The Futures

by Anna Pitoniak

  My lawyer arrived, and John or Kurt turned on the recorder. “So Evan. We have new testimony from Michael that we need to ask you about.”

  “Okay,” I said, glancing over at my lawyer. She nodded.

  “You’ve stated that you were unaware of Michael’s relationship with the Chinese officials until the night of”—he looked down at his papers—“November thirteenth, 2008.”

  “Right. The first night in Las Vegas.”

  “Now, Michael has testified that you were aware of his relationship with the Chinese officials from the beginning. Since”—he looked down again—“August eighth, 2008.”

  “No. I didn’t know anything until Vegas. I wasn’t even supposed to hear that. They didn’t know I was—”

  “Michael stated that you were aware of his trip to China, taken in August, to facilitate the initial meeting with the officials.”

  “No. I mean, yes, I knew about the trip, but I didn’t know what it was for.”

  “Michael stated that you did.”

  “I didn’t! He didn’t say anything about it, except that he was going to China.”

  “Michael said, and I’m quoting here, ‘Evan knew exactly what we were doing.’”

  “Can we have a minute, please?” my lawyer said.

  We stepped out into the hallway. Her high heels brought her up to my eye level. “Evan. Point-blank, is there anything you haven’t told me? I don’t like surprises.”

  “No. Nothing. Why would Michael say that?” My heart was beating even faster.

  “It could be part of his strategy. Make it seem like you had more responsibility than you actually did. So he’s not the only one who looks bad.”

  “Do you think I look bad?” My voice cracked.

  She cocked an eyebrow. “It doesn’t matter how I think you look. It matters that I protect you. Understood?”

  We went back into the conference room. I could feel John and Kurt staring as I took a small sip of coffee. The scratching of pen against paper, the buzz of the fluorescent light above. A dull ache throbbing through my temple.

  “Are we good?”

  “Go ahead,” my lawyer said.

  “Evan, you turned over the twenty thousand dollars that Michael gave you on November twenty-fourth, 2008. You had said, in previous testimony, that Michael gave you this money as a—I’m quoting here—a token of his appreciation. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. That’s what he said.”

  “But you didn’t deposit or spend any of the money.”

  “Right,” I said, relieved. “It’s all there.”

  “Why didn’t you spend any of it? What were you waiting for?”

  “I’m sorry—what?”

  “Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money. Is there a reason you were so hesitant to touch it?”

  “Is this really relevant?” my lawyer said.

  “Do you think you deserved that money?”

  “I—I didn’t ask for it. Michael just gave it to me.”

  “But you didn’t turn it down. You didn’t give it back. Clearly you thought you were entitled to that money in some respect. Except that you didn’t spend any of it. See, that’s what doesn’t make sense to me, Evan. You make it seem like you were just a low-level player. But Michael Casey wouldn’t be giving you a twenty-thousand-dollar payoff unless you were intimately involved with this deal.”

  “It wasn’t a payoff!”

  “Then what was it?”

  “A…a bonus. It was a bonus.”

  “Spire didn’t give out bonuses last year.”

  “Can we move on?” my lawyer said. “I don’t see that we’re getting anywhere with this.”

  “Fine,” John or Kurt said. “The next thing we’d like to ask you about is Wenjian Chan. Has he been in touch with you since you saw him in Las Vegas?”

  “I already told you. No. I never heard from him.”

  “Well, it’s possible he might have reached out to you since we took your testimony the other week. Has he?”

  “Why would he do that? He knows we’re being investigated.”

  “Maybe he wanted to find out what exactly you were telling us. Maybe he wanted to make you an offer for your cooperation.”

  I felt like I was going to throw up. “Don’t you think that I would have told you? That I would have told you if I’d heard anything from him?”

  “Come on, Evan,” John or Kurt said. “You don’t exactly have a great track record with that. That’s the whole reason we’re here.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Evan,” my lawyer said, in a warning tone.

