Ghosts of Manhattan (16 page)

“Sue, how are you?” I need to decide quickly how much I want to get into this.

“I'm fine. I want to hear how you are.”

“The usual. Crappy.”

She laughs. “What's going on? Are there some changes happening at work?”

“None. That's part of the problem. It's arrested development hitting a crisis stage.”

“Sounds like it's time for a change.”

“It's not all that easy. At my age I can't change careers like a T-shirt.”

“Is anything going on?”

“Sue, I'm in the goddamn office.”

“So whisper.”

I look up at the television screen on one of the columns that hold up the ceiling and Rebecca is delivering a report on corporate earnings from the stock exchange floor. The volume is off but she looks gorgeous and I avert my eyes like I've been caught peeping in the women's dressing room. William and Ron are off the desk screwing around somewhere, so I have a little privacy.

“Julia and I are having some problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“We're barely speaking.”

Sue has always adored Julia and I can feel that her level of concern has gone higher.

“Sue, there is so much hitting at once that it's hard to isolate, but the source of it is my job. I know it sounds like I'm pointing to something easy for a problem that is really inside the two of us, but I think work is playing that big a role. It's like the Marines—not a job, an adventure. It's a lifestyle adventure and it's a ride I can't get off.”

“Well try, Nick.”

“It's not a ride anymore, it's part of me. This is who I am; I just need to figure out how to correct course a little. I'm working on it.”

“Nick. You're focused on the wrong thing.” Her voice sounds fed up, which I don't expect at all. “People's lives are the way they are because of the choices they make. So before you focus on the job as the issue, you need to focus on you as the issue. What is it about you that got you here?”

I'd have hung up on anyone else, but I know she believes in me
and is rooting for me. “Sue, I didn't have a crystal ball when I was twenty-two. If I had known, I'd have made different decisions.”

“I don't buy that. I can see taking the job to start, but not sticking with it. You've had every opportunity to make a change at any point and you never have.”

I don't want to say anything until I feel less defensive. All I can think is that I don't remember when I was last happy, even since long before Bear. Maybe sprinkles of happiness from Julia, but nothing independent. Nothing that would make a person think I was anything other than a miserable, cynical bastard. Maybe I choose to stay in this career because it is exactly what I deserve.

I've been silent long enough that I want to make sure Sue knows I'm not angry with her. “I'm not ignoring you, Sue. Just thinking.”

“How bad is it with Julia?”

I haven't directly considered this before. I have never even tried to envision life without her. I always assumed the same laws of physics that make the rivers flow would also hold us together. This is to be our place in the universe even if comets collide around us. “I'm not sure. It's bad, and what's worse is I don't know if I can make it better. Every interaction we've had lately widens the gap.”

“Take a few days off and go somewhere. Maybe it's better to go just by yourself to pull it together. You love Julia. That will take care of itself if you let it. You need to get your head screwed on straight first.”

I have a mental image of myself in a remote hotel room, face down in a bowl of cornflakes next to an empty bottle of scotch tipped on its side. “I could take a few days and drive out to Sag Harbor. Quiet out there this time of year.”

“Just focus on you for a little while. That has to be the first step. You don't sound good.”

“I know.”

“Are you and Julia coming to the birthday party for Andy?”

“Wouldn't miss it. Nine years old? How is he?”

“He's gone from threatening to leave home if we make him play soccer to now loving it. He's dying to see his uncle Nick.”

“What does he want for his birthday? I could renew his subscription to
Penthouse.
”

“I'm sure you'll think of something.”

“See you in a couple weeks.”

The phone hits the cradle. “So what did those rat bastards at UBS say?” I turn around to see Jerry with both arms up over his head like goalposts, one hand wrapped around a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

I give him the finger and sit back in my chair. I'm still thinking about Sue's words and the emotion she had behind them. Sue still has the same fondness for Julia that she had when Julia and I first met, and it brings me back to a happier time.

I remember our second date. The first had gone so well that I had flowers delivered to her office before I picked her up to take her out again. The note said, “Looking forward to seeing you tonight.”

At dinner she thanked me for the flowers. I thought I detected something odd in her thank-you. It was tiny but there was something about her that seemed cautious. After denying three times that there was anything to it, she confessed.

“I dated a guy who would send me flowers a lot. I love and appreciate flowers and I know they're expensive. But every time, they would come with a computer-printed card that said, ‘Thinking of you.' It felt like it came from his secretary and could be going to girls all over town. And it's all he would ever do. No letters or notes or surprise drop-bys or even a long email. It got so I came to resent the flowers a little. They'd get dropped to my office, and
every time I'd hope for something different from the computer-printed card.”

“So no flowers.”

“No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't want to sound ungrateful. I love the flowers from you. You're not that guy. Not at all.”

“So no flowers with one-line notes?”

“Just don't substitute flowers for everything else. Flowers are great but not intimate.”

“It's a deal,” I said. Her smile was beautiful. These are the kinds of things people love to learn on early dates, and she's already saying how much more promising I am than an ex-boyfriend.

“Here's a deal. Never send me another flower. Just send me a letter once in a while.”

“A no-flower policy. Not another flower ever?”

“Exactly. No temptation.”

“Okay. I accept the deal.” We shake hands and I think, damn, this will be harder. Getting the flowers to her took thirty seconds to dial the phone and read out my credit card number. I also think I really like this girl. She's different and honest.

