The Underwriting

by Michelle Miller

  Lauren shook hands with the model but paused before taking Tara’s, scanning her suspiciously. “Mom’s still at work,” Lauren finally said. “Why aren’t you?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard so much about this event,” Tara lied. “There’s no way I could miss it.”

  Lauren’s jaw clenched and her thin throat swallowed without saying anything. She excused herself to make her hostess rounds.

  “What did I do wrong?” Tara asked Callum.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Callum brushed it away. “She’s too old to not realize she isn’t her mother’s priority.”

  Tara watched Lauren smiling politely across the room and for a minute felt sorry for her.

  “But Catherine clearly got Lauren up on that podium, and got L.Cecil to sponsor this event,” Tara said, defending the mentor she’d never met. “I think all mothers love their daughters the best way they know how.”

  “Oh, Catherine certainly got the sponsorship, but not for Lauren. She did it for Phil Dalton.” Callum took a sip of his drink.

  “What?”

  “George E is one of Phil Dalton’s investments—he gets twenty percent of whatever George E creates. An event like this increases the value of the artist’s work tenfold, maybe more. Catherine knew Phil had a bunch of companies in the Dalton Henley portfolio that could use an investment bank, so she orchestrated this event in exchange for throwing those deals to L.Cecil.”

  “Is that why we got Hook?” Tara squinted at Callum. “I thought Josh and Todd knew each other from—”

  “There’s always more to the story, Tara,” Callum said, snapping at the waiter to get him to fill up their wineglasses and indicating her drink. “Keep up,” he coached.

  Tara let that sink in as the dinner was served.

  “By the way, you might want to save your other prospect from that guy,” Callum said, lifting his brow to John Lewis, who was talking rapidly at Rick Frier.

  “And so with the premier checking account, you get three free wires every month and unlimited transfers to any other L.Cecil account, but you have to maintain—”

  “Mind if I join in?” Tara turned and smiled pleasantly. The booze had her feeling surprisingly at ease.

  “Please,” Rick said, seeming to mean it.

  “Is it true you grew up in California?” Tara asked the man, remembering the bio. “I went to school out there.”

  “Oakland,” he said, pleased with the shift in topic. “Where’d you go to school?”

  “Stanford,” she said politely. John glared at her, offended that Rick was more interested in her than deposit rates.

  “We’ve got a great presence in Silicon Valley,” John interjected, shifting his tack. “In fact, we’ve been able to get our clients a lot of access to IPO shares for companies that—”

  “That’s where that girl went, right?” Rick ignored him. “The girl that died?”

  “What girl?” Tara asked, taking a sip of her wine.

  “Kelly something.” Rick snapped his fingers.

  “Jacobson,” John filled in.

  Tara felt her face drain. “Kelly Jacobson died?”

  “Do you live in a cave?” Rick made a face. “She overdosed on drugs three weeks ago. Did I hear she was supposed to work for you guys? Better cover that one up.”

  Tara felt like her sternum was breaking. “I had just—” she started, lifting her hand to her mouth. “Oh my god, what a heartbreaking accident.”

  “Accident?” Rick scoffed. “You don’t accidentally go to a concert and take a gram of drugs. She was at one of the fanciest schools in the country—she should have been making something of that, not squandering it by getting high.”

  “College kids experiment,” Tara said, knowing she shouldn’t say it but not liking the tone this man was taking about Kelly or girls like her. “It’s how you learn who you are.”

  “How old are you?” Rick’s brow furrowed at Tara.

  “Twenty-eight,” she said, unashamed.

  “That’s the problem with your generation. You”—he waved his hand in the air—“millennials.” He said it like a dirty word. “You have no sense of work ethic. You take an opportunity like a university education and squander it ‘finding yourselves,’ then come out with no useful skills and whine when your bosses don’t make you feel good about yourselves.”

