The Futures(63)

My parents waved good-bye to the Baldwins as their car backed out of the driveway. When the front door closed, I noticed a slump in both of them. The mask dropped, the smile loosened. They didn’t particularly enjoy the company of the Baldwins any more than Elizabeth or I did. But they did see the utility of their company. The Baldwins were the right kind of people with the right kind of connections.

“Just leave it,” my mother said when Elizabeth and I started clearing the dessert dishes from the table. “Let Jasmine get it in the morning. I’m going to bed.”

She trudged up the stairs. My father retreated to his study off of the kitchen; always more work to be done. Elizabeth shrugged and went up to her room, too. Pepper had been in his crate all through dinner, and no one made a move to let him out. So I unlatched the door and fed him a scrap of piecrust from Mrs. Baldwin’s plate, then took him for a long walk through the dark and sleepy neighborhood.





Chapter 11


Evan



Roger caught me earlier that day. “Trouble in paradise?” he said, clapping me on the shoulder.

I jumped in my seat and exited the browser where I’d been looking at apartment listings, but I felt the heat rise in my face. Roger sat down across from me, grinning with glee at his discovery. “The wife mad that you’ve been spending so much time in the office? She kicking you out?”

“Shut up, Roger.”

“Oh, wow. Did I hit a nerve?”

Several hours later, Roger was gone. Everyone was gone, except for me. The streets were quiet when I finally left the office around midnight. The scattering to home had begun that afternoon. The only signs of life in our neighborhood were the divey Irish bars jam-packed with city kids who were home for the holidays from college, drinking with friends.

In the bathroom, brushing my teeth, I heard a strange noise. A mechanical chirp. After a minute of confusion, I finally saw it on the ceiling: the smoke detector, flashing a yellow warning light. I dragged a chair over and disconnected it, took the battery out, and it went silent. It was too late to go out and buy a new battery. I’d have to survive a night without it.

But I couldn’t fall asleep. The whole apartment felt unsettled—it had ever since I’d gotten back from Las Vegas. I’d taken to lingering longer and longer at the office to avoid it. At least I could still feel normal at the office. Even when she wasn’t around, the feeling of Julia clung to the apartment. I’d started checking online apartment listings in my spare time, furtively, clearing my browser history afterward like I’d been watching porn. The options beckoned: sexy, seductive, a fresh start. Rents were loaded with incentives, post-crash. The new glassy, high-end buildings on the far West Side were perfectly affordable for a young finance bachelor. Then I’d shake my head. I wasn’t a bachelor. Julia and I were still together, after all.

I kept tossing and turning that night, thinking I was hearing the distant chirp of the dead smoke detector. I finally drifted off, but I woke a few minutes later with a start. I thought I smelled smoke, but I knew it was nothing.

The next morning, as I passed the diner on the corner, I stopped and peered through the window. A TV in the corner showed the crowds at the parade. It looked cozy inside. The jingling bell announced my arrival, and a sullen waitress showed me to a table. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she said, slapping the laminated menu on the table. “You want coffee?”

The coffee was sour and burned, and the eggs were runny, but it didn’t matter. I’d passed the diner every morning, and I’d always wanted to stop there. When the man at the next table departed, he left behind his copy of the New York Observer. I grabbed it, straightening the crinkled pages. There was a story about the war in Iraq, the troops celebrating Thanksgiving in Baghdad and Basra. An item about the Detroit bailouts. At the bottom of the front page was a teaser for a story inside: HEDGE FUNDS DOWN IN 2008

Results show steep drop in earnings across industry. A12

I flipped to page 12. It was Adam McCard’s byline.

“More?” the waitress said, not bothering to wait for a response. She tipped the carafe and let the coffee splash over the sides of the mug.

I skimmed the story. Manhattan, Greenwich, Stamford—everyone was having a bad year. Negative returns, investors yanking their cash, waves of layoffs. Hundreds of funds had shut down already, and more were on the brink of collapse. Sometimes you had a bad year, everyone knew that. But this looked to be something bigger. A bad decade, or more. Even at Spire, money was tight, and there weren’t going to be any bonuses that year. People grumbled, and Roger let slip, bitterly, that he’d been counting on a bonus to make up for the money he’d been wasting on bottle service. But I think most of us knew how good we had it. We still had our jobs. Spire was the one hedge fund in the industry that hadn’t laid off a single person since the downturn.

The WestCorp deal had finally gone live earlier that week, on Monday, a few days before the holiday. Michael had called me into his office that morning. He gestured at me to sit, then he shut the door. He didn’t mention the car ride on Friday night, what had happened, or what we’d discussed. And that was okay—I didn’t need him to explain anything. I finally felt like I got it. Like everything made sense.

“Evan. I realized I never actually thanked you for coming on the Las Vegas trip the other week, on short notice. You were immensely helpful. So thank you.”