Before our next date I sent to her office two dozen roses, a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates, and a singing midget who reads:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Please forgive me

Breaking my deal with you

I'm using my words

To make sure that you know

I feel very strong

About how far we can go

They're no substitute

The flowers are real

I hope you accept

I'm changing the deal

It will be a big night

So rest up and get ready

I'm planning to ask you

Can we go steady?

I made sure nobody at Bear ever caught wind of any of this. It would have been humiliating, but sometimes it feels good to humiliate yourself if you can do it only to the person you care most about.

Four months later we're lying in bed in a suite at the Rock House in Harbour Island. We wanted a quiet vacation that would be just us in a place where we could sit on the beach, read books, eat seafood, and ride around the island in golf carts. The kind of place that requires two planes and a water taxi to get there.

She rolled over in bed so that she was sitting on my stomach and looking me in the eyes. “Nick, I love you.”

I was so happy to hear this. I had felt this and thought about saying it and where, when, and how to say it, but she said it first. It didn't feel like losing a race because I really did love her. But it has always been a reminder of who is the more courageous of the two of us.

“I love you so much, Julia.”

Nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.

—A
LEXANDER
S
UPERTRAMP

January 20, 2006

CHAPPY CAN BROKER A SINGLE TRADE THAT GENERATES
enough commission to warrant a celebration. These types of trades can come together over a period of days or in an instant. Celebrating only in response to a big commission would make Chappy seem cheap, so there are also arbitrary parties. Celebrating without cause is the key to swagger.

Tonight is in response to a trade we put through Chappy. The brokerage fee on the transaction is about six hundred thousand and Jack Wilson will spend a good piece of that tonight. At any rate, I'm in an elevator at the Soho Grand on the way to a suite Chappy has for the night. I used to crave this kind of night. Like rounding the bases after hitting a home run, I thought I would always have the energy for it. Now I have the premonition of a heroin addict who looks down at the needle in his arm with the vague recognition that this crap will kill me one day.

Jack knows enough not to put the room in his name anymore. He'll have some broker on his desk do it and let him know the expense will be covered. I get off at the penthouse level and go to
Chappy's suite knowing exactly what I'll find. The Soho Grand has two penthouse suites, one with a view north and one with a view south. We're in the southern-facing one looking over Canal Street to the Statue of Liberty and Staten Island. I hope the northern one isn't rented.

There's a full bar set up but no bartender. Any other party would have bartenders and a few cute waitresses to pass hors d'oeuvres, but this party needs more discretion. I count five hookers in the room, each with a martini glass and a grip on the stem as though it were a ski pole. One bends down over the coffee table to rip a snort of cocaine. She straightens up like the yellow plastic bird in chemistry class that perpetually dips its beak in water, and her momentum pours her martini down her chest. A pimply kid who could pass for nineteen tries to drink it off her.

“Nick, good to see you. What's going on? What can I get you?” Jack Wilson seems to appear in a flicker next to me.

“Gin and tonic. I see I'm not too early.” It's only 9 p.m. I usually try to avoid work functions on Friday nights. Even though I can sleep off the hangover, I'm hoping to make an early night of it.

“We got a jump on things.” Woody comes through a bedroom door on the other side of the suite, arm in arm with two more very attractive hookers.

“Not bad.” Jack follows my gaze to Woody and his two friends.

“Two grand each. They just got here. There were two others here earlier that were totally unacceptable and I sent them back. I gave the agency an earful, so they sent along these two in mint condition. Obviously it didn't take Woody long.”

A person eavesdropping might have the sense that we're talking about pieces of fruit. Very expensive pieces of fruit. For a moment I imagine the cab ride home of the two hookers, scolded and rejected by a coked-up Jack Wilson. He passes my gin and tonic. My
hand isn't visibly shaking but I can feel it and I force myself not to slurp down the drink.

The suite is huge, especially by New York City standards. The main room is the size of a tennis court with various sofas and chairs organized to create different pods for conversation. The room is elegant and conservative, lots of dark woods, dark carpets, and mostly dark blues in the fabrics. It would take a guest twenty minutes to try out every available place to sit. The suite is not designed to provide for every possible need; rather it is designed to provide the sensation of having so much excess that the notion of having to meet a need vanishes.

The rooms have been renovated to have the feel of a modern club room with high-end entertainment systems. There are two bedrooms, a bathroom, a study, and a balcony connected to the main room. Everything looks to be in use.

“Hey, Nick!”

“How ya doing, Woody?” He's still arm in arm with both hookers, who are surprisingly beautiful and no more than twenty years old. Poor things are probably fresh from some small town, just pretty enough to have a chance at a modeling contract with Ford or Wilhelmina, and like the rest of the new girls to the city, to pay the rent they end up waiting tables or promoting Bacardi rum in the bars. Or hooking.

“I'm excellent. Just survived a round with these two lovelies.”

“Mazel tov.” I'm looking down at my drink. The girls don't seem to mind being talked about in the third person. They're looking around but at nothing in particular.

“You should have seen the two that were here earlier. Jack traded up.” He smiles at Jack and gives the girls a squeeze around the shoulders.

“Nice.” I think I'm the only one feeling uncomfortable. “How's
the balcony?” I take a step out of the conversation toward the balcony doors.

“Nothing out there,” Woody calls after me. “It's freezing outside.” I keep moving toward the balcony. “William and Ron are at Scores. They'll be over later.” This is said as though it's information I've been waiting for.

I step outside and the cold snaps me alert. The wind blows much harder at this height. The balcony is the size of a suburban living room. I walk past some metal furniture to the rail and can see the activity up and down Canal.

“Hey, Nick. I see a little gray coming in on the sides. Hadn't noticed that before.” Jack had followed me outside.