Chapter 1
Paige had stopped listening two minutes ago, choosing instead to focus on the bowl of green curry in front of her. It was excellent, mildly spicy with a rich coconut flavor, and she wanted to pick up the whole bowl and drink it, but instead, she took dainty sips as her date went on about…something. When Paige had checked out, he was talking about some band he’d seen at BAM last weekend.
This had to stop. Well, the food was good, but this was the third time this month she’d gone on a date with a guy she had zero in common with. This one was twenty-eight, had some unfulfilling office job to pay for his passion—which seemed to be avant-garde sculpture made with found objects, though he’d made zero money from this—and he lived in an apartment over an ice cream parlor with two roommates. He had such a “Down with the Man” attitude that Paige was afraid to admit she’d once worked for a bank.
“So what do you do?” he asked. His name was Trevor, and despite his age, he had a full Tom Selleck mustache just like Paige’s father. Never a fan of facial hair, Paige had resigned herself to beards because it seemed like 75 percent of the men her age in Brooklyn had them, but mustaches?
She sighed. “I’m the events manager at the Whitman Street Cat Café.”
“Oh, that’s cool! I’ve walked by that place a bunch of times but never gone in. It’s right up the block from the Petrified Cow Skull.”
“The what now?”
“It’s a punk bar. They have live music on Fridays and Saturdays. You should come check it out with me sometime. Friday is indie night, kind of an open mic night for punk bands, but you sometimes see some really great undiscovered bands.”
Undiscovered punk bands sounded like a lot of loud noise. Paige had been game for that kind of thing ten years ago, but she was staring down her thirtieth birthday. At this point in her life, she preferred a good cocktail and friendly company to live music. Of the bars on Whitman Street, she much preferred Pop, a martini bar down the street from the Cat Café where they played music at a level low enough that she could have a conversation with her friends without raising her voice. She said, “What other bars do you like on Whitman Street?”
“Oh, there’s that German place, Lautemusik. I hesitate to call it abiergarten, because there’s no real garden element to it. They don’t even have an outside seating area.”
Given that the place was literally called “loud music,” if Paige remembered her German correctly, she suspected she and Trevor would not see eye to eye on this, so she asked, “What about Pop?”
“That place? So dull. I’d much rather hear live music. I heard this great band last week at the Way Station on Washington. You know, that nerd bar? They have live music on Saturdays, and once a month this alt-rock band plays, and they are amazing. They’re called…”
Paige concentrated on her food as she half-listened to the rest of his story. She liked music but didn’t share Trevor’s passion for hearing it live. She tried to change the subject a handful of times, but Trevor spent the time between when she signaled the waiter for the check and when he asked, “Is it cool if we go Dutch?” talking about some other band that played something he referred to as “punk bluegrass.” When she mentioned that the last concert she’d been to had been at the Barclays Center, Trevor said, “Ugh, how could you even set foot in that place? It’ssomainstream,” and Paige knew they would never be seeing each other again. Anytime Trevor disdained something as dull or mainstream, Paige realizedshewas dull and mainstream. She was fine with that, but Trevor clearly wasn’t.
After they each paid their half of the bill, they walked outside. “My place is a few blocks from here, if you wanna…” Trevor said with a wink.
“I need to get home. I’m opening the Cat Café tomorrow. But this was fun.”
She waited for his departing figure to disappear around a corner before she set off for home on foot. She spent the entire walk home telling herself she was done with dating for a while, although she said this after every bad date. She joked with her friends that she had to kiss some frogs before she met her prince, but New York City seemed to be all frogs lately. So maybe it was time to give it a rest, at least for a little while. Paige’s friend Lauren had told her several times that love would find her when she stopped looking, which was basically what had happened to Lauren, so there might be some truth to it.
But Paige was tired of being single, too. Surely there was some single man in this city with whom she would be compatible? How hard could he be to find?
* * *
Landing a job at a high-powered corporate law firm was not all it was cracked up to be.
At eight o’clock, Mr. Provost’s paralegal carried a stack of files into Josh’s office. Josh glanced outside. He had an office, at least. The internship he’d finished at Davis, Cash, and Lee the summer between his second and third years had ensured that he’d been offered a good job at a great salary upon graduating from law school and passing the bar, which he’d done last summer. Josh certainly couldn’t complain on that front; his salary was adding a lot of padding to his bank account right now. Unfortunately, he never got to spend any of it because he spent every waking hour at this very desk.
“Mr. Provost wants a summary of the Donaldson depositions before he has to be in court at ten on Thursday.”
“Yeah, no problem. I’ll just squeeze that in between the Appleton case and the O’Dwyer paperwork.”
The paralegal winced and left the office.
Josh sighed and gazed out the window. His office faced Sixth Avenue, about three blocks south of Rockefeller Center. He could see roving bands of tourists walking up and down the street, the lights on the signs of the bodegas and souvenir stores and clothing shops and grab-and-go lunch spots across the street. He’d been so absorbed in what he’d been working on that day that he hadn’t noticed the sun setting.
New York City had a lot of lawyers, but it also had a lot of ex-lawyers, and Josh was starting to understand why.
When he finally left the office close to midnight, he took advantage of the company car service account and got a ride home. His apartment was in a massive high-rise in Downtown Brooklyn, and given that he’d started work at DCL about a week after he’d moved to the city, he hadn’t had time to decorate or, well, furnish the apartment yet, despite living there for almost six months. The bed, the old sofa, and the kitchen stuff had come from his apartment in Georgetown, but most of his books were still in boxes, his refrigerator was empty except for energy drinks and an expired bottle of milk, and the desk he intended to set up was still packed in a long, slim box, waiting to be assembled.
On the way into the building, he stopped to say hello to Bill, the doorman. He’d picked this building because it was about eight blocks down Whitman Street from the Cat Café where his sister worked and had an upstairs apartment. When he’d signed the lease, he had a vision of popping down there on weekends to say hi and hang out. He spent his weekends now mostly sleeping or working.
Something had to give. Josh was fucking tired.
As he brushed his teeth, he thought idly about Megan and what she might be up to now. Was she just as busy at her new firm in Chicago? Although he still felt a pang in his chest whenever he thought of her, maybe it was just as well that they’d broken up. Working a schedule like this, he’d never see her anyway.
He finished the summary of the Donaldson deposition and brought it to Greg Provost the next morning. Provost was a bit of a snake, but he was a partner in the firm, a widely respected attorney, and Josh’s boss. He spent the bulk of his time defending the firm’s corporate clients against accusations of fraud and other financial crimes. Since Josh had spent the better part of the last twelve hours reading through depositions, he felt confident concluding that the fraud charge in this particular case was bullshit. So he handed over the summary and was getting ready to leave again when Provost gestured toward an empty chair and said, “Have a seat.”
