The Associate

The lights in the shelter came on each morning at six, and most of the homeless awoke and began making preparations for another day. The rules did not allow them to stay past eight o'clock. Many had jobs, but those who didn't were expected to be on the streets looking for employment. Brother Manny and his staff were very successful in placing their "friends," even if the work was often part-time and minimum wage.

Breakfast was served upstairs in the fellowship hall, where volunteers manned the small kitchen and prepared eggs, toast, oatmeal, and cereal. And it was served with a smile, a warm "Good morning" for everyone, and a quick prayer of thanks once they were all seated. Brother Manny, a notorious late sleeper, preferred to delegate the early-morning duties at his compound. For the past month, the kitchen had been organized and supervised by Baxter Tate, a smiling young man who'd never boiled water in his previous life. Baxter scrambled eggs by the dozen, toasted loaves of white bread, prepared the oatmeal  -  real, not instant  -  and also restocked the supplies, washed the dishes, and he, Baxter Tate, often said the prayer. He encouraged the other volunteers, had a kind word for everyone, and knew the names of most of the homeless he graciously served. After they had eaten, he loaded them into three old church vans, drove one himself, and delivered them to their various jobs around Reno. He picked them up late in the afternoon.

Alcoholics Anonymous met three times each week at Hope Village  -  Monday and Thursday nights and at noon on Wednesday. Baxter never missed a meeting. He was warmly received by his fellow addicts, and quietly marveled at the groups' compositions. All races, ages, male and female, professionals and homeless, rich and poor. Alcoholism cut a wide, jagged path through every class, every segment. There were old, confident drunks who boasted of being sober for decades, and new ones like himself who freely admitted that they were still afraid. They were comforted, though, by the veterans. Baxter had made a mess of his life, but his history was a cakewalk compared to that of some of the others. Their stories were compelling, often shocking, especially those of the ex-convicts.

During his third AA meeting, with Brother Manny watching from the rear, he walked to the front of the group, cleared his throat, and said, "My name is Baxter Tate, and I'm an alcoholic from Pittsburgh." After he uttered those words, he wiped tears from his cheeks and listened to the applause.

Following the Twelve Steps to recovery, he made a list of all the people he had harmed and then made plans to make amends. It wasn't a long list and was heavily focused on his family. He did not, however, look forward to a return to Pittsburgh. He'd talked to Uncle Wally. The family knew he was still sober, and that was all that mattered.

After a month, he began to grow restless. He did not relish the thought of leaving the safety of Hope Village, but he knew the time was coming. Brother Manny encouraged him to make his plans. He was too young and smart and gifted to spend his life in a homeless shelter.

"God has big plans for you," Brother Manny said. "Just trust him and they will be revealed."

WHEN IT LOOKED as if they might escape at a decent hour on Friday night, Tim Reynolds and others quickly organized a drinking party and hurried out of the building. Saturday was to be a rare day off. No member of the litigation group at Scully & Pershing could be seen at work on Saturday because it was the annual family picnic in Central Park. Thus, Friday night was cleared for serious drinking.

Kyle declined, as did Dale. Around 7:00 p.m., as they were both wrapping up the last details of an endless week, and with no one else around, she leaned around the canvas partition that separated their tight cubicles and said, "What about dinner?"

"Great idea," Kyle said without hesitation. "Any place in particular?"

"My place. We can relax and talk and do whatever. You like Chinese?"

"Love it." The word "whatever" was bouncing around his addled brain. Dale was thirty, single, attractive, apparently straight, a pretty lady alone in the big city. At some point, she had to think about sex, though Kyle was depressed at how little he thought about it.

Was she picking him up? It was a startling idea. Dale was so shy and reserved it was hard to believe she would put the move on anyone.

"Why don't you pick up some Chinese and bring it over?" she said.

"Great idea."

She lived alone in Greenwich Village, in a fourth-floor walk-up. They discussed various take-out restaurants in the neighborhood, then left the office together. An hour later, Kyle climbed the stairs with a sack of shrimp-and-chicken fried rice and knocked on the door. Dale opened it, with a smile, and welcomed him to her apartment.