  “It means you kept this deal a secret long after you knew the truth. It means you chose to keep silent about Michael’s plan even though you knew it was wrong. It means we can’t trust you to give us the full picture unless we ask.”

  “I didn’t keep it a secret!”

  “Then who did you tell about it?”

  “Okay,” my lawyer said, shutting her briefcase with a firm click. “I think that’s enough. Let’s take a break.”

  My lawyer and I had lunch together that day at the Indian place on 9th Avenue. Roger and the other analysts were at another table in the restaurant. I hadn’t been invited to lunch with them in months.

  My lawyer spent most of the meal on her BlackBerry. “Sorry,” she said. “My nanny has the flu. We had to use the backup. Now the kids are sick, too. It’s a fucking nightmare.” She noticed my untouched food. “Hey. You okay?”

  “No.”

  She put her phone down. “You know it’s not personal, right? The things they were saying back there. They really don’t give a shit about you.”

  “It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like they’re after me.”

  “They’re only trying to get as much out of you as they can. So they can nail Michael and the Chinese. You’ve got the testimony they need. But you’re small fish, Evan. I mean that in a good way.”

  Roger and the others walked past on the way out. Roger bumped into my chair. “Oops. Didn’t see you there, Peck,” he said, grinning. “Hot date, huh?”

  After we finished eating, after she paid and we stood up to put on our coats, she asked: “What did you mean before? When you said that you didn’t keep it a secret?”

  “Oh.” I was hoping she had forgotten about that. “I didn’t really mean anything. Just that, um, I didn’t consciously keep it a secret.”

  When we returned to the conference room, John and Kurt looked up in unison. “Actually, we’re done,” one of them said. “For now, at least. We don’t need anything else. You can go back to work.”

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “We might need to call you back for a few things as they crop up. But yeah, that’s it. You’re done. Thanks for your help.”

  “You must be relieved,” my lawyer said, walking me back to my office-slash-closet. “Now you can go back to normal, right?”

  “I guess.” I did feel relieved—that weak but good feeling that comes after you’ve finally thrown up—but I also felt confused. Shortchanged somehow. What would come next? What was going to happen to me?

  We stopped outside my door. “Well,” she said. “Good luck, Evan.”

  * * *

  My life went soft at the edges. The same feeling permeated the hours at work, the hours at home: emptiness, futility, like a bucket with a hole in the bottom. The SEC investigation had been my last vestige of purpose. For a few weeks I continued to arrive early, stay late, and keep my closet door propped open so that anyone walking past might imagine me hard at work. Then I left a little earlier. Arrived a little later. Started shutting my door at lunch so I could watch the postgame highlights with the sound on. January became February, then February became March. Eventually I gave in to it. I punched in and out. I ate dinner; I drank. I’d go entire weekends without speaking, so that my voice felt scratchy and strange when I greeted the security guards on Monday mornings. I arrived hungover and shut my door for long stretche
s to take naps on the coarse industrial carpet, letting time pass like high clouds drifting through the upper atmosphere.

  I realized at a certain point that I’d been celibate for nearly three months. It was the longest by far I’d gone without having sex. In high school, it was only ever a few weeks at a time, and in college, too, and after that came Julia. It was like a portal to an earlier time. The texture of this frustration was identical to what I’d felt as a virginal teenager. It was almost as if, by going so long without sex, I had become my younger self again. I felt confused and melancholy in a way I hadn’t in a decade. I could have gone out to a bar and ended the celibate streak with a one-night stand easily enough. But in a way, I liked being alone with my former self. I indulged it. I liked recalling how it felt when adulthood was still a distant mystery. When the concrete details—an apartment in Manhattan, a high-paying job—would have been sufficient by themselves. I hadn’t realized, back then, how messy it actually was. I wanted to go back and hide inside that ignorance.

