Girl Walks Out of a Bar by Lisa F. Smith

doing the math on the full-year lease I had signed on my apartment and the Club Med vacation I had just charged on my American Express. Then I had a vision of all the people I knew from law school who were unemployed. “OK. I’ll do it. What happens next?”
    At that point nobody pretended to be enthused. The decision was made and now it was all a matter of details and execution. I felt like a hooker in training who’s told, “Buck up, Trixie. At least you don’t have to kiss on the mouth.” It was time to grab Jessica, and get as drunk as possible.
    â€œYour new office will be set up for you by first thing Monday morning,” Doug said.
    â€œ This Monday?” I gasped, even though Jessica had warned me about how quickly this was to happen. “The next time I come to work, I go across the street?”
    â€œYes. You have all weekend to get your office here packed up. The building people will move it across the street whenever you’re ready,” he said.
    I mumbled some grossly insincere thanks to Doug and Penny as I left, too numb to cry. I wasn’t going to be able to cut it over there. The firm’s Corporate Finance group was the elite.They were the top students from Ivy League law schools who got off by reading about their deals on the front page of The Wall Street Journal . That wasn’t me.
    Walking back down the hall to Jessica’s office after leaving Doug and Penny, I thought of the obese wife of a tax partner who had tried to make small talk with me at a cocktail party when I was a summer associate at the firm. We were standing in the living room of the firm’s senior partner’s palatial apartment in Midtown. I was on my third glass of wine, but it hadn’t been enough to make me feel comfortable in this uniformed-elevator-man-and-precious-objects setting with the Central Park backyard. I couldn’t wait for the party to be over. The harder-drinking associates had promised to take us to an Irish bar across town afterward, where the real evening could begin.
    â€œAnd what law school are you from?” the tax partner’s wife asked, with her Phyllis Diller hair, Minnie Pearl floral dress, and a fleck of spinach between her teeth. My back was pressed against a wall and I hoped I wasn’t dislodging a priceless landscape painting from its supports.
    â€œI go to Rutgers,” I said. “I’m from New Jersey.” I always felt compelled to add this qualifier, which I intended people to hear as, “I could’ve gone to a better law school, but I decided to stay in state for the tuition break.”
    Confusion flashed across her face, followed by what can only be described as her literally looking down her nose. “Oh,” she said, clearing her throat. “I see. Well, I think it’s noble of the firm to take a student from Rutgers.”
    Thanks only in part to my growing buzz, my mouth dropped open. She stood there for an extraordinarily awkward moment during which neither of us said a word, and then she walked away.
    â€œScrew her.” My friend Ed, a midlevel associate at the firm had overheard the exchange. “Next time, you should ask herwhat law school she went to. I’ll go grab you another glass of wine,” he said.
    Though I tried to shrug it off at the time, I knew that I’d never feel that I was as good as the rest of the lawyers at the firm. It was my default setting, just as when I was a little kid, then in junior high, in high school, during undergrad, into law school, and now at a swanky New York cocktail party. I always compared myself to others and always came up short.

    After I left Doug’s office, I did the death march back to my desk, my head swirling all the way. Now I was really in trouble. I had just been knocked into an open manhole with no idea how far down it was to the bottom. The Corporate Finance people weren’t the types to train, nurture, or be even slightly