Ghosts of Manhattan (7 page)

I walk back toward the bar stools and I see Julia raising her voice to a guy sitting on what used to be my stool. I come up behind them and hear her holler, “That is my husband's seat. We're still using it. Please move.”

The guy is ignoring her and trying to get the attention of the bartender to order a drink.

I put my hand on his shoulder and give enough of a squeeze to let him know that my hand isn't going to move away. “Hey, buddy. You're in my seat.”

I've learned in almost all cases you don't have to fight. You just have to convince the other guy that you really will. Sometimes in a place like New York you run into a crazy person who really will too, and worse yet might have a knife or some other crap. But I'm pretty sure this kid isn't that way. He's just a little geek who's had too many two-dollar beers already.

He spins around to me, keeping flush on the stool. “I don't see your name on it.”

I slowly reach up and squeeze the hell out of his nose and hold on to it. “It's written right under your ass. Stand up and I'll show it to you.” I've got an excellent grip on his nose. I feel like I could pull it right off his face. I squeeze harder.

“Okay, okay.” His voice sounds like he just inhaled a helium balloon. Julia half laughs but I'm still trying to act like a tough guy.

I lead him by the nose to the side and off the stool, then let him go. He reaches for his nose to make sure it isn't bleeding and walks away to a table.

I sit back down, half-turned to keep an eye on him. “I hope he doesn't have a bunch of enormous friends back there playing pool.”

“My hero.” Julia clinks my bottle, takes a sip, and orders two more beers. I'm still watching after the guy and feeling less tough than I was a minute ago.

“Don't worry. If there was going to be a fight, it would already have happened.”

“I guess.”

I turn back to the bar and look at Julia in time to see her eyes go over my shoulder and she says, “Uh-oh.”

I turn back around expecting to see muscles and a tank top and instead it's an overtanned Italian-looking girl with huge black hair and crazy blue eye shadow. She has on what could be just a bra and leather or plastic pants that look impossible to get in or out of. The guy I removed by the nose is right behind her and looks like he's trying to slow her down, but she gets right to us.

Her accent is just what I expect. Nasal and Staten Island. “Oh, big tough guy, tweaking noses. You loser. What kind of a creep even does that?”

Julia gets off her stool and gets between me and this thing. Her movement is slow and nonthreatening. She just places herself there, which doesn't surprise me at all. Julia always gets my back. She always fights for me first and only later does she ever wonder whether or not I was in the right. I love that about her.

“Your boyfriend took my husband's seat, and he knew it. My husband just taught him some manners.”

The thing puts a finger right in Julia's face. “First of all, bitch, he's not my boyfriend. Second of all,” and she wags the finger, “why don't you shut your mouth before I smack you?”

Julia doesn't flinch from the finger wag. She doesn't even look at it but keeps eye contact and her expression only gets more calm. It's clear the girl is waiting for a response from Julia and it's clear Julia is about to give one. “Why don't you . . . pluck your eyebrows?”

The conversation pauses like a needle scratch and we all look at the thing's eyebrows. They stand out as pencil thin against her thick head of hair. They look perfectly waxed. Impeccable.

The girl's eyes seem to roll back to get a look and check in on the eyebrows too. Her face looks terrified.

The guy with the tweaked nose lets out a moan and looks at the floor. “Oh, God.”

The wagging finger is long since back to her body and playing defense. She turns on a heel and runs back to the girls' room. Two other girls from a table nearby run in after her. The nose guy retreats back to a table and Julia and I are left standing alone, shoulder to shoulder, as though everyone else had just been carried off by a tornado.

“My hero.”

She looks at me. “I couldn't have you trading blows with that insane person.”

“Should we get out of here before round three?”

We turn back to the bar. It's pay as you go here so we have a small pile of cash on the bar top that has been changed back. I pick up a few bills to figure out a tip, then decide just to put them all back down. We take a last sip of beer and before we can get away from the stools, the women's room door opens and the Italian girl comes out with mascara spread around her eyes and goes directly for the exit, followed by one of her girlfriends. The guy at the table gets up and goes after them. The last girl comes over to us.

