Love And Miss Communication Part 2

Luke reappeared shortly after Tracy and Jake retreated.

"Sorry about that. I didn't know my relatives were so talkative," he said. "Can I get you another drink?"

"Absolutely," she said.

She lost track of how many c.o.c.ktails they downed, but it was safe to say enough for it to seem like a great idea for them to grab the mike from the DJ and serenade the crowd with Justin Timberlake's "s.e.xyBack."

"You're really fun, Evie," Luke said when the two of them found themselves in the empty coat check. He was running his hands up and down her bare arms.

Then his lips were on hers, their tongues at battle. It felt amazing. The mixed-up sweat, the feel of his stubble, the panting. Oh, how she'd missed this. She pulled away from him for a moment to admire his face and smiled. It seemed there was life beyond Jack after all.

Their makeout lasted until a tuxedoed wedding attendant ahem-ed them.

"Night's over, kids," he said.

"Let me put you in a cab," Luke said. "Evie Rosen at Baker Smith. I'm going to look you up first thing tomorrow. Let's get together for a drink."

"I would love that," she said, taking the hand he offered her.

He flagged down a taxi and helped her inside. Through the open window he said, "Get home safe. Oh, and Evie, hang on to your phone a little better next time." He winked one brown eye at her and sent her off.

Seat belted into the backseat, she looked out at the city, all sparkly from the glow of the headlights and traffic lights. The rows of flowers in planters, illuminated from tiny spots, formed pink pillows in her mind. It had been a great night.

Back home, Evie quickly swapped her dress for cozy pajamas and flung her dizzy self into bed. Now she remembered why she never drank Scotch. Eyeing the blur that was her laptop on the night table, she almost sent Luke a Facebook message-just a quick "what a fun night" opener to get a dialogue going, but she resisted on account of inebriation.

She did not want to end up like Jeffrey Belzer.

Jeffrey was a summer a.s.sociate with Evie. After returning from a three-bottles-of-wine lunch at the Harvard Club (normal in the course of the seduction of the Big Law summer programs), he dashed off a quick e-mail to his fellow a.s.sociate Allen Jacobs.

Why, oh why, did Allen's parents have to spell his name with two l's? Jeffrey Belzer must still be pondering that very question. When he selected the recipient of this soon-to-be-legendary e-mail, he didn't click on Allen Jacobs, but rather All Firm. The stream of the Sancerre at lunch couldn't have helped. It was done. There was no taking it back. Well, yes, an attempt was made to take it back. Not sixty seconds after sending the e-mail, someone must have alerted Jeffrey, because what followed in everyone's inbox was the following message: "Jeffrey Belzer would like to recall the message that was just sent." Now everyone who had ignored the message (it had had the bland subject line "yo") decided it had to be juicy. Within an hour, it had gone viral. The infamous blog BigLawSux had picked it up and then it appeared, verbatim, in the next day's Wall Street Journal.

Baker Smith was quick to issue a press release stating that Jeffrey Belzer's employment had been terminated as a result of his lapse in judgment. The statement further clarified, to clients who were already calling up to contest their bills, that the cost of the summer a.s.sociate program was fully absorbed by the firm and not pa.s.sed down to clients. Finally, and most comically to Evie, the firm said in the release that it encouraged every employee to recognize other individuals for their inner qualities and not their outer characteristics. Evie guessed that was the diplomatic way of saying that it did not condone referring to people as the "fatty" or "Indian chick." Fortunately for Baker Smith, its white shoes were quickly repolished and it retained its status as one of the city's premier law firms. Jeffrey, on the other hand, apparently fled to Thailand for a while and was last spotted taking drink orders at an Italian restaurant in the West Village.

The episode gave rise to Evie's hard-and-fast rule: no e-mail or texting while drunk.

Far less tragically, she had once signed an e-mail to a senior partner, Mitch.e.l.l Rhodes, with "xoxo, Evie." Mitch.e.l.l had responded to the otherwise professional e-mail with, "Thanks. I can't even get my kids to tell me they love me!" Evie and Mitch.e.l.l had worked together many times since that e-mail exchange, and considering he was on the partners.h.i.+p committee, she felt fortunate they had shared that moment of intimacy, even if it arose from her carelessness. Still, there was no need for anyone else to receive an unintended electronic hug and kiss or a smiley face emoticon.

