The Tourists

by Jeff Hobbs

  It’s seven years earlier and we’re all running around an oval loop in our matching blue-and-white school-issued gear, and then—without us realizing it—this enclosed loop opens and people like David Taylor stay in one lane, and people like me wander.

  And while I could barely afford a burger and a Corona at our reunion seven years later, David took care of the entire table by passing his credit card to our waitress on the way to the restroom.

  In college David Taylor and I are both English majors who run the same event on the track team, so we find ourselves taking most of our classes together (in fact he’s in that same Imperial Literature class with me and Ethan Hoevel) before jogging out to the track a mile from campus each afternoon. He is clean-cut and handsome, and when he first arrives on campus he automatically—amiably—goes out with Yale’s best-looking girls. He’s the kind of guy who calls you “pal” but in a way that isn’t annoying. He’s the kind of guy who shaves his pubic hair and tells his “buddies” how it makes him look “bigger” and everyone laughs, but he’s also the kind of guy who then complains to me during our jogs that it really just itches a lot and scares potential hotties off.

  In lit classes, he’s never much of a writer, always opting to carelessly crank out his papers the night before they’re due in his room on the top floor of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house (junior year he’s treasurer). “Ninety percent of what you learn in college happens outside the classroom” is an axiom that David Taylor likes to repeat often.

  On the track, he’s legendary throughout the Ivy League for winning the indoor eight-hundred-meter championship as a freshman, coming from behind in the final fifty meters to overtake the reigning senior champion from Princeton. But that victory becomes a weight on his shoulders: even though David Taylor is always in the top three, he will never win another championship. He doesn’t have the body of a power runner—he’s too lean and not particularly tall—but still, he’s able to run like a steady and enduring machine. And since his speed and strength don’t come from muscle, I always think they come from some intense and basic desire located deep inside of him to just beat the other guy—David Taylor seems to have that particular ambition. He leads every workout, and over hundreds of thousands of meters through four years of practice I lag behind him, watching his legs churn on and on and wishing mine could do the same.

  Though David and I are always more than just casual acquaintances, we never approach true friendship. He’s too pleasant, too mellow; success comes too easily to him.

  When he starts dating Samona Ashley near the end of junior year, I push him away even more.

  Then we graduate and take vastly different paths: while I drift into the poverty of the wandering, he signs on with Merrill Lynch directly in May of 1997 (the conception being that banks think highly of champion athletes, and he has that eight-hundred-meter victory very near the top of his résumé) and remains there for two years before moving on to a start-up hedge fund called The Leonard Company. He puts in ninety-hour workweeks, performs very well, and soon becomes the boring person we all knew he always was. At the track reunions he stops amusing us with mildly crude one-liners and instead starts talking about interest rates and the market and all the costs and benefits and risks that compose his life, which only serves to invite the question: What risks could there be for a guy who already has a six-figure salary, a luxury high-rise apartment, and Samona?

  His answer to that question—and the only real risk he ever seems to take—is marrying Samona Ashley at the age of twenty-six. I read their announcement on the Weddings/Celebrations page in the New York Times Sunday Styles section and after thinking about it for a long time finally find the nerve to call David and offer my congratulations, but he never returns that call and I only hear about the ceremony from old teammates who’d been invited—a medium-size event in Darien, Connecticut, the sole memorable detail being that Samona engaged in a screaming fight with her mother at the garden reception, which then ended early. When the topic turns to how much David paid for Samona’s Vera Wang dress (“not less than ten-five,” a voice mutters), I tune out—it’s still too painful for me to dwell there.

  Later, whenever I mention the unreturned call, David Taylor will mime scratching his head and say it must have gotten lost in his voice-mail box. We stop hanging out beyond the biannual track-team reunions, our excuses including his work schedule and marital obligations, and because I am broke most of the time.

  I never admit the real reason to him, and it never becomes clear whether or not he knows.

  Samona only comes up in our conversations unintentionally, and I invent ways to avoid the topic.

  Whenever a mutual acquaintance asks me to describe David Taylor, I always answer in a noncommittal way: “He’s a likable guy,” and I can only say this because in a city like New York—where everyone has an angle, where everyone wants something from you or else they don’t give a fuck—there’s comfort in a guy like David Taylor. His lack of mysteriousness goes a long way.

  Near the end of that dinner last January someone asked David Taylor how Samona was doing—like someone always did in order to segue into the obligatory “marrying too young” jabs—and David said that she was “really great”—like he always did in order to avoid them—and as I chugged my beer to ignore the conversation, he changed the subject by turning to me and asking how my writing career was going. After I told him that it had been a struggle lately finding work, David—in a graceful, offhand manner—threw out that The Leonard Company was issuing a new prospectus on their Web site for the next quarter and needed someone to write it, and that it wouldn’t be much work but would pay well—probably better than any magazine. If I wanted the job, David would recommend me. It was pretty much a sure thing, he suggested.

  A few days later, I almost called on his offer. I was in the middle of dialing the seven digits when I hung up—something stopped me from making the call to ask David Taylor for help.

