The Futures(17)

It was a strange thing to watch her from this distance. To realize what a difference a few meters could make. The way she glanced at her watch, as if to make the train move faster; the way she stared vacantly at the ads for dermatologists and vocational schools. She seemed frustrated and grumpy, but underneath was something harder. An irritation that had nothing to do with the sick passenger or the signal malfunction or whatever had caused this train backup. Something that had been there before we’d even left the apartment that morning. It was like I was looking at Julia from a different angle and seeing something I hadn’t seen before.

The next morning, she was still asleep when I left for work.

*

August arrived, and the city grew quiet. Our neighborhood was a ghost town on weekends. It had become a way of marking time, the Hampton Jitney pulling up on Sunday evenings, the seep of sunburned passengers back to the crosshatch of numbered streets. Everyone who could afford to had fled for the beach.

Work was quiet, too. I checked everything two or three times, guarding myself against boneheaded mistakes. The bosses accepted the work I was doing with a clipped thank-you. I tried to see this as a positive—the models and decks must have been good enough to make it across their desks without comment—but I felt a crackling undercurrent of worry. The sluggish market, rumors about layoffs. There were still long stretches of hours, sometimes days, when I didn’t have much to do. Maybe it had been rash to jump at this job. Maybe I should have thought more about trying to play hockey after college—in Europe or the minors. My life at that moment would have been totally different.

Until one Friday night in early August, when my luck changed.

It was early evening. The higher-ups had left around lunchtime to beat the beach traffic. The other analysts were already at McGuigan’s. I was getting ready to leave when my phone rang.

“Could you stop by?” Michael Casey asked in a flat, untelling tone.

When I arrived, he looked up from a stack of papers and gestured me inside. I hadn’t been in there since the interview back in March. His office was bare of decoration except for a few pictures of him and a younger blond woman who had to be his wife, the two of them smiling against Caribbean sunsets and snowy ski hills. She looked a bit like Julia, though not as pretty. No kids, I noticed. Michael was unsmiling. “So, Evan. How have things been? What are you working on?”

“Good. Great. Things have been great. I’ve, um, been working on a few projects for Steve. He’s had me run some models for the macro group. And, uh…”

Michael nodded briskly. “Fine. And are you liking it? Is the work engaging?”

“Well, um, yeah, I would say it is.” Shit. This was exactly what I’d feared, coming across as some inarticulate hick with nothing to say. “It’s been really interesting, learning about these new markets, and—”

“All right. It’s okay, Evan. Relax. We don’t have to skirt around this. I know what it’s like, your first month on the job. It’s boring. You can admit that, okay?”

I laughed. I hoped it sounded confident, not nervous. “I guess.”

“I was impressed with you in our interview, Evan. I was. I admire your ambition. It’s not easy to get yourself out of a small town. Trust me, I know. What I want to know is what you’re looking to get out of this. Don’t get me wrong. Some people just want to do their two years, go to business school. They’ll do fine for themselves. Dip their toe in, then do the next thing. For some people, that’s just fine.”

Michael leaned back in his chair, his evening stubble catching in the light.

“You know, I grew up in South Dakota, on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Where I came from, people never left. You understand what I’m talking about.”

I sat up a little straighter. “I do.”

“People like us, we actually have an advantage. We remember where we came from. We work that much harder. Now, Spire gets its pick of who to hire. The best and the brightest. But it’s not often I have the chance to hire someone like you. Someone who reminds me a little of myself.”

A few blocks away, my coworkers were already drinking and laughing, off duty for the night. I felt a buzz and pop of adrenaline near the point where my spine met my brain. Just like at the beginning of a game, right before the puck drops.

“Evan. I think you’re smart. I think you’ve got huge potential. My question is, what are you looking for? Do you want to try for something bigger?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

The tone shifted. Faster, more relentless. I was trying to keep up.

“I’ll tell you, first of all, there are no sure things. We always have to bear that in mind. Nothing is certain. But this is the closest thing to certainty that I’ve ever seen in this world. So. What’s the most important thing you learned about hedge funds when you decided you wanted to work here?”

“How to—how to exploit inefficiencies in the market?”

“That’s one thing. And some people may agree with you that it’s the most important thing, but that’s not the answer. The most important thing you need to know is the art of timing. Being first. Knowing when to get in and when to get out. Knowing the inefficiencies does you no good if you screw up the timing.”

“Right. Timing. I see.”

“And what does the right timing allow you to do? What’s the primary rule of arbitrage?”