by Anna Yen
“I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re wrong,” I said.
“I’m right. And you know it. I’ll talk to Austin Sterling.”
“No!” The last thing I wanted was drama in the middle of Red Bean’s IPO, or a red flag that I was “manipulating” people, much less clients. Shoot, Austin didn’t even know who I was. But then I had another thought: maybe a compliment from Scott Kraft could get me a raise—that is, if “manipulative” was a compliment in this world. “Unless,” I added slowly, “you’re going to say good things, of course.”
Scott started to turn away. “Someone from Treehouse will call you.”
“No! Really!” But by now, Scott was halfway down the hall.
“Wait! What’s the job?” I asked. Stock administrator, probably. Perhaps even in-house paralegal. Whatever it was, I told myself, I didn’t want it.
As he rounded the corner at the end of the hallway, he turned his head to shout back, “Investor relations. We’re going public.”
I didn’t even know what an investor relations person did; all my client communications were directly with CEOs, CFOs, or sometimes in-house general counsels. But Kate certainly knew when she came rushing over later that morning.
“No Neck downstairs said he heard Scott Kraft offering you an IR job last night when he was making his security rounds. Is it true? The rumor is all over the office!”
I leaned back in my desk chair watching her pace as far as she could in my office—two steps back, two steps forward. She seemed very excited.
“It was actually really early this morning. But it doesn’t matter. I like where I am,” I said.
“Well, then, you’re stupid.” This adjective was usually applied to me by my family members, not by Kate. When coming from Mom, Dad, or Audrey, stupid was something I ignored, but now I was actually listening. “I mean, think about it: you work like a dog, and if you count the number of hours you’re here every day, you’re getting paid well below minimum wage. I want more for you than senior paralegal, Sophia. Who gives a shit about a senior paralegal?”
I had to admit that this was not a mystery. The answer was a resounding no one. Kate was right, and when I called Audrey, she said something similar. But I wanted someone to see my point of view—someone to tell me I wasn’t crazy. I called Daniel and launched into the story of Scott’s offer, leaving out Kate and Audrey’s opinions and my commentary on Scott’s smudgy glasses. Daniel didn’t care about those kinds of details.
“You’re kidding me. You’re really debating this?” he said. I could hear a hint of jealousy in his voice. “You’ve got to do it. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
“But I’m scared.”
“Babe, don’t be scared. You’ll do great.”
“What if they fire me because they don’t like me? I’ve got a good gig going here! And what about Grant? I couldn’t leave him.”
Laughing, Daniel said, “They won’t fire you. Just scope it out. You don’t have to decide right now. And we should talk about why you were at work at that hour of the morning.” That was three for three on the yeses. Daniel, Audrey, and Kate seemed to think I was sitting on a gold mine.
After fretting for another two-tenths of an hour, I determined not to focus on Scott or Treehouse anymore; I had work to do for Grant and that’s all I knew for sure. Anyway, Scott might have just been sleep deprived, drunk, or crazy—it was four o’clock in the morning when we spoke. Maybe he would forget about the whole thing.
Three days later, I walked up to my office door to find a Post-it note stuck there waiting for me.
Please come see me.
—Austin
I swallowed hard and a knot formed in my stomach. Shit! They’re going to fire me. I felt like a dead man walking from my office to the firm’s middle wing, where Austin held court. I hoped to get a glance of Kate so she could give me some reassuring thoughts, but her office was empty, and Sterling’s—across the hall and one door down—was not. His assistant saw me and waved me straight in. Gulp.
“I understand you met Scott Kraft the other night,” Austin said with a serious look on his face (not that I’d ever seen him have any other look). He was sitting at a simple contemporary desk of tan-colored granite with distressed dark wooden legs. Two tastefully matching vertical silk screens hung on the wall; they complimented the desk and added a je ne sais quoi to the room. A forest-green velvet couch ran along the wall whose windows overlooked Page Mill Road. Perfect. Stylish, but serious.
