Only a year older than me, the senior account manager already has a corner office on the twenty-fifth floor and a client list longer than my arm. I drop by late on Friday afternoon to tell him that I’m leaving and find him sprawled out across his leather sofa, half-asleep. Caught like a mischievous golden retriever, he scrambles to his feet and smoothes his tailored wool slacks, smiling.
“Bro,” he says, “get in here. Gotta talk to you. Close the door. Sit down.”
I close the door, and he slaps me on the back as he makes his way over to the desk. An e-mail catches his attention. He coughs and starts to read, clearly forgetting about me. I sit quietly, waiting for him to remember.
Everyone calls him Stall, my boss. I forget his real name. Something like Tradd Poche, or Duplessis Poche, or Tradd Duplessis-Poche. A name fermented and bottled on Prytania Street, aged three hundred years. Nothing even remotely like Stall. I didn’t give it a second thought at first hearing, but after a week in the office one of the other account managers let slip that Stall is short for “Bro-sev Stalin.” A nickname he picked up in college, I gather.
Raised at the Mardi Gras balls, taken as a legacy by his fraternity at Ole Miss, and destined for some grand, old mansion on the Avenue, my boss sits behind a mahogany desk and calls his father’s friends for business. Soon, he’ll be calling his fraternity brothers.
Yet, he seems frail to me, Stall. Like some inbred Hapsburg monarch. He’s short, and his black hair sits limp and thin across his pale scalp. His acne scars look fresh, and his teeth, though perfectly aligned, stand out against his warped jaw as the obvious work of a high-priced repairman.
“Sullivan have you doing analytics all day?” he suddenly asks, looking up as if surprised to find me here after just a moment ago asking me in.
“Yes, Euro bonds, mostly.”
Stall scoffs. “Bro, Sullivan’s a wonk. Blow that shit off next time.”
“Really?”
“Who’s your mentor, bro? Huh? Who’s the big-swinging dick around here?”
“You?” I answer, after hesitating just a moment to join in the reference.
“Damn right, bro!” He slaps his desk. “Here’s what you gotta understand. What Sullivan doesn’t get. You listening?”
“I am.”
“So, they call this the wealth-management business, right? But really, it’s the Wealthy People Management Business. It’s not about the analytics. Fuck that shit. We bill as a percentage of total funds under management, not as a percentage of return on investment. About a trillion dollars got yanked from the market during the crash. But with confidence building now? There’s about to be a mad dash by all those lizard brains to put that trillion dollars back. The business is about getting to that money first. Crunch analytics all day and you end up doing maybe half a percentage point better than a monkey picking a portfolio at random. It’s about pressing palms, bro. Getting the funds under management. Money into the market. After that, the shit’s on autopilot.”
“Right, I understand. But, Stall, and please don’t take this the wrong way, I’m from central Alabama, okay? I don’t know wealthy people. My dad is a good high school football coach and a pretty bad farmer. Plus, I’m not great at pressing palms. Research, on the other hand . . . I don’t mind it. I find it relaxing, honestly.”
Stall leans back in his chair with his hands behind his head and grins. “You know why I volunteered to mentor you?” he says with an odd glow of satisfaction. “Over the holidays, even? After I had a list in front of me of, like, a hundred names?”
“No,” I say honestly.
A serious look falls across Stall’s face. “Because you’re a war hero.”
My cheeks burn and the hair stands up on my neck.
Stall doesn’t appear to notice. “You know what wealthy people like? You know what impresses them more than other wealthy people? Fucking war heroes.”
“Stall. Listen.”
He interrupts, “The Hero of Profane Twenty-four? Didn’t I read that on the Internet?”
“Profane Two-Four,” I correct him instinctively.
“Was that not, like, the first thing that popped up when I googled your ass? You already have a major leg up and you don’t even know it.”
“That article got some things wrong.” Then, trying to move the conversation onto another topic, I add with a fake laugh, “I sure haven’t met any wealthy people because of it, I can tell you that right now.”
