Breathe In, Cash Out

by Madeleine Henry

  “Is it Diwali?” Adam whisper-asks me.

  “Yes,” I lie.

  The MD, Zena, is a single mom, member of the Anderson Women’s Group, and force of nature. She reminds me of Everest Lady, who we reference at the pod every now and then as a personality type. During training, Anderson hosted a day of lectures by alumni including a woman who had climbed Everest twice. Apparently, you can’t just climb Everest from bottom to top. You have to climb a bit, then trek down halfway, then climb a bit more, then trek down halfway, over and over again in order to acclimate yourself to the altitude. At the time I thought, Yep, there’s an idea: find the worst place on earth and bring to life the myth of Sisyphus. Everest Lady literally did. Not only that, but she trained while working at Anderson full-time. She used the rowing machine in our gym at night with her eyes closed and said she had brainwashed herself into believing that she was both sleeping and working out. Most of the time, I can’t do either, and Everest Lady did both at the same fucking time.

  Zena finishes an email at her desktop, hits ALT+S to send it, and wheels herself to the table. Deck printout in hand, she summarizes a phone call with the CEO and his latest comments on our presentation. Zena supplements those with ideas of her own. Meanwhile, Harry stops by the pod with the Zen garden and rakes a couple of squiggles.

  “What do you think, Allegra?” Zena asks.

  Fuck. They stare at me. I get the feeling that Zena is calling me out because I am a woman. If I were a male analyst, she wouldn’t care. But I missed what she was saying.

  “I agree,” I flounder.

  Zena pauses as if there’s a glitch in the Matrix before promptly resuming her comments. Words zoom across the table. Adam is scribbling, but I’m slow. I feel out of this flow. The only way to describe it is that I am a full body in between two heads. Harry continues to rake. I can’t even hear the wooden tool grate sand, but the sound is as distracting as that of fingernails raking across a chalkboard.

  We must be finished, because Adam closed his notebook. Zena signs the upper right-hand corner of the presentation and records the date and time. Some MDs joke about how bad their handwriting is when they return paper markups, with oh, my chicken scratches kinds of bullshit. I once spent half an hour trying to figure out if loopy markings were a comment or a doodle, passed the presentation around to other analysts, and took a vote at the pod on how fucked I was. Two to one, I was fucked. At least Zena’s cursive is neat.

  “Thanks, team,” she says. “Goodbye, Adam. Allegra, a minute.”

  Adam departs with the deck.

  “How’s it going?” she asks. Before I can answer, she continues, “I couldn’t help but notice you didn’t speak up in our meeting.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say honestly.

  “Why not?” she demands.

  “I got distracted,” I say. “It won’t happen again.”

  She nods. “This is something we talk about at the Women’s Group,” she says. “Studies show women in finance have lower confidence in their skills, but better skills. We perform better on written tests than men.”

  This is clearly a gender pep talk, but she has no idea how low on my priority list my banking skills are right now.

  “You have the skills,” she says. “Don’t doubt them. Stick up for yourself.”

  “Find my voice,” I say.

  “Exactly,” Zena says.

  I remember my first meeting with Skylar, when she told me the exact same thing. Find your voice and tell your story. Zena spins back to her desktop. I know Zena is trying to be nice, but I also know that everyone has an agenda. When someone says, Find your voice, they already know what they want you to say.

  chapter 18

  I changed my handle from @AllegraHandstands to @Pretzel Yoga a few days after Yoga Cyclone. Enough already. The jokey comments had deteriorated and were getting plain mean. Most new ones were put-downs to the tune of “this is such a shitstagram .” A few called it “slutty.” Sure, I’m only in a sports bra in most of the videos, but come on. It was a practice gallery.

  I thought a new name would thwart more colleagues of mine feeling clever. Looking to shit on @AllegraHandstands? Surprise, “no results found,” assholes. Still, even with the new handle, my Instagram keeps growing. @PretzelYoga now links to 3,011 followers, a couple of weeks since I taught at Yoga Cyclone. I don’t even know who these people are anymore. Three thousand eleven. I have 312 friends on Facebook.

