Fake Plastic Love

by Kimberley Tait

  “You’re late this morning,” he coughed at me. “And I don’t think you’ve been checking your BlackBerry.”

  “You can hardly claim it’s a habit,” I retorted. “I ran into Jamie Gruenstein outside of St. Paul’s.” He stared back at me, obtusely. “The girl in our training class who left to become a math teacher?” I tried. More blankness. “The uppity one who had the nervous breakdown?” His face lit up with recognition.

  “Blimey. Gruenstein,” he grunted. “Where’s she lurking these days?”

  “Is Piggelo in yet?” I inquired, ignoring his question and logging myself into my computer.

  “You’re going to want to check your e-mail,” he said, mutedly, “and then make your way to Conference Room B.”

  This day was supposed to be about me. It was my day to exert control—my day of taking the Bartholomew bull by the horns and saying enough is enough. But something had happened. I had no idea what, but it meant that—like a flailing figure in a muddy tug-of-war—I was rapidly losing my grip on the rope.

  Chase offered me nothing more, keeping his fists on his hips and pitching himself back in the direction of his darkened office, slamming the door behind him.

  I frowned and swiveled toward my desk to face my unsightly inbox, clogged with dozens of unread messages that had accumulated over the weekend. One from the Chairman’s Office sent a few hours earlier jumped out at me—sent to all employees, marked with an urgent red exclamation point, and stamped with the subject line:

  FOR IMMEDIATE USE: EMPLOYEE TOOLKIT TO ADDRESS QUESTIONS ON HOLOGRAM

  I scanned the message and learned that it had been sent as a result of an article posted late last night, London time, on a lifestyle blog, featuring a series of “grossly distorted and out-of-context images” from the firm’s 150th anniversary party the previous autumn. The Chairman’s Office “toolkit” included a Q&A, outlining acceptable ways Brothers employees could address questions they received about Hologram Henry and the state of the firm’s culture.

  My heart accelerated. I opened a browser and navigated to La Belle Vie. And sure enough, an unlikely cast of Bartholomew Brothers characters including Hologram Henry was plastered across Belle’s home page, looking wildly outlandish next to her older posts on the advantages of wearing high-waisted skirts and tips for turning your apartment into an urban safari by embracing zebra prints. Its title—“Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner!”—seemed to be an arbitrary play on the name of that old Sidney Poitier film. At first blush, I could see the focal point of her article wasn’t the copy. It was the photographs—the ones Belle had snatched with her contraband iPhone at the 150th anniversary party despite Jeremy’s wholehearted pleadings for her to destroy the evidence. And now, eleven months later, she was trampling on his request in the most flagrant way imaginable. Posting a series of tasteless images granted her readers—and the public at large—an inside and indecent look at uproarious life within the fortress walls of The House of Bartholomew. Belle quoted Shakespeare in the heading above her image gallery:

  Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

  I winced as I started to click through Belle’s pictures of that phantasmagoric night. First, there was Leezel Bartholomew sprawled out indelicately on a settee, ripped stockings on display as an anonymous hand dropped figs into her yawning mouth. Jeremy stood ghost-like in one corner, a mille-feuille elevated in the palm of his hand in the manner of an attentive footman. The next picture was of Drewe and Hologram Henry, tossing back thimbles of dark purple liquid that looked disconcertingly similar to Jägermeister. And of course there was one of the pocket-squared banker—Saber Man himself—slashing forward with a sword to shatter a champagne bottle, sending shards of glass flying into the face of the obliging bartender who was holding it for him. This was followed by another image of the same bartender looking incredulous as he held a blood-soaked wad of paper towel to one eyebrow. Belle devoted a paragraph to the barman’s trip to the ER and the number of resulting stitches. She also dwelled on the extravagance of Hologram Henry and the cost of bringing that corporate icon back to life for just one night. As it turned out, Henry—who had been programmed with a state-of-the-art algorithm that enabled him to interact socially and spontaneously with Brothers employees—had cost the firm $5.2 million. You had to give Belle credit for unearthing the financials of the hologram that must have required some degree of investigative journalism. Alongside her photo gallery, she went on to ask:

  Do these look like people in need of a morale boost in the form of a talking hologram at the expense of their shareholders to the tune of more than five million dollars?

