Had he just called me Skippy?

From that morning on, my in-box remained perpetually full. Nine weeks in at Klasko, I started sleeping with my work phone set to vibrate on my chest, to Sam’s obvious displeasure. I ate dinner with it on the table. I showered with it on the toilet. “Busy” took on an entirely new meaning. I began to block out time in my calendar each day to go to the gym—an appointment I rarely kept. That block slowly became the block of time in which I tried (and sometimes failed) to fit in a shower.

“Hi, Lara,” I answered my extension perkily.

“Hi.”

Shit. She sounded pissed. What had I done? What had I forgotten to do? I would have forgotten I was working for her entirely if she hadn’t called.

“Did you send those leases to local counsel?”

I put her on speaker as I rapidly searched my sent mail. I didn’t even know which deal she was talking about. Lara. Real estate. I thought I had. Fuck. Had I forgotten to hit send? Here they were.

“Yes. I did. I sent them last night at eleven oh two.”

Silence.

“Alex. You didn’t cc me,” Lara said, forcing calm into her voice.

My heart sank. She was right—the cc line was blank. “Oh god. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” Please don’t fire me. Please don’t fire me.

“See that it doesn’t, please. If you cannot handle this in addition to your M&A matters, I can ask for alternative staffing.”

I breathed in sharply. “That won’t be necessary. It won’t happen again.”

I heard a mechanical pulse on the other end of the phone. “I have to grab this,” Lara said, and the line went dead.

I dropped my head into my hands; my lunch was in my throat. I couldn’t believe I had done that. I never made careless mistakes.

“Happens to the best of us.” I spun around in my chair to see Peter Dunn leaning against my doorframe, arms crossed over his chest.

Shit, I thought. I need to start closing my door when I’m on speaker.

“Shake it off, kiddo,” he said with a smile, and I forced myself to exhale as I fought back tears. “Either you’re going to be perfect or you’re going to be alive. Can’t be both.” He watched me carefully for a moment longer before taking one step farther into my office. “When I was a second-year associate—longer ago than I care to disclose—I sent the second-to-last version of a merger agreement to be signed, instead of the final, and it had a bunch of stuff in it we had successfully negotiated out of. Basically, I undid all of our work. And our client didn’t even read it. He just signed it. And obviously the other party signed it because the terms were better for them. Such a mess.” He shook his head and laughed.

“What happened?” I asked, feeling both horrified and comforted.

Peter shrugged. “The partner I was working for called me into his office. He said he’d take care of it, and that I should let it be a lesson in two things: One, ATD is king. And two, there’s almost no mistake a good lawyer cannot manage. Understand?”

I nodded.

“You should ask questions if you don’t understand.”

“I’ll work on my attention to detail,” I said, showing that, yes, I’d understood the acronym.

Peter smiled, putting a finger to the side of his nose and then pointing it at me. “Smart,” he said. “That was before everybody checked email every three seconds! Waiting it out was fucking agony. You can just email everybody again, saying, ‘Inadvertently left Lara off the email. Looping her in here.’ That’s it.” He turned on his heel to leave before pausing and looking over his shoulder. “Oh, and I’ll get you on one of my deals asap. Better to diversify your experience out of real estate.” Was he telling me that my mistake didn’t really matter because it was for real estate? “Oh, and don’t say ‘sorry,’” he called over his shoulder as he was halfway out the door. “Not ever.”

I stared at the empty doorframe, feeling slightly confused, then turned back to my computer.

“Yo!”

I looked up again to see Carmen, and waved her in. “Hi!” I really needed to start closing my door.

She took the seat across from me. “Was that Peter Dunn leaving your office?”

I nodded.

“You know him?”

I nodded.

“He knows you?” She raised her eyebrows. I laughed and nodded.

“He’s, like, a big deal.”

I laughed again, uncomfortably this time. “I’m doing M&A now. And still trying to pretend I have time for the real estate deal I’m on.”

“I heard.”

“How? We don’t even have water coolers.” I gestured to the large glass bottles of still and sparking water placed on my desk every morning by the food services fairies.

“Matt Jaskel is my partner mentor. He mentioned it when I last saw him.”

“Wow, he’s a big deal. You must have impressed somebody in your interview,” I said, echoing what she had said to me about Vivienne White.

She gave a short, approving laugh. “Have you lost weight?” It didn’t feel like a compliment. “How’s Sam? Can we do lunch tomorrow?” She didn’t wait for any answers as she took out her phone. “Noon? I figure we better start sharing our M&A war stories if we’re going to survive.” She smiled from ear to ear, and I noticed again how especially attractive Carmen was when she smiled; it seemed to iron out all of her sharp edges.

I opened my calendar to check whether I could have lunch, then realized that I was about to be late to my next meeting.

“Anna! Can you grab me the documents I printed?” I yelled out my door. So much for not asking her to do anything menial. I looked back at Carmen. “I can’t do noon. Late lunch at two?”

“Can’t. I have a call at two, and my dad is in town this weekend, so I want to try to get ahead with work. Coffee at four?”

“Done! I’ll send you a calendar invite.”

“Hello!?” Carmen and I both grabbed at our chests as a third voice echoed through my office. “Hello?!” We stared at my phone as Lara’s voice emanated from it. “Fucking first years,” she muttered before hanging up.

“Did you forget to end your last call?”

“Shit.” I shook my head, panicking as I wondered just how much of our conversation Lara had heard. “Today needs to be over. I can’t do anything right.”

“Happens to everybody. Was that an M&A partner?” Carmen asked. I shook my head. “Whatever, then! Who cares? Gotta run, see you tomorrow,” she said, ducking out of my office.

Jordan was already sitting in one of the two guest chairs when I arrived at Matt’s sun-drenched corner office. I paused at the door and waited for Matt to wave me in, and as soon as he saw me, he gestured to the empty guest seat. “Give us a second. We just need to finish up on this other matter.”

Jordan acknowledged me with a nod and turned back to Matt. “The calculation is kinda fucked because those figures really should have been above the line,” he mused.

I knew I should have paid attention to the conversation, viewed it as a learning opportunity, but I let my gaze drift around the room. Little Lucite plaques filled every single inch of windowsill space, touting all the impressive deals Matt had done: a Newton’s cradle for Criterion, Inc., a skyscraper for Upwards Partners, an oil well for EarthBound LLC.

Deal toys, one of the other first-years had told me they were called.

“I have so much on my plate. You deal with this.” Matt’s voice drifted into my ears, and I flashed him a grin, knowing my job would be much easier if he liked me. Matt smiled back at me. This was going to be much easier than it was with Lara. Guys are simple, I thought.

Jordan continued to brief Matt. “And the buyer sent through the target list for us to . . .”

“Do you know what a target list is?” Matt asked me, interrupting Jordan. I nodded, grateful that I had looked it up that morning after I’d been cc’ed on an email mentioning it.

“The list of potential targets in the market. Prospective acquisitions for the buyer,” I answered, trying to hide my smugness.

“I see a potential issue with Tremor, Elite Metals . . . ,” Jordan went on without acknowledging me.

I turned my attention back to Matt’s office decor. There were classic 1990s black-and-white professional photos of Matt with his wife and three boys, all wearing jeans with white collared shirts and bare feet. There were classic 1980s portrait pictures of his family with fading oval borders, in which the youngest child was still an infant. And one of Matt being swallowed up by the poufy white sleeves of his wife’s wedding dress, her with a short, feathered bob and him with thick brown locks and a full beard.

“Hard to believe I ever had that much hair,” Matt said, following my gaze. He laughed and brushed his hand over his scalp gently, as though running his fingers through his hair plugs would rip them out.