A handful of stops later I was carried up and along the human river of rush-hour commuters exiting St. Paul’s Tube stop past the Cathedral and fleeing out of the drizzle into the steely jaws of office lobbies that offered little emotional respite. The City looked a lot like Old Wall Street, except its streets were scattered with professionals in fatly knotted ties and bright gingham dress shirts and heavily chalked pin-striped suits with pinstripes so thick you wondered whether these men sat down on a kitchen chair every night to diligently redraw them using an elongated ruler and a blunt stick of blackboard chalk.
The financial district in London also lacked a soundtrack. It wasn’t humming with a can-do and confident beat that marked the footsteps of men and women striding in the lockstep of possibility across the pavement of New York. Little striding happened in London; instead, people trudged forward, people wandered, people muddled through, people spilled and stumbled out of corner pubs blindingly drunk at four in the afternoon on a sunny Friday to get an early crack at erasing the memory of everything that had happened during the week. There was an Invisible Banker who welcomed pedestrians stepping off the Millennium Bridge into the Square Mile—his bowler hat and owl-eyed glasses propped up in the air with the help of a wire coat hanger. He wore a sandwich board sign reading: HELP! I’M A BANKER AND I’VE GONE MISSING. REWARD FOR PERSON WHO FINDS ME. BIGGEST BONUS IF YOU CAN FIND MY SOUL. A few blocks away, outside The Brothers’s London building, a cluster of protestors held vigil at our front doors waving signs reading CAPITALISM IS CRISIS and RICH BEWARE YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED and KING GEORGE DIDN’T LISTEN TO US EITHER and, bafflingly, WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? There was a vagrant atop a milk crate on the outer edge of the crowd dressed as the Monopoly Man who had seen better days, his stubble dark and shadowed, his monocle shattered, his top hat with its top punched out crudely.
Once you circumvented this human barricade, you entered Barts’s London lobby, suboptimally shared with a handful of other firms. This meant it lacked the club-like exclusivity that enveloped you each time you entered The House of Bartholomew in New York. But it was immaculate all the same and was patrolled by a fleet of Eastern European security guards with sharp jaws and steely eyes that promised to bring you within an inch of your life with a single swift chop of a hand if you looked at them the wrong way. By the time I reached my desk up on the ninth floor, the adrenaline had started racing through my veins over Piggelo’s arrival and my imminent introduction to my new boss, wiping the Belle doppelgänger sighting from my mind. But an air of eeriness still hung around me, like a drop of red food coloring billowing its way through a clear glass of water. Our London Private Banking team was still small so no one sat alongside me in my row, though immaculate strings of vacant desks advertised the great growth plans Piggelo had in store for the fiscal year. As I logged into my computer, a gaudy flash caught the corner of my eye. I looked to my left to see a familiar-looking 5" × 7" glossy headshot of Grace Kelly stashed beneath a lovingly buffed ten-years-of-exceptional-service Lucite cube.
“What on Earth…?” I whispered beneath my breath, both hands freezing atop my keyboard. There must have been some kind of cock-up with The Brothers’s internal mail service, shuttling Leezel Bartholomew’s most cherished workplace possessions to our London office. In search of answers, I stood up and walked into the visiting partner’s office that Piggelo typically parked herself in on her trips across the pond. She wasn’t there but someone had set up a smaller-scale battalion of her stilettos alongside her temporary desk—not as formidable as her New York lineup but terror-inducing all the same. Checking all four corners to ensure Drewe wasn’t blending somewhere into the background, my eyes bulged as they locked on the dapper form of Chase Breckenridge, seated with perfect posture at the conference table on the far side of the office. Whenever Chase landed in his mother country, like any self-obsessed American banker he took great care to dress in his Savile Row best. That morning, he could have doubled as an old-school merchant banker who had recently transferred into finance from a Short Service Commission in his British Army senior regiment. He was able to pull it off. Despite his breadth and trademark bawdiness, Chase was a model of made-to-measure finesse—the sort of fellow who had his jacket shoulders filled with horsehair and its inner lining fitted with pockets to accommodate the exact dimensions of his BlackBerry and employee card. The kind of banker who wouldn’t have been caught dead in a breast-pocketed dress shirt—who had his measurements logged in the circa 1825 ledgers of the same tailor who had produced Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation robes. The kind who kept the straining girth of his triple-E-width feet secured with the help of his buffed black oxfords’ double hand-sewn top stitching.
