For a long time, Owen was a respected and well-compensated executive at a large marketing firm on Madison Avenue. He’d liked his job and had climbed the ladder both quickly and graciously. By the time he was thirty, he had a few small, prestigious luxury brands and three major book publishers in his portfolio, and he would have been content to keep it more or less like that until he retired. People liked him. They liked working with him, they liked talking to him, they liked going out to lunch with him.
He should have known change was a-brewing when people started to refer to his department as Old Marketing, as opposed to New Marketing, but he hadn’t really paid much attention to it. And then, out of the blue, the asteroid hit the U.S. economy in 2008, and by the time the dust settled, Owen’s whole world had changed. The prestigious, high-profile books Owen knew how to market were being tossed like greased watermelons into that spring-break swimming pool known as social media. Marketing efforts for the luxury goods he knew how to position were scaled back, and executives soon decided they could handle their needs in-house. When things finally started to normalize, the consensus seemed to be that Owen was too old to market, or to understand the market, or to change with the times. His social media presence consisted of Facebook posts of his kid saying funny things. Somebody had moved his cheese. His cheese was gone, and he couldn’t find it.
After nearly a year out of work, Owen managed to find a job as a corporate recruiter. In his best moments, he thought of it as marketing people to jobs and jobs to people, but really it was just spending a lot of time on the phone and on the Internet tracking down individuals through their LinkedIn profiles and trying to wrestle their cell phone numbers out of them so he could hound them into changing jobs so he could earn his split of 15 percent of their first year’s salary.
Owen had developed something of a specialty, matching medical professionals to new opportunities, and he’d even begun to contemplate leaving the small firm he worked for and setting up his own shop. The thought of it was depressing, though. The thought that this was his forever job, that this was his legacy, was almost too much to bear. He wasn’t interested enough in money for its own sake. If he had been, he could have embraced the entrepreneurial aspect of starting his own recruiting company; he could spend time implementing systems and motivating his employees, maximizing profits and expanding into new markets, but instead, well, instead— “I wanted to reach out to you to see if you are interested in a new opportunity— “And if I may, can I ask, what is your current salary?
“Would you be willing to relocate for the right opportunity? What about Danbury, Connecticut?
“I see. Well, yes, Danbury isn’t for everyone—
“Can I ask you, do you know of anyone, perhaps an individual not as senior as yourself, who might be interested in a new opportunity in your field that might involve relocating?
“Yes, well, thank you for your time. Is it okay if I reach out to you in the future if I find any opportunities in your field that would meet both your salary and relocation targets?”
It was either that, or this:
“You’ll show up tomorrow for the interview? It’s at Mount Sinai. It’s at three o’clock. Can I confirm with them that you’ll be there at three?
“And you know where you’re going. I sent you an e-mail yesterday with the details— “I’ll send you the e-mail again right now. There. You should have it. Do you have it?
“All right, one last thing. You haven’t been returning their calls, and it’s made them nervous, and they’ve expressed concern to me that you aren’t interested in the position. I’d like you to take down this number and call them right when we hang up the phone. Do you have a pen and paper handy? Okay, I’ll hold.”
Good God, this job! It was like babysitting. And these were well-compensated medical professionals. Specialty nurses who made six figures a year. Lab technicians, radiology professionals, diagnostic sonographers. Even doctors!
“Okay, now call and confirm that you will be there at three tomorrow. Can you do that right after we hang up? Great. And I’ll be following up with them in five minutes to confirm that you’ve reached out to them.”
Now imagine having those two conversations over and over again, day after day, for the rest of your life.
You might want to have sex with strangers too.
*
It was at the behest of Hugh Willix, his personal attorney, that Gordon snuck into Kelly’s office while she was off at yoga to see if she had signed the papers.
“They’re not here,” Gordon said into his phone while he was creeping around.
“What do you mean?” asked Hugh.
“They’re not on her desk where I put them. I can’t find them.”
“Look for them.”
“I looked. I’m looking. I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Maybe she signed them and put them somewhere in your office.”
“I don’t think so. If she did, she didn’t mention it.”
“Shit,” said Hugh. “Tell me again exactly what you said to her.”
“I said what you told me to say,” said Gordon. “I said I wanted her to sign some papers about our estate. Nothing more.”
“And now you can’t find the papers.”
“No,” said Gordon. “Should I ask her where they are?”
“No. Don’t do anything,” Hugh said. “Let me think on this a bit.”
“Let me think on this a bit” meant at least three billable hours, which would cost Gordon eighteen hundred dollars, but Gordon was not in the mood to pick nits.
“Why do you need to think?”
“If she took them to an attorney, we could have a situation on our hands.”
“Kelly wouldn’t do that,” said Gordon. “She wouldn’t even know how to find a lawyer.”
“You’d be surprised.”
*
Kelly had, in fact, done just that.
“So, your husband asked you to sign these papers, and you told him you wanted to read them first, but instead you brought them here.”
“Yes,” said Kelly. “I just want to know what I’m being asked to sign.”
“That’s wise,” said one of the two lawyers she was facing. “You’re a smart woman.”
“I don’t want to sign something I don’t understand.”
“Of course,” he said. “Now, before we go any further, tell us what you know about your prenup.”
“I don’t have a prenup.”
“I mean your and Gordon Allen’s prenuptial agreement. Do you know what it contains, in broad strokes?”
“Gordon and I don’t have a prenup.”
The young lawyer looked over at Lawyer Number Two, who had been furtively zipping through his BlackBerry under the conference table and totally silent up until he heard this.
“You don’t have a prenup,” said Lawyer Number Two.
“No.”
“You never signed a prenup?” Lawyer Number Two was clearly taking over.
“No.”
“Gordon Allen and his attorneys never asked you to sign a prenuptial agreement of any kind?”
“Nope,” said Kelly. “Am I not being clear?”
“How is that possible?” Lawyer Number One asked Lawyer Number Two. “The guy’s gotta be worth ten billion dollars. That’s legal malpractice.”
“We got married pretty impulsively,” Kelly said.
“What do you mean, ‘impulsively’?”
“Well, we dated for a while, and then he got a divorce from Elaine—it wasn’t my fault, she’s a major-league bitch—and the day the divorce was final we flew to Vegas.”
“And in Vegas…”
“We got married.”
“You got legally married.”