At the time of the Jeffrey Belzer episode, Evie reacted much like the other young a.s.sociates-with a mixture of uproarious laughter and collegial pity. Things would be different if she made partner. She would be a partial owner of the firm (okay, her share of the profits would be like 1/250), but nonetheless a media crisis like this would have a totally different effect on her. She felt so grown up thinking about that. In the professional arena, she was exactly where she was meant to be at this age. Romantically, she felt like an insecure high-schooler. Besides the two years she dated Jack, her love life had been a series of three-date-max relations.h.i.+ps.

What would Luke find when he looked her up? She did a quick self-Google. Her Baker Smith profile was the first return. The picture was a total disaster, taken after she'd pulled a double all-nighter. There were a few better images of her on NewYorkSocialDiary.com from society events that Caroline had dragged her to. Her name appeared in a list of partic.i.p.ants in a 5K Juvenile Diabetes fun-run, even though she'd actually bailed last minute due to a head cold. Her father's obituary in the Baltimore Sun was there. There was no trace of her and Jack. He didn't love pictures.

She curled up with her laptop tucked under her arm like a blankie and hoped for a new message ding from Luke, but the only thing she heard until she fell asleep were the soothing sounds of ambulances and car horns-the New York lullaby, she liked to call it.

Radio silence. That's what she got from Luke Gla.s.sc.o.c.k after Paul's wedding. It was aggravating. He had seemed to forgive the whole birthing-a-phone-on-the-dance-floor mishap. She thought they had made a connection. They shared a hot and heavy makeout at the end of the evening. He had gallantly put her in a taxi, coolly handing the driver a twenty. He promised to be in touch. Could he have forgotten her last name? Where she worked? Even so, he could have asked Paul.

Now at work she found herself thinking about him too much, moving her head from one giant monitor to the other, like she was watching a tennis match at her desk, but not actually focusing on anything. The Calico closing had gone off without a hitch, but instead of being able to celebrate, a new matter was put on her desk moments after the final signature page had been faxed. She felt like Lucy in the chocolate factory.

Rumor had it the partners.h.i.+p committee was having a deliberation session that day, at least according to her BFF Renaldo on the maintenance crew. He had just delivered four sandwich platters and eight yellow legal pads to the forty-second-floor conference room.

Amid the stream of e-mails advertising summer sales, Evie noticed a message from Joshua Birnbaum, a tech entrepreneur she'd met on JDate three months earlier. They went out twice-two no-sparks-but-could've-been-worse evenings that left both of them fairly apathetic. But here was Joshua again, suggesting they meet for a drink as though ninety days hadn't pa.s.sed since they'd last been in contact. She was actually considering accepting when her phone rang.

"Hi, lady," Caroline chirped. "We didn't recap the wedding yet. How've you been?"

"Eh. Swamped at work, as usual, and annoyed Paul's cousin has vanished into thin air."

"He's probably just busy at work. If his job is anything like yours, he doesn't have a ton of spare time to make dates."

Evie didn't have the strength to fight Caroline on that point-to state the plain fact that drafting a simple "It was great to meet you" e-mail could be accomplished in less than thirty seconds. No one knew that better than Evie. She managed to send dozens of personal e-mails out during the day. The letters on the keyboard of her computer were practically tattooed on her finger pads. She could dash off a one-liner blindfolded and with one hand tied behind her back.

"I think you should just put him out of your head," Caroline went on. "You know how that whole watched pot business works anyway. Can you hang on a sec? I'm in a cab." She heard Caroline ask the driver to take her to the Plaza Hotel on Central Park South. Then, in a far more hushed tone, she heard Caroline tell him to pick her up in two hours. Last time Evie checked, taxis didn't do round-trips. Clearly Caroline was talking to Jorge, her chauffeur, but at least she was embarra.s.sed about it.

"Sorry, I'm back. I'm walking into a luncheon. Text me if you hear from him. You know how boring these charity things are-I'll just be staring at my phone. Like you." She giggled.

"Touche," Evie conceded.

Glancing at the BlackBerry on her desk, Evie thought about how her smartphone helped drown out the loneliness, almost like the background noise of a rerun she'd committed to memory. Acknowledging that a three-ounce electronic device was subst.i.tuting for a genuine mate hit a sour note, but Evie was too cognizant of its usefulness to consider quitting the habit.

"Well have a good time. Don't forget to save some endangered pocketbooks for me."

Evie couldn't resist. In February, Caroline had purchased a table at "New Yorkers for Wildlife" and convinced Evie to duck out of work for lunch in the Waldorf ballroom. The trouble was that it was minus six degrees outside and most of the ladies were bundled in fur.

