“Sachin’s a piece of shit.”
“Look, that happens all the time to the actors on set…”
Marie Alice spread even more of the dough out over the table. Her nail polish, an orange less intense than that of her shorts, stood out amid the wet flour.
“So is it true, Primrose, you’re pale because you’re jealous?” she asked.
Don Otto slowly raised his big round eyes from the dough. “Whom should Primrose be jealous of?”
A group of schoolkids had entered the store. They formed a polite semicircle in front of the cash register, each putting some coins on the counter. They might have been seven or eight years old and the girls wore blue skirts and the boys a uniform with checkered ties.
“How much is a slice?” asked Don Otto, turning to me.
“Seventy-five cents,” I said, counting the coins on the counter. “We’re missing a quarter.”
A little girl stepped forward and put down a quarter.
“Eliza, we need that for the subway!” shouted one of the kids.
“Focaccia for everybody, move it!” said Marie Alice, taking out a few singles from the tight pockets of her orange shorts and slamming them on the counter. Then she looked at each of us, one at a time. “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Unlike the opening in Queens, that evening was a good start, with a lot of elbowing, like when something’s happening in town, like during fashion week. Around ten o’clock, people started coming out of the theater. Women were rushing in the cold, on very high heels, the men following behind putting on their overcoats, and everyone came spilling into the bakery. The bell was constantly tinkling.
Paper-wrapped packages with large oil stains were sliding nonstop across the counter, and the line outside was longer than the one in front of the Broadway shows. People were joining in simply because others were, and then were trying to figure out what to order. Plain focaccia, focaccia with onions, sage focaccia? It was a new language for midtown Manhattan. Adam’s and Don Otto’s arms were dripping like meat cooking on spits.
When the crowd from the evening shows ended and we were ready to close, the bell on the door rang again. It was a quick, sharp pinch like a syringe.
The couple that walked in looked like they were coming from the opera rather than a Broadway show. The young man wore a black tie, his platinum-blond hair was combed back, and the girl was in a light evening dress, her arms wrapped in long satin gloves. The dress revealed fading tan lines on the curve of her back.
“Forget Peter Luger, Andy, I want you to try the best thing in the world!” said the girl.
“Best thing in the world? You know I don’t do speedballs anymore, honey.” He stubbed out a cigar on the sole of his shoe. Then, noticing that she suddenly seemed uneasy, he reassured her. “I’ve never done a speedball, honey.”
But that’s not what had upset her. Seeing us, her eyes went cold. I’m sure that we must have seemed to her like a faded snapshot of a street in Rapallo: there was the miniature Indian, the huge, silent baker, and there I was too, my face covered in flour. That snapshot must have seemed so out of focus to her, so irreconcilable with her forty-two shining SL&B floors, with everything that she had achieved.
“I didn’t know that you were in New York,” Chloé whispered.
Something struck me in her tone of voice. I would have expected that she’d brag about her job, that she’d act as if the world was at her feet. Instead, she stood there, with her arms tight, a bit pained, as if she did care for us. In her eyes—when she raised them to look at me—was that sense of loss children have when their parents can’t find their way.
“Among the thirty-three thousand restaurants in New York, did you really have to come here?” I asked.
“You’re in Zagat,” she said, smiling, trying to say something nice.
Sachin solemnly pushed a pan toward her. “This one is on the house.”
“God, Chloé, you really do know everybody in New York!” said Andy. Laughing, he bit into the slice of focaccia before we’d had a chance to wrap it up. “From celebrities to pizza boys.”
“Well,” she said quietly, smiling at Sachin. “Thank you.”
