“Kalimera file!” someone yelled. Good morning, my friend.
I turned and saw Zemar’s silhouette, his linen scarf worn as a turban, lit by the Gucci billboard behind the fence.
“Kalimera file,” I echoed, thumbing his lighter, perfectly curved, begging to be touched, and I felt myself bending my life even further. If Zemar was the prototype, I had to cut deeper between my work and my inarticulate, interpreting life with Erik.
FIVE
THE NEXT EIGHTEEN MONTHS I lived in hotels. I spent half a year at the Soho Grand in New York, four months at the Lancaster in Paris, another four at the Forrestal in Princeton, two at the Berkeley in London, and one at XV Beacon in Boston. They were all small, theatrically decorated properties that catered to long-term guests by offering insanely addictive service. Suitcases were magically unpacked and repacked. My favorite books appeared on my nightstand, and new underwear in my drawers. If I had a good day, cocktails were complimentary. If I got sick, a doctor was sent to my room, and my handwritten notes were couriered to the client. Shopping, gift wrapping, VAT-refund processing, and personal reminders in Moleskine pads cushioned me. Everything was available yet only when I needed it.
Sure, I worked crazy hours and with difficult teams, but, much like the expensed luxury I lived in, everything about my work was someone else’s long-term commitment. I built portfolio management models that helped clients decide on billion-dollar investments, I developed product-launch and acquisition strategies for years to come; but they were all other people’s challenges. I was protected by project-specific deadlines; clients, cities, and Command teams came and left. I made short, forceful friends—and enemies—that I rarely came across again. And soon this detachment at work spilled over to the rest of my life. Attached Commanders honored personal commitments Friday to Sunday, crossing the continent or the Atlantic twice a week, but singles, or semi-singles like me, decompressed on weekends right there in the hotel.
“How is hotel living?” I played back Paul’s question over my room’s speakerphone in Princeton. “It’s just like work, really. Promiscuous,” I said with a nervous laugh. “We’re talking no responsibilities. When, if, I want to spend a weekend at my home in San Fran, great. Otherwise, all options are open.”
I could hear Paul smoking.
“If you think about it, it’s not a bad deal at all,” I went on. “I’m homeless, but in first class.”
“I think you’re bullshitting me, Greek boy,” Paul said.
“Come again?”
“You sound lonely.”
“How’s London?” I changed the subject. “How are you?”
“Everything is fine, everything is good. It’s just a bit strange being single.”
“If anyone can do it . . .”
“Screw that,” Paul said.
“Well, being single may be good for you. You said you wanted to rediscover yourself, remember?”
“I suppose,” Paul murmured. “Please don’t do that,” he said firmly to someone in the background, then to me: “Malaka, what are you doing this weekend? Come hang out here with us, in London.”
“Us?”
“Alkis and I are throwing an EBS dinner this Saturday night.”
“IF YOU WORK IN MANAGEMENT consulting, you can keep reinventing yourself,” I half joked at Paul’s party. “Being on a project means that you are in town for a few months, with an expense account and twenty-four-hour service. The options on how you present yourself are unlimited. What’s not to like?”
“Careful, now. Real options and hedging cost. There’s no free lunch.” Paul handed me his new business card: wealth, asset, private equity, and custody management. “All in lowercase Calibri,” he said, pointing at his card.
“You mean there’s no free lunch for your clients,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Paul asked.
“Means your ass is a different story,” I replied.
“I don’t make the rules, Stathis. I just play.”
I thought of his father, who did make the rules, who’d probably gotten Paul his new job after he’d spent a year drinking in the Pacific. And why shouldn’t I get a free lunch, or some no-strings-attached ass, for a change? All that when, slowly but steadily, people were cutting me out, right, left, and center.
By 2004 I had become so virtual, so conditioned to my self-exile, that old friends and acquaintances gave up on my schedule, my availability (or lack of it), my “flakiness,” and finally “you!,” as I read at the end of a collapsed e-mail conversation with ex-colleagues from the Bay Area. “Stathis who?” someone from the group had replied-all. “You’re supposed to meet him in Café de la Presse and he’s in Amsterdam.”
