by Adam Mitzner
That’s at least one bright spot. The cost to the fund to borrow a few hundred million dollars more won’t be prohibitive.
“Go to four to one on the leverage,” he tells Haresh.
“That’ll exhaust our credit.”
Jonathan looks into the restaurant, where he can see Ross and Goldenberg yukking it up. “Just do it, Haresh, and let me worry about where the money comes from, okay?”
“Okay. You’re the boss.”
Back in the restaurant, Jonathan sees that either Goldenberg or Ross has taken it upon himself to order another bottle of the four-hundred-dollar Amarone that Jonathan will be paying for. It’s just as well, as he’d prefer these guys get good and drunk tonight.
* * *
Jonathan stumbles home close to one in the morning. Natasha is asleep. Or pretending to be so she doesn’t have to engage her husband in his inebriated state. Jonathan doesn’t care which; he’d rather be alone, too.
After dinner, Ross thought the revelry should continue, so after they put Goldenberg in his limousine, Ross and Jonathan ended up at the St. Regis Hotel’s King Cole Bar, drinking overpriced scotch. Jonathan had watched his wine intake at Wolfgang’s, as he never liked to get too drunk with clients, but the scotch had pushed him over the edge. He’ll be good and hungover tomorrow, but it was worth it to keep Ross happy.
Before Ross’s speech became slurred, he clearly articulated the words that Jonathan had longed to hear: that he was open to staking Jonathan in his own fund. This had long been Jonathan’s ultimate dream, to be free of the Vincent Komaroffs of the world and to reap one hundred percent of the profits he earned. What impeded this fantasy from becoming reality was that he’d need somewhere near two billion in cash to start the fund, and in order to do the type of trading that would give his investors the returns they demanded, he’d also need to borrow close to six billion more. That’s what had long tethered Jonathan to Harper Sawyer: they have that type of borrowing power, and he doesn’t.
Jonathan realizes that given the amount of alcohol Ross had consumed, he might not remember anything about what he’d said tonight, or might pretend as if he didn’t if he thought better of his offer in the clear light of day, but if he was serious about putting a billion or so in a fund under Jonathan’s banner, that would go a long way toward convincing other big-shot CEOs to follow suit. The banks, in turn, might see that kind of blue-chip clientele as a reason to loosen the purse strings and give Jonathan the credit he’d need.
With the fantasy now a little closer to reality, Jonathan returns to one of his favorite parts of this daydream: the naming of his would-be fund. He’s considered honoring his humble roots (Carlisle Investments); or a Greek god (Ares Management); or going with a pop-culture bent (Gotham Partners). But in the end, he knew he’d never be able to resist the self-congratulatory ring of Caine Capital. It was just too good to pass up.
Right behind the name game is an even greater fantasy: his final showdown with that self-inflated egomaniac Vincent Komaroff. Jonathan envisions them walking toward each other like gunslingers in the Old West, in a final battle for supremacy. When they came face-to-face, Jonathan would tell Komaroff that if he had only been less stingy at bonus time, things would never have come to this, but now there’s no turning back. He imagines Komaroff begging—offering him a twenty-million-dollar bonus just for staying for a few more years—and Jonathan laughing as he literally turns his back on the boss on his way out the door.
Sometimes Jonathan even took the daydream to the trading floor of his self-imagined Caine Capital. Fifty thousand square feet of open space with helicopter views of New York City. Now a hundred traders occupy the X-shaped desk, with Jonathan still at its center.
His home is different in this fantasy, too. It’s now the penthouse of some new construction overlooking Central Park that he’s undoubtedly purchased for a record-breaking sum, and, of course, he summers in that oceanfront mansion in East Hampton.
It’s not lost on Jonathan that although he envisions his fantasy life with striking clarity, he never sees Natasha in these glimpses of his future. He doesn’t imagine that she’s divorced him, for he’s certainly upheld his part of their marital bargain by providing her the life of opulence she craves. And he doesn’t envision that he’s left her, either, as that would require alimony, and he’d rather not weaken this fantasy by depleting his net worth by half.
No, for it to truly be a fantasy, Natasha must meet some type of sudden end. Preferably one that makes Jonathan seem even more heroic for having endured such suffering.
4
Eight Months Later/December
As soon as he gets out of his car, Jonathan hears the Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself” and he’s firmly back in 1990. He surveys the other vehicles in the East Carlisle High School parking lot. A lot of economy cars, most of them domestic, scattered among the SUVs and minivans.
His Bentley looks very out of place, and Jonathan smiles.
When the invitation to his twenty-fifth high-school reunion arrived in the mail two months ago, Jonathan could not envision any confluence of events that would have led him to attend. It had long been something of a point of pride that looking back had never held any interest.
And yet here he is.
“Hey, you’re Johnny something, right?” says an obese man sitting on a bench in front of the high school, a plume of smoke around his face.
Even with the man’s extra hundred pounds and bald head, Jonathan recognizes Pauley DiGiacomo. The smell of pot is also a trigger. Pauley was a first-class burnout in high school, although in East Carlisle, and apparently nowhere else on earth, the stoners were called ginkers. He’s wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with some type of writing on it that’s obscured by the gray hoodie he has half-zipped over it, which immediately makes Jonathan think that his decision to wear his Brioni suit was a mistake, even if he did forgo the tie.