“Ahh, there you are!” Chase looked up at me and shouted, as though he could finally call off the search dogs he had unleashed to sniff out my whereabouts. His voice seemed more nasal, wailing at me like one of those odd-sounding, headache-inducing European police sirens.
“Chase,” I replied as nonchalantly as I could manage, “I didn’t know you were coming over. Is Piggelo here yet?” It wasn’t unusual for Chase to make lightning bolt cameos in the London office so he needn’t bother taking any vacation days on his personal trips abroad. His family had a house in Belgravia and, with all of his mother’s side of the family still in England, he frequently alluded to social commitments that necessitated his constant and casual pond-crossing.
“She’s been delayed,” he answered, cryptically. “It’ll just be me today,” he added, even more cryptically. Though I sensed something was amiss, I knew my levels of homesickness must have been steep for me to feel a sliver of fondness as I looked at Chase’s timber-colored countenance.
“You know it’s strange to say this,” I admitted to him, dropping into the chair across from him at the table, “but the sight of you is a bit of a relief. I’ve been on pins and needles about who Piggelo tapped to head up the London team and she was supposed to do the grand unveiling today. Did it fall through? I should have asked you to squeeze some intel out of Drewe before you came over.” Chase cleared his throat and, for whatever reason, the sound of it sent the thought of that carelessly strewn Grace Kelly 5" × 7" glossy spiraling into my mind like a pinwheel of disaster. Our eyes faced off steadily from opposing ends of the table. “Why are you here, Chase?”
“This is going to be one helluva team, M.” He grinned at me, a navy spark skipping diabolically in his eye.
“So you’re coming over to join the team?” I asked, venturing forward with the utmost caution.
“No, no.” He shook his head, waving a thick hand in the air around him, enabling me to steady my breathing again. He leaned toward me just a fraction. “I’m coming over to run the team.”
My heartbeat cranked up with violent protest in my rib cage. His face may have been leathery, but he was still ridiculously young to run any team. Back in College people said his father had made a mammoth donation to his primary school, opening a new Breckenridge Wing that bought him advancement to the class above. Beau Breckenridge knew what he was dealing with and wanted to ensure his son would always appear to be a step ahead of his quicker contemporaries, even if that step had to be paid for. Piggelo appointing him as head of the Barts Private Banking team in London continued this theme of prematurity. As outrageous as it was, I could guess at her rationale—Chase’s noble lineage, his deep-rooted family connections in England, his dark complexion that probably had some kind of biracial appeal, his action-figure looks that could set the pallid cheeks of the frostiest old English countess swirling excitedly as she transferred him all of her assets. He fit the part to a tee.
But still, I sat pinned to the back of my chair with amazement; just like that, I was reporting directly to Chase Breckenridge. I would have had to force myself to say something if Leezel Bartholomew herself hadn’t barged in at that moment, spandex clad and sporting an enormous Liberty hair bow, presumably as a nod to her new English home base.
“Divine news! I closed on tha
t place in Chelsea next to the Rolling Stone, the only problem is I think it’s Ronnie not Mick—” She rattled on and then, at the sight of me, checked herself with very obvious displeasure. “Oh. M.”
“Leezel, a moment please?” Chase dictated, genteelly.
“Certainly, Chase,” she answered, batting her eyelashes and bowing toward him like a dutiful geisha as she bustled back out and closed the door.
“You’re not serious.”
“I am indeed serious.” He grinned, leaning back to balance his bulk on the two rear legs of his chair. “Leezel’s come over to be my new office manager. When the old girl puts her back into something, it can be a spectacle to behold.” The thought of Leezel putting her back into something, anything, and the saucy smile smeared across Chase’s face as he described it, made me wince. “She’s a wizard at logistics, you know.”