She took the bag and Andy the architect opened the door, which rang for one last time that night. And just like that, she was gone again.
ince the bakeries’ balance sheets remained in the black, in May we decided to go to the other coast. It was a noncalculated risk. Martin, the bum-economist, from his grating on Sixty-first and Fifth, said that the equity/debt ratio was starting to tip and we were expanding too quickly. We paid him a good monthly retainer, but his latest reports were always the same one-liner: “You’re not giving America time to poop: what goes in must come out!” Also the banks wanted more guarantees. Though we still had leases on our motorbikes, Queens Bank and Morgan Four Stones provided the financing to open seven new bakeries in California. Were we doing well or did the banks have to put money to work? It’s funny, every time I walked inside a bank to get a loan, it reminded me of buying a pair of sandals in Rome: for the same pair there are three different prices (for tourists, for Italians, and for Romans); with their adjustable straps you can never tell if the sandals actually fit you; and if you don’t have enough money, the owner says, “Just take them and pay me later, we know where you stay…and anyway we trust you.” We pushed on faithfully.
The week before our L.A. opening Sachin—possibly believing we still lived in the seventies—plastered all of Sunset Boulevard with flyers saying “Forget LSD, Mom: Focaccia House!” We didn’t really have a budget for Press & Advertisement. He was very proud of his idea.
The night before, when there was nothing left to be done, we decided to go to Malibu. We left our bags in a small B&B run by a guy from Marseilles, and before dinner, as we used to do in Rapallo, we jumped into the sea. It was seven o’clock on an evening in early May, and the days were becoming longer.
Marie Alice had on a one-piece bathing suit with a pattern of green circles, and she splashed at Sachin and Verger until they were running off along the shoreline. The water must have been really cold, as Don Otto too went into the ocean slowly, up to his thighs, jumping slightly when a wave came.
“First one who gets there gets a kiss!” shouted Marie Alice, pointing to an imaginary spot on the horizon.
Don Otto now was beating the waves. He was swimming calmly and listening to the nearby strokes, and when he turned his head to take a breath, she was next to him, her mouth half open in a yawn he would have liked to kiss. Damn, he liked swimming beside her.
And he didn’t care if he made a fool of himself, and that he had never had a woman, and that she instead had been with who knows who or how many times.
“I won!” shouted Marie Alice, stopping arbitrarily mid-ocean, while Sachin and I were at least ten strokes behind her. Then she dove underwater like a silvery trout and emerged a few moments later. She handed to the baker her wet bathing suit clutched in her fist. “Here’s your consolation prize.”
A lock of red hair continued the smile on her cheek. Her legs lost their shape underwater.
“You didn’t win. We arrived at the same time,” said Don Otto, holding her bathing suit as if it were a real prize. “Or are you insecure?”
“C’mon, who wants to be with a retired porn star?” Marie Alice was laughing now. “And you, you’re not giving me my first prize.”
It would have been tough for anyone to make love in the ice-cold ocean that day, but not for Don Otto. He broke the waves.
round eleven o’clock we ate on the terrace of the B&B facing the ocean. It was chilly, but it was a nice evening to eat outside. Some long, white clouds ran across the sky. The owner served an iced Chilean red wine and a lobster whose claws were still moving on the tray. At times a gust of wind blew out the candle in the middle of the table, and the owner would have to come and relight it.
>
Although it was eleven o’clock at night, the phone seemed to ring every minute. Inspired by Sachin’s seventies-style flyers, a reporter had titled his piece in the L.A. Times: “Forget sex, drugs and rock & roll: Focaccia House!” and this had created a buzz. Sachin’s idea had worked.
“No, I’m sorry, we’re full,” said the miniature Indian answering his cell phone and then hanging up.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“I know you’re the CEO, Rosso…but what did we learn about street selling? To sell fugassa it’s all about the fugazi,” he said, playing with words: in Italian dialect fugassa means focaccia. He raised his finger and looked at us wisely. “To have a packed place you have to tell everyone the place is packed.”
Sachin’s cell rang again. I answered this time. “Who? One minute…” I covered the receiver and whispered, “It’s Beyoncé herself, not even her PA…She’s asking if she can come to our opening.”
“Right, and I have Madonna on the other line,” said Sachin, taking the phone away and turning it off. “It’s just a prank.”
