The Underwriting

by Michelle Miller

  An analyst arrived in the conference room with their Seamless Web order. It was way too much food for three people, but it felt like a waste to order anything less than L.Cecil’s forty-dollar dinner allowance.

  Todd took a break to eat his chicken parmesan and read the day’s news. Bloomberg’s top headline read Stanford Student’s Death Fuels New Drug War. He opened the story.

  PALO ALTO, Ca.—Kelly Jacobson, a senior at Stanford University, was found dead in her dorm room last Thursday morning by her RA, campus officials said in a press release issued Saturday. The official cause of death was ruled to be a heart attack caused by an overdose of MDMA, or “Molly,” a drug popular amongst concert-going twenty-somethings. The girl’s death has shocked the Stanford community, and is now fueling a debate in Washington over drug use in the millennial generation.

  “This is exactly what happens when you start legalizing marijuana and lightening sentences for drug dealers,” insisted Congressman Carl Camp (R–NE). “Our most promising students are getting corrupted by the liberal brigade. We’ve got to go back to harsher penalties for dealers. Lifetime sentences for dealing, period.”

  Sean Robinson, president of the Congress of Racial Equality, disagreed: “The only reason this is getting any attention at all is because Kelly was a privileged white girl and Molly is a privileged white kid drug. If you want to talk tragedy, go to the projects, where dozens of poor kids die unnoticed every week.”

  “Have you ever done Molly?” Todd asked Beau, ignoring Neha, who clearly hadn’t.

  “Sure, man,” Beau said. “Why?”

  “Was just reading about this Kelly Jacobson girl.”

  Beau took a sharp breath in. “Yeah. Sucks.”

  “What’s it like?” Todd had never done drugs. Random testing by the NCAA had kept him from ever trying in college, and booze had always suited his needs since.

  “It’s just a purer form of ecstasy,” Beau said, rubbing his eye. When he realized Todd hadn’t done ecstasy, either, he went on, “It makes you euphorically happy, and all your senses and emotions are a little sharper. And you get really, really affectionate—not in a sexual way, just in a really see-the-best-in-everybody-and-feel-really-close-to-them kind of way.”

  “Does it give you a hangover?”

  Beau shook his head. “You come down like two days later, when all the serotonin leaves your brain. That can be pretty rough,” he said, then shrugged. “But better than a booze hangover.”

  “Interesting,” Todd said.

  He went back to outlining the risk factor section of the Hook S-1 filing. This section was always such a joke, especially for technology companies like Hook that weren’t even profitable. Everything about the proposition was risky to investors: the company had no revenue model and was run by a sociopath of a CEO and a socially incompetent CFO. As far as Todd could tell, the only thing that made Hook worth anything was that sexually desirable men like him were on it.

  He typed:

  If attractive people find a better alternative

  If monogamy becomes popular

  “Did you and T Two ever bone at Stanford?”

  Todd looked up. “What?”

  “You and T Two. Did you ever hook up in college?”

  Todd shook his head and looked back at his computer. “Not my type.”

  “You think she’s Callum’s type?”

  Todd shrugged, trying to play it cool. “I don’t really give a shit.”

  “You know they’re at the Crosby Street Hotel.”

  “What?” Todd’s head snapped up. Pretending a downtown meeting was innocent was one thing, but drinks at the man’s hotel?

  “Ugh,” Neha said judgmentally from her corner. Todd had forgotten she was there.

  Beau slid his phone across the table to show Todd a map with a blue dot floating over the Crosby Street Hotel.

  “How do you know that’s where she is?”

  “Tracking her on Hook.” He grinned, pleased with himself.

  “You can’t do that.” Todd shook his head. He used Hook all the time: you could find out what girls were within a quarter mile of you, but not their exact locations.

  “You can if you change a user’s settings.” Beau shrugged, looking back at the phone. So that’s what Beau had been doing when he took Tara’s phone.

  “How did you figure that out?”

  “I was a computer science minor at Georgetown,” he said. “Anyway, Harvey’s going to be so pissed if she runs off with him.”

  “What?”

  “He gets cranky when the firm invests all this money to train smart girls, and then they quit and go be wives before they generate any real value for the firm.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  Beau looked around. “Wouldn’t you rather be the wife of a billionaire than a VP in ECM?”

  “Callum’s like fifty.”

  Beau shrugged.

  “I wish she would leave,” Neha said without looking up. “She doesn’t do anything anyway.”

  “I’m sorry?” Todd turned, not sure what to make of the analyst’s outburst.

  “Sorry,” she said, “I know you picked her for the team and all, but she doesn’t know how to do anything. She just asked me to reformat an entire PowerPoint deck, as if I don’t have better things to do.”

  “You are an analyst,” Beau pointed out.

  “I’m Todd’s analyst. If I’d wanted to be an ECM analyst, I would have been,” Neha said. “Maybe if she spent less time curling her hair she could do the work herself.”

  Todd laughed. “What’s got you so wound up?”

  “Tara!” she said. “I was supposed to work on my statement for my promotion tonight, and now I’ve got to do this because she wanted to go have drinks.” Neha pushed her glasses up on her nose, staring back at her computer.