  She concluded:

  That’s why the very last person I would invite to dinner, or would want to be seated next to at a dinner party for that matter, would be a banker. I was an English major in College and don’t pretend to know the first thing about finance. But I understand there is a need for investment banks in our society and that they prop up a great deal of what happens in our everyday lives, from boarding an airplane to doing our weekly grocery shopping. It’s not what they do that appalls me, it’s how they go about doing it. It’s the attitude they assume. Some may question the social value of how I make a living. Bankers, I’m not splitting atoms or curing cancer either. Still, your sense of self-importance seems to be limitless. You cast spells on people who work for you, in some cases people who are too well meaning and too hardworking to pause for a moment to question you. I have watched people I love be twisted and deflated by the banks they devote themselves to. They carry their branded bags, they flash their corporate cards and BlackBerrys with pride, but I only feel a great sense of pity for them. Some of the most troubling examples don’t make it into the papers: the stories of everyday people who are deeply unhappy yet choose not to make a change. These people could be giving the world so much more if only they would stop postponing their happiness. I know it would be naïve to ask Wall Streeters today to live up to the principles and heart of George Bailey and his simple Savings & Loan from It’s a Wonderful Life. There is a great deal in this world that falls short of wonderful but we could all take a step in the right direction if we stopped and asked ourselves: Where has George Bailey gone and how can we bring some piece of him back?

  I entered the search term “hologram” into my browser to try and gauge the immediate damage caused by Belle’s post. I leaned back in my chair, stunned. Hundreds of news outlets around the globe had already picked up the story from the wires and published pieces overnight—the press had been waiting a very long time to catch the firm with its proverbial trousers down and Belle handed them the damning evidence they’d been dreaming of, stamped with her signature red monogram.

  As I clicked back to La Belle Vie to pore over everything again, it dawned on me this must have been the “serious” blog entry Belle’s agent wanted to see before he sent Clipped Wings to publishers—an exposé that could transition her from fashionable blogger to broadly respected author. While Belle’s points were by no means profound—or original—and she admitted to knowing next to nothing about finance, her whistle-blowing photos confirmed the worst of many people’s growing suspicions about the arrogance thriving inside firms like Bartholomew Brothers. Plus her timing was excellent. As the economy struggled on and ordinary people grasped for someone to blame, antibanker sentiments had reached a frenzied pitch. The article would grab even more attention now than it would have immediately following the party.

  She had to know how difficult her post would make life for her husband Chase. And for Jeremy, the man who had escorted her to the party—the man whom Piggelo had tasked with destroying all evidence captured on Belle’s contraband iPhone. Keep that date of yours in check. See that every photo she takes is history. Or you’ll be history. But maybe some piece of her defiance wasn’t totally self-interested. Maybe she wanted to push the people she loved to be truer to themselves. Her post was sweeping and stereotyping, but I read into its copy very specific references that I kne
w were pointed straight at me. Glancing down at my branded duffel, threadbare in places due to so much constant use, I couldn’t totally disagree with her. At least Belle had built something for herself, in her own name, however superficial and trifling. What had I actually created? What had I actually done? I, who had wanted to accomplish so much? Staring at the image of Hologram Henry and Drewe with their heads thrown back, I knew that I had sacrificed a large section of my twenties, an opportunity-soaked, totally irrecoverable half decade of my life—and maybe even a bright future with Scott Bosher—to a venerable name that in reality stood for ideals that were about as real as a pixelated Hologram Henry projected onto an auditorium stage. I had spent the better part of my life trying to prove something to someone and I hadn’t the faintest idea what or to whom.

  I leaned over and unzipped my bag, pulling out a crisp, white envelope that lay flat across my neatly folded gym clothes. Inside it was the resignation letter I had fantastized about writing and handing over for the last five years. Envelope in hand, I stood up and held my chin high, only to be confronted by the sight of Leezel Bartholomew prancing toward me from the pantry.

