Ghosts of Manhattan (10 page)

“Sure, I still play sometimes.”

“Nicky used to be ranked in the country when he was a teenager.” Julia gives me a wink and a push against my shoulder.

“Not too many people played squash in the country back then. Getting ranked wasn't so hard. Just had to play enough tournaments.” This is a little bit modest but mostly just true.

“That's great, Nick. Do you keep it up? What rating are you now?”

“I have no idea. I haven't played since I was a kid.”

“I'm a B. I'd say a high B. Haven't played much lately, but last week I beat a guy who's a solid B.”

I imagine an era ten thousand years ago when, draped in animal skins, I could leap from my chair and club Oliver to death across the skull, then enjoy my victory by eating the food from the table with my bare hands, making loud grunting noises, and dragging off the women for sex.

But not in this century. Not in the 21 Club. Here survival of the fittest is based on a new set of traits and in my industry Oliver has them in spades.

Humans aren't just a few steps out of the jungle. Humans never left the jungle. The jungle just changed around us. There are those who are selected not to survive, but the selection process is no longer so immediately fatal.

Oliver is waiting for some response, but I have no idea what skill is required to be a B player.

Oliver continues, “Anyway, this guy who's a B used to play in high school and is getting back into the game. Grew up playing hardball and needs to get up to speed on softball. Nobody plays hardball anymore. I try to play a few times a week when it's not so busy. I picked the game up about twelve years ago and got addicted to it. Never played in high school. We should play sometime.”

“What sports did you play in high school?”

“None. I wasn't that into sports then,” he says.

“Maybe that's why you're so into them now.” Julia gives me a sharp look that is meant only for me, but she's angry and everyone notices.

She recovers quickly. “Have you been getting squash lessons for the kids?”

“Oh, yes,” says Sybil.

I let the talk move away from me like releasing a feather from two fingers and I listen to it swirl around from squash to schools to vacations to nannies and maids until it drifts too far away. I hear voices but not the conversation and it feels remote as if they are sitting at another table, and I continue with my dinner and gin.

From this perspective I can see the conversation move in physical form like colorful tubes of fluid transfer, moving from person to person and getting redirected back and forth across the table. Julia looks radiant, glowing brighter than the rest. She is strikingly beautiful in a complex way so that you can get lost in her all over again. It is one thing to have a beauty that gets attention, and quite another to have a beauty that holds it.

There is something distinctive about her presence that I can see without really looking, see with only a casual glance across a room or at a long distance when she is just the slight movement of a tiny shape among a group of other shapes. I can know it is her the way a parent would know their child playing with other children far across a field. But this hasn't taken years of a mother's care and learned watchful eye. I felt this force within Julia the moment we met. To be up close next to her can still fill me up, as though I'm standing inches from a painting I had before only seen reproduced in books. I still love her.

November 24, 2005

I'M ROPED INTO A DINNER WITH THE GUYS AT CHAPPY
who cover our desk. It's Thanksgiving and they are looking for something fun to do, which typically means something without their families. I'm still feeling resentment toward Julia over the dinner with Oliver and Sybil. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is but I feel it. On an intellectual level, I know the healthy thing to do is go tell her I feel resentful and try to address it directly. On an emotional and every other level, I'm repelled at the idea of that kind of conversation with her. It makes me uncomfortable and I'm not sure I even want to admit to her or to myself that a dinner with Oliver can make me feel resentful. Anyway, a Thanksgiving night work event gives me an excuse to do something away from home with Chappy.

When we buy or sell in and out of positions, we often put the trade through Chappy, who will find the other party in the transaction for us, sometimes keeping us or the other party anonymous so the rest of the Street doesn't know our positions. Chappy never takes a risk on a position; they don't actually buy anything
themselves, they just broker two parties together and take a piece of the transaction. We put a lot of trades through Chappy, so they like to make sure we're properly entertained and don't take our business to another brokerage shop. We spread it around to a few shops, but it's human nature to give a little back to the guys who just sprung for a nice dinner. And even more so if that dinner is followed by a lap dance and cocaine.

Doing drugs can form a bond between men. The way couples can build on the foundation of the first big laugh shared or the revealing of a secret, when men get high together it is an intimate act, revealing in its own way. The person has shared something with the other, knows something about the other as though they are part of a special club that likely doesn't include even a person's wife, kids, or parents.

We meet at Bistro 18 on Prince Street in SoHo. Jack Wilson runs the desk at Chappy that covers our products. Jack is my age and played baseball at Syracuse. We have a few college friends in common since I know some of the lacrosse players from there. He has black hair with premature gray evenly set around his head instead of just at the temples, and I think he'll be completely white-haired in ten years. He's about five seven, average build, but his face and neck are swollen from alcohol. The way cookie dough flattens when baked, his features have melted down to be almost flat and unrecognizable. There is enough left to see that it had once been a good-looking face but this now just makes him look unnatural and worse.

He's very jolly, always backslapping and laughing too loud, head roving around and eyes active, constantly searching for the next excuse to bark another laugh and slap another back. He brought with him his schlep, Tyler Atwood, who goes by Woody. I have William with me. Woody and William are about the same age
and regular abusers of the Chappy expense budget. They make the rounds to the strip clubs and massage parlors together, but in this area there is no one like Jack. He makes no pretense of doing actual office work but delegates it to Woody and others. He focuses entirely on forging that special bond of coke and strippers with as many on Wall Street as possible. The more people that join the Jack Wilson Club, the more money he makes.

He's out to the morning hours four or five times each week. He knows the best coke dealers, and as their best customer, they all know him and give special treatment. They'll meet him anywhere, anytime, with whatever he wants. If Jack's with a group, everyone is taken care of. If he runs out, the dealer will send someone to stand on the corner outside the restaurant to deliver more.