  “That’s not fair.” Tara’s voice was firmer than she meant it to be, but she had been working her ass off for the past three weeks to make men like him money, and Kelly would have done exactly the same. How dare he accuse her generation of a bad work ethic. John Lewis glared at her from over Rick’s shoulder but she went on. “We’ve worked hard our entire lives. To get into a school like Stanford? Kelly probably didn’t have a childhood, she was under so much pressure—”

  “Pressure?” Rick laughed. “Pressure to do what? Get good grades and participate in lots of extracurricular activities? You want pressure? Try having a draft number.”

  Tara glared at him. His face was rough and mean, and made her angry. “Every generation has experiences that shape it. You had Vietnam, we had 9/11—”

  “No comparison,” Rick interrupted. “I haven’t got an ounce of sympathy for your generation, or some pretty sorority girl doing drugs and slutting around. I’m just glad I won’t live long enough to witness you and Obama destroy this country.”

  “Speaking of which,” John interrupted, flashing his fluorescent teeth. “Have you done much estate planning? We can help you set up a dynasty trust and—”

  “Yours is the generation that destroyed this country,” Tara heard herself announce.

  “What did you say?” Rick turned to her, his jaw set.

  “Nothing.” John tried to pull his attention back. “She didn’t say anything.” John’s eyes dared her to speak again.

  “You exploited other nations and drove up spending to support your own short-term thinking. And now we’re stuck with terrorists that hate us and debts we can’t afford. And that perfect, happy life you told us we’d have if we just worked hard and took out student loans and went to good colleges: those dreams weren’t real. We gave up our childhoods to become successful adults, and now that we’re here we discover it was all a lie, that you’ve left us nothing but unsustainable policies to untangle. And you have the nerve to criticize us while you cash out and run? How dare you blame millennials for wanting to escape that burden sometimes, or for being drawn to a president that provides an ounce of hope in the midst of your bitter, selfish cynicism.”

  Rick Frier’s jaw had come unhinged. John Lewis was fuming behind the man’s shoulder.

  “If you’ll please excuse me,” Tara said, putting her napkin on the table and standing up, focusing her eyes on the exit so she wouldn’t feel the stares of Callum or the other guests who had paused in their meals to watch her.

  “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” she repeated as she shut the door to the bathroom stall, letting her forehead fall against the door. “Oh my god. What did you just do?” she whispered, all the alcohol evaporating from her brain so she could see the situation with terrifying sobriety.

  That was it. It was over. Just like that, she had ruined her career. She’d taken an opportunity people aspired to their entire lives and she had ruined it. Where had that come from? She hadn’t even remembered to vote in the last election: why was she defending Obama to a notoriously conservative client? But something about his face—it had been so mean. And Kelly—fuck. Was Kelly Jacobson really dead?

  She reached into her purse and found the Xanax she kept for emergencies, swallowing a pill as she heard someone enter the bathroom and lock the door.

  The woman went into the stall next to hers and lifted the toilet seat. Tara held her breath, and waited for the vomiting to start. Tara had never been bulimic, but she’d tried the binge-and-purge thing a few times, as had every wo
man she knew, and she didn’t judge the girl in the next stall for it. In fact, she kind of wished she could do it now: take a finger and punish herself, purge up the last hour and start over from empty.

  The girl finally stopped with a gasp and a whimper and Tara slowly opened the stall door, taking a breath to collect herself. She washed her hands in the sink. Could she really go back out there? What was she going to say?

  She looked at the closed stall door and called softly, “Are you okay?”

  The door opened and Lauren Wiley emerged. “Fine,” the girl said, unemotionally, avoiding Tara’s eyes as she approached the sink.

  Lauren rubbed soap deeply into her skin and rinsed her mouth, patting the corners of her lips dry. She kept her posture perfect as she opened her gold clutch and put a round mint on her tongue.

  “What?” Lauren snapped, noticing Tara not moving.

  “Nothing.” Tara shook her head. “I just don’t want to go back out there,” she admitted. “Not that it isn’t a lovely event,” she added, remembering Lauren’s position.

