“Where the hell is he?” Chuck said, craning his neck toward the glass walls of the conference room. The meeting had been called for 9:00 a.m. sharp, and it was 9:06. “He’s keeping half the company waiting.”
Roger took a swig of coffee. “I don’t think Michael’s real concerned about how busy the rest of us are.” He jiggled his knee, knocking against mine on purpose.
This was the weekly Monday status meeting, the last one before the end of the year. An empty chair awaited Michael at the head of the table. Roger and the other analysts and I sat around the perimeter of the room. Chuck, seated at the back end of the table, turned his chair around to talk with Roger. Most of the higher-ups at the table were in a sedate Monday mood, chatting about soccer practice and piano recitals, plans for Christmas in Aspen or Saint Barts. Chuck’s wedding was fast approaching, and his fiancée spent most of her weekends in Connecticut ironing out the wedding details, which left Chuck by himself in the city, enjoying one final run of debauchery. Every Monday morning, he and Roger traded stories from the weekend.
“A model? I don’t believe you,” Chuck was saying.
“For real. Apparently she’s the next big thing out of Croatia.”
“Did you check your wallet before she left? Or maybe you just paid her up front. I know some of them won’t have it any other way.”
“Fuck you, man. I’m not washed up like you. I don’t have to pay for ass.”
“Bullshit. What about Vegas?”
“That’s different. That’s Vegas. Even Evan was paying for it in Vegas.”
Chuck raised an eyebrow. “Evan?”
“Our first night there. He didn’t come home until the morning.”
Chuck threw his head back and laughed. “You think our little Evan was out with a prostitute?”
I felt the heat rising under my collar. I should have said something, changed the subject. But in the previous few weeks, I’d learned it was better not to draw attention to myself.
“Well, where was he, then?” Roger was acting like I wasn’t right there.
“He crashed on our couch that night, in my and Brad’s room. After you and your hooker locked him out.”
Brad, sitting across the table, glanced up at his name. He froze, thumbs hovering above his BlackBerry keyboard. He looked at Chuck, but Chuck had already moved on. Then Brad shifted his gaze to me. I could see the rapid realization in his stare.
The room went quiet. Roger’s knee stopped jiggling. “Finally,” Chuck muttered, spinning around to face the table.
“Morning, everyone,” Michael said, and the room murmured in response. He took his seat at the head of the table. “Steve, why don’t you start us off?” Steve nodded and launched into an update, doing his best to make the macro group’s weak results sound palatable. Michael watched him with his hands steepled together, like a villain out of a movie. He did look the part: steely gray hair, a face carved with deep wrinkles, a skeptical squint. People still feared Michael, as they always had, but now the fear was earned. He was in charge; he’d saved the company. Things were going exactly as planned on the WestCorp deal. The rest of the world had noticed WestCorp’s growing exports, and their stock was rising rapidly, just as predicted. There were whispers that Kleinman was going to stay in DC and angle for the top job at Treasury in the new administration. That would mean Michael was permanently in charge, and that my trajectory at Spire could continue unchecked. Michael hinted at a raise and a promotion on the horizon. I couldn’t really believe how lucky I was.
But I had miscalculated what would happen after the deal went live. The rest of Spire didn’t want to see that the firm’s survival hinged on this one specific deal. The only thing they saw was their exclusion from it. We were the competition. Roger confirmed it for me a few days earlier. I bumped into him as I was leaving Michael’s office. “Shit, sorry,” I said, bending down to help gather the papers he’d dropped. While we were crouched, our faces close, Roger snarled: “You think you’re real hot shit, don’t you?” People stared at me pointedly in the hallways—others, not just Roger, had noticed how much the newly powerful Michael had taken me under his wing.
I thought they’d be happy about the success. I thought I had finally proved that I belonged in this world, too. But I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
A parallel had become clear to me. For a long time I’d hoped that things would get better, at home and at work. That the small daily miseries—jealous glares from coworkers, stiff silences from Julia—would eventually prove temporary, if I worked hard enough. But it was Julia, the previous weekend, who finally made me understand. I’d been hurrying out the door on Saturday morning, and Julia was sitting on the stoop, her eyes red and puffy. She told me that she’d been fired. I felt a pulse of sympathy for her, and then—nothing. I was struck less by the news than by my own lack of reaction. It was like hearing about a minor plane crash in a distant country. Sad, but not sad for me. On the way to work, I wondered whether it was a delayed response. Maybe the feeling would come later, the feeling of watching a loved one suffer. But it never did. I didn’t love her anymore: that was the answer. Simple and clear. I was relieved to realize this, actually—it was about time. I shouldn’t have kept loving Julia for so long after things had turned so bad. And I shouldn’t have expected that Roger and the others at Spire would see me as anything but the competition. It wasn’t worth it, caring about people who didn’t care about you.
