The Buy Side (31 page)

“You know, I think it’s great and all that you love your vacation,” she says. “The more I’ve thought about this, the more I realize how selfish of you this was. You didn’t give your daughter or me a moment of consideration. It was all about you.”

The rainbow over my head starts to fade.

“I opened your American Express bill to pay it for you. There’s at least a half dozen charges for hotels.”

I try to explain, but she doesn’t want to hear a word of what I have to say. What am I going to say anyhow? I sit in hotel rooms watching porn, masturbating, and snorting cocaine for six hours a night while she sits home, worrying and taking care of Lola?

“Jenn, I never cheated on you,” I say. “I promise.”

I hear the dial tone and let my hand holding the phone drop to my side. I’m looking out at the mountains. The evening sky is streaked with pink and purple. A warm breeze blows in from the desert.

AFTER TWENTY-EIGHT
days, I’m a different person. Long gone are the toxins that poisoned my body. I’m tan, have a shaved head, am clean-shaven, and look younger than my thirty-seven years. As I walk through the outside gate, I close my eyes and lift my face to the sun like I did on Fifty-Seventh Street, but here no one shoulders into me. All I feel is the warmth of another chance. When I open my eyes, my old friend Bill is standing there waiting for me, as if he just appeared. “Let me give you a hand with those bags,” he says with his smile like a crease in a favorite leather jacket. I jump into his van and buckle up. “What airline?” he asks as we begin to pull away.

“Just drop me at the nearest bar,” I tell him. He hits the brakes and we come to a screeching stop. He looks at me with hard assessment. The twinkle in my eyes belies my poker face. We both break up at the same time.

“The Navajos say that laughter is a sign of purity,” he says as he pats me on the knee. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

As the elevator doors open, Jenn is standing there holding Lola’s hand. Lola is not quite sure how to react. I’m crestfallen. Only Houdini and M.C. seem happy to see me. I squat down and open my arms. Then Lola breaks into a smile and toddles over. I sweep her up and hold her tightly. My baby senses my vulnerability and crawls right into my heart. It’s not that simple with Jenn. She stands there, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest. She attempts to smile, but it doesn’t quite form.

We spend the day together, hanging out in the apartment. The uneasiness between us is worse than a bad first date. I wonder if she feels the same as I do. And the awkwardness I feel with Jenn is only part of my discomfort. I thought it was going to be easy to put the past behind me. But everything reminds me of using: I look at the computer and I think of porn, the plates in the kitchen remind me of cocaine, the dogs remind me of sleepless nights. I place my hand on the brick wall in the living room, hoping to feel anchored. But I feel nothing.

The days struggle to pass. There are moments when the love Jenn and I once took for granted seems as strong as ever, and other times when we act like complete strangers. She spends a lot of time on the phone, sometimes with friends but mostly with her mother. It feels as though they’re teaming up on me. And I have no grounds on which to fight back. I’m the one who’s the addict, the guy who left for rehab and stayed there for a month. I guess Jenn’s mom is just being a mom. I need to fix everything. For now, Jenn is sticking by me, but we both agree it might be time to move out of the city and start over. We decide to get through the holidays and then I’ll start the process. I need to
prove to Jenn and everyone else that I’m better. In rehab they told me: No major changes in the first twelve months of sobriety. But back in real life, it isn’t that easy. It’s Jenn’s decision whether we’ll stay together or not. And I need to make some money.

In January, I set up a home office for my job search. Each day I spend a few hours sending emails, watching the market online, and making phone calls. Most of the people I contact know my situation—the Wall Street rumor mill never disappoints. Those that don’t aren’t exactly shocked. “Turney, what do you think ninety-five percent of the sabbaticals on Wall Street are for?” my friend Rob asks. Everyone wants to help. At first I think it’s because they love Turney, but then I realize the person who helps me get a job will most likely also get an indebted buy side guy to trade with—me.

Lola enjoys having me home. We go to the park and swing on the swings when it’s not too cold. We eat lunch together, we watch
Dora the Explorer
, and we take naps. At night I try to hit a meeting, the ones they kept telling me about in rehab. I don’t like leaving for that long. I feel like Jenn gets nervous every time I do, wondering if this will be the time I won’t come back. I meet a Wall Street guy named Kevin at one of the meetings. He’s tall and skinny, with the first sightings of gray hair. Though he doesn’t look the part, he played Division I college basketball. He asks me questions about my daughter and the Cleveland Indians. He genuinely seems to care how I’m doing. He has a friend named Chris. I think Kevin is Chris’s sponsor. Chris has a round face and wears glasses. He’s in media or the Internet or something. I’m not sure how long he’s been sober, but he wears an ill-fitting Sy Syms suit with a ripped pocket and has white tape on one of the arms of his glasses. He just looks happy to be alive. He’s a funny guy. He follows Kevin around like a puppy. They save me a seat at a meeting every Monday and Thursday. I like them a lot.

After one meeting, they ask me to grab some coffee with them. At first, it’s hard for me to open up. But when I do, I mostly talk about Jenn. Kevin tells me she has a right to be angry and I just need to focus on myself and stay in the moment. “Go to meetings, call me every day, and take care of yourself,” he says. “You’re doing great.” Though I don’t feel like I’m doing great, I soak up his encouragement. I wonder how someone from Wall Street can be so kind and serene.

