Hotel Living

by Ioannis Pappos

  “’Cause you have?”

  Erik turned and gave me a wanna-bet smile.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “Got a record too?”

  “Damn right!” Erik said, and touched the scar on his upper arm.

  “I thought you said that was a car accident.”

  “During a chase.”

  “Really? Did you hit a supermarket in Roxbury?”

  “Punk!” Erik laughed. I laughed back.

  “I know you wanna tell me,” I said.

  He put his book down. “Okay. So we’re leaving a Red Sox game and the brakes die on us, and we red-light a major one.”

  “I believe you,” I said unconvincingly.

  “Now cops are chasing us, but we can’t stop. So my cousin fences the car right up next to the wire of this parking lot. Windows smashed, paramedics, cops don’t buy our story . . .”

  “Did they take you to your dad’s hospital?” I asked seriously.

  “Fuckass!” Erik jumped on me, but I was expecting him, so I sprang off the futon. “Stop dancing,” he yelled and threw my copy of Real Options after me, which I kicked in midair.

  “Bequia! One on one!” I said, and started tapping our soccer ball with my knees.

  “You were lucky,” Erik mumbled.

  “Keep telling yourself that.”

  “Stop talking. You’ll drop the ball two floors down to Guadeloupe again,” Erik said.

  “You didn’t pass it to me right. Look! Look how you’re supposed to hit the ball. Above the knee, Erik. On the thigh. Jump and swing. Jump and swing. Control, don’t trap.”

  “You play soccer like you dance zeibekiko.”

  I laughed but kept freestyling. “You play football like a dancing slave. Said Zemar taught you?”

  Erik threw his Mike Davis at me and I kicked the ball at his face. Making a fist in time, he bounced it off the patio.

  I ground my teeth. “It’s a sublet, you dick!” I said as seriously as I could. “Gotta be decent, discreet.”

  “Dance now.”

  I burst onto the futon and onto him, clamping his neck with my knees. He tried to break loose and grabbed my crotch. “You wood?” Erik laughed.

  “Is your verb-skipping a Southie thing?” I squeezed his neck harder. “Or is texting fucking with your brain?”

  “C’est quoi ce bordel?” my neighbor shouted.

  “Greek slut!” Erik said.

  “Bloomberg whore!”

  Weather permitting, we slept outdoors. I barely thought of Greece.

  WEEKDAYS IN PRINCETON, WE WERE making progress, getting closer to solid findings, but somehow I wasn’t translating goodwill to more work. I wasn’t really selling.

  “Business development is the only way to partnership,” Andrea murmured during my professional development meeting as she flipped through my “Basket of Skill Sets” folder.

  She was still sore about Paris, and she knew that I suspected her motives and moves. She still had the upper hand, but now she was a touch scared of me too.

  “I lifted ‘Business Development’ to ‘Primary Focus,’” I offered.

  She dropped my folder onto her desk and turned to her new espresso machine, which was sitting-pretty on a tea trolley I had seen in conference rooms. She pressed the machine’s big round red button and went back to my “2006 Goals” subfolder and my “Focus Card,” which she put between my “Upward & Downward Evaluation Matrix” and my “Command Years Scorecard.”

  “Yes, I see that,” Andrea said, nodding. “It used to be under ‘Substantial.’ Are you sure you don’t want an espresso?” she asked, and once again leaned over the machine, which was warily silent.

  “I’m good, thanks,” I replied, worrying that her new toy was broken, and what impact that might have on my professional development.

  But then she turned, holding a glass filled with espresso. She leaned back against her desk, not quite smiling, one hand flat on my folders, the other holding her cup, and enjoyed a sip.

  “Stathis,” she said, looking quickly up to the ceiling. “Your basket is strong. You’re in the tenth percentile on both leadership and quant. You get good client feedback, and Command is not an up-or-out firm, but . . . What I want to see next—what your challenge should be next is to introduce clients to more of our offerings. And the ticket here is . . .” she prompted me with her free hand: “Something sexy?” She tilted her head. “Innovation! What else?” She raised a shoulder and took another sip.

