by David Bledin
“Thank you, piglet.”
Exhaling sharply, she says, “That is really quite something. Mein Gott, I was not expecting that at all. She is engaged, wouldn’t you believe it, to a Russian.”
She furrows her forehead as if processing this new information carefully.
“But he is such a young boy. She must be off her rocker, right, piglets?”
She sighs in exasperation. The Defeated One winks at me, an unspoken understanding: Lulu also thinks their tryst is wrong. We have a third-party opinion to support our determination to get him fired.
“The Russian, he will be coming to the holiday party. This name you call her—what is it, Unadulted Sex —?yes, she said she will bring her fiancé. I am certain this is the case. Which reminds me—”
Lulu pulls a heap of waxy envelopes out of her purse and hands us each one. Palm trees sway on the cover of an invitation.
YOU AND A GUEST ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE BANK’S ANNUAL HOLIDAY PARTY.
SHERATON HOTEL, DECEMBER 14, 8:00 PM. DRINKS AND HORS D’OEUVRES WILL BE SERVED.
PLEASE RSVP NO LATER THAN NOVEMBER 20.
THEME: LUAU!!!
DON’T FORGET YOUR FLORAL SHIRT OR HULA SKIRT!!!
“A Hawaiian theme? Lulu, how could you?” the Defeated One chides.
Lulu shrugs. “Don’t give me that. It will be fun. Leis, coconuts, plastic palm trees. We’ll be drowning in kitsch, piglets.”
The Defeated One mentioned this party in passing. It’s a pretty wild time, apparently: open bar, decent finger food, an opportunity to watch the Sycophant make an ass out of himself trying to get the steps down to the electric slide. As a party teeming with investment bankers has its natural limitations—the Toad acting as chaperone, analysts quivering in fear lest they drink too much and do something really stupid in front of their bosses—the Bank has typically been clever enough to invite its umbrella of other divisions: the cantankerous old drunks up on the bond trading floor; the Tech Support team always showing up either grossly underdressed or grossly overdressed; and, most fascinating of all, the back-office employees, those forgotten souls tucked away in the basement doing risk analysis and credit profiling and god knows what else. There is otherwise no recognition for these subterranean critters, no chance at glory, only this one annual party, a single foray into the Bank’s public eye.
Needless to say, the pressure is too much for them. Dusting off their sixties chiffon prom dresses, donning their tweed suits, they venture forth into the limelight to provide hours of top-notch entertainment: being the first ones on the dance floor, inevitably drinking too much, vomiting all over the bathroom walls before one of them knocks over the punch bowl. A burst of greatness before slithering back to their dank and muted cubicles, forgotten for another 364 days.
“Back office got the invite, right?” the Defeated One asks, grinning.
Lulu titters behind her hand; even she appreciates the insinuation.
“Of course, boy-chick. It would not be a party without them.”
“Are we doing one of those videos again?”
The Defeated One mentioned this as well. It’s one of the Bank’s long-standing traditions (meaning it was initiated two or three years back) that the analysts are supposed to get together and film a witty-yet-within-the-bounds-of-good-taste video to be screened at the party.
“Yes, I believe the Toad mentioned something about it this morning. As a senior analyst, boy-chick, I think you might be in charge.”
“Jesus,” the Defeated One groans, “like my job isn’t difficult enough without having to force a chuckle from Stepford wives.”
Lulu is no longer paying attention, struggling to shove the remainder of the envelopes back in her purse.
“It was lovely, my piglets,” she says, bolting up from the chair, “but duty awaits.”
She holds the edges of her skirt and does a little curtsy, then bounds across the room, still trying to stuff the envelopes back in her purse.
“Adieu, adieu.”
Before she slips out the door, she adds, “Oh my, I nearly forgot. It’s a G-string, by the way. Zebra print. I noticed it when the Philanderer bent down to pick up some papers.”