Stall smiles. “Well, you’re going to! Tonight, bro!” He stands and slips on a dark sports coat, clearly tailored to hide his sloping shoulders. Subtle gray stitching pops against his light pants and pale-blue shirt.
“Yeah, I sort of have . . . plans,” I lie. Plans that involved going home to watch television, read about the heavy-weather handling qualities of the Pearson Triton, maybe drink a beer or six by myself, and fall asleep.
“So? Cancel them.” He smiles. “You’re working tonight, bro.”
I throw out a few more lame excuses as we walk down the dark hall to the elevator, but before I know what’s what, we’re in his BMW convertible. It’s cold out, but he keeps the top down as we speed through the central business district, turning without signaling, weaving and accelerating without cause, then cutting off a city bus to make a sudden right turn onto Tchoupitoulas. I get the odd sense he’s trying to impress me with all the reckless driving.
We cross into the Garden District and snap to a violent stop at a red light. Stall sighs, annoyed by all these traffic rules, and lights a Dunhill cigarette from a wide, blue pack.
“Where are we going, again?” I ask.
“Called Cure. Brand-new place. Really cool. Real nice. Like a gourmet cocktail bar. They make specialty drinks with hand-cut ice cubes and, like, bitters and essence of orange from eyedroppers and shit.”
“And—sorry—who are we meeting?”
“Just some friends from school.”
“Ole Miss?”
He laughs. “High school, bro.”
He parks on Freret Street, in front of a shuttered tuxedo-rental shop, just across the street from this Cure place. The tuxedo shop has obviously been closed since Katrina. The whole neighborhood still carries the faint scent of mold, of sun-dried debris. The bar is about the only sign of life for three blocks. Still, it’s progress, a sign of serious investment. The owners, I can see, gutted the old brick storefront and rebuilt the bar from scratch. Warm, recessed lighting glows out through new plate-glass windows, and shelves of upscale liquor climb the walls behind the bar, up to a twenty-foot ceiling of pressed tin. I watch a bartender in a bow tie climb a ladder on wheels, like the kind you’d see in an elegant library, and grab one of the expensive bottles up top. There’s a strangely etymological motif, too, I notice, with framed extracts from Victorian texts on long wires, and exotic beetles preserved in mid-dissection behind glass.
Someone’s clearly betting big that this block is going to anchor a new kind of New Orleans neighborhood, like something you’d see in downtown Austin or San Diego. I imagine their spreadsheets littered with sunk costs and projections. Soon, all these gutted houses, from which dockworkers and truck drivers would have walked around the corner to rent tuxedos for their modest but venerable Mardi Gras balls, will be picked up for a song by young college graduates and renovated. Maybe they’ll stay to raise families, these urban pioneers, but probably not.
I hear young voices coming down the street, laughing and carrying on. The group, a well-dressed contingent equally divided between guys and girls, turns the corner. Just the kind of folks the investors are banking on.
“Look at this motley crew,” Stall bellows, jumping out of his convertible. A receiving line follows in which he shakes each guy’s hand while giving a half hug and kisses each girl on the cheek while placing his hand ever so lightly on her upper arm.
I stand off to the side, hands shoved in my pockets.
Finished with his friends, Stall turns to me. “Everyone, this is my buddy Pete. My intern for the Christmas break, MBA candidate at Tulane. And did I mention? Iraq War hero.”
I wave, try to smile, then stick the hand back into my coat pocket.
The pioneers are quiet for a moment, their eyes wide. One girl chuckles.
“Damn, hell of an introduction, Pete,” the tallest guy says finally. He walks over, shakes my hand, and slaps my shoulder. The rest of them follow with faux kisses and firm handshakes. My head swims and I don’t even catch half their names.
Stall whispers something private in my ear about “feeling good,” but it’s drowned out by chatter, everyone in the group suddenly in loud conversation with everyone else simultaneously, and I don’t quite catch his full meaning.
