Overseas (2 page)

She raised her eyes and glared at me anyway. She had a round babylike face, so completely at odds with her personality it might have been a private joke between her and God. Pretty, in its way, particularly the arresting blue of her heavy-lidded eyes, but her current haircut—short and wispy, aiming presumably for a pixie effect—made that plump florid face look like Tinkerbell undergoing a severe allergic reaction.

Not that my opinion counted for anything. According to Charlie, she was sleeping with Paul Banner, head of Capital Markets and my current boss.

“Hmm. Did you forget your makeup today, Kate?” she asked.

On any other morning, this kind of comment—so typically Alicia, tossing her petty kindling atop the impotent inner rage of her subordinates—would
have infuriated me. Today, I could hardly be bothered to shrug. “Your e-mail said to hurry in. And Charlie and I were up late last night, finishing the presentation.”

She tried again. “Do you have, like, some powder in your purse? I could loan you some mascara. This is kind of an important pitch, you know.” She tapped the stack of presentations. “Southfield Associates is a twenty-billion-dollar fund. A lead steer.”

“I’ve got lip gloss.”

“Good. You’re not going to find yourself in a room with Julian Laurence again anytime soon. You want to give the right impression.”

“Yeah, well, back to the revenue numbers. I had some questions about them myself last night, but Charlie said…”

“Charlie is full of shit. You should know that. Year five revenue growth shouldn’t be less than twenty-three, twenty-four. ChemoDerma is a
growth
company, Kate. Do you know how much skin serum they sold last year?”

I knew to the last dollar, but the question was obviously rhetorical. “A lot,” I said, “but the patent expires…”

“Fuck the patent. I want you to redo the spreadsheet with a revenue growth number of twenty-five percent in years four and five. Print out a dozen copies and replace the page in all the books.” She rose from her chair.

“But it’s not just that page. A couple of charts refer to these projections…”

“Replace them all.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall. “Um, isn’t Southfield supposed to be here by eleven? And Banner has us pre-meeting at ten forty-five.”

She ran her tongue along the ridge of her upper lip. “Come on, Kate. Where’s that can-do spirit we hired you for? Just find an intern.”

She picked up her latte and left the room.

“T
HANKS FOR SHOWING UP,
” I growled at Charlie, as he staggered through the conference room door two hours later. I was leaning over my
laptop, flipping through the last few slides of the presentation and hoping I hadn’t missed any references to the new revenue projections.

“Sorry, dude. My BlackBerry fell under the bed. Did you get them all done?” He nodded at the plasma screen on the wall, which was hooked up to my computer.

“Barely.” I clicked back to the title slide and straightened. My back and neck were stiff with tension; I lifted one hand to rub the hardened muscle at the top of my spine.

“You rock.” He set two cups on the table. “Peace offering. Peppermint mocha, extra hot, right?”

I looked at the cup. “Thanks,” I said, and picked it up, bathing my nose in delicate mint-chocolate steam. The tension eased fractionally. “So where’s Banner?”

“He’s not here yet?”

“Of course not.” The door opened and the intern wobbled in under a stack of presentations. I jumped up and snatched one, flipping to the pages I’d changed. All there. “Thanks, buddy,” I said.

“No problem. Just mention me to Banner.”

“Yep, sure.” I thumped the books on the table, dismissing him, but he didn’t leave immediately. He hesitated, hovering between the table and the door; I glanced back just in time to see him turn away with a shaming shake of his head.

I called after him. “Wait. I’m so sorry. What was your name again?”

“Doyle. David Doyle.”

“I’ll rave, I promise,” I told him, flashing a smile.

“Yo, that was awesome,” Charlie said, laughing, as David Doyle bolted out the door. “You slayed him.”

“Hardly. So where did Banner go?” I repeated. “It’s ten minutes to eleven.”

“Oh, probably doing the meet-and-greet with Alicia. No way Banner’s going to give up any face time with Julian fucking
Laurence
.”

“Yeah, well, he
should
be more worried about the actual presentation.”

Charlie crashed confidently into a chair and began to swivel. “Kate, nobody around here has even
met
Laurence. Never takes sales calls. Never reads Street research.”

“Just the usual jerk, probably. You know these hedge-fund guys.” I got up and went to the monitor on the wall, adjusting the display.

