Her smartphone chirped on the breakfast bar: a text from her fiancé. He was offering to pick up sandwiches from Café Habana so they could sit down and look at the websites of various wedding photographers. He’d found one who had gone to Cooper Union and was really pushing the envelope of what wedding photography was all about.
Seo-yun sighed. When had her fiancé become relentless? She typed, “I don’t care,” but then deleted it. Instead, she told him to bring beer.
Bryan stopped by his apartment near Battery Park just long enough to pick up his mail, nod at the doorman, and change out of his suit. It was a nice enough place: generic and luxurious, the kind of address where a successful Wall Street mover and shaker should live. The rent was exorbitant. Some people might be impressed, but not him. Bryan looked out the window at the view, at the river and the lights of New Jersey twinkling in the distance. What kind of person pays a small fortune for a view of New Jersey? An asshole, that’s who.
Dressed in blue jeans and a white shirt under a simple jacket, he left the pin-striped suit and polished brogues in the closet, his briefcase on the breakfast bar, and took the subway across the river to his father’s apartment. It was a funky one-bedroom in a tenement building in Long Island City, but since his father’s death last year he’d kept paying the rent, preferring the mix of artists and what was left of the old-school working-class vibe to the phony luxe of Battery Park City. He thought of his father’s place as his safe house, somewhere he could go to unwind, a home that made him feel normal.
He stopped for dinner at a pizzeria on Vernon Boulevard. While he sat there he got a text from a woman he’d been dating. It wasn’t a serious relationship, although he could tell that she thought he should be proposing any day now. She was, after all, the kind of well-educated, good-looking woman that Wall Street wizards were supposed to marry.
A cute emoji popped up on his phone: a tiny cartoon of a Chinese take-out box and chopsticks, followed by two champagne bottles and what looked like a flamenco dancer. He knew she was disappointed that he was going off on vacation by himself and guessed she was offering to pick up some takeout and come over to his place for drinks and horizontal dancing, a kind of desperate last grab for an all-expense-paid Caribbean getaway. But that wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t bother to reply. Nothing personal. It was his signal to her that he’d already gone to sleep. It helped that he got to work before sunrise. His job was a good excuse for a lot of things.
She was attracted to him because he was successful. He made a lot of money, and that made him a good catch. Even if he’d behaved like one of his porcine colleagues, she probably would’ve liked him. Boys will be boys, and rich boys will be the most boyish of all. Sometimes, when he was on top of her, thrusting away, he’d look down and see her face going through the motions, as if her world were getting rocked, instead of her just putting in her time on the way to making some bank. It made him sick. Not so repulsed that he couldn’t ejaculate. She wasn’t a monster.
Bryan sipped his wine. If his father were still alive he would have made fun of him for ordering the most obscure glass on the menu. What’s the difference between that and Two Buck Chuck? Of course any attempt to explain organic viniculture or the influence of terroir would be mocked. Making Bryan feel like a pretentious blowhard was one of his father’s favorite games. Which was weird because his father was a wannabe poet, and expounding on the foibles of other writers was all he ever did.
He’d been a high school English teacher, but after Bryan’s mother died his father retired to the small apartment, where he spent his days writing poems and thinking of himself as some kind of Queens flaneur. Bryan laughed; if his father thought he was pretentious for ordering a nice wine, he should’ve heard himself pontificating about Robert Lowell and W. S. Merwin, or the work of Louise Glück; about how the new poets were bullshit and how the Beats were overrated phonies.
It took six months to clean the apartment out. There was so much stuff to go through. Stacks of books. Why did his father buy poetry collections in foreign languages? Was he really reading Cavafy in Greek? Apollinaire in French? Mayakovski in Russian? He didn’t speak any language but English. Bryan donated his father’s books to the local library; he hoped it could make some use of them.
