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  “Thanks.”

  I really struggle to make it sound genuine; I can’t even begin to fathom what would have happened if the Star hadn’t stepped in and saved my ass this morning. Still, there’s a poorly concealed reality behind it—the dogged truth that I find him utterly despicable. I’m well aware this is an evil thought, up there in the same league as those dark secrets muffled by a screen during confession. The Star is hands-down the nicest guy in the entire analyst class at the Bank. He’s interminably pleasant and modest, chugging along with the disposition of a Buddha, though I’ve never seen him sleep a wink.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you would have done the same.”

  Would I have? Like hell.

  “Yes, of course.”

  So where does this despicability spring from? Perhaps it’s because he can’t be entirely human. He just can’t. He’s like this investment banking superhero, capable of constructing seven discounted cash-flow models while rescuing pregnant ladies from burning buildings. A cyborg, maybe. Or he suffers from a mild case of autism: a bit of a dweeb but with awesome analytical powers. Who knows. Either way, he’s setting impossibly high standards.

  I hear the Sycophant’s voice from just outside the doorway.

  “That was a brilliant recommendation. Brilliant! We’ll definitely incorporate that into our future models.”

  Cringe worthy; he has to be talking to the Client.

  “It was really a pleasure to meet with you this morning. If you come up with any more suggestions about the competitive environment, you have my card.”

  The Client mutters something and then he’s off. I pull up a spreadsheet, one with lots of numbers, and scatter a few papers across my desk. The Sycophant has this eerie way of sneaking up on you. No footsteps, no friction from the carpet, just this sudden prickling on the back of your neck.

  “We could have used you at the meeting. The Client didn’t understand the change you made to the revenue-optimizing correlation.”

  The Sycophant’s voice is high and shrill now that he’s no longer sucking the lifeblood from some Client’s sphincter. He has a rodentlike physicality, so it suits him well. Thin nose, pointed ears pressed flat against the sides of his skull, aerodynamic bone structure. Beady little eyes. There’s something unnerving about those eyes being so close, boring into my skin. They’re gray and watery and filled with the bitterness of a geeky kid who couldn’t get the girls and couldn’t play any sports and couldn’t even do what’s expected of geeky kids like that, mainly cashing in on the late-nineties tech-bubble bonanza and retiring in the Caymans at the age of thirty-something with some washed-up supermodel.

  “The package was also fifteen minutes late this morning. When I say six in the morning, I mean six in the morning. Not six-fifteen. You’ve got to manage your time better from now on.”

  Those beady little eyes study every twitch of my body. We’ve all picked up on the fact that the Sycophant’s becoming even more of a bastard lately, which is somewhat understandable with his wife running off with the cable guy (a rumor, uncorroborated but highly probable).

  “I’m sorry,” I mumble.

  That’s all I’m going to give him, not much to work with. I know it seems like a lack of integrity. What am I saying —?it is a lack of integrity.

  “And I don’t know why you inversed the revenue-optimizing correlation. It was fine in the previous version. Fix the correlation, then put through these other changes. The Client wants to see the revisions first thing tomorrow.”

  By handing me his markup he effectively dismisses me. No thank-you for pulling an all-nighter, no acknowledging I’m barely awake, hanging on to reality by only the merest of threads. I look over the markup. His handwriting is barely legible, though this sort of thing is endemic at the Bank. You get accustomed to the omission of vowels, the plethora of code words that are often made up on the fly: STET. Up arrow. Arrow to the right. An omega symbol. Hmm, that’s a new one. Surprisingly, it’s not too brutal—only a few hours of minor modifications. I can work off a previous version and have the inverse of the inverse of the revenue-optimizing correlation already calculated. Meaning, back to where I started.

  “The Star really saved your ass this morning, huh? You look like shit, by the way.”