“I go by Jonathan nowadays. Jonathan Caine.”
Jonathan extends his hand for a shake, like grown-ups do, but Pauley puts up his palm, inviting a high five. “Fuck yeah,” Pauley says, after Jonathan slaps his hand. Then apparently realizing that he’s being ungracious, Pauley says, “Hey, you want a hit?”
Pauley pushes the joint that’s clutched between his stubby fingers toward Jonathan. The irony isn’t lost on Jonathan that he could have easily had this exact same conversation with Pauley DiGiacomo senior year.
“No, I’m good,” Jonathan says. “So what have you been doing with yourself, Pauley?”
“You know me, still kickin’ it with the drums.”
Jonathan suddenly recalls that Pauley was in some type of band in high school, and now that he’s accessing that part of his memory, a pretty decent version of “In the Air Tonight” performed at the senior variety show with Pauley on the skins comes back to him.
“So you’re in a band?”
“Yeah. We’re called Caravan. We just did the open mic night down at the Grove. We play at my church sometimes, too.”
“Hey, that’s great. Married? Kids?”
“No way, man. Got Nixie, though. She’s a black Lab mix. Just the two of us against the world. You know how it is, right?”
Even though Pauley obviously meant the question to be rhetorical, it throws Jonathan. The last thing he wants is to be able to identify in any way with Pauley DiGiacomo’s life. And yet, he does know how it is, and he doesn’t even have a dog.
“You going to make it inside?” Jonathan asks.
“I’m just chillin’ here for a few. Sounds rockin’, though.”
“Okay,” Jonathan says, glad to be able to extricate himself from a stoned ghost of the past. “I’m going to head in now.”
Pauley takes a toke. “Great talking to you, man.”
* * *
The signs inside the high school direct Jonathan toward the gym, which he could have figured out on his own because that’s where the music comes from. Now it’s Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love.”
“Johnny Caine—no way!” Dana says brightly. “Well, you look great. You didn’t come to the other reunions, right? And you’re not on Facebook. Or if you are, I can’t find you. I’ve looked. Wow, Johnny Caine. So . . . tell me?”
“Tell you what?” he says.
“Married? Kids? Job? Where do you live? You know, twenty-fifth high-school reunion stuff?”
“I’m married, but no kids. I work on Wall Street and live in New York City.”
“I knew it. I knew it,” Dana says with a giggle. “I always used to say that Johnny Caine is going to be a millionaire someday.”
He smiles to confirm her assessment. “Your turn.”
Although he didn’t think it was possible a moment earlier, Dana’s expression lights up even more. She reaches into her purse and pulls out her phone.
“I should keep this out because I keep showing people. This is Jackson, he’s my baby, and a high school senior now. And my oldest . . .” She scrolls through the pictures. “She looks terrible here, but this is Mandy. She’s a sophomore at Rutgers.”
Jonathan feels like a dirty old man when he thinks about the fact that Mandy looks almost exactly like Dana did back in high school. “Wow. Your daughter’s in college.”
“Karen Thompson is a grandmother already! And I don’t think she’s the only one. Is your wife here? I’d love to meet her.”
“Unfortunately, I’m here by my lonesome. My wife had another engagement.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Dana says. “But I totally get it. My husband is tired of the old stories, too, which is why I’m also flying solo tonight.” Then, looking over Jonathan’s shoulder, she says, “Hey, it’s Patty Tiernan. You remember Johnny Caine, don’t you?”
Jonathan turns around. “Hi,” he says, even though he doesn’t recognize Patty Tiernan at all.
“Hi,” she says back, sounding as if she can’t place him, either.
“Well, you’re all set, Johnny,” Dana says. “Go have fun. I’m going to be done here in another forty minutes or so, and then I’ll come find you. Okay?”
“Sure,” he says. “One thing, though, I go by Jonathan now.”
“Good choice,” Dana says, nodding. “Fits you better.”
* * *
The same thought recycles again and again in Jackie’s brain: How could she have ever been friends with these people? Vain and insecure. Mean-spirited to the point of nasty. And above all else, stupid as the day is long.
Barbara DeSapio was Jackie’s best friend in high school. The number of nights they slept at each other’s house likely qualified each of them for legal residence.
They lost touch in college, but not for Barbara’s lack of trying. It was Jackie who broke away, wanting to put as much distance as possible between the vapid beauty queen she was in high school and the person she wanted to be. And for a while, it worked. She had long considered it her greatest failing that she’d returned to Rick and to East Carlisle. In the end, Jackie had no excuse other than that she’d been afraid. Instead of relying on her intelligence, which she’d never been quite confident would support her, she fell back on her beauty, which had never let her down, and she ran back to the land where she had once been queen.
Facebook did the rest, reacquainting her with the old high school crew. Barbara lived on Long Island, and even though she was only two hours away, their contact over the past years had been limited to liking one another’s status and the annual birthday call.