  Seriously—after her failed insider-trading trick in Paris, Georgina Clooney was back at her innovation tune. She was so shameless that I had to look away to avoid laughing.

  I left her office wondering how Andrea’s innovabullshit and seven folders of my professional development, of my bullshit, could make middle managers buy more slides and Excel spreadsheets.

  A week before Thanksgiving I dispatched Justin to research literature on how to “introduce management frameworks to corporate America.” “And I want sexy stories,” I ordered. I’d never used the word sexy at work with a straight face before.

  Two days before the holidays, Justin walked into our Princeton war room with his Victorinox carry-on in tow. When all nine pockets were empty, we were buried under a mountain of books, articles, and Post-it notes on business frameworks exploiting metaphors from history and war (“Alexander the Great’s art of strategy”), instincts and emotions, paradoxes and controversy (“Teams don’t work,” “Throw your annual budget plans in the garbage”), family life, ecosystems (animals as well as cataclysmic events), thermodynamics, mythology (including fucking Greek gods, or was it Greek gods fucking?), cognitive behavior, semiotics, and the Zen impact on the bottom line. Honestly.

  I spent the rest of the morning feeling like I was stuck at the business section of Borders at Logan, thinking about the man-hours wasted on those metaphors. But it was the mid ’00s; there was time and budget for anything.

  Later that day, I was on the treadmill at the client’s gym, smiling, thinking of Erik’s reaction to the “labors of Hercules in the corporate boardroom.” Still, I knew I had to push things to the point of ridicule to have a chance at being heard, and hopefully sell—and for the life of me, I couldn’t get Oprah off my treadmill’s screen. I pressed the Channel button twice, but she was still there, looking astounded, when an Aztec warrior–heart-monitoring-gloved hand pointed at the side of my treadmill’s frame.

  “You need to plug in here first,” a familiar voice said.

  I reduced my speed and saw Justin, beaming next to me in hard-core athletech gear. A bottle of smartwater and a video gadget were hooked to his gladiatorial Home Depot–like belt. His T-shirt said: “Hwa, Won, Yu.”

  “I didn’t know you worked out,” Justin said, all cocky after his intervention.

  “Surprise,” I said. “I didn’t know you were off to Baghdad.”

  “Funny, boss. Are you just running, or working on volume too?”

  “Running, mainly. And how many times have I told you that I am not your boss. We don’t have bosses at Command. I’m your senior, and it’s for this project only.”

  “Trying to look young now, are we?”

  From the corner of my eye I caught Gawel, in a plain T-shirt and shorts, looking our way from the other side of the gym. Without a suit, he looked high school.

  “What’s . . . ‘Hwa, Won, Yu’?” I struggled.

  “They are hapkido’s main principles,” Justin explained. “Nonresistance, circular movement, and water.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t jump out of your suitcase this morning,” I said, but Justin was fixing a button on his fist-weapon glove-watch.

  “I gotta keep moving, boss. If I drop below my heart range, my monitor will beep.”

  “We can’t have that, now,” I mumbled, and went back to my Hercules thoughts and my skepticism about
placing myself in this stupid business-metaphor fad. What I needed was a potent nondrug paradigm that I could just plug into Jersey pharmacos. But how can I turn an indie script into a summer box-office hit, I thought, when I noticed Master Justin, two machines down, stretch-stepping while browsing a big-screen catastrophe on his gadget. Could I be missing some sort of sensation here? At the end of the day, who was my audience, and what did they really need in order to have a good day at work? These were managers who would pick the New York Post over the New York Times. A corporate-world craving everyday, Brooklyn thrills. I had to make my projects newsworthy. Keep them simple, but give them a populist twist: a surprise, a juxtaposition. I started sensationalizing our oncology project, Murdoching its challenges and deliverables.

  The next day I walked into our war room feeling smart. “Let’s have some fun!”

  “Mornin’,” Gawel and Justin mumbled.

  “We’ll work like restaurant chefs,” I said with a smile.

  Gawel turned. Justin kept typing.

  “Stop e-mailing,” I said.

  “What’s going on?” Justin asked. “You need a latte?”