  And I never had to figure exactly what it was because of an unexpected windfall that came through in the form of covering February Fashion Week for Maxim. Ethan Hoevel had set it up with a single phone call. It was a week of running around to all the top shows, cataloging models and outfits, drinking too much, sleeping too little—and I felt uplifted by the silly distraction of it all. It was like coming back into the world after an exile—money in my pocket, the phone ringing, messages demanding my appearance, actual deadlines to meet. I even made out with a Tommy Hilfiger model at Spa (though when my hands reached for her pants, she mentioned something about a boyfriend). And I forgot about The Leonard Company and the morning I had almost called David Taylor.

  But Ethan Hoevel’s admission about Samona Ashley three months later changed that, because if the admission was in fact true, then I wanted to know more.

  (Part of me assumed that this infatuation—the way I couldn’t expunge certain images from my head—was all just journalistic impulse.)

  (The rest of me, of course, knew better.)

  And since I couldn’t ask Ethan—for my own reasons, I couldn’t trust him—and I couldn’t ask Samona—I was afraid of what she’d make me feel—the only person left I could talk to was David Taylor.

  And at the end of May, finally, I picked up the phone.

  It was 4:45 in the afternoon, right after the market closed on a Thursday.

  “Leonard Co,” was how he answered. There were a multitude of phones ringing and throngs of people yelling in the background.

  “Hey, David? It’s—”

  “Hey, pal.” He cut me off sharply. I couldn’t believe he recognized my voice.

  “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “Busy, just real busy,” he said, sighing, distracted.

  “It’s really loud there,” I said. “Thought you had your own office.”

  “Yeah, the door’s open. Something tweaked in the ventilation system.” He shouted out a garbled sentence at someone and then returned to me. “They’re doing all these
renovations on my floor and something got tweaked. What’s up?”

  I hadn’t thought this out—he caught me. “I guess you need to get a fan.” I could hear him typing and he sort of said “hmm” but not necessarily to me. “Would it be better if I called a little later?”

  “No, it’s okay,” he said, and then added, “Just make it fast. What’s up?”

  “Well,” I began hesitantly. “I was thinking back to January and how you might have been needing someone to write that prospectus for the Web site?”

  “Oh…yeah. I mentioned that, didn’t I?” Static interrupted him. “Wait—hold on a sec.” He was still typing. “Okay. Sorry about that. Right, the prospectus. Yeah, wasn’t that a while ago?”

  “I never called. I got totally sidetracked but—”

  “Hey, it’s cool. I’m not sure what’s going on with that now. Not exactly my thing.” A pause, and it suddenly seemed quieter on the other end. “So…you’re still interested? You want me to ask around again?”

  Everything slowed down for me. This was why I hadn’t called the last time—the tone of voice that seemed specifically engineered to remind me that David Taylor worked in a skyscraper in midtown while I barely worked at all. And it didn’t even matter that I knew him well enough to assume it wasn’t intentional—his condescension still translated so thickly through the phone that I almost told him his wife was having an affair.

  “I’d really appreciate it, David,” I said. “I really could use the work.”

  “It’s not a problem,” he said.

  There was an awkward silence before I asked, “Is everything cool over there?”

  “Fine,” he replied. “I mean, work’s a bitch, but I’m used to it.”

  “And…how are things on the…home front?”

  The typing stopped.

  “Fine,” he said, deadpan. And then, “Do you need anything else?”

  “Maybe we should grab lunch one of these days.”

  “Look, it’s too busy here to talk now,” he finally said. “No rest for the weary.”

  “Well, can we catch up?” I asked a little too fast. He breathed in—taken aback by my insistence—so I added, “You know how we can’t really talk at the reunions and I just want to hear about how things are going with you, and how Samona’s doing.”

  Someone, a woman, was talking to him. I could hear her voice sounding urgent in the background. But I could also tell that David had held up a finger, which was meant to quiet her, and then he said flatly, “Samona’s great.” There was another silence that we were both carefully attuned to, and then just as quickly snapped ourselves out of.

  “Good. I’m really glad to hear it.”

  After a brief hesitation, David said, “Look, I’ve gotta run, pal. Someone’s here.”

  “Okay. Sure.” I was shaking.

  “I can do lunch,” David said. “But can you come up to midtown?”

  “I don’t know if I can afford it,” I half joked.

  A week later—a nice afternoon at the end of May—I put on an old linen suit and sandals and walked up Third Avenue through Murray Hill, past Grand Central up to Fifty-second Street. The restaurant was called Corotta, and though I had read about it I’d never been there because it was the kind of place where a tiny entrée cost forty dollars and afterward, when you had to find something to actually eat, you went to the nearest Wendy’s and scarfed down a burger. I had walked fast and arrived early. The hostess led me to “Mr. Taylor’s table” and a bottle of San Pellegrino materialized. The place was packed.

  David was fifteen minutes late, but I didn’t care until I saw another guy tagging along behind him. I was disappointed that a third person was joining us and I kept a fixed smile on my face as David introduced James Gutterson as a former all-Ivy hockey player from Cornell who, after a two-year MBA program at Hunter, was striding through the analyst sector at The Leonard Company. “Understand you were an athlete, too,” was the first thing James Gutterson said to me, eyeing the sandals I then tucked out of sight beneath the table. He had a Canadian accent.