The droning at the front of the conference room stopped. Wanda was waiting for Michael in the doorway. He gestured at the person talking to continue. On the other side of the glass wall, Wanda fluttered her hands as they spoke. She looked nervous.
Michael stuck his head back in. “I have to take this,” he said to the room. “Finish without me.”
In the silence, Steve cleared his throat, said we might as well keep going. But I wasn’t listening anymore. I leaned back to watch Michael and Wanda retreating down the hall toward his office. Michael was walking so fast that Wanda had to run to keep up.
Around noon, I passed by Michael’s office for the umpteenth time that day. The door was still closed. Wanda’s chair was empty. I turned my back, pretending to examine the papers in my hands. The hallway was quiet, and I strained to hear something, anything, through the door.
“Excuse me,” a woman said, pushing past me. It was our head of PR, a woman in a bright green dress and a crisp bob, her bracelets jangling as she knocked hurriedly on Michael’s door. Her perfume had a distinctive musky scent, a trail she left whenever she barreled through the hallways to put out a fire. A smell I had come to associate with panic. She opened the door without waiting for a response. A loud conversation erupted through the opening before she slammed it shut again.
I walked back to my side of the floor, scanning faces and computer screens and conversations for clues. The floor was emptier than usual, but the lunch hour would explain that. A muted TV flashed silently in the lobby. Two analysts tossed a Nerf football back and forth from their opposing desks. The wind outside had picked up, and when I stood at the windows at the edge of the building, I could see black umbrellas popping up like mushrooms on the street far below. The last of the lingering snow would be gone by the afternoon.
At my desk, I hit the space bar a few times to wake my computer. I watched Roger nodding his head to the music in his earbuds, typing with emphatic keystrokes, looking perfectly normal, exactly like he looked every day.
But I knew, even if I didn’t know what: something was wrong.
That night was supposed to be the Spire holiday party, an extravagant dinner at the Waldorf or the Pierre followed by a long night of drinking. It had been canceled this year. The recession made it impossible, both financially and optically. The secretaries felt bad for us, so they improvised. Tinsel was strung in the hallways, and miniature Christmas trees and menorahs decorated their desks. Around 6:00 p.m., someone went around offering beer and Champagne. There was a scrappy, festive mood that night. The year from hell was nearly over.
But I was restless. That afternoon, like something out of a dream, I found myself back at Michael’s door, arm raised and fist clenched, ready to knock. Stop, I thought, and I shook my head. Whatever it was, Michael could handle it. I stayed at my desk the rest of the day, willing my mind to focus, trying not to obsess about things I couldn’t control.
Roger was drinking a beer. He’d stolen the Nerf football from the other analysts and was tossing it up and down with one hand. He was in the middle of a running monologue about what to order for dinner.
“Hey, Evan,” Roger said, chucking the Nerf at my chest. It bounced to the floor before I had time to catch it. “Listen. We need to decide. Italian or Chinese?” He burped. “Let’s get more beer, too. We can expense it, right? Anyway…”
Roger may have hated me, but he liked an audience more. He sounded out every mundane thought that passed through his head, narrating every part of his life. I was used to it by then. I let it wash over me without really listening.
“Y’know, though, there’s a new Vietnamese place I think we should try, too. Shit—what’s it called?” He sat down at his computer, his cheeks ruddy from the beer. “You know, the one on Forty-fifth. Or is it—”
I heard a ping from Roger’s computer, the sound of an e-mail arriving. He clicked, his monologue trailing off, then he went silent. His eyes were scanning the screen. I heard the same ping sounding on the computers around me, like a chorus of chirping birds.
“Holy shit,” Roger said. “Holy shit.”
“What is it?” I tilted back in my chair, tossing the Nerf from one hand to the other.
Roger’s face went pale. “Check your e-mail. Right now.”
