Bank Page 5

  Further down on the screen:

  From: TheSycophant@theBank.com

  To: TheProdigalSon@theBank.com

  Don’t worry. I’ll get somebody else on it. Have a good time.

  At the beginning of the thread:

  From: TheProdigalSon@theBank.com

  To: TheSycophant@theBank.com

  A buddy of mine is off to Switzerland tomorrow and there’s a massive party tonight. I’m not going to be able to get the comps done for the beverage deal. Can you get somebody else to finish them up?

  “What the fuck—I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

  I slam my fist down hard on the desk, toppling over the computer speakers. I haven’t been this angry in a very, very long time.

  “Calm down, Mumbles,” the Defeated One drawls.

  I glower at him. I swear to god, if he starts with me now, I’m going to gouge out his eyeballs with a paper clip.

  I dial Mark’s cell phone. He picks up after three rings.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” I start. “My boss—”

  “Look, no need to make excuses. You’re blowing us off tonight, right?”

  I don’t know what to say. I can’t apologize; I’ve apologized so many times for this sort of thing that I no longer have any credibility.

  “The Ex-Girlfriend is here already. She’s not going to be too happy.”

  “Can I speak to her?”

  Muffled sounds before Mark comes back on the phone. His tone is hushed.

  “Look, she’s pretty miffed. I think it’s best if you just leave it for now. Are you sure there’s no way you can make it down? Only for a beer?”

  One beer. Fifteen minutes in a taxi both ways. Thirty minutes of drinking and chatting up the Ex. I could be done in an hour max.

  God, who am I kidding? There’s no such thing as one beer, and if the Ex wants to hook up later?

  “I don’t know. I have all these precedent transactions to finish up—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Anyway, I probably won’t see you before I leave for Bulgaria, but be sure to stay in touch. You have my e-mail address?”

  “Yeah.”

  I have a sense I’m dropping down one additional notch into this pit of despair.

  “Hey, have a good time—”

  Mark hangs up on me. Mark, even. I rest my head on the desk and close my eyes. It’s truly amazing; right when I thought I’d reached the nadir of this job, all of a sudden, there is this unprecedented low. A hand on my shoulder:

  “There there, sweetcheeks.”

  I’m too upset to bother coming up with a retaliation. The Defeated One giggles erratically before heading to the washroom for another line.

  Three

  Many moons ago, before Christopher Latham Sholes invented the typewriter in Milwaukee, before gelatinous invertebrates slithered out of the oceans and evolved into prehistoric monkeys, the world was nothing more than a tiny speck. You could have carried it around in your pocket. Up a nostril. It was really that small. And when the world was no bigger than a fingernail, when it was nothing more than swirling hydrogen gases, there was no Bank. No time value of money. No bipedals buying and selling securities so they could cruise around in BMW 6 Series convertibles.

  But I don’t have to venture back to the beginning of time to make this point: It wasn’t always like this.

  It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m surrounded by all of these aliens. They don’t look like aliens, at least not the quintessential X Files variety, no pasty skeletons with bulbous sloping foreheads and hollow eye sockets, but they’re aliens nonetheless. Here in this cookie-cutter suburban house, the aliens chatter aimlessly about needlepoint and seated lawnmowers, and about how the garbage should be taken out earlier in the week, on a Monday instead of a Tuesday.

  One of the aliens, my aunt Penelope, whose fiftieth birthday is the cause of this extraterrestrial get-together, glides by in a yellow sundress and hands me a slice of chocolate cake. Picking at the colored sprinkles on the icing, I settle back in the fold-out chair and observe these life forms going about their day-to-day social norms: my uncle Bob stretched languorously on the couch like a giant cat; on the rug, a gaggle of vociferous cousins slamming down their Pokemon cards; my mom in the kitchen, chopping carrots for a salad; my dad smoking a cigar in the fenced-in yard beside dozens of identical fenced-in yards with Aunt Penelope’s next-door neighbor, a husky man in galoshes. The aliens seem to go about their daily existence in this completely frivolous universe. No responsibilities, no deadlines, no ominous feeling that at any moment a cell phone could go off and next thing they know they’re wasting the entire weekend putting together comps.

