I’d gotten used to wearing pants with a drawstring, so the suit and tie already put me in a bad mood.
“Which deal are you guys using for BANK?” asked Dark Gray Suit as he frantically shuffled through the papers in front of him, a collection of Training the Street and Breaking into Wall Street study guides.
“Burger King’s acquisition of Tim Hortons,” said Navy Suit, sitting at the head of the table.
“What was the purchase price?” said Dark Gray Suit.
“Eleven billion—seven billion of cash, four billion in stock,” said Navy Suit as he leaned back in his chair.
“Eleven point four billion USD, or about twelve-and-a-half CAD,” chimed in Dark Gray Suit #2, his eyes glued to his laptop computer screen.
“And it was all about inversion, right? Tim Hortons is headquartered in Toronto, and since Canada has a lower corporate tax rate—”
“Twenty-six and a half percent,” said Dark Blue Suit.
“Right, so it’s lower than in the US, which makes re-domiciling the combined entity in Canada attractive.” As he said it, his eyes scanned the table for reassurance. “Wait, was BANK lead left? Or were they co-bookrunners with BANK?” Seconds later, he darted across Watson library to a Bloomberg Terminal.
“He’s fucked—the deal was more about realizing cost synergies than the tax thing. Plus, BANK wants to hear about stuff that isn’t front-page news—need to show them you’ve done some research.” Navy Suit fixed his cufflinks and brushed a piece of nonexistent lint off his sleeve.
“Good call. What transaction you using?” asked Navy Suit #2.
“Got a debt offering that I found—didn’t get a lot of press but heard from a buddy that it got BANK a lot of respect on the Street.”
“What company was it?”
“Look up your own shit.”
“Keenan, what deal are you using if they ask?”
“Probably that Burger King one,” I said.
“You’re interviewing with BANK next, right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Dude, pretty sure they didn’t advise on that deal. You can’t use that as your example if they weren’t involved in the transaction.”
“I heard that place is a real sweatshop,” added someone.
“So do you have a backup deal you can use?” Dark Blue Suit asked me. “Keenan?”
But I was busy reading the most recent headline on NHL.com about a former junior hockey teammate who at age twenty-eight was getting called up to the Vancouver Canucks to make his NHL debut. After toiling in the minor leagues for nearly seven seasons, he was about to realize his childhood dream—and mine. Equal parts envy and pride rushed through me as I stared at his picture on my computer screen.
“They’re going to love you with the hockey background,” said Navy Suit #2 as he peered at my screen. “Plus, you already got sick banker hair.”
I didn’t have banker hair. It was hockey hair. But he was right: it was sick.
Four months ago, a day after my first class at Columbia Business School, recruiting for investment banking started. There were nights spent in “banker circles”—six-plus students standing in a circle, holding half-empty, watered-down vodka sodas with crooked nametags pinned to suit jackets, listening expectantly to some banker. One student would ask how BANK thought about the effects of low interest-rates or increased regulation on M&A activity, at which point the Oracle of Nowhere would regurgitate—using mainly acronyms—a highlight reel of the deals he’d worked on, most of which we would have seen “on the front page of the Journal.”
“We were sole advisors on TTZ’s LBO of a major CPG company. Bought them out at seven times LTM EBITDA.” Which of course begs the question: WTF?
We would nod in unison and pretend to know what the hell the guy was talking about, and then it was onto the next question. Rinse and repeat. Periodically, I’d take breaks to hit on the HR women; they’d pretend to know what investment banking was, and I’d pretend to care what they were saying.
When the banker had exhausted his shtick, he’d dole out business cards to the group in the circle. “Any questions, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email.” Rest assured, no one hesitated. After grabbing another drink and finding a new group of first-year students to serenade, it was a mad dash to write down some identifying features of the banker. “Short, bald, TTZ seven times deal???—ask Xinchen in corporate finance class on Monday.” These would be key in drafting up our thank-you emails to be sent the following day, no earlier than 9:00 a.m. and no later than 5:00 p.m. according to the head of the investment banking club at school.