  I read some of my new direct messages at my desk.

  1. I can take picture for you ?

  2. Can you lick your own pussy

  3. What are you some good beginner yoga moves?

  4.

  5. Your hot

  6. Do you teach yoga?

  7. Do you visit LA ever?

  8. Hi PretzelYoga. Enjoying your holidays?

  9. My name is Ricardo and I am a professional photographer and videographer specializing in your niche. . . .

  10. great job. proude of you teacher. if you have time then you can visit in india. there are so many awesome locations beautiful nature Yoga Meditation Schools. this is not expensive

  11. So do you know how to do a lot of gymnastics or what

  12. Hi ! I want to do yoga. Can you help me?

  13. Hi, I love your flexibility which leads me to ask if you have any tips on which stretches work best to get really flexible. Anything will help x

  These are not I-dare-you-bro messages from colleagues. The profiles look real. They belong to teenage cheerleaders, gymnasts in training, photographers, and a couple men posting entire galleries of selfies. Once again, I face an enduring question in my life: what the actual fuck? To answer that, I research. Turns out, Instagram may be able to “promote” any post to its Discover page, where people see the content without searching for it. It’s my best guess that, after a slight organic boost from the AS trolls, one of my videos was promoted, introducing it to strangers who genuinely care about yoga.

  * * *

  Tripp slurps the top of his vanilla soft-serve swirl at the pod. At 3 p.m. every day, the cafeteria opens ice cream machines where the salad bar normally stands, complete with an abundant spread of candy toppings.

  “You know my VP called me out for using air quotes today?” he asks.

  I did know that. I happened to walk by as one surly VP crinkled slow-motion air quotes in front of him as they stood alone in a conference room.

  “How’d you use them?” Puja asks.

  “Fucking everywhere,” he says. “I have no idea what the deal’s about anymore. It’s changed so many times.”

  “Nice,” Chloe says.

  “ ‘Reverse merger,’ ” he says. He makes air quotes.

  My laugh stops abruptly as I check my phone to see a new email from Skylar. I read it, humorless. Skylar has sent me a map of the United States pinned with red flags in cities from Miami to Seattle. These are the locations of studios where I could promote my SkylarSmithYoga transformation.

  “Jesus Christ,” I mutter.

  “Exactly,” Tripp says.

  For the past three weeks, Skylar has been flooding my inbox with information about my potential yoga business trips, ending each with a smiling emoji. In another email, she included a script I could use as inspiration in describing the great influence that she had on my yoga journey. The script was a series of bullet points, which left me “wiggle room” so that it would “sound natural.”

  The first four:

  • Last year, honestly, I was miserable. From the outside, my life must have looked perfect [say: Anderson Shaw, New York City, 6 figures].

  • But inside, I knew something was wrong [say: unhappy, out of shape, unfulfilled, no friends].

  • Then I met Skylar Smith [say: we vibed, her message immediately resonated].

  • Her personalized life coaching and yoga methods changed my life. . . .

  I can only reply to her every so often. I keep postponing our next get-together—blaming work, as bankers can—and it�
��s been nearly two weeks since we’ve seen each other. The latest plan is to meet this weekend for a chakra workshop.

  I don’t have my official answer yet and don’t want to commit too soon. Skylar clearly expects me to say yes to her offer. All she did at Yoga Cyclone was say will and when, never would or if. But I don’t know yet. I would love the life she has, but I’m not 100 percent sure I can trust her. And isn’t yoga all about intuition? I don’t know. I’m not even sure if working for her would be closer to or farther from my dream of teaching in the first place. Skylar texted that she sensed distance between us, and again I blamed work. She called yoga the “real work.”

  “Oh, how expedient,” Tripp says.

  The SAT word snares my attention. Tripp is reacting to an email from the second-to-last person I’d want to hear from.

  From: Mark Swift

  To: Vivienne Wood, Tripp Thompson, Allegra Cobb

  Fri 8 Dec 3:15 p.m.

