Hotel Living
Page 23
Alkis gives me a pitying once-over. “Paul says you’re neither blue- nor white-collar anymore. He says that you’re black-collar, their clubbing entourage.”
“Paul talks?” I say, and down half my espresso.
Alkis takes a deep breath. “He can, I suppose. Who would have thought Paul would be our success story?” he says seriously. “He’s getting rich, on paper at least, and more famous than the people he stalks.”
“Please, I’m eating . . .” I make a face. “And Tatiana’s a friend. So let’s drop it.”
“She’s a bipolar prostitute!”
I’m not sure where to start now. With the “haute provincialism” he used to smell in her pussy, or with her fucking him like a dog? But I don’t know if he knows I’ve slept with her—one never knows whom Tati calls when she’s wasted—which makes me slightly nervous. He could be sniffing me out, testing me to see if I’ll come clean.
“What do you want from me?” I say calmly. “To write on a piece of paper that Tatiana is a whore? Is that what you want?”
“Pretty much,” he says, and his face finally relaxes. “Do you know that if it wasn’t for me, Paul would have ‘lost’ your number?”
“That’s just Paul.”
“That’s so not Paul, mate. He sent you a postcard from Trikeri, from your bloody village, which he visited with his girlfriend. He and your father tried to call you. They were worried about you.”
“Never got the postcard.”
“He sent it to Command. I passed him your work address myself when he couldn’t get online in Greece.”
“Well, I’ve been on the road.”
“You’ve been on the road going down. And it’s a stupid way to go.”
“What’s a clever one?” I chug my Bloody Mary with a shrug, but Alkis’s face stays serious.
“Just don’t go. If someone fucks with you, like Erik did, or the way Tatiana fucked me over, maybe you don’t have to fuck them back. And you definitely don’t have to fuck yourself up. You learn and move on.”
I don’t need this right now. “Who wants an easy life?”
“Then toughen up. Smile and lie about it. Everything’s a lie. Lie or die!”
“Like you do with work?” I throw back. I can’t tell if I need more food or to get rid of some.
“You seriously think that you are better than me,” Alkis says, almost laughing. “You go from one biotech to another, selling them the same shit. You only exist because pharmacos want to spy on one another. You’re a delivery boy who makes way less money than I do. And look at you—I’m surprised you still have a job.”
He thinks I still give a damn. “Well, they can’t fire me,” I mumble to myself, but Alkis picks up on it. His pitying expression is gone.
“Talk to me,” he orders. I can tell by the sound of his voice that he smells blood.
“Andrea and some BioProt folks are devaluing the company,” I concede, happy for the distraction. “So her man can do a takeover at a discount.”
“I knew it!” Alkis exhales. “I fucking knew it.” He leans toward me worriedly. “How deep are you in it?”
I say nothing.
He grabs me by my palm-tree shirt. “Listen to me. Now you listen to me. You’ll be the first one to be subpoenaed if shit hits the fan. Andrea knows you’re a cokehead and tolerates it. She may actually like it, ’cause you’ll make the perfect ass to blame if they need one. Get a lawyer. Today. I can find some names for you in New York. This is no ‘oops’ with Tatiana anymore. Copy your hard drive—what am I saying, you can’t do that. You have to ‘lose’ your laptop and ask for a new one. Get a prepaid phone and don’t give the number to anyone but your lawyer. And stop e-mailing me. I’m serious.”
My brows furrow, and I nod my head in assent. All I really want to do is go back to my room.
“Stathis, I’m here for you. You’re still my ace, mate,” Alkis says, and his guy’s-guy vulnerability comes through. I look at his broad shoulders; the kind they like to recruit to investment banking.
“And?” I shrug.
“And get the hell out of here. Finish the project and drop those leeches around you. You used to play rugby, for Christ’s sake. You don’t belong here! Andrea? Teresa? Constantine? The guy had to become a Muslim to measure up to his dad.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Fuck him. I don’t wanna know him. I know you. How about you transfer to London? Or get a new job there? I’m there, and you’ll be closer to home. The Greek army was reduced. You can pay for part of your service.”
