by Megan Goldin
Sam could tell from the suspicious tone in her voice whenever he called to tell her he was staying overnight at their apartment in the city. Recently, she’d taken to phoning at odd hours. It was obvious that she was checking up on him.
Kim’s instincts were good. They always had been. The only thing she’d gotten wrong was that he wasn’t having affair, at least not in the traditional sense. It was a transaction.
For the past year, he’d taken to hiring callgirls every now and again. Maybe once or twice a month. He only ever booked with Magdelinas, a high-end agency that provided models for parties and for what was euphemistically called ‘private entertainment’. For a substantial fee.
Sam was never particular about which girl he ended up with. From his experience, every girl on the agency’s books was a stunner. He had a preference for girls with long legs and big tits. He was less concerned about their colouring. There were blondes, brunettes and redheads. It suited him well, he liked variety. There were girls from California, the Midwest, Brazil and France, and quite a few from Russia. Whatever girl turned up at his door at midnight was always sexy as hell and showed him a good time.
Then he met Trixie. After that he wanted only her. She was blonde, originally from Georgia. She had an authentic Southern accent to prove it. She charged $1000 for a two-hour session. Three times that rate if he wanted her to stay all night, and he usually did.
He felt no guilt. Compared to the other guys at work, he was practically a saint. They went through girls the way Kim collected handbags. The lies they told their wives and girlfriends were pure artistry. Until recently, Sam never thought he was capable of that level of guile.
He never imagined that he’d cheat on Kim when he said his vows on their wedding day. He’d imagined they’d have the ‘till death do you part’ Catholic marriage that his parents had shared. But eventually he came to the conclusion that was impossible. His parents had been married at a different time, in different circumstances. His father hadn’t faced the sort of temptation that Sam experienced on a daily basis.
Sam worshipped his dad, though he was the first to admit that there was little he did to follow in his footsteps. His dad had been devoted to his mother until his dying day; Sam barely lasted two years before he first cheated on Kim. That’s if he didn’t count an encounter before their wedding with one of the bridesmaids, Kim’s closest childhood friend. He didn’t. It was after the rehearsal dinner and they were both drunk. He felt awful about it afterwards.
In his first three years at the firm, Sam earned more than his dad made in his entire lifetime. He’d never imagined earning that kind of money when he was a kid growing up in the poorest neighbourhood in Suffolk County. His dad was a high-school math and physics teacher who taught at the best public school in Long Island to support his wife and five sons. Sam was the eldest. While his father gave other peoples’ kids the best education on the island, by virtue of their school district and their father’s meagre salary his own children were forced to attend the worst school in Long Island. The locals called Sam’s school Rikers High.
If it hadn’t been for his easy charm and sharp mind then Sam might well have fallen over the edge like so many of his school friends. Meth addicts. Petty thieves. Rap sheets for breaking and entering.
Sam had done some stupid stuff after his dad died. Smashing headlights, small-time shoplifting. He was never caught, but his mother found out. That was worse. She reminded him that he had four young brothers who would follow whatever example he set.
He made a concerted effort to reach a 3.9 GPA. He nailed it. He applied to three colleges and was accepted at all of them. In the end he opted for a small Roman Catholic school in New Hampshire that offered him a generous scholarship. There he completed his four-year undergraduate degree in three years thanks to extra subjects that he took over summer school. His stellar marks won him a place at Wharton. He paid his MBA fees with a combination of scholarships, financial aid and income earned tutoring and driving cabs at night. He was recruited as an analyst at Stanhope and Sons two months before graduation.
It took years for Sam to claw his way up the ladder at the firm. He still had a few more rungs to go to reach the top. Like Everest, the final ascent was the toughest. His rivals were all cut from the same cloth. Political animals; ambitious and ruthless. They’d sell out their grandma in a heartbeat if that’s what it took to cut a deal or get a promotion. Sam was no different. His Catholic guilt had long fallen by the wayside. Money, he learned, absolved even the guiltiest conscience.
Sam looked down at his dark grey shoes. They’d cost him $1200. He had a dozen pairs just like them in his closet. They were his way of giving the finger to the austerity of his childhood.
Lately, he’d had nightmares that he was flat broke. The more he earned, the more Kim spent. He was making stinking amounts of money but it barely covered their expenses. He made enough for them to live like millionaires. The trouble was that Kim wanted to live like a billionaire. He couldn’t pull it off. God knows, he’d tried.
He bought a house in Westchester. Kim wanted to live near her friends. Their house was a faux-French chateau. It had six bedrooms. They only used two of them. The roof was grey slate with protruding attic windows reminiscent of a Parisian mansion. When he bought the house, he thought it more classy than kitsch. He soon came to realise he was mistaken. It was kitsch on steroids. Just like his life. He cringed every time he drove through its black cast-iron gates.
In no time Kim began to complain that the house was too small. Too dark. There was a smell of mildew in the front living room. The pool wasn’t long enough to swim laps, not that she ever used it. The kitchen was old-fashioned and there was no space for a tennis court.
