FIVE #5
Matt McCallum was dressed in a black T-shirt and extremely baggy jeans, which he had pulled halfway down his ass, so that his abs and the top of his briefs were showing.
He, too, wore tons of heavy gold jewelry and had given himself huge fake tattoos of Chinese characters up and down both arms. Like Hunter and Kyle, Matt was wearing dark sunglasses, but—unlike the other two—he had added a wig.
Matt McCallum had given himself fake cornrows.
“Yeeeeah, yeeeeah!” Matt screamed into the mike. “A’ight, fools! Me and my homies are in the house!”
Oh my God. This could only end badly.
I craned my neck and scanned the surrounding tables, looking for Tyler. It was too dark with the dimmed lights. I couldn’t see him. I turned back around and screwed my eyes shut tight for a second. Please, please don’t. I sent up a fierce, desperate prayer.
Onstage, Hunter knelt down and pressed a button on the boombox.
In the next instant, a thick, pulsing beat shook the entire tent.
We could feel the earth beneath us throb along with the deep, steady bass.
Then a familiar swelling of orchestral strings began to sing up top, and I recognized the song immediately.
It was a popular hip-hop song from years ago, the soundtrack to a Hollywood movie.
It had been one of the earliest rap songs to cross genres and hit the top of the mainstream pop charts.
It was, in other words, a rap song that rich white people had heard of.
Hunter, Kyle, and Matt swayed their bodies to the beat of the low, steady bass, their palms open and swinging in front of them, swiping at the air in random arcs.
Both Hunter and Kyle were comically awkward dancers, but then I realized that they were doing this deliberately, poking fun at themselves, purposely stepping on the offbeat, playing directly to the stereotype of clueless white guys attempting to rap.
But Matt McCallum seemed really into it. Matt was pumping his fists in the air and violently jerking his body in time to the music. He had a steely, pissed-off death glare in his blue eyes and a convincing sneer on his face. Matt McCallum was not going for comic effect. He was in character.
I strained to focus on the spoof lyrics they were belting out:
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I take a look at my life and see there’s not much left
’Cuz I’ve been working at this firm for so damn long,
Even my mama thinks my mind is gone
But we keep billing and billing, we can’t ever stop
If one of these days we want to wind up on top
You better watch how you’re talking, and watch how you’re walking
Or you and your homies might never get made
Now I’m the kinda guy the little homies wanna be like
Dinner at Luger’s, weekend house at the seaside
But ninety-hour weeks they go down kind of hard
They never told us any of this back in HarvardYard!
Now Matt took a step backward to join Hunter and Kyle and, still swaying in unison and waving their arms in the air, the three of them launched into the chorus, singing at the top of their lungs:
Been spending most our lives, working in a partner’s paradise
Been spending most our lives, working in a partner’s paradise
Been spending most our lives, working in a partner’s paradise
We’ll keep spending most our lives, working in a partner’s paradise
Oh my God.
The tent felt like it was closing in on itself; the air around me was still and very close.
Slowly, taking care to have a neutral expression on my face—as neutral as possible—I glanced around the table.
Gavin Dunlop was grinning and nodding his head in time to the beat.
Andrea Carr’s forehead was furrowed. She looked grim.
I knew I liked that Andrea Carr. Caleb and Nate, meanwhile, just looked bored.
I snuck a look at Murph. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he had a quiet, thoughtful look on his face, but it was impossible to read.
I couldn’t tell if Murph looked thoughtful because—like me—he was contemplating the idiocy of three incredibly privileged lawyers spoofing a song that was a lament to the destructive cycle of gangster violence in the inner city, or because he was thinking that he could have come up with way funnier lyrics.
As casually as I could, I looked around at the neighboring tables.
Many of the senior partners were laughing and actually tapping their toes and slapping their thighs in time to the throbbing bass beat.
Most of them didn’t seem aware that anything unusual was happening.
A few younger lawyers did look uncomfortable, though, and just offstage, Pam Karnow looked downright pissed.
I finally spotted Tyler. He was seated a couple of tables behind me, with his arms hanging limply at his sides, making no eye contact with anyone at his table.
The summer associate sitting next to him looked mortified.
