this basement sushi bar on Forty-Third Street.”
“Sounds appealing,” I said.
“You’ll love it. Dollar sake bombs. No way any partners know about it.”
Charlie was right—there was no way anyone from the firm knew about this sushi bar. It was two flights below street level with zero atmosphere. We settled into a corner table and ordered Sapporos and sake.
Charlie clinked his bottle against mine. “Okay, spill. What’s happening on Andie’s case? How’d it go in LA?”
I told him about editing Andie’s chapters. “I get to log pro bono hours for half of the time, which is cool. And I mean, how crazy is it to get to see a book get written from the beginning?”
Charlie poured soy sauce for each of us. “I swear you have some kind of ‘it girl’ halo around you. But like a nerdy one, just for lawyers. How many first-year associates can say they ghostwrote a client’s memoir?”
“I’m ghost editing. Very different.”
“Call it whatever you want, but it’s fucking awesome. And what about working with the LA partner? Did you blow him away yet with the FOIA stuff?”
I shook my head. “I’m kind of hoping I’ll see him in the next few weeks so I can pitch it in person. I want the full dramatic effect.”
“Channel the halo.” He grinned. “Do anything fun in LA?”
I told him about dinner with Leo and the gallery opening. “I’m not exaggerating. Every person in that room was hanging on every word he said. To be fair, he’s unbelievably charming. He’s not even forty-five and one of the most successful lawyers in the country.”
“‘Unbelievably charming’?”
I blushed for being overly effusive. I was supposed to be talking myself out of this crush.
“Sorry, I spent the last week drafting that complaint and got way too comfortable with hyperbole.”
“Watch that, DeFiore.”
“What about you? How’s your week been?”
“I won’t even pretend to compete with you.
While you were sipping champagne, I second-chaired a deposition somewhere in Delaware.
What else . . . I got super high a couple nights ago with some of my law school buddies and almost adopted a cat.
I guess the highlight was I went on a forty-eight-hour date.
Pretty surreal,” he said, looking both pleased and exhausted by the idea of a date lasting that long.
“Awesome, tell me more about the deposition.”
“We weren’t even close to the one Delaware town you’ve heard of. I had to rent a car at the train station and drive another hour.”
“Yikes. And the date?”
He took a long sip of his beer. “She works with a friend from college. It was a blind date that started Monday night and ended yesterday. We haven’t talked since then, and I can’t decide if that’s normal or a sign that the connection maxed out at two days.”
He looked honestly unsure, and I laughed without meaning to.
“Sorry, but it can’t be that hard. If you liked her enough to spend forty-eight hours with her, then text her. If you didn’t like her, maybe also send her a text that says you were only in it for the story.”
“I know what my communication options are. I’m just not sure which of the two I’m feeling,” he said, feigning offense at my advice.
I threw my hands in the air. “Trust me, I’m not trying to be preachy. I have nothing to preach to you.”
I briefly considered the idea of Charlie liking someone enough to spend two nights with them. I suddenly wanted to know everything about her. Did he have a “type”?
Charlie motioned to the waiter for another Sapporo. “What about you? Ever think about ‘gettin’ back out there’?”
I must have given him a look, and he immediately looked embarrassed. “Sorry. Was that a weird question?”
“Siri, what’s a synonym for ‘weird’?”
He splashed my soy sauce with a chopstick. “Don’t be a word snob.”
I leaned back and sighed. “I can’t even think about dating. Besides, there should really be a dating grace period after losing your humanity to the bar exam. At least a year.”
“Fair. And truthfully, it might be why my dating life has sucked so much.”