  I kept waiting for the SEC to come knocking, to ask the question I’d never answered. What did you mean, you didn’t keep it a secret? I had blurted it out without thinking, and they treated it like a throwaway. A pathetic, confused, nonsense lie. But it was the truth; I hadn’t kept it a secret. I was the whole reason the SEC was there, shining a bright light on the dirty deal. No one ever asked about the leak. Maybe they always assumed it was me, the young analyst gone nervous and blabby, or maybe they just didn’t care. It was a paltry defense in any case. I had told somebody, but not the right somebody.

  One day in March I lay down for a nap after lunch, intending to sleep off another hangover. When I woke up, it was late—past 8:00 p.m. I’d slept for almost five hours. On my way to the elevator, I passed the other analysts, gathered near Roger’s desk.

  “Steve’s riding you that hard?” one of them was saying to him.

  “Go without me,” Roger said. “I’ve got at least six hours left here.”

  Roger’s face was puffy and pale, exhaustion and caffeine lending a nervous twitch to his features. But when he noticed me approach, he grinned like his old self. “Look,” he said. “Peck can take my place. Make him pick up the tab. He’s rich.”

  Everyone had heard about the $20,000. They knew I had to turn it over, but it was fodder nonetheless. Roger laughed. “Still can’t take a joke, huh, Peck?”

  “You can come along if you want,” one of the other analysts mumbled, a residual politeness kicking in. The group walked slow, including but not quite acknowledging my presence. No one knew what to say to me. I glanced back over my shoulder at Roger. He was staring so closely at his screen that it looked like he was going to tip over. Just as I must have looked, so many nights during the previous year. It was like coming across a photograph of myself that I didn’t remember being taken.

  When had I become so invisible? I thought as the elevator descended and the analysts traded stories I knew nothing about. When had I become an afterthought? Other people made mistakes and were forgiven. I didn’t know how much longer I could endure this. I knew it was fucked up, but I missed Michael. Or maybe it was more that I missed the way Michael made me feel. Like I was part of something bigger.

  The neon sign for McGuigan’s glowed ahead of us in the darkness. It was the same as always—the stale beer smell, the jukebox, the crack of cue against billiard ball, the rattle of ice. But before I could follow my coworkers to the usual booth in the back, my eye caught another familiar sight.

  “Evan?” she said. Her eyes wide, uncertain. Almost regretting it.

  Then she smiled.

  I nursed my Guinness. It wasn’t until late, long after my coworkers had gone, leaving bills stuck to the damp table, that Maria came and sat next to me.

  “Do you want another?” she asked, pointing at my empty glass.

  “I’m okay.” For the first time in a while, I didn’t feel like getting drunk.

  “Sorry. I meant to come over earlier. It was a crazy night. How are things?”

  “Good, I guess.”

  Good? I missed the way things had been between us in the fall, but I didn’t know how to go back to that. I doubted it was possible.

  “I have to say something,” Maria said at last. “I should have said this a long time ago. I’m sorry things got kind of weird when I started dating Wyeth. That was bitchy, bringing him in like that. I should have told you.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That. That’s fine. You didn’t owe me an explanation.”

  “That’s not true. I really liked you, Evan.” Her voice wavered. “I just—I kept waiting. You know? I kept waiting for you to make a move or do something or say something. Eventually it seemed like you didn’t want anything like that. And Wyeth was cute, and he asked me out. So I said yes.”

  She shrugged. “You seemed pissed afterward. Then you didn’t come around for a long time. But you’re back now, and—I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what’s going on in your life or why you’re back, but I want us to be friends again. I’d like that. If you want to.”

  I stared down at the bar, blinking, willing the seams to hold together.

  “Are you okay?” she asked in a soft voice.

  I shook my head. “God, Maria. I’m sorry. I’m a jerk.”

  “No, Evan. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. I—”

  “No. I’m an asshole. I didn’t make a move last year because I had a girlfriend.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  “I should have said something. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, my God. That makes so much sense. A girlfriend!” She laughed, then stopped. “Wait. Did you say ‘had’?”

  “Yeah. We broke up a while ago.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was complicated. It’s better that it’s over.” Was that true? Was that what I really thought? “It had been dragging itself out for a long time.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well,” I said. “How much time do you have?”

