BACK IN NEW YORK on Tuesday, getting into a cab on Broadway, I ride down to Midtown to my office. Yesterday was a bitch, I hadn’t been available over the weekend and hadn’t checked in at all. And now, there is a lot of work backed up. I get in at seven, get slammed with calls from all my clients, Carl in one of his expansive moods, my associate needing a lot of basic guidance on shaping the language to secure our client’s needs without changing the basic template of the document and the structure of the financing arrangement. It is two in the afternoon before I can turn around without facing another minor crisis. I work harried and jet-lagged, and don’t feel the slightest personal interest in any of it, neutrality being the value of legal counsel.
Carl has just gotten back from a week off, which he spent in Hawaii. It’s his second day back, and he’s still being brought up to date with various cases, being briefed by me and the other senior associates who report to him. Carl is a good looking guy with reddish brown hair, blue eyes, Jewish mother, father died or just disappeared—I could never get the story straight and he doesn’t talk about it, so he probably doesn’t know the full extent of it. Carl’s in his forties now, getting pudgy and soft in his professional success. He leans back behind his desk as he listens to my update, eyes wide and a little shining. He runs his hands through his hair, his palms pressing down and squeezing his hair back off his forehead.
“Charter is going ahead with the Silverado deal,” I say. The currency exchange rate is being factored in on a contingent basis with a clause to maintain a less than fifteen percent variation, which Larry is going to guarantee on the bank’s side. He says he can keep it to less than five percent and that the fee he’s getting for the acquisition makes up for it, but that doesn’t matter to us, I guess. “Larry’s pretty sure the whole thing will work out. He’s also got a couple of mergers cooking, one, some industrial manufacturer, Stokes in Illinois, has a deal to spin off one of its properties, and if he can shop a buyout for the rest of the company, he will do the high yield financing. As far as I can tell, Carl, the money can be raised. Larry’s embarrassed to go before his capital commitment committee a second time.”
“For what?”
“The board has to sign off on a bonus for the C.E.O. if they sell the company.”
“So what. They’re not going to care. If the deal is good, an extra twenty million won’t kill it.”
“I know. It’s an ego thing with Larry, I guess. He’d rather call in an outside partner. But I don’t know if he will. It’s so much easier to just have the bank stick the extra money in up front and get all its ducks in a row.”
“How come he didn’t know about it?”
In fact, the information came pissing out slowly, now ejaculating when you’re not ready for it as we get close to the deal. “There was a competitive offer from the U.K. which we had to meet with the agreement that the C.E.O. gets two seats on the new board of the new company, which may or may not work, depending on how much he can demand. I mean the company is arguably coming out of a swamp right now and he can take credit for the turnaround, his leadership and some bullshit, I don’t know if they’ll buy it, but, I guess it depends on how much they still like him now, you know, does he have an credibility with them at this point. We’ll still have to see with time. It’s all these social issues. It kind of depends on who else is on the board, I guess. We’ll try to knock it down to one. Then, it’ll be just him. But if he has no pull, what good will it do him? Beyond the extra money, of course.”
“What is the company worth now?”
“At this moment? Well, the rest of the company is not really worth anything, I don’t think, but conservative projection of revenues for this chip division is around eighty million a year. Out of that, I don’t know how many millions in profit. But the legacy debt is a drag on the numbers as a whole, so Larry’s got to set up a new financing vehicle for them, and they’ll syndicate that to five or six other banks, and he’ll sponsor the issue then securitize it. Free up the new company from the debt. There’s a big ass fee in it for them and then they’ll carry a piece of the points. I think it makes sense.”
“Sounds good to me, Mark. A little complex, but that’s the way it goes. A lot of work for you. You’ll charge a completion fee on top?”
“Right.”
“What does the company do exactly?”
“They have a proprietary interest in a method patent for a silicone spray process for integrated circuits that they are going to license to some Korean manufacturers and it’s supposedly worth something like five hundred million dollars over five years for contracts already signed. I’ve got a box of papers on it coming later today. They’re serious about extracting value; Larry said that they want to spin it off of the rest of the company, which is mostly rust-belt stuff, a lot of machinery, remnants that are still operating now, but won’t last much longer. It’s not worth it to reinvest since all that is going to China now. Just get rid of all that stuff and keep the intellectual property.”