I follow them all into the bar with Stall’s hand on my back. He rubs my shoulder with the other hand. “Yeah, you’re feeling good, bro.”
It’s louder inside. A modern remix of an eighties rap song pumps cleanly from the new speakers. Old-fashioned lightbulbs hang on cords running all the way up to the ceiling. The filaments glow in a deep, comforting orange without seeming to give off much useful light.
We weave through the crowd and grab a booth in the corner, girls on one side, guys on the other. Stall tucks himself in back, dead center, three-deep with wealthy people on either side of him. They’re still talking feverishly about something, or someone, who’s recently disappointed them. Stall officiates the discussion like a referee, calling foul on spurious opinions, ad hominem attacks, or less polite thrusts of rhetoric.
I take a seat on the end, grab a drinks menu. Nothing on the list looks even remotely familiar to me. The drinks all have names like the Start and Finish, the Thousand Blue Eyes, and the Art of Discussion. Under each is a dense paragraph detailing all the ingredients and how it’s prepared. If only they had a familiar beer or bourbon. At this point, I’m just looking to get drunk.
I slap the menu closed and rub my forehead, lost and embarrassed. The guy next to me, Brown Hair and Tweed Jacket, elbows me deliberately. I come to, squinting through dim yet somehow aggressive lighting, to see that the table has gone quiet and everyone’s looking at me.
An insistent female voice calls out from above. “Mr. Donovan?”
I tilt my head and see Paige Dufossat, wearing a white, button-down shirt and a blue bow tie. She has her arms folded behind her back, high and stiff, and her long brown hair is piled on top of her head in neat, casual braids.
“Oh. Paige. Hi,” I stammer. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“Wait.” Stall jumps into the conversation. “You guys know each other?” He gives another ruling: “Weird.”
“We had a class together this semester,” I say.
“Business Ethics,” Paige adds.
The tall guy, Blond Hair and Red Shirt, snorts the word “Ethics” and laughs.
The girl sitting next to him, Straight Black Hair and Green Dress, pushes him playfully. “Stop it, Chance.”
Paige touches me on the shoulder. “So, what can I bring you guys?”
“Wow—I don’t know,” I say. “Ask them first.”
She starts with the girl on the other end of the booth, Curly Brown Hair and Thin Yellow Shirt, and takes the drink orders in rapid fire.
“Blue Note.”
“Floridian.”
“Pinot noir. I don’t care which.”
“Belgian Trappist. Whichever Kirk suggests.”
“Bandito.”
“Cuvée.”
“Bulleit rye, neat.”
And before I have time to blink she’s back to me. “Pete?”
I throw up my hands.
She smiles. “Alabama, right? Why don’t I just bring you three fingers of Maker’s Mark.”
I exhale. “Perfect. Thanks.”
Paige strides back to the bar with purpose, but still manages to turn around and catch me watching her. I look away before I can take note of whether she’s pleased by that or annoyed.
I look back at Stall, who’s smiling slyly. “What’s all that about, Pete?”
“I know her from class. Like she said.”
“No—three fingers of Maker’s Mark? What’s the significance of that?”
“Bear Bryant’s drink. She’s, uh, having a little fun with me.”
The guy to my left, Tweed Jacket, elbows me again. “You know these girls went to school with her, right?”
“High school,” I say, as much to myself as anyone.
“Sacred Heart,” Green Dress says, and addressing her friend across the table asks, “I even used to crew her dad’s boat for the summer regattas. I mean, why’s she working here, anyway?”
“Hold up,” Stall whispers, eyebrows pointedly lifted.
The table goes quiet as Paige places a small glass of water by each of us, nods at Green Dress, and says, “Pete’s into boats. You should ask him about it.” She sneaks a smile in my direction and walks away without waiting for a response.
Once Paige is out of earshot, Green Dress turns to a visibly distressed friend across the table and exclaims, “What the fuck was that!”
“What?” I ask. “What’d she do?”
