by L. Maleki
This worked—until it didn’t.
One morning, Andrew, the CEO I had yet to meet (though I often caught him out of the corner of my eye slipping in and out of his office, a tall, dark-haired man in his forties who favored beautifully tailored suits), sent me an email. It said, I need to leave Teterboro tomorrow morning. Thanks. That was it. Nothing else.
I wanted to write back, “Alright, good for you,” but knew that was not the best play.
When you Google “Teterboro,” you will discover it is a town in New Jersey. That was not a surprise to me. Of course it was a town. What else would it be? The name of his lover? I doubted Andrew would email me about that. But it wasn’t until the sixteenth Google entry I noticed Teterboro had an airport.
I looked up the website for the private jet company Frank and Andrew preferred, and voilà, they were based out of the Teterboro Airport. I’m a genius. I called the office and spoke with a pilot. He called back in ten minutes, assuring me a plane for Andrew would be ready to go first thing. Some of what he said was garbled by roaring engines in the background, but the plane was scheduled.
The next morning, Andrew was standing next to my desk when I got there. He was composed, stern, his face emotionless.
“You’re Paris, I assume. Nice to meet you. Can you tell me the tail number?”
I stared at him blankly. “Umm.”
Irritation skittered across his face, then disappeared. “I need the tail number for the plane. Otherwise the helicopter pilot won’t know where to take me.”
Helicopter. Did he say helicopter?
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes, sir, yes, but … but maybe not in this case … helicopter?”
“Sweet Jesus. You haven’t scheduled my helicopter hop? And you don’t know what plane I’m flying on?” He slapped his hip, the sound dampened by expensive wool. “If you don’t know something, ask questions. If I can’t get a heli now, I’m going to miss the departure time. And then I’ll miss my meeting. Do you think the president of Coca-Cola is going to care that I’m late because of a new assistant?”
He hovered over me as I found the number for the helicopter service on East 34th, the one PRCM used to get out to Teterboro Airport. By the grace of all that was good and holy, there was a heli and a pilot available.
Andrew visibly relaxed. Picking up his briefcase, he said in a much kinder voice, “Make sure my driver is pulled up around front and that you call the heli service with the tail number of the private plane, so we can find it. And, Paris, know when to ask for help.”
His tall frame disappeared down the hall. I jerked my stiff body to the restroom. Quite a few traders gave me weird looks, probably wondering if I was having a seizure. Behind a locked door, I stared at the ceiling, my hands shaking in my lap. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
But once I got the lingo, acronyms, and nicknames down, I actually felt like I had a decent shot at pulling it off. I wasn’t stupid. I was quite bright at times, I reminded myself, and the basics were not too terribly different than any other job in finance: use money to make money.
By the time Friday rolled around, I was developing a cocky swagger. I’d helped a New York Knicks coach understand basic contract language and I scheduled time for a CNBC news anchor to meet with Frank when he returned. Some of it was overwhelming, but only because there was so much to learn, not because I couldn’t do it.
Michelle met me in the break room as I retrieved my leftover hummus and vegetable sticks to take home for the weekend. She took off her suit jacket and sat down, propping up her feet on a gray plastic chair, fanning her face with the newest edition of the Wall Street Journal. “Paris. I admit, I had little faith in you.”
She undid her ponytail and shook her straight blonde tresses free. With her thick, shiny hair juxtaposed against her black-framed glasses and her white button-down shirt about to bust open, I expected seventies porn music to start playing overhead at any second. She looked at me and offered a slow grin. If I had lesbian tendencies, I would have swooned. I’d always crushed on smart girls. Who didn’t?
“But I think I was wrong,” she said. “You’ve got brains, and I’m pretty sure there’s a backbone in there somewhere.” She rubbed her temples briefly and then re-gathered her hair into a ponytail. “I’m sorry if I’ve been hard on you. I’m here if you need me. You’ve got this.” She paused. “But don’t trust anybody.”
Then, Saturday night at 7:04, it all went to hell.