“I’m not your EBS protégé anymore,” I say, and stand up to him, literally. “May be a criminal, but I’m a man now.”
NINETEEN
From: Andrea Farrugia
To: Stathis Rakis
Date: Wed, Apr 4, 2007, 3:14 p.m.
Subject: BioProt video conf.
Statis, I believe our Strategic Alternatives are solid. Please set up one-on-ones with the steering committee to walk them through Strategy III (Cosmeceuticals).
Good client facilitation today, but you responded to my action items at 3 p.m. EST. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. I need turnarounds before noon my time. This is not negotiable!
Andrea Farrugia
Senior Vice President
Command Consulting
* I am in the business of impact *
From: Teresa BangBang
To: Stathis Rakis
Date: Sun, Apr 8, 2007, 11:52 p.m.
Subject:
How are you, lover? I haven’t spoken to Tati since I talked to you on the phone. She never picks up. She cut me out of her life after she moved to France, after she had the procedure . . . Her father, the asshole, doesn’t pick up either. I’m in Paris shooting, and I can’t concentrate, I can’t perform. I know that you talk to her. PLEASE PLEASE tell her that I want to see her. Please, tell her to call me. Is Ray behaving back home?
I love you. Always.
Teresa.
From: Andrea Farrugia
To: Stathis Rakis
Date: Thu, Apr 12, 2007, 1:12 a.m.
Subject: BOUZOUKIA
You looked like you arrived straight from a Greek bouzoukia at the video conference today. If you want to have impact, you should button your jacket when you walk into a meeting, and make sure the pink sticker from the dry cleaner is REMOVED from your shirt! Not looking after your looks is telling BioProt that you have no discipline, and that will hurt their appetite for risk.
I couldn’t care less about “innovation fatigue.” Impact, impact, impact!
Andrea Farrugia
Senior Vice President
Command Consulting
* I am in the business of impact *
From: Tatiana SmartFuck
To: Stathis Rakis
Date: Fri, Apr 13, 2007, 9:38 a.m.
Subject: Get to France.
My love, Aix is a paradise. The garden is amazing. I read books and go to the fruit market. I’m working on my relationship with my father. Come see us. Je t’adore.
Emotionally and physically available, Tati.
From: Paul deBerg
To: Stathis Rakis
Date: Sat, Apr 14, 2007, 1:06 p.m.
Subject: AccostingTV Gallery opening invitation
A Game Changer—attached
From: Stathis Rakis
To: Paul deBerg
Date: Sat, Apr 14, 2007, 1:10 p.m.
Subject: RE: AccostingTV Gallery opening invitation
I never subscribed to your list.
From: Stathis Rakis
To: Andrea Farrugia
Cc: Kirk Davies
Date: Fri, Apr 20, 2007, 3:14 p.m.
Subject: Rethink, redesign, redevelop
Andrea—
The majority of the metrics we picked favor Strategy III (Cosmeceuticals). What is the purpose of a full-blown portfolio exercise if our model is structured in a way that predetermines where to invest? It is conceptually messy and confusing to the client. We are about to transform BioProt into a consumer products company. There’s still time to rethink our approach.
Stathis.
From: Andrea Farrugia
To: Stathis Rakis
Date: Sat, Apr 21, 2007, 1:12 a.m.
Subject: RE: Rethink, redesign, redevelop
REDRESS!!!
Andrea Farrugia
Senior Vice President
Command Consulting
* I am in the business of impact *
From: Kirk Davies
To: Stathis Rakis
Date: Sun, Apr 22, 2007, 10:08 p.m.
Subject: RE: Rethink, redesign, redevelop
Dear Stathis:
I celebrate our culture of debate. These are the types of questions that we welcome. At Command everyone is equal. We speak freely and we don’t smooth out our differences.
