Chapter One: The Offer

Self-Indulgent Prologue:

It was impossible to know then that the afterthought choice to apply to the Hawaii firm of Pearl & Francis on a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon while filling out co-op applications in a windowless room would forever alter the course of my professional and personal life. I made the decision as casually as I had chosen lunch that day, a buffalo chicken burrito with extra sauce, and in case you’re wondering, I’d chosen that option because of its proximity to the law library. I’d chosen the Hawaii firm because I’d needed a tenth pick. Of course, it was equally impossible to predict then in that bleak little room that the choice made that day would also result in my very first Christmas lying on a beach clad in only a bikini and a Santa hat, but I digress.


Chapter One: The Offer

“You got it! You got it! I can’t believe it! You’re going to Hawaii!” Annie launched herself at me in bear hug fashion. Annie was a petit brunette with a pixie face and hair cut, literally the most adorable person on the planet who would also, coincidentally, destroy you in a court of law. She had been my roommate from the very first day of law school on and we’d shared an apartment, classes, colds, a horrible cat and pretty much everything else these last three years.

Annie had actually been sitting besides me that very first week of orientation when the heads of the Northeastern Co-Op came into speak to us about the program. It was this program which had settled me firmly on Northeastern Law. I had taken three years off after undergrad to figure out if I wanted to practice law or not. I’d spent that time working on a large toxic tort litigation and had no desire to regress back into classes fulltime. The beauty of the Co-Op program was that after your first year of traditional law school curriculum, the remaining two years were split into quarters, two which would be spent in classes and two of which would be working in a legal internship. A grand total of four internships over two years and a great way to develop practical legal skills and forge networking connections. Or you know, go to Hawaii.

I still remember Chaz, a Northeastern law grad himself and the head of the Co-Op program, who had told us about his own path: federal judge and federal agency his second year, then a firm who offered him a job in Boston after law school, and finally, and here Chaz raised his eyebrows dramatically and said rather confidentially, “for my money, folks. If you have a job going into the last quarter of your third year (and then he leaned way over the podium so he was practically in our laps): Hawaii.”

I had leaned over first to Annie and then to guy on my right who ended up being my best male friend, Ben and whispered, “I’m going to Hawaii.” Annie had grinned at me but Ben had scoffed and retorted “Yeah right, you and the rest of us.” That was Ben for you.

Over the next two years though, while I busted my butt for good class evaluations, the economy busted. Heading into our last year of law school, there were fewer of us with jobs than ever before, and I was one of the lucky ones, having secured a spot at BoulderHamlet, Boston’s top corporate firm. This fall, assuming that I passed the bar, I would begin life in the hedge fund department. Other students, smarter than I was, were not so lucky and so this had to have driven down the amount of applications to Hawaii while people scrambled to get jobs here in Boston.

So in the end, standing in my apartment, shivering and wet after swimming home through a particularly disgusting late October storm, and dripping rain all over Annie who had just checked the afternoon co-op postings, it turned out that Hawaii wanted me afterall.

“I can’t believe it!’ Annie moaned. “Can I please have your life?”

Hawaii or not, this was a stretch. Three weeks ago, no one wanted my life. My long term relationship with a fellow law student had just ended and ended badly. Tucker. Three weeks now and the name still made me wince to even think it. Oh yes, and everybody was still talking about it. Yet another good reason to switch time zones for the next quarter.

Tucker and I had gotten together during the summer after our first year, but I always kind of knew, although I had hoped against, that we were both just passing time until the end of law school, the bar, or until the other person met someone better. Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself, although deep down, I think I loved him, loved him even though I knew it was all going to end and it was really going to hurt. The last few months, Tucker had grown distant and just downright obnoxious, and then it all escalated quickly over a few short weeks.

We were with a group of our friends downtown when Tucker got wasted, put his hands around my neck and squeezed. Hard. He had also been thoughtful enough to say loudly enough for all our friends to hear that I’d better remember who took care of me. The worst part though was that he didn’t remember doing it the next day and repeatedly told me that if he didn’t remember it, I couldn’t be mad at him over it. The logic of this was stunning, even for a law student.