Frank sent me an email from Mt. Vernon, Illinois, where he was at a conference:
I’m flying back tomorrow morning. Make sure the plane has Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Financial Times. —FC
At first blush, that didn’t seem so bad. Thank you, Michelle, for making me put the contact list in my phone. I knew he was flying on a private jet with the company I’d just called for Andrew—but the pilot had no way of getting the papers.
“Hey, we’ve got the Saturday editions. You sure that won’t work?”
“No, he specifically said Sunday.”
The man on the other end let out a gusty sigh then muttered something under his breath. Apparently, they’d been on the receiving end of Frank’s wrath before.
“Okay.” I rushed my words. “Let me see what I can do from my end. I’ll get back to you.” And so began my Saturday night sojourn into the bowels of the phone directories for Mt. Vernon. Unfortunately, no one in Mt. Vernon reads newspapers. Not one Barnes & Noble, hotel, gas station, or Laundromat had a copy or even a subscription. After burning through the same sources in Summersville with the same big goose egg, the panic scrabbling at the back of my brain grew stronger.
At eleven o’clock, I wrote an email back to Frank. My first message to my new boss.
Hi Frank,
I have called every place in Mt. Vernon and Springfield that might have these newspapers but nobody carries them. I’ve also spoken with another plane company, XOJet, but they don’t have the papers, either. My only choice, with your approval, is to get a driver to pick them up after midnight tonight in Chicago, which is five hours away, and then drive them to your hotel in Mt. Vernon. A car service from Chicago said it would charge you $900. Okay with the cost?
Let me know.
Paris
I figured he would either ignore my email or berate me for such an outlandish idea. He replied within three minutes.
Yes. –FC
The first car service I had called—who had given me the initial nine hundred dollar quote—realized I was serious when I called back. But they decided the money wasn’t worth it.
Feeling dizzy, I called what seemed to be hundreds of drivers in Chicago, asking if they would drive the five hours to make the 10 a.m. flight—the flight was actually at eleven o’clock, but I didn’t want them to be late. Everyone laughed at me, saying the same thing: “Do you know how far of a drive that is? That is going to cost you!” but then inevitably deciding they’d rather go to bed.
I had one last car service to try. The guy who answered was the owner and said they’d do it, but I made him repeat himself since I was having a hard time hearing over the heartbeat in my ears. He didn’t have a driver free but said he’d leave by 5 a.m. and drive there himself for the nine hundred dollars, because, “I feel sorry for ya, girl.” I thanked him, offering my firstborn child. He declined and promised he wouldn’t oversleep. I prayed and knocked on wood.
I did not sleep. I lay in my bed in my new apartment, memorizing the ceiling tile pattern. Outside, the screeching tires, revving engines, honking horns, fire trucks, and screaming drunks made a cacophony of ugly noise. Gina had shrugged when I’d first mentioned the incessant traffic and told me it would eventually turn into white noise and “sound like the ocean.” Well, this particular ocean is as peaceful as a churning, sixty-foot tsunami bearing down on me.
At 6:10 a.m., I got a text from the driver saying he was on his way. Roaring tsunami or no, I fell asleep w
ith a smile on my face.
At 9:15 a.m., my phone woke me. It was the pilot, letting me know Frank had moved up the flight. I texted the driver and prayed to Mother Earth and the gods of the freeway to turn red lights to green, part the traffic, and let my person through.
Luckily, after I bit off my fingernails and paced a groove into my floor, the driver arrived in time to catch Frank instructing the crew to shut the doors. He sent me a reply, to let me know the deed was done.
Dropped off the papers with your boss. It was weird, he acted put out. Anyway, thanks for the business and good luck with the new job. Your boss seems like an ass hat.
I spent the next hour staring out the window, breathing in, breathing out, concentrating on the light rain streaking the glass. I startled when my phone beeped with another text. I assumed it was Gina, wanting to do brunch somewhere laden with hungover Wall Street boys.
It was Darien.
