“It was good. Really good. I think the key to this job is taking advantage of the slower nights and coming home to you whenever I can.”

I put my bag down on the bed, feeling the rush of control over my life as I came home from a long day of work to my boyfriend, happy to see me, in the beautiful apartment my job allowed us to rent. Sam reemerged and picked out a T-shirt from a drawer, and watching him, I felt completely at peace. I knew Sam—really knew him. I could always tell what he thought of someone new by gauging his posture when he spoke to them. I knew that his favorite meal was grilled cheese and tomato soup. I knew the face he made in the mirror when he shaved. I suddenly appreciated that with him things were almost always what they seemed, and I knew how much he adored me. At Klasko, I didn’t really know my friends at all. It didn’t matter at all to me that he couldn’t yet pay rent or take me to nice dinners. I’d turned down a job at Sanctuary so I could do those things for myself, and for him. I knew one day soon Sam’s company would be successful, that it would all even out in the end.

“What?” he asked, looking at me. I narrowed my gaze slightly. His arms were in the sleeves of his T-shirt, and he was just about to pull it over his head.

“I’m not hungry just yet,” I said softly.

His eyes widened. “No?” he asked.

I shook my head once and let the right corner of my lip curl upward. His arms still in the sleeves, his strong, smooth chest still bare, he made his way over to me. He raised his arms and pushed them over my head, pulling me close with his T-shirt as a lasso. I craned my neck up to him, and he kissed me slowly. When Sam kissed me, I could feel his goodness wash over me.

“I’ve missed you,” I whispered. He kissed me again. I placed my hands on his chest and let my fingers creep down to where his towel folded in on itself. With a little pressure to the half-knot, his towel dropped to the floor. He pulled my hips in toward him and rested his hand on my backside. I felt his shirt drop away from his hands as he undid the zipper of my skirt. It slipped down to my heels. I locked eyes with his and raised my arms above my head. He obliged my request with a boyish grin and pulled my button-down up over my head.

I shifted my weight only slightly and lifted a leg.

“Leave the heels on,” he whispered. I smiled as I dropped my raised foot back to the floor. “The only thing I can stand about you working so much is how good you look in work clothes. Also, fair warning, I can’t really bend at the knee—I’m so sore.”

I threw my head back and laughed, feeling my hair on my back. I expected him to pull me onto the bed, but instead he pushed me up against the wall, where my heels made me the perfect height.

I can absolutely handle this job, I thought before I allowed myself to get lost in him.

Part II

The Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA)

A written legal agreement between two or more parties entered into in order to protect the sensitive information each party will become privy to as negotiations are entered.

Q. Would you say your professional relationships extend beyond the confines of the office?

A. I’m not sure I understand the question.

Q. Did or do you socialize with colleagues? Did you socialize with clients?

A. Yes. Yes.

Q. Can you please elaborate?

A. Klasko not only encourages socializing but often funds it in the form of happy hours and retreats. I didn’t go to undergraduate or graduate school in New York, so many of my friendships were formed at Klasko.

Q. I see. And what about with clients?

A. Actually, a large part of the job at Klasko is entertaining clients. In a legal market like New York City, there are so many law firms with excellent reputations to choose from, and the idea is that a client hires lawyers they also enjoy spending time with, as the hours required to close a deal are quite long.

Q. How do you socialize with colleagues and clients?

A. What do you mean, “how”? What does anybody do with their friends? What do you do with your friends?

Q. Ms. Vogel, I’m not the one testifying here. What types of activities do you engage in with clients and colleagues outside of the office?

A. Anything. Lunch, dinner, bars. I don’t know. Stuff friends do.

Q. Have you ever been to a strip club with a colleague or client?

A. No.

[Defense counsel confers]

Q. Is there any difference in how you socialize with your friends and with your clients?

A. Aside from the fact that the firm picks up the tab, there is a difference in general topics of conversation. Dinner with clients is professional. We often discuss work.

Q. Is that so? Topics of conversation are relegated to work? And you, what, limit your alcohol intake?

A. Not always, no.

Q. Perhaps it would help if you elaborated on client development endeavors.

Chapter 6

As we shuffled into our weekly Monday-morning first-year training, a bottleneck was forming at the sign-in sheet, and I heard chatter swirling around me:

Fuck! I can never remember my attorney ID number.

Just write your name, they’ll fill it in.

Who is “they”?

They! The firm!

I was so drunk that I gave the cabdriver the address of the office instead of my apartment building.

I’ve done that. Because we fucking live here.

My girlfriend is going to break up with me if I don’t come home before ten o’clock one night this week.

Tell her to chill out. We’ve only just started. When we get paid tonight, buy her Louboutins. The price is nothing if it means no more nagging.

I grabbed a mug, filled it with black coffee, and grabbed a seat in the back row. In our first two sessions, I had only half listened as I busied myself with the flood of Monday-morning emails streaking into my phone. I knew I wouldn’t get in trouble—M&A associates were almost expected to have their phones out during these trainings—but that day my absentee partner mentor, Vivienne White, was presenting. Figuring that she deserved my full attention, I left my phone facedown on the table. Vivienne was small and severe, beautiful with a certain frost that made me want to stare at her from a distance. Everybody was supposed to have lunch with their partner mentors in the first week of work, but I had yet to meet her face-to-face and I was just entering my third month at the firm. I had, however, emailed with her—she had canceled the very lunch dates she had requested on three separate occasions.

I saw the guy to my right checking his email, and managed to resist the urge for a few moments before following suit. Project Hat Trick still hadn’t quite heated to a boil, and I hoped to take full advantage of the simmer. A bunch of us were supposed to celebrate surviving the first couple months of work that Friday, and logistical emails eagerly anticipating our dinner at the end of the workweek, even though it was only Monday, had already begun.

*

“To payday!”

Derrick, Jennifer, Kevin, and I clinked the thick, ridged rims of our steins together and dropped our shots of sake into them. I reveled in the familiar sensation of malt on the back of my tongue, which tasted all the better because of my knowledge that it would barely put a dent in the $3,700 that had appeared for the fourth time now in my checking account—my biweekly take-home pay, even after the government took its share and I maxed out my savings contribution.

I wiped at my lip as the steam from the hibachi table hit my cheeks. It was my first time at Benihana, which Jennifer had insisted was the perfect place because none of the tourists infiltrating the midtown branch of the chain would bat an eye if we got too rowdy. I gazed at the couple across the table, the frames of their bodies wavy through the heat as they giggled and groped one another. Derrick followed my stare.

“We should have gone to EMP and blown it all,” Derrick groaned as he watched our chef, in an impossibly tall hat, greet us with a theatrical display of his knife skills.

“You’re the most gluttonous human I’ve ever met!” Jennifer laughed. I had no idea what EMP was, but assumed it was some unbelievably fancy restaurant.

“Are you kidding me? I can barely afford this after taxes!” Kevin complained.

“Right!? Half our paycheck gets stolen from us to pay for a government that does almost nothing I agree with!” Jennifer pouted. To me, complaining about getting half one’s paycheck stolen was an exercise reserved for those people in the highest tax brackets, a group that I was exceedingly grateful to be a member of.

“Where are Roxanne and Carmen?” Kevin asked.

“Roxanne’s stuck in the office, and Carmen’s father is in town,” I said, then took a long sip of my beer.