“Kate, Laurence is not just
some
hedgie. He’s
the
hedgie. Grew Southfield from zero to twenty in, like, seven years. The dude has mythic fucking alpha. The real deal.”

I heard the rhythmic squeak of Charlie’s office chair, swiveling back and forth, and smiled into the TV monitor. He was a good-looking guy, Charlie. Not that I really noticed anymore, having seen him just about every day of my life for the past two and a half years, often for twenty-four hours straight, sometimes sloppy drunk, and once with horrifyingly explosive stomach flu (his, not mine). Good-looking in a bland way, with regular preppy features and straight thick brown hair, which he wore slicked back like some kind of Gordon Gekko mini-me.

“So what does that make him?” I turned around just in time to catch Charlie checking out my pencil-skirted derrière. “Not just any old jerk, but
the
jerk?”

“Come on, Kate.” He pulled a stress ball out of his pocket and began squeezing it with his left hand. “He’s a living legend. Timed the post-nine-eleven bounce-back to fucking perfection, made some leveraged bets on financial stocks. Risky shit, but it paid off. They unloaded all of it right at the top. Right at the
top
, dude. Nerves of fucking steel. The guy’s a billionaire now.” Charlie shook his head. His eyes shone with awe. “Not even thirty-five, and he’s cleared the wall. The whole fucking ballpark.”

“Impressive.”

“Oh, come on. Look at you, all stressing out. Strap on a pair of balls, for once.” He switched the ball to his right hand and rolled it around his palm, grinning slyly. “You’re a smart girl.”

“Thanks.” I clicked again to the first of the revised slides and frowned. Twenty-five percent. We were going to get slaughtered.

“No, seriously. Plus you have a major advantage over the rest of us.”

“What’s that?”

“Your
looks
, Kate.” He tossed the ball up in the air and caught it with a deft flick of his hand. “You’re the first thing these guys notice when we walk into the room. You should work it.”

“Charlie, for God’s sake.” I said it too sharply. I sensed Charlie’s body locking into place, fingers clenched around the ball.

“Oh, dude”—his voice thinned with dawning apprehension—“you’re not gonna, like, report me or something?”

“No, no. Jeez, Charlie. It’s okay. All fun and games.”

His hand slackened; the ball went back in the air. “You seriously don’t think you’re good-looking, though?” he pressed, relieved, apparently, that he wasn’t about to be hauled up in front of a sexual harassment tribunal. One torturous day of our new analyst orientation three years ago had been devoted to gender sensitivity training, as if we hadn’t had enough of
that
in college already. Not that most of my colleagues cared much. Anyone who was going to hyperventilate about the crassness of the investment-banking atmosphere did not, ipso facto, have the necessary cojones to kill your career.

“Well, I’m
okay
, I guess,” I said cautiously, catching my reflection in the sterile blue glow of the computer screen.

“Dude, give yourself some credit. You rock the whole sexy librarian thing.” He leaned back in his chair, propped his oily black shoes on the gleaming mahogany. “I mean, no offense.”

“Sexy
librarian
?”

He shrugged. “Some guys love that shit.”

“You’re so full of it.”

“Full of what?” He leaned forward, grinning. “Come on. Full of
what
, Kate?”

The first thing you learn on Wall Street: just play along. “Full of
crap
, Charlie.”

“Kate! Did you just
swear
?”

“
Crap
doesn’t count.”

“Sure it does. It’s like
shit
for wusses.”

“Deep, Charlie. So Harvard.”

“Kidding, Kate. We all love how you elevate the fucking tone around here.”

“Any time.”

“That prim Wyoming shit…”

“Wisconsin.” I lifted the cup to my lips.

“Whatever. Just remember what I said, when Laurence… Oh,
fuck
.” Charlie heaved his feet off the edge of the table, nearly toppling in his chair. “Here they are.”

I jerked to attention, with a splash of scalding coffee against the back of my throat. My hand stole up to rip the elastic from the twist at the back of my head, leaving only a skinny tortoiseshell headband to keep my hair in place; not exactly the polished professional, but at least not—
thanks, Charlie
—librarian
manqué
. Had I remembered the lip gloss? I rolled my lips together. Slightly gooey. Check.