“I'm sorry, but I have to know. How did you know to say that? What made you say it? We just looked at her eyebrows in the mirror. They look fine.”

Julia shrugs. I guess she isn't going to explain her genius.

“There's nothing else you could have said that would level her like that.”

Julia isn't gloating but she isn't saying anything either. I offer, “Is she going to be okay?”

The girl nods, still amazed at the exchange. “I think so.” She turns for the exit after her friends.

Julia sits back down. “Another drink?”

“On me, darlin'.”

November 20, 2005

WILLIAM LIVES IN MURRAY HILL WITH HIS FIANCÉE
, Jen. It's a new high-rise, doorman building on Twenty-ninth Street. Everything is new and nice in those buildings but they have no character, just a set of box-shaped rooms stacked next to each other, and it feels sterile.

He invited us to this dinner party forever ago, so it's hard to avoid. I'm always rude about asking who else is invited to these sorts of things because I like to prepare for how much of a nightmare the evening might be. These nights are always lousy for Julia but relative to other work dinners this shouldn't be too bad. William and Jen are hosting me and Julia, Jerry Cavanaugh and his wife, Alison, and Conrad Bradbury and his wife, Janice.

The night seems like a butt-kissing opportunity for William to advance his career. The title hierarchy at Bear goes associate, senior associate, VP, director, managing director. William's a senior associate, which is normal for a young guy. Jerry and I are managing directors. Conrad is a trader on the foreign exchange desk and
is either a VP or director. William is always networking, which is why he's a natural sales guy.

I don't know Conrad Bradbury very well. He's a southern guy and seems to come from money. He likes to wear seersucker around to claim his southern roots. His southern accent is softened and refined by years of living in the North. He's skinny and sort of frail but not in a feminine way and he has blond hair that he's always touching. He never runs his fingers through it, he just smooths it over with his palms.

Conrad and Janice get to the lobby at the same time as we do. He and I are both holding a bottle of wine. Conrad's a good-looking guy and I would have thought that with the money he's making he'd have a hot wife, but Janice is just sort of average.

That's the funny thing about Wall Street wives. There are almost no tens. They all have plenty of money, so they dress well and have expensive handbags. They go to the gym and are usually pretty toned. They compete on looks as best they can, but you almost never see a ten. When someone on Wall Street has a hot wife, it's a big deal and talked about. It's rare enough that people at Bear know which guy at which firm does. Nobody trading at Bear does, though Julia is talked about some. Nobody on the desks at Goldman or Chappy does. There's a guy at Merrill.

Janice is just finishing her cigarette. She takes a final drag, which nearly ignites the filter, then snubs it out in a trash can by the elevator.

“Hey, Conrad. This is my wife, Julia.”

“Nice to meet you.” He does a quick up and down of her. Poor guy can't help it. “Nick, this is my wife, Janice. Janice, Julia and Nick.” Conrad has a deep voice that pronounces the southern drawl.

We all shake hands as the doorman presses the button to call the elevator and tells us William and Jen are in 22C. We ride up
in silence and Janice reeks of cigarette smoke. It's in her clothes and I'm sure by the end of the night it will be in mine the way it was going to a bar in the nineties.

We get off on the twenty-second floor and ring the doorbell at C. William answers looking very sophisticated.

“Evening, gents. Ladies.” He's wearing a blue blazer with a handkerchief neatly tucked in the breast pocket. He and Jen must be feeling very grown-up that they're hosting a dinner party, like they're a real couple.

We walk in, shake hands, and deliver the wine, and each of our wives gets a kiss on the cheek. Jerry's already in the living room drinking from a bottle of Budweiser. His wife, Alison, is sitting on a two-seat sofa also drinking a beer. I've met her once before, so I go over to say hello and introduce Julia.