  Could you swing by?

  “Did Mark eat Jason?” Tripp asks.

  “We’d better go,” I say.

  Tripp gulps the rest of his ice cream in one swallow and buttons his top button. I walk a pace or two after him, hiding behind the broad V of his shoulders and back. I haven’t answered Mark’s texts in weeks. He texted me a couple of times asking how I was, but I didn’t respond. Skylar wasn’t telling me to flirt with him anymore, and that was the whole reason I’d engaged in the first place. Mark let it go.

  I avoid eye contact with him now as I step into his office, as an extension of my ghosting. I doubt he gives a shit, because this job does not leave headspace for drama. Tripp and I take seats across from Vivienne.

  “Team, I have some bad news,” Mark says.

  “What did Titan say about our last book?” Vivienne asks.

  Mark waves her comment away like a mosquito near his face.

  “We never gave them that book,” he says. “The deal is on hold.”

  Vivienne becomes, if possible, paler. Bonuses are close enough that I can almost see their six-figure shadows in the snow. Delaying the deal means our fees will miss this year’s cycle, if they come at all.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “It has nothing to do with the valuation or any of the work we gave them,” Mark says. “They’ve always understood all of that. It’s relationship issues between the companies. They just don’t like each other. Who would take over? Where would the headquarters be? We can’t throw pitch books at bickering.”

  Mark’s phone rings. Vivienne jumps.

  “Excuse me,” she whispers.

  “I’m afraid I have another call,” he says. “I wanted to tell the team in person because I know how much this deal meant to us.”

  I picture Dad.

  “Yes,” Vivienne says. “Excuse us.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Tripp says.

  We file out behind Vivienne. Is she limping? The last words this woman needs to hear today are relationship issues. She turns into her office and sinks dejectedly into her posture chair. On the walk back, we pass Harry. He is actually reading Yoga for Dummies in full view as if it is a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

  Tripp drops his client notebook three feet, where it lands on his desk.

  “Bitchtits,” he mutters. “The deal wasn’t even announced. We did all that work, and I can’t even put that shit on my résumé. All I have on there is two shitty IPOs.”

  “Is Vivienne okay?” Puja asks.

  We turn around to look at Vivienne in her office. She curves into a defeated slouch over her keyboard, holding her head in her hands. Her chest heaves. She might actually be crying.

  “Jesus, did she get fired?” Chloe asks.

  “No,” Tripp says. “Titan-Sierra on hold.”

  “Wow,” Chloe says. She doesn’t sound sorry.

  “I literally don’t know how this day could get any worse,” Tripp says.

  Right on cue, Mark’s daughter appears on my left like a terrifying apparition of a twin from The Shining. She wears a green uniform and carries a clipboard. Oh my God, why the fuck are you here? She stares without a sense of humor.

  “Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?” she asks.

  “Is that a fucking joke?” Tripp mutters under his breath.

  I can’t think of a more coercive point of sale. Her brother appears next to her, twitching with youthful energy as if he is possessed. Banking is now literally a horror movie.

  “Sure!” Chloe jumps in.

  All four members of the pod sign our names across dotted lines on the form jammed into her clipboard and place our orders. I haven’t eaten a Girl Scout cookie since the toasted-coconut Samoa days of middle school. Luckily, they still sell those.

  “How much do I owe you?” I ask.

  “Twenty dollars,” she says.

  She isn’t fucking around. This is a better business model than managed care: mark up your shit to the sky and then sell into a customer base socially obligated to say yes.

  “Do you take credit cards?” Tripp asks.

  “Cash only,” she says.

  “Pretzel cart motherfucker,” Tripp mutters.

  “You eat those?” I ask.

  “What, you’re never hungover?” he asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “Oh right,” he says. “Yoga.”

