“Stacy?” I peer up at my colleague’s familiar face and glossy brown hair. Stacy Arroyo is an eager second-year associate with an aggressively cheery demeanor that I’m certain can only be counterbalanced by a dark pastime I have yet to identify. We are two people who would never choose each other as friends but have trauma-bonded after spending day in and day out in the same hellish workplace. I would lay down my life for this woman who says “whoopsie-daisy,” and that’s a fact I’m forced to carry with me now.
“Morning,” she says, her voice ungodly chipper given the hour. Then her demeanor downshifts so suddenly, I nearly get whiplash. “AgriTech says they’re cutting their legal budget.”
“Were you staking me out in the parking lot to tell me that?”
She lifts her shoulder. “You don’t like when I call you before work.”
“Well, I don’t like whatever this is either.” I punch the elevator call button with my now-free hand.
“Why are you always dressed like a storm cloud? You’re wearing gray on gray on gray. It’s summer. Aren’t we supposed to dress more casually? Or at least incorporate a pop of neon?” she asks, holding the elevator door open with her hip.
Today I’m dressed in a perfectly tailored gray suit and silk shell that I’ve paired with an eye-wateringly expensive taupe tote from The Row. I bought it in a retail-therapy bingesometime after Rich moved out but before I’d calculated how much of my stuff I’d need to sell to buy the house from him.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to return something I’d purchased in a rare moment of post-Rich optimism, and the quiet luxury of the smooth, supple leather makes me feel chic while eating breakfast tacos off a food truck. To remove it from its protective canvas sack, I need to hype myself up by whispering capitalistic affirmations like “This is an investment piece!” and “I deserve nice things!”
Despite these high-end staples, my coworker—whose enthusiasm for “tasteful” body glitter under the harsh workplace fluorescents has given her golden tan skin an iridescence rivaling that of the vampire family inTwilight—will forever see me as the grumpy Care Bear.
I frown. “I don’t trust people who go too casual in a corporate environment. I don’t need to see a man’s bare knees in a place of business.”
At Anderson & Gottlieb, I work with plenty of normal men who ask after my weekends in an appropriately disinterested manner before following up on the status of client files and shuffling away from me. But, as with any male-dominated industry, there are a handful of partners at my law firm whose energy teeters dangerously between condescendingly paternalistic and confusingly sexual, all executed with a healthy dose of plausible deniability. Advances are often subtextual and generally too difficult to explain in a way that would make for an actionable HR complaint.
All this to say, gray suits are a necessary defensive tactic.
“You said something about AgriTech?” I slurp iced latte from its rapidly collapsing paper straw.
“Yes,” she tells me, leading the way to my tiny office, whichis all windows, with no room for privacy or relaxation. “They want us to cap our fees or they’ll stop sending work.”
I barely suppress my groan. “If they want to spend less on legal fees, they should try getting sued less often.”
Once we’re safely in my office, I violently plop everything on my desk like I am both Miranda Priestly and the poor assistant who’ll have to pick up after her.
“They’re Bob’s client. What did Bob say?” I ask.
Bob Champion is a managing partner with a gift for name-dropping washed-up politicians from the nineties. In the parasitic cesspool that is Anderson & Gottlieb, associates are trapped in a toxic, symbiotic relationship with partners in which job stability is dependent on how much those in power like and trust you. Weneedthem to dump enough of their work onto us to meet our insanely high billable-hour quotas and live to fight another day. Bob is my whale who provides the endless supply of work that keeps my hours unbeatable, and I’m the tiny barnacle on his back he auto-forwards emails to in the name of “mentorship.”
When I first joined Anderson & Gottlieb as a bright-eyed young lawyer, I immediately set my sights on Pamela, the only female partner in the patent group and a woman with the kind of severe black bob that seems to pass judgment on my bouncy blond blowout merely by existing in its inert perfection. Pamela rose through the ranks in the era ofLean Incorporate feminism and seems permanently disappointed I’m not experiencingmore overtsexism to the degree and frequency that she endured. No matter how many midnight calls I answered or miles I racked up flying all over the country at the drop of a hat, it never seemed to be enough.
So now I’m stuck with Bob because Pamela has a newprotégé in smarmy Paul, a fellow fourth-year associate so determined to push me out of this place that he spends his Sunday mornings endorsing me for things on LinkedIn.
Before answering my question, Stacy dips her head to the side. I’m not going to like her answer. “Bob said you’d handle it.”
Unfortunately for me, Ican’tfall out of favor with Bob if I want to stay on the partnership track, and as a fourth-year associate, I’m completely at his mercy.
She doesn’t miss my eye twitch. “My law school friend says Payne loves the work we’ve done for them, and they’re hiring for multiple roles…”
I drop into my office chair. “We’re not going in-house at a company that makes rat traps, Stacy. It’s not that dire,” I reassure her for the umpteenth time, because despite Stacy’s commitment to her career, I know she has a chaotic streak that includes watching YouTube videos of workers telling off their bosses while she eats her bento box lunches at her desk.
“A & G is the safe bet,” I promise her. “We’ve worked too hard here just to start over someplace else. We’re playing the long game, Stace.”
With Stacy, I’m always in this role: the slightly more senior associate who is yanking her up and out of this den of vipers by her pink chiffon sleeve.
She sets my drinks on my desk and moves to leave but then seems to change her mind. “Almost forgot,” she says, wheeling herself back around to present me with a tiny black envelope.
I open it and analyze its contents. “Why are you handing me an expired gift card to Ruth’s Chris Steak House?”
“It’sbarelyexpired, and I’m hoping it’ll soften the blow of…you know…today.”
The word she’s not saying beats against my skull with a steady thump:divorce, divorce, divorce.
