The Underwriting

by Michelle Miller

  “See that?” The man pointed at the screen, talking to no one in particular. “These fucking idiot VCs are at it again.”

  Charlie turned to the TV screen, where the local news was running the headline:

  JOSH HART FIRED WEEKS BEFORE HOOK’S IPO

  “Hey, Hal, turn it up, would ya?” the man called to the bartender.

  “Sure thing, Horace.” The bartender climbed on a chair to turn up the volume. Charlie looked up to watch the story.

  “Hook, the location-based dating app with headquarters in San Francisco, announced today that its board, led by venture capitalist Phil Dalton, has asked the company’s founder, Josh Hart, to step down from his post as CEO, to be replaced by the company’s current CFO, Nick Winthrop, just a week before the company was set to begin the road show for its initial public offering, which is expected to value the company at fourteen billion dollars. Neither Hook nor Dalton were available for comment, but Tara Taylor, a representative of L.Cecil, the bank underwriting the deal, has this to say.”

  Charlie felt his chest tighten as the camera cut to a woman whose name was written at the bottom of the screen; TARA TAYLOR, L.CECIL INVESTMENT BANK. That was Tara Taylor? She was attractive and spoke with the precise enunciation and smileless face that screamed alpha bitch. Charlie knew her type from college—the aggressive, feminist girls who sucked everything good out of what it meant to be a woman in pursuit of high-powered jobs. No wonder she hadn’t responded to his e-mail. Was that who Kelly would have worked for?

  Charlie looked back down at the journal, scanning the pages to see if Kelly had said anything about Tara Taylor, and landed on an entry from her internship last year.

  July 21, 2013

  I messed up. Like, really messed up. Oh my god I want to crawl in a hole and die. What if the recruiting team finds out? This is absolutely going to ruin my chances of an offer. I mean, no question. It’s got to. What am I going to do? I have to find a new job. What if they fire me tomorrow? Then no one will ever hire me, ever. I’m supposed to start with ECM this week, with that girl Tara Taylor. I wanted her to like me so badly, but the minute she finds out about this it’s game over. How did I get so drunk? A bunch of us went to dinner at Rosa Mexicano because it was our first weekend off all month. I was admittedly really tipsy—I had like three margaritas, I think. Maybe four. But then Chris ordered shots and I couldn’t not do one—they were Patrón and probably cost like seventeen dollars apiece. Plus I guess it was cool to be one of the guys. It was just me and Lizzie Schuster at that point, with seven of the cool guys in our training class. And I was sitting there thinking, “What glass ceiling?” I can totally run with the guys. But then Lizzie ordered shots, too. I don’t know what I was thinking, trying to keep up with her drinking: she’s six feet tall and on the basketball team at Harvard. But I tried. And I puked in the bathroom after dinner and felt better. But then we went to this club and they ordered bottle service—like, two entire bottles of vodka and three bottles of champagne for the nine of us—and then I don’t know what happened. I just kept drinking and dancing and it all would have been okay if Beau Buckley hadn’t shown up. Oh my god: of all the people! He’s an associate for Harvey Tate. Like, super-wealthy associate to the senior vice chairman of all of L.Cecil. And he shows up and I’m sure I just flung myself at him and we’re making out on the dance floor and the next thing I know I’m waking up in his bed this morning. I think we had sex. Okay, I know we had sex: there was a condom next to the bed this morning. And I can feel it. Like, between my legs, I can feel that I had sex and it makes me want to never leave this room. Why did I think I could do this? Why did I think I could work on Wall Street or live this life or—I don’t even know how to get out of it. I wish I were back in Pi Phi—with someone who’s been through something like this before and would understand. But none of the girls here would get it and how could I—

  “Are you using that chair?” the homeless-looking man asked, gruffly.

  Charlie looked up at the chair across from him. “No.”

  “Can I have it?” the man asked. “Need to prop my leg up.”