Unsatisfied with Caroline's dismissal of her angst over Luke, Evie phoned the ever-honest Tracy, hoping to catch her during a free period. After she went straight to voicemail, Evie started to dial Stasia's number but replaced the receiver midway. It was easier to speak to Caroline and Tracy about this type of thing. Both of them were married, but Caroline's husband was geriatric and Tracy's an ambiguously employed loafer. She believed they were both content, but still Evie took some comfort in feeling that compromises had been made. Relating agonizing dating stories to them was certainly tolerable, usually cathartic.

Stasia was different. She and Rick were a golden couple-attractive, well educated, from "good" families. They looked like they stepped out of a Slim Aarons photograph. Without-gasp-the help of a wireless connection, they found each other at Stanford Medical School (albeit over a cadaver dissection). After his training, Rick, an East-Coaster from birth, convinced Stasia to relocate with him. He became an ENT with a successful private practice on Park Avenue while she was slowly rising up the ranks in the research department of a top pharmaceutical company based in New Jersey.

After her announcement at Paul's wedding, Evie knew they were planning to start a family. It was natural to picture Rick as a father. He didn't seem to mind when Evie crashed their date nights and was quick to offer up the guy's perspective when she needed relations.h.i.+p advice. Plus Rick helped people for a living, even if it was only from the discomfort of deviated septums. That was more than she could say for Caroline's husband, whose daily task at work appeared to be printing money. It wasn't really her place to get high and mighty about professions, since working at Baker Smith hardly likened her to Mother Teresa. But still.

Her office phone rang. Tracy.

"Hey, I just saw a missed call from you. What's up? I'm on lunch."

"Nothing. Just annoyed. Stupid Luke from Paul's wedding. He hasn't e-mailed me yet."

"Evie, you are killing me. I saw him. He's cute, but you can do better. Didn't you say he was kind of a jerky banker type?"

"I don't remember that." (She did.) "And I hate to ask the obvious, but if I can do better, then shouldn't he be banging down my door? And by the way, when you did see him at the wedding, you said he was adorable."

"Uch, never mind what I said. Hormones talking. Stop checking your e-mail and think about where you want us to take you out to dinner for your long-overdue birthday dinner. We thought maybe the Beatrice Inn. Caroline can get us in." Evie had canceled on two previously scheduled celebrations because of work obligations. Things had a shot of getting quieter over the summer, but Evie wasn't much in the mood for merriment.

She chose to completely ignore Tracy's attempt to change the subject.

"In my entire adult life, I've only met one person that I've truly loved and who loved me. You know I never should have given him that stupid ultimatum. I could be happily-"

"Happily what?" Tracy cut her off. "Happily dating? You can't happily date for the rest of your life. You said you wanted a real commitment. Marriage. A wedding. Kids. You deserve that, and breaking up with Jack was the right thing to do."

"I guess you're right." Evie decided it was easier to agree than to draw out this debate again, which she had had with each of her girlfriends at least a dozen times.

"I am right. But I gotta go. The bell just rang."

Evie rested the phone in its cradle and opened up her lower file cabinet. She s.h.i.+fted a few heavy-duty hanging folders to the front, and pulled out the silver picture frame, now badly tarnished, that used to sit to the right of her computer. It housed a picture of her and Jack from a Halloween culinary event. Jack was one of the featured chefs. For a costume, the farthest he would venture was letting Evie attach feathers and silly pins to his toque. She, on the other hand, went all out and dressed as a s.e.xy version of Remy, the chef from the Disney movie Ratatouille.

She'd met Jack just a month before the Halloween party at the Soho Grand bar while out with the girls celebrating Stasia's move back from the West Coast. In the sw.a.n.ky lobby, she had flopped down happily in between Stasia and Caroline on a velour banquette and quickly downed a gla.s.s of Cabernet. She relaxed and imbibed, taken in by a sensual red diptych hanging next to the bar. That's when she noticed Jack. He was getting up from a nearby table and shaking hands with a pretty young woman holding a tape recorder and a heavily inked cameraman. Evie was instantly curious.

After about an hour of sneaking glances at each other, he approached Evie when she stepped away from her table to listen to a voicemail, and offered to buy her a drink. The first thing she heard was his accent. It was definitely British and definitely hot.

Evie a.s.sessed that he was handsome but not out of her league. He stood about three inches taller than her in her heels and had fair skin, steely blue-gray eyes, and brown hair worn a touch on the long side. She guessed he was about midthirties. The small gap between his two front teeth immediately made Evie curious about his background. Where she was from, everyone got braces the day after their bar or bat mitzvahs. He had a raw s.e.xiness about him, emphasized by a five-o'clock shadow and the motorcycle jacket he managed to pull off without any irony. In a word-he had swagger.