Look, as cute as he was, you just can’t date crazy. And the problem was, every time I’d seen him since, all I could think about was his hands around my neck. Now, was this enough to end things? I think you could have made arguments either way that either I was in the right or that I had overreacted on a single isolated incident. At least a law student would argue it both ways, if only because we are an annoying breed. However, I just couldn’t shake the deeply creepy feeling I now had around him and so we had ended it and spent the last three weeks dealing with the fallout from it. This fallout included the general rumor mill fodder and the fact that now at every law school gathering, and by gathering, I mean congregating to drink cheap drafts in a dive bar, Tucker would show up with an ever-changing array of skanktastically attractive female first year law students. Not that I was bitter.

“Annie, don’t spread this around just yet,” although I knew this was futile, every student had access to the posting. This was the one flaw in the Northeastern system was that everyone knew every offer you received from a Co-Op employer, which means Tucker already knew if he had checked the posting. The only reason I hadn’t know yet was that I’d just come from the gym and hadn’t checked yet.

“How could you not! It’s Hawaii, Cassie! Hawaiian beaches and sun instead of snow and sleet back here. What are you worried about?”

“Just please don’t tell anyone I’m definitely taking it yet. I’m not sure what I’m gonna do. I mean, what about you? What will I do with the apartment?”

“We’ll sublet,” Annie said cheerfully.

“I couldn’t do that to you,” I insisted earnestly and I meant it. I was not going to leave Annie with some weirdo. I was the only weirdo good enough to be her roommate.

“Of course you can. Let’s just make sure to only get a moderately creepy person off of Craigslist, no full blown crazies.” She gave me one of her biggest, toothiest grins.

“What about Hemingway?” I jerked a thumb toward our embarrassingly obese tabby, who yawned and flexed his claws maliciously to show just how much he would miss me.

“That heart attack waiting to happen can’t be the reason you don’t go to Hawaii. Obviously, I will continue to overfeed him in your absence. And here’s the deal, if I can scrape together the money, I’m gonna come visit. So you have to take the offer, so I can come hang out with you. Now go call your parents and then Ben, because you know you’ve been dying to call him since you walked through the door.”
She was right of course, Annie was right in every situation except one: adopting cats. Here and here alone, she’d been an utter disaster. To accentuate my point, Hemingway swiped at my ankles as I went into the bedroom and closed the door. Yeah, I was really gonna miss that furball.

I checked my cell which was full of voicemails and texts from all my friends congratulating me on the offer, lots of alohas and hopes that I would get laid, or lei-ed, or leied, you get the idea. I clicked through them all and then called my parents at their respective places of employment, they both had exuberant responses similar to Annie’s: of course they’d come visit.

So that should have settled it, right? I should have been turning cartwheels in aloha print shorts at this juncture. But something didn’t feel right or real about the entire situation. Was I worried about being homesick for Boston, my parents, and my friends? I didn’t think so, I’d spent every summer as a kid at sleepaway camp; I wasn’t prone to homesickness. Was it Tucker? I sincerely hoped not. That was too very after school special of me.

Or maybe it was the fact that what I knew about Hawaii could literally be contained in two sentences (and here it goes, prepared to be dazzled): “The state of Hawaii is comprised of a bunch of islands whose names I don’t know and is located somewhere over near Alaska, I think. Because of its nice weather and abundance of hula girls and pineapples, it is a popular destination for vacations, honeymoons, and the Pro Bowl is played there.”

Then I called Ben, the one person who I knew would help me get my head on straight. He told me to meet him at Punters, our favorite dive bar with absolutely no windows and cheap drafts. I readily agreed since it was only about ten minutes from our apartment and it was still raining. On my way out I invited Annie along, but she and Ben didn’t get along, so she opted out. You can’t have everything.

Ten minutes later, I shook the water from my raincoat, said hello to the owner and bartender extraordinaire, Steve, and bought two Jack on the rocks which set me back a whopping six dollars and joined Ben in the back of the room by an ancient dartboard coated in calk dust from the late sixties.

