“Nobody expects you to be anything,” I argued half-heartedly.

“Doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause I can’t get fired. Guess that’s the upside to being their black poster boy.” He spun back toward the street, formed a circle with his thumb and index finger, and whistled, and a cab screeched to a halt. “Get home safe, Skippy,” he said, my nickname sounding like an insult. He lived in the West Village, and though he knew I was on his way home, he didn’t offer me a ride.

I stood for a moment staring after Derrick’s cab before snapping out of it to hail my own.

“Skippy! Join us!” Matt and Didier were leading the pack out of the restaurant. A sense of sadness nestled into my throat. Derrick had shattered any illusion that tonight’s invitation was a result of them actually enjoying my company. It was all about optics, I understood that now. “Wasn’t a question,” Matt continued, smiling broadly. Maybe they did actually want my company, even if it was just so I could entertain Didier. And I really did want to see what it was like to party without thinking about the tab. How would somebody with no budget spend an evening in New York City?

“But hey, remember, what happens out with clients, stays out with clients,” he warned, putting a finger to his lips.

I nodded in total understanding.

Two hours later we were in a dark corner of the Boom Boom Room in the Standard Hotel. When Matt had flashed his black AmEx to the bouncer, we’d been ushered past the line and up to the fourteenth floor, where we were shown to the plush red couches around a corner table—the only suits in a sea of skinny jeans, short dresses, and silicone cleavage. By the time I’d taken my third shot at Jordan’s command, I was struggling to hold my head upright on my neck, which had dissolved to putty in the grip of vodka. The two-drink-maximum warning played on a loop in my pulsating eardrums.

“I bet it’s hard for you at work, getting hit on all the time,” KJ slurred, leaning over Jordan to talk to me. I shook my head playfully, hating that I was flattered. The offense I might have taken when sober to not being treated professionally dissolved and was replaced by some shallowly buried middle school complex about being the broad-shouldered girl when skinniness was in and the outspoken one when guys liked passive girls.

“I really don’t.”

“Tell her,” Taylor growled at Jordan.

“Tell her what?” Jordan asked dryly, staring straight ahead.

“Carmen does!” I insisted, trying to turn the attention from myself.

“Does what? Who is Carmen?” Taylor asked Jordan with a nudge, but Jordan ended the conversation with an almost imperceptible shake of his head. I looked at Jordan’s complete composure with envy. How does he do it? He’s been pounding wine and shots all night. Matt leaned his head against the armrest on the opposite end of the couch as a scantily clad cocktail waitress refilled the drink in his almost lifeless hand, and Didier plunked his massive frame down beside me, resting the edge of his left leg atop my right. He snorted and then hacked back up whatever had been pushed down from his nose, only to swallow it back down again. Unwilling to catch the Plague, I tried to wriggle out from under him without success.

“Have you met this Carmen girl?” Taylor asked Didier.

Didier nodded. “She’s on the Trinity acquisition.”

My neck suddenly felt solid, and I snapped up my head. She is? She didn’t tell me that.

“Is she hot?” KJ prodded. I looked for Didier’s response, feeling slightly slimy for wanting to know what he thought.

“Yeah. But in a way that makes you want to treat her like shit.” Didier’s voice was clear, and he seemed more sober than just a few moments ago. He let out a burp under his breath, and I smelled rancid chemical waste. “You’re hot in a way that makes everybody want to take care of you,” he yelled, barely audible over the music.

“You have issues,” I mumbled.

“You have no idea.” His shoulder bounced as he laughed. “But you know, I don’t give a fuck how hot you are. None of us do. You get good deals because you do good work. If you were just hot, I’d just hit on you. Not work with you.”

I didn’t know what to say. Part of me wanted to tell him he couldn’t speak to me that way—that it was harassment. But it didn’t feel like harassment. It felt like a compliment. I wasn’t even certain if a client could harass me—he wasn’t my employer, after all. I struggled to see the downside to having a client express interest in me, and although my vision was cloudy from alcohol, I could see what lay ahead: staffing on the best deals, positive performance reviews, a smoother path to success than I would have if Didier never knew my name or wanted me to like him back. The drinks suddenly hit me again, and I closed my eyes for a moment.