“Thanks, Mark, excellent. It’s a beautiful feeling being pulled back into the flow of the business, after being away. Chasing down fees, hoping, begging. It’s a desperate business, but I love it. I can’t get away from it, I’m constantly thinking about deals, even last week, with the kids in Hawaii, I’m sitting by the pool and calling in to check my messages with Alexis. I hate that.”
“But you can’t show it, you’ve said it many times, Carl. You’ve got to stay cool. We’re not nonprofit here. And you do love it.” He does love it, and that cool insight unnerves me.
“Here’s what it comes down to for me. If I can get paid, if I can resolve an issue and collect a three hundred thousand dollar fee or three million or whatever, we’re not proud here, we’ll take small fees, hey that’s how it adds up, you can’t look down on the small money, can you? And then how sweet it is to say fuck off to all those who ever doubted us.”
“We provide a necessary service to the market. You’ve said it a thousand times, Carl.”
“Right. But you know what, Mark? Somehow, somewhere along the way, the money becomes proof, a way to measure yourself against the other guys. Amazing how quickly the money stops being the means to buying anything tangible and becomes a sign of superiority; it means something. But the funny thing is, it isn’t really. Money doesn’t make the man, the man makes the money. We’re all equal, at the start—under the law, and I guess, in the eye of God. But by hustling, working harder, identifying opportunities, some individuals make more money. Then we all sit back, even if we know it’s stupid, we sit back and look at how big a pile of money a guy has and think that’s how big a man he is. Big man, big pile. Money talks, but it’s not just that cliche. Money is a language. And we say things with it and we do things with it; we use it to declare who we are, announce it to the world, not just our status, but whatever we can say. Status is a part of it, but you can do more, you can say whatever you want. I mean, really, what do I really say in all this language that we use here in the law and in the market, here we are writing out all these agreements to nail down contracts for transactions, partnerships, fee agreements, financing, that’s it, the language. We do things with the words. That’s why it’s so important to keep your word; if you promise to do something, do it. Right?”
“Right, Carl.”
“Even the value of a deal, or a company, when you think about it, is articulated by the numbers, but it’s also asserted and acknowledged and accepted by others as the way it is, in language, right? It’s simple, in a way stupid, but nevertheless that’s what it is. And the performance of each individual, it’s like in sports, you know, we’re not all gifted athletes, but if you train, stick to your discipline, work out, you’ll get results. Look at Allen, he’s not some gifted salesman, he’s had to work to get where he’s at.”
“Brokerage is a pretty fast business. . . .”
“I know, but nonetheless. I may not agree with how he spends his money, but first you have to earn it, and to do that in any business you have to establish trust with your customers, you have to create a track record. Selling is hard work, it takes a lot of discipline, perseverance, time management, focus, there are a lot of things that can derail a sale, and a lot of it is how you present it, sure it’s not as complex as what we do, but in essence, to the client, our job is to simplify a complex process down to a few statements and that’s all he needs to know, we sell that and we earn our money by handling the rest. Selling stocks is the same thing, that’s the reality of it. The pace is different, it happens a lot more quickly, but the relationship has to be built beforehand, so you can call a client up and say hey you should be in on this and then I say okay what is it and thirty seconds later make a decision based on trust. There’s a lot more to it than just making money. It’s not that money makes the man, obviously, the man makes his money, and that’s his work, how society values him.”
“Sure, Carl. It’s printed on society, and that’s civilization. I mean, we could just beat each other up. Even elementary school, you knew who had more money by the clothes he wore or the car his mother picked him up in.”
