Dear Money (22 page)

Theodor would assume I was in the maid's garret beneath the shelves of so many books—the dictionary, Shakespeare, even the Bible open on my desk as I searched desperately for something to say. Instead I was here. I knew what I was doing, what I wanted. Later, I would come to learn how the perceptions of others could have a tight grip, but I didn't feel that now. On Wall Street so many people stay long after they've made their millions, not because they want to, but because they are afraid of the perception of others if they leave—fear they couldn't hack it, fear they didn't have the stamina, fear they didn't have the drive, fear of releasing their spot—like the prized Manhattan parking space that you don't want to surrender even if you have no need for it. (Understanding this later, I would realize just how brave Will Chapman had been to let it all go, because you do not get it back.) The perception of me now, in my realm, would be that I had failed as a writer. I could see Lily Starr leaning into the ear of one of our graduate school friends:
Have you heard about India Palmer?

But I didn't care, for the first time I didn't care about the writing. I thought of my desk again, alone on the top floor beneath so many books. How I'd sat there for hours, days, weeks, trying to understand what was next. The blank page in front of me no longer held me—the hours of staring out the window—the joy of an e-mail, the daily mail—the lingering over the newspaper—the calls to the agent to complain about the lack of reviews, to complain about anything so I could feel productive—the dull spark of a vague idea that wishes to be much more—the relief of the day's end—racing home to the girls—the hope, indelible, that the rush and urgency of desire would come again.

Beneath the glass tower of Bond & Bond, I felt a new kind of hope. And I understood that I hadn't told Theodor, just as the lover doesn't tell the one she is betraying, because he would turn my new hope into something sordid. He, with his faith, his vow of artistic chastity, would be the one to turn hope to guilt. I paid the driver and stepped into the cold. It was Friday, January 2, 2004. Fairy lights dressed the trees running the length of Park Avenue.

Bond & Bond occupied six floors and the building's penthouse, on the forty-third floor. On the ground floor, the company had security guards stationed in front of its own bank of elevators; one elevator shot straight to the top, no stops. A guard called up to Win to announce my arrival. "A Miss Palmer to see you, sir," he said, giving me the once-over. I took the express elevator to the penthouse.

I was greeted by Miss Lane, a late-middle-aged woman who had been a beauty and was trying to hang on to the quality that had once best defined her—Botox smoothing out wrinkles, sort of, the way an iron that is not hot enough makes only slight progress with a fabric's creases. Her blond hair was piled regally on the crown of her head, and her blue eyes held an alluring twinkle as she informed me that "the boys" were waiting for me in Mr. Radalpieno's office. She swiped a plastic ID card to open a set of glass doors, and we entered a sanctuary of glass and white walls upon which hung a spectacular collection of investment-grade photographs—a large space, high ceilings, like a gallery. This, I would learn, was a kind of fad in the world of investment banks, especially of those that were doing extremely well, a white-walled corporate Paradiso in which only a very few were allowed entrance, ever.

I followed Miss Lane to the outer reaches of the penthouse, past photographs by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Cindy Sherman, Alfred Stieglitz, Arthur Leipzig and countless others—obscure, rising, renowned—our heels clacking on the marble floors. There was nowhere to sit. Even on this gray day the room was flooded with natural light. I could appreciate the different tones of white the farther into the space we ventured.

Miss Lane, in front of me in her white suit, guided me like a celestial being. Edward Steichen's picture of Gloria Swanson, her face veiled by a floral scrim, seemed to watch over the room. I knew the lives of these artists. In my own small way I understood them. I knew the sour admixture of cabbage soup and film developer and body odor that went into the making of these prints, but they had been lifted out of their lives, beyond their lives, and landed here in the rooms of Apollo, the blinding albedo of the corporate divine.

At another set of glass doors, again Miss Lane swiped her card and we entered a waiting room, also spare, with a glass coffee table and a chaise, love seat and armchair upholstered in a cream chenille that contrasted, just, with a woven wool rug in various tones (yes) of white. A smoked-glass door apparently led to Ralph Radalpieno's office. Miss Lane offered me a seat, took my coat and asked if I'd like anything to drink. A photograph by Sally Mann, of her young daughter holding a cigarette, hung to the left of the office's entrance. To the right of the entrance hung a photograph by Gertrude Kasebier of the early-1goos showgirl Evelyn Nesbit in a white dress, off the shoulders. She leans forward with half-parted eyes and lips. In her right hand she holds a small ceramic pitcher. The idea that all of this, which I felt in my chest like an old injury, had become the private reserve of a titan of finance made my knees buckle.

