“To Chloé, who’s graduated from the best master’s program…,” said Sachin, signing her copy and reading aloud from the inscription. Then he went on to sign the other copies. “To Franz, the master of parties, and now also a Chicago boy…” “To Federico, a future great painter…” Then he took my copy and looked at me with an empty smile. “And what do I write for you?”
re you sure you’d like another oyster martini?” are the last words the Indian engineer / tour guide / chauffeur / street peddler / novelist remembers distinctively from that entire evening.
“Yeah,” he drawled, stepping down from the podium onto the abbey’s granite terrace, already visibly intoxicated. “Another oyster martini.”
“I’m Anna,” said the woman standing in front of him. She could have been in her forties, but there was something extraordinarily fresh in the polite smile beneath her big raven eyes.
“Anna with the singing nipples?” said Sachin, winking.
“No, I’m Anna Carlevaro, the president of the Awards,” said the woman, shaking his hand in a friendly way.
A dinner followed the book signing. Every table was dedicated to a great novel, and on each plate was a place card in black ink. I started searching for my seat, looking at the plates, but I couldn’t find my name. What do I do? I still had not gone up to her.
“Here!” said a woman in her seventies, tapping on the empty seat next to hers. She pointed to me. “Yes, you…”
Miranda was the head of the press office at Cesar Publishing. Although she had occupied that position for twenty years, every writer was like the first one for her. No one was better at blackmailing a newspaper. Nobody knew how to threaten a tax audit to get a favorable review for one of her writers, or how to bribe a judge for a vote at a literary award, as she did. Her face, hidden by a waterfall of lilac veils attached to her seventeenth-century Venetian hat, contrasted with her threshing-machine voice. She was so passionate about her job that, as a writer, you’d feel you were writing just for her.
As I took my place next to Miranda at the table, named after a famous novel I’d never read, an editor from a competing publishing house was already seated. He kept adjusting his flashy yellow tie. We were still waiting for Sachin and Cesar, the publisher. Votes were being bought and sold with the same easiness as the sign of peace is exchanged in church. This award was not always won on merit.
“Are you not a member of the jury?” asked Miranda, lighting a Lucky Strike.
“Yes, I am,” I said.
In fact, after my father had sold our family title, what remained of our glorious past was to be one of the Book Awards’ twelve hundred jurors.
She looked at me sideways. “You know, Cesar is waiting for your manuscript.”
“How did he hear about it? Did Sachin tell him?” I could have asked her twenty more questions. “Is he really waiting for it?”
“Yes, but for how much longer?” asked Miranda calmly, taking a second puff.
I slipped my vote into her bag. “Do you have many votes?”
“Forty, with yours. If Sachin doesn’t grab the Awards president’s ass, we may end up in the top five.”
“Which would be the first time for your publishing house,” I said.
“Which would be the first time,” repeated Miranda, stubbing out her Lucky Strike after the third drag.
When Sachin and Cesar joined the table, however, each holding an oyster martini, her smile vanished.
“Cesar!” she shouted. “Please tell Sachin not to grab the Awards president’s ass.”
“Stop grabbing her ass,” said the publisher, reprimanding his author. “Sleep with her!”
“You too, Cesar, please.”
From the other side of the table came a question from the competing editor with his flashy yellow tie. “So, Sachin, what are you writing now?”
Even though the tension for the upcoming awards was mounting, or maybe because it was, the chatter during dinner was casual and disjointed. Miranda asked me to send her my book. Miranda asked me to send her my book. I repeated it to myself over and over. The fact that this was likely an empty invitation and prompted solely to get my vote (I would have voted for Sachin anyway) didn’t bother me at all. The first part needed a rewrite in the third person, and the third part needed a rewrite in the first person—these were my sole concerns. Just by sitting next to Miranda, I felt I could run home and finish my book that same night.
Every so often, someone would look up nervously at the Awards president’s table, where Anna Carlevaro had begun stuffing ballots into the precious box.
Over dessert, at the far end of the terrace, the orchestra’s violas gave me an additional boost of confidence. Could it really be? “The Waltz of the Flowers”? It was. I recognized the dry and luminous beginning—a favorite waltz from my misspent youth. Whenever it was playing, I knew just what to say to a girl. I summoned my courage and crossed the glittering ballroom and walked to the table where she was sitting. I felt that all of the 450 guests of the Awards were looking at me.
“Would you like to dance?” I asked.
Chloé smiled but did not stand up. “No, thanks.”
fter dinner, the publishers again went out onto the medieval terrace together with their respective writers for a last chat. The sky was now overcast, but the clouds did not look aggressive—only soft and blue. Holding Sachin up by the arm, Cesar seemed to be searching the sea for omens for the coming day’s verdict. I walked behind them, gathering the crumbs of their glory.
“I’m sorry I misbehaved,” Sachin stuttered. He was now so drunk he sometimes missed a syllable and his pronunciation was even more awkward than usual.