The message came with a bright red exclamation point. A news alert. I double-clicked to open it. My stomach plummeted as I read the headline:
SPIRE UNDER SCRUTINY
Evidence of bribery sparks investigation
No, I thought. No, no, this can’t be happening. But of course it was happening. It was the exact fear I’d been trying to suppress all day. I clicked through and began to read the article:
Federal authorities have initiated an investigation into whether Spire Management, a New York City–based hedge fund, bribed the Chinese government to obtain favorable terms on lumber imports.
The investigation was launched after the Observer contacted authorities for comment on Spire’s practices in China. The paper learned, through confidential sources within the company, that Spire Management has bribed highly placed Chinese government officials in order to arrange for tax-free imports of lumber to China from several Canadian companies. Spire has taken an aggressive position on these companies, which includes the conglomerate Pacific WestCorp, and stands to profit significantly from their growth.
A review of WestCorp’s most recent quarterly statement shows that exports to China have increased substantially over the third quarter, and the company expects continuing significant growth in the next fiscal year…
The byline at the top of the story stood out in big, bold letters. Adam McCard.
Roger was staring at me when I finished reading. The floor had gone silent while everyone read the news. The only sound was of the building’s joints, creaking in the high wind.
“Did you know about this?” Roger asked, in a charged whisper.
Was I being paranoid again, or were people murmuring as I passed? A numb panic spread through my body: my limbs had gone leaden, but my mind was racing faster and faster. I speedwalked over to Michael’s office. All the e-mails and phone calls back and forth with WestCorp. The delivery to Chan in Las Vegas. Security footage from the cameras in the hallways at the Venetian. Chan’s cackling demands. The $20,000 in cash, still sitting in my sock drawer. There were a thousand different trip wires suddenly lying in wait.
Wanda was back at her desk. Her fingers flew across the keyboard; ten different lines blinked red on the phone. A half-eaten salad lay forgotten at her elbow.
“I need to talk to him,” I said.
She looked bewildered for a second, then laughed. “Are you kidding?”
“But it’s about this story. The WestCorp story. Please, Wanda.”
“Evan. This is way above your pay grade, okay? Just go home, get some rest. It’s the best thing for now. Trust me, hon. I’d help you if I could.”
When I got back to my desk, Roger stared at me with a mixture of pity and contempt, maybe even a little bit of awe. I turned off my computer, pocketed my phone, put on my coat. The elevator whisked me down to the ground floor. Outside, the night was consumed by a vicious rainstorm, dark and howling and damp. I walked to the subway at Times Square, dodging umbrellas and sprays of water from cars streaking by. One foot in front of the other. Just keep walking. I elbowed my way into the middle of the train for a seat and collapsed, my clothes dripping wet.
I thought of Brad, shouting and seething with anger that night in Las Vegas. It would have been nothing to him to pick up the phone and vent it all to a reporter. Michael had a fat bull’s-eye painted on his back. Anyone who resented him, anyone who wanted him gone, any of those people would have happily spilled the news. And who knew how many people Brad could have told? Chuck, or Roger. Roger, his jealousy barely guarded by derision. He wasn’t someone used to coming in second. On the roof that day in September, the day of the crash, he had been the one to summon forth Adam McCard’s name. I always read the Observer. Just for their finance guy. He’s good. Adam’s silky touch might be exactly what Roger’s wounded ego needed. Making Roger feel like he was doing the right thing. It explained Adam’s pointed questioning when he ran into me at Thanksgiving. He’d been chasing the scent of the story. Roger had acted so surprised when the news broke.
Who would do this? Why would he do this? If someone really hated Michael, if he wanted him gone, there were other ways. Roger or Brad could have gone straight to David Kleinman, and Kleinman would have handled it—probably would have rewarded the whistle-blower, to boot. Instead, whoever did it had gone nuclear. Someone was willing to blow up the whole company because of some petty jealousy. I felt my blood rising. It stank of hypocrisy. Everything Spire did, every bet we made and trade we transacted, was dependent on some kind of asymmetry. We had better information, faster networks, a heavier footprint. We got rich to the detriment of some other party. That’s how it always worked. For this particular deal to be singled out was completely arbitrary. How many hundreds of morally questionable deals had been made at Spire in years past? Who had the gall to decide that, here, a line had been crossed? Who had the right?