Andrea loves merging science with commerce—she loves hybrids. She lives in a condo hotel. How is that for real (estate) options?
I hear that the BioProt people trust you, which is important. Yet your dress code has come to my attention. Andrea is not asking you to wear a three-piece suit. Do what I do: bespoke dress down when on the West Coast.
Regards,
Kirk C. Davies III
Senior Vice President
Command Consulting
TWENTY
August 2007
I BARELY SEE THE SUN IN LA. I live between BioProt conference rooms, tinted-windowed SUVs, and the hills at dusk. They all contribute to a summer that makes everything seem surreally seamless—BioProt’s cement campus melds into God’s hangar house, God’s black sofas into Sunset lounges where I hang out with Ray, and his oversize white T-shirts into BioProt lab outfits. As work and play merge—I manage biotech models and Teresa’s bank accounts—God, Ray, and Andrea become the different faces of a trinity. I have to accept that either the world around me is mad or that I am, and I choose the former, accusing LA of making me manipulate science via commerce and cocaine via Xanax.
“How’re you doing, man?” A forty-year-old guy in a skateboarder outfit taps my shoulder as I search for beer at a convenience store on Sunset. I’ve no idea who the dude is. Have we partied? Fucked? Is he a client?
“I’m good,” I say. “How are you?”
“Press on!” He smiles, and his crow’s-feet turn upward. “Do they still have you up there?”
“Up?” I say.
“At the Chateau.”
“Basically,” I say. I need a six-pack, and Ray is waiting outside in the car. I can barely stand up straight because of my insomnia, but this dude here in skate shorts won’t stop chatting me up.
I look around for an excuse, anything. Middle-aged guys in Abercrombie & Fitch outfits browse the Raw–Organic–Vegan aisle. “Who am I to judge?” says Teresa from the cover of a tabloid on the bottom shelf, and I flash back to scoring in her garden, having three-ways with Ray in Tatiana’s childhood bedroom, watching Ray peeing into the kitchen sink at the Chateau and on a nineteen-year-old, going to coke-for-sex parties in half-built houses, editing BioProt slides with God. So why shouldn’t forty-year-olds resist aging? Why not the Andrea doctrine? What’s the difference between God’s celebrity-for-an-hour virtual-reality game and Andrea’s BioProt scheme for face-toning vibrating machines? If culture is driving science, then biotechs will become the new establishment, heading for the pharmacos’ heyday of the nineties, oversaturated with cash, blockbusters, and denial about research and patent expirations. “I’d rather reinvent than invent,” God says. What if we go Andrea, and give up on hard innovation? Let drug pipelines get acquired and then turn novelty to lifestyle and marketing instead. “You know that you’re irrelevant, that you’re extinct, when you follow the trend. And that’s when it gets interesting,” God taught me.
“I’m double-parked,” I tell the dude. “Do you want to come to a formwork party?”
MY CELL PHONE IS RINGING nonstop, but some girl’s torso blocks me from going for it. As I roll over, my hand gets wet from come or piss on Ray’s shark. I see my phone under Teresa’s kabbalah bendels on her nightstand.
“Hello,” I groan.
“Are you sleeping?” Alkis asks.
“No. Sore throat.”
“Right.”
“What’s up?” I hear office chaos in the background. I’ve no clue what time it is in London, or here.
“Listen, mate.” Alkis sounds serious. He takes a second. “They found your Greek pal Constantine, I mean, Zemar, er, in Peshawar.”
“What?” I rub my itching eyes. “Oh . . .”
“They don’t know if it was an overdose or murder. It’s news today. I mean, it’s part of the news today. I thought you should know.”
“What was it? Like . . . what did he take?”
“Heroin. They found him with a syringe in his arm. Channel Four said they’ll do an autopsy in Pakistan. Hey, mate, everything’s bananas today. BNP suspended withdrawals. They tell me they can’t move their subprime bonds. I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
I pull myself out of bed, holding my phone tightly, and walk through Teresa’s balcony door. I sit on the garden steps, and the mist that clouds Laurel Canyon sends a chill over my naked body. It’s the first time that I feel cold in LA. There’s too much in the garden, trees growing under trees, everything mishmashed to form a jungle just two miles from Sunset. The sound of the birds conflicts with the hum from the city. Nothing makes sense in Southern California. I dial my sister.