Two rooms, a den-kitchen combo, and one bedroom. It was small but nicely decorated, a minimalist theme with leather and chrome and black-and-white photos on the wall. She, too, was well-appointed and pursuing the less-is-more approach. Her white cotton skirt was extremely short and revealed more of the slender legs Kyle and the other vultures had been admiring. Her shoes were short heels, open toe, no straps, red leather, high-class-tart stuff. Kyle glanced at them and said, "Jimmy Choos?"

"Prada."

The black cotton sweater was tight, without a bra under it. For the first time in far too many weeks, Kyle began to feel the excitement of sexual arousal.

"Nice place," he said, looking at a photograph.

"Four thousand a month, can you believe it?" She was opening the fridge, one about the size of a large desktop computer. She removed a bottle of white wine.

"Yes, I can believe it. It's New York. But no one made us come here."

She was holding the bottle of chardonnay. "I'm sorry, but I don't have any club soda. It's either wine or water."

"I'll have some wine," he said, with only a slight hesitation. And he decided on the spot that he would not torment himself by arguing back and forth about whether he should take a drink after five and a half years of sobriety. He'd never been to rehab, never been forced to detox, never considered himself an alcoholic. He had simply stopped drinking because he was drinking too much, and now he wanted a glass of wine.

They ate on a small square table, their knees almost touching. Even at home and completely relaxed, conversation did not come easily for Dale, the mathematician. He could not imagine her in a classroom in front of fifty students. And he certainly couldn't picture her in a courtroom in front of a jury.

"Let's agree that we will not talk about work," Kyle said, taking the lead. He took his fourth sip of wine.

"Agreed, but first there's some great gossip."

"Let's have it."

"Have you heard about the split?"

"No."

"There's a rumor, I heard it twice today, that Toby Roland and four other partners, all in litigation, are about to split and open their own firm. They may take as many as twenty associates."

"Why?"

"A fee dispute. The usual." Law firms are famous for exploding, imploding, merging, and spinning off in all directions. The fact that some unhappy partners wanted their own show was no surprise, either at Scully or at any other firm.

"Does that mean more work for the rest of us?" he asked.

"I sure hope so."

"Have you met Toby?"

"Yes. And I hope the rumor is true."

"Who's the biggest prick you've met so far?"

She took a sip of wine and thought about the question. "That's a tough one. So many contenders."

"Too many. Let's talk about something else."

Kyle managed to shift the conversation around to her. Background, education, childhood, family, college. She had never been married. One bad romance still stung. After one glass of wine she poured another, and the alcohol loosened her up. He noticed that she ate almost nothing. He, though, devoured everything in sight. She pushed the topics back to his side of the table, and he talked about Duquesne and Yale. Occasionally, the law firm would get mentioned, and they would find themselves wrapped up in it.

When the wine and food were gone, she said, "Let's watch a movie."

"Great idea," Kyle said. As she looked through her DVDs, he glanced at his watch. Ten twenty. In the past six days he'd pulled two all-nighters  -  he now owned a sleeping bag  -  and averaged four hours of sleep each night. He was physically and mentally exhausted, and the two and a half glasses of quite delicious wine he'd just consumed were thoroughly soaking whatever brain he had left.

"Romance, action, comedy?" she called out as she flipped through what appeared to be an extensive collection. She was on her knees, the skirt barely covering her rear. Kyle stretched out on the sofa because he didn't like the looks of either chair.

"Anything but a chick flick."

"How about Beetlejuice?"

"Perfect."

She inserted the disc, then kicked off her heels, grabbed a quilt, and joined Kyle on the sofa. She wedged and wiggled and snuggled and pulled the quilt over them, and when she was finally situated, there was a lot of contact. And then there was touching. Kyle sniffed her hair and thought how easy this was.

"Doesn't the firm have a rule against this sort of thing?" he said.

"We're just watching a movie."

And they watched it. Warmed by the quilt, the wine, and each other's bodies, they watched the movie for all of ten minutes. Later, they could not determine who fell asleep first. Dale woke up long after the movie was over. She spread the quilt over him, then went to bed. Kyle woke up at 9:30 on Saturday morning to an empty apartment. There was a note saying she was around the corner at a coffee shop reading the newspapers, so stop by if he was hungry.