‘You should move to Queens,’ Sam’s mom advised him. He was driving her to the train station after a weekend visit during which Kim complained incessantly about the house. ‘Better to have the biggest house on the street than the smallest.’ His mother always had a knack of putting things in perspective. So did his father.
Shit, he thought. He needed to focus. His mind returned to the jumble of letters in front of him. ‘IPX NVDI EP ZPV USVTU FBDI PUIFS?’
He asked himself what his dad would have done in the same situation. Ever the high-school teacher, his dad had always espoused the concept of Occam’s razor: the simplest answer is usually the right one.
It gave him an idea. What if the letters were one before the real ones in the alphabet, or one after? They would be the obvious options in the absence of any key to the code.
He tried transposing the letters on the screen of his phone. Instead of ‘I’ he tried one option with a ‘J’ and another with an ‘H’. He went through the sentence, testing both options. The first option he quickly realised resulted in gibberish. The second produced a coherent sentence.
‘I have it,’ he called out as if he’d just won a race. ‘I’ve solved the code.’
‘What does it say?’ Jules asked.
Sam turned his phone around so they could all see the solution to the code on the screen.
‘How much do you trust each other?’
Professor Niels, an economics professor at my business school, once asked the class a question that not even the smartest students could answer. ‘What’s the scarcest resource in the world?’
Students put up their hands with all sorts of answers. Rhodium, osmium, iridium were among some of the more educated guesses.
‘You’re all wrong,’ he said, when we’d run out of guesses. ‘The scarcest resource in the world is time.’
It was only when I started working at Stanhope that I understood what he meant. It was basic arithmetic, really. If you were working eighteen hours a day that meant you had six hours to get home, sleep and somehow arrive at work the next morning looking the part. For those with wives or husbands, and kids, that effectively meant seeing their families only on weekends. They’d come home long after their loved ones went to bed and they’d leave long before the
y woke up.
Maintaining a semblance of a personal life required remarkable multitasking and time-management skills. I once overhead a guy from our bonds desk tell a colleague how he fit in twenty minutes a day with his two-year-old daughter. He did it by putting her on his lap while he did stomach crunches. She’d hold a picture book and he’d read it while lifting up and clenching his abs for the time it took to read a page. He said it was the only way he could read to her and maintain his washboard stomach.
It wasn’t said purely out of vanity. Looking good was a huge deal at Stanhope. It was practically a requirement of the job. Our senior management didn’t want a bunch of fat schmoes representing the company. We had to look as exclusive as the brand.
That meant looking fit, toned and tanned. That was ironic given everything about our lifestyle was unhealthy. Long hours and stress were just the tip of the iceberg. Some people sat glued to their trading screens for most of the day, they barely moved. We had little to no opportunity to go outside and get a natural tan because we were working from dawn to dusk. So we had to fake it with visits to tanning salons and by slathering on tanning cream any chance we got. Everyone was neurotic about eye lotions. Nobody wanted to come to work with dark rings under their eyes, even if they were working almost around-the-clock. Everything we did was to project the impression of vigour. Inside, we were withering.
‘The fact is that twenty-four hour days aren’t enough for people in our line of work,’ said Sam during a catch-up over lunch. Sam had appointed himself my unofficial mentor. Since our first steak lunch, he’d met with me weekly to share useful tips to navigate the confounding complexity of our firm with its mysterious social mores and hierarchies.
‘Yeah, there aren’t enough hours in the day,’ I agreed. ‘Especially lately.’
‘This is nothing,’ said Sam. ‘People these days are pussies. When I started it was even tougher. We had three major M&As and the markets were going wild. There were times when I would come into the office on a Monday morning and I wouldn’t leave until midnight on Wednesday. If I was lucky I would grab a few hours on a couch somewhere. Go down to the fitness centre for a shower in the morning, pop some Adderall, and wham, it was a new day.’
‘Sounds like crazy times,’ I said, unsure whether he wanted sympathy or praise. ‘I don’t mind the hours. I’m footloose and fancy-free! My parents know they’ll have to wait until Thanksgiving or Christmas to see me.’
Sam cut me off, waving his fork in the air as if foretelling the future. ‘You shouldn’t count on going home for the holidays. Nine times out of ten there is something that comes up on the eve of a holiday and you have to cancel. I know people who’ve missed their sister’s wedding, the birth of a son and almost their own funeral. When the firm snaps its fingers,’ he snapped his fingers to emphasise the point, ‘we drop everything.’
I hoped he was wrong. My parents missed me terribly. If I didn’t turn up for the holidays then it would be the two of them grimly going through the motions of Thanksgiving with a store-cooked quarter turkey and a side of stuffing prepared from a box.
But it was made crystal clear to us when we first joined the firm that we were expected to work weekends whenever the need arose. And while that turned out to be more often than not, the hours were usually laxer on the weekend – we’d work eight- to ten-hour days instead of eighteen. Holidays were apparently notional. Sick leave was for sissies.
At college it was a badge of honour for people to return from summer internships, at investment banks and consulting firms, to boast about working eighteen-hour days. The reality of the constant, never-ending grind was different. My work hours were barely within the limits of human endurance.
