by Hazel Parker
It felt like I had fallen into a soap bubble and I was surrounded by fireflies that never stopped being lit up. It was gorgeous.
And I couldn’t unravel in the fucking slightest to enjoy it.
Maybe you do need someone to share it with. Someone to enjoy it with.
The thought made me laugh out loud. I hadn’t been on a date in ages. I was pretty sure it had been almost five years since I’d had sex, despite multiple fat cats at Rothenberg egging me on to sleep with them in return for a promotion. If they thought I was going to sleep with them, then they were dumber than I was for thinking I could relax after work.
I had always told myself that I didn’t need love, and while I still believed that was true, I was finding it hard to argue with the possible truth that I wanted love. Some people could certainly live happily single for their entire lives. I was, I feared, not such a person.
Whenever I went out to dinners and saw couples happily chatting, blissfully unaware of how much stress all of us were under at the business dinner, I was extraordinarily envious. I made investments in companies looking to go public; they made investments that would return the favor ten times over, from now until death. Their investments ensured loyalty to each other; my investments ensured nothing more than a bigger number in my bank account and absolutely no job security. The moment my performance slipped, my ass was on the chopping block.
But how I was going to turn that around, I had no idea.
So I did the one thing that I couldn’t believe I would do, but I did it anyway. I Googled “investment banking dating tips.”
I scoffed at most of the initial results, which dealt with significant others asking how to handle the stress of an investment banker. While those might have been fine for the artists and fashionistas working in the city, they did not tell me how I, as an investment banker, could date effectively. What the fuck, Google?
I gave up after two pages of search results and changed my search to “getting dates as an investment banker.” That just produced even more of the same, but it got even worse when I saw the number of results that were from bro bankers bragging about the number of women that they had banged. Frustrating was an understatement, and I swore that if I ever met the author of such a blog post, I’d sock him right in the fucking nuts.
These results weren’t getting me anything. But I did have two options in the back of my mind.
The first one was someone whose name brought a smile to my face, but then a laugh at the ridiculousness of it. Thomas Fitzgerald. But without even trying, I could think of three strikes. He was a coworker, he was stable, and he had free time—which meant he’d want me to have free time. I canceled out that thought faster than I typed, which was a real shame considering he seemed like a nice guy.
But the second option...well, it either would hold the potential for something much worse than what I was discovering online, or it would work as it had for some of my friends from Princeton.
I could do online dating.
I shuddered at the thought while still staring out at the window. I would have to deal with so many bad dates, so many terrible dudes, so many awkward encounters...but if it worked out…
It was a game of asymmetric payoff. If I went on a hundred dates, all but one would suck. But the one that didn’t suck might wind up being a guy I could take to weddings, have genuine, real laughs with, and enjoy slow dinners with. Instead of investing even more time into my career, I could invest into a loving relationship.
OK, Amelia, stop being so fucking sappy. Get on with it and download the apps.
I looked at my first couple of options: Tinder and Bumble. Bumble seemed to offer better dates, but it also put the onus on the woman to talk first. That was laughable—there were periods in my life where I went over seventy-two hours without having a spare moment. Maybe if the app gave me five days to start communication, I would have been interested, but a mere twenty-four hours was like telling me I had to respond instantly to the guys. Sure, some of them could boost me, but then I’d judge them as desperate.
I knew I was acting like a terrible bitch, but the stress of work was beating me down so severely I couldn’t look at it any other way.
Tinder was going to give me a lot of dick pics, assholes, and ghosted dates. But it also was the app I didn’t need to invest any time with. I could check for thirty seconds, decide who I wanted to respond to, and run with it. And so Tinder it was.
Immediately, I became impatient with the app. I uploaded my most recent photos, which included a professional photo, a photo of me at a wedding, and one with me and a close friend—which was actually from three years ago, but she had just recently resent it to me by text, making it look like it was recent. Which reminded me, I needed to respond to her about the photo…
As soon as I had my profile up, I had the option to swipe.
But first, I sat down on the couch for a quick nap.
* * *
My alarm went off at five-thirty.
I was still in my work clothes from the night before. And I wasn’t concerned in the slightest. The life of a workaholic meant that when I decided to fall asleep, when my body finally allowed me to pass out, it was practically instant. There was no closing the eyes and counting sheep. It was like an on-off switch, and only my body could decide when that switch got thrown.
I muddled my way through my morning routine, somewhat curious to check Tinder. As I placed an order to go on my phone to the local bagel shop and walked over, I started swiping.
The dudes that I saw were, well, not impressive. And I didn’t even think that was because I was being mean!
Most of the dudes, for starters, weren’t smiling. They were trying to look cool, either with selfies or with their overpriced suits, but all they wound up doing was looking smug and arrogant.