As for the ratty collection of composition notebooks, Bryan didn’t really know what to do. There were hundreds of them. He’d flipped through a few, read some of his father’s poems, his musings, his rants. His father wasn’t famous—he’d published maybe ten poems in his entire life—so Bryan couldn’t donate the archives to a university. He asked a couple of his dad’s old friends if they wanted to sort through the notebooks, but they didn’t have time, weren’t interested, or were engaged in some kind of Japanese-influenced declutter program and didn’t want anything that didn’t spark joy. In the end, Bryan carted them down to the curb and dumped them in the recycling bins.
With his father’s things cleared out and some new paint on the walls, the place looked cozy and clean. Bryan decided to stay there on the weekends. It was small and had an unreliable furnace, but it was normal. It was, as his father would say, authentic. A real apartment in the kind of real life that real people should lead. Grounded. Humble. In a part of the city where people actually made things or fixed things, worked with their hands. It was the opposite of the airy-fairy financial fantasyland that Bryan was a part of.
He didn’t know why—maybe it was the constant stream of derision his father subjected him to about Wall Street corruption and fat cats destroying the world—but he never felt comfortable surrounded by the trappings of wealth. There wasn’t anything wrong with being rich. Not really. But there was something his father said that rang true: “Rich people just aren’t very nice.”
The managing directors of all the departments were meeting in a large glass conference room with a large glass conference table. As the directors entered, they passed a white marble counter lined with trays of pastries, fresh fruit in cups, carafes of orange juice, and a large thermos filled with hot coffee. No one touched the food. Ever. Seo-yun didn’t know why. Why couldn’t she eat a pain au chocolat while other people were talking? But no one ever did. Perhaps it was some kind of macho thing—a display of willpower and restraint to make up for the extravagance of their lives. Somehow not eating a muffin in the morning translated into buying a Maserati in the afternoon. There was no time for pleasure when there was money to be made.
She wasn’t the only woman in the room, but she was the only Asian American working at this level in the company. Even though the room was crowded, with several managing directors joining via Skype from overseas, there wasn’t even an African American diversity hire present. Everyone else was white.
The managing director of bond trading was getting into an argument with the director of analytics. The director of analytics was unpopular at the firm because he never stopped reminding people he went to Harvard and he always brought statistics to shoot down the complex—and often crackpot—schemes that were floated in these meetings. Seo-yun appreciated his logic. She didn’t care where he went to school.
A couple of MDs were droning on about volatility in various sectors of the economy. Real estate continued to perform, but pharmaceuticals and biotech were looking shaky. The gas and oil lobby in Washington, DC, had gotten some new law passed and extraction was hot again.
These discussions didn’t interest her; they didn’t intersect with her job, so she was rarely asked to be part of the conversation. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she spoke at one of these weekly meetings, not that she wanted to speak. As long as her department was bringing in massive profits, she could let her work do the talking.
Seo-yun looked down at her tablet and saw that the ruble was making a move. That was unusual. She sent a message to the other forex traders on her team.
“How do you think that will affect the riyal? Miss Kim?”
Seo-yun looked up. A dozen business suits were staring at her. She
had no idea which one of them had asked the question.
“The riyal?” She smiled. “It’s the ruble we should be watching. It’s starting to move.”
The executive director nodded and said, “What does LeBlanc think? I’m thinking this news will destabilize the Saudis. Can you get him to shoot me an email about the riyal?”
Seo-yun felt her stomach drop. “Bryan’s on vacation, but I’ll put together some analysis for you today.”
“Great. Send it to the group.”
The meeting ended. Seo-yun grabbed a pain au chocolat on her way out the door and jammed it into her jacket pocket. She went into the women’s restroom, into the nearest stall, and closed the lid. She pulled the pain au chocolat from her pocket, sat down, and began to eat. She let the crumbs scatter on her black jacket and felt the chocolate melt in her mouth, coating her tongue with a rich and sweet and slightly bitter flavor.
