For the Love of Money

by Sam Polk

  I knew the minute her plane was scheduled to land, but I didn’t call her. I was unwilling to sacrifice the hand I’d gained. Better to let her call me, I thought. She did. We agreed to meet for lunch.

  Both of us were reserved, cautious, but soon conversation rippled between us. I told her excitedly about my internship, which started in two weeks. She told me she’d missed me. I paid the bill, and as we left the restaurant I casually asked her if she wanted to spend the evening together. I saw the relief flood her, and I pulled her to me and kissed her.

  Later she came home with me, to the same place where I’d slept with a girl named Cassandra the night before. That night, before Sloane and I had sex, I put on a condom because I’d been having unprotected sex with other women. It was the first time we’d used a condom since Sloane went on birth control. I saw her notice, and I thought she was going to say something, but she didn’t.

  Over the next few weeks I saw a lot of Sloane but continued to see the other women as well. I could tell by how Sloane avoided asking me about evenings I spent away from her that she knew.

  CHAPTER 15

  Brand-Name Life

  ¤

  In June 2002, at the age of twenty-two, I stepped out of an elevator onto the CSFB trading floor on the first day of my summer internship.

  The room was the size of an airplane hangar. Glass-walled offices fenced the perimeter. Rows and rows of trading desks stretched across the room. On the walls hung a hundred glowing flat-screen TVs. Each trader sat in front of six high-tech computer monitors and a phone turret with enough dials, knobs, and buttons to make it seem like a cockpit. My eyes fastened on a trader in a light-blue button-down. He was talking rapidly into the microphone tip of a headset. He looked like he was running the command center of a spaceship.

  “That’s Greco,” said the HR woman who’d come up behind me, pointing at the trader I was staring at. “He trades ­telecom—Verizon, AT&T—on the corporate bond desk.” Trading floors are laid out like school cafeterias—instead of each table belonging to a clique, each belonged to a certain market.

  “You’ll be on corporates for a month,” said the HR woman, holding a clipboard, wearing pearls and a gray pantsuit. “Then you’ll rotate to mortgages. It’ll be between you and two other interns; only one of you will be offered a full-time job. Good luck.”

  Getting that offer was the whole point of my summer. I was approaching the elbow between college and the real world, where an Ivy League education was most concretely valuable, where securing a full-time position at a prestigious firm meant entrance into the highest echelon of American capitalism. The first step toward becoming one of the business leaders you read about in the paper.

  When markets were up, banks hired every one of their interns. But now that the Internet bubble had burst, and the stock market’s value had declined by half, turning an internship into a full-time job had grown difficult. I was terrified about not securing a position at a blue-chip firm and disappearing into the anonymity of regular life.

  I watched as the HR woman walked back to her office, passing rows of men glued to their computer screens. One trader strolled down the aisle casually swinging a golf club. Some were on the phone and I could hear the hum of conversation like in a restaurant. The atmosphere was focused, professional—nothing like the shouting and waving of the trading floors on TV.

  I realized I was gawking. I didn’t have any idea what to do, or where to stand. My face flushed. I saw Anna, a junior trader who’d interviewed me. She looked up, a phone pressed to her ear. I waved. She smiled. Then her eyes flicked back to her screens.

  I walked over and stood behind her chair. I figured she’d sense my presence and get off the phone and I could ask her what I should be doing. I didn’t realize at the time that standard rules of propriety don’t apply on a Wall Street trading floor. In the weeks ahead I’d become accustomed to standing behind a trader for fifteen, twenty minutes before they’d even acknowledge me.

  After a minute I thought maybe she hadn’t seen me so I stepped closer. She didn’t even look up; she just speared an index finger into the air, indicating that I should wait. I felt conspicuous, embarrassed. I stood there for ten minutes before Anna hung up the phone. “Grab a folding chair from that closet,” she said.