  “What promotion?” Todd asked. “Aren’t you a second-year?” Analysts didn’t move on to the associate role until year three.

  “Yeah, but they’re promoting two of us early since Matt and Rohit quit.”

  Todd considered that. If Neha was gunning for a promotion, she’d work even harder on this deal. Score.

  “She’s on the move,” Beau said, noticing the phone on the table, watching the blue dot move across town, stopping on Greenwich Avenue. “Does she live in the West Village?”

  Todd shrugged.

  “I think we’re safe,” Beau said. “If I were going to bone an old-balls billionaire, I’d stay at the hotel. I hear the suites at the Crosby are sick.”

  Now Todd was annoyed. She was trying to hook up with Callum. And going home at ten forty-five when they had a deal to get done. Maybe Lillian would have been a better choice. Or one of those gay guys from ECM who Todd knew had a crush on him.

  “Hey, do you—” Todd started to address Beau, but then remembered Neha panicking beside him and sent Beau an instant message instead:

  TODD: Drink?

  BEAU: Thought you’d never ask.

  TODD: Campbell Apartment?

  BEAU: I’ll go first.

  TODD: Be right behind you.

  Beau took a deep exhale, and closed his computer. “I am beat,” he said. “I’m going to go take a little power nap and get back to it at home, if it’s all right with you.”

  Neha’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking,” she said. “We’re not even halfway through, and we’re supposed to—”

  Beau lifted a hand. “I know my limits, Neha. I’ll be more productive if I can just get a quick snooze in, do a little midnight workout, get back to it.”

  Neha looked at Todd, expecting him to do something about it. “Perks of being an associate,” Todd explained. “Work hard on this deal and I really think you’ll get that promotion, though, and then you can do the same.”

  Her chest rose and fell and she went
back to her computer, looking irritated but motivated. Good girl. Beau packed up his stuff and left the room.

  Ten minutes later, Todd shut down his computer. “So I’ve done all I can do until you finish that model. I’m going to go get some shut-eye. When do you think you’ll be done?”

  Neha looked at her computer, concerned. “I’ll have it to you by six, I think. Six thirty at the latest. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah,” Todd said. “Should be fine.”

  “Okay,” she said, refocusing on the screen.

  “I’ll talk to Tara about all the work she’s throwing at you,” Todd said as he stood up, “but for now, finish what I sent you, then work on your app, okay? Her stuff can wait.”

  “Thanks.” Neha looked up at him, grateful.

  “Sure thing,” Todd said.

  Todd headed downstairs. A break would do more good than sitting there getting riled up over Tara. He braced himself for the cold as he powered against the wind and the snow that had just started to fall on Park Avenue. When he got to Campbell Apartment, the swanky bar in Grand Central Terminal, he found Beau already chatting up two girls.

  There were two great things about Campbell Apartment: (1) it was a known banker hang, and therefore attracted a crop of women primed to fuck anyone with an L.Cecil business card; and (2) it closed at midnight, creating a natural opportunity to invite a girl back for sex and still get six hours of sleep, as opposed to a club or two a.m. bar where girls always wanted to stay for one more song. Todd checked his watch: eleven fifteen, just enough time to close the deal with one of these girls. He hadn’t had sex since the weekend and could use a midweek boost.

  “I see you’ve met the second biggest deal at L.Cecil,” Todd told the girls as he strolled up to the bar.

  A petite blonde wearing a short black skirt and four-inch patent heels turned her enormous breasts to him. “And who’s the first biggest deal?” She pursed her lips around her straw.

  “Me.” He grinned, turning casually to the bar to get a drink. He could feel her eyes lusting after him. This wouldn’t even take forty-five minutes. They had mindless conversation for ten minutes, while Todd continued to think about Tara and Callum and get more and more irritated.

  “I have to be honest with you,” Todd said, interrupting something the girl was saying about fashion week. He’d already forgotten her name. “I had the longest day and am seriously so beat. I was just going to come for a quick drink with Beau and then go hit the sack.”

  Her chest fell, disappointed.

  “But then I met you,” he said, “and I’m having such a conflict right now, because I’m so tired, but I don’t want this to end.”

  Her eyebrows lifted as her confidence rebounded. “Well, I could give you my number and we could go out some time and—”

  “The thing is, I’m on this insane deal. I wish I could tell you about it, but it’s all confidential. And I am literally working around the clock for the next two months. And I just know by then you’ll be taken.” He shook his head. “Girls like you never stay on the market long.”

  She hesitated, thinking. “Tonight, then?” she said.

  “Oh, I—” He looked down, falsely sheepish, then back up. “Are you serious? I don’t usually—”

  “Me, either,” she interrupted, giggling but committing to the idea. “But there’s a first time for everything, right?”

  A cab ride, an hour, and a mediocre blow job later, Todd passed out on his pillow, no longer thinking about Tara.

  CHARLIE

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12; PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

  Charlie parked the car behind Memorial Church, and a woman in black robes ushered him into the church’s alcove. He felt his eyes get hot when he saw his mother, hunched in a chair, her little body folded into itself as his father stood, helpless, beside her.