“Marigny was Paige’s sorority sister, and she didn’t even say hello to her.” Then, to her date, Chance: “And meanwhile she’s, like, totally flirting with Pete over here.”
Maybe hoping to ease the tension, Red Polo Shirt says to me, “So, you sail Pete?”
“Sorry?”
“Paige said you’re into boats. You race? I got a buddy who’s always looking for crew.”
“No. She’s just messing with me. I’m just looking for a renovation project. You know, a lark, really.”
“So you don’t race?”
“No, but I’d like to get into cruising. Maybe work up to a solo, open-water passage someday.” I cringe on the inside, hoping no one at the table calls my bluff and asks me a more detailed sailing question.
Red Polo chuckles. “A solo passage? That sounds miserable.”
Stall senses an opportunity to push the conversation in a new direction. “That wouldn’t be an issue for Pete. Like I told you, he’s a war hero. Seriously. You can read about it.”
“Which branch of the service?” Tweed Jacket asks.
“The Marine Corps,” I say.
“What did you do?” Curly Brown Hair asks. “Were you like a Navy SEAL or something?”
“No, I was a combat engineer.”
“So, what’s that?” she asks. “Like, what’d you do all day? Engineer things?”
“Filled potholes, mainly.”
Red Polo chuckles.
Stall jumps in. “But tell them about Ramadi. About the helicopter.”
Just then, Paige comes back with the drink orders and distributes the glasses all around the table. Everyone’s quiet again, and I make a point not to let Paige see my face.
I hear the girls whispering to each other as she walks away and grab for my Maker’s Mark, a wide, low ball full almost to the brim with just a few rough-cut ice cubes submerged. I take a long pull. Three deep swallows that numb my throat, just right. I come back to find Curly Brown Hair still looking at me.
She waves her hand insistently. “So? Why were you bothering with potholes?”
“Bombs. Insurgents planted bombs in the road. Under the asphalt sometimes, but mostly off to the side. You saw this stuff on the news, right? Improvised explosive devices? IEDs?”
Nothing. No response from the table. Another long pull, and my drink’s already half-gone.
“The bad guys would put bombs in the same places all the time,” I continue. “Basically reseeding the old potholes. So our mission was to get rid of the bombs first, then patch. It was called route clearance, but really it was just road repair.”
“And this was . . . a full-time job?” Chance asks with a perplexed smile.
“Six hundred and forty-seven potholes.” Another big sip. A third of the glass left, now.
“And out of those, how many had a new bomb in the hole?” Chance asks.
“Six hundred forty-seven.”
Chance whistles. “Goddamn, son,” he murmurs, and laughs nervously.
Next to him, Green Dress looks at me with a soft, troubled face. Like she’s somehow concerned for me. “So then, why did you keep doing it like that? It seems—I don’t know—like people would . . . get hurt? Like, did the bombs ever go off?”
“Sometimes. Not often. We were pretty good at staying safe. But, yes. Sometimes people did get hurt.” I finish the drink. “Just how it had to be done.” I push the empty glass away and let the bourbon slosh through my empty stomach, my guts like a cauldron.
“But why!?” the girl pleads, like a teenager who’s just been grounded.
Something about her nasal, childish insistence activates the bourbon seeping into my tissues, and my mood abruptly shifts.
“Because, Stall,” I say, snapping my eyes onto him, for some reason, and ignoring the girl, “it wasn’t always the hole that you had to worry about. Sometimes, see, they’d leave a fake bomb to make you stop. Then, while you were looking at it, all scared, they’d come at you with machine guns and rockets. Then sometimes they’d put an artillery shell inside a dead dog. Because who wants to mess around with a dog carcass, stewing all day in the hot sun? Then, just as you’re getting used to that, they’d leave a bunch of headless bodies in the desert for you to deal with. And sometimes those were bombs, too.”
I reach out and take another sip. No competition for the floor at this point.