  Charlie pushed the chair so the man could lift his leg. His shoe was held together with duct tape.

  Charlie looked at his empty glass, then back at the journal, and decided he needed another before he went on. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked the man as he stood.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “Hirsch Reserve. They’ve got it behind the bar,” he said, then tilted his head. “Help yourself, too. You look nice enough.”

  Charlie went to the bar and lifted his brow to the bartender. “Hirsch Reserve?”

  “For Horace?” The bartender laughed at the man, pulling out a bottle from beneath the bar. “You want one?”

  “I don’t think so,” Charlie said. It was probably moonshine.

  “You sure? It’s good shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “Sixteen-year-old bourbon. Costs about three hundred a bottle.”

  “What?” Charlie’s face was doubtful.

  “Horace’s favorite.”

  “Who is he?”

  “You know when you send an e-mail secure? Like you hit that little button and it encrypts the message?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Horace invented that.”

  “What?” Charlie looked back at the man.

  “Swear to God.” The bartender nodded. “He’s worth about a billion dollars, which is why we’re drinking his bourbon. Welcome to Silicon Valley.”

  Charlie took the glass of liquor back to Horace. “Thanks,” Charlie said, indicating his own drink, then scanned the rest of the journal to see if there was anything else about Beau Buckley. He found his name on the last page and braced himself when he saw his own, and then noticed the date.

  March 5, 2014

  Charlie isn’t coming to graduation. He hasn’t said it, but I know he won’t. And now that I write it, I realize how foolish it was for me to be expecting him to. I guess because he surprised me for high school graduation, I thought maybe he’d do the same for this one. But I thought he’d come visit me at Stanford, too, and he never has, so I should have understood before now that things have changed. It’s so funny that he’s worried I’ll get sucked into L.Cecil and it will change me—as though he hasn’t gotten sucked in and let his work change him. Not that I don’t admire what he’s doing—I just don’t know where it ends. And I miss the old Charlie. Like the Charlie who used to roller-skate around New York in fluorescent spandex: is that Charlie even there anymore, or does that necessarily die when you spend all your time around tragedy?

  He says they need him over there, but doesn’t he realize I need him, too?

  God, Kelly, that is so selfish. Syrians are dying and you’re hanging out in California going to concerts and accepting a $90,000-a-year job. And I have other people watching out for me—I mean, Tara Taylor wants to be my mentor. She is so amazing—pretty and smart but still totally down to earth. Like that time last summer when she got drunk with us at the closing dinner Beau organized and did all of her impressions of the bosses at L.Cecil—she’s smart and driven but still knows how to have fun, you know? Anyway—point is, I don’t NEED Charlie anymore, I just WANT him—the old him—back. I feel like that Charlie would have understood why I’m going to L.Cecil and not been so grim about it all.

  The world stopped. Charlie stared at the words on the page until they blurred from tears he had forgotten he had the ability to form. His brain raced back to the roller-skating incident: it was a few years after he’d graduated and he was in New York working on a story when his mother called to tell him Kelly had been cut from the high school dance team auditions. He’d called Stuyvesant and said they’d had a family emergency and she needed to be excused from class, then showed up with 1980s costumes and roller skates and taken Kelly to the West Side Highway, where they’d made a scene skating
and laughing, finally ending up in Central Park with the hardcore roller skater dancers who were kind enough to let them join despite their novice skills. They didn’t ever talk about the dance team, but he knew he’d made her feel better, and that made him feel as good as he’d ever felt.

  He hadn’t lost that part of himself. But the seriousness . . . the world had gotten more serious—between terrorism and technology and religious conflict and greed. Or maybe it had always been that serious, he just hadn’t realized it before, safe in his privileged American cocoon.

  He felt his defenses rise against the pain of Kelly’s words: what was he supposed to do?

  “Now this shit,” Horace said to no one in particular, “this shit’s sad.”

  Charlie looked up. The news had switched to Robby’s trial and the final jury selection going on right now.