  The next morning, as I passed Roger’s desk, I noticed that he was wearing the same clothes as the day before. Shirt wrinkled, tie stained with oil, smelling and looking like he hadn’t slept in days. It was the first morning in a long time that I had woken without a hangover. I’d picked up breakfast, which I never did, the toasted bagel radiating heat through the white bag. I stopped next to Roger’s desk.

  “Want breakfast?” I said, extending the bag toward him. He raised an eyebrow. “They messed up my order,” I lied. “I asked for sesame but they gave me an everything. So they did it over, but they gave me both.”

  “Um. Okay. Thanks,” he said warily, taking the bag.

  “You’re welcome,” I said. Then, before I lost my nerve: “Do you need any help?”

  He tore off a bite of the bagel. “Help?”

  “With whatever you’re working on. It looks like you’re slammed.”

  He stared for a beat. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Nope. Not joking. I’ve got time to pitch in.”

  Then he laughed. “Well, yeah. Duh. They can’t staff you on anything. The investors would freak out.”

  My stomach turned at the smell of the warm cream cheese.

  “They told us not to talk about any live deals in front of you,” Roger continued. “It’s a liability. You’re going to be gone soon, anyway.”

  “A liability?”

  Roger’s expression softened. “Look,” he said quietly. “I’m not trying to be a dick. Do you want my advice? Just cash your checks and ride this out. Then you can move on to another firm. Start fresh. Somewhere else, they won’t even care.”

  Down the hall, the other employees were arriving for the day. Roger rearranged his face back into its usual smug grin. “Thanks for the bagel, but just get out of here, okay?” he said under his breath. “I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

  I went back to McGuigan’s that night, and the next, and the next. I drank Coke, and I watched whatever
was on the TV—a Yankees game, Jeopardy!, the local news—killing time, waiting for the bar to quiet down enough for Maria to take a break. She was the only person I had talked to in months. I couldn’t lose her again.

  That first night, I told her the whole story: Michael, the bribery, the trip to Las Vegas. The Julia part, too. I figured it was fine. The investigation was nearly finished, and the findings were going to be public soon enough. Maria stared at me, rapt.

  “Have you heard from her since you broke up?” she asked at the end.

  “Nope.”

  “But you haven’t called her, either?”

  “There’s nothing to say.” I jabbed at a melting ice cube with my straw. “She checked out a long time ago. I don’t think she was ever going to come back.”

  “Why are you still here, then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why stay? I mean, you must be miserable at Spire, right? And you always said you weren’t that crazy about New York. You could go somewhere totally different. Don’t you want to start over? Leave it all behind?”

  But where would I go? How could I explain? I couldn’t leave, because for the first time, New York finally felt like home. Last year the city was a backdrop separate from my life, something I was only borrowing. But the shift had happened not long ago, when I realized that I had changed. That the city had been witness to different versions of myself. It gave me a new claim over this place. I had tried, failed, collapsed, but I was still here. The city was still here. The scale of the place had become newly comforting. It had a way of shrinking my pain to a bearable smallness. It was nothing compared to the towering skyscrapers or the teeming crowds. Any given day, in any given subway car, there were people who were happier than I, people who were sadder than I. People who had erred and people who had forgiven. I was mortal, imperfect, just like everyone else. It was good to be reminded of that.

  But that mortality also made me old. I felt like I might vanish in a second. I realized—knowledge that arrived all at once—how much the world would continue to change after I was gone. Someday, people would look back on this era in the same way I had looked back on the settlers of the New World or the cowboys of the West in the slippery pages of my schoolbooks, strangers whose lives were distilled down to a few paragraphs and color illustrations. They would shake their heads, not believing that we could have known so little. It was nearly impossible to imagine the continuity. Then they would turn away from the past and continue their lives in a world transformed by technology or disease or war. By rising oceans or collapsing economies or by something that we—we soon-to-be relics—couldn’t even imagine.