  My job was to learn how a trading floor worked by watching and asking questions. But the last thing in the world a trader wanted was some college kid peppering her with questions, so in reality my job was to fade into the background, like furniture. I spent the morning listening to Anna and scribbling notes to appear busy. By early afternoon, unaccustomed to adult workdays, I was struggling to keep my eyes open when a trader across the aisle stood up holding a World War II infantry helmet. “It’s time,” he said.

  Everyone laughed and reached for their wallets. “That’s Jared Caldwell,” Anna said. “He trades energy. He’s a stud.” The next few minutes consisted of traders flicking their gold and silver credit cards into Jared’s helmet. When all the cards had been collected, Jared picked a card, read out the name, and then tossed the card back to the person it belonged to. Then again and again and again, while traders ribbed one another, chortling when their own names were called. When just two cards were left, everyone knew whose they were. Jared picked one out and put it facedown on the desk. Then he grabbed the last card.

  “Today,” Jared said, “coffee is on . . . Hinton!” The group exploded, laughing and yelling. “Where’s the intern?” Jared yelled. I hustled over. He shook my hand, gave me Hinton’s credit card, and told me to go to Dunkin’ Donuts and get coffee for the whole desk. I walked toward the elevators with a huge smile across my face. This was fun!

  That night I went out with the other interns. A willowy French girl from Georgetown laughed loudly when I told the group how I’d stood behind a trader for twenty minutes without being acknowledged. She kept glancing at me, and when she went to the bar for a drink, I followed. Her name was Melanie, and soon we were chatting, just the two of us. Two managing directors showed up; they both leered at Melanie as they talked.

  Two hours later, I was drunk. When Melanie said she was leaving, I said I was, too, and soon we were pressed against a building making out. I asked Melanie to come home with me, to the Alphabet City apartment I was subletting with another finance guy. She said no, that she had to wake up early.

  Reluctantly, I stumbled home alone. I packed some pot into a glass pipe I kept in the drawer next to my bed, smoked, and went to sleep.

  I was on the trading floor by five thirty the next morning. I asked Jared, the trader with the credit card helmet, if I could sit with him. “Sure,” he said. “Just plug in this headset, and you can listen to all my calls. Write down any questions, and I’ll answer them at the end of the day.”

  I spent the rest of the morning listening to Jared’s calls, safely blending into the background. In the afternoon, Jared spent twenty minutes answering my questions, mostly about what certain words meant in the foreign language of trader-­speak.

  “Anything else?” he asked after answering my last question.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Who is that?” I pointed to the biggest office on the floor, where a tall good-looking blond man in his thirties sat reclined in his chair, his feet propped on the desk. I’d seen him walking the floor earlier. People had stood to shake his hand.

  “That’s Jack DiMaio,” Jared said. “He’s thirty-five and the boss of the whole floor.” Jared told me how Jack had organized a walkout when the traders thought they were being underpaid; to entice them to return, management had given all the traders three-year multi-million-dollar bonus guarantees. Jack was guaranteed $15 million per year and named head of fixed income.

  I looked at Jack, reclined in his office, and bristled with envy. I imagined myself in his position, my feet propped on the desk. The boss of the whole floor.

  The next day I was sitting with Jared again
when Jack ­DiMaio called him. I looked to Jared to see if he wanted privacy, but he motioned for me to listen. After a few minutes of talking about the market, the conversation turned casual. Jared, a car aficionado, said he admired Jack’s new Porsche. “Well,” said Jack, “then as a part of this year’s bonus, it’s yours.”

  I almost fainted. I’d dreamt of being rich since I was a kid. But I’d never imagined a world where people gave each other $70,000 cars in a casual phone call.

  Before that summer, the most successful guy I knew was Sloane’s father. At CSFB, I saw a thousand Jack Taylors, men who had gone to brand-name schools and gotten jobs in brand-name firms and wore brand-name clothes in their brand-name lives. They lived in places like Darien and Greenwich, took Caribbean vacations, and belonged to country clubs. The most important thing in my life was getting what they had.