That summer, insomnia settled in. I became an after-hours Birkenstocked fixture at the front desks of my hotels. When a useless Ambien gave me the munchies, I shared the midnight burger right there with the reception staff; often it wasn’t even charged. Discussions and etiquettes started to slack, and the night crews would quickly position themselves as the have-nots in our relationship, with all the boldness—the cockiness, really—of having little or nothing to lose: “You work too much,” these kids would tell me.
“You should buy a Daytona.”
“Upgrade to a bungalow.”
“Work faster.”
“Quit your job.”
“Go to Jericoacoara.”
“Have a three-way in your cottage.”
When I left for work a couple of hours later, the same shift would see me out: “Good morning, Mr. Rakis,” they would say firmly, businesslike. Like a Cinderella-esque switch had evaporated our nighttime equal standing.
Other guests, sometimes colleagues, would pause an extra second at my lack of grooming, and even when I was freshly shaved—a habit that became less sacred—I lacked the chivalry that the typical Commander projected. Among my kind, there was usually sophistication and neatness around our appearances, and I showed neither. Partners with the “smart” accounts, their entourage, and a good number of “hi-pots”—high-potential Commanders—went for the angular Savile Row cut. Lower in the food chain was a compulsion for a Ralph Lauren kind of properness that bordered on a manicured, Christmassy, my-mother-bought-me-this-shirt look. I had joined an army of eunuchs with a handful of Euroglitz Brown graduates in four inches-high-collar shirts.
Andrea, in her high heels and pearls, would now and then comment on my “amusing” or “random” tie knot, my mismatching belt and shoes, and once, after a client presentation, my “weathered” Filofax. Wireless gadgets were “a Command privilege, a shield,” she explained, “subsidized by our professional development expense accounts.” I would get internal e-mails about a new Apple series, a special offer on Montblanc accessories, or an Etro suit sale, but I had neither an iPod nor a French-cuff shirt. My three suits were solid brown, gray, and black. Not having a navy-blue was more than anti-Command; it was almost anti-American. My anachronisms, my perceived masochism: “How come you jog without an iPod?” an early-twenties Business Analyst asked me. “Why do you take notes by pen? Why don’t you just IntraPoint in real time, like the rest of us?”
None of that really bothered me. Neither did my privileged solitude, which slowly slid from fun to lechery. Sleeping around became a hobby. In hotels, I laid receptionists, maître d’s, competitors, flight attendants, and, once, a business-school professor. “Wanna get a drink?” turned into “Wanna get naked?” turned into “Wanna fuck silly?” All in the name of managing insomnia and—in all seriousness—in order to run into a better Erik, while I was busy lying to the real Erik, pretending I had meetings near him, hoping I’d jump on a plane and spend a weekend with him somewhere, anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
“Bro! That’s crazy. I have to be in Montreal for work the week of the fourth too,” I said over the phone, excited but careful, trying to keep despair out of my voice.
“Is that right?” Erik mumbled, typing something.
“I’ll get
the Molsons if you buy eggs on Sunday,” I said. “It’s a good deal, Erik.”
“Don’t you need to prepare? Pick your fonts?” Erik cat-and-moused me while we talked out my second obviously made-up business trip that summer.
“They’re Canadians.”
“Mm-hmm.” Was he acknowledging my political incorrectness? Reading an e-mail? Watching War-on-Terror in the background?
“WE PROMOTE STAFF EXPOSURE,” ANDREA said during my semiannual professional development meeting with her.
“I don’t want to be exposed . . .” I joked, but her expression didn’t change.
“You see, Stathis, any quick specialization to a specific industry, like biopharma, will deny you the advantages of what I call ‘corporate window-shopping,’ which is one of management consulting’s main attractions. Very few people get to play in different sectors like we do.” She adjusted her earring, and a Krupp-sized diamond ring glittered. No window-shopping there.
I nodded.
“Now, I want you to live for speed and innovation. That’s what our clients want and need.”
“Speed and innovation,” I echoed reassuringly.