The restaurant’s landline rang. The owner brought over the receiver.
“Yes, I did hang up on you guys on purpose,” said the miniature Indian answering. Then his complexion gradually changed color. After a few seconds he covered the receiver. “It…really…is…Beyoncé.”
I noticed that his cheeks were bright red and the face of Lucien Verger, who was sitting next to him, was bright white. Together they looked like the Japanese flag.
“Franchising, home delivery, Beyoncé…” Don Otto shook his head as he lay the summer business plan down on the tablecloth. There was a shadow in his eyes. He had pronounced those words as if they weren’t synonymous with victory, but with defeat.
“Don, you’re not quitting, are you?” said Sachin, grimacing. “We’re doing well.”
“You’re doing better than I ever did,” said Verger, drying his egg-white nose.
“Yeah, thanks a lot…,” said Sachin. “Don’t you think we’re doing well, Rosso?”
“We’re doing okay.” I smiled. And I felt that the five burgundy stripes on our family crest were shining again.
“You’re doing something else, Rosso. You want to feed the entire world. But for me, Rapallo was enough,” said Don Otto.
Perhaps because he had lost his virginity, the baker seemed articulate, certain, and aware. Marie Alice was sitting upright with her elbows pulled into her inexpensive evening dress, and now and then the wind rose, scattering a whirl of sand down the beach. Out there, the waves were breaking on the beach like uninterrupted applause.
CHLOÉ VERDI
May 4, 2009, New York City
n June 3 a wire transfer to an offshore account listed as COA for”—the prosecutor turned and looked at the jury—“320 million dollars?” As he picked up the document, I shivered. “Are these transactions disclosed in the IPO prospectus, Ms. Verdi?”
CHLOÉ VERDI
July 7–August 31, 2008, New York City
hen I dropped my raincoat on my desk around nine o’clock in the morning, there was an unusual degree of commotion in the office. The library was abuzz with obscure lingos such as Rule 10b-5, and green shoe, and I could hear people asking, “But is it true we’re doing the offering?” The secretaries were letting their coffees get cold next to the phones, and I was told, “Buvlovski is waiting for you.”
“Yes, it’s an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, Ms. Chloé Ombra Allegra Verdi,” thundered Dimitri Buvlovski, slowly enunciating my name, as I walked into his office.
“An Initial Public Offering?” I asked without believing my own words. Was he asking me to work on an IPO, the listing of a company on the Stock Exchange, Buvlovski’s number one obsession?
“One of the biggest deals of the year,” said the Russian, taking a sip of coffee and then a sip of tea from the two cups in front of him. “Last week the company received a triple-A rating in the Financial News. Don’t you read the Financial News, Ms. Verdi?”
I remained silent a moment, with my notepad open and the letters “AAA” rolling over my back like a marble. I still couldn’t believe it.
“As a precedent for the prospectus I could use—” I said to show that I was prepared.
“Yes, please give any precedent to Mr. Zilberberg, who is in charge of drafting the prospectus. Instead, I would like for you to prepare a due-diligence checklist for this evening.”
“What’s the company name?”
“A food company,” Buvlovski said, declining to give me the full picture in order to make my job more difficult, as was his practice.
As soon as I got back to my office, I quickly reviewed what an IPO was all about. First the bankers, who shop the company around, are selected. Then the due-diligence investigation begins to make sure that the company has no skeletons in its closet. As a result of the due-diligence search, the offering documents are prepared, including the prospectus describing the company and the securities being sold. Once a draft of the prospectus is in place, the company files the registration statement with the SEC for its review, comments, and approval. Then the road shows begin and the offering is pitched to potential buyers; pricing of the deal occurs; and finally the bell rings on the New York Stock Exchange and the company is publicly traded.
Although the due-diligence was considered a bore, I threw myself into it without question. I was being given a task that was useful, actually important. I was working on the deal that the entire firm was talking about. Why me, the girl who was typically assigned to rearrange the library? I had no idea. I didn’t even care that, just like Franz before him, Zilberberg was being assigned a job deemed more important than mine—and Zilberberg hadn’t even passed the bar exam, while I had passed it last year.