  “Piggelo has been waiting for you for the last five minutes,” she announced, with a powdered smirk she didn’t bother to hide. “Her mood is absolutely abysmal.”

  I regarded Leezel coldly, slid my envelope into my blazer’s inside pocket, and made my way to Conference Room B.

  “Sit down,” Piggelo commanded from the head of the table as I crossed the threshold. “We have representatives from Legal and Employee Relations on the line and you should know this conversation is being recorded.” I took a seat in the designated chair, frozen with bewilderment. A Polycom alit with bright-green lights sat in the center of the table like an arcane boomerang with a dark destination to be determined by a chosen few.

  “When did your friendship with Jeremy Kirby begin?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I don’t think I need to repeat the question. This is pretty basic stuff, M.”

  “A few months into our first year of training … in 2006. What is this about?”

  “And how long have you known Belle Barnum?”

  “Belle Barnum?” I frowned. “I think you mean Belle Bailey?”

  Piggelo glanced down at her crib sheet.

  “Yes. Bailey. That’s what I said.”

  “We were College classmates.”

  She nodded her head and slashed an exaggerated check mark across her paper. “How early in your friendship with Jeremy Kirby did you sense his loyalty to Bartholomew Brothers began to waver?”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I assure you, M., we wouldn’t be paying to have this conversation recorded and transcribed if we weren’t being entirely serious.” The rosy round of her face looked more deadpan than ever. I glanced around me and noticed Drewe blending into the wall paint at the far side of the room, his pale head bent forward diligently as he scribbled notes in his beige-covered logbook.

  “Jeremy has been loyal to the firm as long as I’ve known him,” I answered. “He’s the first one to arrive and the last one to leave practically every day.”

  Piggelo opened a file folder on the table to her right and consulted a printout that was probably a historical record of his swipe card data tracking back to 2006. She sniffed.

  “We aren’t talking about hours clocked. This isn’t a factory of manual laborers!” she bellowed, closing the file folder and tossing it at Drewe’s head. “We’re talking about loyalty. You have been a close friend of Jeremy Kirby and his fiancée Belle Barnum for many years.”

  Had Jeremy been interrogated in the same way, I knew each description of Belle as his betrothed would have felt like a fresh chestal bullet.

  “Belle isn’t Jeremy’s fiancée,” I corrected Piggelo, evenly. “Belle has been married to Chase Breckenridge for several months now.”

  The deeper we waded into our conversation, the more diligently Drewe scribbled into his logbook, the more beeps I heard richocet from the green-lit Polycom indicating more and more mystery participants dialing onto the line, the more everything resembled some disturbing corner of the Twilight Zone. Piggelo pounded her burly fist on the table.

  “I’m warning you not to be difficult!” The firm clearly had no interest in dragging Chase into any scandal—the fact of his marriage to Belle was somehow irrelevant. “Let’s take a different tack here. Did you see and speak with Jeremy Kirby and Belle Barnum at our 150th anniversary party in New York last October?”

  Her glare and tone and manner were so insulting that I wished I could have resigned then and there. But I couldn’t—I knew I was Jeremy’s one and only defender.

  “Yes, I did,” I replied without batting an eyelash. “You know I did because you were watching me.” With your beady, beady eyes, I wanted to add. At that, Piggelo’s real-life beady eyes, extrabeady that morning from poor sleep on the flight over, widened with surprise at my sudden insolence.

  “And did you see Jeremy trip Leezel Bartholomew on her way to the pastry table while Henry Q. Bartholomew II was giving his speech?”

  “Trip Leezel?” I cried, incredulous. Piggelo cleared her throat. Drewe echoed it from the far side of the table with his own feeble throat-clearing, prompting Piggelo to turn to him with hatred and bark: “Oh, cut it out, you little twit.” His pale face burned pink for a moment then extinguished. “Jeremy saved Leezel Bartholomew’s life that night,” I said, firmly. “She swooned watching the hologram and her head would have cracked open like a melon on that marble floor if Jeremy hadn’t leapt forward to catch her. I saw it with my own eyes. So did dozens of other people. You can ask Saber Ma—that guy from investment banking who sabered the champagne bottle. He was standing right there.”