“Look, Mark. There’s a direct correlation between what you’re worth and . . . what you’re worth, I mean, your net worth and what you’re worth, you know what I mean, what else is there? Sure, there’s a moral disparity here, but we’re not talking about your moral value as a human being here. I’m talking about economic value, what you are worth to others. You’re only worth a shit if you’re worth some money to somebody. That’s the market. Work, man, what you create, and you’ve got to make it so you get compensated for what you do, it’s labor, intellectual labor, but we leverage our knowledge and mastery of the law and sell that to our clients who are out doing whatever they’re doing, building buildings or renting out buildings or buying streams of revenue or lending money out to whoever might be doing any of those things. We build our base, our own capital, intellectual capital, and then we use it as a lever to multiply and accumulate more capital. For us, it’s knowledge, relationships, the terms and conditions of abstract obigations, the law. It has nothing to do with what’s right, but everything to do with what works in a given situation; it’s pragmatic. It’s mostly about organizing a system, controlling it, operating it, creating it to get things done, practically. And whatever it is that gets done is productivity, meaning financial profitability, return on investment. That’s the measure, Mark. You organize the work and create a system that generates return on investment. How else do we have all this stuff lying around us, buildings, phone lines, electricity, air conditioning, subways, highways, banking systems, legal contracts, vehicles, air planes, gasoline delivery systems, I’m talking about indoor plumbing, the whole world, the man-made world, we’ve created all this through work, labor and intellectual organization, invention and discover. That’s why everyday whatever you can put into the system, you’ve got an obligation to do it, whether it’s digging ditches, driving a truck or working out differential equations, who knows maybe that will help build the next generation of supercomputers that will decipher the human genome. What do you think the Nasdaq bubble was all about? Sure, it got ahead of itself, there’s always speculation, they’re spectators, people placing bets on the sidelines, and yes that becomes part of it, its own industry, and maybe it’s non-productive, I don’t know, or maybe it helps regulate the system, lubricate all the machinery that sifts the information of what will return a profit and what won’t, what allows it to bend with more flexibility, making it stronger yet more supple, more efficient as it comprehends a greater and wider field, and you don’t necessarily know a priori, can you, so you have to try it out. Sure, momentary swings of the market are inevitable as people change their minds as the facts come in, and yes there’s deception, of course, and you can make money and you can also lose money. That’s what we’re all doing here whatever we are I don’t care if you’re in Uzbekistan trying to make a living for your family and put enough food on the table and save some surplus to store away for later. And let’s face it, that’s what money does, the extra that you store up, if you want to know what something is, you have to understand what its function is. Aristotle, right? You get paid what others deem you’re worth, at what number they value your work. You know and I know, it’s not a perfect system, but for the most part, it’s better than anything else out there, communism, socialism, come on, they’re all failures, failed experiments, failed societies. People have tried them, and they’ve resulted in devastated societies. The market, man, the market is the only way to test the value of anything. Money is a fungible substance, and everything can be translated, exchanged, quantified by money. Whatever’s fungible. Whatever’s not, well, we’re not talking about that.”
While he talks, I think, the language of money, what is it? Like he said, everything you see around you, everything you touch, that’s been built, made, bought, sold, the pipes flushing the toilets, the metal mined to make the pipes, the sewage plants, the buildings, two hundred years old or brand new houses, the banks’ computers, the college degrees that decorate offices, the wooden table in the conference room, the pressed particle board modular walls of secretaries’ offices and of speechwriters and research analysts paid to address the public, to persuade, to sway, to get the media and the crowd to do what you want them to do, buy the stock, don’t sell, hold for the long term, or just assent to what you’re saying for the moment and let it pass until some other event occurs. Money, the language we live in and use to come to agreements, to strike deals, contract services, promise and guarantee outcomes, action, the labor, the work you bill by the hour, whether its by hand or some entertainer’s mouth or the computer programmer’s fingertips. Giving and taking, exchanging. It’s a simple language, this for that, you could go on forever, eliciting agreements to exchange one thing for another, saying things and having it make sense, making someone understand what you’re offering for what you expect return, in some context, communicating a universal functioning of a simple idea.
“I’m not saying money is the only thing,” says Carl. “Family, love, yes, relationships, they’re more important than money, health, yes, but I’m talking about, as far as what’s quantifiable. I’m glad to be back. This is not just a job, or a career, it’s human activity, an enterprise, a more or less smooth running machine. Sure, we need to make it run more smoothly, there’s always room for improvement, but it’s something I’ve built. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing I love more than taking time off with my family. You should see my kids. My boys are the most adorable kids you’ve ever seen. It’s a miracle how fast they grow. I love getting away from business. You really have to appreciate what you have, family, relationship, a nice place to live, the comforts. We forget how hard it was to secure it once we have it and then we take it for granted and think all the time about what we don’t have, can’t get and frustrate ourselves trying to get it and then that’s how we imagine success, getting what we didn’t think previously we were capable of getting or doing. It’s not just about big houses or money in the bank, but accomplishment, Mark, accomplishment. So, yeah, here we go again. Back on the chain gang. Slaving over money which will provide us with whatever we want. That’s the key to happiness, getting what you want, but life is unpredictable and there really are no guarantees. You never know when your investments will go sour—look at the Nasdaq over the last year. I lost so much money, I have to forget about retiring early.”