One night when I was working late I walked into the ladies restroom and almost slammed right into Elizabeth, the other girl from my induction group. She was standing near the sink taking a line of coke off the leather organiser we’d received during our induction. When I’d first met her Elizabeth was a goody-two-shoes who refused to drink wine during our lavish lunches. After three months working with the fixed-income team, she was snorting coke like she’d been born doing it. I was probably among the few who didn’t medicate myself to survive our gruelling schedule.
The executive team, on the other hand, came in late and left early. It was an open secret that they spent most of their time at long champagne lunches or taking corporate jets for golf trips with clients. I suppose the argument was that, when you reached their level, schmoozing clients was bringing the firm billions of dollars in business. Still, it created a certain unspoken resentment among the rest of us down by the coalface, sweating it out while the executive team lived it up.
We ran and reran numbers. Built 100-page deal books in the space of days. Then had them torn up by someone from the executive floor and started all over. We plotted and strategised about takeovers and mergers. We spent our days and nights figuring out ways to squeeze out more value by planning lay-offs at target companies and devising creative asset-stripping schemes. The executive team had a sweet deal, they just signed off on our work and collected the lion’s share of the bonuses.
‘We work the deals, they take the credit – and most of the bonus,’ griped Jules during one marathon all-nighter.
‘That’s how the system works,’ Sam said. ‘If you play your cards right then one day you’ll rake in all the money while a twenty-something grunt who’s barely outgrown acne breakouts burns out before your eyes doing all the work.’
‘It’s a blessed life. I can’t wait. Drunken lunches with their brokers. Sneaking off to conduct affairs in penthouses stashed away in private trusts so their wives can’t get them when they divorce,’ said Jules. He turned to Sylvie with a smirk. ‘Will you enjoy reporting to me when I get bumped upstairs?’
‘What they’re trying to tell you, Sara,’ said Sylvie, putting a manicured hand on my forearm, ‘is that if you’re a woman at Stanhope then you’re going to have to get used to watching male colleagues who are dumber than you get promoted.’
‘There’s hope for you yet, Sylvie. Didn’t you read the latest newsletter?’ Sam said. ‘Diversity is now one of Stanhope’s core values.’ I had seen the article about Stanhope’s big diversity push. It struck me as more about capturing headlines in the business papers than actually tackling what was a real problem in the firm.
But the fact that he’d read it shed light on Sam’s eagerness to mentor me. The newsletter noted that experienced managers who mentored women and ethnic minorities in their divisions would get a component added to their annual bonuses. Knowing Sam, he figured he might as well cash in and suck up to Vincent at the same time by offering to mentor me.
You could count the female investment bankers at the firm on two hands. And the number of female executives on one finger. The head of human resources was a woman and there was a woman on the board – a great niece of the original Stanhope founder. That was it.
Most of the women employed at the firm were in support roles; marketing, communications, HR and admin. The army of personal assistants was almost entirely female. Without them the firm wouldn’t function.
The firm’s senior executives paid lip-service to diversity just as they gave lip-service to corporate social responsibility, another buzzword they bandied about in employee communications and brochures. All they really cared about was making money. It was the firm’s raison d’être and it was ours as well.
Sylvie rolled her eyes as Sam high-fived Jules and Vincent. He’d deciphered a simple transposition code but from the way Sam acted you’d think he’d just discovered quantum theory.
As the men celebrated she leaned back against the elevator wall with her arms crossed. All Sam had produced was the cryptic sentence ‘How much do you trust each other?’ It’s not as if the doors immediately opened to let them out. Nothing had changed. They were still locked inside and it was still pitch dark.
All they’d found so far were random clues that made little sense. Fragments of a l
arger puzzle that none of them understood. There were still no instructions on what to do with the clues they’d solved. Sylvie had the feeling they were being toyed with. They were no closer to getting out of the escape room. Even if they knew what they were looking for, it was virtually impossible to find anything in the dark.
Sylvie checked the time on her phone. There was twenty minutes left. It couldn’t go fast enough. She still needed to get home and pack for Paris. Thanks to the stifling heat, she also needed to shower and wash her hair before her flight – there was no way she was flying to Paris all grimy and sweaty.
Marc was picking her up at Charles de Gaulle and they were driving straight down to the Loire to have dinner with his parents. The timing of the trip was lousy with all the uncertainty at work as they headed into bonus week. If it hadn’t been Marc’s birthday Sylvie would have flown over on a different weekend.
They planned to check into their hotel in Blois to freshen up before dinner. Sylvie had been reluctant to stay with Marc’s parents at their converted farmhouse just outside the town. Marc had only recently divorced his wife Cecile after a twenty-year marriage. His folks had taken the break-up hard. Sylvie was going to have to use every scrap of charm to win them over and she didn’t think it was a smart idea to spend all weekend holed up with them at their country retreat.
The trip was important to her. Marc was important to her. Their relationship was at that delicate stage where it could go either way. She absolutely had to make her flight and she shouldn’t have put herself in a situation where she might have to rush. She berated herself yet again for turning up.
In truth, she’d felt compelled to attend once she knew the others were going. In the current environment it would have been a bad move to miss the meeting if everyone else was there.