The thank-you emails—holy shit. Crafting those tailor-made responses to everyone who handed me a business card at countless events took up more time than studying for any test—and I tried in school this time around. I pulled an all-nighter composing a batch of thank-you emails one night. I’d be lucky to get a response with “tx.”
Then there were the informational interviews. We’d sign up weeks in advance to schedule a fifteen-minute conversation with a senior investment banker. Setting up these humdingers involved typing phrases like “nice to e-meet you,” “pick your brain,” and “look forward to connecting”—phrases that make you rethink life.
After e-meeting the senior banker, we’d set up a time for an “informational.” After regaining cell service following the subway ride downtown to whatever bank, we’d receive an email from a secretary explaining how something important came up, and the banker needed to reschedule. When we finally had the informational interview, it was a fifteen-minute, one-on-one session in which the banker fellated himself, glanced at our résumés, then left them on the table after we thanked him profusely for his time. Informationals, however, were useful in that they helped eliminate the prospect of working at a boutique bank. My first and only informational at these smaller investment banks, which focus on advisory services, involved thirty minutes (the guy literally had a timer) of technical financial questions. Within sixty seconds, he had quizzed me on the accounting of JV net income and the treatment of inventory step-ups on a pro-forma balance sheet. He never asked my name. From there on out, I had narrowed it down to bulge-bracket banks.
But as painful and tiresome as the recruiting process was, it finally came to an end. And it’s not like anyone had forced us to go through it. For the most part, I gave banking a shot for the same reasons most did: to earn some stripes, learn about how businesses work, and hopefully start down a path of freedom paved by financial independence. Investment banking was also the first industry to start recruiting—no doubt to entice wayward individuals like myself who felt urgency to explore careers but had little idea what they wanted to do. You didn’t choose banking; banking chose you.
I stood up from my chair and scanned the library, each of the dozens of tables more frenzied than the next. “Gotta take a leak, boys.”
Navy Suit #2 retrieved his iPhone from his inside jacket pocket. “It’s 11:27. You only have three minutes.”
Two hundred seconds later, I was back at the library table, which was now empty aside from Navy Suit #2.
“Where’s your interview?” he asked.
“J-17.” We both stood up as I looked for the room on the perimeter of the library.
“Your top button is undone,” he said. I buttoned it and cinched up my tie.
“Thanks, man. Good luck.” I whacked him on the shoulder.
He looked down as I made my way across the library where introductions were already underway in front of all twenty-five library private rooms. With my matte black binder, I covered the small piss-stain on my crotch and moments later arrived at room J-17.
“Good to see you again, Bill.” I shook hands with Stripes and met his colleague, Solids.
We took our seats at the rectangular table, me on one side and Stripes and Solids on the other. I’d been involved in plenty of odd-man rushes in my hockey days, but never had I been on the business end of one.
“Since we’ve had a chance to get to know one another over the past few months, I figured I’d let Solids take the lead.” Solids reached under his swivel chair and adjusted his seat up. Like a kid at a barber shop, his feet were now dangling a few inches off the floor.
Solids had a head of hair that resembled a barren hay field with a low yield after a rough winter. It wasn’t a huge shocker that BANK didn’t have him on the front lines as part of the recruiting team—he probably wore a cape at some point in high school. So much for Darwinism.
“Stripes has told me a little bit about you, and I’ve had a chance to look at your résumé.” Solids held up a piece of paper which I’m pretty sure wasn’t my résumé, then continued, “But I thought it would make sense for me to give you a rundown of my background first. Sound good?” I nodded and prepared to zone out. He said something about reverse mortgages for a bit, then went on about his voracious curiosity for finance and something about loving numbers at one point. I did, however, catch the fact that Solids, like Stripes, held the title of vice president. Don’t get too impressed—there are hundreds in each bank. As he listed the transactions he worked on, I tried to pinpoint the industry he covered:
“So you know the retail space?” I asked.