THEY RODE THE subway together to Central Park, arriving around noon. The litigation section of the firm threw a family picnic on the third Saturday of each October, near the boathouse. The main event was a softball tournament, but there were also horseshoes, croquet, bocce, and games for the kids. A caterer barbecued ribs and chicken. A rap band made its noise. There was an entire row of iced kegs of Heineken.

The picnic was to promote camaraderie and to prove that the firm did indeed believe in having fun. Attendance was mandatory. No phones allowed. For most associates, though, the time could've been better spent sleeping. At least they were not subject to being dragged into the office for another all-nighter. Only Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur afforded the same protection.

The day was clear, the weather perfect, and the weary lawyers shook off their fatigue and were soon playing hard and drinking even harder. Kyle and Dale, anxious to avoid even the possibility of gossip, soon separated and got lost in the crowd.

Within minutes, Kyle heard the news that Jack McDougle, a second-year associate from Duke, had been arrested the night before when a narc team kicked in the door of his apartment in SoHo and found a substantial stash of cocaine. He was still in jail and likely to remain there over the weekend until bail could be arranged on Monday. The firm was pulling strings to get him out, but the firm's involvement on his behalf would only go so far. Scully & Pershing took a hard line on such behavior. McDougle would be laid off pending the charges. If the gossip turned out to be true, he would find himself unemployed in a few weeks.

Kyle paused for a few minutes and thought about Bennie. His chilling prediction had come true.

LITIGATION HAD 28 partners and 130 associates. Two-thirds were married, and there was no shortage of young, well-dressed children running around. The softball tournament began with Mr. Wilson Rush, senior of all seniors, announcing the brackets and the rules and declaring himself the acting commissioner. Several lawyers had the guts to boo him, but then anything was permitted on this fine day. Kyle had elected to play  -  it was optional  -  and he found himself on a ragtag team with two people he'd met and seven he had not. Their coach was a partner named Cecil Abbott (of Team Trylon), who was wearing a Yankees cap and a Derek Jeter jersey, and it was soon evident that Coach Abbott had never run to first base in his life. With a cold Heineken in hand, he prepared a lineup that couldn't beat a decent T-ball team, but then who cared? Kyle, easily the best athlete, was stuck in right field. In center was Sherry Abney, the fifth-year associate Bennie was stalking as Kyle's entree into the Trylon-Bartin case. As they came to bat in the first inning, Kyle introduced himself and chatted her up. She was visibly upset by the McDougle arrest. They had worked together for two years. No, she had no idea he had a drug problem.

Mingling was encouraged, and after Coach Abbott's team was finally saved by the mercy rule in the fourth inning, Kyle plunged into the crowd and said hello to every strange face he encountered. Many of the names were familiar. He had, after all, been studying the bios for six weeks. A notorious partner, Birch Mason, also clad in Yankee garb and half-drunk by 2:00 p.m., grabbed Kyle like an old friend and introduced him to his wife and two teenage children. Doug Peckham took him around to meet some of the partners. The conversations were all the same  -  where'd you go to school, how's it going so far, bet you're worried about the bar exam results, life gets better after the first year, and so on.

And, "Can you believe McDougle?"

The tournament was double elimination, and Kyle's team distinguished itself by becoming the first to lose two games. He found Dale playing bocce, and they headed for the food tent. With plates of barbecue and bottles of water, they joined Tabor and his rather homely girlfriend at a table under a shade tree. Tabor, of course, was on a team that was undefeated, and he'd driven in the most runs so far. He had urgent work at the office and planned to be there at six the following morning.

You win, Kyle wanted to say. You win. Why don't they just go ahead and declare you a partner?

Late in the afternoon, with the sun fading behind the towering apartment buildings on Central Park West, Kyle eased away from the party and found a park bench on a knoll under an oak. Golden leaves dropped around him. He watched the game in the distance, listened to the happy voices, smelled the last of the smoke from the grills. If he really tried, he could almost convince himself that he belonged at that party, that he was just another of the many successful lawyers taking a quick break from their hectic lives.

But reality was never far away. If he got lucky, he would commit a heinous crime against the firm and not get caught. But if luck went against him, then one day during this family picnic they would be talking about him the way they were talking now about McDougle.