  “You don’t have to lie,” Lauren said, turning back to the mirror and smoothing gloss across her lips. “It’s awful. The art is weird and the company is dull.”

  “Well, I’m sure your mother would have been proud,” Tara tried, checking her own reflection one last time.

  “My mother can go fuck herself,” Lauren said, testing the words like it was the first time she’d ever said them out loud. “Sorry,” she added, “I don’t mean that.”

  Tara didn’t say anything.

  “It’s just—” Lauren started, neither of them sure why she was confiding in Tara, “I worked really hard on this.” The girl laughed, looking up at the ceiling to blink the tears away. “And I know it wasn’t hard like what she does, but it was hard for me, and I”—she shook her head—“I’m just never going to be enough.”

  Tara didn’t know what to say.

  The girl rolled her eyes at herself and leaned forward, using a finger to carefully nudge the tears back into her eyes so they wouldn’t mess up her eyeliner. “Please don’t say anything.”

  Tara shook her head. “I won’t.”

  Tara left Lauren in the bathroom and went slowly back to the table, her legs heavy. That—what Lauren felt and felt like she couldn’t show—was what Rick Frier didn’t understand.

  She saw her empty seat and changed her mind, heading for the coat check instead.

  —

  THE XANAX HAD STARTED to kick in by the time she got home, and she climbed the stairs to her apartment methodically. She plugged in her BlackBerry but didn’t look at it, not ready to find an e-mail firing her for what she’d done. She took off her shoes and stepped out of the dress, placing it carefully back on the hanger. She wiped her eye makeup off, washed her face, took out her contacts, and rubbed under-eye cream on her lids and cold cream on her face. She unpinned her hair and brushed it carefully. She drank two glasses of water and took three milk thistle tablets and an Advil, and set her alarm for five a.m., giving her six hours to rest before everything changed.

  TARA

  THURSDAY, MARCH 27; NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  “L.Cecil CEO Derek Strauss appears before Congress today to answer allegations of trading violations at the global investment bank in regards to . . .”

  Tara hit the snooze button as memories from last night seeped into her consciousness: Rick Frier’s fat face and her own stupid voice piercing the reverie of her Xanax-assisted sleep.

  “Fuck.”

  She reached for her BlackBerry, which sat charging next to her iPhone, which sat charging next to her iPod, which sat charging next to her vibrator, which she left charging in the open because no one ever came in here anyway.

  She scrolled through the new messages, looking for a note from HR saying she was fired, but not finding it. It was five a.m., though, so that didn’t mean anything.

  She got to the Printing House gym at five thirty, right as the doors were opening, and took the elevator to the top floor. She climbed on a treadmill that faced the window, looking out over the Hudson River to the glimmering lights of New Jersey still asleep.

  She pressed the button to start the machine’s belt, her legs reluctantly waking as the blood started to flow.

  She couldn’t drink, she realized: that was the problem. Alcohol was a depressant, and it made her think too much—or rather, think too much about the wrong things. Why had she kept accepting wine from Callum? He was clearly mocking her—the drunk nerd on his right getting wasted as the picture-perfect Russian model sat on his left eating lettuce.

  She sped up the treadmill and watched the distance meter climb as the music reverberated in her ears and her chest started to burn with the effort. The pain felt good.

  Maybe Rick Frier had been right: the kind of pressure millennials felt wasn’t that important. Lauren’s rich-girl problems were nothing compared to the rest of the world—who cared if she had an eating disorder, or felt unaccepted by her mother?

  She pressed the speed up again, and again, to make the point stick.

  And Kelly Jacobson should have known better than to do what she did. Tara had only tried drugs twice in college, and had always been responsible about it, only taking a little with people who knew what to do if something went wrong.

  Tara watched the treadmill hit her normal six miles, but she didn’t stop, pressing the speed up again and stretching her legs long as her pulse pounded.