“Enough to be dangerous,” he replied.
“Would you say you have an expertise in the chemical sector?” I said.
“Enough to be dangerous,” he replied.
“So look,” said Solids. “I think we have a lot in common from what I’ve seen and heard, but it would be great to hear more about you.” I gave him a sixty-second rundown of my pitch, which walked through my résumé and how my life had taken a series of twists and turns that led to investment banking being the obvious next step. There was no room for uncertainty.
Solids leaned back in his chair and did a lot of head nodding, while Stripes excused himself from the room to take a call.
“I also see you’ve been writing a book?” said Solids, half statement, half question. “Is it a novel? Tell me more about that.”
“It’s a memoir about my time playing hockey.”
“How long did it take to write?”
“The actual writing was about two years, but trying to get an agent took another year, then getting a publisher was another—”
“It’s so funny—sorry to cut you off—but I’ve coauthored a few pieces of research published in the Journal of Financial Economics that I wrote when I was working for the New York Fed after college. It’s important to have those outside interests.”
Stripes returned to the room and sat down. “Sorry for that. Got a deal that’s live—big consumer name you’d know,” he said.
“Look,” said Solids. “Here at BANK, we like to think we have a culture that differentiates us from some of the other big firms on the Street. We work hard and play hard.” Solids glanced and exchanged smiles with Stripes. “When it comes down to it, we only have one rule which is the ‘no asshole rule.’” If I had a dime, even a nickel, for every time I heard a banker say that, I wouldn’t need a job.
Stripes nodded his head, then leaned in and rested one elbow on the table. “As an athlete like yourself, I can promise you we know how to have a good time. There are a bunch of veterans at BANK. Actually, we’re working closely with a former Marine on this deal that we’re hoping will close by end of the month.”
Stripes did CrossFit, an activity he brought up in all of our previous conversations—the push-jerk was his favorite exercise, but a recent lower back issue had hurt his most recent attempt to beat his PR. “And we’ve talked about this before, Bill. We’re not about face-time here at BANK, and we think that really separates us from some of the other places you’re probably interviewing with.” Stripes was right about that one: he’d told me a bunch of times throughout recruiting that face time wasn’t a priority. The only issue I had is that up until three weeks ago, Stripes had been working at a different bank and reeling off the same spiel.
“With that, I have to put on my interviewer hat—wish I didn’t—and go through a few questions.” Solids opened up the notebook in front of him and removed a sheet of paper. “We’ll start with a few résumé questions, then finish with some technical questions. Sound good?”
“Not really,” I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Instead, I went with, “perfect.”
“Super. We love candidates with unique backgrounds, and you certainly are in that category. But obviously, without any real work experience, you’re one of the more unique cases we’ve had in the business school recruiting process.”
“I have to say I’d consider playing hockey real work experience. I realize it didn’t involve sitting at a desk in front of a computer, but I was hired and earned a salary—and got fired, just like a real job.”
“Fair enough,” said Stripes, as he nodded cautiously.
Solids buried his head and scribbled something onto the sheet in front of him. After a few seconds of silence, he lifted his head. “Can you tell us about a time when you worked as a member of a team and had to resolve a key issue?”
“Absolutely.” This was the “Is he a team player?” question we’d been told would be asked. I’d played on hockey teams since I was five and had spent the three years between college and business school playing professionally in Europe. Being on a team had defined my identity. “When I was playing in Sweden a couple years ago, I had a teammate from Latvia who spoke no English. A few weeks before we started—”
“Let’s push pause on this for a second,” said Solids. “We love the hockey angle and want to hear more about it. But do you have any examples from other relevant professional experiences? Or from your time at business school so far?”
Hockey was my only work experience before school. I could have manufactured some garbage about an assignment I’d worked on with my classmates, but we hadn’t even finished our first semester and aside from getting consensus about what unlevered beta we should use on our corporate finance class cases, there wasn’t much in the way of ‘resolving key issues.’