Bryan turned the Sunfish into the breeze, letting the sail flutter for a moment before it picked up the wind again and carried the boat forward. He’d gotten pretty good at sailing. For almost a year he’d spent his Sunday afternoons taking lessons at the Manhattan Sailing School, going out and cruising the Hudson in a J/24, taking turns at the helm, and hoisting sails with a small group of enthusiasts. The best part was that they talked about boats and sails and knots, about wind and waves, about the nuances of reading the weather. He didn’t know what anyone else in his class did; the others didn’t know he worked on Wall Street. There was no social climbing, no one-upmanship—it was about being on the water.
He kept the Sunfish beyond the breaking waves but close to shore. It made no sense to go out into the open ocean in a small boat. Besides, he didn’t have anything to prove, and he was having an excellent time zipping back and forth across the little bay. It was a beautiful day, the water off Punta Cana was clear, and there was a steady wind.
He looked back at the line of palm trees that marked the resort; under them a hundred chaise lounges were set out in rows across the sand, facing the ocean as if it was going to teach them something. No wonder this part of the Dominican Republic was called the Coconut Coast. You could plop your ass in a chair and have people bring you food and drink all day long. It was the perfect break from the maniacal pace of Wall Street, a chance to check out and recharge.
That was the dream, wasn’t it? Drop out of the rat race and spend your days barefoot, slightly drunk, and sunburnt in a tropical paradise. His father had always said he wanted to retire to Hawaii, but when Bryan offered to take him there on vacation he declined. He didn’t even want to go to Florida, and the Keys were supposed to be a poet’s paradise.
No stress. No meetings. He didn’t have to watch every twitch and tick of the dollar against the yuan. The S&P 500 could go fuck itself. There was no ass-kissing, no marketing directives, no bullshit. Yet when he walked past the sunbathers on the beach, almost all of them were looking at their tablets or their smartphones, checking whatever it was they were checking, complaining about the Wi-Fi, bitching about the broadband speed.
Bryan turned the boat, ducking the boom as he came about. A psychiatrist might’ve had a theory about why he was there: he was making amends by living the authentic life his father always wanted but never could have—something like that. But then psychiatry wasn’t really a science, so maybe it was all a bunch of bull. His dad would have agreed with that for sure.
Seo-yun glanced at her fiancé. “Sorry.”
He sighed and put down his fork. “Soy. C’mon. All you do is work. We’ve got a wedding to plan.”
Seo-yun didn’t respond. What could she say? Was there anything more boring than planning a wedding? But it seemed that all he wanted to do was go over his ideas. He was consumed by details: the food, the flowers, the music, the invitations. He even tried to show her samples of fabric for the tablecloths. Who did that? Who cared about that stuff? She spent her days looking at financial minutiae; the last thing she wanted to do on her lunch hour was obsess about other kinds of details. Couldn’t the tablecloth be white? Couldn’t they hire a wedding planner like normal people? As long as everyone had a good time—and with what this wedding was going to cost they’d better have a good time—did it really matter if the napkins matched the flower arrangements? Did he have to call them serviettes?
“Soy? Please.”
She held up a finger, silencing him, and read the text from her assistant. There was a routine inquiry from compliance about a drawdown on a margin account. It was an unrecognized transaction and the client was concerned. She typed in a quick reply. “It’s important.”
He nodded, letting his floppy bangs droop over his sweaty pink forehead. When they’d first started dating she liked his style, how he looked like the edgy singer in an emo band; but now he just looked like an overweight marketing exec who was trying too hard to look like the edgy singer in an emo band.
He reached across the table and tapped on her wrist. “Am I really supposed to give your parents a goose? I don’t even know where to find one.”
“You can give them a wooden goose or a picture of a goose. It’s symbolic.”
“Seems a little silly.”
“Just be happy you don’t have to wear a jeogori.”
Seo-yun signaled the waiter for the check. She heard a disgruntled snort blare from her fiancé’s nostrils, the sound he made when he was unhappy. She watched him tug on his mustache, another sign he was annoyed.