"I'm Jack," he said, grabbing a few handfuls of smoked nuts at the bar. "And I'm absolutely starved after a rubbish sus.h.i.+ dinner in Midtown."

"Midtown? Why were you eating there? My office is in Midtown and the restaurants are terrible. I'm Evie, by the way."

"And what is it that you do? In Midtown?"

Courtesy of the alcohol ratcheting up her self-esteem a few notches, Evie responded proudly that she was a corporate attorney at Baker Smith, instead of muttering "lawyer" under her breath.

They ended up discussing for ten minutes which neighborhoods in Manhattan had the best restaurants-teasing, joking, and spritedly fighting their way through a mock dispute. For the first time in ages, she actually ignored the persistent buzz of her BlackBerry, even though she knew a team of attorneys in the firm's Menlo Park office was waiting on her feedback. Jack was just so pa.s.sionate as he spoke-though really anything he said with that accent would have magnetized her.

"So, Jack, what do you do that you have so much time to go out to eat?" She hoped to get at some explanation of why he was being filmed earlier.

"Well, I suppose now is a good time to tell you, I'm a chef. Jack Kipling is my full name. Perhaps I should have told you that before we got into it." He chuckled, obviously enjoying her jaw-dropped reaction.

Jack Kipling was arguably the city's hottest young chef. She was surprised that she hadn't recognized him. He was not only a chef but also a successful restaurateur, owning several well-regarded restaurants in the city, most notably JAK, a French-style bistro on the Upper West Side near her apartment. He was a close pal and rival of Marcus Samuelsson.

"But don't worry, no offense taken about your comment that uptown restaurants are almost as bad as Midtown," he said.

"Wait-no-I actually love JAK! I eat there all the time. Honestly. Check your receipts. You'll see lots of Evie Rosen AmEx charges."

"I believe you. Though I won't quiz you on what your favorite dish is, just in case you're lying to make me feel better. Listen these nuts are not really doing it for me-I'm still rather peckish. Do you want to-wait, sorry, I forgot I saw you over there with your friends."

"No, no, it's fine. We were getting ready to leave anyway," she lied. "I'll just go say good-bye to them and we can get something to eat."

And that was the start of Evie's relations.h.i.+p with Jack.

Three shrill rings of her office phone brought Evie back to the present. Her secretary, Marianne, whom she shared with another a.s.sociate, was away from her post, as per usual, so Evie scooped up the phone herself. Marianne was all big hair and big lips and something always seemed to need reapplying in the bathroom.

"This is Evie."

"Evie, it's Mitch.e.l.l Rhodes. Could you come up to the conference room on the forty-second floor please?"

Evie immediately felt nauseated. It couldn't be that she was already going to be named partner, could it? It was too early for that, unless the firm was changing its protocol. Maybe they wanted to grill her on her recent matters, to see if she was really up to snuff. Or could there be some secret societylike initiation process where she'd be blindfolded and forced to drink a drop of blood from the pinkies of each of the partners on the executive committee? She didn't like the sound of Mitch.e.l.l's voice on the phone. Why did everyone at her firm have to sound so formal? She wished they would just say, "Hey, get up here, we want to give you a huge office and loads of money."

"Sure, I'll be right up," she muttered, and grabbed her ID card so she could access the executive-level conference floor.

Two minutes later, she found herself seated across from the five members of the partners.h.i.+p committee. Mitch.e.l.l was scanning his BlackBerry and did not look up when she entered, which seemed peculiar. The conference room had one wall of solid gla.s.s and the afternoon sun streamed through, forcing Evie to squint while she faced the grim-looking partners. She steeled her body against the powers that be. The long mahogany table around which the partners were seated was covered in boxes filled with papers-the kind used for due-diligence projects. There had to be at least ten of them, each overflowing. Good grief, please let this not be the mound of paperwork she'd be expected to review in her newest a.s.signment.

"Evie," Patricia Douglas, the freshest member of the partners.h.i.+p committee and a highly regarded litigator, said. "You know how outstanding we think your work has been since you've joined the firm. Your reviews have been consistently glowing."

"Thank you. I really try my best." When n.o.body cracked a smile, Evie wondered if maybe she shouldn't have responded.

"As you know, the choice of who makes partner at Baker Smith is not one that we take lightly."

