Something Great and Beautiful

by Enrico Pellegrini

  “Why are you staring at the aquarium?” he asked.

  “I may not look like it, but I’m the grizzly in the firm,” I said.

  “I thought I was the grizzly!” said Buvlovski, bursting into laughter.

  Since he didn’t want to order another bottle on an empty stomach, Buvlovski asked for the tea trolley. He also liked the St. Petersburg Café because of its infinite variety of teas. The white teapots lined up on the linen tablecloth looked identical to me, but the Russian confidently lifted a small samovar. “It’s called the Prince Vladimir…,” he said in a very low voice, pouring a cup for me and one for himself.

  “It tastes of nutmeg,” I said, sucking on my lower lip.

  “Nutmeg, cumin, cloves, ginger…”

  The more Dimitri listed the spices, the more handfuls of cumin, gusts of ginger, storms of Greek fennel seemed to fill the air, to cause our hands by mistake to brush against each other, and to narrow the space between our foreheads.

  “Why do you keep on laughing, Ms. Chloé Ombra Allegra Verdi?”

  At that moment, in the room the conversation halted and a couple of women who were seated at the entrance turned around to look. There was a hum of curiosity and gossip surrounding the young gentleman who had just entered the room.

  “He’s on the cover of Vanity Fair,” one of the women said.

  The young man held his wet raincoat on one arm, gracefully away from his body. I couldn’t see his face from where I was seated, as he was handing something to the coat check guy. He didn’t seem to have the butcherlike demeanor that businessmen typically have. He had an air of gentility, a slight awkwardness, that doesn’t belong to the world of Wall Street. Then he headed toward our table.

  Is it him? I wondered for a moment. I pinched a piece of skin on my arm. Did I have that much wine? It couldn’t be him.

  “I’m sorry about the rain,” said Buvlovski, standing up and straightening out his jacket. “May I introduce Ms. Verdi, who is handling the due-diligence? This is the CEO of the company, Rosso Fiorentino…”

  I felt a small shock travel through the bones of my neck and back and descend all the way down to my knees, which buckled as if they had been hit with a stick.

  few days later than scheduled, the due-diligence for the IPO of Focaccia House began at 1203 Sixth Avenue, the company’s first Manhattan bakery. Although the company was opening three stores a day, all across the country, they did not bother renting an office, or more precisely, objected to it on a philosophical basis.

  “This is not going to look good,” the bankers had said. “It’s going to look great. We’re reinvesting profits back in the business, i.e., in new bakeries, not in useless office space.” Management had responded on the advice of their consultant, a certain guy named Martin Marmeladov, someone nobody had ever seen or heard of and whose qualifications were unknown. That same guy was the one who had apparently advised the company to go public: “Time for an IPO,” was the title of his handwritten memorandum on a paper napkin stained with stracchino cheese.

  As instructed, the due-diligence was not carried out in an office, but in the bakery. While rhododendrons bloomed in the mild early summer air, we, the lawyers, were all crammed into a three-square-foot closet, next to an oven, sweating bullets, covered in flour, drowning in boxes. We were reviewing contracts and having a sauna at the same time.

  Typically, in important deals, a data room is organized to gather the business’s confidential information. The data room is not welcoming; this makes it difficult for the lawyers to discover the company’s skeletons. Usually it has no windows, is flooded with boxes of useless information while the sensitive documents are hidden somewhere else, and the coffee tastes of pistachio. Well, here it was taken to an entirely new level. The typical data room was a five-star hotel suite compared with the inhumane closet we were drowning in.

  “Do you need more water?” an employee named Alejandro Caselli would ask now and then, when we looked particularly dehydrated (as a result of our proximity to the oven, the room temperature was above 100 degrees Fahrenheit). His usual duty was to wrap up focaccia at the counter, but during the IPO he had been put in charge of the data room.

  “We need to see these agreements,” I said. Most documents I had been reviewing throughout the morning were useless, but I had discovered some interesting stuff in the board of directors’ minutes. “Certain payments of $125,000 are made in cash, and $320 million has been wired to an offshore account listed as COA. What does COA stand for?”