I sat down and took in the scene again. I was at a threshold, Dante notwithstanding, and this was its odd whitewashed portico. It was a test. Not of Radalpieno's devising, but mine. I had always been one for detail. It had been my life's blood. But I was entering a world in which, in order to succeed, such detail needed to be purged. That would be what I imagined bond traders called "noise." Theirs was the Apollonian quest for the purest signal, to filter out the noise (the cabbage soup) and its associated moral quandaries and grasp from all the distracting bits that I once used in my daily life—to jettison all that, and to seize the signal, the trend, the very flow of history itself.

I told Miss Lane that I didn't need a drink, at least not of the sort she was offering that morning. "All right, then. Good luck with them," she said, giving me a knowing wink but nothing more. I imagined she'd been with Mr. Radalpieno from the beginning. I waited there for some time. A peaceful silence; the low din of the building's circuitry. Then Miss Lane returned. She now had a yellow silk scarf wrapped around her neck, and on a silver tray she carried three cappuccinos. "Do you like cappuccino?" she asked. She had no identifiable accent. Deftly she held the tray with her left hand, and with her right she opened the door. I followed her. She smelled of lemons. There was a veneer to her that, I later realized, didn't allow me to look beyond the surface. There was no life for her outside the office. This was where she existed, within the glass walls. Somehow it seemed almost strange to me that we spoke the same language.

Ralph Radalpieno sat behind a large steel-and-glass desk, and behind him lay the East Side, the East River, lurking like a fat snake beneath the leaden sky, Brooklyn and beyond. From here you could see the clear demarcations of class, rippling from the epicenter of Park Avenue wealth to the outer reaches of Canarsie and East New York. A few planes lined up to land at La Guardia. Win sat in a highly designed but uncomfortable-looking leather chair, but hopped up as I entered. He extended his hand to me and, taking hold of mine, he pulled me in for a kiss. "At last," he said. I smiled. Seven computer screens, in two tiers, sat on one side of Radalpieno's desk, a blur of green lines, graphs and figures.

"Sorry we kept you waiting." His desk was vast and so was his desk chair, but his imposing size dwarfed both, not to mention Win. Had I not been a novelist, had this not been a lark, had I not had my teaching job (simple as that), I think I would have been afraid. "One of the traders had quite a show going in subprime," Radalpieno said. "We've been riveted by the trace."

Miss Lane set down the cappuccinos on his desk. Next to the phone, an old-fashioned black rotary model, stood a polished bell—like a bellhop's bell but sterling silver. Otherwise the desk was as spare as the rest of the floor. Miss Lane left, shutting the door behind her. The figures on the screens moved about, a dance that I didn't think I would ever understand. One screen, I noticed, simply offered the business news, on mute.

"This is some bank," I said to him. Radalpieno, thick of girth, had short silver hair that accented his steel-blue, secretive eyes, though dimples softened him when he smiled. He gave me a quizzical, confused look, marked by a little impatience. "I didn't know banks looked like this," I added, in explanation. He wore a blue suit with a subtle pinstripe. His wedding band pressed into the flesh of his ring finger. "Where's all the mess? Isn't mess what makes everything happen?"

"There's mess," he said, "but not here. This is the brain. The mess is downstairs with the guts and gore."

"I'm honored, then," I said.

"As you should be. Not everyone gets to come up here. You probably won't be up here again."

"He's direct," Win said.

"I can see."

"I'm intrigued that you've come," Radalpieno said, staring me squarely in the eye, a kindly challenge. Again I realized I would have been afraid of him if ... if he were the Dashing Cavelli, say, with a book deal for me that hinged on his opinion.

"I wanted to hear Win out," I said.

"We like bets," Radalpieno said. "We're probably a little—how shall I say it, Win?—overfond? Yes, we're overfond of betting. It's a kind of occupational hazard, as you'll see if you stick around. Win's made a bet with me. He's bet he can take you and turn you into a trader, a good one."