  Aunt Penelope returns with two glasses of punch. She plops down beside me and tosses her head back, her long earrings tinkling like wind chimes.

  “You look tired.”

  I’ve been keeping a tally; she is the eighth person who’s told me some variant of this over the course of the afternoon. Even my gay uncle Tom, who usually comments on my developing physique while trying to grope a biceps, only shook his head sadly when we exchanged our hellos.

  “I am tired,” I mumble.

  “What do you have to complain about? I tell you, it’s not easy getting this old. Takes a hell of an effort.”

  She’s been saying weird crap like this the entire afternoon, craving everybody’s pity for living a relatively carefree five decades, marrying a quiet Deloitte & Touche accountant, and not having to work a day in her life—and now she’s bored of it. The same house as everybody else, the same weeping willow in the yard, the same supersized groceries bought at Costco.

  “How do you like the new job?”

  “It’s okay.”

  I have this policy: I try my best not to talk about work outside of work. It’s really difficult to adhere to this. Because I have only this meager existence beyond the confines of the Bank, it’s all too easy to derail any conversation I’m having, so I’m once again ranting about the latest outrageous request from the Sycophant, or how I constantly fantasize about shoving a pencil up a nostril and slamming my head down, killing myself the same way that Japanese student under the pressure of passing his entrance exams did once.

  “How many hours are they making you work?”

  “Ninety on average. Sometimes more.”

  Her head flies up, earrings jangling.

  “Ninety a week? My gosh. Are you serious?”

  I nod.

  “That’s downright obscene. Aren’t there labor laws to prevent such a thing?”

  I shrug. Aunt Penelope waves over Aunt Teresa and Uncle Tom.

  “Can you believe it; they’re making him work ninety hours a week! Isn’t that crazy?”

  Aunt Teresa and Uncle Tom bob their heads simultaneously.

  “Crazy. Yes, definitely crazy.”

  It’s not long before the entire roomful of aliens knows my work schedule. It’s foreign to them, this ninety hours a week; it sets them debating whether such a thing is possible. Uncomfortable with the sympathetic stares thrown my way by every third cousin in the vicinity, I slip out to join my dad in the backyard. The fall air is crisp and refreshing, providing some relief from the smothering relatives inside.

  “You look tired.”

  “Yeah,” I mumble, “everybody else just told me the same thing.”

  “A bad week?”

  “Each one worse than the last.”

  He puffs on his cigar thoughtfully.

  “I hope you’re not staying there because you feel obligated to stick it out.”

  “It’s not that—”

  “Because you know your mom and I would be proud of you regardless of your career choice. Hell, if you wanted to head off and play a flute in the woods, we’d still support that decision.”

  I know he means it. Even the flute thing. He’s told me a million times he’s having trouble figuring out why I’m doing this. The problem is, I’m not entirely sure why I’m doing this either. I’
m pretty certain it’s not the money, though the money is fantastic. Probably it’s my fear of the abyss. You’ve ventured down this structured path since birth—grade school, then high school, then college, then recruiting—and you see the path’s extension looming on the horizon: Work at the Bank for two or three years, take a break to get an MBA, return to climb your way up to the stratosphere of the industry, and retire by age forty-five with a home and a summer house and two Labrador retrievers. No matter that you’re slowly being throttled by the invisible hand of crusty old Adam Smith. If I were to quit, to walk away from all this, it would be the equivalent of hurling myself into Nothingness. No stability, no steady flow of income, no guaranteed summer house, and no retrievers. A future plagued with way too much uncertainty.