  This is from the Defeated One, the other analyst who shares our office. He is the Star’s antithesis. He would be the Star’s archnemesis if the Star gave us any opportunity to hate him. But no, the Star’s just too damn nice. The Defeated One despises investment banking, though he’s never going to leave. It’s not that he’s sadomasochistic. It’s the high-maintenance girlfriend. It’s the presents that must be lavished on the high-maintenance girlfriend after he’s cancelled their dinner plans for the fifth time that week. And also a fledgling coke habit.

  He rocks back and forth in his swivel chair and eyes me critically. The Defeated One has a full year of seniority on me, which apparently gives him the right to act the seasoned veteran, while I remain the perpetual newbie.

  “Come on, Mumbles. Let’s round up Postal Boy and Clyde and get some coffee.”

  Mumbles is what I go by, a nickname derived from a propensity for mumbling, I guess. The caliber of wit at the Bank is truly staggering. Postal Boy and Clyde are two of the other analysts in the Mergers & Acquisitions group. There’s six of us in total: three in this office, three just down the hall.

  It’s easy to persuade Clyde to join us. Clyde is always up for coffee; he’s reliable that way. It’s because he does the least amount of work aside from the Prodigal Son, blessed progeny of some executive at the Bank, and the sixth analyst in the M&A group.

  Postal Boy is hunched before his monitor, making grunting noises under his breath. There is a possibility he looks even worse than I do. Big bags droop under his eyes, and his glasses are askew on the bridge of his nose. His hair is matted down unsuccessfully, so little strands poke up in a myriad of directions. Postal Boy is the second-hardest-working analyst in our M&A sextet, just below the Star. Yet unlike the Star, who makes everything look so easy, Postal Boy shows the strain of his effort: pimples induced by an endless stream of sugar between four and six in the morning, a nervous twitch of his left eye, and the tendency to curl his hands into fists for no apparent reason.

  The Defeated One is convinced Postal Boy’s going to lose it one day, a Columbine of the banking world. I disagree. He works too hard, no doubt about that, and there is definitely some serious repression going on, but postal? The eye twitch is pretty creepy, though, I’ll give him that.

  “Postal, get your shit together. We’re heading down for some coffee.”

  Postal Boy speaks in a slow, monotonous drone. “Can’t. Have to finish these comps.”

  “They can wait.”

  “No. They have to be finished up by ten.”

  The Defeated One kicks the back of Postal Boy’s chair hard. Postal Boy lurches forward, knocking a Diet Coke off the desk, which spills onto a stack of papers left on the floor. Postal Boy frowns at the wet papers and the growing splotch on the carpet and readjusts his glasses.

  “Fine,” he sighs with resignation, “but we have to make it quick.”

  On the way to the elevators, walking slightly ahead with the Defeated One, I say, “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Done what?”

  “Kicked his chair like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who called it. It’s going to be on your shoulders if we’re all riddled with bullets one day.”

  The Defeated One chuckles, shaking his head. He’s not really an asshole, just very, very bitter.

  “Think about it. It’s brilliant. Get him all riled up and who does he take out first? Prodigal Son—bon voyage. Clyde—that’s a bit of a bummer. Sycophant—gone. The Philandering Managing Director—gone. By the time he’s through with them all, we’ll have barricaded the door to our office. Maybe used the Star as bait or something. It would be a beautiful thing. Can you i
magine never having to deal with the Sycophant again? For that, we sacrifice Clyde.”

  “I don’t know. He might come looking for you first. I go second based on geographic proximity.”

  “Nah, Postal’s eruption will be so atomic that logic won’t play a factor. He’ll take out the first things moving.”

  The Defeated One is designated the scout. He pokes his head out into the reception area, ensuring there is no senior employee waiting for the elevators, and we make a scramble for it. Dammit—all the elevators are on the ground floor. Bad scenario: The elevator pings open and somebody superimportant steps out and cracks some smart-aleck remark (“Hey, you fellas are all taking the elevator down together? Has the M&A department bought out some insurance policy for that?”), and we chuckle politely, blush a bit, and the superimportant person shuffles off, thinking, Man, those analysts don’t work as hard as they did back in the day. Worse scenario: Superimportant person steps into the elevator with us, and during the awkward descent of thirty-two floors, we have to scrounge up some basketball statistic or enlightened commentary on inflation when all the while the superimportant person is thinking about the six-over-par round he shot that morning.