You can’t miss Ben. He’s tall with chronically disheveled dark hair and a disarming lopsided smile. And don’t let his rumpled appearance fool you, he’s the smartest guy in our entire law school class and he knows it. I met him the first day of orientation, we had all the same classes together, and a friendship was formed over baseball, business law, poker, and a general distaste for our liberal classmates. Over the last three years, we’d gotten each other through classes, job interviews, and all the other legal conundrums that are just too boring to detail in any great length. The bottom line was, there was no one I trusted as I did Ben. Every piece of advice he’d ever given me had been spot on, he’d even pointed out early on that Tucker was certifiably crazy. For the record, Ben didn’t like any of the guys I dated, but in retrospect, I still wish I’d listened to him about Tucker.

He took a sip of the Jack and started right in on me in typical Ben dissection mode, “so where do you stand on offers?”

He meant co-ops offers for next quarter. “Four.”

“Nice. I have four,” he added just to indicate that we were on equal footing. Best friends or not, we were still competitive as hell. “Where are they?”

I threw the worst one out first. “Stierman and Pearlson, LLP.”

“Gross. Since when do you do environmental law? Do they pay or is that against their tree-hugging religion? What’s the next one?”

“Rood, Moskowitz, & Joyce.”

He nodded. “Great firm, but do you really want to do bankruptcy work?”

I thought about this. It was a great economy for bankruptcy, but I was already too much in love with hedge funds, which in the legal community, is like saying you love going to Battle Star Galactica conventions.

“Brougham and Samarel.”

“Scum of the earth. You know they defend asbestos cases, right? Are you really sure with your background you want to go down that road. I mean, I’m okay with it, but are you? Those guys are a half-step above ambulance chasers on the food chain.”

“They pay the best,” I said, since money is always on the mind of a struggling law student, but I was unconvincing at best. “500 more a week than Pearl and Francis.”

“Why did you choose to mention the Hawaii firm last?”

I shrugged. When we eventually started practicing law, there was no doubt that Ben would be lethal at taking depositions. He only asked direct questions and had a way of pushing you in the direction he wanted to go.

“Well, did you lose your spot at BoulderHamlet?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you think you’d work for one of these other firms and jump ship to any of them?”

“Not in a million years.”

“Then here’s the deal. In the fall, BoulderHamlet is gonna pay you a ridiculous amount of money to work 90 hours a week, so 500 more a week right now is just silly. Plus Brougham and Samarel are asbestos defense which will be like dipping your soul in tar for eleven weeks. If you have no intention of doing bankruptcy work or environmental law, then you in what we call the catbird seat. Do you know what that means?”

“I’m familiar with the expression,” I said mildly. I don't like being patronized.

“Then you go to Hawaii. When else in your life are people going to pay you to do legal work in a tropical paradise? Let’s be serious. Plus, I’m in line for the Samarel and Brougham offer if you don’t accept it.”

Of course Ben was always playing an angle.

“Won’t you miss me?” I asked. “Even a little?”

“Do I look like I grew chick parts in the last twenty-four hours?” He gave his crotch a quick tug just to illustrate that this had not been the case. Class, class, class.

Well that settled that.

He finished off his Jack and gave me a slightly sloppy grin. “Let’s do what we always do.”

He meant: split a pitcher, shoot some pool, split another pitcher, get wasted, make poor life choices, blame the booze, and then forget it ever happened in the morning.

In case it wasn’t completely apparent by now, Ben and I had one of those friendships that sometimes slipped into what I liked to think of as morally gray areas. It wasn’t a perfect friendship by any means, but when the chips were down, Ben had my back and I had his. And in the three turbulent years of law school and the bar exam looming, this was the best kind of friendship to have.

“Come on,” he said giving me a tug toward the pool table. “Tonight we celebrate your good decision by making a bunch of bad decisions.”

And oh man, did we make some bad decisions.

The next morning (late morning) I called Pearl and Francis to accept the offer. It was done, I would be moving to Hawaii in less than a month. It occurred to me that it was probably time to go and do some research on Hawaii since it was going to be my home for the next three months. So I opted to do my research via the same scholarly source that had gotten me through law school, so I went to Wikipedia.