  “Miss, if you’re not referring to the documents that the attorney, Mr. Zilberberg, is reviewing,” said the employee hesitantly, “we would have to make a request with the management.”

  Joe Zilberberg, who was still waiting for his bar exam’s results, was already an attorney in the employee’s mind, while I, who had passed the bar a year earlier, was a “Miss.”

  “Wouldn’t it be faster to speak with someone?” I asked.

  The employee smiled. “The management is very busy. I doubt they’re even around. Today’s the road show, Miss…”

  I quickly picked up the jacket of my suit (on which someone had rested a tray of sage focaccia) on my way to the road show.

  “So, we are going back to the office?” asked Zilberberg, checking the time and noticing, relieved, that it was almost lunchtime.

  Although he had been assigned the prestigious task of drafting the prospectus, commuting or having lunch was the most gratifying moment of Joe Zilberberg’s day. Only when he was going from his home to the office, or in general any time when he was not working, for instance when he was hanging out at the firm’s cafeteria, did his job seem to be important and prestigious. As soon as he started working, it made no sense. Since joining Buvlovski’s group, he had already lost ten pounds and his girlfriend.

  When I arrived at the road show at the Waldorf Astoria, the doormen were so busy directing traffic it could have been the opening of a nightclub in the meat packing district. The road show is the moment of truth in an offering, when you understand whether the market is buying, although nobody really ever knows what.

  Under the Waldorf Astoria’s flags, filling and emptying in the wind, journalists were lined up for security checks, while the heads of the funds were ushered in easily through a secret entrance.

  “Last month shows a 62 percent gain in earnings per share over May,” echoed the words in the Grand Ballroom.

  After showing security my ID, I entered the room. On the podium Martin Case, Pyramid Capital’s CEO, one of the IPO’s lead underwriters, with his imperious blue eyes, was wrapping up his speech. For an instant his gaze met that of his high school friend in the audience—Mark Schwarz, the head of Fortitude Retirement Fund, whose feeder fund invested the savings of millions of Norwegian retirees.

  “And the EPS gives us two different types of information,” concluded Mr. Case. “First, in this country in June, people ate more focaccia than hamburgers. Second, health insurance stocks are skyrocketing.” He flagged a paper to the Grand Ballroom. “Has anyone seen this report from Health & Science? A Mediterranean diet based on focaccia, two slices per day, lowers high levels of triglycerides…” He slowly opened and closed his hand as if he was waving to someone. “Goodbye strokes, first cause of mortality in the country! Ladies and gentlemen, this is a story the Street wants to hear.”

  In the second row, the journalists quickly jotted down the reference to Wall Street, while the rest of the audience already seemed satisfied and asleep. Even Harpers’s CEO, nicknamed Red Eye because he had once brought the Stock Exchange to tears by barring a company’s listing, was quietly chatting with his neighbor. The offering was already oversubscribed.

  At the door my eyes wandered to the great crystal chandeliers above that underbrush of bankers and lawyers. The Grand Ballroom that each year hosted the debutantes’ balls in white tie, now hosted the elite of finance. Inste
ad of Chablis, waiters served Gatorade and coffee. Instead of chasing one another for a kiss, we exchanged business cards. Instead of dancing, people spoke about money. The hundreds of jackets and ties seemed freshly ironed below the mellow lights. Ever since that evening at the St. Petersburg Café, I had been feeling a vague sense of unreality, as if I had been run over by a car.

  They were all seated in the first row. All of them but him. There was Sachin; the last time I’d seen him he was in a dingy bakery and before that on Rapallo’s promenade with a sheet of sunglasses at his feet. There was Don Otto, the baker, and Franz was there too, as he always managed to work his way in everywhere. He had a badge pinned to his shirt that read CO-MANAGER NEW YORK OFFICE. Rosso’s mother was standing near the side entrance, wearing a colorful hat unsuited to the occasion. She was leaning on the arm of a friend who had accompanied her from Italy and seemed stunned, as if she too had been run over by a car or a freight train.

  “And what about him?” I asked the security guard standing behind me.

