Now You See Her - Michael Ledwidge [42]
The luckiest thing of all was that after I proved my usefulness in a class action suit, my boss, Tom Sidirov, a legendary litigator and even better person, practically demanded that I go to City College and then Fordham Law School on the firm’s dime.
It had taken almost ten years of work and night school, and thousands of logged hours on the New York City subway, but I eventually pulled it off. I became a lawyer. I’d even passed the New York bar exam on my first try.
Over the last three and a half years, my career had steadily started to pick up speed. I wasn’t in line to make partner anytime soon, but I had my own cases now, my own clients, even my own personal assistant.
All my hard work at the office and as a mom was starting to reap some pretty plush dividends, I thought, as I sat in the tastefully done restaurant. There weren’t supposed to be second acts in American lives, but I was giving it a pretty good go. I was finally starting to come across things I’d never dreamed I ever would again.
Stability. Fun. Dare I even say its name?
Hope.
It seemed that after two decades and a thousand miles, maybe I’d finally run far enough. For a moment there among the high-rent chatter and clacking crockery, I think I actually felt safe.
That’s what made what happened next so wrong, so utterly unfair.
Because as I sat there toasting myself, it wasn’t just my boss who was on his way.
As I sat cozy and dry and warm and stupidly proud of myself, my rude awakening and reckoning was already hurtling toward me, bigger and badder than ever before.
Chapter 52
“IS THIS SEAT TAKEN?” my boss, Tom Sidirov, said five minutes later.
Bald and short, even in his signature Brioni navy chalk stripe, my slight, sixty-plus mentor looked more like a retired bus driver than one of the country’s most successful litigators. Which couldn’t have tickled the cunning summa cum laude Columbia Law School grad and tenacious former Golden Gloves boxer more.
“When you say lunch, you don’t mess around, do you, boss?” I said.
“Well, when it comes to bribing my protégée,” Tom said, twisting an imaginary villain’s mustache, “I pull out all the stops.”
“Protégée?” I said. “Wow, here it comes. I’m almost afraid to ask. What’s this urgent new project you wanted to discuss?”
“A multifirm pro bono initiative is starting up,” Tom said as he spun his BlackBerry on the tabletop. “I don’t know too much about it except that it’s called Mission Exonerate, and I’m the partner who was supposed to find the volunteer for it, yesterday. Which I’m praying to Saint Anthony might be you. It starts Monday.”
“What about ProGen?” I said.
For the last month, I’d been on a team putting together the contracts and prospectus for a biotech merger. To fall asleep at night recently, instead of counting sheep, I’d go over the alphabet soup of reagents, genomics, proteomics, and cell therapies.
“We’ll find someone else to take over your role,” Tom said, lifting his gadget and making the sign of the cross at me with it. “I know it’s last minute. Hence, the free lunch and my undying gratitude. What do you say?”
As if it were a question. Tom had been like a father to me. Try like a fairy godfather.
“I say yes,” I said with a smile.
“Marone! How many times I gotta tell you?” he said, reverting to his native Bensonhurst accent as he took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it over. “When you’re being bribed, neva eva agree straight offa de bat.”
I opened the flap and slid out the two tickets.
And had trouble breathing.
They were double-digit field box seats for tonight’s Yankees game. Tonight’s Yankees–Red Sox game. The first one of the season. The only bigger Yankee fan than me was Emma.