one is living in. You unlock the front door and stale air pours over you.â
âAnd we travel at short notice sometimes,â said Rosemary, as if that explained matters.
âA butler, a maid and a cook is all,â said Shiva.
âWe get such nice invitations,â said Rosemary, smiling at Andrew.
4
Andrew came downstairs in the dark. He couldnât sleep. Heâd had too much wine. He was terrified. He thought he should figure out how to call Cathy, even though sheâd told him not to. Then again, he didnât much want to. That was probably why heâd left his mobile upstairs the previous evening. At some level, he wanted to run away as much as Cathy. He couldnât help feeling that was what sheâd done.
He was angry about the call heâd gotten from his new boss. He didnât need to be managed . He certainly didnât need to be told he was wasting his time. His role, admittedly self-assigned, was to originate big âcreativeâ deals â the sort that added to the firmâs prestige as well as its bottom line. He decided what to work on. He didnât chew up a lot of associate resources, as some of his colleagues did, insisting on hundred-page presentations that said nothing new. His approach had paid off often enough so that he was entitled to patience and encouragement.
The weekend had started well, actually. His guests seemed to be enjoying themselves. They probably thought they were slumming and were letting themselves relax. Cynthia and Rosemary were never going to be friends, but they didnât haveto be. Joe and Shiva were enjoying how different they were from each other. You could see it in the way they looked at each other.
Joe was not getting along with Cynthia, but that wasnât a crisis. Sally had explained the problem to him: Cynthia hadnât gotten used to not being the centre of attention, the way she was in her job. She hadnât been married to someone as rich as Joe before, or as single-minded. Come to think of it, she might not have been married before at all. Anyway, Cathy â correction, Sally â was going to buddy up with her the next day.
All that really needed to happen was for Joe and Shiva to have time to talk without any distractions. If a deal makes sense, Andrew often told himself, it will find a way to happen. He just needed this one to happen, that was all.
It was his own fault, of course. No one had insisted he chase big improbable deals. It was a choice heâd made â to live by his wits, as he put it to Cathy, rather than his elbows. He hadnât wanted to compete with his partners for ownership of the clients who rang the cash register on a regular basis â public utilities who issued debt every six months or conglomerates who shuffled prosaic subsidiaries with shameless frequency. There was a price to be paid for that cowardice: the randomness of success, and permanent anxiety. But if he couldnât deal with that, he didnât belong on Wall Street.
Andrew didnât turn on the kitchen lights because he knew about visual purple and he wanted to preserve his night vision. He did that on the mornings when he came downstairs before dawn and made a mug of coffee by feel and went out onto the porch to wait for the sky to lighten. âBeginning of morning nautical twilight,â it was called: the point when you first could tell that sunrise was coming though it hadnât happened yet.
Some colleague who had served in the Navy had given him that phrase years ago. Andrew liked the way it suggested charts and remote places and the nineteenth century. He often wished heâd been in the Navy. His father would probably have liked that.
Sometimes he took his mug all the way to the beach, through the bushes and down the wooden stairway it had taken some persistence to be permitted to construct. There was rarely anyone on the beach at dawn, and he was occasionally tempted to set his mug
âAnd we travel at short notice sometimes,â said Rosemary, as if that explained matters.
âA butler, a maid and a cook is all,â said Shiva.
âWe get such nice invitations,â said Rosemary, smiling at Andrew.
4
Andrew came downstairs in the dark. He couldnât sleep. Heâd had too much wine. He was terrified. He thought he should figure out how to call Cathy, even though sheâd told him not to. Then again, he didnât much want to. That was probably why heâd left his mobile upstairs the previous evening. At some level, he wanted to run away as much as Cathy. He couldnât help feeling that was what sheâd done.
He was angry about the call heâd gotten from his new boss. He didnât need to be managed . He certainly didnât need to be told he was wasting his time. His role, admittedly self-assigned, was to originate big âcreativeâ deals â the sort that added to the firmâs prestige as well as its bottom line. He decided what to work on. He didnât chew up a lot of associate resources, as some of his colleagues did, insisting on hundred-page presentations that said nothing new. His approach had paid off often enough so that he was entitled to patience and encouragement.
The weekend had started well, actually. His guests seemed to be enjoying themselves. They probably thought they were slumming and were letting themselves relax. Cynthia and Rosemary were never going to be friends, but they didnât haveto be. Joe and Shiva were enjoying how different they were from each other. You could see it in the way they looked at each other.
Joe was not getting along with Cynthia, but that wasnât a crisis. Sally had explained the problem to him: Cynthia hadnât gotten used to not being the centre of attention, the way she was in her job. She hadnât been married to someone as rich as Joe before, or as single-minded. Come to think of it, she might not have been married before at all. Anyway, Cathy â correction, Sally â was going to buddy up with her the next day.
All that really needed to happen was for Joe and Shiva to have time to talk without any distractions. If a deal makes sense, Andrew often told himself, it will find a way to happen. He just needed this one to happen, that was all.
It was his own fault, of course. No one had insisted he chase big improbable deals. It was a choice heâd made â to live by his wits, as he put it to Cathy, rather than his elbows. He hadnât wanted to compete with his partners for ownership of the clients who rang the cash register on a regular basis â public utilities who issued debt every six months or conglomerates who shuffled prosaic subsidiaries with shameless frequency. There was a price to be paid for that cowardice: the randomness of success, and permanent anxiety. But if he couldnât deal with that, he didnât belong on Wall Street.
Andrew didnât turn on the kitchen lights because he knew about visual purple and he wanted to preserve his night vision. He did that on the mornings when he came downstairs before dawn and made a mug of coffee by feel and went out onto the porch to wait for the sky to lighten. âBeginning of morning nautical twilight,â it was called: the point when you first could tell that sunrise was coming though it hadnât happened yet.
Some colleague who had served in the Navy had given him that phrase years ago. Andrew liked the way it suggested charts and remote places and the nineteenth century. He often wished heâd been in the Navy. His father would probably have liked that.
Sometimes he took his mug all the way to the beach, through the bushes and down the wooden stairway it had taken some persistence to be permitted to construct. There was rarely anyone on the beach at dawn, and he was occasionally tempted to set his mug
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