  I’m fully aware this is a pathetic standpoint. I’ve read The Alchemist, agree that humans can only hope to achieve inner peace by following their innate destinies. Still, I think my fear is valid enough. Think about it. Whose innate destiny is hanging on to the back of a truck and collecting other people’s garbage? Scraping dead bodies from homicide scenes? The Alchemist maybe worked fine back in the agrarian days, when life wasn’t so complex, when specialization of labor consisted of a decision between hunting wild boars or staying home and planting flax. But Ford and the Industrial Revolution changed all of that, bringing this whole notion of automation into corporate human behavior. Face it: The Alchemist just doesn’t hold up in this modern age.

  “I don’t want you to waste any time. To spend even another year doing something that makes you so miserable.”

  Another puff. My dad is reaching the age when both of his parents died of cancer: my grandma with a tumor in her head, my grandfather with polyps all over his colon. It’s making him acutely sensitive to the transience of things.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s like, standing here with you, I have this intuitive sense of what’s good for me. But then the week starts, and I’m swamped with all this work, and suddenly my thinking is boxed in by their system. The Bank is like this evil vortex, sucking you in until you’re one of them.”

  The tinkle of earrings. Aunt Penelope pokes her head out the screen door.

  “Dinner’s ready. It’s all laid out buffet-style, so go right in and help yourselves.”

  While I’m scooping mushy carrots onto my plate, Uncle Tom creeps up from behind and pinches my left buttock.

  “So, ninety hours a week, huh?”

  I preemptively swat his hand away, avoiding another pinch.

  “Yup.”

  “They must be paying you the big bucks?”

  “Sixty base.”

  “That’s it?”

  “We get a bonus at the end of the year. Supposed to be another fifty or so.”

  “So you’re, what, twenty-three and already pulling in over a hundred grand a year?”

  Uncle Tom is really excited by this happy synaptic connection he’s made. He’s repeating to anyone who’ll listen:

  “Get this. He’s twenty-three and making a hundred grand. He should be paying down our mortgages, right?”

  Within seconds, the entire roomful of aliens knows my salary. It sets them buzzing like mosquitoes, the number rising up in disbelieving chirps. The rest of dinner is spent trying to persuade my preadolescent cousins not to pursue investment banking despite how many Pokemon cards they’ll be able to afford.

  As I’m forcing down the last piece of leathery brisket, Aunt Penelope, who’s standing in the middle of the room, suddenly breaks out in uncontrollable sobbing:

  “I can’t believe I’m fifty and my life is like this. And the worst thing about it is everything’s stuck. You can’t change any of it.”

  It’s pretty weighty stuff. Completely inappropriate, but weighty nonetheless. Nobody knows exactly how to react, so they do the awkward thing and gape at her in stunned silence until she’s led upstairs by her embarrassed husband.

  My mom giggles nervously. “That’s our cue to leave.”

  On the way to the car, my dad betrays all the advice he spoon-fed me earlier, proving he too has succumbed to the alien mind-set:

  “I just wanted to let you know that your mom and I, we’re very proud of you. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, being entirely self-sufficient and all. This working hard now will only make you a stronger person later on. Trust me; stick it out for two more years and the world is going to be your oyster.”

  The problem with my dad’s logic is this: It’s not going to be just the two years. We all start out kidding ourselves this way, swearing on our lives, on all good things in this world, that after twenty-four months we’re going to step into that elevator and never go back. Never. Instead, we’ll graduate from B-school and find a regular “industry” job with a decent enough salary, settling into upper-middle-class comfort: home by six, a hearty dinner of meatloaf and yams, coaching Little League or soccer practice on the weekend.

  At least that’s the theory. In actuality, demonstrated time and time again, the industry is not letting go; it nips at your neck like a pitbull on amphetamines. After suffering through the hellish experience of being the lowest of the low—those two or three years spent mastering the bricks and mortar of the trade—you’re suddenly viewed by the industry as a precious commodity.

  So this is how it works. By the time you’re nearing the end of your second year in the banking world, your compensation has been juiced up to one hundred and forty thousand all-in. Analogously, you’re also getting accustomed to the mind-numbing tedium of your position. You can crunch comps in your sleep, tame the two-hundred-sheet Excel behemoths, whip out perfectly formatted PowerPoint pie charts like nobody’s business. Whether you like it or not, you’re turning into the Star.