  “Don’t you think?” Horace asked Charlie.

  Charlie nodded silently and left the bar.

  TODD

  FRIDAY, APRIL 18; NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  Todd spotted Joan at the Gramercy Tavern bar, sipping a martini. Her blonde hair was swept into a tight twist and her suit jacket hung on the back of the chair, her arms bare in a silk blouse. She shouldn’t have been wearing a sleeveless top, at least not in Manhattan. It wasn’t that her arms were fat, their lack of definition just looked grossly out of place on an island of Pilates-toned limbs.

  Todd took a breath: he could do this. He had to. His job depended on it.

  “Can I help you?” the hostess asked.

  “Reservation for two, under Todd Kent,” he told her. It had taken him an hour of calls, three personal favors, and one lie (that his dying-from-cancer cousin was in town) to get the reservation. “My dining partner’s right over there.”

  He tapped Joan’s shoulder lightly and smiled. “Don’t you look lovely,” he said.

  “Todd Kent,” Joan said, sounding practiced. “It’s really nice to see you.”

  “And you.” His grin was set. It wasn’t just her arms: her face had gotten pudgier, too.

  “So how have you been?” he asked as they sat at a table in the back. “You look really wonderful.”

  “You’re lying, but I’ll take it.”

  “I’m not,” he lied. “You know I always found you sexy.”

  Her eyes paused on him for a second before looking down at the menu. Todd could feel his palms sweat. What if this didn’t work? He thought about the deal, his bonus, his reputation. It had to work.

  “Could we have a bottle of champagne, please?” he asked the waiter.

  “We’ve got the list right here.” The man handed him a thick leather-bound notebook. “Sparkling wines start on page twenty-one.”

  “Why don’t you bring your favorite? We’re celebrating.”

  “Your tastes have matured,” Joan said.

  “So have I. I’m really sorry about how things ended,” he said, trying to remember how, exactly, things had ended.

  “Let’s not talk about it,” she suggested.

  The waiter arrived and showed him the bottle of champagne and Todd approved it. Once the glasses were filled, he toasted Joan: “To fresh starts.”

  “To fresh starts,” she said.

  They ordered dinner and another bottle of wine and Todd searched for things to talk about.

  “So how is working at the SEC?”

  “Awful,” she said. “It’s gotten even worse since the crisis, as you can imagine.”

  “Why?” He’d never thought about it. The SEC was where people who couldn’t cut it on Wall Street went to work. There was no point in going to the trouble of understanding the financial markets in order to collect a government salary when, if you had half a brain, you could make ten times as much at a real firm. It was why the whole idea of government regulation was so absurd: as if the government would ever attract talented enough employees to regulate what the more sophisticated talent on Wall Street was doing.

  “Way too much work, not enough staff,” Joan said. “Even if it were easy, there’s no way we could ever do a thorough job. And it’s not easy, as I’m sure you can also imagine.”

  “I’m sure.” He tried to sound sensitive but didn’t really care.

  “So what’s going on with Hook?”

  “How did you know I’m working on Hook?”

  “I approved the first S-1.”

  “You did?” he asked. “Thanks for getting it through so quickly.” He relaxed: she was on his side, so long as he didn’t fuck tonight up.

  “It’s fine,” she said, taking a bite of her duck. What woman ordered duck? Especially at her weight?

  “Well, I’m sure you heard that Josh Hart is leaving,” he said, “and Dalton Henley is buying him out.”

  “So he’ll have no ownership in Hook at all?”

  “None,” he said.

  “Is he upset?”

  “No.” Todd shook his head. “Everyone agrees it’s for the best.”

  She looked skeptical. “What happened?”

  Todd shrugged. “I think everyone just realized Josh is a programmer, not a CEO.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “What?” Todd asked honestly. After spending a day convincing other people of the story, he felt confident in it.

  “Nothing,” she said. “When are you submitting your new docs?”