  “Hey,” he said, gently touching her shoulder. The sight of him made her sobs start anew, and he wrapped her in his arms.

  He’d arrived from Istanbul this morning and come straight to Stanford’s campus for Kelly’s memorial service. Raj had told him to leave on Friday when he got the news, but Charlie had insisted on staying to hand off his work. He just wasn’t ready to face the truth.

  He’d learned that Kelly died of a drug overdose. She’d taken Molly at the concert she’d told him about last Wednesday when they Skyped, then come home and passed out in her bed. Charlie didn’t even know you could die from Molly, but Kelly’s RA had found her unconscious the next morning. He’d taken her to the hospital, but it was too late: she was pronounced dead of a heart attack from heatstroke caused by the Molly that saturated her lifeless veins.

  He’d accepted the story but he still didn’t believe it. He and Kelly were as close as anyone: he’d have known if she were getting into drugs. Wouldn’t he?

  Or had he pushed her away with his disapproval? He’d been furious last year when she told him she was interning at L.Cecil, but he’d been certain the summer would dispel any fascination she had with it. She’d meet the worthless guys he’d hated in college—the ones who thought wearing a suit made you a man—and she’d understand what a waste it would be to give her talent to them. She hadn’t seen that, though, and he’d felt sick when she’d told him she’d decided to return after graduation.

  And so his last experience of the sister he loved more than anyone else in the world had been one of disappointment. He collected that failure and focused on it, knowing anger with himself was easier to manage than the thought that she was really gone.

  The church bells rang and the chaplain opened the doors to the sanctuary, overflowing with people. The sound of the organ mixed with murmured weeping, and he felt his mother start to shake into tears, covering her face with her hands. Charlie and his father kept her from falling and led her to the front pew.

  The service was a two-hour parade of classmates tearfully recounting stories of Kelly’s energy and warmth as her framed portrait smiled out into the congregation.

  The chaplain said the final prayer, one of the campus’s a cappella groups sang “Amazing Grace,” and the crowd slowly emptied the church to go to various support groups that had been organized around campus.

  “Come this way,” the woman who had read the scripture said quietly but firmly to Charlie, leading the family through a side door.

  “What’s going on?” Charlie whispered.

  “The press is here,” she said apologetically. “We tried to keep them out, but Stanford is an open campus.”

  “Why is the press here?” he asked.

  “The Carl Camp thing?” she said, then bit her lip, realizing he didn’t know. “Carl Camp—the congressman—he’s using Kelly’s story as a reason to clamp back down on drug policies.”

  “I haven’t been watching the news,” he admitted. It hadn’t even occurred to him anyone would cover Kelly: weren’t they all more worried about Syria?

  “I’m sure it’ll all blow over,” she said unconvincingly, “but for now drive up Serra Street. They won’t see you.”

  His parents climbed into the backseat, too overcome with grief to realize what was going on, and Charlie edged the car out onto the road. He heard someone pounding on the trunk and slammed on the brakes as a girl came around to his window, tears streaming down her face.

  He rolled down the window.

  “I’m so sorry,” the girl bellowed. Her chest was heaving. “I’m so, so, so, so sorry.”

  Charlie put the car in park and got out. “I’ll be right back,” he told his father.

  The girl’s thin shoulders were hunched over, shaking with the damp cold and her sobbing. He led her under the cover of the walkway that circled the quad and gripped her arms, her distress causing him to temporarily shut down his own. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  “No.” She shook her head, sniffling. “No. It’s all my fault.”


  “What’s all your fault?” He shifted into reporting mode.

  “Kelly. I killed her.” She coughed out sobs as she said it, her pretty face contorting as mascara streamed down her cheeks.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Charlie said as calmly as he could. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I told her it was okay,” the girl said. “She asked me if she should try it and I told her she deserved to have a little fun. And she wasn’t sure, but I said I’d watch out for her. And I did.” She looked up, her blue eyes big and innocent. “I promise I did. I was with her the whole time and she only took one hit. Really, she only did a little.” She looked hopefully at Charlie, like he could make it go away. He recognized her now: she was Kelly’s friend Renee, the rich sorority sister whose father had gotten Kelly the internship at L.Cecil.

  “Then what happened?” Charlie asked steadily. “After she took the hit?”

  “She was definitely high—I mean, she was being even more sweet and energetic than she usually was, just telling everyone how much she loved them and talking about how happy she was and how excited she was about New York and L.Cecil. Literally, all the way home, she was totally with it. And I gave her some water—but not too much, I swear! And she put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth and I put her to bed and waited until she fell asleep and then locked the door behind me and she was fine, I promise she was. But I should have.” Another sob burst through the girl’s open mouth. “I should have stayed with her.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Charlie said, knowing it wasn’t. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “But how . . . I just don’t understand how it happened. It took us an hour and a half to get back—if she’d taken more when we were at the concert it would have kicked in before I left her alone.” Her eyebrows were squeezed together. “Right?”

  “Charlie, can we please go home?” His father opened the car door. “Your mother needs to—”

  “You’re Renee, right?” Charlie said.