Seconds passed, and I saw Stripes remove his BlackBerry from his pocket, check it, then place it on the table. Solids didn’t move—he just eyeballed me.
Having trouble keeping straight Solids and Stripes? Imagine how I felt.
“I’m sure teamwork played a large role in your hockey. Can you tell us about what made you pursue it after college?” Solids said.
“I loved the feeling of winning and scoring goals.” It’s a feeling everyone should be able to experience.
Neither wrote anything. They both looked at me, waiting for more explanation, but that was the only answer I never had to rehearse.
“Can you tell us a little bit about how you see transitioning from playing sports to a career in investment banking?” asked Solids. For people like me, career-changers, recruiting firms loved drilling into our reasons for “transitioning.”
“I think there are plenty of transferable skills that will help me in banking.”
Moments passed before Solids piped up. “It looks like you played on a number of teams—bounced around a lot. Can you speak a little bit to why that was the case?”
“I got hurt once, traded once, and cut by a couple teams. I went where there was an opportunity to contribute.”
They still didn’t write anything, but Solids checked his BlackBerry.
“I spent the summer after my senior year backpacking through southern Europe with some college roommates, so I’m sure we can swap some similar stories,” said Stripes. He then jotted something down.
“You have a tremendous opportunity at school to explore a number of industries, so what is it about investment banking that makes you certain this is what you want to do?” said Solids.
“I’ve always been interested in how businesses work, and the idea of being a strategic advisor to some of the biggest and best companies in the world is really exciting to me. I think banking combines a quantitative element with a need to be a superior problem-solver, all in a fast-paced environment.” Once again, these were sound bites I’d rehearsed ad nauseum. Stripes bought it, but I could tell Solids needed more stroking. “The deals you guys work on are front-page news in the Journal, the deals that move markets. It’s exactly the work environment I want.”
A smile grew wide on Solids’s face as he nodded, laid his pen down, and leaned back in his chair. “That’s exactly it. We’re not making headlines every day, but when we do, it’s the first thing you read when you wake up.”
Solids turned to Stripes as if to give him the go-ahead to fire a question my way. “I remember you mentioning natural resources is one of the industries you were interested in.” Stripes looked at me in search of confirmation. My slight nod belied the neon sign flashing in my head that read, “OH FUCK.”
Stripes continued, “What are your thoughts on where oil is headed?”
“Like any other commodity, the price is going to depend on supply and demand. On the supply side, I think OPEC will probably keep production going to try and damage the economies of certain rivals, specifically Russia. With demand….” A brunette outside with a little sundress caught my eye. “On the demand side, I…we’re going to see….” I could feel the first bits of sweat inching down my forehead. Was that girl from Columbia? How had I never seen her on campus? Undergrad, maybe? I exhaled slowly, returned my eyes to somewhere in the middle of the table, and went through my mental emergency interview checklist—when in doubt on these subjects, reference the following terms: accounting → taxes; corporate finance → leverage; marketing → customer lifetime value; operations management → bottleneck; miscellaneous → diversity; and economics….
“China,” I said. “China is going to play a large role in demand, but with projected GDP growth slowing down, I don’t think there will be enough demand to have a material impact on prices. With those dynamics in mind, I think we’ll see it around forty dollars per barrel for the foreseeable future.”
They both jotted down some notes as I peered out the window, but the girl was gone. All I saw now were two students, walking and laughing, though the size of each of their backpacks was nothing to laugh about.
“Any favorite classes this semester?” Stripes asked. There was one correct answer.
“Corporate finance,” I said. And I wasn’t even lying. It wasn’t the content of the course though, but the way our Chilean professor pronounced the “b” in “debt,” and how he replied to every statement made by my classmate Brad, a former Marine who still used military time, by politely stating, “You have all the right words but need some work on the order.”
