The client list is unfathomable they represent everyone: Boeing. The top lawyers in the country all work there. The mythological headquarters that sits in a black-and-gray fortress on West Fifty-Second street. And today, I have an interview at the top law firm in the city. $21.55 at (opens in new tab)ĭavid works in finance as an investment banker at Tishman Speyer, a real estate conglomerate. The average street style is a Penn sweatshirt), but there’s nowhere else in the city where we’d be able to afford a two-bedroom with a full kitchen in a doorman building, and between the two of us, we make more money than a pair of twenty-eight-year-olds has any right to. Murray Hill isn’t the most glamorous neighborhood in New York, and it gets a bad rap (every Jewish fraternity and sorority kid in the Tri-State area moves here after graduation. I take the coffee cup and go sit in our kitchen nook that overlooks Third Avenue.

David thinks it’s sacrilegious but he buys it, to indulge me. I go to the refrigerator, and when he hands me the cup, I add a dollop of creamer. He squints at me, and my heart tugs at the look on his face, the way it scrunches all up when he’s trying to pay attention but doesn’t have his contacts in yet. When we first started dating, I thought he was getting up out of bed before me to swoosh some toothpaste in there, but when we moved in together, I realized it’s just his natural state.

I’ve already brushed my teeth, but David never has morning breath. I wrap my arms around him, kiss his neck and then his lips. It makes him look dignified, particularly when he wears glasses, which he often does. He’s still in his pajamas, and his brown hair has a significant amount of salt and pepper for someone who has not yet crossed thirty, but I like it. I’m wearing a bathrobe, hair spun up into a towel. “Happy Interview Day,” David says when I walk into the kitchen.

Rebecca serle in five years