  The four of us pull out our wallets and scrounge together crumpled ones and fives to meet our minimum payment. I’ve never felt as poor as I do right now. Assistants aren’t spared either. I watch the Swift girl sell to Trixie next. Cough it up, Trix-alicious. Trixie has been bringing her own two kids to the office for every unnecessary school holiday since forever. President’s Day, they’re here. Columbus Day, they’re here. Her kids play a game called Calculator, where they run to different analysts, ask for a number, and then add it to twenty-seven to see what it is. No matter what the sum is, they gasp. Last time they played it, Puja said, “I wish I were a kid. I’m so bored by everything now.”

  It’s par for the course. When we started as full-times, the HG group heads ended our welcome session with a request to treat each other well. This was the same meeting where they told us to hide our badges around the city. The MDs acknowledged that popular opinion of Anderson is extremely low and advised that we stick together. So we tolerate family visits.

  “I need a drink,” Tripp says.

  “Preach,” I say.

  He slaps the table. “All right, let’s do it,” he says. He stands and points at Puja, then at Chloe. Neither budges. “Oh my God, come on.”

  “It’s three thirty,” Chloe says.

  “All righty then,” Tripp says. “It’s you and me, A.”

  “Now?” I ask.

  “Let’s go,” he says.

  At this point, what do I have to lose?

  * * *

  Tripp and I sit at the seriously turdy bar at Samson’s, a pub close to Anderson. It shares the block with Gucci, Burberry, and Hermès. There’s even a Michelin-starred restaurant nearby, where Chloe went with her boyfriend for the four-hour tasting menu on their two-year anniversary. Samson’s, though, is lit like a cave and smells like smoke. Its bar is lined with rickety stools that spark the aha moment as to why they’re called stools in the first place. It’s as if this bar was here first, the entire neighborhood was constructed around it, and Samson’s is not fucking changing.

  Tripp and I are flanked by two disheveled alcoholics. Tripp faces me from his stool, back to the rest of the room. He nurses his IPA and grimaces as if it’s sludge. My glass of ice water has left a ring on the countertop, which I use as clear ink for the pretend pen of my straw.

  “I should take an online depression test,” Tripp says.

  I already have this month. I’m not.

  “Fuck,” he says. “Such bullshit.”

  “Why do you do it then?” I ask.

  “This guy who lives in front of my parents in Southampton was a banker, and now he runs a hedge fund,” Tripp says. “He has five p
ools. Five fucking pools.”

  I’m not surprised. Put in your banking hours now, go to the buy side, and then literally swim in benefits later.

  “Wow,” I say, unimpressed.

  “How fucking sick is that?” he asks.

  “Very fucking sick,” I say.

  We both check our phones. I have two new requests since we got here: Print five equity research reports on one client and book a dial-in for a conference call with another. Welcome to Trixie’s job. The line between analyst and assistant can blur. This shit would take VPs a second to do themselves, but people here are obsessed with saving micro-increments of time and asserting their boss status at every chance.

  “You know, I have to be sober to do all of this shit but doing all of this shit makes me want to drink,” Tripp says.

  He takes another swig.

  “Anyway,” I say, picking the old conversation back up, “if you live next to someone with five pools, aren’t you, like, fine?”

  He smirks.

  “You only have four pools or something?” I ask.

  “Broo-tahl,” he says. “Broo-tahl.”

  “Fine, fine,” I say. I let it go.

  “You mean, why aren’t I sucking the allowance teat?” he asks.

  “Ew,” I say.

  “Exactly,” he says. “Not today, A. Not fucking today.”

  “But if you could do anything, what would you do?” I ask.

  “Make a shit-ton of money,” he says.

  “No, money aside,” I say. “Take the money out of it. What do you wake up in the morning and get excited about?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. He shrugs. “What about you? Yoga?” He continues before I can answer. “Jesus, you’re probably judging the shit out of me.” I laugh. “Hold on now,” he says. “It’s not like I think money is everything, by the way. It’s really about freedom. I don’t want to rely on my parents. I want to pay for my own shit and live in nice places. I want to buy this drink. Well, this drink’s definitely on AS, but other drinks. It’s about living on my own terms.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “But what about you? Yoga?” he asks.