Tyler looked both sad and utterly unsurprised.
I willed him to look over at me, but he didn’t.
I turned back toward the stage. I watched helplessly as Hunter, Kyle, and Matt anchored their arms about each other’s shoulders and belted out the next verse:
Power and the money, money and the power
Minute after minute, hour after hour
You accumulate your riches
Grab your hos and your bitches
Now that me and my homies got made
And so our wives get younger
Our cars get bigger
Gotta run a lot faster
To catch up with this n——!
Except they didn’t say “N——.” I couldn’t believe it. They actually sang the word that rhymes with “bigger.”
I gasped. And I was not alone. There was a collective sucking in of breath from the tables near us.
Murph glanced over, caught my eye, and shot me a look. Holy shit.
I twisted around just in time to see Tyler Robinson walk out of the tent. I pushed back my chair, murmured, “Excuse me,” to no one in particular, and hurried after him.
“Tyler?” I ran out into the deepening dusk, peering across the shadowy, gently sloping lawn. “Tyler?” The evening had turned cool, and I rubbed my bare arms, shivering, not sure which way to go. He was nowhere to be seen.
“Tyler! Where are you?”
“Hey,” he said, much closer than I’d expected.
I whirled around. He was a few yards away from me, leaning against the thick gnarled trunk of an old oak tree.
I walked over to him.
“Hey.” I stood beside him, against the oak, which smelled mossy and damp. We were silent for several long moments.
I slid down along the base of the tree and settled onto one of its ancient, twisted roots, surprised at how solid and steady it felt beneath my weight.
I tilted my face up, staring up through the wizened old branches at the stars, which stood out in sharp relief against the clear night sky.
You never saw stars like this in the city, and I thought about how incongruous all this beauty was with everything that was going on underneath the tent.
I felt like I should say something to let Tyler know he wasn’t the only one in the world who ever felt like this. As long as I lived, I would not learn to leave a quiet moment alone.
“Tyler, I don’t know what those guys were thinking—” I began.
“Stop.” He held a hand up like a traffic cop. “Don’t. You don’t have to. Let’s not talk about it.”
“Okay,” I practically whispered.
“Damn.” Tyler pounded his fist against the tree. I jumped. “Nothing surprises me around here anymore. You know that?” He broke away and started striding up the hill toward the clubhouse.
I followed him. “Wait, where are you going? The first buses back to the city don’t leave for at least another hour.”
“You stay if you want. I’m calling a fucking cab.”
I sped up after him, struggling to keep up as the heels of my strappy sandals sank into the soft, moist sod. “But Tyler, what if someone asks where you went?”
He stopped. He laughed once and spun around. I realized I’d just asked an incredibly stupid question.
“Ingrid,” he said, and both his hands were clenched in fists, “I’m done. I’ve already spent an entire day faking conversation with people I can’t stand, and I’ll be damned if I let myself just sit here and smile through another second of their fucking dinner entertainment.”
“Listen, Tyler, what if we just—”
“No. I’m not doing this anymore.” He shook his head. “I’ve stayed too long as it is.” And he wasn’t just talking about the outing.
“Tyler, wait.” I reached out and touched his arm.
“No.” He shook me off. Then he looked pointedly at me. “You stay, then.”
His words stung me.
He broke into a fast run, up the hill. In another moment, he rounded the corner of the clubhouse and disappeared entirely.
I felt completely and utterly alone, more alone than I had ever felt in the nearly ten years since I’d been at Parsons Valentine. Because Tyler had just planted a nagging, bitter little seed of doubt. About what we were both still doing here.
I shivered, noticing again the chill in the evening air. I wished I’d brought a wrap. Slowly, carefully, trying not to slip on the grass moist with evening dew, I made my way back across the lawn to the tent and slipped back inside.
As I slid back into my seat, Gavin Dunlop leaned over and whispered, “Everything okay?”
I nodded.
Everything was not okay. I felt sick. Incredibly, the crazy skit was still going on. Onstage, Matt McCallum was still “rapping.” Hunter and Kyle were rhythmically bending their knees and arcing their arms around wildly.
Been spending most our lives, working in a partner’s paradise
We’ll keep spending most our lives, working in a partner’s paradise