I knew how it would go. It would be a fucking nightmare. The country had just been devastated, and it needed someone to pin the blame on. The SEC would come in with guns blazing. In the papers, on TV screens, broadcast over radio waves: people wanted blood. They bayed for revenge. The complexity of subprime mortgage products meant that the real bad guys might never face punishment. But this story, our story, was easy to understand. Rich guys bribe the Chinese in order to become richer. All while the rest of the country shrivels in a drought of our own creation. I saw it from the outside for the first time, just how bad this looked.
The train pulled into 77th Street. The crowd moved up the stairs in a slow trudge, each person pausing at the top to open an umbrella or pull up a hood. It was earlier than I usually came home, the tail end of rush hour still thick with commuters. My thoughts looped back to Adam. That slimy bastard. Preying on disgruntled employees to get his next story; converting other people’s unhappiness into fuel for his ambition. I wondered what Julia ever could have seen in him, even as a friend.
Then it occurred to me, as I waited for the light to change on 3rd Avenue. Julia. Had she seen Adam lately? Had she mentioned his name? I sifted through my memory: no, she had never said anything. But this city wasn’t very big. Even I had run into Adam, and what were the odds of that? And Julia kept in touch with everyone, even people she claimed to dislike, even the bitchy girls from prep school. But she hadn’t uttered his name once since that rainy March night, sophomore year, when she’d disappeared upstairs with Adam during that party. I wasn’t stupid. I could guess what had happened. But after that party, the fights tapered off. Things felt steadier, calmer. She went away to Paris, and, after that, we were happier than ever. We never spoke about it again. It had been left completely, resolutely in the past.
As I turned onto our block, I passed a group crowded under a bar awning, smoking cigarettes in soggy Santa hats and holiday sweaters. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” blasted out through the bar’s open door. A girl wearing an elf costume stumbled into me as I pushed through the crowd. “Whoa!” she said, sloppy and laughing. I mumbled an apology. She stuck out her tongue, swaying on her feet. “Merry Christmas, grinch!” she shouted at my back.
The image materialized as I dug my keys out of my pocket. Julia, turning at the sound of her name. At a bar or a party, or some sidewalk in the city. Smiling at an old friend. Softening and bending toward him, like she had all those years before. A little lonely, bored in her job, with so many hours alone in that tiny apartment. So much restless energy. What might have happened between the two of them, reunited after so long? The conversations, hours and hours of conversation, saying everything she had to say. The things she was no longer saying to me. Julia always loved a good listener.
The apartment was dark when I opened the door. The light, when I flipped it on, illuminated a strange scene. The blanket was rumpled around a fresh-looking dent in the futon. A take-out container of soup sat on the coffee table, still steaming with heat. The dread swelled, a tinge in the back of my throat. Where was she? I spun around, surveying the room for clues. But the rest of the furniture was neat and in place. A bowl and mug sat on the drying rack next to the kitchen sink. The tea towels hung square from the oven door. The bed was smoothly made, the pillows plumped. A stupid phrase came to mind: There was no sign of struggle. Julia had just up and left moments earlier.
I pulled out my phone and called her. I belatedly realized that the ringing was louder than usual, coming not just from the speaker next to my ear but also from somewhere in the room. I followed the chime and buzz to the coffee table, where her phone was partially obscured by a stack of take-out napkins. I picked up her phone, which was glowing from my missed call.
The wallpaper on her iPhone screen, for a long time, had been a picture of the two of us taken during that summer in Europe. She had handed her phone to another tourist while we leaned against the railing that separated the rocky path from the bright blue sea below. She loved that picture. The two of us smiling and squinting, happy and tired and sunburned from an afternoon trekking through the Cinque Terre. After the digital shutter snapped, we relaxed our smiles, Julia thanked the tourist, and we walked back to our B and B in Monterosso. That night we drank wine on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean. She pulled her hair loose from its bun and tilted her head back to look at the stars. I took her hand and led her back to our room under the attic rafters. We fell asleep curled together as the waves crashed far below. But that photo, that moment, that life was gone. In its place, on the phone screen, was a generic image of planet earth floating in space. That image wedged in my brain like a shard of glass. Erasure of our happiest memories. Evidence of just how far we had drifted.
But that’s not what I was really looking at. I was reading, over and over again, the text message that appeared on the locked screen of the phone. Eight short words, but that was all it took. It became suddenly, painfully clear who was behind the revelations about Spire. Who had been drawing closer and slipping information to the person on the other side of the table.
Adam McCard, thirty-two minutes ago.
I’m sorry, babe. I had to do it.