Chapter 11: Saturday Night Social

Abril is a full member of 49. Her dates with me for the law firm social functions were an assignment for her, an unwelcome assignment at first. But women are sometimes known to develop feelings for men; between us it settled on a brother-sister track, with extra teasing because she was Spanish, and zero sex because this was too important and she doesn’t go that way.

I picked her up near the apartment building, then took her to the Casa. We went to our own bedrooms. I did not see her again until about 5 minutes to six, when we did a mutual inspection. At 6 sharp the limo picked Abril and I up. I was in custom tux #3 and Abril was wearing a black dress that was the image of elegant. As always when she went to these functions, the dress looked like it was downplaying Abril’s generous cleavage, but it fact it was doing the opposite.

When I was hired by the law firm my recruiter said I was expected to be “at least stable” (meaning I had a regular girlfriend) at my ‘new member’ level and the next level up (associate). However, to make junior partner I would need an “attractive and very understanding wife.” At the first social function I took Abril and realized what he meant - the senior partners were very clear in how they looked at the junior partner’s wives. I suppose that should have been obvious considering some other observations: there were no female or Jewish lawyers, no minorities (I considered myself 100% Hispanic but I looked very “Scandinavian viking”), plus all the partners were predatory heterosexuals and assholes. As a law firm they could ignore these ‘politically incorrect’ facts, and they never had to share them with anyone.

Inside the firm it was clear what worldview they shared: White Male Privilege! One unwritten rule was that, after these social functions, no partner slept alone, but he was never with his wife. The rules further said that, for a junior partner, if your wife didn’t tempt somebody enough “for the overnights,” your services might not be needed after the weekend. Junior partners were expected to entertain the wives of the seniors while their wives were enjoyed by the seniors.

The firm had not always been this way. Huttle, who founded the firm, had no interest in bias of any type. Shunt leaned towards intolerance, but he kept his private feelings under wraps. It was when Barnes came in, about 15 years ago, that things changed. They brought him in during an economic downturn when the firm was in trouble from over-expansion and Huttle was approaching semi-retirement. Barnes was a rainmaker who, in a year, pulled the firm out of trouble by bringing in a lot of clients, all of whom loved him. As it happened, Barnes was a piss-poor lawyer, but Shunt had put together a core of really smart lawyers who did outstanding work for each of the clients, including “calling the shot” at the trial level for what became a couple of Supreme Court rulings. Barnes took credit and once he made himself invaluable, he and Shunt forced Huttle to retire and turned the direction of the firm on a dime, transforming it to a fortress of white male privilege. Some like-minded client-contacts were let in on the secret; with white privilege under siege at their own places of employment they paid a premium to deal with kindred spirits.

It was not all bad, that was when the “service with their smile” professional girls were introduced, and they came in all the colors of the rainbow. The intolerance only applied to lawyers and their wives.

At this point the firm was old enough that some of the older lawyers came to social functions with their “of age” daughters and stepdaughters and trophies to swap around instead of their “no longer as flexible” wives. I guess the rules allowed substitutes. The younger generation sure knew the game and the rules; some of those younger bitches really liked to play with lives and careers.

Abril picked up on what was going on as quick as I did. She suggested that, with all these old bastards, she could get close easily and be “a real killer” if it would speed my promotion to the big score she knew I had planned. (She would get a share.) She grew belladonna, for instance, to make eye drops. But we both knew other uses.

“I know how to paint it on my boobs,” she said. Old men, who would suspect?

I said I would keep her ingenuity in mind, but that I was not planning to use her that way. In fact, every partner contributed to profits and hence was worth keeping around until the day of the con.

By then I was thinking I would need a real wife “from the same plantation as my late mother.” Of course Abril understood that, and dipped her head in respect. Both of my grandfathers had already made inquiries about arranging a wife for me from my mother’s tribe, and arranged marriage at the age of 30 to 32, or 35 at the latest, was part of their tradition.

The wife grandfathers select for me will probably be six feet tall, strong as an ox, with an extremely ethnic look. She will be capable, and inclined, to thrash any man who lays a hand on her. She will not be a beauty, the tribe does not consider looks important. So I will not be taking her to social functions related to my work.

But I assured Abril, nobody would displace her in this role, as long as she wanted it, and she would share in the profits when they came. Abril and I would probably have a fake wedding and she would live in my house with my real wife until then, keeping the disguise.

If you have watched a TV show about lawyers you might think that partners do the heavy work, and they are all concerned with the law and getting it right. That does not happen here. At any law firm partners are about getting and keeping clients. They fight constantly about money. These are not epic battles, rather they are the daily battle of a thousand paper cuts.

The real work at our firm is done by the Members and Associates, to use the language of our firm. Part of the deal is that we hire established lawyers, not new grads from law schools who have to be trained, so the bottom of our firm is like the cream of middle range at most firms. The worker-bees like me do the work and are paid a fraction of their billable hours; but they are paid for what they do best: writing expertise. Plus we never waste time dealing directly with lying clients.

Junior partners are responsible for jobs, they serve as a bridge between the client workers and the firm’s workers, plus they check on everything. No work product leaves the firm without a junior partner’s personal approval, for which they are held responsible. That means one reversible mistake and you are out no matter what senior partner likes your wife underneath him in bed. Junior partners get a larger share of their own billable hours and a smaller share of equity profits.