“You didn’t misbehave. If you want to write books, you must walk on dead bodies. If you want to win a prize, you must sleep with someone—better if she’s the president of the prizes.”
“So I didn’t misbehave,” said Sachin, relieved.
“If you go with him, you’re misbehaving,” Cesar said, pointing to the competing editor with the flashy yellow tie.
Before going to sleep, I walked Sachin up to his room, dragging him by his shoulders, because he seemed to have lost his motor skills. I had picked up an herbal tea for him in the abbey’s kitchen, but since he had drunk sixteen oyster martinis, he still managed to throw up on every statue of every saint he could find. I held him up on the steep, wooden staircase, which smelled of wet fur. Whether this was due to the centuries or to the miniature Indian’s vomit, I couldn’t tell.
“I must be in good form,” said Sachin, as he studied his cup of herbal tea. “Can you imagine how proud the Maestro would be: Sachin Asghar from Calcutta up for the Book Awards, the same award he won!”
I nodded glumly, holding him up. When we reached the second floor, pausing in front of Francis I of Valois’s portrait, Sachin seemed to feel better. He stared intensively at that fourteenth-century painting and closed his fist in front of Francis I’s unkempt reddish beard for a moment; he determinedly wiped the vomit from his mouth and stamped his feet noisily. At that exact moment, the door he was hoping for at the far end of the hallway opened.
“You’re not feeling well?” said the voice of a woman.
A silhouette had stepped outside, a short bathrobe wrapped above her thick knees. Through the doorframe behind her, one could glimpse into the room of a generous, messy woman. A terrycloth sash was dangling from an armchair, a bra lay on the ground, and the ballot box was open on the floor like a mouth at the dentist’s. “Would you like an aspirin?”
“My heart is up for grabs,” were the last words to be heard from Sachin before he disappeared inside the Awards president’s bedroom.
For a moment, I lingered in the dark, empty corridor. I asked myself what I was doing there and, in general, anywhere at all. Something great and beautiful…A year had passed and I still didn’t know what the Maestro meant. No novel,
no beautiful emptiness, no exporting focaccia. A gust of wind extinguished both torches on the staircase. A squeak came from the wood. Another silhouette, this one standing beside the window. Could it be someone from the publishing house, or security? The ghost of the Maestro? Sometimes I felt his presence. The silhouette moved slightly, and her profile was carved by the cold emergency light. I recognized a cherry-red skirt in the dim light.
“Is Sachin okay?”
“He’s in there hitting on the Awards president.”
“Sorry for before, I didn’t mean to be rude,” she said. “I don’t know how to dance. Your old pickup line would have been better.”
“My old pickup line?” I asked, confused.
“A slice of focaccia,” said Chloé smiling.
She bowed her head. The black caress of her hair brushed against her cheeks. I thought of all the incredible things she had done during this year, while I had done nothing.
“And what about Franz?”
“What about him? He won’t make a move,” she said. “Maybe he doesn’t like me.”
I was the one to kiss her this time, and she didn’t turn her head away. I felt her lips opening slowly. I felt the tip of her tongue. Again, she was darting it fast, like a year ago, like a girl kissing for the first time. No, she didn’t belong to Franz, I liked to think. This time she didn’t taste of focaccia, but of the candied fruits of the Genovese panettone which had been served for dessert. Again, I felt as if I was walking into the cold sea up to my navel, and everything seemed possible.
“See, what I don’t like about you…,” she said, placing both of her arms around my neck, and looking at me in the eyes, “is that you’re spoiled. You study, but you don’t study. You write, but you don’t write. You and Franz grew up together, but he’s not spoiled, and you are.”
“Why don’t you know how to dance?” I asked, slipping my hand inside her cherry-red skirt.
“If you come to visit in America, you can teach me,” said Chloé smiling, gently taking my hand out.
he next day, as Sachin stepped out on the terrace, the vote counting was halfway through. The final race was on. In the fresh sun, and with the tension mounting, he didn’t even feel a headache from the night before. Don Otto was down below, serving thin strips of focaccia with sage, and the people wistfully watched the yachts entering Portofino. The few who were chatting were distracted and couldn’t keep themselves from counting votes in their heads. Typically there were no surprises and only the usual suspects would make it into the top five. But this year the fifth place was a wild card. Everyone’s focus was on the favored Francesco Nero’s Two and the underdog, the foreigner, Sachin Asghar’s The Venus with the Singing Nipples.
The voice of the vote counter, opening up the ballots, was like a constant drumbeat.
“Nero, Pellegrini, Nero, Asghar…,” called out the vote counter.
“Don’t be nervous, Miranda. You’ll make it to the top five,” I said, fantasizing about the day my novel too would compete for the Book Awards. Chloé’s kiss had fueled my imagination. “They’ve promised you forty votes.”
“For sixteen years they’ve promised me forty votes,” said Miranda.
Now twenty votes were left to be counted. Francesco Nero’s Two and Sachin Asghar’s The Venus with the Singing Nipples were neck and neck for fifth pl ace.