I had idolized everything about Austin Sterling since I’d arrived at the firm nearly two years ago. His distinguished appearance, complete with perpetual tan, was only part of it. Austin was mysteriously quiet, and his presence was commanding. He dressed almost exclusively in Ralph Lauren Black Label, and not infrequently I’d see his picture in the pages of San Francisco Magazine’s About Town section. Unfortunately, he was rarely without his breast-implanted socialite wife, whose puckered mouth always looked as if she had just inhaled a mouthful of lemon juice.
We were in the same meeting once. It was an extremely complicated transaction whose negotiations weren’t going well, even for Grant, so Austin had to get involved. When he walked into the room, it was as though all the air was sucked out, and you could almost hear the gasp from the opposing counsel. I remembered biting my top lip to stop myself from smiling at their frightened faces.
That’s right. The big guns are here now.
I fumbled to answer Austin’s question. “Yes, I met Scott Kraft last night. He seemed pretty ordinary to me, ordinary in a ridiculous sort of way. I’d never want to work for that man.”
“I see. That’s a very interesting perspective,” Austin replied politely. “He was impressed with you, Sophia. Apparently he found you quite capable of navigating around roadblocks and convincing people to do things they don’t want to do.”
“Ha! Well in that case, how about I convince you I should get a raise?” The compliments from Austin sailed over my head—I was nervous, the perpetual invitation for my stupid wisecracking self to appear.
But Austin only gave me a courteous laugh, then returned to being serious. “He wants you to work for Treehouse. You see, confidentially, we were drafting his company’s S-1 registration statement last night. That’s why he was here.” Austin was referring to the several-hundred-page document full of legalese that outlined a company’s basic business, financial history, and all the risks that could impact its operations. It was a required SEC document for any organization wanting to go public, and I was an expert at them, having helped Grant draft so many for the IPOs we’d done. Then Austin continued, “With Scott Kraft’s name attached to this S-1, I think it will be a successful transaction.”
“I don’t know anything about IR, Austin,” I murmured. I couldn’t imagine leaving the place where I’d grown comfortable. The place where my best friend worked and where I wasn’t measured by anything other than how I did my job. Why would I ever leave? For the first time, I was valued and respected. It was hard work here, but it had everything I needed.
Just then, Grant walked in and joked, “Getting into trouble again, Sophia? Austin told me he was planning on talking to you today.”
Phew. Grant is here to save me.
“I’m not taking the job,” I said, looking straight at Grant, worried he might be angry.
“Are you fucking crazy?”
I was confused. He wanted me to go? But why? Shouldn’t he fight for me or offer me more money so I would stay . . . or something?
“What?” I asked. “But you need me. We have all this stuff to do.” I began to pace the length of Austin’s office, my mind racing with alternatives. Anything but leaving. “If it’s a ‘save face’ thing, I can go for a little while as a consultant and pretend to test it out.”
Austin broke in. “Again, very interesting.”
I took that as a sign of encouragement and looked at Grant. “How about that, Grant?”
“He’s not agreeing with y
ou, you moron. When someone says, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ that means you’re a fucking idiot!”
“Oh.” I turned slowly to Austin, reddening with the realization that he’d used the phrase more than once.
More calmly, Grant continued, “Take the job, Sophia. Scott Kraft is a big deal. This will change your life. Besides, he’s one of our biggest clients, and if he wants you to go work for him . . . well, we’d encourage you to go.”
I looked at Austin, then at Grant. Then at Austin again. Who’s the decision maker here?
“Are you firing me?” I asked in a panic.
Austin got up from his desk and walked slowly toward me. When he stood just inches from my face, he said in a proud, fatherly tone, “We’ll be very sad to see you go.” That was his polite way of answering, “Yes.”
Someone else will be in your chair before the seat is cold.
I couldn’t bear the thought of being fired again.
“When do I start?” I asked in a defeated tone. I may have been confident, even overly confident, with my peers and with Grant, but standing there in front of Austin Sterling made me timorous.
