triangulating, readjusting. And it looks like I was wrong about you.”
I just stood there—less shocked than when Carly atomized my iPhone, sure, but not by much.
“And that frankly changes everything for you,” Judy continued. “The rest of the partners like you. But I was a holdout, and we all know I can veto anything. And now you’ve won me over. So, yay-rah—go you.”
I nodded, although Judy wasn’t looking at me (uttering some of the most momentous words that a young attorney could hear within these walls, she was meanwhile checking email on her old school BlackBerry).
“So you know the drill from here,” she said. “Fido’s coming through New York tomorrow, and I have a ten o’clock meeting with him.
Bastard!
”
For a moment I thought she was denouncing our main patron in Washington. But she was just irked by an email. She fell silent, her thumbs thrashing a retort into the keyboard.
“Anyway,” she continued, actually looking at me now. “It’s my monthly one-on-one with Fido, but you’re coming. It’s time for you to start meeting the folks who are the firm’s bread and butter. So as to establish personal relationships with them to the mutual benefit of yourself and the partnership, blah, blah, blah.”
So this was it. The Omen. I was actually getting the call.
“And this’ll be a doubleheader,” she added. “The Munk’s in from L.A. tomorrow, too. We’ll be dropping in on him right after Fido.”
I nodded again. She was referring to the CEO of a vast music label—one who famously clutches apples and other loose food with both hands when he eats, chipmunk-style.
“You sit closer to the elevators than me, so I’ll come by your office at nine-thirty tomorrow, and we’ll head out,” Judy finished. “Got it? Oh, and since you’ll be meeting Fido, why don’t you spend the afternoon trying to score him some Milk Bone?”
----
1. Actually, make that “to dramatically benefit our
clients
,” because we wake, toil, and breathe with the sole purpose of promoting our clients’ interests. Any advantage that accrues to us as a result is incidental. And you should pity the fool who implies otherwise (particularly in writing).
2. The fear is that if people record radio (particularly digital radio), they’ll surely record some music shows, which can easily lead to music piracy, which itself leads swiftly to meth addiction, human cannibalism, and societal collapse.
3. Although of course we prefer it when our quarry is able to fight long enough to run up the bills for a while. That said, we never feel great when they go bankrupt with lots of unpaid debts. After all, defending counsel deserves to get paid, too.
SEVEN
AVATARD
Like all pets , Fido loves his treats. So every so often, we try to give him one. “Milk Bone” is our internal code for the little goodies that make him feel cherished. And since he has unusual appetites, they’re notoriously hard to arrange. Most senators are happy if you rally lots of funding for their campaigns. Others can be wooed with decadent junkets fueled by thousand-dollar single malts. But Fido’s a
devout Mormon with no funding concerns, so none of that works.
He does, however, have a mad inner craving that we can help satisfy—a primal desire he shares with most red-blooded American men. Which is to say that conservative, God-fearing, and borderline elderly as he is, Fido secretly wishes he was a rock star. To be clear, his rock ’n’ roll fantasy is more Osmond than Osbourne. But he takes it incredibly seriously—so much so that he has actually released several albums over the years (mainly on religious and
patrioticthemes). So, if part of your job is making Fido happy, you occasionally strong-arm someone into putting a snippet of his music into a movie. Or, you get a Nashville D-lister to leave him an admiring voice mail. Or, you blackmail somebody into performing one of his songs in a concert.
Judy had given me a whole list of
I just stood there—less shocked than when Carly atomized my iPhone, sure, but not by much.
“And that frankly changes everything for you,” Judy continued. “The rest of the partners like you. But I was a holdout, and we all know I can veto anything. And now you’ve won me over. So, yay-rah—go you.”
I nodded, although Judy wasn’t looking at me (uttering some of the most momentous words that a young attorney could hear within these walls, she was meanwhile checking email on her old school BlackBerry).
“So you know the drill from here,” she said. “Fido’s coming through New York tomorrow, and I have a ten o’clock meeting with him.
Bastard!
”
For a moment I thought she was denouncing our main patron in Washington. But she was just irked by an email. She fell silent, her thumbs thrashing a retort into the keyboard.
“Anyway,” she continued, actually looking at me now. “It’s my monthly one-on-one with Fido, but you’re coming. It’s time for you to start meeting the folks who are the firm’s bread and butter. So as to establish personal relationships with them to the mutual benefit of yourself and the partnership, blah, blah, blah.”
So this was it. The Omen. I was actually getting the call.
“And this’ll be a doubleheader,” she added. “The Munk’s in from L.A. tomorrow, too. We’ll be dropping in on him right after Fido.”
I nodded again. She was referring to the CEO of a vast music label—one who famously clutches apples and other loose food with both hands when he eats, chipmunk-style.
“You sit closer to the elevators than me, so I’ll come by your office at nine-thirty tomorrow, and we’ll head out,” Judy finished. “Got it? Oh, and since you’ll be meeting Fido, why don’t you spend the afternoon trying to score him some Milk Bone?”
----
1. Actually, make that “to dramatically benefit our
clients
,” because we wake, toil, and breathe with the sole purpose of promoting our clients’ interests. Any advantage that accrues to us as a result is incidental. And you should pity the fool who implies otherwise (particularly in writing).
2. The fear is that if people record radio (particularly digital radio), they’ll surely record some music shows, which can easily lead to music piracy, which itself leads swiftly to meth addiction, human cannibalism, and societal collapse.
3. Although of course we prefer it when our quarry is able to fight long enough to run up the bills for a while. That said, we never feel great when they go bankrupt with lots of unpaid debts. After all, defending counsel deserves to get paid, too.
SEVEN
AVATARD
Like all pets , Fido loves his treats. So every so often, we try to give him one. “Milk Bone” is our internal code for the little goodies that make him feel cherished. And since he has unusual appetites, they’re notoriously hard to arrange. Most senators are happy if you rally lots of funding for their campaigns. Others can be wooed with decadent junkets fueled by thousand-dollar single malts. But Fido’s a
devout Mormon with no funding concerns, so none of that works.
He does, however, have a mad inner craving that we can help satisfy—a primal desire he shares with most red-blooded American men. Which is to say that conservative, God-fearing, and borderline elderly as he is, Fido secretly wishes he was a rock star. To be clear, his rock ’n’ roll fantasy is more Osmond than Osbourne. But he takes it incredibly seriously—so much so that he has actually released several albums over the years (mainly on religious and
patrioticthemes). So, if part of your job is making Fido happy, you occasionally strong-arm someone into putting a snippet of his music into a movie. Or, you get a Nashville D-lister to leave him an admiring voice mail. Or, you blackmail somebody into performing one of his songs in a concert.
Judy had given me a whole list of
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