Most strip clubs require that you pay real cash for play cash to give to the girls. Monopoly money that the girls cash back in with management at the end of the night. Keeps them honest, I guess. I heard Jack was recorded as having spent the second-largest amount of money in some club last year. First was some billionaire from Moscow.

“Hey, Jack.” His face is looking even puffier and more engorged than when I last saw him. He and Woody are leaning against the bar, vodka drinks in hand.

“Nick, how ya doing, my man? Looking good as always. Haven't seen you in a few. How ya been? Everything good?” Jack has a way of asking multiple questions in his greetings, none of which requires a response.

“Everything's good.”

“Good to see you, William!” Jack gives him a push and a laugh.

“Hi, Jack. Good to see you.” William is a little starstruck. We're the customers, the Chappy guys have to entertain us, but Jack is a sort of legend. No one goes at it harder, and William and his
friends have been repeating Jack Wilson stories for the last few years to the point they've created a demigod for themselves.

“Cocktails on the table, boys.” Jack turns to the bar, where six more vodka sodas are already poured. Two to me, two to William, and one more each to Jack and Woody so there isn't a free hand among us. “Michael!” Jack calls to the headwaiter and they exchange nods and we walk to our table in back.

We drop into our seats, go to work on our drinks, and survey the restaurant. For an old New York restaurant known for its steak, this place always has pretty girls, and usually a few doubtful ladies loitering by the bar. “William, I hear you're engaged.” Jack shakes his head. “You stupid bastard.”

“Yeah, I guess it was time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time to get married. She was ready and I'm okay with it. I caved on this one. She's talking about kids, but I'm not caving on that.”

“No? Never?”

“No way. Never.” William's emphatic.

“So, you just decided to screw the same woman for the rest of your life?”

The table is quiet for a moment, appreciating the question. Jack has a point. “Well, I just didn't want anyone else screwing her.”

“Her little sister is just as hot,” Woody says. “When are you setting me up?”

“Not a chance. I have enough to deal with right now.” Apparently William isn't completely devoid of common sense.

“Yeah, what's up?” I ask. I know it isn't anything from the office monopolizing his time.

“Wedding planning. I'm getting pulled into more of it than I thought I would.”

“What kind of stuff?” asks Woody, inquiring about a foreign land.

“You can't imagine how much. The place, the menu, the invitations, the kind of silverware, napkins, and chairs, the centerpieces, even the kind of doily under the drinks. That's just part of it. There's transportation and hotels, photographer, videographer, flowers, minister. All I want to do is the band.”

“Are you guys planning this yourselves?”

“No, we have a guy. Flaming guy. We still need to see stuff and make all the decisions. Every time I show a hint that I don't care about something, she gets pissed.”

“Let me give you some advice, William,” I say. “Don't tell her it doesn't matter to you. They don't care what your opinion is. Only that you have an opinion. Just pick something, then get out of bounds. She'll probably pick something else, but she'll appreciate that you offer an opinion.” I don't totally believe this, but I do about fifty percent of the time, and it's safe advice.

“Spoken like the only married man at the table,” laughs Jack.

“Only six years, but I've learned some survival techniques.” And I realize they were just that. Julia and I have been only surviving.

“William, you should listen to your boss. A wise man.” Jack makes a toasting motion with his glass. “Did you act like a gentleman? Did you ask her father's permission to marry her?”

Woody rocks back in his chair, laughing with a hand over his mouth. “William, tell the story. You have to.” Apparently Woody has heard the story already and it's a good one.

“I did ask.” William looks at the center of the table, smiling. “I'm going to need a bump before I tell this one. Anyone have a white bag?”

“Of course, young man.” Jack reaches in his pocket, then slides in plain view across the table a small ziplock cellophane bag the
size of a fifty-cent piece, the kind a store would put earrings in. This one is packed with chalky white cocaine.

“Be right back.” William puts it in his pocket, pushes back from the table, and walks past the bar to the staircase leading to the men's room upstairs.

Aside from the good food and great-looking women, Bistro 18 is mainly popular for having a perfect cocaine bathroom. Most restaurant bathrooms in New York have a few urinals and a couple toilets and there are people coming in and out of there like Grand Central. There's no privacy in the room and you can't snort a bunch of coke up your beak with that going on. Snorting is a loud, obnoxious sound, even to other coke users and especially to nonusers, and it attracts a lot of attention. The best bathrooms have a single stall and a lock on the door. That way you can make yourself comfortable in private. You don't need to cut up lines the way they do in the movies. You just dip in the tip of an apartment key and lift out a pile, maybe the size of a mini chocolate chip, and wedge it up the nostril.

William is back in less than five minutes. “Okay. Yes, I did go to ask for permission.” We're all leaning forward, already small bursts of laughter happening in anticipation of this debacle. “Keep in mind, they live in Arizona, so I don't see them much. We've met only a couple times before this.” He takes a drink, enjoying the effect of his pauses. “So we fly out there. Jen knows I'm going to do this, so she goes out shopping with her mom, and her dad and I stay home at their place for some alone time watching college football. We're all set with our beers and the game on, having some nice guy-bonding time, and I can't figure out any smooth transition so I just go right in. I tell him I love Jen, I want to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her.” He takes another sip. Woody bursts out laughing, which makes the rest of us laugh
wondering where this is going. William is a good storyteller. He'll have a nice career as a salesman.

“Her dad looks stunned, and I think a little alarmed. After at least a full minute of looking right at me, he says, ‘Well, I'm concerned about this.'”

“So he has a pulse,” says Jack.

“He then proceeds to rake me over the coals with an interview. Keep in mind, he's withholding any sort of ‘yes, you have my permission.' He says, and I quote, ‘Tell me about yourself.'”