“What’d you think of the Calaveras Vineyard case?” asked Solids, a Columbia Business School alum who for some godforsaken reason still remembered the case studies in first-year corporate finance class.
“Yeah, definitely an interesting one,” I said trying to buy time.
“How’d you approach calculating the WACC with all the uncertainties?” Solids asked. He had me on the ropes. And if the guy really wanted to know so badly, he should have asked the Norwegian girl in my study group who did the case. Beads of sweat gathered on my forehead.
“I remember a lot of those case studies ran together,” said Stripes, saving me as he shot a smile in my direction.
“Okay. We’re going to get into some of the technical stuff now—shouldn’t be too difficult, so don’t worry.” Solids clicked the top of his pen and tilted his neck to one side, then the other. “Could you walk me through how you’d get from net income to free cash flow?”
This was a layup—it was in every single study guide and something we’d been told to prepare for from the first day of recruiting. If I could avoid putting myself to sleep mid-explanation, I’d get the check mark.
“Starting with net income on the income statement, I’d add back interest expense, multiplied by one minus the tax rate—”
“And why one minus the tax rate?” said Solids.
“Interest is tax-deductible.” I said. He made a mark on his sheet, then motioned me to continue. “Then I’d add back depreciation, subtract capital expenditures, then subtract investment in working capital.”
“And why would we be interested in a company’s free cash flow versus, say, its EBITDA?” Solids clicked the top of his pen twice, then poised himself to write while his eyes fixed on my mouth.
“EBITDA may be easier to calculate for back-of-the-envelope calculations and is a decent proxy for operating cash flow, but the biggest issue is that it doesn’t take into consideration capital expenditures or working capital needs. Free cash flow, on the other hand, does, and so it is really the best gauge to understanding how much cash a company generates, which can then be used to buy back shares, pay dividends, make acquisitions, or pay down debt if it has any.” I’d rehearsed that for weeks and was in such a groove that I decided to go off script. “Because the unlevered free cash flow is the best calculation for the cash a company generates, it’s those cash-flow projections that are used in a discounted cash-flow model to calculate a company’s net present value.” They both scribbled down more notes.
“Well that leads us into my next question,” said Stripes. “If I said, ‘Here, Bill. Here’s a million dollars. You can either take it today, or you can wait, and I’ll give you 1.11 million dollars next year,’ which would you take?”
This was another question we’d been prepped on repeatedly. When I first heard someone ask it, my reaction was, what dumbasses are dishing out a million bucks willy-nilly? No wonder the economy has been in the shitter. But the concept they were testing was “present value”—a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. The reason is that a dollar today can be invested at a “risk-free” rate in a government security, and therefore can be worth more after a year than a dollar that you kept under your mattress. However, the wrinkle in this case involved using that risk-free rate (in this case, a treasury bill with one-year maturity) and discounting $1.1 million to today’s value. I didn’t have a clue what that specific interest rate was, but I knew for sure that it wasn’t much more than zero percent. Think about the interest you earned in your savings account around 2015—it sucked.
Anyway, the point was that if I invested one million bucks at just above zero percent for one year, I wasn’t going to be close to having 1.1 million bucks at the end of the year—to get there I would have needed a 10 percent return.
That’s when it hit me.
Prior to business school, my knowledge of investing was limited to watching Shark Tank reruns on CNBC. But in my corporate finance class, I’d done a project with a heady guy who’d worked at a hedge fund prior to business school, and he told me about his most recent investment idea. He was one of those guys who said he picked up Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor in high school, and “it just made sense.” Plus, on his LinkedIn profile he had CFA, CPA, NAACP, AARP, and a bunch of other initials next to his name, so he had some credibility, at least in finance.
“I’d take the one million dollars today,” I said. Solids immediately reached for his BlackBerry and started typing with a smirk on his face.
“Could you walk us through your reasoning?” said Stripes. As Solids placed his BlackBerry back on the table, Stripes’s BlackBerry vibrated.