“Not until early September, so we have plenty of time for you to finish Red Bean and transition the rest of your clients to another paralegal.”
And with that, the decision was made. I was pimped out to one of Sterling, Rich’s most important clients.
As the leaves outside started to turn from green to orange, red, and brown, I began tying up loose ends at Sterling, Rich and dreading losing the comfort and safety of my second home. With everything handed off earlier than expected, I spent my last week at the law firm reading the S-1 that Austin had given me. Treehouse was a “new media company” that promised a whole new form of family entertainment; the movie it was about to release was one I’d even seen trailers for. It was an animated film called Treasures, a story of a grown man’s valuable toy collection that comes to life when humans aren’t around. I, probably along with every other moviegoing know-nothing, had assumed Treasures was a Samba production, since Samba was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of the animated movie industry. And of theme parks. I tried to think of another company that had succeeded in that niche or even come close to Samba, but I couldn’t. Interestingly, Samba and Treehouse were in bed together; they had a formal agreement that required Samba to market and distribute Treehouse films, although the gorilla had creative control. There were also complicated financial royalty and expense schedules that were part of the Samba agreement but not specifically detailed in the S-1.
The airplane landed at SFO the night before I was to begin my adventure at Treehouse. Daniel and I were freshly tanned from a Labor Day getaway to Kona, Hawaii, and went straight from the airport to meet Mark and Kate for dinner. Over the course of the evening, Kate and I gossiped about our law firm peers, made catty comments about other people in the restaurant, and talked about Kate’s hatred of the LSAT exam that she was studying for. We all but ignored the two guys and their conversation about who would make the World Series and their crushing performance in fantasy football.
“What did the Treehouse CFO say when you spoke to him?” Kate asked.
“We didn’t talk for long, but he sounds really cool. It sounds like some of what I’ll be doing is similar to the stuff I did for Grant, since they’re going public. But after the IPO I’ll be responsible for the Wall Street communications.”
After a game of four-person credit card roulette (which I lost), Kate asked, “Are you excited about it?”
“I’m getting there,” I said as I swirled the ice cubes in my drink. “Animated movies are fun, right? At least more than the paper pushing we’ve been doing at Sterling, Rich.”
“Oh, come on, you love it!” Kate said.
She was right.
I looked away dramatically as though I were acting out a Shakespearean play. “I know, I know. I do. Don’t—”
“—listen to me!” Kate said, finishing my sentence. We giggled while I paid the check, and then it was time to leave. I loved that we knew each other so well, and I held on desperately to the hope that our friendship would always, always be just like this.
Daniel drove me home, and when we pulled into the driveway, he asked, “What are you thinking about? You’re so quiet.”
I turned my head toward him and responded, with a contented grin, “I just love the four of us. I never want any of it to change.”
In the bleak morning light, a September drizzle coated the East Bay in a thin film of blah, which matched the feeling in my stomach. It was my first day at Treehouse, and as I drove up to the tan-colored single-story office, the sight was anything but inspiring. The building was shaped like a blocky U, and at 8:45 a.m., the parking lot was nearly empty. There was no need to circle for a parking spot and no buzz of gardeners tending to the lush landscape like they did every morning at Sterling, Rich. No crisp-suited men making haste toward the building entrance. No gilded sign over the lobby.
Inside, behind an unimpressive desk in an even less impressive entrance bay, the Hawaiian-shirt- and lei-wearing receptionist was disarmingly cheery. His name was A.J., and he looked like a huge teddy bear of a cartoon character. I guess I’m not in Kansas anymore.
“You must be Sophia,” A.J. said. “Weeeeeelcome to Treehouse!” I recognized his unmistakable voice as the one on the company’s automated telephone system. He sounded like a ringmaster announcing the circus acts of “Press 1 for Directions!” and “Press 2 for a Company Directory!” He probably had a caffeine drip somewhere.