  The elevator opens. It’s empty. First sigh of relief. The elevator closes without anybody karate-chopping the doors at the last instant. Second sigh of relief. A cardinal rule of elevators: Unless there’s a superimportant person in there with us, somebody worthy of foolish chatter in a futile attempt to impress, the elevator is a temple of silence. As with a urinal. Chattering away while using a urinal is deserving of ancient forms of torture.

  The little screen that displays ads and bits of trivia and SAT words we’re never going to use once in our lives, not ever, is filled with static. A buzzing noise. Not the static. Clyde is singing something. It’s mostly under his breath, but I think I hear the Spice Girls, the chorus of “Wannabe.”

  Clyde is an odd one. Not that we aren’t all a little odd, especially in this industry, but Clyde is a little odder than most. It’s a difficult sort of odd to pinpoint. The Defeated One and I have played this game many times before: What is it about Clyde that’s not quite right? Physically he is fairly nondescript: reddish hair, pale skin, an unassuming mouth and nose. He looks a bit like Archie from the comics, the sucking-up-to-Mr.-Weatherbee Archie, not the suave incarnation who has those two babes lusting after him.

  Maybe it’s because we don’t really know him. Sure, he laughs at our jokes, makes a few half-hearted attempts of his own, but it always comes across so detached, like he’s trying to seem relatively normal when there is something else churning around that head of his. God knows what. Flying monkeys. Promiscuous cowgirls. We know this: He’s kind of lazy, but then, he doesn’t really need the money; his dad is a construction magnate or something like that. He frequently does crazy shit just for the sake of doing it: smoking pot in the drug-testing bathroom tucked away behind the trading floor, trying to figure out which porn sites escape the filters, in the middle of the day, when the assistants are still roaming about. We’re pretty certain he’s a nice guy, but then, maybe he isn’t. Maybe he goes home to wherever he lives and sticks pins into little effigies of us. Or plays ultra-violent video games. Maybe he’s the real postal potential.

  Make it last forever, friendship never ends.

  At the twenty-first floor, the Defeated One breaks the cardinal rule of not speaking in elevators.

  “Clyde, are you singing the Spice Girls?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s catchy.”

  “But it’s the Spice Girls.”

  “Who cares?”

  The Defeated One shakes his head, but there’s not much he can say to that. Such is the Way of Clyde: He just doesn’t give a damn.

  A line of Cole Haan loafers and Prada heels snakes out from the perpetually packed Starbucks in the lobby of our office tower. Starbucks—last refuge of the investment banker, the only place you have some modicum of privacy, and even then you’re never entirely certain a Managing Director isn’t breathing down the back of your neck. There is a quartet of ridiculously hot twenty-somethings a little ahead in the line. Based on the manner of their dress—oversized tinted sunglasses, weird frilly handbags, cleavage-enhancing blouses—they have to be in Public Relations. The Defeated One tries to make eye contact and fails miserably.

  Clyde mutters behind me, “Crap. Philandering Managing Director at three o’clock.”

  I look over my shoulder as discreetly as possible. If we stay facing forward, there is a chance he may pass by without distinguishing the back of our suits from the rest of this crowd. The Philandering Managing Director is a bulky ex-linebacker alpha-male type whose previous four assistants resigned abruptly over the past six months. He stops at the other end of the lobby to chat up a blond woman in a librarian’s skirt. She looks vaguely familiar; I think she works in Technical Support.

  Postal Boy is getting fidgety. He’s mopping sweat off his forehead and his left eye is twitching all over the place.

  “I can’t wait any longer. I’ve got to get back upstairs.”

  The Defeated One eyes him sternly. “No. You look like shit. Mumbles looks like shit. You have my word that I feel like absolute shit. Postal, we are entitled to our coffee.”