Alicia entered first, mouth twitching irrepressibly, jacket unbuttoned to reveal an aggressive bronzed cleavage. Her voice cascaded with false regret. “Kate,
there
you are. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

The strangest feeling: vertigo, as if the entire broad carpeted floor had fallen away beneath my feet. “Leave?” I demanded, in undertone. “What do you mean,
leave
?”

“I’m so sorry. We had an extra ChemoDerma guy show up.”

“What about Charlie?”

“He stays. He’s just, you know, a little more
professional
.” She mouthed the last word with relish, hardly bothering to disguise her smile.

I’d had many revenge fantasies about Alicia. My favorite had her going rogue and blowing up the bank in a spectacular career implosion, like Nick Leeson with an industrial-strength push-up bra. Except she didn’t work on the trading floor—no math genius, Alicia—and my joy in her demise would be obscured by the fact that most of my 401(k) was held in
Sterling Bates stock. Oh, and I would also be out of a job. Still, her public disgrace had been enjoyable to contemplate in the comfort of my cubicle at three o’clock in the morning: a guilty pleasure for which I usually repented in the light of day.

Not anymore.

I stared at her, only dimly aware of the dark-suited figures streaming through the door, filling the room with affable chuckles. “Okay,” I said. I turned to Charlie. “It’s all here, ready to go. Watch out for the new revenue numbers.”

“Dude,” he moaned.

“Don’t worry. Alicia’s doing all the talking. I’ll be in my cube if you need me.” I picked up my laptop bag and walked to the door—past Banner, with his craggy overtanned face and emollient smile; past the ChemoDerma CEO, frowning quizzically; past two or three men who must have been from Southfield. The last one turned his face as I walked by, flashing me a lightning impression of startled eyes and bright extraordinary beauty, but I didn’t even pause. I could just hear Banner introducing us:
And these are our hardworking analysts, Charlie Newcombe and Kate Wilson, who put the presentation together for you folks. Um,
Katie?

The door closed behind me, cutting him off.

I
WENT DIRECTLY TO MY CUBICLE,
as I’d promised Charlie, and kept my phone poised next to me on the desk. I had nothing to do; my laptop was in the conference room two floors above me, delivering the presentation.

I should have been grateful. I had never grown used to meetings like this one, always hovering on the brink of some disaster: six-inch-high spelling errors projecting on the screen, mislabeled graphics, pie charts whose numbers clearly didn’t total to 100 percent. Revenue projections pulled out of thin air, neat and pretty and so completely freaking bogus. Ideal target practice for sharp-witted hedgies.

But this wasn’t much better, this unnerving idleness, this queasy suspicion
that I was missing a deadline or failing in some critical responsibility. I reached out restlessly with one hand and traced the edge of the framed photo on my desktop. Nothing too revealing, just Michelle and Samantha, standing in front of Neuschwanstein at some point during our post-college Eurail trip. Samantha’s arm looped around Michelle’s shoulders, pulling her off balance; Michelle’s fingers stuck up above Samantha’s head with the obligatory bunny ears. They were probably hungover. I was pretty sure we’d spent the previous evening at one of the Munich
biergartens
. Or three. A lifetime ago, it seemed; I narrowed my eyes and tried to recall the laughing Kate who had taken that photograph, compare her to the suit-swathed creature I inhabited now. Manhattan Kate, impermeable investment-banker Kate.

Eventually I rose to use the bathroom; not because I needed it, but because it was something to do, however brief. I lingered as long as I could at the black marble sink. I washed my hands with scrupulous care, chased away each tiny droplet under the hurricane draft of the hand dryer, twisted my hair back into its elastic. My face gazed back at me from the mirror, heavy and troubled, unrecognizable.

I picked up my silent BlackBerry from the counter and made my way back through the maze of identical heather-gray cubicles to my own, where I stopped short.

A tall lean man stood there in perfect stillness, resting one hand on the back of my chair. His curling hair gleamed dark gold in the remorseless office lighting; his back, broad and immaculate, bent forward a degree or two toward my desktop.

“I’m sorry,” I snapped. “Can I help you with something?”

He straightened and turned to me. “Kate,” he whispered.

I flinched in shock. The man was beautiful, unutterably beautiful. His face bore the implausible symmetry of a classical sculpture, almost exotic, with wide vivid eyes that absorbed me greedily. A yellow Sterling Bates visitor’s badge hung from the right lapel of his suit jacket, or I might have thought I was hallucinating.