22

LEILA HAD TRIED not to think about the work that would await her when she got back to the office on Monday. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to go much longer. She had updated her resume the night before.

She arrived just after nine, hoping to slip in quietly. To her surprise, everyone was there already, but nobody was working. Not a single phone receiver was off its hook. Samantha’s office door was shut. Leila looked around.

“What’s going on?”

“You picked a bad time to go on vacation,” said Cox.

“Things were so quiet when I left.”

“Well, they’re not quiet anymore.”

She sat down at her desk and opened her email, but didn’t start sifting through any yet, scared of what she might find.

Samantha’s office door opened and two men in suits walked toward the elevators, not making eye contact with anyone.

“Do you think they’re the feds?” Dennis asked.

“No way,” said Cox. “The feds always come on Fridays, and they wear black suits. That guy’s suit was gray.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dennis was clearly on edge.

Samantha appeared in her doorway. “Leila!”

She obeyed the summons, terrified. The door shut behind her.

“You sure left me in a hell of a mess.”

“I’m sorry.” Leila sat down, not able to imagine what was going on. Samantha leaned back against the front of her desk. She looked exhausted for a Monday morning.

“The least you could have done was answer your cell phone.”

“I was out of coverage range. What happened?”

“Desert Villas is in crisis. The new houses aren’t appraising for half what the first batch closed at. Buyers are walking away from their earnest money deposits. Better than taking a bath by closing, I suppose.”

“Isn’t Marshall Berg still doing the appraisals?”

“Fuck Marshall! That ass has betrayed me for the last time. I’ll have his license before this is through. Leila, I need you to call Paul. He’ll listen to you. He panicked when you were gone last week. He needs to hear your voice. Tell him everything will be fine with the two Kumar loans and we’ll find a way with the others.”

“Kumar? But the Kumar loans funded over a week ago, before I left.”

“We’ve still got them on our warehouse line of credit. The investor pulled out. I’ve tried everywhere. Sun Trust won’t touch them. Neither will Countrywide.”

“Shit. Who was that Kumar guy anyway?”

“Amit Raj Kumar. He’s a British investor. He bought two of the biggest houses with five percent down payment on interest-only loans.”

“Well, if the new appraisals are right, he already owes more than they’re worth. How long can we afford to keep them on our warehouse line?”

“Not this long. It’s bad. When you left a week ago, we were a healthy company. Now, we’re a whisper away from insolvency.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, I have a potential investor in Sweden.”

“Sweden?”

“And if that doesn’t work out, there are those guys you just saw walking out of here. I can’t talk about it yet, but they’re my last resort.”

“How are you funding the other loans?”

“The smaller ones we still have room for on the line.”

“Three big ones are supposed to fund on Wednesday.”

“I’ll have to cover some of that out of my pocket.”

“Can you do that?”

“I have to. If the feds find out, they’ll be here on Friday to put handcuffs on the doors and we’re done.”

Leila stood up and walked toward the door.

“What should I tell Paul?”

“I don’t know. Use your charm. Whatever the hell you do, don’t tell him the truth.”

Leila put her hand on the doorknob but turned around one more time. She couldn’t help it. “What is the truth?”

Samantha exhaled audibly. “Nobody wants to live in those houses they built in the desert. They sold to investors and speculators, but who are they going to sell or rent them to, coyotes and rattlesnakes?”

Leila walked back to her desk. Not two months ago, they celebrated Desert Villas as the new frontier of Phoenix real estate. How quickly it all came crashing down.

It was a strange week in the office. Samantha hardly spoke to anyone. There wasn’t much action on the phone lines. Cox and Tommy each managed to lock a loan, but those were the only two names on the board. The three loans funded on Wednesday. Leila wondered if anybody else knew the strings Samantha had pulled to get it done. Fortunately, the investors came through the next day. Meanwhile, the Kumar loans remained on the books. Time was running short.

Leila began sending out her resume.

On Friday morning, the two mysterious men were back. They were in Samantha’s office for over an hour. At the end of the meeting, they shook hands in her doorway, all smiles as everyone watched nervously.

“May I have everyone’s attention, please?” Samantha said after the men left. She wore a big smile that would have looked fake if not for the relief it showed. “I am thrilled to announce that our company is merging with Alamo Trust Bank, a super-regional that has a big presence in Texas and New Mexico. They already have a small mortgage office in Phoenix and are excited for the opportunity to grow in Arizona. Next year, they plan to open a couple of deposit branches here.”