Franz, Zilberberg, Andy—the architect I dumped Franz for—all the men I met within the firm or outside, were all cookie cutters. Their grand lifetime mission seemed to be the same: go to the Hamptons by sea plane, eat out at Nobu on Thursdays, and maybe in their fifties have their own assigned seat at Giants Stadium. Yes, even Andy, who initially had introduced himself as the next Frank Lloyd Wright, turned out to have fewer dreams than a palm tree.
Did I know any other kind of man, really? I thought of a face covered in flour in a small bakery off Broadway. I paused in my work and smiled. He was no longer a good-for-nothing.
Until now that world of Wall Street, which seemed so inaccessible from the outside, from the inside was a bit dull, made of mediocre people, with a predictable, mechanical life, primarily geared toward being part of the club. Maybe I had had too much time to think…In fact, now that I was on the deal the entire firm spoke about, I thought that anybody would want to be me.
By the time Dimitri Buvlovski and I arrived at the St. Petersburg Café that evening, it was pouring. Generally, kickoff meetings took place at some Zagat-starred restaurant, though for IPOs Dimitri always books here—maybe it brought him good luck.
He enjoyed this place in the middle of nowhere on Coney Island, this eccentric Russian restaurant, in front of the ocean, which the police close down every six months. He liked the orange chandeliers, the aquarium in the shape of a grizzly bear with a couple of deep-blue fish swimming in it, and the disco mirror balls turning on the ceiling as in a seventies club. Above all, he liked that you could smoke at the table, which may also have been the reason the restaurant was closed down every six months. Because I was in charge of the due-diligence I had managed to convince Buvlovski to take me to the kickoff meeting with him.
“Your guest is arriving late because of the weather,” said the waiter, refilling our glasses with Müller-Thurgau and opening a small square box of cigars.
“A Tuscan, please,” said Buvlovski after a moment’s thought.
“So, what do we know about the business?” I asked, trying to extract some information. “What is
this, a phantom company?”
“Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, ninety-seven stores, more than three new openings per day…it’s such a fly-by-night company that in just a few months it’s brought Domino’s and Pizza Hut to their knees,” said Buvlovski, breaking the silence.
“Oh, I think I saw something about it in the Post,” I said, pretending to be in the know. The truth was that lately I had been working so hard doing useless stuff I barely knew anything about the outside world.
“And the Financial News and People. They’re making more money than God! But we know nothing about them.”
“So the newspapers know more about the company than we do?”
“I know, this is ridiculous,” said Buvlovski. “It’s the first time I’m listing a business on the Stock Exchange that’s been around just seven months.”
I let the wine wet my lips without drinking it. Since I don’t generally drink, one glass on an empty stomach can put me in a daze, and in fact I was already quite dazed. I could feel my cheeks gradually becoming the same color as my Amaranth suit.
I grazed an imperfection on my glass’s stem with my finger.
“Why did you involve me?” I dared to ask.
“The management is Italian. You’re the only Italian-speaker in the firm.”
“Imagine…an Italian friend of mine wanted to do the same thing, sell focaccia, and nobody would ever take him seriously.”
“Well, you should have, Ms. Verdi,” said Buvlovski. “You’d be sitting on the other side of the table now. You’d be the client.”
I smiled. “No, I’d be on Sixth Avenue covered in flour.”
Buvlovski smiled in return, because the wine seemed to be going to his head too.
“Why are you laughing, Ms. Verdi?”
I swallowed my laughter looking at the grizzly-bear aquarium. The clumsy Russian had annoyed me before; now he was almost fun. For a moment his intensity made him weirdly charming. I felt that strange attraction one sometimes feels for disgusting things, such as for the marrow of the osso buco. A rambunctious deep-blue fish kept banging against the glass.
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