After we’re done shaking off that horrible mental image, I turn back to my monitor. It’s been a few days since I ran into the Woman With The Scarf at Han’s Blue Diamond Chinese Gourmet, and social etiquette dictates it is now permissible for me to send her an e-mail without coming across as too desperate:
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hey—you gave me your card at Han’s a couple days ago. Double portion day. Was wondering if you were up for coffee this afternoon. If not, another time.
A Shakespearean sonnet it’s not, but you better believe it took twenty minutes to craft that e-mail. Her reply is immediate:
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Oh yes, I could definitely use some caffeine right now. Starbucks in fifteen?
I whip off an affirmative: Three o’clock it is.
I begin reviewing an annual report. When I look over my shoulder, the Defeated One is still facing away from his desk, scratching his chin with the nib of a pencil. Suddenly he smacks his knee and starts laughing hysterically.
“Gentlemen, I do believe I’ve got it!”
“Got what?”
“The plan, Mumbles, the plan!”
The Defeated One gets to his feet and starts pacing the room. He’s babbling animatedly.
“We’re going to capture it on tape. They’ve done it once, they’ll do it again. We’ll hide the camcorder in the boardroom or something. Come the holiday party, projecting it on the screen, the two of them rutting in front of each and every employee at the Bank, including her Russian fiancé”—the Defeated One pulls at the sides of his receding hairline in his excitement—“it’s fucking brilliant!”
The Star and I stare at him stoically. The Defeated One grimaces.
“Huh? Don’t you appreciate the genius behind it?”
“So, we’re going to get this all on tape?” the Star offers meekly.
“Yes! Detectives do it all the time.”
“And you’re fully comfortable broadcasting this in front of everybody at the Bank? What about the fallout? How’s the Prodigal Son not going to suspect it’s us behind it? Have you even stopped for a second and thought about the consequences if anybody catches us?” I ask. “We’d be served our pink slips faster than—”
The Defeated One shakes his head sadly. “Mumbles, stop being such a pansy. We’ll get some scapegoat to cover the rest of the editing and splice in the clip right before the party. Don’t worry about the minutiae; we’ll figure out the kinks in due time. So, you guys are in, right?”
The Star has already swiveled back to his monitor.
“Heh”—the Defeated One turns to me—“he wasn’t meant to be a part of it anyway. Are you in?”
It’s a feasible plan, I’ll grant him that. There is ample room for potential fuckups, the punishment for failure being severe, but also a sliver of a chance we might be able to pull it off.
“Aaargh. You won’t let up on this until I agree, will you?”
“Not likely.”
Leaning back in the chair:
“Fine,” I mumble, “I’m in.”
“Great!” The Defeated One beams. “I’m going to run it by Clyde and Postal later this afternoon, see what they think about it.”
I check the clock at the bottom of my monitor. Two minutes to three. I open a complicated-looking spreadsheet and strew some papers across my desk.
“All right, boy-chicks, I’ll be back in fifteen minutes or so. If anybody asks, tell them I’m taking a dump.”
“Where are you off to?” the Defeated One asks suspiciously.
“Coffee date with that girl from Han’s.”
“You’re sneaking away for an afternoon fuck. Way to go, stud,” the Defe
ated One snickers.
“Piss off.”
I’ve just located my wallet hidden under a pitch book, when the phone rings; the Sycophant’s extension shows on the caller ID. I consider not answering it—surely it can wait fifteen minutes—but for some stupid reason I do. The Sycophant is snappy and clearly frustrated, explaining how the Utterly Incompetent Assistant needs help with some filing and it has to be done within the hour. Resisting a primal urge to scream expletives into the receiver, I tell him I’ll be right on it.
As I hang up, the Defeated One shakes his head in mock pity.
“The Sycophant cock-blocked your little coffee date, huh?”
“Jesus, I should have known better,” I sigh, slumping back in the chair. “I mean, you’d think I’d be used to it by now, you really would. But fuck, it still stings every time. Does it ever get any better?”
The Defeated One flicks a rubber band at me. “Nope.”
I pick the rubber band off the carpet and add it to the rubber-band ball I’ve been forming since I started here. So far it’s no bigger than a golf ball, only a meager few dozen rubber bands, but I’m inspired by the mammoth aluminum-foil ball that used to roll into Pee-wee’s Playhouse before the guy crushed our youthful naïveté by wanking in a movie theater.