  “Who?”

  I pointed to the empty seat in the first row.

  “Ah, the CEO…,” smiled the guard dreamingly, absorbed in his well-groomed sideburns. “If I were him, I know where I’d be…”

  Before the Q&A session started (the questions and answers with management), Rosso Fiorentino walked in and took his seat in the front row. Like a very important person who had no time to waste, he seemed to show up only when he was actually needed.

  t six o’clock in the evening on Monday, August 29, two nights before the IPO, everything seemed ready. In line with the Stock Exchange’s recommendation, it had been decided to close the listing in August—and not in September—to discourage speculative behavior. Over the previous weeks, Buvlovski’s desk had become a magnet attracting everything: reports of the New York Stock Exchange, comments from the SEC, a change of underwear for me, who hadn’t been home since forever. By now, my three red Amaranth business suits were as dirty as a tablecloth at JG Melon’s.

  While Joe Zilberberg was reorganizing the due-diligence folders, I verified for one last time the risk factors on page twenty of the prospectus. I, instead of him, had been assigned to draft the prospectus because—to the surprise of the partners of the firm—I “knew” the management. I added as a risk factor: “Management: Total Inexperience and Complete Lack of Business Judgment.”

  Dimitri Buvlovski was stationed at his usual place, staring out of his office window. He rose to retrieve the sheet of paper that the fax had just spat out. A fax coming in from the SEC at this hour was not a good sign. If we didn’t respond to it in time, the listing would slip.

  “Management is not returning your calls?” he barked at the pigeons of Lexington Avenue. “It’s typical that clients prefer to hang out with the bankers rather than responding to us. But I thought you knew those guys! Let’s hope for you there’s no biggy in this fax…”

  The Russian took the prospectus from me and started quickly reading the questions from SEC. “It all seems inapplicable, good,” he growled. “Section 5, litigation re intellectual property, inapplicable; accrued liabilities, inapplicable; Section…”

  “I think that’s applicable,” I said, rubbing my eyes that wouldn’t stay open anymore. “Certain payments are made in cash, and hundreds of millions of dollars are wired to an offshore account listed as COA. No idea what that stands for.”

  “The rest of the management isn’t available either?” said Buvlovski, shaking his head.

  “I don’t know where they are.”

  “You better fix it. That’s why I gave you the job…otherwise the listing slips.”

  When, later that evening, the jitney dropped me off in Bridgehampton, the city’s mugginess had faded into fresh salty air. Every so often, a comforting smell of grilled corn came from a nearby barbecue. I had decided to go out of my way to save the IPO. Just as before I had tried to help Shimoto, now I was putting all at risk to save his dream. Even if it made me look ridiculous.

  At Villa Fitzpatrick, where management was staying, the line of people waiting began in the parking lot. For that one evening, the residence of a Black-stone partner had been converted into a hotel. Everything had happened so fast; they didn’t even have time to arrange for a proper reception center. The analysts were waiting in silence, while outside the bathroom two women journalists were exchanging gossip.

  “Do you think Rosso goes to Bungalow 8 to pick up women?”

  “He doesn’t need to. He’s going out with the world’s biggest rock star.”

  “No, no, she’s going out with his friend Franz. But did you notice whether she redid her tits?”

  I took the villa’s elevator to the fourth floor, management quarters. The reception hour was over, but when the security guard at the door saw my SL&B card, he let me in anyway. The hall was dark and the windows were open and rattling a bit from the wind outside. Either out of exhaustion or because of the semidarkness, for a moment I couldn’t remember why I had come.

  To go from “zero to hero” in the blink of an eye seemed to be the norm in these days. Very swiftly you could go from being a good-for-nothing to head of a Fortune 500, from being friends with bums and pornographers to friends with the stars. Success wasn’t about school, experience, résumés, or curricula vitae; the only thing that mattered was who had the last laugh. And that last laugh—like getting a mortgage, having sex, learning how to day-trade, just like everything else—was made so easy for everybody, that everything was all much more difficult—including holding on to your own home and making sure that your boyfriend wasn’t cheating on you with Silicon Valley’s latest operating system.