She was dating a Fortune 100 CEO, and as her jewelry increased in size, so did my aversion to her. Obviously she wasn’t there for the salary, and with most partners courting her for her man’s business, she had turned into the perfect bitch. The last thing I wanted was to be the bitch’s bitch. Plus, after she had cornered me at O’Hare, there was no trust lost between us.
“Speed . . . and . . . innovation,” she repeated slowly, as if I doubted her.
I nodded again. What the fuck? I get it. Move on.
Within weeks, contrary to Andrea’s advice, I joined Command’s biopharma practice, a move that kept me bouncing between the East Coast and Europe. Soon enough, I realized that pharma managers didn’t trust Hamptonites or groomed, testosterone-deprived intellectuals to build their strategies. What Command VPs were missing—out of privilege or success—was that clients were equally self-absorbed in their plainness. Strangely, my Command abnormalities gave me my first breakthrough: I was not 3G-accessorized, I was not intimidating. Jersey clients saw their own dullness in me. We identified, we joked, they “could be consultants too!” I became their first point of contact. See, my insomnia went beyond the mundane; it protected me from jumping to hypotheses and conclusions. I was a voyeur in client meetings. People talked too much. You shut up, and you got it. I let clients play out their thoughts and then intervened on their terms. I became “the weird Greek guy” who made Senior Associate in sixteen months because I was lonely, Erik-obsessed, and depressed.
“MATE, WE HAVE TO GET out of consulting,” Alkis said, a couple of hours into our red-eye to Paris.
I laughed. “We’ve been promoted,” I said. “We’re about to lead a big biotech project in France.”
Alkis shook his head. “Jesus, Stathis. You still think consulting’s a career.”
“I never said that,” I protested.
“Command trains us to grow nominally! The partners will never let us get paid in equity from clients. Nominal growth!” He waved his hand at a slight angle. “That’s all you get. Failure. Nominal growth is failure.”
“We offer independent thinking,” I said. “Objectivity. We can’t get paid in equity. We shouldn’t get paid in equity.”
Alkis made a face. “What?”
“Equity is a conflict of interest. It’s obvious,” I said, and looked around. We were the only two people awake in first class.
“Whatever, mate,” Alkis said, and clicked on his Outlook. “This is too good a week to argue. I love my ex-client.”
“Did you extend your last project?” I asked, more lost than curious.
“God, no! The client there wasn’t getting it, so we fired him.” Alkis laughed.
How does one fire a client? Was this some consulting joke I had missed? Or did Alkis get someone literally fired during his last project, in London?
“Fired?” I said.
“Okay, want to hear something really sexy?”
“What?”
“I penciled down the head of BD at News Corp to talk about social networking opportunities.”
“You got a meeting at Murdoch’s?” I said, still bugged by the “firing” comment.
“Stathis, I don’t have meetings. I have discussions,” Alkis said seriously. “Fun, fun, fun,” he whispered, tapping his laptop with his thumbs.
But in early 2005 everything was “fun” and “sexy.” At Command, our EBS “tribe” had brainwashed itself into “fun.” Projects were “value-adding,” “strategic.” “Ride the wave!” people said. Downside risks were seen as independent, impossible to be aligned in a row. Discounting them or treating them like any other absurdity—say, the fear of flying, or terrorism—was “leadership,” “good decision analysis.” Our world was an upside-heavy dependency diagram, a 1950s superhero with an expanding torso yet very skinny legs.
Alkis’s iPod, laptop, and coffee—all black—lay spread on his tray table. The Aviator was playing on his video screen. I looked at his gizmos and wondered how Alkis had those instincts, which we were never taught at Command. I glimpsed DiCaprio in a state of paralysis on the screen, and thought of how Erik would react to Alkis’s new meta-consulting world. For some reason my mind went to al-Qaeda, and I imagined us being shot down right at that moment. Not an absolute loss, I thought, seeing Alkis smiling at his Outlook screen. But a sudden turbulence made me change my mind.
“I’ll go check if Gawel has any questions for tomorrow,” I said.
“He’s back in business,” Alkis murmured, glued to his screen.