“Right, Carl. You weren’t ever going to retire. And if you really wanted to, you could.”
“Thanks, Mark. Thanks. Keep up the good work. Be responsible. Financially responsible. I am. You’ve got to be. How you succeed in your personal finances, by saving—it’s not how much you make, but how much you spend, though really it is how much you make--and it’s investing not spending except when it comes to your house, that should be your first investment,” he says, holding up his index finger, tendons straining in his wrist, “ It’s the number one thing, Mark. That’s what I don’t understand about Allen and even you—you’re spending all the money you’re making! That’s a mistake. There will come a time when you will wish you had saved that money, or invested it, it’s amazing how much growth you compound over time if you start early. I wish I had started earlier in life. And don’t borrow money, ever, except for your house, which is part of yourself, that’s the only reason to take on debt. It’s property, Mark, ownership. In fact, I can’t believe I’m margined on these stocks at all now, what a mistake, but it is just too easy. You don’t really own these things, you’re just holding them for awhile, with the idea of selling them in the future. Temporary ownership. I should close those positions now and just take the loss before it gets worse but I’m sure, I know it’s going to come back in, even though Allen doesn’t think so. What the fuck does he know? He’s just a kid. What, how long has he been working, five years or so? Sure. He’s worked hard, he’s got access to information from Moral Morgan but I think all that research is tainted, it’s obviously biased, no one doubts that it isn’t, but everything is biased really. I mean, yes, surely we should know, right? It’s our job to produce and interpret documents in such a way as to benefit and protect our clients. That’s all those research reports amount to really, documents, language. You just have to know who their real clients are, not me, no. Of course everything’s subjective, the whole fucking market’s the totality of individual subjective choices, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but, there are huge pools of capital….”
“But they’re still managed according to some set of decisions and processes, policies and procedures, and yes, gut feeling and subjective judgement calls, right?”
“Well that’s research, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but no research really tells the tale, you know that don’t you?”
“There’s always more, always another layer to the story, of course, Carl. All the banks have huge stakes in percentages. Some guy writes a four-hundred-page dissertation on the coal industry, what is that, who cares, and who reads that? Who is this idiot that would spend day and night for how long writing this up? I mean, in the end, you or me or some investment manager just makes a decision. That’s all there is to it. Isn’t it?”
“That’s what I’m saying. Exactly. You’re a fool if you listen to these guys exclusively.”
“Well, they do cover the market and bring ideas to people. They present their opinion and then back it up with reasoning, facts, interpretation of data, you know.”
“Oh, I know, but what I’m saying is that you can’t always listen to these guys.”
“Of course not.”
Carl told me about the turning point of his career as a young lawyer. “My mentor here at Stephenson Roberts Altrow, a great man named Abe Jameson, Irish guy, one of the guys who started the securities practice here. He pulled me aside once, after I had been working days on end, a string of all-nighters—we were so busy—and I was losing it. I used to drink then, and my life was a mess. It got to the point that for a week or so I couldn’t work, I hit the wall. I’d come in to the office and not be able to keep up by four, eyes dulled, couldn’t articulate and I started to slack off, slow down, trudge. Abe pulled me over one day and said, ‘Carl, I like you. You’re tough, smart, unpretentious. Just like I was. We want young men like you to make it here because you’re going to keep doing whatever it takes to get the work out. And, if you start to see the big picture, who knows, maybe you’ll get new business in the door. Maybe not. It’s not easy. We demand perfection. That’s how we approach potential clients. We tell them that we demand perfection. And perfection demands long hours. I know you’re tired. I can see the exhaustion in your face. But I also know that you’re not a quitter. Carl Stiehl, are you just going to settle for being a dime a dozen lawyer, practicing at some nine-to-five firm or on your own? Sure, I know you can make a nice living. But that’s not really why we’re here. We want ambition in our associates. If you don’t have it, then this won’t be the right place for you. We don’t want you. But I know you have it. You won’t be satisfied with just a mediocre standard of living. We only want the best. There’s no room for second place here, Carl. I want you to think about that. If you decide this is not the right place for you, that’s fine. No one will shove you out the door. You can stay as long as you want. But if you want to make partner, that’s a different story. Now you don’t have to say anything now. In fact, you don’t ever have to say anything. We’ll both know what you decide.’ I made partner seven years later, after busting my balls every damn day. And we never mentioned that conversation, Abe and I. But when he died, just a couple of years ago, you were here, I cried. I really did. He’s the guy who summed it up, what it’s all about, for me. Mark, I quit drinking that day, I think, or it was that week, if I remember. I mean, sure, I drink wine with dinner, but I don’t get drunk, not in public.”