I hear you made it into the bigs! Congrats! I’m so proud of you. I always knew you were going to be someone. I’m going to be in NYC soon, let’s have dinner. I miss you, Paris.
I turned off my phone. My peaceful moment lay dead at my feet.
The next morning, I beat Frank to the office. I went to Michelle, handed her an Americano, and told her about the weekend adventure. “The coffee is to thank you for helping me out last week.”
“Ah.” She sipped from the white paper cup, leaned back in her chair, pushed her glasses up her nose. “He was testing you. He would normally never approve nine hundred dollars for five newspapers. Money is better spent on entertainment. Live entertainment. And he’s never early for flights—he’s always late. For flights, meetings, everything.”
I settled in at my desk, pondering. Was it always going to be like this? Hopefully this shady operation was a one-time deal to see if I could cope under pressure. A grin spread across my face. I’d pulled it off.
Chapter 8
My back cracked, running pops up my spine, as I levered myself out of the desk chair at the end of my first real day. I wobbled on my gladiator pumps. Six o’clock. Time to punch out.
Then Franklin Coyle walked in. Nine hours late for work.
“Hey, Paris. Right?” He marched through the workspace and past me like he was late for a meeting. He wasn’t. “Come on.”
He left his office door open behind him. I stood in the doorway. He dropped into his chair and started plunking away on his keyboard. Behind me, there were maybe two or three traders left and one research assistant. They were shutting down and packing up.
I swung my head back and forth a few times. Day one with the boss and already I’m going to break Rule #1 of Protect Yourself from Sexual Harassment: being alone in an office with this guy.
He was talking at his screen, as if I were standing beside him taking notes. I hurried over, hoping to understand his mutterings without having to ask him to repeat himself.
“There are a few things I never want to hear about. For instance, refilling the water coolers or stocking the office supplies or crap in the break room, and for God’s sake”—he stopped, pierced me with his squinty eyes—“tell that loon down in Compliance to keep her tampon issues to herself!”
“Okay, will do.” What the hell? “Anything else for tonight? I’m heading out, Mr…. Frank.”
“Kind of early, isn’t it?”
“Oh. Um, it’s after six. But I’m happy to stay if you need something.”
Please, please don’t need anything.
Frank let out a long sigh but said nothing. I stood there awkwardly. After a minute, I crept out and shut the heavy, frosted-glass door, afraid to draw his attention.
I should have stayed in there. I’m sure I just failed a test.
Unsure of what to do, I stood at my desk and pressed my fingers against the desktop, swaying back and forth. I closed my eyes for a second, fighting off a headache. I opened them to see an email notification slide across my computer screen. The subject line screamed TAMPONS! It was Frank.
I forwarded it to my home email so I could figure out what the tampon debacle was about while in the privacy of my living room, with a bottle of Patrón on hand.
“No way.”
“Gina, I cannot make this stuff up.”
“Oh my God. Those are some crazy, entitled one-percenters, right there!” Gina guffawed, while Lucia draped her arm gracefully across the back of my couch and smiled, distantly amused.
“I know, right?” I opened up the email to read to them. “Listen to this. The compliance officer sent Frank an email complaining that the receptionist screwed up. She’d stocked their bathroom with tampons made for twelve-year-olds, and the women on the thirty-sixth floor were resorting to using two at a time. It was that or they had to bring their own from home, which is ‘simply unacceptable,’ she says. ‘We are not going to walk down the hall carrying tampons like we are in middle school!’ And then she suggests the receptionist be reprimanded because she ‘became snotty and told me to use the pads that are in there!’ Well, okay, in this woman’s defense, those pads look like they’ve been in there since George Bush was president. The first one.”
“Sounds like the cucchiaio d’argento is in her fica,” Lucia said, removing a pack of cigarettes from the bag next to her.
Gina, mid-gulp of white wine, shot clear liquid out her nose. She gasped, tearing up. She finally stuttered, “Oh, no, you didn’t just say that!”
“What? What did you say?” I hated to be left out of a joke. “And you know perfectly well you cannot smoke in here, Lucia.”