Of the ones who smiled, a decent portion of them weren’t healthy. I was really trying to be nice, but seeing everyone look like this was not doing me any favors in thinking that I would find love.
I would guess that of the first fifty profiles I saw, I probably swiped right on about four of them. I wasn’t sure if it was reassuring or troubling that all four of them had already liked me, enabling chat to take place. At least, though, they would have to initiate conversation if they wanted to see me. I didn’t have to do that.
There has to be a better way than this. I can’t just spend the next three years of my life going on a bunch of app dates and expect to find love, right? If I want to have sex, sure, but I mean...this isn’t going to work out, right?
I grabbed my bagel sandwich, making a point to thank the restaurant staff in the hopes that it would make me be a slightly better person today. Maybe being nice would also appeal to Ben in some fashion, though I had my doubts about that. He tended to like aggressive people who got theirs, not people who had manners and who said please and thank you.
I walked to the lobby of Rothenberg Banking, swiping my work tag and taking the stairs for the second floor. I had arrived early, about twenty minutes before my long-distance conference. I took the rare opportunity to eat my breakfast somewhat slowly.
It was also perhaps the first morning I’d had where I even had what felt like five minutes of free time, let alone twenty.
I looked at Tinder and started swiping some more—though most of my swipes were left, not right. This is so inefficient. This is just not effective. You need something better. Not…
Not this.
And I was afraid, as I put my phone down and mindlessly munched on my bagel, that I wasn’t just talking about Tinder.
I was talking about much, much more.
Chapter 3: Fitz
The ride the night before had gone a long way toward clearing my head.
It didn’t solve all my problems, of course, but it did mean that when I showed up to the office shortly after seven, I was feeling pretty good. I slept nearly eight hours, and they were a restful eight hours. In the world of Rothenberg Banking, I might as well have slept
like a teenager on a Saturday.
That wasn’t too far from the truth, given it was now Friday. I nodded to my colleagues, who were trying to awaken their minds with coffee, with multiple shots of espresso in my own hand and sat at my desk. I took one last glance at my phone before putting it away from the evening. Uncle, as someone who also worked in the industry, had texted me in the morning.
“Don’t forget club party tonight,” he had written. “Make sure you come. Chance to unwind from our bullshit lives.”
I chuckled at that, taking care not to laugh too loudly lest someone hear me and try to ask questions. But there was something that Uncle hadn’t mentioned that I needed to learn more about. I sent him a text, requesting a private meeting. I had little doubt as I put my phone away that he would grant me that audience.
The only question that remained, then, was if he would provide me the information I needed.
The morning came and went without much trouble. Fridays tended to be the slowest day at the bank, as many of my colleagues struggled with hangovers from a variety of substances—including some of my bosses. Gerald, for his part, did not show up until eight, practically a mortal sin for someone of his position, and he quickly shut the door to prevent anyone from bothering him. It would not have surprised me in the slightest if I had walked in and discovered him sleeping.
When lunch came, I headed down to the cafeteria to grab a quick bite. I usually ate alone, but on this day, when I saw Amelia sitting by herself, moving her thumb across her phone screen multiple times, I remembered how we had interacted the day before. I remembered how I was seemingly the only person who could get away with pushing my words with her.
Wonder how much further I can go. Who knows? Maybe it’ll get me fired, and I’ll have to live a life of being a Savage Saint. There are worse things in the world than that.
“Mind if I sit here?” I asked.
Amelia’s face immediately lit up, and she put her phone away.
“As long as you won’t bore me with whatever bar you went to and whatever bimbo you slept with, then sure.”
“Oh, I don’t think that will be the case. I just went to Brooklyn and caught up with some friends.”
“Wait, you had a Thursday night like every other person outside of this office did?” Amelia said, leaning forward as if I had just dropped a bombshell of a conspiracy. “Tell me more. What’s your secret? How did you do it?”
I murmured a quick laugh as I grabbed my fork to dive into the pasta served for the day.
“I left right after we chatted, kept my phone with me, and headed east. Once I got to Brooklyn, I cracked open a beer, chatted, and left it at that.”
“Wow. Friends in banking?”
“Eh, one of them. But the rest, nah.”
“Holy shit. A normal person works here. What the fuck are you still doing here?”
I laughed to deflect the fact that I asked myself that question with far more frequency than I wanted to admit.
“I don’t know that I’d call myself normal per se. I mean, I am in investment banking. I like motorcycles. I—”
“You like motorcycles?” Amelia said.
Shit. I shouldn’t have said that. She’s just going to ask more questions now.
“Do you ever get to ride one? Do you feel like they’re as unsafe as people say they are? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
I laughed again. God bless Amelia Hughes for never being afraid to ask the tough questions.
“I ride from time to time. It’s like anything else. If you do it right, you’ll probably be fine. If you try to flaunt fate and push boundaries, sooner or later, fate fights back. Fate has a way of winning in the end.”