“Sure. I’d take the million bucks and buy shares of Atlas Properties, which is a REIT that owns commercial properties in the US. The stock just got hit because there was confusion about litigation regarding one of its major tenants. It’s currently yielding eleven percent, so assuming they don’t default, I’d have one-point-eleven million dollars at the end of the year.”
“And what if the price of the security dropped?” said Stripes.
“Well, I won’t sell the position, so it would only be a loss on paper.”
“Can you talk more about the risk associated with this?”
“Well, the company isn’t overleveraged, and they have raised their distribution consistently over the past twelve quarters. Of course there’s market risk, but I’m twenty-eight years old, which I think is young enough to take some risk. Plus, I know I’d learn much more by getting involved rather than spending a year on the sidelines.”
Solids pressed the middle button on his BlackBerry. “We need to wrap up, but before we do, I wanted to ask if you were involved in any more of the clubs here. I see the investment banking club on your résumé. Are there any others?”
There weren’t.
“Yeah, a couple others,” I said.
“Could you tell us about one, ideally where you hold a leadership position?”
The last real leadership position I’d had was as an assistant captain of the Swedish team I played on in my last year of pro hockey, a position I was elected to by my Swedish teammates. But Stripes and Solids had already put the kibosh on anything hockey related.
“I’m the VP of events for the Energy Club,” I said. I felt slightly bad for lying, but I needed to stay in the game. Holding a leadership position for a club in business school consisted of signing up electronically to join the club, paying the fifteen-dollar initiation fee per club, then volunteering to organize some event during the semester. Following through on the event wasn’t even required. If you volunteered to organize an event where a friend who happened to be Asian came to speak to the club, you’d hold a title like Co-Chairman of Asian-Pacific Relations.
“Terrific…terrific. That’s great,” said Stripes. “I was actually VP of finance for the Energy Club.” Solids checked his watch, and the three of us stood up.
“We’ll be in touch,” said Stripes.
I shook hands with both of them and exited the room.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Helen, one of the few female students recruiting for banking, booking it toward me.
“I totally screwed up my last interview at BANK. I’m effed,” she said.
“I’m sure you nailed it,” I said.
“Definitely not.”
There were circles of students forming at every corner of the library, no doubt debriefing and comparing notes on their interviews. I just wanted to get out of there and piss away the rest of the day at my apartment.
“A bunch of us are heading to Tito’s on Broadway for some margaritas. Come.”
“I gotta return some videotapes,” I said.
“Videotapes? Who even has a VCR anymore?” This had been a common occurrence through business school—classmates taking my comments at face value.
“It’s a line from American Psycho. It was a joke.” What wasn’t a joke was that going to Tito’s for some cervezas and frozen margs wasn’t on my to-do list, so I had to come up with something convincing. “Seriously, though, I gotta help my sister move this afternoon, and I promised I’d head to her place right after interviews.”
“You can come for one,” she said, batting her eyelashes.
Behind Helen, I saw a clock hanging on the far wall that read 12:36 p.m. “I told her I’d be there by twelve forty-five, and it’s all the way in the East Village. I’ll let you know when I’m done though.”
“Okay. Text me later.” She started to walk away, but then turned around. “By the way, how’d your last interview go?”
But I was already gone.
* * *
I’m sure some of you are wondering, which firm did Stripes and Solids work for? Others of you couldn’t give two shits, but I’ll tell you anyway: BANK. I also interviewed at BANK, BANK, BANK, and even BANK. The interviews all took place that week and went like the one I described, more or less.
They also all resulted in the same outcome: Thanks for your interest in BANK, but we won’t be making you an offer.
Who did get offers? The first week of school, I was studying in Watson Library when I spotted a classmate across the table from me. I recognized him, but we hadn’t yet formally met. I was battling through our first microeconomics problem set and had spent the better part of the past couple days trying, with little success, to understand Vickrey auctions.