Carl told me this story when I was in a similar situation, overworked, burned out from grinding my brain, reading, writing, trying to get the hang, get up to speed with the practice. I had just started running projects, and there was an overwhelming amount of work, details, contracts and concepts I didn’t understand, and the deals were big, tens of millions of dollars on the line, with clients calling me for this for that and I wasn’t even sure what it was they wanted or how it fit into the scheme of things. I kind of resented Carl relating his experience to me, as if he could see exactly where I was, what I was suffering, the doubts in my own mind, even though he was basically right, but still, I looked at him with his bulging eyes and emphatic demeanor and said to myself, fuck you, Carl. But I know that he was just trying to help me see from his experience that you had to push through difficult thresholds to break through to a higher level of work. And he was right. But for some reason I haven’t been able to forgive him for seeing me as he saw himself, even though in a way it’s the utmost compliment and sign of respect. I respect Carl, but there’s something fucked up about him that I guess is in me as well, something that I do not really want to see as part of me.
He went on, on that occasion, after telling me the story of about Abe Jameson, to tell me about meeting his wife. “I met Darlene that year too. She was a teacher in the city--can you imagine? Southern belle teaching in Brooklyn, it was some program to recruit qualified people into teaching in the public school system. I think it was her way of getting away from her father and the south, I think. Shiny auburn hair with a hundred different colors in it, it seemed. I fell in love with her immediately. We met at a party; she knew one of the other associates, Bill Hutchinson, who knew her from Georgia, I think. Well, I knew Bill too, and we didn’t like each other too well, but we were cordial, collegial. He was at the firm back then. You know him, don’t you? He’s a partner now at Thatcher Harlett. Never forgave me for taking away Darlene from him. They were a matched set, you know. But I had to have her, southern accent and all. Just lost my head. Oh, she didn’t like me that much at first, thought I was too aggressive, kind of rude, a New Yorker, a Northerner. Considered me a Yankee at first, silly, I know. But I just kept calling her. She had quit teaching and was working in marketing for a public relations agency. She never really was that serious about Hutchinson, though she had plenty of other men calling her and plenty of older men, successful, interested in her too. After almost a year of calling her, she finally let me take her out. We went to some fancy restaurant. I think I just wore her out, believe it or not, sad to say. I let her date whomever she wanted. I just made it clear to her that she wasn’t interested in hearing about it. Eventually, she saw that I was serious about what I wanted. My dream, to make partner, make some money, be someone. I shared that with her. And she saw, I think, how I persevered, and that I was going to do it. Oh, she could have married guys from rich families. But, you know, that didn’t appeal to her. Her dad was the local lawyer in her town in Alabama, who had made it on his own, too. We get along real well, now. Sometimes though now, you know, a lot of times, I want to fuck other women, women other than my wife, but, look, I ask myself, is it worth it, for some shapely piece of ass? I mean, it’s only natural when you see a beautiful girl, slim, modelesque, so hot it makes you hurt because you know you can’t have her and you can’t even try because you don’t want to screw over your wife. I mean there’s a lot of trust there, you know? It’s like an ethical commitment. Not that just because you see a hot piece of ass on the street or at some party you can have her, believe me, I know, it doesn’t always work out that way, and if it does, you don’t know where it’s going, so all that for a piece of pretty ass? It’s like the market—it’s set to fool you, do exactly the opposite of what you think it’s going to do, and the more you think it’s going to go up, the greater the risk of the fall is, but the higher it goes, the more attractive it seems, the more you desire it. But you shouldn’t buy it because the pure, nice rise has already occurred, of course, you should have bought it before. But it fools you, just because you want it, you want a piece of it, the rise. It’s tricky, there’s natural deception built in. I guess it’s us, how we think.” What he said made sense in a cover your ass kind of way, as if the way to live was to not screw up a nominally good thing. If you think a thing is good, why should you go about fucking it up? I mean he’s right in a straightforward, pragmatic, common sense way.