Did Samantha really think she could fool any of them into thinking this was good news? Across the short cubicle wall, Leila heard Dennis snort, “What a shit show.” Samantha was undeterred.

“The advantage is that as a bank, they fund all their loans in-house. We have access to all the capital we could ever need. The flip side of that is our product offerings will be smaller. This merger is effective as of today, but we will retain our name through the end of the year. Our lease in this space runs through another two years, and there are no plans at this time to break it.”

She paused, and her smile disappeared.

“Now, for me to get this deal through, I had to agree to become leaner. Our loan volume over the last two months doesn’t justify this fat of a staff. A few of you have not been carrying your weight.” She looked down at the floor, then back up and exhaled sharply. “Dennis, DeShawn, Rosemary . . . thank you for your contributions. You are hereby terminated. You may take a moment to pack up your things.”

Nobody moved for a second. The shock was still sinking in.

“I mean now. Don’t bother to try to save any of your files. Your log-ins have already been canceled. I’d like this to be as painless as possible, so please just go.”

Rosemary burst into tears. Dennis began putting things in his briefcase. DeShawn stood up.

“It’s been fun,” he said quietly to Leila.

She offered her hand. “Good luck.”

He walked out without taking a thing. Dennis and Rosemary remained at their desks.

“Kristen,” Samantha called toward the junior processor, “this is your two-week termination notice. Mona can handle all of our processing from here on, but I’d like you to stay and finish up the files you’re working on.”

Finally, Rosemary and Dennis made their painful exits. Samantha addressed those who remained.

“The rest of you are officially on notice. No crap, no games, no more vacations. This is do-or-die time. Now, get on those phones and sell some goddamn loans or you can pack your things too.”

They obeyed. Sales were hard. Voices on the other end of the line were indignant, sometimes even threatening, but the four surviving loan officers kept at it. They had to.

For a few hours, Leila’s mind was back on the pressure of this job, even while she plotted her escape. She felt bad for those who had been fired when she planned to quit as soon as she had a good offer, but she couldn’t offer her place to another even if she wanted to. It didn’t work like that. Every loan officer was judged on his or her merit alone. That was something she loved about it.

It was past one o’clock, and she hadn’t eaten all day. She hadn’t brought any food either. She stepped out to get some lunch. Crossing the street and heading for a reliable deli, she passed the Starbucks where she had met Ashford a few months back. Dennis sat at an outdoor table. There was no coffee cup in front of him. He must have considered it a suddenly expendable expense. He stared with glazed eyes across the street at the office building. Leila guessed he had been sitting there all morning.

“Hi, Dennis.”

“Oh, hi.” He was jolted out of his daze.

Leila didn’t really want to, but she sat down beside him, thinking it was the polite thing to do.

“What am I going to do?” The pitch of his voice rose the way she remembered it always did when he became agitated.

“You’ll get another job soon. You have great experience.”

“It’s not like it used to be. What happened here is happening everywhere. There’s no place for a guy like me anymore. Maybe for you or Cox. Maybe even DeShawn. He’s young. He’s got a big personality. That’s the only thing that’s valued anymore. An over-the-hill guy like me, though? I’m screwed!”

She didn’t know what to say. Sadly, he was probably right. She couldn’t imagine where he would find a new job with his skill set in this economy.

“It’s too late for me to start a new career. All I know is the mortgage business, and this business is going to shit. I bet my wife will leave me too.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. She’s wanted to for years. If I’m unemployed, what does she have to stay for? Our kids are grown. None of them need me anymore.”

It wasn’t only the business that had moved past Dennis. The world had moved past him. But he had let it happen. She did feel for him, even as his self-pity reeked of a lifetime of entitlement and privilege. Maybe he was right, that the days of an older white man being handed another soft landing were over. His real problem was that as a privileged white man, he had never learned to scratch and claw for his chances.

She stood up. “I can’t be away for too long. Samantha’s cracking the whip up there today. Dennis, I’m really sorry. You have my number. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

She started to offer her hand, but Dennis had returned to his daze. She hurried to the deli for her salad, then brought it back to eat at her desk.

A day at a time, she told herself. A day at a time before she could find a new job . . . if she could. A day at a time before she and Ashford could live their love openly. A day at a time until her child came into the world. Until then, she would pick up the phone and fight to survive, even if the housing market crumbled around her.