  “Just track,” I said.

  James thought about it for a moment, then conceded, “Track’s tough.”

  “Yeah,” David snorted. “All. That. Running.”

  I stared at him, a little mystified. “I miss it, though, sometimes,” I said.

  “What’s there to miss?”

  The waiter came and David ordered a bottle of shiraz, which James tasted and approved. James stopped his pour at half a glass.

  “I have to take it easy,” he muttered. “Fucking busy up there.”

  David agreed. He only had a half glass as well. The rest of the bottle was apparently for me. And why not? Where was I going after lunch?

  I was about to ask James if Cornell had ever won the Ivys but he just missed cutting me off by saying, “So David tells me you’re interested in working for Leonard.” His voice carried the heavy air of commitment, and then I understood why David had brought him.

  “Maybe, like, freelance.”

  “We do that sometimes. But just for the Web site.”

  I tried paring things down to their most basic essentials: I’d spent the last seven years writing almost exclusively about parties with the occasional low-level city election or local opinion piece tossed in a few times a year. So: benefits, gallery shows, restaurant openings, and Fashion Week had sustained my career—I mean, right?—and by extension this little thing known as “my life.” And if the feebleness of my accomplishments hadn’t started to bother me until quite recently, then what was so shameful about a quick freelance job regarding leveraged buyouts and the market turning? When I compartmentalized my thoughts this way

  (and ignored the fact that a big reason I’d chosen my particular career path in the first place was that I never wanted to set foot in a bank for fear of ending up like David Taylor and James Gutterson)

  (and buried my certain ulterior motives to which David seemed oblivious)

  then the job at Leonard didn’t seem so bad.

  I realized I had daydreamed off course and was awakened by James Gutterson clearing his throat.

  “Mind if I peek at your résumé?”

  It took me a second to realize he wasn’t joking.

  “I know, I know—bad manners during a meal but time is really tight and I just want to help figure out where you might fit in.” James reached for the bread basket but scowled and changed his mind. “Corporate communications is kind of a big deal.”

  David was zoning out on the menu and I realized he wasn’t going to help.

  “Could I maybe give you an oral one?”

  James sighed and offered a tight smile. He glanced over at David, who didn’t look up from the menu. “Sure.”

  I started talking. It didn’t really matter to any of us. We just surrendered to the reality of the moment. It was all so dull. The pieces on rent control seemed like they should have been impressive but they weren’t and I knew it. I thought I had covered a few “important” events—the unveiling of the Intrepid, the tearing down of Columbus Circle for the new AOL Time Warner Center—but no one cared. We ordered lunch (no appetizers—no time). I kept talking. James’s interest was waning while David was glancing around the room, recognizing a few people with a nod of the head. With no reluctance I threw out that I had also covered Fashion Week for Maxim and suddenly their interest in me was reactivated.

  “Did you meet any models?” James asked.

  “Sometimes. Yeah.”

  “You tap any ass?” he asked flatly.

  “Actually, yeah,” I lied.

  I noticed David was frowning. I remembered that Samona Ashley had modeled for about a year after graduation, and his silence brought me back to the real reason I had asked David Taylor to have lunch with me: Ethan Hoevel was tapping Samona’s ass. That thought came back in a rush and I poured myself another glass of wine while James went on about models for a while—suggesting he had slept with many though I could tell from the
contempt in his voice he had slept with exactly none—and then the food came. I had forgotten that David never had anything particularly insightful to say and when he did say something it was obvious that he had thought about it too much—nothing ever just slipped out, which drained every sentence of spontaneity and guarded every observation with thinly veiled condescension. He spoke like a computer trading program.

  “Are you married?” I asked James.

  He shook his head and answered back with his mouth full and I couldn’t understand what he said. He saw my quizzical expression and wiped his lips with a napkin, swallowing. “Nope—I still like to hate-fuck.”

  He winked at me. David was taking small bites of his little block of salmon.

  There was nothing to say after that.

  I had almost finished the wine and we all realized there was no reason for any of us to still be at Corotta—except, of course, for the secret one. And as I watched David take his careful bites while focusing on the afternoon ahead, even that started to seem like a shameless and cruel experiment. But I went with it anyway.

  “How’s Samona?” I finally asked him.

  “She’s great.” He was staring at his food while he ate.

  “I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

  “We ought to get together,” he said, but it sounded noncommittal.

  James had finished his duck ravioli and was chugging water. He stared indifferently at the ass of a waitress who walked by. “Samona’s hot,” he said.

  David put his fork down gently, making a statement but not too much noise. “Come on, James.”

  “You’re too sensitive, Davey.” James raised his eyebrows at me. “Don’t you think Davey’s too sensitive?”

  Before I could answer David told me, “She opened a fashion print studio in SoHo a few months ago.”

  “That David Taylor funded,” James pointed out.

  David ignored the remark. “So she’s running that now.”