Then Chris uses his breath to fog up his glasses, then cleans them, “Did you drink on the plane to rehab?” he asks out of nowhere. I shake my head no. “Smart,” he says. “I did, and your boy Kevin shot-gunned three beers on his flight to Minnesota.” It’s a funny visual, especially when Kevin pretends to perform the technique on his coffee cup. I think it’s the first time I’ve laughed in months. The bit isn’t even that funny, but Kevin keeps pretending to shotgun his coffee and I’m laughing harder each time he does.

Though much is still unsettled, on the job front things seem to get better right away. On a Monday morning in January, I sit down at my home office, turn on my computer, and see I have three emails, all from the sell side. One is from Gus, another is from a friend named Oliver, and the third is from another friend, Pat. They all have buy side leads for me. Just then, I hear Jenn and Lola preparing to go for a walk. And out of nowhere the idea of calling a dealer pops into my mind. It’s insane to think I’d even entertain the thought. “Play the tape forward,” they told me in rehab. I do. And the story ends with me pacing around a hotel room in my underwear, checking the peephole every five minutes. What an awful idea. I pick up my phone and follow up on the leads.

And as the week goes by, more leads and interview requests come in. I talk to a guy in a downtown boutique firm who loves me but thinks I’m overqualified. He tells me he’s going to call a buddy whose
firm I might be perfect for. A hedge fund called Balyasny, in Midtown, one with the same model as Galleon, wants me as their healthcare trader. They need to go over the numbers and come up with an offer. A firm, SAC Capital Advisors, up in Connecticut thinks it may have a spot for me but needs a week or two to figure out how to make it work.

My conversations with prospective employers are almost like out-of-body experiences, as if someone else is doing the talking other than me. The last time I interviewed like this, I got the job at Morgan mostly because of my knowledge of
Melrose Place
. I’m shocked now at how much I know, how poised and confident I am. In each interview, I guarantee them that I’ll have the lowest SAT scores in their conference room. But, I say, if we play poker, I’ll take all of your money. The line works every time. I explain the art of managing commission dollars, and how I can cut commission in half and still get them the same service from brokers as before. I tell them I’ll make mistakes, but I’ll never try to hide them, and my honesty disarms them. “I want to find a place to finish out my Wall Street life,” I say finally. And every time I get smiles, handshakes, and promises of a returned phone call.

But alone, in my own thoughts, I’m far from confident, let alone believing someone would put me to work. I think of myself as branded with a scarlet letter, one all of Wall Street can see. I’ve been bad and deserve to be punished. I’m desperate to make Jenn, and the rest of the world, like me again. When I look back at that time, the fallout I was facing wasn’t all that bad. Jenn stayed with me, Lola always loved me, and I still had money in the bank. It just didn’t
feel
that way then. I was desperate to get a job, and willing to take the first one offered.

And in fact, it happens almost seamlessly. My lead from my friend Oliver pans out. In February, I get a call from J. L. Berkowitz, a firm that used to be called Cramer Berkowitz and was managed by
Mad
Money
’s Jim Cramer. That night I’m playing with Lola in her room. I discuss the opportunity with my daughter over a pretend dinner. “I have a job interview tomorrow, Lola,” I say. She smiles and flips a plastic meatball at me. “I don’t really want to work there, but I guess sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to, like brushing your teeth,” I say. As I hear the words come out of my mouth, I can taste their contradiction. The last six weeks all I’ve been saying is I want a job. Lola giggles and pretends to eat. “And I also have to keep you in meatballs,” I say, tickling her on her sides. Lola cackles even harder. I kiss her on the forehead. “Wish me luck,” I say.

By the time I hit the street after the interview, I’ve already gotten two voice mails from guys who were my references telling me how much Berkowitz loves me. I’m shocked—they trade everything but healthcare, the only thing I’ve traded the last six years. It doesn’t matter to me; a stock is just a few letters clumped together. The next morning I get a call from Jeff Berkowitz, who tells me to come in on Thursday to work out a deal. That day, I get dressed in a blue button-down shirt and khakis. My hair is still short, nearly a buzz cut. My eyes are as clear as a Maine stream. I’m about to go back to the buy side.

IF, PRIOR
to interviewing at Berkowitz, I had any remaining hesitation about exiting the city, it was removed one day when I came home from work. Jenn was waiting for me inside the doorway. Her arms were tightly folded across her chest, and her face was red with anger. She’d had yet another run-in with our next-door neighbor. A misogynist, a racist, and an awful human being, the guy had been the bane of Jenn’s existence since she’d moved in. He kept all his crap in our shared hallway and frequently behaved in a nasty way. “I can’t live here anymore,” she said. “If you want to, that’s fine. But I have to leave.” I knew she meant it. If I needed a final shove, this was it. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s start looking.”

Once we were in, we were all in. As if it were a full-time job—and it nearly was—Jenn took on the task of getting the co-op ready for sale and finding the house. She spent hours on the computer looking.
She had maps, open-house listings, and brokers’ phone numbers, and she worked out our itinerary down to the minute. We hit every open house from Brookville to Cold Spring Harbor on the north shore of Long Island. And Jenn was the happiest I’d seen her since Lola was born. I realized then how selfish I’d been to her. When we’d met, she was a professional singer who’d just completed a world tour. She became pregnant just eleven months after we started dating, a pregnancy that kept her sick in bed for much of the time. With my partying and job obligations, I’d left her almost totally by herself to take care of our baby in a big apartment with a crazy neighbor. If once in a while I got impatient with her as she searched for the perfect house, the thought of how I’d treated her kept me from saying anything.