When she sees her former BFF in the flesh, it’s even more apparent than from photographs that Barbara has kept up her looks, so much so that she could still manage a passing resemblance to Heather Locklear, her senior yearbook separated-at-birth partner. Jackie assumes that some of that must come with money—as Barbara’s Facebook feed was a never-ending stream of photos with her personal trainer. On top of which, Jackie assumed that a nip or tuck had been done, too, or at the very least, a healthy amount of Botox. Barbara didn’t have a wrinkle or crease on her.
Michelle Sackler, née Abromowitz, and Melissa Romero, née Farella, completed the quartet of high school royalty that ordinary students referred to as the Cliquesters. They both attended college at University of Miami and then moved in together after graduation. Their parents willingly picked up the rent because they viewed an apartment in a complex that was next to the medical school as a better investment in their daughters’ future than graduate school. Turned out they were right. Before the two-year lease ran out, Melissa married an anesthesiologist who lived on the sixth floor, and Michelle tied the knot with a plastic surgeon resident on nine.
The M&Ms, as Michelle and Melissa called themselves, now live within five minutes of each other in Boca Raton. They’re both stay-at-home moms, even though the youngest of their children is in high school, which leaves a lot of time for them to have lunch, shop, and go to the gym together. One of those lifelong friendships straight out of a multiplex rom-com, Jackie thinks.
“I can’t believe that you and Rick never left East Carlisle,” Melissa says.
“Yeah,” Michelle chimes in. “It must be so strange to go to the same places where we used to hang out as kids.”
“Have you driven down Route Eighteen?” Barbara laughs. “I doubt that there are five stores still around from back then.”
“The mall’s still there,” Michelle points out. “Remember, Jacqueline, when we’d go into the dressing room of . . . what was the name of that store with the really short skirts? And we’d stuff the miniskirts into our bras and then walk out like we were Dolly Parton or something?”
“G&S,” Melissa says.
“Right, G&S,” Michelle says.
Jackie recalls precisely this dynamic from over two decades ago, and hated it then. The M&Ms finishing each other’s thoughts, as if combined they might have a normal-size brain, and Barbara trying to drive a wedge between them and Jackie, so she could protect her position as Jackie’s best friend.
“It’s actually very nice,” Jackie says. “Living in the same town you grew up in, I mean. There are still a lot of teachers around from our time, and there’s something—I don’t know what the word is, gratifying, maybe?—to see your kids doing the same things you were doing. Our youngest, Emma, she’s a gymnast over at the Weider school, and Robert plays quarterback for the Bears.”
“I bet that makes Rick happy,” Barbara says.
There’s something about Barbara’s tone that Jackie finds unsettling. A familiarity that shouldn’t be there. Jackie’s often wondered whether Barbara slept with Rick, maybe when they were in college and she and Rick were on one of their many breaks. Maybe in high school, for all Jackie trusted either of them.
“Out of all of us,” Melissa says, “I think Jacqueline’s life is the closest to what I would have imagined in high school.”
It’s about as bad an indictment as Jackie can imagine, even though she can certainly see why Melissa would have planned this for Jackie twenty-five years ago.
You’ll marry Ricky and live in a house on Farmington Lake, and you’ll have a boy and a girl, and the boy will be a football player, and the girl will be beautiful.
How much did Jackie not want that to be the way her life turned out? And yet, maybe she protested too much. She didn’t have to move back to East Carlisle after college. She could have turned down Rick’s marriage proposal and gone on to graduate school, like she’d originally planned.
She had never imagined the price she’d pay for her insecurity would be so unbearably high. A lif
e of abject fear with no end in sight.
* * *
Alex Miller is the first person Jonathan encounters whom he was actually friendly with in high school. They weren’t in the same core social circle but in the same general sphere of high school life at least: smart boys with ambition. Alex had done all right for himself too. A couple of years back, Jonathan ran into Mitch Glassman at a restaurant in SoHo, and Mitch mentioned that Alex Miller was a partner at Cromwell Altman, a top-tier New York City law firm.
Alex is looking good, which gives Jonathan a boost that he might not be as run-down as the others he’s scanned from a distance. Alex’s hair remains full, albeit half-gray now, and he doesn’t seem to be a completely different shape than he was in high school.
In the time it takes Jonathan to approach, Alex has been joined by Stephen Hirshman, who was a world-class geek in high school. The years have not been kind to Hirshman. A bean pole with a huge Jewfro back in the day, he’s now swung in the opposite direction, close to three hundred pounds and bald as a cue ball.
“Finally, men in suits,” Jonathan says.
Alex chuckles. “Yeah, really. Did an e-mail go out that everyone was supposed to dress like teenagers?”
“Only among the guys,” Hirshman says. “The girls seem to have gone all out. Some social scientist should make a study about why the female of the species preserves itself so much better. Look over there—Jacqueline Lawson and the Cliquesters. I swear, it’s like time has stood still for them.”
Cliquesters, Jonathan repeats in his head. He hasn’t heard that term in twenty-five years.
“Okay,” Hirshman says excitedly, “this definitely falls under the category that there is no karmic justice in the world, but I heard that Jacqueline married that douche bag Ricky Williams. The prom queen and the quarterback of the football team. Clichés are clichés for a reason, I guess.”