by Hazel Parker
“I don’t know if you know this, Fitz, but you are a unique employee here. You have interests outside of work. You have more. That in itself isn’t unique, but what is unique is you have something more that isn’t just money.”
“I don’t know,” I said, a little uncomfortable with the idea that I was somehow special here. “I think everyone here has interests outside of work. They just don’t have the time to...do...it…”
My voice trailed off as I saw Amelia look at me like I had worn six pairs of glasses on my nose. She shook her head, her mouth still full of food.
“I just want to become an executive director here,” she said. “But I think I’m burning myself out trying to do it. I’m so fucking frustrated with the status quo—I keep pushing and beating everyone’s ass here, but they’re not giving it to me. The office politics of it all is just suffocatingly stupid.”
I know that better than you realize, Amelia. It’s just not here that that matters.
“What do you want to be, Thomas? What’s your end game here?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Everyone here wants to be something,” she said. “Eighty percent of the people here think they’re going to be the next Rothenberg even though their last name is Goldschmidt. Fifteen percent of the people want to become partner. Four percent of the people just want to make enough money to retire before they’re forty. And one percent...well, I guess you’re the one percent of the one percent, huh?”
“Would seem that way, huh?” I said.
I hadn’t even considered that question for so long because I hadn’t given thought to the future at Rothenberg. I kept looking for a reason to quit or a safety net to fall into, but I never considered the possibility that said safety net would not reveal itself until I had jumped to a higher level. In any case, it definitely wasn’t something that I was going to figure out here in the next five seconds.
“I guess become partner,” I said.
Amelia crossed her arms.
“I feel like you’re not going to flip out if I say you sound full of shit,” she said. “Anyone here who wants to become partner almost salivates over the possibility of it. No one would just half-heartedly fall into it.”
“Yeah, true,” I said, mentally noting how much I was beginning to relish this girl’s approach.
“I guess you’re just happy with where you are,” she said. “Which I’m kind of envious of. I think my life would be a hell of a lot less stressful if I could just learn to be content for thirty seconds for once in my fucking life.”
But that was exactly it—I wasn’t content. If anything, I could relate to Amelia much more than she realized.
We both wanted something more and were unsatisfied with the status quo. We both didn’t know how to get there, or at least we didn’t see us getting there through the current means. The only difference lay in what we wanted, but we both clearly wanted more.
“Well, not everything is what it seems,” I said.
We sat and talked shop for a few more minutes, but the conversation notably seemed much more muted and bored than the one before it. The passion in Amelia’s voice had gone out, though she still swore and never bothered to hide how she really felt. It just lacked the same zest and zeal from the moments before.
When I left, I made a joke to Amelia to take the weekend off.
“Off?” she said. “I don’t know how to take it off. I—”
For the first time that I could ever remember, she cut herself off.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I was thinking about a free-time activity, but then I realized I’d probably cancel it anyways in favor of work. So, nothing worth saying.”
That was even more unlike Amelia. But the normal Amelia would come roaring back if I tried to pry more information out of her, so I just smiled, wished her well, and departed. That girl is something else.
It’s too bad she’s too closely tied to Rothenberg. I don’t know what she’d do without it.
Meanwhile, I can’t help but think what I’d do without it.
* * *
Though I had planned on staying until eight to appease Gerald, when he departed shortly after six o’clock, I followed him right out the door, waiting only a few minutes to give him space. I saw the eyes of my colleagues glaring at me and expressing their envy, for which I gave precisely zero fucks. If I couldn’t leave permanently, I could at least give myself space to dull the pain a little bit each day.
Getting outside Rothenberg Banking and onto the streets of Manhattan, with the enveloping sewer smell, the audible taxi honking, and the mix of starry-eyed tourists and unyielding locals actually felt like an enormous relief. Only in an industry like banking would the streets of the busiest city in the world feel like a calm oasis in comparison. Just further proof I need to get the hell out.
I made the briefest of pit stops at my apartment, on the twentieth floor of a modern high-rise, and changed into something a little more blue-collar. My slacks were swapped for jeans with holes, my dress shoes were swapped for boots, and my suit and tie were changed out for a t-shirt. I grabbed the Savage Saints cut that Marcel had recently given me, slid it on, and stood in front of the mirror.
I thought I looked like an MC member. True, I didn’t have the wild hair or the facial hair that some of the other members might have, but I had the look and the body. I kept myself in great shape, and what facial hair I did have implied that I wasn’t part of some major banking company.
But I guess in the eyes of the rest of the Savage Saints, it didn’t matter what I looked like until I acted like a Savage Saint. Time will tell.
I headed to the subway, rode it down to Brooklyn without saying a word to anyone else, and made the walk down to Brooklyn Repairs. From outside, I could hear the music starting to grow. I opened the door, stepped inside, and smiled as Marcel and Uncle both called me out.
“There’s our favorite banker!” Marcel said.
I walked up and hugged them both.
“Gentlemen,” I said, nodding to them both. “I’m not a banker tonight. I’m just a club member.”