I don’t remember how I navigated my way out of that office. I was far too stunned to take notice, but within an hour was taking refuge in a coffee shop down the block and lucid enough to remember logging on to Verity from my BlackBerry to post another message in a bottle:
When someone presents you with a freeze-frame of your life and your only reaction is: How the hell could I have let this happen?
Later that afternoon, back at my desk, Chase bulldozed up to me and laid a beefy paw on my shoulder.
“M., let me buy you a pint,” he barked, a hearty attempt at camaraderie or consolation that only managed to stoke my anger.
We wound our way down Fleet Street to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, an ancient pub reeking of wet dog hair. I wasn’t sure if it was the rank odor or the rank idea of Chase being my new boss that caused my mouth to start watering aggressively.
“Let me get one thing straight. You actually selected Leezel to move here with you?” It was easier to focus on the lesser crime than tackle the most offensive topic.
“Sure I did,” Chase replied, inhaling a packet of pork scratchings. He crumpled the foil and nodded to the bartender to line up a few more packets. “It’s easy to keep a bird like Leezel onside. Back in New York, I’d let her gorge on the hundred-buck fried chicken platter at Momofuku. Over here, buy her a lobster thermidor from Scott’s on Mount Street every other fortnight and she’ll be happy as a bottom-feeding clam.” He cleared his throat grittily to uproot a rogue pork scratching or to verbally dig for the aforementioned shellfish. “The key to everything, M., is having the right people onside. That’s why we chose you to be a part of the team.” Chase’s easy use of the communal pronoun we chalked himself off crudely with the likes of Piggelo and Drewe and the dark, plutocratic puppet masters who wrote and ruined the Fates of apparent plebeians like me. He was an unthoughtful twat in so many respects but on one point I had to agree with him. Who we align ourselves with—who chooses us to be on their team and who we choose to be on ours—is everything in this life.
“Every good Private Banking team needs a reliable woman as its anchor. I mean someone safe and conservative and believable. Someone to help it look more trustworthy and reliable. Piggelo sees you as utterly reliable. She wanted to make sure I agreed before she made the decision to move you and I want you to know I answered with a wholehearted yes. I said you’re the safest punt we could make. That you’re never going to be the one to skip off to follow a man or have a baby—ha, can you imagine?—and leave us all in the lurch.”
A strange thing happens when someone you don’t respect declares that something is never going to happen in your life—that it just isn’t in the cards for you—with authoritative certainty. Something, and I’m not quite sure what, emptied out of me at that moment. According to Chase and The Brothers, I was a safe bet because they assumed my mother’s most menacing nightmare would come true—that I would never marry, always devoting myself first and foremost to my work. Giant foam fingers—the sort that people tote along and wave at low-end sporting events—materialized in all corners of the pub and pointed at me in derision. I looked down to the bar and even Chase’s pork scratchings had sprung to life, dancing around and doubling over in a chorus line of laughter. I had read so much into Piggelo tapping me for the job in London. And what an idiot I’d been to believe it had been based on merit—that she believed in me, that promising things lay ahead of me at the firm.
“Speaking of which,” he blazed on, brusquely, “sorry things didn’t pan out with Scott Bosher.” The sentence landed between my eyes as a large verbal loogie. It was nauseating to hear Chase not only speak Scott’s name, but also reveal that he had been aware of our dating and, worst of all, our breaking up. It told me he was much more tuned in than I’d ever given him credit for. “The thing is, M.”—and with that he let a silent, horrendous-smelling beer burp loose in my direction—“no man gives a rat’s ass about a top-seed squash standing.” He pulled the corners of his mouth back into a tight sneer. “Or whether you win a bloody game of darts.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s what did it—my involvement in the squash bracket and my tendency to win at darts,” I answered dryly.