“Yes, how did you know?” I asked, gently putting down the box of office items and mementos I’d brought from Sterling, Rich to scratch my neck. Damn wool sweaters! I was wearing a cabernet-colored twinset with a matching pleated plaid miniskirt. Thanks to my mom, I looked as though I’d stepped straight out of a J.Crew catalogue.
“We don’t get many visitors. And Ashley keeps running over here asking whether you’ve arrived yet or not. God, I hope you do better than the last six people who tried to do this IR job,” A.J. said.
I must have looked confused, because he added confidingly, “Ashley is Scott’s assistant.”
But I wasn’t confused. I was stuck on “the last six people.” My palms began to sweat.
Suddenly, I heard a crisp, snappy voice coming from behind me. “Sophia! It’s a crazy morning, but I am so happy you’re here.” I turned around to see the voice’s owner walking toward me. Petite and in her early forties, Ashley looked like a Japanese anime character: thick brown pixie-cut hair, enormous brown eyes, and impossibly long lashes. She looked hip yet professional in her blue fitted blazer and matching tapered pants, even with the telephone headset wrapped around her ears. The black patent platform lace-up loafers she wore made her a few inches taller than me, causing me to stand up as straight as I could. Ashley wore round, John Lennon–style glasses. She peered at me through the frames, evaluating but friendly.
“Scott won’t be in today, but that’s good because we’ll need to get you set up,” she said in a professional tone as she led me through a door on the left side of the lobby, rattling off my first day’s agenda. I had never heard anyone talk that fast; had she not been enunciating every consonant and vowel so clearly, I wouldn’t have understood her. Her brisk pace kept up with her mouth, as though she were an Olympic speed walker racing for a gold medal. Ashley held her key card up to a security sensor and the door unlocked with a click. On the other side, I suddenly stopped; I couldn’t see a thing.
“Your eyes need to adjust, but just keep walking. There’s nothing to run into,” Ashley said.
I blinked several times and then walked gingerly ahead. A long hallway dimly lit with fairy lights came into view; the caverns of the open doors of the screening rooms on either side were mysterious and dark. I could tell from the distant sound of Ashley’s voice that she’d walked quite a bit farther ahead. Holding my box tightly, I shuffled toward her words’ staccato rhythm. Finally, after about twenty steps
, I felt the hallway walls open up into a large room. At least fifty cubicles snaked through the space, and as my eyes adjusted, I gasped in delight at how each one was painstakingly decorated. Treasure troves of paraphernalia—from small plastic toy figures to human-size Tyrannosaurus rexes, movie posters to monster masks—were draped, stacked, pinned, or somehow mounted in ways that surrounded each cubicle owner with their own form of inspiration. At first I thought perhaps it was all set up for Halloween, but that wasn’t for another month and the cubes were too intricately detailed to be temporary. Water and food dishes for dogs were everywhere. Oh, there are dogs here! There was even one plywood shack complete with a crooked, hand-carved sign that read gone fishing. The whole structure had been built around the existing cubicle like a rickety disguise. I felt like I was inside an amusement park.
The large dream-like room was lit by more fairy lights, but brighter: small, twinkling pods that had been strung above each row of cubicles, patterned like waves on a moonlit night. On the walls hung colorful storyboards outlining the story of Treasures. I was so entranced by this wonderland that I lost track of Ashley.
As I spun around looking for any sign of her, she came speeding back toward me from a hallway behind the sea of cubicles. “Oh, sorry. I forgot—a tour. This crazy area is where our creative team sits. Can’t you tell? Pretty cool, isn’t it?” It’s certainly different. Ashley took me by the elbow and led me to the other end of the wonderland. We walked through a heavy metal door into a curved hallway and passed a modest kitchen area before landing on the other side of the U.
“This,” Ashley explained, “is the noncreative side.” She then pointed to the closest office and continued, “Our CTO, Matteo, is here.” I peeked inside the office and noticed its walls were covered with framed posters of Italian motorcycles. “And our CFO, Jonathan, is there. You spoke with him already, didn’t you?”