No s.h.i.+t. Out of her entering a.s.sociate cla.s.s of 120, only 5 or 6 had a shot at partners.h.i.+p. Evie barely knew her compet.i.tion. The other a.s.sociates whose names were being whispered in the hallways worked in different departments and rarely, if ever, surfaced at firm social events. The rest of the a.s.sociates from her entering cla.s.s had been gradually weeded out over an eight-year period. Blood, sweat, and tears were expected by-products of the journey. And still there were no guarantees for those still standing. It could be one careless error in a closing doc.u.ment. Or a faux pas at a client meeting. She was immensely proud of herself for not having made any missteps, at least none big enough to come to the attention of upper management.

"However," Patricia continued, "there is something concerning that has recently come to our attention. About your performance."

Suddenly, the temperature climbed to Bikram Yoga proportions. What could this be about? She couldn't remember ever feeling so clueless and so unsure of what was coming next.

A million thoughts raced through her mind at once, but none of them made much sense. She'd once feigned a terrible cold to get out of a mentoring program so she could attend a special event at Jack's restaurant. Who could have known she was lying? She'd purposely ducked out of pictures that were Instagram-bound. More recently, she had forgotten to mute her phone while on a call with the Calico accountants and had made an appointment for a haircut on her cell phone simultaneously. But those were hardly capital offenses.

"Evie, do you see all these papers on the table?"

Of course she did. She nodded yes.

"Do you have any idea how many papers are here?"

Evie shook her head no. What was this? A guess-how-many-jelly-beans-are-in-the-jar contest?

"Ten thousand," Patricia said. "Actually, more than that. And do you know what's in those papers?"

Evie looked down at the floor, unable to blink, and watched as the checked pattern of the carpet took on a distorted and frightening pattern.

"Doc review?" Evie whispered. "For my next project. The tech merger." Her voice lilted upward, like a little girl's.

"No, they are not, Evie." Mitch.e.l.l Rhodes spoke for the first time in the meeting. All of the other partners present had remained silent, most of them expressionless. One of them-whose name Evie couldn't recall-seemed to be stifling a smile. "Evie, these papers are the more than one hundred and fifty thousand personal e-mails you have sent while at work over the last eight years. As you no doubt recall, we were having server issues recently. Many a.s.sociates complained about the Internet speed and said LexisNexis was almost unusable. So we hired a consulting firm to look into the matter. It turns out a number of our a.s.sociates have been abusing their time at work by sending extensive personal e-mails. But you, Evie, were by far the worst offender. We calculated you sent, on average, seventy-five personal e-mails every day. At first we a.s.sumed you were running a private business from the office, which is strictly prohibited, but from a review of the data that appears not to be the case."

Evie felt her rib cage collapse like an accordion. She worried her skeleton wouldn't be strong enough to lift her from her chair to get to the bathroom, where she desperately wanted to throw up. Could it really be possible she was the worst offender at the firm? Wasn't everyone addicted to e-mail? All the younger a.s.sociates were probably just texting instead. But could she prove that?

"Evie," Mitch.e.l.l continued, "we're very disappointed. Frankly, you were almost a shoo-in for a partners.h.i.+p. But we can't in good faith promote somebody who in one day sent over ninety e-mails back and forth to someone named Caroline Michaels with the subject line 'Is Jack getting sick of me?'"

Evie remembered that day. She couldn't focus at work because Jack had declined her offer to accompany him to the Aspen Food & Wine Festival for no discernible reason. All he'd said was "I'm fine to go alone." Evie felt like she was nagging him every time she offered to come along. She tasted a salty drop on her lip at the memory, which released a full batch of fresh tears at the thought of what was happening to her now. She was losing her job. The most stable thing in her life. Her livelihood. A good part of her existence. And she was crying at work. Something she had vowed never to do.

Patricia spoke up again, undeterred by Evie's tears. "In case you are wondering, our review of your e-mails is perfectly legal. When you signed your employment contract, you gave us express consent to review anything on our servers." Jesus, it was like she was reading from a script in a wrongful termination defense manual. "Evie, I'm sorry about how this turned out. But we can't imagine you have been devoting your full energies to work when you are spending so much time on personal matters at the office. We wish you luck, but your employment at Baker Smith is now officially terminated."

Without a word, Evie stood up from the conference table and headed to the door. Summoning all the strength left in her body, she whispered, "Then I guess this is good-bye."

"Evie-wait," Patricia said. Evie turned back with her hand still on the doork.n.o.b. She thought for a brief moment that maybe they had changed their minds, reaching a silent decision after seeing her anguished face that, yes, they could overlook her e-mail infractions and give her another chance.

"Yes?" Evie said, a hopeful note in her voice painfully obvious even to her.

"We're going to need your BlackBerry back."

All she could think about as she palmed the featherweight piece of black plastic that had been her lifeline to the outside world for the last eight years was-if she wasn't who was she?