By late afternoon that day after getting back from Los Angeles, I was swamped again, renegotiating an agreement for Loeb and his client on the financing, and going over preliminary terms for that second potential acquisition. Gina had called during business hours, long distance from Boca Raton, Florida, where she was working on a deal with some private equity firm providing financing for a buy-out of a regional managed health care company. I got the voice mail, but didn’t have a chance to call her back. I’m sure she wants to know about my weekend in LA. Would I just tell her straight out that I had fucked her so-called friend, Audrey, throughout the weekend, or just let her read between the lines? No. I avoid confrontation. She won’t ask straight out, but she’ll want to know.
Bill, a second year associate who works for me, needs help rewriting the draft of
the review document which we may or may not but probably will submit to Larry’s capital commitment committee in response to the sale bonus clause for the C.E.O. of Stokes. Janice, another associate, is writing a letter addressed to the counsel for the independent members of the board. They have to be persuaded to sign off on the twenty million dollar bonus to the C.E.O., and as representatives of the buyer, we are weighing in on the desirability of acquiring. All this needs to be presented in just the right way, as we are on both sides of the deal. Bill doesn’t understand the main issue. If the board supports the management’s right to pay the chief executive and themselves what amounts to forty million dollar bonus, in the form of a retirement slash severance contingency options package, in the event of the sale of the company, that scuttles any fair market price. It’s a potentially prohibitive sale clause that calls into question whether the company’s sale is in good faith. But if we address the board through their independent counsel, we might be able to get them to reject the clause. Even if we don’t, depending on how tightly the C.E.O. has the board under control, Larry thinks he can raise the money, Bill finally gets it, takes it and does the rewrite. It still looks like shit, and I’ll have to rewrite it myself later, soon, probably by tonight. This is for Larry’s client who is now interested in the industrial parts manufacturer that I was telling Carl about, Stokes Steel. It’s a large-scale tool and die plant that produces steel and bronze parts and fittings for heavy machinery, trucks, light vehicles and ships. It also produces parts for commercial heating and cooling systems. It is the breaking up of its two divisions, the industrial manufacturer and the silicon-surfacing business that interests Larry’s client. The only problem may be finding someone to sell the tool and die plant to—who the hell wants a factory in the ancient rust belt now? The Chinese and the Koreans take care of that at this point, and it’s just a waste of money to run something like that here, with all the expenses, personnel, healthcare, pensions, taxes. It just easier and more profitable to export the whole thing out and import the products back. But, Larry knows some private equity guys who buy properties like this for insurance companies who offer to load them off temporarily to customers who need to show a loss, he says, and we might be able to broker a deal at the right price, which of course depends on the financing points, which he thinks he can cover through First Charter and its outside syndicate. The Fed Ex box the information arrived in weighs about 30 lbs. Leafing through the hundreds of pages of Excel spreadsheets I sense once again that I am not being compensated anywhere near what all this takes out of me. Although there is money in it and we’ll all get a piece of it if Larry is right and he usually is and you can sell off the industrial pieces, I guess they’ve got that lined up and if the method patent holds—which it should unless there’s some other method out there that we don’t know about, which is of course possible, but what the hell, I have no idea, you’ve got to go with what you’ve got, right? Or else what are you going to do?
I have a headache by the time I get done around seven in the evening, and I call Gina again to see if she wants to meet tonight or later this week. I haven’t seen Gina in over a month now. What is the nature of our relationship is a question to which I don’t have an answer. She’s not there as usual, so I leave a voice mail, knowing I won’t hear from her. At eight, I leave to meet Allen at a bar on 38th Street off Lexington. It’s ice cold inside. Drinking a bottle of even colder Budweiser, Allen tells me that he has called an escort service.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Come on. You can have the first shot at her.”
“Why do you want me to fuck her?”
“I wanted us to do something together. No, really. She’s really hot. Her name is Holland. I have hired her a couple of times. Petite blond. European accent. Really good.”
“Allen, this is starting to get embarrassing.”
“What?”