  In the dark hall, Sachin’s small figure appeared wrapped in a Scottish robe.

  “I see you prefer escorts to the Venus with the Singing Nipples,” I said. Through a half-open door, I glimpsed two women half naked, wrapped in baby doll outfits, playing cards on a bed.

  Sachin looked up as if the Chrysler Building was about to crash on his head.

  “No,” he said, laughing. “Nothing is crashing down yet. Except maybe on you, if you don’t get this legal job done.”

  He was wearing a shark’s-tooth necklace and holding a Budweiser.

  “Two escorts?” I asked.

  “Well, mine is the blond one…the other is Rosso’s. I did stop searching for the Venus and I also stopped writing.” Sachin took a sip of beer. The shark’s teeth danced on his throat. “But it’s just a break.”

  “Is he on the terrace?” I asked. “We need some important information, otherwise the stock listing slips.”

  “Rosso? He’s out on the terrace. At your own risk.”

  I took a deep breath. “Is it true that he’s going out with…a rock star?”

  “After you crashed and burned him? He’s done with girlfriends.” Sachin smiled. “It’s true, though, that she fancies him.”

  The terrace was dark, but the ocean beyond was flat and luminous, lit by the moon. In the strong breeze, tissue paper from a bouquet of flowers was floating across the tiles. I walked slowly, in my disheveled suit, reminding myself to take it easy and clutching at the prospectus under my arm.

  “Is it Mardi Gras or an IPO?” laughed an angel’s voice at the end of the terrace, commenting on my attire as I walked in. “Or is it the Carolina Herrera Fashion Show? Check out that ass! It defies the force of gravity…”

  The world’s biggest rock star was sitting right there, on a white chaise longue, next to the drink cart, her back against Franz’s knees.

  “Ciao,” she said. To make up for her lukewarm welcome, she reached for the tray next to her and poured a glass of something, offering it to me with a friendly gesture. “Or perhaps you lawyers don’t drink?”

  “No, Chloé doesn’t drink,” Franz said in her ear.

  In that moment a man in a gray Prince of Wales double-breasted suit stepped
out from the half shadow.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Rosso Fiorentino. His voice was brusque and controlled, as if he had just been operated on for appendicitis or was speaking to a low-level employee.

  “But you didn’t answer my question, Rosso,” said the rock star, continuing to check me out as she got up from the chaise longue. “Are all your lawyers this hot?” She walked over to Rosso and adjusted his gray tie over his shirt. “You may be a prince of high finance, but you have no idea how to knot your own tie.”

  “You’re in a jacket and tie,” I said, squinting my eyes.

  “He’s always in a jacket and tie,” said the rock star. “He has a videoconference in half an hour with Zurich.”

  “Why are you here, Chloé?” asked Rosso, lighting a table lamp on the terrace.

  “I think…,” I said, trailing off, lost.

  At that moment, all at once, everything seemed senseless: the SX regulation, the reports of the NYSE, comments from the SEC, the steamy data room, and I myself and all of my pathetic efforts to save the IPO. And that Franz was going out with the world’s biggest rock star, and that she was dating him, and not because they liked each other, but to be closer to that impossible speculative world of an enterprise richer than the GDP of a country—a world invented by a guy who couldn’t even keep a dog on a leash, whom everybody ran after now, and who instead was hanging out with escorts.

  I heard laughter on the terrace. “Your lawyers may be hot, but they’re not that bright!”

  This last slap in the face seemed to awaken me. “Yes, Rosso, I came here to ask you some questions.”

  hen I was back in the office, it was five o’clock in the morning. No one was there, not even Buvlovski. The days were growing shorter and the sky was still pitch dark, except for some fading moonlight here and there. With whatever brainpower I had left, I reread the totally crazy answers I had received from Rosso during our two-minute conversation: “The payments in cash are made to a consultant named Martin. He is a bum and has no bank account, that’s why we pay him in cash…The multimillion-dollar wires are to the Christ of the Abyss, that’s what COA stands for…Why? I promised that I’d give him fifty cents for every dollar I made.”