  “Sunday.”

  “I’ll take a look on Monday,” she said. “Unless there’s anything really wrong, you should be able to start the road show the following week. You said you need it done by end of Q2, right? That should keep you on schedule.”

  “You are seriously the greatest.” Todd clinked her glass, his chest melting with relief.

  The waiter came back with the dessert menu. Todd ordered an espresso martini, deciding the best course of action now was to get very, very drunk. Or maybe he could get her very, very drunk, and then she’d pass out before they had to have sex?

  He sipped his martini and ordered a cheese plate.

  She polished off a chocolate torte and ate the petits fours.

  She excused herself to the bathroom as he gave the waiter his corporate card.

  “Todd?” He looked up at the familiar voice. Louisa LeMay, his old fuck buddy, stood slim beside the table. Her tight black dress clung to her tiny waist at his eye level, and her face glowed in a slightly tipsy smile.

  “Louisa?” His heart caught. “What are you doing here?”

  She turned her gaze toward the bar, where an old man was sipping a scotch, grinning at her. She smiled back at him. “Too many martinis,” she laughed, lifting her fingers to indicate she was on her third.

  “How long are you in town? Can I take you out?” he asked, the memory of her body against his making him forget how much work he had to do before Sunday.

  “I go back tomorrow,” she said, then added, “And it probably wouldn’t be appropriate anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  She bit her lip and blushed. “I think I might be in love,” she said, lifting her shoulders. “Can you believe it? Me?”

  Todd’s jaw dropped. He looked back at the man at the bar. He was old and not even attractive. “What?” he snapped, not comprehending.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Something just happened. I didn’t think I’d ever want to settle down, but this guy is just so . . .”

  Joan came back to the table, looking at Louisa, who turned. “Hi, I’m Louisa.”

  “Joan.” The two women shook hands.

  “Anyway,” Louisa said to Todd, “I’ll let you get back to each other, but really nice to see you, Todd, and great to meet you, Joan.” Her happiness made him want to vomit.

  Joan’s eyes followed her back to the bar, studying her jealously.

  “Is that Callum Rees?” she asked, and Todd realized she was looking
at the man, not Louisa.

  He turned. “What?”

  “Callum Rees. The billionaire who started all those companies.”

  “No way.” Todd turned. “Is it?”

  “I think so.” She lifted her brow. “Good for Louisa.”

  The waiter returned with Todd’s credit card before he could process Louisa falling in love with Callum Rees. He looked at the receipt, then coughed: the bill was $3,618. “Shit.” He looked up at the champagne: it was $2,600, and didn’t even taste good.

  “Everything okay?” Joan asked.

  “Absolutely.” He smiled. The normal expense limit for client dinners was three hundred dollars a head, but he’d get the bill approved once he explained the reason: keeping the deal from getting delayed was worth a lot more to L.Cecil than thirty-six hundred.

  He helped her out of her chair and tested his willpower, putting his arm on the small of her back as they left the restaurant. He hoped Louisa wasn’t looking. Ordinarily, he’d try to make her jealous, but being with a woman like Joan just made him feel foolish. But when he glanced back at her, she was laughing with Callum, absorbed in their conversation and oblivious to Todd. It would have been more comfortable if she’d just slapped him in the face.

  “Are you going uptown?” Joan interrupted his disappointment.

  “Just across,” he said. “It’s a nice night—do you want to walk?” He needed more time. She was not attractive and had just eaten more than a linebacker, and seeing her side by side with Louisa had made it all even worse.

  “I’m on Eighty-seventh and York,” she said. “It’d be a bit of a hike.”

  “Oh, I’ll get us a cab, then,” he said, reaching out his hand and praying she didn’t have cats.

  A car arrived and he opened the door for her. “It was good to see you, Todd,” she said, climbing in and putting her hand on the door to close it. “Congratulations on your continued rise.”

  “Wha—” He stared at her extended arm. “I—”