“One time, after one of our platoons filled this Iraqi family’s cistern with clean water, the local Al Qaeda crew rolled up after dark, locked all twenty of them in the house. And I’m talking about three generations here. Grandmothers and grandfathers. Little kids. And they blew up the house. Everyone inside.”
I notice that my drink is warm and tastes sweeter than Maker’s Mark. It’s Tweed Jacket’s Bulleit rye neat, and I’ve grabbed it by mistake. I wonder why he’s not saying anything to stop me, shrug, and continue.
“Yeah, that house bomb was nasty. Blast hole cut all the way into the street. While they were recovering the bodies, I took my platoon out to patch the hole. And believe it or not, there was a second bomb in that hole, too.” I laugh to myself. No one joins me. “Pardon me for a minute.”
I pull away from the table, stand, and walk away.
Behind me, I hear Stall pleading with his friends, “Look, I know. But seriously, do a search for Profane Twenty-four.”
Paige notices me on my way to the outside smoking patio. She’s working with savage concentration behind the bar, constructing three different drinks with the precision of a heart surgeon. She motions for me with her chin.
I stride over, placing a foot on the bottom rail.
“You know those assholes?” she asks curtly, rubbing a lime around the rim of a glass.
“No. Just that guy Stall. He’s my boss for this internship. They’re his friends.”
“I know. Used to be my friends, too.”
“Small town that way, huh?” I scratch the back of my neck and take a deep breath. “Guess your sorority sisters took offense at the deeply counterculture motives that led you to business school?”
Her smile is a fault line in granite. “I happen to be concentrating in nonprofits, or didn’t you notice in ethics class?”
“Yeah, I didn’t notice much in that class, honestly.” I start searching the bottles behind her for something I might recognize.
Paige notices. “What? You already finish the first one? Christ, I poured you a triple.”
“You sure did. Thanks. And, uh, yes, I did.”
“Here.” She turns for a glass and pours me another.
I take a sip and enjoy it so much I have to pause before setting the glass back down. I sneak another quick tug while Paige is looking at those busy hands of hers, letting the liquor touch every corner of my mouth before it slips down into my throat.
“So you’re working down at One Shell Square?” she asks. “Figures. We’ve been wondering about you.”
“Who?”
“Your classmates. We meet every Thursday at Molly’s, or didn’t you get my note? Everyone’s been asking about you. They seem to think I should be the one who knows.”
“Yeah? Well . . . tell everyone I say hello.”
“You won’t come and say hello yourself?”
“I’m not real social.”
“Except with douche bags like Stall?” She motions another bartender over to grab the tray of completed drinks. Little works of art, all of them.
“It’s not exactly a social occasion. Stall’s trying to introduce me to, you know, potential clients.”
Paige laughs. “You mean suckers?”
“Sorry?”
“Derivatives? Securitized debt obligations? Euro bonds? Ponzi schemes, all. It’s a sinking ship, Donovan. Even with the bailouts.” She opens a bottle of water and takes a sip.
“Professor Cole seems to think the market’s found its footing.”
She shrugs. “We’ll see. It’s all just paper, anyway.”
A memory suddenly takes hold in my mind, and I chuckle to myself. The smell of burning paper. The glow, the aggressive heat, the gnawing flames. I hear a chorus of laughter in my head, steeped in crazy, manic relief. How funny it was to live.
I close my eyes and rest my head on my hand.
Paige pokes me in the shoulder. “Donovan,” she says, a bit of concern in her voice now, “are you . . . laughing?”
I look up at her, my goofy smile its own answer, as I trace with my eyes from her trim, little lips to the worry lines on her cheeks, all the way up to her button nose. Then I allow myself to take the rest in, too. Her slender neck, her narrow, defined shoulders, her fierce, lovely little frame—not caring anymore if she catches me.
“Smiley Pete Donovan,” she says, smiling herself now. “What’s so funny?”
“I ever tell you about the time I watched a million dollars burn?”
“No. But you can tell me now.” She smiles and takes back my drink.