  The Philandering Managing Director and his latest conquest cross the lobby and exit through the revolving doors.

  “See, they won’t even notice.”

  Clyde has the best vantage point; he can see them through the window.

  “Nah, she’s just having a smoke while the Philanderer chats her up. There’s no movement toward the parking garage; this doesn’t look like it’s gonna turn into a quickie. He’ll drop in on the way back.”

  There are three people in front of us in the line now and three cash registers. The odds are pretty good we’ll have our coffees before the cigarette is out.

  “No fancy drinks,” the Defeated One instructs. “Just black. We don’t have time for any namby-pamby cappuccinos.”

  I like my namby-pamby cappuccinos, especially when the Asian barista with the Coke-bottle glasses is at the drinks station. She’s one of the rare Starbucks employees who’s mastered the art of the foam: She ensures it stays in the cup all the way down and doesn’t dissipate after the first few sips, leaving you with a run-of-the-mill latte.

  Clyde says, “She’s ashing her cigarette pretty intently. I’d say she’s getting close to the filter.”

  “Fine,” I concede, “black it is.”

  Then the cash register manned by the tall, pasty guy who makes possibly the world’s worst cappuccino, not worth the sweat and toil of the Guatemalan or Ethiopian farmer picking the beans for the latest international blend, makes a clunking noise and the screen at front fades out. A collective groan from the line. One of the other registers opens up, and the old man standing two places in front shuffles over. Now there is only one further barrier between us and our coffee, a woman with an Hermès scarf tied taut around her neck. She’s young and polished, and everything about her screams type A personality. The Italian hand-crafted flat heels, the severe cut of her suit, the way she clutches her handbag possessively, hugging it close to her chest. She is pretty in a strange way. Big brown eyes, a nose that is slightly too large, thin pursed lips. Not bodacious like the foursome from Public Relations—she wouldn’t stand a chance strutting around in a California bikini contest—but she pulls off the whole corporate image well.

  “The smoke is tossed,” Clyde observes. “There’s no movement toward the parking garage. Philanderer’s expected arrival time is T-minus thirty seconds.”

  “Let’s just go,” Postal Boy croaks.

  He’s really nervous, his eye twitching like crazy.

  “No,” orders the Defeated One, “we are staying for our coffee. Look, we’re next.”

  The Woman With The Scarf heads to the open register.

  “Watch this. You can tell from the shoes. Superefficient
coffee order coming right up. Ten seconds tops,” I wager.

  The man at the other working register doesn’t look as promising. He’s ancient and confused, and he gesticulates wildly at the case of pastries. Every time the barista reaches in to grab a muffin or a danish, he gets all flustered, curses in a foreign language, and points to something else.

  “Christ,” the Defeated One mutters, looking over his shoulder.

  I discreetly follow his gaze to the back of the line: The Philandering Managing Director is charming the pants off a sixty-year-old secretary in front of him. What the hell is taking the Woman With The Scarf so long? Oh lord, a piece of paper in her hand; she has a fucking list.

  She speaks in a rapid-fire monotone; that’s good, but god, listen to the complexity. One percent wet (absolutely NO foam, she emphasizes) caramel cinnamon latte with the ultra-low decaf blend, double cup sleeves. The barista’s marker flies across the cup. Next: low-fat two percent extra-hot cappuccino. The barista stops her marking.

  “Huh? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  The Woman With The Scarf looks up from her list.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Low-fat two percent. It contradicts itself.”

  The Woman With The Scarf visibly tenses.

  “I don’t have time for this,” she snaps. “Just make it.”

  From the frown of the barista, the hands lowered to her hips, I know what’s coming next. She’s not backing down.

  “You tell me how to make it, then.”

  “Oh god,” the Woman With The Scarf snarls. “I just can’t deal with this right now.”

  “Miss,” the barista states coolly, “you’re holding up the line. Please explain how I should go about making your low-fat two percent cappuccino.”