“I’m really glad you agree with me, because there is one thing I wanted to discuss with you,” he ventured, turning conspicuously upbeat. “It’s something we all agree you need to work on.” If he told me I needed to smile more I swore by God all restraint would be out the window and I’d enjoy the simple satisfaction of breaking a bar stool over his talking head. “And I want to speak candidly here, for your sake.”
“Oh, I appreciate that, Chase.”
“You’re too direct, M. You wear your emotions plain on your face and it scares the shit out of people. Especially blokes. And you know I’ve experienced it firsthand. It probably scared the shit out of Scott. Can you blame him? I could have told you from day one the whole thing between the two of you would have gone tits-up. But the point is we can’t have you scaring the shit out of clients. Not that anyone has given us that feedback … yet.”
“This is extremely helpful,” I said, pulling a notebook from my bag and pretending to scribble down his pearly pointers. In reality, I was filling each line with an unending repetition of turbo-douche turbo-douche turbo-douche turbo-douche turbo-douche turbo-douche and was pressing down so hard with my pen I came close to breaking through the paper with the nib.
“In what specific ways do you think I could improve?”
“Play the game a little. Stop ripping open the kimono every chance you get. Play it cool for once in your life, for Christ’s sake. You just can’t lay your cards out on the table all the time the way you do. At the end of the day, all anybody wants is a bit of mystery. Keep them guessing and they’ll keep coming back for more. There isn’t much more to it than that.”
It was Chase’s life strategy—both at work and at play—and I knew then, though he made no direct mention of it, that Belle Bailey would be on her way to join him in London, if she hadn’t already started packing. Her words atop the Empire State Building drifted back to me with new meaning: I’ve been feeling the pull more lately, you know. Sometimes it keeps me up all night. I lie awake wondering where it is I’m actually supposed to be, where my story is supposed to play out. Was it here or there? With Jeremy, or with Chase? She was drawn to Chase and his unavailability in a dark and primitive way, as people are drawn to the things most inaccessible to them, the things most unhealthy for them.
“That’s the rummy thing about life,” Chase barged on, by that point addressing all pub patrons as though stepping into his natural role as the evening’s keynote speaker. Standing beside him, like an illustration of an eyeglassed nerd clutching her notebook and pen, I looked up at him in silent hatred. “We all want what we can’t have the most. We can’t help ourselves.”
Later that night, the Unknown Caller rang and I filled Jeremy in on the gruesome happenings of the day. As always, he was my safe haven—the only person who wouldn’t toss back a smart Well, you can’t say I didn’t tell you so when I broke the news of my professional humiliation.
“I guess I’m the bi
ggest chump of all,” I declared to him. My pen and notepad sat lifeless next to me—I couldn’t even summon the energy to doodle. “I honestly believed that if I added value, it would lead to something. They’d see what I’m bringing to the table. It would all take me somewhere.”
“It’s a rotten turn of events,” Jeremy concluded, apologetically. “What are you going to do?”
“Well, I can’t jump ship until I have something to move on to.” Markets were still struggling pathetically and most financial firms had imposed hiring freezes—if I left The Brothers there was no assurance I could land on my feet. We all knew bankers who had been laid off resorting to desperate means to earn a buck, tending bar or trying to sell their patent of a reimagined periodic table of elements or playing guitar semiprofessionally in restaurants around the Canary Islands. The firm had us by the short hairs and they knew it. Teaching English on the Kyrgyzstani peak would have looked like a more attractive alternative but we were all petrified that if we fell off the grid, if we became whatever equivalent of the guitar-playing guy in Tenerife, a professional drawbridge would snap shut and there would be no going back. And then what? I could have swallowed my pride and turned to my father for advice but he was long since retired, and the banking world he came of age in bore little resemblance to its modern, mile-a-minute counterpart. Besides, I knew he would have asked me for my game plan and the truth was I didn’t have one. The Brothers had been my game plan for so long, I realized without them, my way forward didn’t seem to exist. “For a start I need to get back in touch with the man from Bridges Capital who wanted to meet with me last year. I never took the interview and now I see what a mistake that was. I have no idea if they’re still hiring.”
Fake Plastic Love Page 28