I dash off an e-mail:
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
My humble apologies. My VP is in a crunch and needs some immediate assistance. Impossible to get away right now. Hopefully you haven’t gone down already. Anyway, would really like to reschedule—perhaps later in the week?
A couple minutes go by and I still haven’t received a response.
Fucking hell.
I don’t understand it. I really don’t. I’m kneeling beside the Utterly Incompetent Assistant, mountains of paper surrounding us, and I’ve just seen her slot a Prudential Securities report in the D folder. It’s simple: Prudential, P. It’s the umpteenth time she’s messed up since we started, the first time I’m going to muster the resolve to say something about it.
“Why’d you just do that?”
She stops filing and stares vacantly at me.
“What?”
I’m trying my best not to come across as too antagonistic.
“That report was clearly for Prudential Securities. Right at the top of the first page. And yet you put it in the D folder.”
Her expression is vapid.
She shrugs. “I made a mistake. I’m human.”
She goes back into the D folder, removes the Prudential Securities report, and drops it in its rightful spot in the P folder. Less than five minutes later, I see her slotting an SBC Communications pitch in the Z folder. It’s too much. I reach into the Z folder and slam the SBC pitch on the floor beside her.
“That’s an S,” I bark. “S.”
My attempt at authoritativeness comes out forced, a little too abrupt. Perhaps it’s a deficiency in my character—I’m a notorious conflict avoider—though it could also be the inherent awkwardness of a twenty-three-year-old having to bitch out a woman who is already pushing her midforties.
The Utterly Incompetent Assistant glowers at me, putting her hands on her hips.
“What’s your problem?”
I’m flabbergasted, truly.
“What’s my problem? My problem? I’m asked to help out because you’re too stu—”
I catch myself before I cross a line. Though it’s an objective truth—the Utterly Incompetent Assistant is as dumb as a doorknob—my stating this explicitly would have severe repercussions. No doubt she’d send off a complaint to the sticklers at HR and then I’d be booted out, the Utterly Incompetent Assistant left to gloat over a file cabinet in complete disarray. Justice duly served.
“I just don’t understand it, that’s all. I mean, you know the SBC Communications pitch should be filed in the S folder. You have to know this. And yet you put it in the wrong folder.”
I’m expecting some moral outrage, a defense mechanism kicking in, but instead she’s back to that irritatingly vapid expression.
“What I don’t understand is why you care so much.”
I stare at her in stunned silence, but she ignores me, going back to her filing. I pick up another report and drop it in the correct folder, and yet I can’t seem to brush off what she just said. I’m sure she didn’t intend it to be profound, but it is somewhat, now that I’m thinking about it: Why do I care so much? What makes me different from this middle-aged woman who is perfectly content going about her daily business making all sorts of negligent errors, returning home to her cats and her Reader’s Digest and a Lean Cuisine popped in the microwave? Why do I care so deeply about getting these reports and pitches into their correct folders, given that nobody’s going to pat me on the back for the effort?
Two years: the average lifespan of an i-banking analyst. That’s all it’s going to be. Kneeling here beside the Utterly Incompetent Assistant, I make a commitment to myself: No matter what’s thrown my way, whether it be a ludicrous salary increase, a promotion, or the promise of a brilliant letter of recommendation to the prestigious B-school of my choice, I’m going to walk out that door after twenty-four months, never to return.
For now, it’s more of the same. I notice the Utterly Incompetent Assistant slotting a Coors Brewing Company report in the K folder. At least she got it right phonetically. I don’t bother reprimanding her; she’s chosen her path, just as I’ve chosen mine. I reach in and correct her mistake, both of us silent until our task is done.
The Defeated One is testing out the eyepiece of a digital camcorder.
“Lulu was right,” he says, filming me walking across the room and sitting down at my desk. “The Toad came by while you and dimwit extraordinaire were filing away and put me on video crew. The quality on this is fantastic.”
