I race-walked to the career services center, where several other students were flipping through job listings in big white binders. A paltry list of firms scheduling interviews with third-year students was pinned to a bulletin board. Someone had scribbled We’re Fucked at the bottom. Two organizations were interviewing third-year students: The Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corp. and Skadden, Arps, a top-ranked firm, famous for having the highest starting salaries in the country. The JAG Corp. was out because I didn’t want to disclose my mental-health treatment or the three times I’d smoked pot to the federal government. As for Skadden, it was a powerhouse law firm stocked with thoroughbred attorneys from Ivy League schools who routinely worked sixty-hour weeks. Skadden was the Harvard of law firms. They would never hire me.
I fought the urge to vomit on the white binder.
My closest law school friend Clare pooh-poohed my fears. “You’re first in our class! You have it made.” Yes, as valedictorian, I would land a job, but if it only paid thirty grand, I would sink under the weight of my debt. I’d taken out a private loan, at 10 percent interest, to pay for treatment with Dr. Rosen. My law school debt was considerable. How would my life work if I had an extended job search? Would I have to move back to 6644 Thackeray?
In group, Dr. Rosen was insistent. “Interview at Skadden.”
I balked. I saw myself as second tier, a middle-of-the-pack lawyer. My law school was second tier, as was Bell, Boyd & Lloyd. The Skadden partners argued before the Supreme Court and helmed complex commercial litigation covered in multipage Wall Street Journal articles. They wore custom-made suits with Italian leather shoes. I was a little girl with pinworms, a college student who almost died from self-induced vomiting, a young woman with an apple fetish barely in remission.
“Skadden’s not for me, Dr. Harvard.”
“Yes, it is.”
What the hell did he know? He sat around with psychologically broken people all day. Skadden would expect me to perform at my highest level around other people who were doing the same and had been since they graduated summa cum laude from Princeton. I was a Loyola Rambler.
“You’re brilliant. Skadden is going to want you.”
Brilliant was a word to describe Madame Curie, Steve Jobs, or Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, the female physicist who invented caller ID. It was not a word for me. Being first in my class made me a workhorse who desperately wanted achievements with which to wallpaper over the holes in her personal life, not brilliant. I had the LSAT score to prove it.
Patrice nudged me in the forearm and then exaggerated the motion of rubbing her chest like Dr. Rosen always did when someone gave him a compliment or an insult. I rubbed my chest halfheartedly. But some part of that brilliant penetrated just below my breastbone, a sliver of it nested in the soft part of me that was willing to receive it.
At home, I opened my closet door and stared at my navy Calvin Klein suit and Cole Haan flats. Of course I’d wear the lipstick Carlos picked out. At least I could get the costume right.
A week later, I sat across from a balding white guy in his sixties who stood in his stocking feet, leaning on oak bookshelves where his children smiled from chunky silver picture frames. Head of Skadden’s litigation department. He winked and asked me where I saw myself in five years, chuckling as if the question was bullshit. I told him the truth: “I hope to be moving toward partnership.” I didn’t mean firm partnership necessarily, but he didn’t know that.
The next partner who interviewed me had the most sumptuous charcoal-gray suit I’d ever seen. I studied it so I could describe it to Carlos later. During our thirty-minute conversation, he rolled up five separate pieces of Scotch Tape—sticky side up—and daubed at invisible dust specks on his desk. When he shook my hand at the end of the conversation, he said, “I promise we can give you exciting work.”
The male associates had quirky artifacts in their offices: a framed vintage Cubs jersey, a Gorbachev bobblehead doll, a signed Bruce Springsteen album. None of them seemed psycho or incapable of talking about their lives outside of work. The only woman I met, Leslie, had an open smile and an easy laugh. I felt myself sink into the chair in a way I hadn’t in the men’s offices. When I asked her if it was possible for a woman to succeed at Skadden, she nodded her head slowly. “Yes, I think so.”
For lunch, two junior associates, Jorge and Clark, hailed a cab that whisked us to Emilio’s for tapas. Jorge had a regal bearing and wore a bow tie and cuff links. Clark was baby-faced, slightly disheveled, and recently married. Once we were seated, Jorge suggested we each order four plates to share. I’d never had tapas. I’d never eaten chorizo and Manchego cheese for lunch, or any other meal. I’d never shared twelve plates of food with two men while trying to land a job.
When the food arrived, I calmed my breath and took bites from each of the plates: grilled goat cheese on toast points, Spanish sausage, tricolored olives glistening with oil, sautéed escargots, and grilled potatoes. As the savory bites slid down my throat, my belly quivered with pleasure and shock. This was a long way from cabbage, tuna, and mustard. I worried the corner of a white linen napkin