  “Stop talking,” I told Justin. “Now, I said that we’ll work like restaurant chefs. So let’s find out what’s seasonal to put in the specials.” I paused, with a grin on my face.

  “Could you—”

  “Okay, here is the one-liner: We pick a current affair and we build a framework around it. Then, and only then, we fill it up with the client’s numbers.”

  The guys nodded to each other, puzzled.

  “Just bear with me. For example, our client is getting murdered by this aggressively low-priced biotech, the underdog, right? We are supposed to present final recommendations end of February, which, if you Google, is Oscar season. So we can approximate their market to a duopoly and use game theory to build a couple of defense strategies, including a dominant one that we could call A Beautiful Mind.”

  “No shit.”

  “I’m not done yet. We’ll use the bar scene from the movie to show how it’s possible to improve the client’s odds by helping them find their Nash equilibrium and settle on it. How they cannot protect their market share if they go into a pricing war, as the underdog knows that they know that with such a move they’ll lose money.” I stopped to breathe.

  Gawel stared at me responsively, giving me a scary high. There was science behind my nudging—game theory worked, they could outfox the bio—nevertheless, I was making something out of nothing. I was adding to Justin’s suitcase and getting away with it, crafting more “entertainment” for managers; me, who’d studied quantum physics, for God’s sake. Was I turning into a tabloid? Into the dark matter and energy I learned about in school?

  Maybe a little nudging was okay, for this project. Sell, get promoted again, and rethink things.

  “Seriously, it was nominated for eight Oscars,” I half joked with the client-lead a couple of weeks later. “I bet our biotech friends have seen the movie too.”

  He was amused, but intrigued enough to buy that they were “Nash-locked” with the other side.

  “Unless, of course, we change the rules of the game altogether,” I continued. “Strategy two: ‘Deterrence.’ A much riskier strategy, and a really bad movie.”

  A door had just opened, and Andrea had somehow been left outside. I am almost free, I thought.

  IT WAS 2006 AND EVERYBODY was smiling. “Uncertainty is your friend,” I preached at the backgammon tournament I set up on the client’s outing. “It’s a better strategic game than chess. See, if we lack uncertainty, then all rents will end up being equal, as strategies can and will be replicated.”

  I became Jersey-provocative. Whether they believed me or not, they smiled.

  I started to excite pharma executives, and that spring my “Innovate through Simplicity” taunt had a small following. I was the Commander whom Andrea would “kidnap” for thirty-six hours to send to an innovation panel in San Diego. And I was game. Flying in and out of towns, I rationalized my abuse of Ambien. I even groomed—some. I dropped by Kiehl’s in Barneys and accepted Andrea’s Outlook invite—“tentatively”—for a fitting at Dunhill. I got promoted, tripled the money I wired to Greece, and started to call my sister more often, as though something was about to happen.

  But what could I do? Quit Command and get a real job? Move back home? I was the youngest Senior Engagement Manager. I was practically Andrea-free. I could work things to my equilibrium, the way I did with clients. Greece hadn’t called me back yet. My sister never said: “We want you, not your money.” Not openly, not to me. And Erik? Well, I was a manager now; I would sleep better soon. I would work out my physical and mental depletion and help him fix up the patio. I could even bribe the Greeks and visit Pelio with him. Teach him how to fish and dive for clams in the Aegean. Things would get better because I was in the driver’s seat.

  “Pick a nice location for your big day,” I told Alkis over the phone after he reminded me of his mortgage and wedding plans with Cristina. “’Cause I’m so ready for a real vacation.”

  “Whom with?” Alkis laughed. “Your sister? Or Erik, again?”

  Bastard.

  “How many times have you proposed but changed your mind?” I said viciously. “I bet you’ve racked up some loyalty points at Cartier by now.”

  “That’s right, I changed my mind. Something I seriously doubt you’re able to do yourself. It’s funny . . .”

  “Funny what?”

  “You outsmarted everyone in our Negotiation class and now you’re scared to ask Erik to move in with you.”

  Pick your fights. Deflate. “I don’t even have enough room for my three shirts,” I said, and tried to laugh.

  “Well, that’s all you got, mate. Fucking empty shirts.”