  I spent the next few weeks working feverishly. I was the first one on the desk in the morning, arriving at 5:00 a.m. At night there were dinners and drinks with traders and executives, and how well you performed in those situations was as critical as your performance on the desk. Getting a full-time job offer was not based on how smart you were. It was a question of whether the traders liked you.

  They wanted to know if I was cool. Did I play a sport in college? Which one? There is a hierarchy of athletics on Wall Street: Lacrosse at the top, crew at the bottom. Wrestling was right in the middle—not as cool as soccer or basketball, but tough enough to impress.

  They also wanted to know how social you were. Time after time veterans told me that Wall Street works hard, but they play harder. You had to prove that you could handle yourself in a bar.

  To the traders, as an intern, I was an afterthought. To me, they were the most important people in the world. I can rattle off the names of those CSFB corporate bond traders like I can the seventh-grade cheerleaders from junior high. They were the gatekeepers of my future.

  I went out every night. I rarely called Sloane, and when she called me I often didn’t answer. One night, I hooked up with two girls in the same night. The first was a Duke sorority girl I’d met on Super Day, and when she left my apartment I was still drunk and still looking to party. So I called an engineering major at Columbia whom I’d hooked up with often while Sloane was in Italy and invited her over. By the time she arrived I was nearly blacked out. We started to have sex. I pushed her to do things she didn’t like. She got pissed, stormed home. I passed out.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Fulcrum

  ¤

  Four weeks into my internship, Jared and I had become close, some of the traders—Greco, Jory, Hinton—seemed to like me, and I’d received several compliments on my work ethic. Sloane had gotten a waitressing job at the trendy Soho House and was taking a summer class at NYU. That Friday, after work, I was so exhausted that I went home and climbed straight into bed. I spent all of Saturday on my couch, watching TV and smoking weed.

  The next day, Sunday, July 22, 2002, my high school friend Nate Robertson was in town, and he invited me to play in a softball game in Central Park. I hadn’t worked out once that summer, was about thirty pounds overweight, and was afraid I’d look stupid. In my first at bat, I nearly struck out before hitting a lazy pop-up to left-center, straight into the outfielder’s glove. But in the last inning, as I was playing shortstop, the batter hit a high-bouncing ground ball far to my left, and I made a blind underhanded stab at it—a prayer, really, that was answered as the ball sailed cleanly into the pocket of my glove. I ripped it out and flung a dart to first. Over the next few weeks I’d think often about the easy happiness of that moment.

  After the game we smoked a joint and walked over to The West End, that bar I’d frequented at Columbia, for wings and pitchers. At the bar, I received a text from Sloane saying she needed to talk to me. I was stoned but knew immediately that something was wrong. I called her, but when she heard I was at a bar she said we’d talk later, when I was no longer drunk and high. I left the bar immediately and started walking to the subway, my stomach in knots.

  I jumped in a cab instead of taking the subway. I wanted to get to my Alphabet City sublet fast, call her up, and tell her I was sorry. Make things right. I’d do whatever she wanted. I’d stop seeing other women. I’d slow down on the drinking and the pot. I’d apologize. Whatever it took to win her back.

  By the time I arrived home, it was dark outside. I called Sloane. Half an hour later she walked through the front door. Her face was pale, serious.

  “There’s something I need to say to you,” I said.

  “Me first,” she said.

  The sublet was two stories—the first floor and the basement. Sloane and I went downstairs to my bedroom, a cave with no windows, and sat on the bed facing each other. I tried to show her with my eyes that I loved her.

  “I love you, Sam, but I don’t want to be with you anymore.”

  I felt like I’d been struck by a speeding car. I started to argue with her. She put her hand up, silencing me.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” she said. “I don’t like who you’ve become.”

  I was hit with a rush of pain so fierce that I couldn’t breathe. She left the room.

  I needed to catch her. I jumped up, ran up the stairs, and flew out the front door and down the steps onto the street.

  I saw a cab rolling toward the end of the block. She must have gotten in it. I ran after it, but it turned the corner.

  She was gone.