“Club officer,” Marcel said, a bit buzzed. “Club officer. It’s bad enough we have to get on your ass for being a rich fucker. Don’t humble yourself too much.”
That was oddly sweet of Marcel in his shit-talking way.
“He doesn’t know humility; he’s a banker,” Uncle said. “Here, let me give him some guiding advice before the party gets into full force. Marcel?”
“By all means,” Marcel said. “I’ll just sit here and wait for Biggie. Not like I’m going to be going to talk to the girls here.”
I had barely noticed the four girls and five of our club members in the corner, chatting and flirting. It was understood that at any moment, an officer could have gone over and taken one of the girls for themselves. Marcel, though, seemed intent on remaining faithful to his new girlfriend, Christine.
Uncle and I retreated to the corner.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Uncle, let me just lay it straight,” I said. “I want to quit my job at Rothenberg Banking. I want to work for the Savage Saints full time. Hell, I’ll be a mechanic if the club can’t support me. I don’t care. That job is just sucking on my soul, and I’ve been looking for a way out for as long as I can remember. If I have to stay another minute, I’m going to fucking lose my mind.”
I looked around the room. Marcel was drinking a beer by himself. The other club members, still with dirty hands and the omnipresent stench of motor oil, laughed with the girls.
“You’re the only person here who can even approximate what I’m going through.”
“And Marcel’s girl.”
“Right, but she’s not here, and she won’t be here. I just need some advice from you, Uncle. Should I?”
Uncle shook his head. That was not the response I’d hoped to see.
“How much you make at that job, with everything included? And don’t bullshit me. We�
�re both rich assholes here; we can share.”
“About six hundred grand.”
“And how much do you think a car mechanic makes?”
“About...fifty?”
Uncle laughed.
“In twenty years, maybe. We’re paying our crew twenty bucks an hour here. And they’re experienced. You are not. You’d probably start at fifteen an hour here. OK? Think about it. You would go from the equivalent of three hundred an hour—which I know is not the whole story since you work way more than forty hours, but let’s just call it two hundred an hour. You want to take a cut of over ninety percent of your salary? On a goddamn dream?”
“Uncle—”
“What’s your nest egg look like? Like if you were paralyzed tomorrow with no government help, how much money would you have to draw on?”
“About a million bucks.”
“In this town? That’s fucking nothing,” Uncle said. “I know we live by different standards than a ton of people, but I think it’s a mistake. Is the job really that bad?”
It wasn’t even that the job was that bad. It was more that the draw of being an MC officer full time, of having the freedom that came with being a biker, of being able to ride my motorcycle at any hour of the day, was an enormous appeal. The job wasn’t great, but I would have said the same thing for just about any other job in my spot.
“It’s OK,” I said.
“If it’s anything short of something that would shave years off of your life, then I say keep doing it,” Uncle said. “You’d have to take a serious step down in lifestyle to make it work, and, I mean, shit, when does your lease expire?”
“Eight months.”
“See? And what’s your rent?”
“Four grand a month.”
“I rest my case,” Uncle said.
But I still wasn’t convinced. I could ride out the eight months until I could go someplace else, and then I could move to Brooklyn. Marcel and I could even get a place together; I was sure that he was eager to move out of his brother’s place and have his own.
“Look, I’m an asshole, I know it. I hit on other guys’ women, I push people to take investments when they shouldn’t, and I can run over strangers. But with my friends, I like to think that I tell the truth. I help family and my close friends. You’re a friend, Fitz, and I love you. And I’m here to tell you that I think quitting is a really fucking stupid move, and I’m not wrong. Think long and hard before you do that. OK?”
“OK,” I said.
“Now, let’s have some fun, shall we?” he said. “We can steal some of the girls over there from the prospects. What say you?”
I sighed and just waved Uncle off on the pretense of needing to get my own drink. I really only needed space, though.
I needed space to think about what I was going to do next. I needed space to think about if I’d stay for a longer period of time than a month or so at Rothenberg.
I just needed space to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.
Chapter 4: Amelia
It was a Friday night, which meant I got to leave earlier than usual at nine.
And, for some stupid reason, I had set myself up on a date with one of my Tinder matches. It was officially desperation time in Amelia Hughes’ life.
I wasn’t planning on sleeping with him; I wasn’t even planning on making out with the guy. I didn’t even remember his name—Jack? Josh? John? I had to pull up the app to see that, no, his name was Jordan. Jordan was hot, but there was little else about him that seemed appealing. He had scored a date with me almost entirely on the basis of the fact that he had been one of the few people not to send dick pics or otherwise ask me to fuck him.
In other words, Jordan got the date not because he was a winner, but because he’d avoided being as much a loser as the other possibilities. Things were fucking looking up in my world.
Still, though, I didn’t want to treat this date as a complete waste of my time. I wanted to at least try to trick myself into believing it had some potential. I told myself that I needed to at least hide my worst impulses for the duration of the first date, and if he was worth going on a second date, then I could start to reveal the normal Amelia.
