JACK SORIANO

The one person in the Seniority neighboor who has ever read the fine print.

Jack Soriano grew up in the same family restaurant as his siblings, watched the same particular chaos, ate the same food, and came away from it having decided that the situation required a lawyer. He was not wrong. As the eldest son of Maria and Tony, partner-level attorney in New York City, married to Zoey, father of three boys, he has built a life of admirable orderliness in a family that has never once operated in an orderly fashion. This is either a calling or a survival mechanism, and with Jack it is probably both.

He is serious in the specific way of someone who has spent decades reading documents that other people signed without reading, and that professional gravity has settled into his bearing permanently. Clean-shaven, straight-laced, deliberate. "Please be advised" is not a verbal tic so much as a worldview. He does not reach for the dramatic or the sentimental when the situation can be addressed with a clear statement of terms.

Jack is quietly wonderful because his seriousness is the joke, and he has no idea. He does not need to be funny. He simply needs to be Jack, and the residents of the Seniority neighborhood do the rest. Jayden in particular has made a careful study of every available button and never hesitates to press them, in sequence, with evident satisfaction. Jack responds as he responds to most things: formally and without adequate preparation.

He especially bristles when Jayden, his friend since he first arrived in New York from Iowa, refers to Jack’s middle boy as Jayden, Jr.

Jack didn't leave the Seniority Neighborhood. He just added terms and conditions.