She shrugged. “I have to go.”
His lips turned into a smug kind of pout. “I thought your bank was too big to fail.”
She wanted to tell him that whatever was happening at work was way more interesting than fretting over the design of the invitation or about the availability of pink peonies for the arrangements. She wanted to tell him that this whole marriage thing was a mistake, that his control-freak micromanaging of the wedding plans had killed any affection she felt for him, that she couldn’t stand the sound of his voice or the sight of his pouty mouth, that she would never be able to enjoy sex with him again, that she didn’t even want to be friends. Instead she said, “If the bank fails, we’ll have to get married at city hall.”
She heard him snort again as she left the restaurant. Once she was out on the street, she imagined herself never seeing him again and, for the first time in days, felt a lightness in her step.
Seo-yun’s office was really a bunker for the thirteen computer monitors arrayed around her like some kind of monetary mission control, with piles of documents and folders acting as a backdrop. She closed the door, put her smartphone on her desk as she kicked off her shoes. She sat down and rolled her chair into position. As she waited for the account to load she realized that everything in her life had suddenly become annoying: her job, her fiancé, the wedding, the fact that she had to cover for her colleague, her lack of any time for herself. It was all a bit much. Bryan should be here to deal with this; it wasn’t her normal thing; she didn’t manage institutional accounts. LeBlanc was something of a savant when it came to currency trading, and Seo-yun wasn’t egomaniacal enough to deny that he’d been partly responsible for the stellar performance of her division. Not that he did it by himself; she’d made some major moves too. She liked to think that it wasn’t about individual effort; it was the team that won the game.
It didn’t take long for her to see that almost half a million dollars had been taken on margin against the account. What happened to it was unclear. It had initially been converted to Swiss francs, but after that, it seemed to go to an account at a Russian bank. The Russian account was closed, the funds vanishing in a maze of transactions. This, she realized, was a knot that was going to take some time to untangle. It bothered her that the client hadn’t been paying attention. That was the problem with these institutions and endowments: they didn’t check the details of their finances, and then when something went wrong, they freaked out and blamed everyone else. They just assumed that their wealth bubbled from a magical fountain somewhere. Seo-yun r
ealized she was being unfair. These clients had hired her company to safeguard their pension funds and college endowments.
She saw LeBlanc’s assistant walking past. Why couldn’t she remember his name? Was it Chad? Brad? Chip? She opened her door and waved him over.
“Hey. Do you have a number where I can reach Bryan?”
The assistant, whom Seo-yun thought of as a surprisingly uptight young man from California, blinked at her. “I can try his cell.”
Seo-yun nodded—she’d heard that supervisors and managers should nod; it showed empathy.
“Tell him to call me, okay?”
“I’ll shoot him a text.”
“While you’re waiting to hear from him, can you work with compliance and trace some transactions for me?”
The assistant shifted from foot to foot. She could tell he wasn’t comfortable with her question. “It’s probably a glitch.”
LeBlanc’s assistant came up empty. Not only was he unable to follow the string of transactions on the missing money, but he couldn’t get Bryan on the phone.
It was unusual. If something strange was going on here, what was happening in his other accounts? She used her password override and opened his files. Now that she knew what she was looking for, it didn’t take long to find another account with a mysterious half million dollars drawn on its margin and used to execute a string of forex trades until the money vanished. She checked another account. This one had more headroom and was hit for a million dollars. Same thing. She opened another. Again, the margin loan, the maze of forex transactions.
She wondered whom to call. She didn’t want to sound an alarm. Maybe this was how LeBlanc made money for his clients. Borrowing on margin wasn’t a crime; in fact it was pretty common. There was probably a legitimate explanation for this.
Her phone rang. It was her fiancé. They were scheduled to go to a tasting with the wedding sommelier. She told him it would have to wait. Or he’d have to go spit in a bucket by himself.
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