And yet Byron never envied the wealth or possessions or resources of other people. Sandy Spencer, who had inherited real wealth and over the years earned far more than Byron, owned a classic and tasteful mansion near the Maidstone Club in East Hampton overlooking Egypt Beach. He also had a ten-room apartment on Fifth Avenue and a smaller apartment near the Plaza Athenée in Paris. But Byron never felt any envy of the things Sandy possessed or the settled sense Sandy exuded that he would never have to worry about how well he would live for the rest of his life.
“Byron,” Sandy said as he rose from the table. “I’m glad you were able to stop by.”
Byron shook Sandy’s hand. They had known each other for decades, but they still were oddly formal with one another. They had learned their manners in all-male New England prep schools where the boys were required to wear jackets and ties and call every teacher and coach and the headmaster “Mr.” As they sat at the curved table overlooking the dining room, Byron said, “Someday we’re going to have to learn how to do fist bumps, don’t you think?”
Sandy laughed. “Byron, how the hell do you know what a fist bump is?”
“Hey, Sandy, I’ve walked around for a long time on the face of the earth, and I’ve always kept my eyes open. I even noticed fist bumps long before presidential candidates and their wives began doing them.”
“And fist bumps are-how should I say this?-cleaner, don’t you think? Less chance to pass germs through the knuckles as opposed to the palms.”
“I never thought of a handshake as a sanitation issue.” Byron settled himself into his seat, touching the cool surface of his water glass. “I’ve always tried to be a student of handshakes. I once thought you might be able to predict character through a handshake. Didn’t they teach us that at school? For example, the wet handshake is the sign of the nervous and deceitful, or so I once thought. Handshake style tells you nothing about a person’s character, I’ve learned. And the fist bump probably tells you even less.”
A waiter in his sixties approached the table. “Mr. Spencer, nice to see you, sir. Diet Coke?”
“Sure, Juan. Byron?”
“Just water, thanks.” When the waiter turned away, Byron said, “Remember, Sandy, when we started out in the seventies everybody ordered martinis at lunch?”
“Now we immediately send a lawyer who has a martini at lunch to rehab.”
“Hell, Sandy, I’m so with it these days that I not only know what a fist bump is, but I’ve heard of things like ‘dirty martinis.’”
“The Generation Z drink? My youngest daughter loves to just toss around the words ‘dirty martini.’ Better she says that than ‘dirty sex.’”
Byron casually asked, “Helena is already in college?”
Sandy was surprised that Byron remembered the name of his youngest daughter-Sandy had four children, and Byron had last been among the members of Sandy’s family at a Christmas party almost eight years earlier. But Sandy Spencer knew Byron was an immensely talented lawyer for many reasons, including a prodigious memory. “In fact, Byron, she just finished.”
“What does she plan to do? Graduate school? One of those British gap years? The Marines?”
“Now that would be a learning experience for her.”
Byron, touching the beads of water that clung to the surface of his water glass, said, “Sandy, why are we here?”
Sandy Spencer had developed the skill of gracefully adjusting to any turn in a conversation. Hearing the unexpected, abrupt edge in Byron’s tone, Sandy calmly said, “I know you never liked this place, Byron. You showed real sportsmanship down through the years in getting through places like this, lunches with clients, firm parties, Christmas parties, and the box at Yankee Stadium.”
“And let’s not forget the long weekends at conventions for federal judges that I always attended, the judicial conferences. It still beggars my mind that these federal judges let us pick up the tabs for weekends at golf resorts and that we all expect that no one would accuse us, or them, of buying and selling favors.”
Sandy smiled. “Those conferences, Byron, are for the purpose of fostering collegiality among the members of the judiciary and the lawyers who appear before them. Isn’t that the fact?”
Byron laughed. “A weekend of golf and tennis at the Sagamore fosters lots of things. Collegiality might be one of them. I don’t hear of many federal judges who spend collegial weekends with lawyers at the Legal Aid Society playing stickball in East Harlem.”
Sandy’s face, as if on cue, became serious. “Byron, I owe something to you. And that’s the ability to be direct. We had a partners’ meeting last night. A vote of ninety percent of the partners was needed to vote your expulsion from the firm. And at least ninety-five percent of the partners voted to do that.”
A system-wide pulse of emotion throbbed through Byron. He wondered whether that surge of blood was fear, or anger, or resentment, or shame. “And you called me here to tell me this?”
“I volunteered. There were other ways we could have let you know.”
“And you could have let me know this was under way, Sandy.”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference, Byron.”
“Why not?”
“Because you wouldn’t have done anything about it to stop it. You could have avoided this. You knew this was going to happen.”
“I did? We’ve had partners who were drug addicts, tax cheats, even a pedophile. Every one of them had the option of resigning, and every one did.”
“Byron, those of us who know you know you would never resign.”
“Am I going to be given the reasons?”
“You know the reasons, Byron. You never got permission to do the work for Ali Hussein. You never even asked for permission. You stopped doing work for firm clients. You made public statements without first notifying the executive committee.”
Byron said, “And I have a right to do all those things.”
“Do you think so, Byron? Life’s complicated. You have a right to have sex with any woman you choose, but you should have understood that in the real world in which we now live you didn’t have a right to fuck a law student who came to work for the firm for the summer. The PC world now sees that as taking cruel advantage of the vulnerable, not as a sport and a pastime.”
Byron tore a piece of bread. “She went back to school and made it clear she wouldn’t come to work for the firm. Nothing happened while she was drawing a paycheck. And she’s more than thirty.”
“Byron, you know the rules. This one is pretty basic-at the Jewish firms they have an expression that gets to the heart of this rule-‘You don’t shit where you eat.’”
“Let’s cut this out, Sandy. We’ve known each other for too long. You and all your minions, for all your liberal talk, don’t want to be anywhere near an Islamic terrorist. You have too many clients who don’t want to have a law firm with a partner who represents a Guantanamo Bay prisoner. This has nothing to do with my being with Christina Rosario. Jesus, even Bill Clinton survived Monica Lewinsky and the cigar.”
“I’m not sure where we’re going with all this, Byron. Even as we speak a press release is being circulated saying that you and the firm reached a mutual agreement that you needed to devote your full-time efforts to the representation of Mr. Hussein. The press release also recites the long list of corporate clients the firm has represented for years and says that we continue to be a prominent, business-oriented law firm. There’s a statement from me wishing you well in this new phase of your career and citing your many contributions to the welfare of the firm’s clients.”