LITMIR.BIZ

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us having to find the cash up-front.” I wanted to talk to Barbara about as much as I wanted to go out with my grandmother’s dentist’s handsome associate, but Sara was a friend as well as a client.

      “Thank you, Rachel. Maybe I’m overreacting—I hope I’m overreacting—but I can’t relax if I know that the company might get away from me somehow. I can’t let that happen.” Her gaze locked on mine.

      “I won’t let that happen,” I promised her.

      Exchanges like that sometimes made you forget that Sara was only twenty-five years old. She spoke with the focused confidence of the CEO she would one day become. However, once we had finished discussing business it was almost as if she switched that side of herself off. She was still far more self-possessed than most people her age, but as we talked about her classes and her friends her voice took on the casual cadences of her peers.

      She described the tension that was gripping the campus now that Hell Week had descended upon it.

      “Is there anyone I should look out for who’s interviewing with Winslow, Brown?” I asked Sara after I’d convinced her to order dessert.

      “I’m glad you asked—I’d almost forgotten. One of my suite-mates, Gabrielle LeFavre, is trying to get a job in investment banking. I think she had her first round of interviews with Winslow, Brown today. She’s been talking to all of the usual suspects—Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Merrill. She has her heart set on this.”

      “What’s her background? Does she have any finance experience?”

      “No, not really. She was an accountant before business school. She’d put herself through college at a state school down South, and then she went to New York and tried to get a job in banking, but you know how it is—the big firms only recruit people out of college from Harvard, Princeton and Yale for the most part—nobody even gave her a chance.”

      “That must have been tough. So she went into accounting?”

      “Yes. She had earned her CPA at night when she was in college. Anyhow, she’s a bit of a stress case, but she’s really ambitious, and I think she’d work like a fiend if she were hired.”

      “I’ll keep an eye out for her.” I made a mental note to myself, but from what Sara had said, her friend sounded like the sort of high-strung perfectionist who would fall to pieces the first time a partner yelled at her.

      I turned the conversation to a lighter topic. “Now, what else is going on with you? How’s your love life? Besides Adam, of course,” I added with a smile.

      “Nice.”

      “Sorry. Couldn’t resist. But seriously, anything of interest?”

      “Hardly,” she responded with a grimace.

      “That good?”

      “I was sort of seeing this guy before the holidays, but it didn’t go anywhere. I mean, he’s sharp and good-looking and everything, but we just didn’t click. It’s awkward, because he seemed to be really into it. We’d only been out on three or four dates and he was practically ready to propose. It was bizarre—we barely knew each other.” She looked up at me. “Actually, I think you might know him. He was an analyst at Winslow, Brown before business school.”

      “Who?” I asked, not anticipating what the answer would be.

      “Grant Crocker. Do you remember him?”

      My heart sank as I tried to keep my expression even. I remembered Grant all too well, having had the misfortune of working with him several times during his two years at the firm, likely due to yet another of Stan’s none-too-subtle plots to torment me. Grant was unusually cocky in an industry where arrogance was nearly a prerequisite. He’d spent several years in the Marine Corps after college, so he was closer to my age than Sara’s, and the military seemed to have trained him well in various forms of chauvinism. He had difficulty following directions from a woman, and he more than once almost derailed a deal due to his reluctance to do the grunt work that fell to the most junior person on a team. Several of the secretaries had complained about his condescension and suggestive statements that came just short of overt passes. Most of the men in the department would have described him as a “great guy” and a “real go-getter,” and he was the star of the department basketball team, but the women in the department had their own nickname for him—Too Much Testosterone Guy—which was quite an achievement in our testosterone-rich environment.

      Sara was waiting for my reply. “I remember him slightly,” I hedged. “I didn’t really know him very well.”

      “To complicate matters more, Gabrielle has a massive crush on him. As far as I’m concerned, she’s welcome to him, but he won’t give her the time of day. And she seems to be taking her frustration out on me. She’s barely said two words to me since we got back from winter break.”

      “That must make for fun times back at the dorm,” I said sympathetically.

      Sara shrugged in response.

      “How’s your other roommate—Edie, right?”

      “Edie Michaels. She’s from L.A., and she wants to go back there and work in entertainment after graduation, so she’s not all caught up in the Hell Week hysteria, like Gabrielle. It’s nice to have at least one sane voice in the suite. Anyhow, enough about me. What’s going on with you? How’s Peter?”

      “Peter’s wonderful.” I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. “Absolutely wonderful. In fact, he’s meeting me here tonight. He has a conference to go to this week in Boston.”

      “How convenient,” Sara said dryly but with a smile. “I hope I get to meet him.”

      “I hope so, too.” It was getting late so I signaled for the check and handed my credit card to the waitress. “Are you still rowing?” I asked. Sara was passionate about the sport, and she worked out regularly on the Charles River in her single-person scull.

      “Every morning, before class. Fortunately the river hasn’t frozen over yet. Usually it has by this time of year.”

      “It must be really cold. And dark.” The entire proposition sounded unpleasant to me. Exercise was bad enough at a gym, with music and television and the option to skip the treadmill and go straight for a post-workout massage.

      “It feels good. I think I’m addicted.”

      “Better you than me.”

      “You should try it. You might like it.”

      “I might like beating myself over the head with a blunt object, too, but I don’t think I’ll try that, either.”

      She laughed. “Well, if you put it like that…”

      I signed the bill, and we retrieved our coats and walked out into the cold night. I accompanied Sara along JFK Street toward the bridge that led across the Charles to the business school campus. A bitter wind was blowing off the river. When we reached Eliot Street, where I would turn to go to the hotel, I gave her another hug. “Try not to worry,” I said. “I’ll look into what’s happening with the stock. And I’ll talk to Barbara.”

      “Thank you, Rachel. I really appreciate it.”

      “No problem. Sleep well.”

      I watched for a moment as she walked quickly toward the bridge, a lonely dark figure wrapped in a long wool coat.

      Three

      The hotel lobby looked like an advertisement for Brooks Brothers, thronged with men in dark suits and silk ties, their hair cut conservatively short and accessorized with briefcases and cell phones. Here and there I spotted a token woman or minority in the forest of navy. I’d been so distracted by my conversation with Sara that I’d forgotten to steel myself for the jungle that was the Charles Hotel during Hell Week. It was the preferred venue for recruiting, and most people stayed at night in the rooms that they would use for interviews

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