Wall Street Partnership

ONE

The Parsons Valentine dining room—affectionately known as the Jury Box—resembled nothing so much as a high school cafeteria, writ large.

We were all older, sure, with expensive haircuts and finely tailored suits.

The food was a lot better, and it was served on fine china, classic white with a platinum border.

And then there was the view. Instead of a track or a football field, our windows overlooked the grand expanse of Fifth Avenue and Central Park.

No trophy cases or spirit banners, either, just a vast Ellsworth Kelly painting and a few signed Chuck Close prints adorning the otherwise stark white walls.

But these were just trophies of a different sort.

At Parsons Valentine he was like my brother.

Furthermore, everyone at work knew he was an incorrigible flirt.

Monday morning we both acted like it had just been the tequila talking.

That had been eight years ago. We’d never spoken of it since.

“Health food?” Murph asked now, nodding toward my plate.

“Shut up, it’s delicious,” I told him, and took a huge bite of lasagna.

I did not appreciate Murph or anyone else scrutinizing what I was eating.

It always felt, just a tiny bit, like I was back in my fourth-grade cafeteria, shyly unwrapping the scallion pancake or shrimp toast my mother would pack in aluminum foil in my lunchbox.

“What’s that?” Becky Noble would wrinkle up her nose, her own tidy baloney-and-cheese sandwich raised halfway to her mouth, causing all of the other girls to giggle.

Years later, on a blind date at the Campbell Apartment, my twenty-dollar martini had arrived alongside an appetizer of those same scallion pancakes, cut into dainty bite-size triangles and served with a ginger-soy dipping sauce.

My blind date—an anesthesiologist named Ethan—pushed them toward me.

“Try one. These things are amazing,” he enthused, popping one into his mouth.

“They are good, aren’t they,” I replied, smiling vaguely and wondering what had ever happened to Becky Noble.

Murph shook his head at me. “I swear I’ve never seen a woman eat so much and still be a size two, Yung.”

I shrugged.

Here was another thing about all the male attorneys I worked with.

They all called me by my last name, Yung, instead of by my first name, Ingrid.

I wondered if some of them even knew what my first name was.

But I didn’t mind this. I’d been in the corporate world long enough to know that it was a good sign.

When they felt comfortable enough to swear like sailors around me, I knew I was finally in.

I looked over at Hunter. He was hunched over a piece of paper, scribbling on some sort of cryptic sketch that looked like a tree.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Huh?” Hunter looked up. “Oh. I’m doing our softball brackets.

See?” He slid the paper toward me. “This is how the season’s shaping up.

Wachtell’s out. All we have to do now is beat Simpson Thacher in two weeks.

And trust me, we will. They suck this year.

So if Davis Polk takes down Skadden next week, and then they knock out the DA’s office after that, we’ll face them in the finals. ” He beamed.

Murph looked at me. “Glad you asked?”