"I'm familiar with the terms," I said.

"But I'd say that, among other things, you're too old."

"Thank you," I said.

"What are you? Thirty-three or so?"

"Or so."

"More?" Radalpieno asked, alarmed, not for himself but for Win.

"You know better than to ask a lady her age," I responded.

"She's direct too, with her evasions," Win offered.

"Good raw material," Radalpieno said, as if I weren't in the room.

Then, to me again, "Most of our boys are boys."

"It's all part of the challenge," I said.

"What do you know about battles, fighting? Do you like blood?"

"I don't think so," I said.

"Then why are you here?"

"Does there have to be blood?"

"The people who work for me, they bleed green. Win, who've you brought me?"

"Green?" I almost laughed.

"Green!" he boomed.

"Hear her out," Win said. He smiled at me encouragingly. None of this worried him. He wore the air of confidence that I'd admired, grudgingly, when I first set eyes on him, with his goggles and his leather jacket, trudging through the sand. That seemed like a very long time ago. Yet against the backdrop of these offices, humility seemed part of his demeanor too.

"What do you know about finance? Do you have a mathematical background? Do you have any idea about bonds, how they're priced, why people want them, how to predict prepayments, what LTVs mean, FICO scores, the basics?" Radalpieno paused and studied the back of his hand. "What about mortgages? What can you tell me about their design? Why would anyone want mortgages? Why would an investor want a pool of subprime originating in the sand states? Mortgages are math."

He spoke as if everyone were an investor of some sort. He had a large appetite for everything, I could tell, and he burned it off, most of it, simply by existing. "You, as a pretty little woman"—he appraised me, his eyes lingering at my chest as if to draw an exclamation point—"why in the world would you want to try on this? Shouldn't you be at home with the kids, redecorating?" Win leaned past me (I was still standing) and lifted the bell from the desk and shook it, to ring it once. I thought that very odd. "Might as well keep that in your hand, Johns, because it'll get a workout this morning." Then to me again: "Bonds, blondie? And that suit'll get you laid." (A black velvet suit cut with eyelets, the skirt form-fitting, patent leather heels.) The bell rang again. (I noted the detail. Had I been studying the scene for fiction, I would have written it down in my book: an odd pair with a bell between them and all the money in the world.)

"I'm not claiming to know much of anything," I said. "I believe the fact that I know so little is Win's point."

"Won't you sit down?" Radalpieno asked, standing and gesturing to the couch and armchairs. He lumbered his heft to the couch. Win and I sat in the chairs. Miss Lane entered with sparkling water and three glasses, set them on the glass table, and as she was leaving Radalpieno asked her if she thought I'd make a good trader. "But mum's the word," he said to her, putting a finger over his lips. "Can women be good traders?" he asked her. "I can count on one hand the lady traders on the Street who are worth a cent." Win rang the bell, a little smile alighting on his face.

With Radalpieno's eyes on Miss Lane, I took in Win. Dressed in a brown suit that illuminated his lovely eyes, he was adorable in that boyish, privileged way that I would come to recognize as a characteristic of the trader type—from home to college to making millions, they were a cocooned lot. Company cars ferried them about the city; they flew to Paris because they liked the way a particular hotel did their laundry; savoring hundred-dollar cigars and thousand-dollar bottles of wine was part of the job description. For all the calm this floor's furnishings were supposed to instill, Win did not seem perfectly calm. Almost calm, perhaps, someone trying to be calm, knowing that to appear calm was the goal. But beneath the surface I could sense that he was excited, ready to get started—someone at a roulette table, feeling lucky, ringing a strange bell. It was also clear that Radalpieno sat firmly in the center of Win's palm, though completely obliviously. "Miss Lane has been with Radalpieno for thirty years," Win offered, glancing at me and then quickly toward her. In that darting of his eye, I wondered if I detected a little nervousness on his part. We had never seen each other without a healthy dose of champagne. Or was I flattering myself?

"She's never ventured too far into the business of what we do," Radalpieno added. "As a lady, she knows better." (The bell tolled.) "So, Miss Lane?" he persisted.