Would Cesar Publishing win? Would it make it for the first time into the top five of the Book Awards? While Miranda brushed her cheeks with face powder, Cesar smoked, pacing back and forth like a man waiting to know if he’s become a father.
“Relax, we’re still fifth,” repeated the editor with the yellow tie, placating his writer.
“But how can you count the votes, it’s awful!” said the writer.
“I know,” said the editor.
“Nero, Asghar, Nero, Asghar…,” called out the vote counter.
Now a great, full silence descended on the terrace.
“Asghar, Nero, Asghar…”
Then, all of a sudden, one shout shot up to the sky and a hundred voices rose all around us. The engineer / tour guide / chauffeur / street peddler / novelist felt two arms around him and the smell of face powder and Lucky Strikes. He had made the top five.
CHLOÉ VERDI
May 4, 2009, New York City
n September 2008 you joined Wall Street giant Sinclair, La Touche & Buvlovski. Exactly what type of tasks did they give you there, Ms. Verdi, before you were put in charge of Rosso’s business?”
CHLOÉ VERDI
January 14–15, 2008, New York City
as I really sitting on the forty-second floor of the Met Life Building? I gazed down at the people walking across Park Avenue. Yes, here I am, even if it’s only to take notes, and for however long it lasts.
I looked around like someone opening the door of a plane onto a landscape never seen before: Dimitri Buvlovski sitting at the conference room table in front of a cup of tea and a cup of coffee; Patrick Sinclair, another founding partner of the firm, playing with the teeth of his pocket comb; and the attorney, representing the other party, enjoying the view. From where we sat, the problems of the world seemed as small as the people on Park Avenue below.
“No, this no means no,” I wrote on my notepad, transcribing the response from opposing counsel. The attorneys were negotiating a shareholders’ agreement for a big retail company.
“With too many nos you go nowhere,” said Sinclair.
“And with a shotgun, a no can become a yes,” said Dimitri Buvlovski.
A “shotgun” or “Russian roulette” was a provision in a shareholders’ agreement allowing control of the company to be transferred in a casino fashion: one party would offer a set price to buy the other party’s shares and the other had no choice but to sell, or to buy out the first party at that same price. It obviously favored the richer guy, not the competent one, and therefore not the company. If a shareholder was struggling, the other party could buy him out for a dime, betting that he would have no choice but to accept.
“Are you gambling away the future of the company?” asked opposing counsel, concerned.
“We have a no-action letter from the SEC,” said Buvlovski, throwing a document across the table.
“You have God on your side?”
Apparently the Russian had his casino-based strategy blessed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. A no-action letter is a request for advice to the SEC when the legality of a transaction is uncertain; if granted, the SEC takes no legal action. The problem was that law firms were flooding the SEC with requests that appeared perfectly legitimate on their face, banking on the odds that the commission would not have enough people on staff to verify the actual transaction.
There was a moment of silence in the conference room. It was difficult to negotiate with Buvlovski. He knew the law, he drank tea and coffee at the same time, and people said he gave in only to his mother.
“And we have a suite at Madison Square Garden tonight,” Patrick Sinclair whispered when opposing counsel excused himself to go to the restroom. He excitedly presented a concert pass to Buvlovski. Although Sinclair was a founding partner of the firm, he showed absolutely no interest in the law. “You’re coming to see her?”
“Who is she?”
“Only the World’s Biggest Rock Star. She’s what you are, but in the music biz!”
“We’ve done only two IPOs this year,” said Buvlovski.
“Dimitri, nobody this year has done more than two IPOs.” Sinclair shrugged his shoulders as if trying to shake off his colleague’s high standards.
Buvlovski replied calmly, “Suites at Madison Square Garden, five chefs in our cafeteria, twenty limo drivers outside playing cards, first-year associate with nothing to do bumped at $165K per year…who the hell is paying for all of this crap?”
“We need to keep up with what other fir
ms are doing,” said Sinclair.
“It’s a race to the bottom.”
s the gray January sun began setting on the forty-two lobbies of Sinclair, La Touche & Buvlovksi, I ran after Buvlovski, who was distributing the work. He would draft the contract himself and would give something pointless to a couple of first-year associates like me. He believed that the newly hired were completely useless because law school didn’t teach anything useful workwise. “Instead of paying your law school tuition,” he had once told a first-year, “you should have used the money to work on your lottery strategy.”
I knew that I had been hired at the last minute, end of August, only because of rules on diversity. That year there were too few women in the firm. And I knew that in July I would have to leave my spot to the newly hired.
Unless…I continued daydreaming while running after the Russian in my newly purchased Amaranth pink suit. On each floor I took it all in: the sweet smell from the gargantuan bouquets of white gardenias, the austere pictures of the partners on the walls (their smiles as tight as if they had been chewing on herring), and, quite shockingly, the shoe shiners who rubbed the attorneys’ black wingtips until they shone like sapphires.
Something Great and Beautiful Page 8