  I knew that Alkis cared, but he was complicating things. He was off the point, he was wrong. Things were balancing out, yet they were still fragile. There were no pockets for Erik, everything was on a continuum: from my job, to my friends, to the books I read and the sports I played. He referred to my approach to life as “New York retail. Everything exchangeable, no questions asked.” He saw no commitment on my part, “no staking whatsoever. Like your life’s a Command project,” Erik said, but all I read was affection, his approval of what I did through playful attacks, the way my father had picked on my algorithmic approach to fishing. All fun and games, till a patio night that spring when I saw an end in Erik’s words: “No irrevocable commitment of resources, no decisions. No balls,” he spat.

  “Come again?”

  “Isn’t that what you teach your clients? Optionality? Hedging? Guess what, you live it,” Erik said.

  It was his gut, not his words, that made me go: “I haven’t hedged you.”

  “You never bought the option, I ain’t your put,” he said, sucking an old paper cut on his thumb. “I ain’t adding to your risk-free ride. Your commitment’s to what you don’t have.”

  Erik paused to suck his fucking thumb while telling me that he’s not mine. And his casualness, this paper-cut insignificance, tore down our pathetically planned patio in my mind.

  As the weather got better, Erik started making a point of avoiding dinners and concerts. “I can’t afford your eating alfresco,” he’d smirk.

  If I got a freebie or tried to pay, he’d dismiss me.

  “Dude, I won’t be part of your agency cost!” he said, throwing my jargon in my face when I offered him Command seats for the Yankees.

  I thought of clients listening to me, Gawel admiring me if not adoring me, and I fought back: “You get too much pleasure from telling us that you don’t have a TV,” I countered when Erik shed a discussion on Lost during a dinner he joined at the last minute.

  When the check arrived, I bundled resentment in camaraderie and passed him a fifty under the table. He grabbed my hand, pressing hard on my wrist
till my fist opened. “Pick it up now,” he said, satisfied.

  By summer our fights were constant.

  “You realize that you’ve developed wardrobe syndrome,” Erik told me at 192 Books when I asked for a separate receipt for Guns, Germs, and Steel to expense on my Command account.

  “Lost you,” I lied.

  “You did, didn’t you?” Erik mocked. “Let me explain. You can link anything to your work, to your clients. Expense it. Everything’s wardrobe, used once for a performance. Your relocation was part of your professional development. You’re still hotel living.”

  I tossed away the receipt, but Erik kept staring at me with pity.

  “And for what?” he said. “For smart-ass work stories and silly dinners.”

  It was the first time I was completely sober and wanted to physically hurt him.

  “Have you seen Vanity Fair at home?” I asked as casually as I could. “I can’t find it.”

  He gave me a shrug.

  “The issue with Soros and your father. Thought I left it on the patio, but I can’t find it. Did you take it?”

  Erik shook his head in disbelief. “Mother . . .”

  “You know which one, right? The one with the photo of your dad among his clients? Those ‘five remarkable women’ or something?”

  “Ask your higher power to find it for you,” Erik said, and walked out.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” I yelled after him on Tenth Avenue. “You walking out on me? Come back! ’Cause when it comes to your family, your definitions are so strict. Hey! ’Cause I can be a Jeevan too, an eco-warrior, a great communist!” I shouted. “Or are you guys hedging? You run for office while your brother takes over your dad’s clinics?”

  Erik stopped. He turned around and walked up to me, his finger pushing hard on my chest. “Listen to me, Feta! If you wanna fight, have the balls to talk about me! What I do, instead of who I am. Got it? You ain’t in fucking Europe anymore.”

  Right there on Tenth Avenue, smelling coffee in his breath, splashes of his spit on my face, I knew we were close to an end. Maybe he’d never seen me as an equal. I didn’t. We’d met fleeing our homes but heading in opposite directions, crossing each other in an accident that I might have dragged out for too long. Seferis’s poem came to mind: Helen and Paris never made it to Troy. The war was fought for nothing, for an empty shirt that ended up there instead. A decade after I’d left Greece, both Alkis and Erik were right. I was wardrobe. I was a fucking empty shirt.