“Up or down?” Didier asked me.

I looked at him blankly. “What?”

He laughed. “You’re cute.”

This is flirting. Granted, flirting with a fat, old Frenchman I’d never consider touching. But still. I rolled my eyes at him but was smiling as he took out a travel-size Advil bottle from his suit pocket and a small glass vial from his pants pocket.

“Up?” he said, holding up the vial, which was filled with white powder. “Or down?” He held up the Advil bottle.

I stared at the vial. “What is it?”

“What the fuck, Didier?” Jordan was suddenly leaning over me, his speech deliberate and irritated. “She doesn’t need that shit.”

“What is it?” I pouted.

“She’s so cute,” Didier whined to Jordan, but Jordan took my arm and pulled me up off the couch, freeing my skirt from Didier’s leg as he did so. Didier was already focused on the breasts of the waitress refilling our ice bucket.

“That wasn’t Advil,” Jordan yelled over his shoulder as he forged a path toward the bar through the swaying figures surrounding us on all sides. “It was Xanax. And coke. And you don’t need either.”

“Oh.” As I allowed Jordan to lead me through the crowd, the bass from the speakers rattled my chest. I stared up at the short-haired singer in the band, kicking her fishnet-covered legs out from under her flapper dress as a brassy trumpet blared. “I don’t do drugs,” I said, almost apologetic. I’d never expected the most successful lawyers in Manhattan to unwind with anything but alcohol. Bankers, yes. But lawyers surprised me. It can’t be all that bad for you, I thought, if all these guys do it on a random Tuesday and go home to their young children and houses in Westchester after.

“I know, I know, Skip. Drugs are frowned upon at the country club,” he said with a smirk. My parents weren’t country-club people, but I didn’t have the chance to correct him before he pushed through to the bar and ordered us two waters. We put our lips to the large glasses dripping with condensation and tilted our heads skyward. I sucked hungrily at an ice cube, then spit it back into my glass, not worrying about seeming ladylike in the moment.

“Do you and Matt do coke?”

“Next question.” Jordan smiled. I rolled my eyes, annoyed I had broken down and finally asked to clarify what the “up” that people were always offering each other actually was.

“You and Matt are like . . .” I intertwined my fingers and held them up.

Jordan laughed and nodded. “You get it. I didn’t know you got it.” I stared back at him, inviting him to continue. “You understand client development. You made Didier like you. And it’s Matt’s job to keep Didier happy.”

“I have a question,” I mumbled.

“Shoot.”

“Remember when . . . Why do you think Carmen told you guys my whole family went to Harvard? And like . . . donated a library?”

“Hmm. Did you ask Carmen?”

“Yeah. She said it was to make me look good.”

Jordan nodded, as though he assumed she’d have said as much. “Look, Skip. The worst thing you can be when you’re in this business is somebody who was given what everybody else needed to earn. Makes people think you’re not as smart or as hardworking as the rest of us. Look at Peter. That’s why . . .”

Jordan registered the confusion in my eyes and trailed off. “Shots!” he declared, attempting to change the subject.

“What about Peter?”

“Never mind, Skip. Shots.”

I rolled my eyes in reluctant capitulation.

“You never answer my questions. And no shots. We’re not supposed to do shots. And we’re only supposed to have two drinks! That’s what they told us ten times in our business development training.”

“There are rules for everybody else, and then there are rules for M&A. Matt brings in more business than anybody else at the firm. We have a different set of rules.” Jordan signaled the bartender. “Two shots of Casamigos, por favor.”

“Didier said I do good work,” I said defensively.

“You do. Stop fishing,” Jordan said and handed me a shot. “Usually first-years are just the people who schedule our meetings and do our slides. You do real work. I mean, we let you do real work. Because you’re good.” He remembered himself and repeated, “Stop fishing.”