  I stood in the middle of the street, feeling like a hole had ripped open in my chest. After a minute, I went back inside and sat down on the couch. I’d expected an exchange, a push-pull. I’d expected ultimatums. But there was nothing incremental in her actions. She was done playing.

  I made my way downstairs and lay in bed. I curled myself into a ball. It felt like my internal organs had exploded. My neck muscles felt like suspension cables.

  A sack of weed sat on my bed. I retrieved a pipe and started to pack it. Halfway through, I stopped. I suspected that if I got drunk or high I might fall into a darker abyss, and I had no idea what would happen if I did. I put the weed back in the Ziploc bag and put it away. I lay down again.

  After a time I went upstairs. The apartment was dark and quiet. I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat on the couch. Bruce Springsteen had released The Rising that summer, and I turned it up on the stereo.

  I stayed up all night, sitting on the couch, smoking cigarettes, staring into nothing. By sunrise I was dizzy. The heartache throbbed. I had to be at work in a few hours, but that seemed impossible. The only thing that could make the pain stop was getting Sloane back. I walked over to the NYU building where she had rented a room. I took a seat on the curb and hunched forward with my arms wrapped around myself. A woman walking by asked if I was okay. I nodded, turned away.

  I waited for over an hour. Finally Sloane came out, wearing a black dress for her waitressing job at Soho House. I stood up and yelled out her name. She looked shocked, then scared. I started toward her.

  “No!” she shouted. A cab pulled up in front of her and she opened the door and then said, sharply, “Go to work, Sam.” She got in the cab and it drove away. I stood there in the street, alone.

  I walked home. It was seven. I was already late. I put on my clothes without showering or shaving and took a cab to work. Soon the elevator doors were opening and I was walking onto the trading floor. I sat down somewhere and tried to look busy for about an hour. Then I looked at my watch. Only ten minutes had passed. I wasn’t going to make it.

  I couldn’t do anything but be honest. I went up to Anna, the junior trader whom I had shadowed on my first day. I told her my girlfriend had broken up with me, and I was in too much pain to be at work. Despite her hardened demeanor on the floor, Anna was compassionate that day. Maybe she herself was a veteran of difficult relationships. In an act of kindness I’ve remembered ever since, she said she would cover
for me. She’d tell the other traders I was at an intern event all day. I thanked her and left.

  When I got home, I returned to my cocoon on the couch. The air was quiet. A shaft of sunlight speared the room and I saw dust particles floating in it. I lit a cigarette.

  I don’t like who you’ve become, Sloane had said. Those words were a knife in my heart, but at the same time they held a mirror to it. She didn’t like who I’d become. Neither, I realized, did I.

  I was tired. Tired of lying. Tired of hurting other people. Tired of ruining everything that was important to me. Tired of numbing. Mostly, I was tired of myself. I wanted to be a different person. I wanted to live a different kind of life.

  CHAPTER 17

  Remnants of an Accident

  ¤

  “Do you know why Sloane broke up with you?” Linda asked. I’d called her and asked for help.

  “Not exactly,” I said carefully.

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s happened since the last time we spoke?”

  I was accustomed to guarding my secrets, but now I shared everything. About the other girls, about the drugs and drinking, about how I’d treated Sloane when she was in Italy, about how I’d treated her since she got back.

  When I was finished, Linda was quiet.

  “Sam,” she finally said, “what do you want?”

  “To get Sloane back,” I said.

  “It doesn’t sound like that’s possible,” she said.

  “Well, then,” I said, “I want the pain to stop.”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible, either,” she said. “At least not for a while. You’ve been suppressing feelings for a long time. It’ll get harder before it’s easier.”

  She asked if I would stop drinking and using drugs. When I told her I had a bag of weed downstairs, she suggested I dump it in the toilet with her on the phone. When I opened the bag, the pungent smell of marijuana slapped me. I held the buds in my hand for a second and then dropped them into the toilet. Watching them swirl down the drain was one of the scariest things I’d ever seen. I was unarmored.