Great plan. Fake who you are and see how that works.
Then again, who shows their entire true self on the first date?
I didn’t bother to change my clothes or head back to my apartment. As it was, I was going to be late for our nine-fifteen date at a bar called McCabe’s in northern Manhattan. I didn’t care about making John, I mean Jordan, wait a little bit, but I didn’t want to be so mean as to cause him just to leave before I even showed up. If I were getting a free drink out of it, then all the better.
I hailed an Uber with an ETA of nine-twenty-five. I looked out the window, one of the few opportunities in my life, let alone my week, that I got to relax and observe the city.
The city that I saw, even though I had lived in it for years, felt like a complete stranger to me.
The street numbers made sense as they climbed. 40th. 52nd. 61st. 70th. But as far as what they meant? As far as the restaurants there? As far as having an association with each street?
That didn’t happen. I didn’t live in Manhattan so much as I lived in a three-block radius, only occasionally venturing outside my bubble. Coming this far out to 72nd Street and 2nd Avenue might as well have been going to Connecticut.
I knew that for my sanity, I needed to get out more. But if doing so would distract me just enough to prevent me from becoming executive director…
“Here?”
I snapped out of my thoughts and looked outsider the Uber. I quickly found McCabe’s and saw the man that looked like Jordan standing outside in a suit and a sleek V-neck shirt. He had a nice five o’clock shadow, slicked-back hair, and a beautiful frame.
If people did judge books by their covers, then maybe this one would work out just fine. So long as he’s like Thomas.
Amelia!
“Yes, thanks,” I said, hurrying out of the Uber.
I walked over to the sidewalk, nearly getting run over by a bicyclist swearing at me to respect his right of way as he blazed past me. I patted my red coat down, caught my breath, and walked over with the most positive attitude ever.
“Oh, my goodness, Miss Amelia?” Jordan said, the expression on his face rising by the second.
I hated him already. Way too dramatic and expressive.
“Yes, Jordan?” I said, trying to counter his theatrical gestures with a subdued tone.
“The one and only!” he said, half-singing “only.” If not for the fact that I was forty-some streets away from my apartment, I might have just planted my heel in the ground, spun, and walked in the opposite direction. “It is such a delight to meet you; may I take you in for some drinks?”
“That was the plan, no?” I said, trying to muster a smile.
“Oh, yes! A funny one, you are!”
And a screaming one on the inside.
Jordan led me over to McCabe’s, placing his left arm over my shoulders. I know it sounded weird to say about someone in the context of a date, but there didn’t seem to be anything sexual about Jordan’s move. It felt more like the kind of thing he did with everyone, as if the world was his buddy. I hated him for it.
I guess work masked the fact that I could be pretty introverted out in the real world. I knew everyone at my job so well and was so driven that I didn’t mind saying everything that I wanted to, but it hadn’t completely erased the introverted side of me. It hadn’t completely buried the little girl who was painfully shy as a child, to the point that she had no friends.
Jordan sat me at the bar. The bartender nodded our way and asked what we wanted.
“I’ll have—”
“Let’s get the lady a glass of your finest red wine.”
I turned to Jordan with frustration written on my face.
“I can order for myself, thank you.”
“But my dear! Allow me to be a g
entleman and order a drink for you.”
It might have been rude this early, but I did not care.
“Well, allow me to be a modern woman and order a drink for myself.”
Jordan recoiled in surprise, but he then did the one thing that might have pissed me off the most.
“Hahahahaha! Very funny, Miss Amelia, very funny!”
I ignored him, putting an order in for some whiskey. I was well past the point of regretting this date; by now, I just wanted to make the most of it with the drinks.
“Yes, a real comedian,” I said. “So tell me a little about yourself, Jordan. You live here in Manhattan?”
“Oh, don’t tell me you forgot what was on the profile!” he said with a boisterous laugh.
“Sorry, but my job mandates that I work far too much and stay in the office for far too long. You seemed cute, and you didn’t send me dick pics, which is why I’m here.”
That may have been too—
“A real comedian, like I said,” Jordan said, still laughing. He doesn’t get laid much, does he? “Well, Miss Amelia, I work in sales for a luxury real estate company here.”
And just like that, in the course of one sentence, it seemed like everything came together immediately.
“I believe in prizing our customers above all else—”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m not here for a sales pitch about your company. I’m here to get to know you.” And by now, just to get some drinks and unwind from the evening. “So, OK, you do sales in real estate. How does one get into that?”
“Well, it’s a journey that began when I was just a young boy in Maine. Back in the late eighties…”
I sat there for what felt like the next twenty minutes, just half-listening and nodding along to Jordan’s story. Occasionally, he said something interesting, like when he spent a year of high school in Spain or took a gap year in Thailand. But for the most part, he came across as the man who believed everyone needed to hear his story. If the world did not know the story of Jordan Tinder—how he was saved in my phone—then the world would suffer accordingly.