“Oh my God! Where are you?” she cries. “What time is it?” I can hear her sobbing.
“I want to come back,” I say.
TWENTY-ONE
October 2007
AT SOME POINT THIS FALL (though I never did figure out what fall meant in LA), my feelings of apathy soured into defeat. Constantine was dead at thirty-eight, Erik was long gone, Andrea had gotten her way with BioProt, and Tatiana was not picking up in France. A postcard I’d sent to Jeevan (addressed: “Jeevan, Moonhole, Bequia”) was returned to the front desk at the Chateau.
The morning after our final presentation at BioProt, I’m up and packed before the sun rises. I want to catch the first flight to New York, as the prospect of traveling with Andrea later in the day is unbearable.
“I’m sorry that you are leaving us,” Josh at the front desk tells me, handing me my final bill and the returned postcard.
“Thank you,” I murmur, staring at the “Return to Sender” stamp from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I look up and see Josh smiling. I’m thrown by how young he looks compared to how old I feel. “Thank you for everything you did for me,” I say, and shake his hand.
On my ride to LAX, I keep telling myself that I need to text Ray; we never had a proper good-bye, not that we ever had a proper anything. But I can’t get myself to type a single word. Flying back east, I try to understand this. I try to comprehend LA. The place where I gave up and stopped caring. Just like Ray, I got sucked into Hollywood culture and turned into a pig in the process, giving hand jobs to strangers and supporting Andrea. I ask for some vodka, hoping it will help me accept that no one can play the game without whoring themselves a bit. But the drink doesn’t do it; I don’t feel any bett
er. I try to distract myself with The Bourne Ultimatum. I’m too tired to follow the plot, but I still get that Matt Damon is way conscientious. So I flip to Ocean’s Thirteen, which seems closer to home.
BACK IN NEW YORK, I keep a low profile. I have to; I have no friends in the city anymore. I’m supposed to do some follow-up work for BioProt, but it’s just support, remote work, and I don’t need to be in the office. So I’m back to my old Sant Ambroeus habits. Once again I live and work on my barstool in the restaurant; once again regulars edge away from me at the bar; once again AAers and Sex and the City tourists roam around Perry and West Fourth; once again I try to ignore my phone. It’s like I never left.
“Mate!” Alkis says when I pick up on his third try.
He’s been in New York for a week, he says. He knows that I’m at Sant Ambroeus.
“I see” is all I say.
He is in town with Cristina. They are back together, sorting things out. Would I like to have dinner with them in the Village?
I have to think about this. We haven’t spoken since LA except for a couple of generic messages—“Paul’s e-trash empire made the Huff Post,” “The Chinese to save Bear”—nothing on Tati, Erik, BioProt, or anything important whatsoever. Dinner with Cristina, before a proper catch-up, seems funny.
“Fine, here is the catch,” Alkis says, after my long pause. “Kevin booked the table. I know he is Erik’s brother, but he is the one who suggested I call you. Do we have a problem?”
“How come you are having dinner with Kevin?” I ask, thinking of Constantine, and I am grateful at the realization that Erik wasn’t my first thought.
“We ran the London marathon together,” Alkis says sarcastically. “You spent too much time in LA, mate. Think East Coast, think smart! The guy runs his own fund and we are on our third round of layoffs, with two fifty-points cuts this month. Our CFO’s on the move. I need you tonight.”
“Your CFO said the worst of the credit shit was over,” I say, and Alkis hangs up on me.
I dial him back.
ALMOST FIVE YEARS TO THE day that I met Erik, I walk down my block to have dinner with his brother. I step into the low-ceilinged restaurant and pick up on a free-floating anxiety in its bar.