It's a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment and the living and dining rooms are combined into a single larger box of a room. William and Jen have put some extra leaves into the dining room table so it stretches across most of the space, and the sofas have been moved up against the wall. Julia and I circle the dining room table to get to Alison.

She's better-looking as a woman than Jerry is as a man. She doesn't have brittle-looking red hair for a start. She has short brown hair and a round face, round eyes, and dimples. She's short and a little chubby but looks like she may have been athletic. Maybe a soccer player. Overall, cute, and nicely done for Jerry. She's very pleasant and seems to have a go-along-with-it kind of attitude. Probably the kind of wife who doesn't like football much but ends up watching it all day Sunday anyway.

As we're talking, Jen walks into the room from the kitchen wearing an apron. “Hello, everyone. We'll be serving dinner in about twenty minutes.”

William jumps in, raising his drink. “We ordered from Smith and Wollensky.”

I can't imagine Jen planned to keep a secret that she's reheating restaurant dinners from up the street, but she looks a little irritated at William's interruption.

“In the meantime, William can fix you all a drink.”

“Yes, what can I get for you all?”

“Ya have any white wine?” Janice asks this in a tone as though she expects the answer to be no.

“We have sauvignon blanc.”

“Okay. One of those.”

“Julia?”

“That's great for me too. Thanks, William.”

“Nick, bourbon?”

“Thanks.”

“Conrad?”

“Vodka soda, lime.”

Janice chirps up again. “You mind if I smoke?”

William's face says please don't do that in my apartment. “Sure, no problem.”

Jen is tugging and restraightening her apron. “Maybe you could just do it by the window. William, will you crack the window and get Janice an ashtray?”

“Sure.” William looks around for an ashtray, which they don't have, and ends up coming back with a cereal bowl. The winter air through the window feels good. The living room isn't meant for eight people and was getting stuffy already.

Most of us get to our second or third drink standing around the room. Conrad's on his fourth vodka soda. I don't know why it takes so goddamn long to reheat a dinner from a restaurant. Julia had started out talking with Janice but after suffering a few
minutes of smoke had moved on to Alison and stayed there. Janice likes to talk with the cigarette still in her mouth. Her saliva has formed a sort of adhesive on her bottom lip so the cigarette can dangle from there even if the top lip isn't holding it down. When she talks, the cigarette flips up and down so you can't possibly pay attention to a word she's saying, you just watch the cigarette move like you're being put under hypnosis. She's in the habit of starting to talk before the smoke has cleared her lungs, so the first words are accompanied by white vapor and she seems to like the effect. I think she's somewhere between a college girl trying to look cool and true trailer trash.

William finally comes out with the first few platters and he and Jen ask us all to sit anywhere at the table. Jerry, Conrad, and I all instinctively pull back chairs for our wives. We know how to play the part of a gentleman. Wall Street guys may play around with strippers, but we know how to help our wives on with a coat, out of a cab, and into a chair. Maybe when the wives are rationalizing why they stay with us, this gives them something to hang on to.

Julia's great in these situations. She has interesting things to say and she doesn't have to talk too much or too little. If she's next to someone who talks constantly, she doesn't mind saying little. If she's next to a shy person, she can take on more of the load.

Conrad keeps putting away the vodka and has gotten wrapped up in telling us about the year he lived in Tokyo. His voice has gotten so loud that it's the only conversation at the whole table, and he seems to think we're all fascinated.

“Japan is the best. Women are so subservient there. Every day a couple women would come over and clean my place, fold all the towels, lay my clothes out on the bed. In the evenings they'd give me a massage. Whenever they leave or enter a room, they bow to
me.” He takes a drink and looks thoughtful. “I really developed an attraction for Asian women there. Seriously. Not just to the way they act to me, but physically. I really got to like the look. The funny thing is those Japanese guys love blond American women. Some low-rent blond model here can go make a fortune in a Tokyo strip joint.”

Janice looks uncomfortable. Even the guys are squirming. These are the kind of conversations we try to avoid having with our wives in the room. Nobody gives Conrad a prompt to continue the conversation but it doesn't matter.