Jake & Mimi Read Online Free PDF Page B

could have kissed him.
    “Bold in places —”
    He held up page 13 . The cows.
    “— but defensible. All of it. First-rate work.”
    Those are beautiful words from a senior partner. Anytime, but especially a month before your review. I glided through the
     rest of the afternoon, and then to the gym in the early evening, where I pushed myself through my best workout in weeks. Step
     aerobics, twenty laps in the pool, light weights, the StairMaster, aerobics again, ten minutes in the sauna for my pores,
     and then the brisk walk home. “Looking good,” Manuel called out, from the lottery window of the little newsstand on Eighty-second
     Street. “Feeling good,” I answered with a wave.
    And I am, as I step out of my apartment and into the street again. I should really cab it, as it’s almost eight o’clock, but
     it’s too beautiful a night not to walk. I’ll miss only the start of the game, and that’s all right. The others went early
     and will save me a seat along the bar. I’m meeting Mark, his sister Sherry and her husband of three months, Alan, at a sports
     bar on Sixty-second. Sherry is a UConn grad, too, and Alan an honorary one, so tonight we’ll root on the Huskies in the big
     annual college basketball tournament. March Madness, they call it. All the best teams from around the country keep playing
     one another until only the champion is left. It goes on for weeks every year and it’s great fun, an excuse for us young grads
     to gather in bars and show our school spirit.
    I need a night out. A night when I can forget, for a few hours, about all the wedding madness and about tax season, too. Maybe
     I can even forget about last Friday.
    I cross the street at the corner of Eightieth and walk past the open kitchen door of Ernesto’s, breathing in the smell of
     the bread they bake fresh each night. I continue down Second Avenue.
    Last Friday. I can’t believe it’s still on my mind. It was nothing, really. Well, not nothing.
    The firm sent me to an all-day tax conference at the midtown Hilton. At the reception afterward, a young associate from Peat
     Marwick, Robert — I don’t remember his last name — turned from the bar, saw the face I was making at my red wine, and offered
     me his untouched glass of Italian white. “Never trust New York accountants to pick California wines,” he said. I laughed and
     took the glass, and we started talking. The wine was refreshing, and he was, too.
Dry
is a kind word for most of these conferences, and for the presentations you hear at them, but he’d given a sharp talk on
     tax shelters. It wasn’t your average accounting paper. He’d titled it “Gimme Shelters,” and it was hip and funny, though dead
     on point, too.
    He was psyched to hear that I was writing my master’s thesis on offshore shelters, and over another glass of wine he asked
     some questions and suggested some approaches that I hadn’t heard yet from my NYU adviser. True, he did recommend I title it
     “The Artful Dodger,” but he was a real help and fun to talk to, even. It was a productive hour, and after he circled on my
     copy of his paper all the sources that might apply to my thesis, and after he wrote out the numbers of two senior partners
     I might call in Marwick’s international division, Robert looked at my ring for a long second, then up at my eyes, and asked
     if I’d had enough tax talk for one day and wouldn’t I like to, and here he leaned in close, “join him somewhere quiet” for
     a drink?
    I flushed, I know — I could see it in his eyes. I took a sip of wine, smiled, and said that I was “joining” my fiancé but
     that I was sure we’d have the chance to talk again at the next conference. He was a good sport and very smooth, saying he
     looked forward to it, shaking my hand in that casually provocative way some men can pull off and drifting back to the bar
     to join the other young Marwick turks.
    That was it. No big deal. Anne calls me VM, for the Virgin