Rough Trade

While Stuart and I had so far managed to! remain at least superficially cordial, it would also be fair to say that we had quickly developed a healthy sense* of loathing for each other. Since day one Stuart worked! hard to systematically sabotage my relationship with his clients, who even without his help seemed to bring out the absolute worst in me.
    It didn’t help that the Securities and Exchange Comi mission had ridden us hard from the beginning, making no secret of the fact that they intended to make the process as difficult as possible for us. Because the SEC feared flack from the religious right, Avco’s bid to go public had beer exposed to the most rigorous regulatory scrutiny. So far we had managed to get through due diligence, the underwriting agreement, the red herring, the SEC’s idiosyncratic computer system, EDGAR, the comfort letter, seven drafts of the registration document, the blue-sky memoranda, and five separate SEC comment letters, each of which we had to meticulously reply to, specifically addressing every one of the SEC’s concerns.
    I had long ago passed the punch-drunk, burned-out stage of being totally fried that marks the end of a long case. Now I was at the point where I hated the clients, the deal, and myself. The only good thing that could be said was that after nearly a year, we had to be approaching the end. I alternated between feeling delirious at the thought that we might soon close the deal and sick with fear that the SEC would manage to devise even more impediments.
    I rounded the corner to my office expecting to find my secretary, Cheryl, waiting for me. Instead, I saw Stuart Eisenstadt sitting behind my desk, casually flipping through my files.
    “Where’s Cheryl?” I demanded, shrugging off my coat and trying to keep the edge out of my voice. Our latest— and I prayed final—-answer to the SEC was due in Washington by nine the next morning, and I had asked my secretary to come in, even though it was a Sunday, to enter the final changes in the draft.
    “I sent her home,” replied Stuart, rising from my chair, picking up the silicon breast implant I used as a paperweight, and beginning to knead it in his hand. It had been a present from my roommate, who gave it to me when I first told her about the Avco IPO. It was actually one of the more tasteful presents I’d received. Ever since the word got out about representing Tit-Elations, a veritable tide of gag gifts, mostly from adult novelty stores, had washed up on my desk.
    “Why would you do that?” I demanded. “Now who’s going to do the reply?”
    “My girl Teri can handle it,” Stuart assured me. In an office where half the guys make Steve Forbes look sexy, Stuart was considered unattractive. “It didn’t make sense to have two girls sitting around filing their nails, seeing as I had no idea where you were or when you’d get back.”
    “Let me explain something to you, Stuart,” I said. “For one thing, when this deal closes, we’re going to hand the client a check for $40 million and our bill for $250,000. They’re going to kiss our feet, not quibble about a couple of hours of secretarial overtime. For another thing, I can’t speak for Teri, but Cheryl isn’t a girl, she’s a highly intelligent twenty-eight-year-old woman who, on top of working for me, is in her second-to-last semester of night law school where she is at the top of her class. She’s the one who’s done all the work on the original document, and for that reason I want her to be the one to enter the changes. Unfortunately she lives forty-five minutes from here, so I now instead of one secretary waiting at sixteen dollars an hour we have two lawyers waiting at six hundred.”
    “That’s okay,” Stuart replied, nonplussed. “We still; haven’t gotten the changes back from the client yet.”
    “Tell me you didn’t send it to them,” I groaned, trying to decide whether to burst into tears or leap over my desk and I strangle him with my bare hands.
    “Of course I sent it. They said they wanted to see it again. Why wouldn’t I?”
    “Because between the two of them the Brandt brothers have yet to see a sentence written in the English language that they don’t think needs changing if only for the sheer joy of changing it. Avery is illiterate and Colin is so anal compulsive that he thinks that if he just gets all the commas in the right place, the SEC will forget that he’s running a bunch of sex clubs and let him collect his