far wall.
After my parents died, I was raised by my grandfather. “You won’t see it coming, Jake,” he told me once. “And you won’t be
able to explain it. But you’ll know.” I walk slowly back to my office and sit down at my desk. I reach for the phone. Jeremy
answers on the second ring.
“Jeremy Nascent.”
“Jeremy, it’s Jake. How would you like to see the Knicks next week? With me and Pardo. Third row.”
“Wow,” he says, but I hear the note of nervousness that I’m always bringing out in him. “What do you need, Jake?”
“Two things. I need you to look over a client file for me. And I need a crash course in financial instruments.”
“What for?”
“To impress a girl.”
He laughs. “You’ll be sure to credit me, right?”
“If it ever comes up.”
“Okay, Jake. Come over tonight with the file.”
“How about tomorrow at lunch?”
“Fine.”
I hang up the phone and spin slowly in my chair to face the window. I look out at the bright Manhattan sky. Tomorrow I’ll
learn about financial instruments and the investment needs of Andrew Brice. Tonight is the farewell party for Diane Silio.
Everyone in the firm will be there. Including Mimi Lessing.
See you tonight, Jake
, she said. I close my eyes.
Yes, she will. And she’ll see me in action.
• • •
Diane Silio gave her notice the day I joined the firm. This night has been coming ever since.
Diane is the first thing I see when I step off the elevator each morning, a coffee-eyed girl from the Brooklyn avenues, her
snowy skin a cool come-on amidst the dark leathers of the reception area. She was hired out of high school seven years ago,
back when our partners could still get away with choosing a receptionist for her ass. She’s kept it, and a lot more, and yet
is that rare Brooklyn looker who slips through the neighborhood gauntlet of cops and plumbers right out onto the open market.
She’s been an asset here, I’m sure, inspired to efficiency each day by the aura of money that soaks this place, but careful,
too, to wear her slit skirts cut at the knee and her blouses open at the throat, letting her trim legs and creamy swell work
on the guys here the way candy at the corner store tempts from beneath the glass.
There’s been current between us from the first. We haven’t said a hundred words in my two weeks here, but her calm eyes hold
mine an extra quarter second each time I bring her a latte from downstairs, and her voice, crisp and distant when she puts
through calls to the other accountants, is close, even warm when she puts them through to me. Part of it is pure good luck,
catching her in the flush of her last days, her mind lulled already by the black sand of Maui, by the two weeks of tropical
drinks and free license that she will escape to with a girlfriend tomorrow, before easing into her new and better life as
a legal secretary uptown.
There’s more to it than luck, though. The ten other guy associates here are steady, wire-rimmed plodders who read the Tax
Code in their free time and might have three dates and one score between them in the past year. They may all make partner
before I do, but none has what it takes to stir the blood of Miss Silio, and none would dare dream of cashing in on her giddy
last day.
I was hired as much for being a regular guy as for any magic I’ll ever work with a tax return. I earned a third-team all-NESCAC
selection in hoops up at Ham Tech. As a basketball honor, all that means is that I could hold my own with any white kid under
six-three between Albany and Buffalo, but in the interview room here at Hyson, Levay, that and my proud admission to being
a TDXer put me over the top. Sol Levine, the hiring partner, knows the money business. He knows that the best accountants
are grinders, and he’s packed the firm with a dogged crew of them. But he knows the search for capital is still half the game,
and he sensed that I
After my parents died, I was raised by my grandfather. “You won’t see it coming, Jake,” he told me once. “And you won’t be
able to explain it. But you’ll know.” I walk slowly back to my office and sit down at my desk. I reach for the phone. Jeremy
answers on the second ring.
“Jeremy Nascent.”
“Jeremy, it’s Jake. How would you like to see the Knicks next week? With me and Pardo. Third row.”
“Wow,” he says, but I hear the note of nervousness that I’m always bringing out in him. “What do you need, Jake?”
“Two things. I need you to look over a client file for me. And I need a crash course in financial instruments.”
“What for?”
“To impress a girl.”
He laughs. “You’ll be sure to credit me, right?”
“If it ever comes up.”
“Okay, Jake. Come over tonight with the file.”
“How about tomorrow at lunch?”
“Fine.”
I hang up the phone and spin slowly in my chair to face the window. I look out at the bright Manhattan sky. Tomorrow I’ll
learn about financial instruments and the investment needs of Andrew Brice. Tonight is the farewell party for Diane Silio.
Everyone in the firm will be there. Including Mimi Lessing.
See you tonight, Jake
, she said. I close my eyes.
Yes, she will. And she’ll see me in action.
• • •
Diane Silio gave her notice the day I joined the firm. This night has been coming ever since.
Diane is the first thing I see when I step off the elevator each morning, a coffee-eyed girl from the Brooklyn avenues, her
snowy skin a cool come-on amidst the dark leathers of the reception area. She was hired out of high school seven years ago,
back when our partners could still get away with choosing a receptionist for her ass. She’s kept it, and a lot more, and yet
is that rare Brooklyn looker who slips through the neighborhood gauntlet of cops and plumbers right out onto the open market.
She’s been an asset here, I’m sure, inspired to efficiency each day by the aura of money that soaks this place, but careful,
too, to wear her slit skirts cut at the knee and her blouses open at the throat, letting her trim legs and creamy swell work
on the guys here the way candy at the corner store tempts from beneath the glass.
There’s been current between us from the first. We haven’t said a hundred words in my two weeks here, but her calm eyes hold
mine an extra quarter second each time I bring her a latte from downstairs, and her voice, crisp and distant when she puts
through calls to the other accountants, is close, even warm when she puts them through to me. Part of it is pure good luck,
catching her in the flush of her last days, her mind lulled already by the black sand of Maui, by the two weeks of tropical
drinks and free license that she will escape to with a girlfriend tomorrow, before easing into her new and better life as
a legal secretary uptown.
There’s more to it than luck, though. The ten other guy associates here are steady, wire-rimmed plodders who read the Tax
Code in their free time and might have three dates and one score between them in the past year. They may all make partner
before I do, but none has what it takes to stir the blood of Miss Silio, and none would dare dream of cashing in on her giddy
last day.
I was hired as much for being a regular guy as for any magic I’ll ever work with a tax return. I earned a third-team all-NESCAC
selection in hoops up at Ham Tech. As a basketball honor, all that means is that I could hold my own with any white kid under
six-three between Albany and Buffalo, but in the interview room here at Hyson, Levay, that and my proud admission to being
a TDXer put me over the top. Sol Levine, the hiring partner, knows the money business. He knows that the best accountants
are grinders, and he’s packed the firm with a dogged crew of them. But he knows the search for capital is still half the game,
and he sensed that I
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