  The flat lines of Piggelo’s face flattened a few more degrees.

  “We’ve already spoken with FX.”

  “FX?”

  “Francois-Xavier—the banker who was photographed with the saber. All he remembers about Jeremy was that he was wearing a rather unfortunate double-breasted blazer that night.”

  “Jeremy has never worn a double-breasted blazer in his life!” I screamed and with that Piggelo pounded a second, more forceful fist against the table causing Drewe to scribble straight off the edge of his notebook.

  “Enough!” she sounded, like a great human gong bringing all surrounding activity to an immediate halt. “Leezel Bartholomew submitted a very different account about what happened that night to Employee Relations. In fact, she said she was afraid to come forward sooner because you and Jeremy have been conspiring to wage a systematic bullying campaign against her for years.”

  “Systematic bullying campaign?” I gaped.

  “We’ll put aside for the moment the claims she has made against you specifically, M. I don’t want to lose focus. This conversation is about Jeremy Kirby. We believe he actively fed his fiancée Belle Barnum ideas for her post about the anniversary party. We believe he engineered the entire blog to serve that singular purpose. Bill is convinced that all the negative sentiment floating around the firm is a result of someone on the inside stirring things up and pouring poison in everyone’s ear.”

  “None of this would have ever occurred to Jeremy,” I said to Piggelo. Jeremy managing, let alone “engineering,” a blog for any purpose was about as likely as Jeremy donning a pair of camouflage cargo pants.

  “I’m afraid you’re wrong on that count. Chase confirmed everything with his statement. In fact, he’s been warning me about Jeremy’s rogue behavior for a good number of months now. I should have paid closer attention. Jeremy’s bullying, his unwarranted physical attack on Leezel, and, most concerning of all, his conspiring with Belle Barnum to publish her appalling ‘story’ about the firm. Chase has personally assured us that Ms. Barnum’s blog will not veer from its usual—ahem—subject matter ever again.”

  They felt vulnerable and were clamoring for a scapegoat. Though Belle had masterminded her blo
g post, and though Chase and Leezel were in cahoots to pin everything on Jeremy and swat him out of the picture like an irritatingly persistent housefly—all three would float fancifully above it all.

  “This is a complete joke.”

  “If I were you, M., I would start focusing on yourself instead of wasting your time trying to defend that man,” Piggelo advised, gravely. “He’s a sinking ship—one that’s sinking fast. Get any closer and you’ll be sucked right down in his undertow.”

  “Are you finished with your questions?” I asked with unmasked impertinence.

  “On the contrary, M.,” Piggelo answered, shifting her girth around to settle back into her chair. “Make yourself comfortable.” She cracked the thick knuckles of her right hand one by one, taking great pleasure in the sound produced by cartilage shifting to her will. “Our questions have only just begun.”

  * * *

  Anyone who worked in Bartholomew Brothers Private Bank knew how much Piggelo hated the word “frankly.” She said it conjured up images of used car salesmen—implying that everything you had said to a person up until that point had been a lie. A few hours after Piggelo’s inquisition was done and the green Polycom lights had darkened and the airless conference room had been cleared and Lysol-sprayed by Leezel, I walked into the visiting partner’s office where Piggelo had parked herself for the afternoon like an oversized SUV jammed into a spot at an angry angle.

  “I’m here to submit my resignation,” I announced, placing my letter in front of her on the desk. “Frankly, Lucy, my time here has run its course.” It felt odd to say her first name out loud—I was a person facing another person, on equal footing with her for the first time.

  She would not look down or in any way acknowledge the envelope I had laid before her. It looked so lonely and exposed on that immaculate surface. And, sitting in her chair a foot away, so did Piggelo. For the first time I understood how sad I was that my story at Bartholomew Brothers couldn’t have played out differently. That Piggelo never saw the things I had to offer—that she never took me under her capable wing as I had hoped she would all along. That she and the firm had only managed to prove me wrong, not right.