  The fact was, the world was a competitive place. If Lauren couldn’t learn to get over her issues, she wasn’t going to make it; and if girls like Kelly couldn’t figure out how to party responsibly, they weren’t going to make it, either. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, it was just reality—a modern version of Darwin’s survival of the fittest.

  But Tara had made it through the tests of her early twenties, and now she had a place in the world. Now there were new tests, and to survive she had to stay competitive, stay focused, work harder. Tara pressed the speed up again, fueled by the thought. She watched the distance click to six and a half miles. She looked down and noticed her shoelace untied. Don’t stop, she told herself, punching the speed up again. Push it to seven. Almost there.

  Until last night, Tara had been a real competitor: the deal was going great, senior management was recognizing her talent, important people like Callum Rees were seeking out her company. She’d been doing well because she’d been keeping her head down, making her path without getting in anyone’s way. She looked at the distance meter . . . 6.8 . . . 6.9 . . . the shoelace caught and Tara lurched forward, catching herself on the handrails as she jumped to the sides of the whirring belt. Her chest heaved as she watched the distance meter hit seven miles, still measuring the belt without her on it. She felt a surge of disappointment, as though it was a sign that she’d lost.

  Who was she kidding? She wasn’t in the race anymore: Rick Frier had been the test she couldn’t pass.

  Don’t be ridiculous. She stopped the belt. Signs are for children.

  Tara checked her BlackBerry on her way to the locker room: still nothing from HR. She showered and went downstairs, where one of L.Cecil’s black cars waited for her.

  Tara’s phone rang and her heart jumped, anticipating a call from the office telling her not to bother coming in. She saw the screen, though, and rolled her eyes.

  “You’re up early,” she told her mother as she answered the phone.

  “Have you booked your ticket yet?” her mother asked without pleasantries.

  “No, I haven’t booked my ticket yet, Mom,” Tara said.

  “But prices are going to—”

  “It actually doesn’t make that much of a difference when you book,” Tara cut her off. Her mother got on an airplane once every two years and still thought you had to go to a travel agent to book a flight. “And I don’t know where I’m going to be flying f
rom yet.”

  “I would just feel a lot better if you had the ticket,” her mother said firmly.

  “What are you afraid of, Mom?” Tara asked, exasperated. “It’s my sister’s wedding. I’m going to be there.”

  “I just—”

  “I’ve got to go, Mom,” she said. “I love you,” she added before hanging up the phone. It’s not that she didn’t appreciate her mother’s concern, but her family didn’t understand Tara’s life at all, and right now Tara had a hard time culling the patience to translate it into a values system they could understand.

  She pulled out her BlackBerry and got to work on the e-mails. She responded to Neha’s question about the syndicate list. Why could the girl not get it right? It was like Neha was intentionally defying her.

  She opened an e-mail from Nick asking where they were having dinner the night they were in London for the road show. Why could he not just look at the schedule she’d sent? And did he not have more important things to think about right now, as CFO of an almost-public company? Shoreditch House, she responded.

  She replied to an e-mail from a Charlie Jacobson at the Associated Press asking if they could meet. Regulations prevent me from speaking directly to the press; please contact our Investor Relations department if you have questions. Shouldn’t someone from the AP know better?

  Her chest clenched when she saw a new message with Catherine Wiley’s name.

  FROM: Catherine Wiley

  SUBJECT: [none]

  Are you in yet?

  Her blood froze. This was it.

  TO: Catherine Wiley

  SUBJECT: Re: [none]

  Good morning—Ten blocks away. Is everything okay?

  She glared at the red light, willing it to start flashing with a response.

  FROM: Catherine Wiley

  SUBJECT: Re: [none]

  Pls come to my office when you get in.

  It was real: she was actually going to be fired. She felt a heat behind her eyeballs and swallowed hard to push it away.

  “She’s waiting,” Catherine’s assistant said without looking up when Tara arrived.