“She said this woman was born with a silver spoon in her vagina.” Gina crawled onto the couch next to Lucia, took the cigarette out of her mouth, and hugged her, laughing. “In her chucky! You are my favorite person.”
Lucia patted her back awkwardly and then pushed her away. “Give me back my cigarette.”
“Gross, Lucia,” I said. “In Farsi, we’d just say jende. Snobby bitch.”
We spent the next ten minutes teaching each other useful Persian and Italian terms, for when we were at a port surrounded by foul-mouthed sailors.
Watching the two of them huddled up companionably on the couch, I became acutely aware of my loneliness. There was a closeness between them that was special, like sisters. They’d both moved from Italy as children and grew up on the same street in Lodi, New Jersey, fending off the same bullies as they learned English together. I was their friend, but they were connected in a way I was not. I was not connected to anybody like that.
“Hey, have you guys been back to The Rooftop? Is it true that photographer Benji has a girlfriend?”
“Are we talking about the chick with abs of steel? And the guy with those adorbs freckles? I saw her stick her tongue down his throat the other day. I don’t know if they’re going out, but something was going in.” Gina waggled her eyebrows, and Lucia smiled a half-smile.
Oh, woe is me, I thought, knowing on some level it was stupid to be bitter about anything right now, not when I had a great apartment and a great job. Darien had emailed a few times since his initial text, but there was no way I was letting that guy back into my life, especially not on a long-distance plan, when he’d be out of my supervisory range. Maybe it’s time I start meeting people. But not barflies. I’m too old for hookups.
Lucia stood and stretched, sensual and skeletal. “I must go sleep. I am on the runway tomorrow.”
“Oh, I thought you usually worked the weekend shows.”
“I am covering for a friend. It is a sporting goods conference at Javits.”
“Yeah, but tell her why the model needed to be replaced,” said Gina.
Lucia snorted. “I do not find it as funny as you do. It could happen to any of us.” She frowned at some unspoken horror. “She went in for a spray tan this morning. As she stepped out of the booth, her doctor called and told her she has the HPV virus.”
“That’s keeping her from the show? What in the hell was she going to be modeling?” I asked.
&n
bsp; “No, it was not that.” Lucia shook her head. “She’d been tested two months before and she did not have the virus then. Her boyfriend must have slept with someone else and then given her a little present. So … she started crying. While the spray tan was tacky.”
“Ohhh.”
“Wide, white streaks … she must have cried very hard.”
I put my hands to my cheeks, sorry for the girl. “Wow. One more reason to be glad I don’t need to tan.” Or have to deal with a boyfriend, I guess.
Later that night, settled into bed at an unreasonably early hour, I called my dad.
“Parisa! Khob hasti?”
“I’m fine, Dad, I just missed you.”
“I miss you as well, koshgelam.”
I smiled to myself when he called me his beautiful girl, looking down at my ratty college sweatshirt. “It’s a good thing you can’t see me right now. My face is breaking out like a twelve-year-old’s.”
“You are always beautiful, do not be silly. Why the acne? Is it stress?”
“Yes, but I’ll be okay, Dad. Just learning the ropes, you know.”
“Do you need me to come out there?”
“No, no, I’m fine, I promise.”
“The purchase of a ticket would be difficult, but I will do it for you, Parisa, if you need me.”
“Seriously, it’s okay … Wait, what? You can’t afford a plane ticket?” Again with the money comment. This from the guy who put money into a savings account every day of his life. And I mean literally. Even on weekends and holidays, sick days, and Super Bowl Sundays. Quarters, ones, fives, sometimes a twenty. “Dad? Tell me what’s going on.”
“Azizam,” he soothed, calling me his dear, “things are slow, but you already knew that. Before you hear it from anyone else, you should know I am considering getting a second, part-time job, just until things pick up again.” He paused at my gasp. “But for now, I am simply tightening the belt. And hey, I’ve got a new belt—it is made out of a watch.”
“Huh?” Last time I was home, he’d told me he was too busy to take care of his bills.