I found Gawel, the Analyst who would be helping us in Paris, sleeping under the Harvard Business Review, Wallpaper, and a blanket. Fast Company was on the floor by his Princeton duffel bag. Once again, I thought of Erik, and how would he describe this scrawny Tintin look-alike twenty-nothing-year-old Pole tucked in under his subscriptions in business class.
Sinking back into my seat, I was ready to close my eyes when I caught Alkis watching a video—on his laptop this time—that showed a preacher in front of a massive, bright screen in a packed theater. The guy talked eagerly with his hands as people cheered. I changed my angle to get a better view, risking more of Alkis’s “markets can demystify and democratize anything,” only to see Steve Jobs talking to Apple executives in a company auditorium. I looked at Alkis beaming, oblivious to my peeking, back to Jobs, back to Alkis, and I began connecting the dots between Command’s narcissistic credo of “haute thinking” and Alkis’s “ubiquitous commoditization” and equity obsession. For Alkis, for all the Alkises, strategy, retail, entertainment, personalized medicine, seduction, anything, could be deciphered into a recipe-driven craft. There were no business art forms left. With the “right story,” generations of skill sets could become irrelevant. We were back to a 1960s conglomerate thinking, when anything could be led by any one of us.
WE CHECKED IN AT THE Lancaster on rue de Berri, off the Champs-Élysées.
“We are a hôtel particulier,” our porter said, squeezing with us into the hotel’s tiny red elevator.
I didn’t know what that meant. “Hotel what?” I asked.
The porter pressed the button for the top floor. “We believe that privacy is the new luxury,” he said, seriously. Seriously.
“Are you coming to L’Avenue tonight?” Alkis asked me. “I told Gawel to book a table.”
“Room service,” I said, trying to sort out the connection between privacy and dwarf spaces.
“Suit yourself,” Alkis said, and checked his watch. “Listen, I need to power-nap for forty-five, then hit the fitness room. How about we get together around two to go through tomorrow’s schedule?”
“Power-nap?” I was jet-lagged; I saw ridiculousness everywhere.
“Yes, you put your muscles but not your brain to sleep,” Alkis said casually. “Which reminds me, we need a proper gym. Gawel should Google that.”
>
“Why don’t we just ask at the front desk?” I said.
He gave me his you-are-delaying-deliverables face. “Stathis, you still think that google means Google? It’s a verb! It means he needs to take care of it.”
DURING MY FIRST WEEK IN Paris I was at the client’s headquarters till eleven each night, trying to figure out what exactly we were supposed to do there. “A portfolio management exercise for their pipeline. Pretty straightforward,” stated Andrea’s one-line e-mail from New York. By Friday, Alkis and I were at odds on pretty much everything: from which of the client’s drug candidates we would assess, to the evaluation process we would use, to our communication style, all the way to our shirts and ties.
We spent our first weekend between Command’s satellite office in Paris and the business room of the Lancaster. Alkis was all about: “I’m from Bayswater . . . there are right and wrong answers, Stathis . . . at the end of the day, markets are linked, so we can buy, bypass, or pass on anything,” while he accused me of being “too process, too West Coast, too decision-fucking-analysis.”
“I HEAR THAT YOU AND Alkis had a smooth takeoff,” Andrea said as the two of us strolled down rue François 1er toward avenue Montaigne. It was a freezing January night.
I rubbed my hands together and put them in my coat pockets. “So far, so good,” I said.
“Let’s go for a quick drink at L’Avenue,” Andrea said, peering through the windows at Céline. “It’s important we spend some quality time together before the project takes off.” She scrolled through her BlackBerry with her gloves on. “I have an hour. I want this to be our time.” She looked at me. “Your time. How are you feeling?”
“I’m excited,” I said, unexcitedly.
Once at the restaurant, we sat at a table for two by the door. The whole place was made of red velvet. I heard some Greek from farther inside, but I could not spot the table.
“The client loves you,” Andrea said, taking her purple gloves off one finger at a time.
“Nice gloves.” I returned the compliment in her currency.
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