“Interesting.”
She took a few more bites of her lunch. She reached for her phone and paused, almost as if she had done it by instinct. She chuckled and then leaned forward, resting on her elbows.
“I don’t know if you know this, Fitz, but you are a unique employee here. You have interests outside of work. You have more. That in itself isn’t unique, but what is unique is you have something more that isn’t just money.”
“I don’t know,” I said, a little uncomfortable with the idea that I was somehow special here. “I think everyone here has interests outside of work. They just don’t have the time to...do...it…”
My voice trailed off as I saw Amelia look at me like I had worn six pairs of glasses on my nose. She shook her head, her mouth still full of food.
“I just want to become an executive director here,” she said. “But I think I’m burning myself out trying to do it. I’m so fucking frustrated with the status quo—I keep pushing and beating everyone’s ass here, but they’re not giving it to me. The office politics of it all is just suffocatingly stupid.”
I know that better than you realize, Amelia. It’s just not here that that matters.
“What do you want to be, Thomas? What’s your end game here?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Everyone here wants to be something,” she said. “Eighty percent of the people here think they’re going to be the next Rothenberg even though their last name is Goldschmidt. Fifteen percent of the people want to become partner. Four percent of the people just want to make enough money to retire before they’re forty. And one percent...well, I guess you’re the one percent of the one percent, huh?”
“Would seem that way, huh?” I said.
I hadn’t even considered that question for so long because I hadn’t given thought to the future at Rothenberg. I kept looking for a reason to quit or a safety net to fall into, but I never considered the possibility that said safety net would not reveal itself until I had jumped to a higher level. In any case, it definitely wasn’t something that I was going to figure out here in the next five seconds.
“I guess become partner,” I said.
Amelia crossed her arms.
“I feel like you’re not going to flip out if I say you sound full of shit,” she said. “Anyone here who wants to become partner almost salivates over the possibility of it. No one would just half-heartedly fall into it.”
“Yeah, true,” I said, mentally noting how much I was beginning to relish this girl’s approach.
“I guess you’re just happy with where you are,” she said. “Which I’m kind of envious of. I think my life would be a hell of a lot less stressful if I could just learn to be content for thirty seconds for once in my fucking life.”
But that was exactly it—I wasn’t content. If anything, I could relate to Amelia much more than she realized.
We both wanted something more and were unsatisfied with the status quo. We both didn’t know how to get there, or at least we didn’t see us getting there through the current means. The only difference lay in what we wanted, but we both clearly wanted more.
“Well, not everything is what it seems,” I said.
We sat and talked shop for a few more minutes, but the conversation notably seemed much more muted and bored than the one before it. The passion in Amelia’s voice had gone out, though she still swore and never bothered to hide how she really felt. It just lacked the same zest and zeal from the moments before.
When I left, I made a joke to Amelia to take the weekend off.
“Off?” she said. “I don’t know how to take it off. I—”
For the first time that I could ever remember, she cut herself off.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I was thinking about a free-time activity, but then I realized I’d probably cancel it anyways in favor of work. So, nothing worth saying.”
That was even more unlike Amelia. But the normal Amelia would come roaring back if I tried to pry more information out of her, so I just smiled, wished her well, and departed. That girl is something else.
It’s too bad she’s too closely tied to Rothenberg. I don’t know what she’d do without it.
Meanwhile, I can’t help but think what I’d do without it.
* * *
Getting outside Rothenberg Banking and onto the streets of Manhattan, with the enveloping sewer smell, the audible taxi honking, and the mix of starry-eyed tourists and unyielding locals actually felt like an enormous relief. Only in an industry like banking would the streets of the busiest city in the world feel like a calm oasis in comparison. Just further proof I need to get the hell out.
I made the briefest of pit stops at my apartment, on the twentieth floor of a modern high-rise, and changed into something a little more blue-collar. My slacks were swapped for jeans with holes, my dress shoes were swapped for boots, and my suit and tie were changed out for a t-shirt. I grabbed the Savage Saints cut that Marcel had recently given me, slid it on, and stood in front of the mirror.
I thought I looked like an MC member. True, I didn’t have the wild hair or the facial hair that some of the other members might have, but I had the look and the body. I kept myself in great shape, and what facial hair I did have implied that I wasn’t part of some major banking company.
But I guess in the eyes of the rest of the Savage Saints, it didn’t matter what I looked like until I acted like a Savage Saint. Time will tell.
I headed to the subway, rode it down to Brooklyn without saying a word to anyone else, and made the walk down to Brooklyn Repairs. From outside, I could hear the music starting to grow. I opened the door, stepped inside, and smiled as Marcel and Uncle both called me out.
“There’s our favorite banker!” Marcel said.