“Don’t you want to hear about my weekend?”
“Yeah? How’d it go? You screwed Audrey, right? You already told me.”
“Allen, I have to listen to your fucking stories endlessly.”
“Okay, Mark. What happened? Was it good?”
“Forget it. I’m supposed to talk to Gina, too.”
“Don’t Gina and Audrey know each other?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t they best friends?”
“Friends. Something like that. I thought so at least. But I don’t think they talk to each other that often anymore.”
“Since you’ve been in the picture.”
“No, man, this just happened now. I mean we’ve known each other socially for a while, years in fact. I’d always thought she was hot.”
“So now you’re doing her. Right?
“Forget it.”
We go back to Allen’s apartment on Seventy-ninth Street with Holland. I go first. She is nice, not much older than twenty-five and actually is from Holland with a very slight Dutch accent. What she’s doing in the business I don’t know. Maybe she has a job as an au pair and decided to have some fun and make some money. Allen has some cocaine out and we snort several lines. I slide her panties down her legs and push her short skirt up around her waist, her pussy is very small looking with fine hairs quite light brown. She sucks my cock. I reach around to my jacket to get out a condom. We are in the spare bedroom, and I can see Allen in the living room drinking a scotch waiting his turn. I don’t know why he wants me to share the call girl. It’s still five hundred bucks apiece.
Holland is working me up with the blowjob. I rub her hard little tits a couple of times then pushed her on to her back, pull her legs straight up and start to enter her. She needs lubrication, and she pulls a tube of KY out of her bag and rubs some of it into her cunt, then I enter her, she moans, “Oh God,” I groan and pull her on top of me. She is airily light. I fuck her hard for a few minutes and come.
Allen appears at the door. “That was quick.”
“How’d you know we were done?” I ask. Holland turned, reclined, and smiled.
“The door was ajar. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Whenever you’re ready, big guy,” says Holland in a soft voice, sweet, sarcastic.
“In a minute, Holland. How was it for you, Mark?”
“He is very concerned for you, Mark.”
“Fine.” I smile. “Listen, I’m going to take a shower and get going. I’ll leave you two to yourselves.”
“You don’t have to, Mark. Let’s do something, go out later.”
“No, I’m feeling wasted. I’m going home. I’ve got some calls to make.”
Coming out of the shower, shaking the water out of my hair, I happen to throw a look in on them over my shoulder. Allen is fucking her from behind, full extension. Holland is really taking it, I could tell, sweat glistening, arching and yelping a little. I walk out and take a cab to my place, yield a nod at the doorman and ride the elevator up to the 11th floor. Taking my tie off, I open a bottle of beer, strip to the waist and put on a fresh T-shirt. Sitting back and sucking on the beer, I drift off, exhausted. I am making one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a year, which is something, but it’s not enough for what I do and it’s not enough period. I have a list of expenses and everyone I know makes more money than I do, Gina, Allen, Audrey. I need to make partner. It’s not even that there’s a list of things I want, I just know my current income is not enough. The problem is, there’s always a problem, the firm keeps a pretty tight lid on exactly how much everyone makes. Oh sure, the first years, the second years, and even the thirds everyone knows how much they’re making, though the bonus is discretionary. But I’m in my sixth year and I have no idea what my peers are making. Robin Jefferies made partner in his eighth year. Jane Albrecht in her ninth. I’m sure I’ll make it, it’s just a matter of time. Twenty minutes float by, and I touch the remote and the TV comes on, I click through 50 or so channels, holding on Bloomberg news on Fox cable, get up and trundle through the fridge for leftovers. Finding nothing, I call the Thai restaurant a few blocks over and have them deliver. Finally getting to it, at the phone, I call Gina back.
Surprisingly, she picks up.
“It’s Mark. How’re you?”
“Pretty tired. We’ve been nonstop around here, scrambling to get out a convertible bond issue but the market keeps shifting. We couldn’t nail down a price. Bear Stearns says they won’t buy more than six blocks of ten million dollars which is insufficient and we’re calling everyone else right now. It’s going to take a while, I’ve got to reconcile the interest rate on the offering and we can’t do it yet because no one has called us back, of course it’s eleven o’clock. If we don’t get full commitments tomorrow we may have to shelve the whole offering. Robert is stewing, oh, he doesn’t show it, but he’ll be pissed as hell if it goes under. But there’s nothing I can do. I don’t make the calls to those guys, he does. Maybe I should just go ahead and make the calls.”