I open up Outlook.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Didn’t get your e-mail until too late. My sincere thanks for sending it out one minute before we were supposed to meet up. Waited at Starbucks for a good half hour before I realized you’d be a no-show. Maybe this coffee thing wasn’t such a brilliant idea. Anyway, not the end of the world. Perhaps I’ll run into you in the elevators.
There’s nothing unexpected here: Of course she was going to get my e-mail too late; of course she was going to blow me off as a result. Perhaps I’m finally adopting the required mind-set for this job, though this isn’t exactly the most comforting thought.
“I ran our plan by Postal and Clyde already. Clyde thinks it’s a great idea, and Postal’s being Postal, meaning he’s a bit squeamish right off the bat. Nothing a few rounds of good ol’ peer pressure won’t fix. All right, so we’re all in. Next step is being on the lookout for a filming opportunity.”
“Cool,” I mumble.
The Defeated One is unperturbed by my lack of enthusiasm.
“I can’t believe how genius this is. We’re going to pull this off, we really are, and it’s going to be brilliant!”
“Yeah.”
This time he senses my malaise.
“Dude, I wouldn’t worry about that chick. Face it, if she’s going to get all pissy about missing one coffee date, imagine how she’s going to react when you fail to show up at her birthday party, or an anniversary, or something like that. An inevitability if you start dating.”
“Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “You’re probably right.”
“You’ve got to start doing some coke, man. Trust me; it makes this life a little more bearable.”
I’m not anti–drug use by any means—to each his own—but I tend to like doing that stuff when I’m feeling good about things, not as an escape mechanism.
“No, thanks.”
The Defeated One shrugs.
“Well, you know it’s available. Just say when.”
I’ve already swiveled back around to add footnotes to my pie charts.
Five<
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Filming begins earlier than expected. It’s two in the morning, less than a week after Lulu’s visit, and the Defeated One has gone to pick up some rancid coffee from the Most Depressing Donut Store in Downtown, the only place that’s open at this ungodly hour. Run by a portly Vietnamese woman and reeking of stale cigarette smoke, the dimly lit hovel is a meeting ground for old men literally weeping into their cups of tepid coffee when they’re not coughing up phlegm or gnawing away on chocolate-glazed crullers.
My phone rings. Before I’ve even put the receiver to my ear, I’m bombarded with urgent instructions from the Defeated One:
“Prodigal Son and Unadulterated Sex spotted heading into an elevator together. This could be our golden opportunity. Grab the camcorder and boot it to the boardroom off the Equity Capital Markets desk. Hopefully they’ll be going to the same place as the last time. Hide the camcorder somewhere discreet and get the hell out of there.”
I interrupt his barrage. “Hey, I didn’t agree to the actual filming.”
After a moment of silence the Defeated One snaps at me, “You said you were in on this. You damn well agreed to this plan. I’m telling you, this could be our last chance. Don’t fuck this up, Mumbles.”
I sigh audibly, but the Defeated One knows he’s got me.
“You have two minutes.”
Then he hangs up. It’s difficult to shrug off my two-in-the-morning lethargy as I grab the camcorder, then speed-walk down the corridor and climb the stairs two at a time. The boardroom off the Equity Capital Markets desk. There are two rooms, one straight ahead, the other a bit to the right. A fifty-fifty probability I’ll get the right one. I slip into the dark room to the right and close the door.
Where to conceal the camcorder in hopes of getting the money shot? Behind the potted fern in the corner? Above the projector-thingy that nobody knows how to use properly, not even the IT guys? I hear footsteps approaching and I have about six seconds, max. I switch on the camera and crudely position it on the cabinet facing the boardroom table, hurling myself into the closet just as the door squeaks open. I’m panting hard, adrenaline racing through my veins, with the exhilarating feeling that comes from being a sneaky shit-disturber. Crammed in between a tower of Coca-Cola cases and boxes full of Bank give-aways—umbrellas and fleeces and packets of mints with the Bank logo stamped on the tins, whatever the marketing team concocts to justify its existence—I hear the door shut behind them.