  And let’s not ignore the psychological aspect to it, the advent of Stockholm syndrome. The term originates from a bunch of Swedish hostages locked up in a bank vault for six days sometime in the seventies. The hostages gradually grew sympathetic toward their captors, resisted rescue attempts, and later refused to testify at the trial. The psychologists had a field day with this one. The prevailing theory is this: The human psyche is weak. In situations of duress, when we’re surrounded by other humans who wield this awesome power over our ephemeral fates, we grow dependent on them. Dependency leads to affection; affection to love.

  So in short, I love the Sycophant. Well, not yet, but I will.

  I’m all packed up after a long day and ready to crash at one-thirty—nothing too terrible, I’ll still manage six hours of sleep—when the Defeated One returns from the washroom, sniffling. This time it’s pretty bad, probably the worst I’ve ever seen him. A rivulet of guck trickles out one nostril. There’s something about toiling away for sixteen hours straight that invokes a brutal honesty:

  “You’re a fucking mess,” I say, shaking my head.

  I brace myself for his retaliation. Though the Defeated One loves dishing it out, he’s not so good at taking it. Instead, he sits down and belches out a wretched sob.

  “It hurts.”

  He clutches at his chest in demonstration of this. It’s actually kind of eerie; I’ve never seen the Defeated One genuinely upset before. Sure, he grumbles incessantly about his life, concocting never-ending plans to shove his head in an oven or impale himself on the modern art sculpture an achievable leap from our window. Still, there has always been a levity behind it, the overriding bullshit factor.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “I was up on the trading floor,” he whimpers, “hunting down a can of Coke. Then I pass by this boardroom window and—”

  Another wretched sob: “Oh god!”

  “What?”

  He’s boring a pencil into his wrist now. A grunt later and he’s managed to draw blood.

  “Aren’t you worried about lead poisoning?”

  “If I should be so lucky. Besides, it’s not lead, it’s graphite.”

  “What about graphite poisoning?”

  He rolls his eyes before another round of
whimpering:

  “Man, I’m telling you . . . it was horrible. The most horrible thing I have ever witnessed.”

  Even the Star’s curiosity is piqued; he swivels around to listen.

  “So what’s going on?” I ask again.

  “You’re not gonna believe it—”

  “Come on. Just tell us, already.”

  “All right.”

  The Defeated One takes a deep breath before moaning, “Unadulterated Sex. The Prodigal Son.”

  He rocks back and forth in the swivel chair, making a creaking noise. It takes only a few seconds for the neural connection, for pangs of jealousy to shoot through my abdomen. The Star, god bless him, seeks further clarifications.

  “What do you mean? What were they doing up there?”

  The Defeated One makes that creaking noise again. The Star ponders this for a moment, chewing on the eraser end of a pencil, before his eureka flash:

  “Ohhhhhhhhh.”

  He’s got it now.

  “Do you have time to stay down for lunch?”

  It’s the end of the week, and half the senior guys in M&A, including the Sycophant, are tied up at a pitch for the next few hours.

  “Always a risky proposition,” the Defeated One says, scratching his chin, “but today’s your lucky day, Mumbles. Let’s go round up Clyde and Postal.”

  Clyde is a pushover. Postal Boy is putting up his usual resistance:

  “The Ice Queen needs research reports pulled on every mining company in the Western hemisphere with a market cap greater than five hundred million. Half a day’s work, and she wants it all done by the time she’s finished her tuna wrap. I really can’t.”

  The Defeated One puts up his hands in mock resignation. “Fine, fine. Sorry we bothered you in the first place.”

  Postal Boy’s left eye twitches in relief as he swivels back around to his monitor. Clyde and I are walking out of the room when the Defeated One takes a running leap and lands a kick squarely to the back of Postal Boy’s chair. Postal Boy lunges forward and collides with the edge of the desk, his glasses hurtling halfway across the room.