ONE
 
 
The Parsons Valentine dining room—affectionately known as the Jury Box—resembled nothing so much as a high school cafeteria, writ large. We were all older, sure, with expensive haircuts and finely tailored suits. The food was a lot better, and it was served on fine china, classic white with a platinum border. And then there was the view. Instead of a track or a football field, our windows overlooked the grand expanse of Fifth Avenue and Central Park. No trophy cases or spirit banners, either, just a vast Ellsworth Kelly painting and a few signed Chuck Close prints adorning the otherwise stark white walls. But these were just trophies of a different sort.
At Parsons Valentine & Hunt LLP, every step you took was a carefully calibrated decision, right down to where you sat at lunch—especially the year you were up for partner. The powers-that-be took meticulous note of who was allied with whom. If you regularly sat at a table to gossip and gab with other associates, it telegraphed lazy and unambitious. If you sat only with partners, it screamed brownnoser. Sitting off by yourself, not surprisingly, was the worst kind of professional suicide—you might as well walk around wearing a big SOCIAL LIABILITY sign around your neck. And the worst thing you could be at Parsons Valentine was unpresentable.
At lunch in the Jury Box, we were spoiled for choice. I navigated my way around the freshly stocked salad bar, past the sushi chef, deli counter, brick-oven pizza and teppanyaki lines, and stopped at the hot entrée station. Mason, the firm’s executive director of Dining Services—he’d apprenticed at Le Bernardin—was standing behind the sneeze guard, wearing his chef’s hat and a crisp white apron. Mason was one of my favorite people at the firm. He’d once sent a steak sandwich to my office when I was stuck on a late-night conference call. I’d never forgotten it.
“Hey, Mason, what are you pushing today?” I asked.
“Well, well. Ingrid Yung. My favorite customer.” He gestured with a flourish at the row of silver chafing dishes. “Today we’ve got some beautiful seared ahi tuna steaks with avocado tartare.”
“Hm. Sounds healthy.”
“And over here I’ve got my famous spicy three-cheese lasagna.”
“Sold.”
I walked my lasagna and a Perrier over to the cashier line. The guy in front of me, some fourth-year Litigation associate I’d never spoken to, was busily scratching a client matter number onto a checkout form with a stubby yellow golf pencil.
Parsons Valentine attorneys had the option of paying for our Jury Box meals in one of two ways: cash from our own pockets, or charging it to the client whose matter we were working on. We were supposed to do this only when working late and bringing dinner to our desks, but a lot of lawyers just charged their meals whenever they felt like it. This meant that Microsoft might be springing for your breakfast bagel, while Time Warner picked up your turkey club at lunch. I always just paid cash. It was faster, not to mention more honest.
I picked up my tray, entered the dining room, and surveyed my options.
Jeff Murphy half-stood from his table, waving me over to where he sat with Hunter Russell, another associate in our class. Good old Murph. He was one of my best friends at the firm. We’d shared an office as summer associates, exactly nine years ago this month. Frankly, I hadn’t expected to like him much at first. I’d taken one look and assumed he’d be too entitled for my taste, the worst kind of irritating, backslapping, how-the-hell-are-you frat boy. But he’d grown on me. Murph was a smart guy, despite the rich jock pedigree.
I set my tray down next to his on the starched white tablecloth and pulled out a chair. I nodded at Hunter, who barely glanced my way, thumbs frantically working the keys of his BlackBerry. Hunter loved his BlackBerry. It gave him the appearance of responding to urgent client messages while he checked his Fantasy League Baseball stats.
“What’s up, Yung?” said Murph, jostling my elbow. He grinned at me, and I looked sidelong back at him.
Murph was a good-looking guy, and he knew it. I was reminded of this once again, seeing him in his crisp white dress shirt, open at the throat, sleeves rolled up, his tanned, muscular forearms lying easily on the table. His wavy, dark blond hair just brushed the top of his collar, and his new tan set off his eyes to brilliant effect, making them look even greener than usual. Murph’s family had a house on the Cape, and he spent a week there every Memorial Day. He’d just gotten back, and he practically glowed with privilege and well-being.
Murph and I had once had something of a moment, you might say, years ago. When you hire ninety-five young, smart, attractive, ambitious people every fall, who’ve all just graduated from the same five law schools and landed in Manhattan, and then make them work twenty hours a day together in close quarters, there’s obviously going to be sexual tension. Back when we were first-years, Murph had thrown a huge Halloween party at the loft he shared in Tribeca with one of his college buddies. I hadn’t really wanted to go, and I didn’t have a costume, but all the other associates in our class were going, and there was nothing I hated more than feeling left out.
So at the last minute, I rushed from work to my apartment and threw on my high school prom dress—the one I’d worn the night I’d been crowned Potomac Valley High’s first-ever Asian American prom queen. (Oh my! Mrs. Saltzstein, the guidance counselor, had gushed. She’d heard of Oriental valedictorians before, but never a Chinese prom queen!) The dress was a strapless pink taffeta number. The zipper took some coaxing, and I was mushrooming a little out the top, but damn if I didn’t still look pretty good in that thing.
By the time I cabbed downtown to Murph’s loft, the party was in full swing.
“Yung!” said a very drunk Murph upon greeting me at the door. He was dressed as Pope John Paul II. We air-kissed—funny how being at a party makes it okay to air-kiss your co-workers—and he led me to the drinks in the kitchen. Many hours and margaritas later, Murph, Hunter, Hunter’s wife, and I were huddled around his CD collection (this being before the iPod age) and someone put on “Son of a Preacher Man.” Murph looked at me, bleary-eyed, and said, “Yung. What are you wearing?” I batted my lashes and purred, “My prom dress.” Hunter’s wife threw back her head and laughed. “What about some fake hickeys? You can’t be a prom queen without the hickeys!”
Without missing a beat, Murph volunteered to provide the real thing, and before I could think better of it, Murph bent over my bare neck and shoulder and did the honors while I leaned back against his Sharper Image CD tower. I remember being surprised at the warmth of him, and how good the burr of his late-night stubble felt against my skin. It tickled, and I was laughing, and Dusty Springfield was singing that being good isn’t always easy, but when Murph stood back up and gazed at me with a deadly serious, intensely hopeful look on his face, I realized I’d made a grave mistake....