“Hey man, you take a crack at this microecon p-set?” I asked. He looked up from the book he was reading, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
“I took a look at it yesterday.” He looked to his left and right then leaned in close to me, his expression growing more befuddled. “And I got a little worried.”
“Same shit,” I said as a wave a relief overcame me.
He cast another wary glance around the room, then continued. “It was just, like, it seemed so easy, I was a little worried I was missing something, you know what I mean?”
Given that this guy looked like his only sexual encounters occurred with something that could be deflated and stored in a closet, I suppressed my primal instinct to dropkick him in the neck. Anyway, he did banking recruiting, listed “comedy” as an interest on his résumé, and got twelve offers.
It wasn’t disappointment I felt when the final rejection call came, but relief. I’d given it a shot and now had the time and a little more education to explore other industries—there were marketing firms, retailers, consulting firms, start-ups and many more. As I sat at my desk on a Thursday afternoon and considered which of those career paths might be worth looking into, my cell phone buzzed. I reached into my pocket—“Unknown Caller” read the caller ID.
“Hello?” I said.
“Bill. It’s Tripp Witherspoon. I’m a managing director at BANK.”
“Hi Tripp. How are you?”
The only Tripp I remember meeting was myself when I decided to try out using the name in third grade, since my name has the suffix “III.” That experiment lasted all of a day: that night I showed up at hockey practice for the New Jersey Rockets and told the first teammate I saw in the locker room, “Call me Tripp.” He didn’t, but he did cross-check me in the face in practice and call me a pussy.
“Plenty busy with a few live deals, but busy is good in this business,” said Tripp.
I opened up my Excel spreadsheet, where I’d compiled contacts I’d met throughout banking recruiting, and hit Ctrl+F, then searched “Witherspoon”—nothing. A LinkedIn search came up empty too.
“I’m calling to follow up on your interview last week. I know you received an email the other day letting you know we wouldn’t be able to extend you an offer, but we’ve done some reshuffling.” He went silent for a few seconds. “We’d like to make you that offer to join BANK this summer.”
“That’s great news. Wow…wasn’t expecting that.”
“It’d be super for you to meet a few more members of our team, but I thought it would be fun for it to be in a venue you’re more used to.”
“Terrific.”
“We have ice time Saturday night at 11:30 p.m. at Chelsea Piers and would love for you to join.”
Midnight on a Saturday? Sounded horrible. “Sounds great,” I said.
“Afterwards, a group of us head to the Chelsea bathhouse for a few spritzers and some guy time.”
“I got class really early—a review session Sunday morning, so not sure—”
“Come on, Keener. It’ll be fun.” It was my good friend and old junior-hockey teammate, Derek, who was working in investment banking at Deutsche Bank.
“Son of a bitch—shocked you could pull off that douchey voice.”
“Spent enough time with you—wasn’t hard to pick up.”
“By the way, can’t even imagine trying to lace ’em up now. You even know where your equipment is?”
“Bottom of the Hudson. What’re you up to?”
“Trying to get motivated to go to the gym.”
“Pretend like you’re going to do cardio, then end up lurking around that hip machine the broads always use?”
“Sounds right.”
“Well get the workouts in now, ’cause when you start working here, you won’t have any time for that shit.”
“Start up where?”
“You by your computer?”
“Yeah.”
The line went silent, then I heard him typing. “Place is more ridiculous than you could ever imagine,” he said.
A new email popped up in my inbox. I opened it and saw a thread of over thirty emails with the following subject line: “Re: Bill Keenan—Columbia.” Scrolling through the responses, it was clear Derek had slowly convinced the decision makers in the bank that they needed to hire me. He wore them down, just like he used to wear down a team’s defense to set me up in a scoring position on the ice.
“They emailed me a few days ago telling me to fuck off along with the rest of the banks,” I said.
“Well you can blow me later,” he said. Few things in life rival a well-placed friend. “Now onto more important shit. Did you see who got called up to The Show a few weeks ago and is now a top four defenseman on the Canucks?”