“Why not? You know what to say.”
“But if something goes wrong, and they change their minds, or something comes up, it’ll be my fault.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know. Yes.”
“That sucks. Call Robert. Ask him what he wants you to do.”
“I’ve got calls out to him. You know, I’m just going to leave. Fuck this. I mean, it’s not my responsibility to close this deal with these investors. They’ve already committed in principle, but now with this interest rate change and the currrency fluctuation, it’s like, do they still want to do the deal?”
“Why not just assume they do?”
‘I can’t. The numbers are significantly different now, and the price has gone up three dollars.”
“Wow, that much. Sorry. Do you think you’ll be able to meet later tonight?”
“I don’t know. I can’t leave yet. I should be done in a couple of hours.”
“You want to call me?”
“Okay.” She sounds hopped up, though she does not take drugs. Just anxiety and excitement—what gets most of us going. Her boss, Robert Williams, she’s been saying, is determined to break his revenue record from last year. I know him and have worked with him in the past, smooth guy in his early 40s, tall, looks great in a pinstripe suit, tan skin, dark blond hair. One of the top managing directors at First Charter. Knows Larry well. They’re both group heads and senior bankers on the executive deal approval committee. Robert could easily be put in charge of corporate finance in a couple of years. Maybe next year. Last time I ran into Bob was at the Marriott Hotel bar in Phoenix. I had casually pitched him our services.
“Who did you end up hiring for the Global Western issue?”
“Gottfried, Schoenberg.”
“Were they great as usual?”
“Yes, but their junior guys are nerds.”
“I know Josh Billingsfjord over there, University of Chicago, a couple of classes ahead of me. Super smart guy.”
“Don’t know him. I usually work with Louis Apple. He’s a partner.”
“I’ve heard of him. How’s your firm doing?”
“Great. We’re doing an interesting acquisition financing. What do you think the junk market will do over the next six months?”
“It’ll hold. It’s fine. Not great, but solid. If you’ve got a good deal going down, stick to it, because people will buy it, oh they’ll hem and haw and act shy, but they’ll buy it. That’s my read right now, but I don’t do that much junk anymore, though I have in the past. Our clients are opting for convertibles right now.”
“We’re doing a few convertible offerings. We worked on I.C.G. with Moral Morgan. Also Southfield Energy Partners. My question is, Robert, how does the bank hedge the risk of holding the bonds, as the underwriter?”
“You don’t. Sure, some of our traders make money if they find about a little before it comes out, they’re not supposed to but everybody knows they know about it, but for us, look, it’s the fees, Mark. The risk is somebody else’s problem. As long as the commitment committee approves the deal, we push it. Sure, the bank will hold as much as necessary, as lead underwriter, but we always syndicate the issue within days or a week or two at the most. Or have so far. But you’re right. At some point, I don’t know when—the market is going to cough up the inferior paper. But that’s the nature of the business. There won’t be enough room for all these companies, especially telecom. Not enough demand from the end market. When that fills up, look out, issues won’t convert and people insufficiently hedged will get hurt. Market’s self-correcting, in all instances, eventually. Investment is a risk business. We all know that. A lot rides on timing. You should see the syndicates for these things. Everyone from stock funds to nondescript money markets own these bonds. No one owns a lot. It’ll be a drop in the bucket. Ultimately, it’s not my problem. The risk is placed and distributed among a large group of investors. We get credit for a big fee this year, the bank puts up money for a very short term, the company raises a hundred million dollars or whatever, then the debt is sold to others. That’s it.”
“Well, listen, Bob, We’d love to work with you. Give me a call anytime you need anything from Stephen Jones. We can do it, we’ll be happy to and we’ve always enjoyed working with you.” I smiled.
“I will.”
I got the drinks I came to the bar for and headed back to the table where I was sitting with Jane, a lawyer at Stephenson Roberts Altrow. “Who was that, Mark? I’ve been waiting for half an hour for my drink.”
“Sorry. He’s the head of Telecom Banking at First Charter. Cool guy.”
“What were you doing, pitching him?”
“It’s part of the job.”
“I know, but don’t you ever get sick of corporate business?”
“No,” I say. But it’s not true.
