The Underwriting (11 page)

“You don't know that.”

“I do, though: I've seen it a hundred times in Silicon Valley. Look at the early Googlers, or Facebook's TNR250.”

“Even if that's a possibility, it's not your decision to make.”

“You're correct,” he said. “I can only do what I think is right for me based on the information I have at my disposal, and I no longer wish to be associated with Hook.”

Tara's blood was boiling. “But there are other people—”

“No buts,” he said. “I know this space better than you.”

“I've been in the space my entire career.”

“Then you know that, as the company's first employee, Juan should have gotten founder's shares, but was, instead, given options.”

Tara shrugged. “What difference does it make?”

“A lot, if you're Juan. And it says a lot about how Josh Hart makes decisions,” Callum said. “I'm getting out.”

“What about me?” she heard herself say quietly.

“What about you?”

“I need this deal to go well,” she said, “for me.”

He was still, watching her. She wasn't sure if the concern was fatherly or friendly or sexually inspired. “You think this deal is going to be your break.” He said it as a confirmation, not a question.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I've worked at this firm for almost seven years, and for the first time in my life I feel like I'm getting somewhere, like it might not all have been a waste.”

“Where are you getting?”

“Catherine Wiley just e-mailed me.” She looked down, laughing at how insignificant it must seem to a man like Callum. “The president of the entire investment bank wants me to represent the firm at an event in two weeks. I know that doesn't sound like much, but that's what this firm does when it wants to fast-track someone like me.” She looked up at him. “It's my chance, but if this deal goes badly, it's gone.”

“Do you want to be Catherine Wiley?”

“Sure,” she said automatically.

“Really?” he pushed.

“A gorgeous, successful woman with a high-powered career and a husband and two kids and a penthouse on the Upper East Side?” Tara laughed. “Yes, I would take that.”

Callum took a sip of his martini.

“You're not what I expected,” he finally said.

Tara's spine straightened, not sure what that meant.

“How much is Phil Dalton taking off?” he asked.

“A third.”

“I'll do a third, too, then,” Callum said.

“Really?” Tara asked hopefully.

“Yes,” Callum confirmed. “On the condition we have another martini to celebrate.”

Tara's caution returned and she said, carefully, “What are we celebrating?”

“That's to be determined.” He clinked her glass and took a long sip, his hazel eyes steady on hers, making her toes tingle with an unfamiliar feeling she couldn't quite describe.

TODD

W
EDNESDAY
, M
ARCH
12; N
EW
Y
ORK
, N
EW
Y
ORK

Todd tried to concentrate but couldn't. How could Tara possibly think it was appropriate to meet a male client known for being a womanizer for drinks, downtown, at eight o'clock, in that outfit? And why was Callum requesting a meeting with Tara instead of Todd if not for sex? For all girls bitched about being objectified, they certainly didn't complain when it worked to their advantage.

An analyst arrived in the conference room with their Seamless Web order. It was way too much food for three people, but it felt like a waste to order anything less than L.Cecil's forty-dollar dinner allowance.

Todd took a break to eat his chicken parmesan and read the day's news. Bloomberg's top headline read
Stanford Student's Death Fuels New Drug War
. He opened the story.

PALO ALTO, Ca.—
Kelly Jacobson, a senior at Stanford University, was found dead in her dorm room last Thursday morning by her RA, campus officials said in a press release issued Saturday. The official cause of death was ruled to be a heart attack caused by an overdose of MDMA, or “Molly,” a drug popular amongst concert-going twenty-somethings. The girl's death has shocked the Stanford community, and is now fueling a debate in Washington over drug use in the millennial generation.

“This is exactly what happens when you start legalizing marijuana and lightening sentences for drug dealers,” insisted Congressman Carl Camp (R–NE). “Our most promising students are getting corrupted by the liberal brigade. We've got to go back to harsher penalties for dealers. Lifetime sentences for dealing, period.”

Sean Robinson, president of the Congress of Racial Equality, disagreed: “The only reason this is getting any attention at all is because Kelly was a privileged white girl and Molly is a privileged white kid drug. If you want to talk tragedy, go to the projects, where dozens of poor kids die unnoticed every week.”

“Have you ever done Molly?” Todd asked Beau, ignoring Neha, who clearly hadn't.

“Sure, man,” Beau said. “Why?”

“Was just reading about this Kelly Jacobson girl.”

Beau took a sharp breath in. “Yeah. Sucks.”

“What's it like?” Todd had never done drugs. Random testing by the NCAA had kept him from ever trying in college, and booze had always suited his needs since.

“It's just a purer form of ecstasy,” Beau said, rubbing his eye. When he realized Todd hadn't done ecstasy, either, he went on, “It makes you euphorically happy, and all your senses and emotions are a little sharper. And you get really, really affectionate—not in a sexual way, just in a really see-the-best-in-everybody-and-feel-really-close-to-them kind of way.”

“Does it give you a hangover?”

Beau shook his head. “You come down like two days later, when all the serotonin leaves your brain. That can be pretty rough,” he said, then shrugged. “But better than a booze hangover.”

“Interesting,” Todd said.

He went back to outlining the risk factor section of the Hook S-1 filing. This section was always such a joke, especially for technology companies like Hook that weren't even profitable. Everything about the proposition was risky to investors: the company had no revenue model and was run by a sociopath of a CEO and a socially incompetent CFO. As far as Todd could tell, the only thing that made Hook worth anything was that sexually desirable men like him were on it.

He typed:

+ If attractive people find a better alternative

+ If monogamy becomes popular

“Did you and T Two ever bone at Stanford?”

Todd looked up. “What?”

“You and T Two. Did you ever hook up in college?”

Todd shook his head and looked back at his computer. “Not my type.”

“You think she's Callum's type?”

Todd shrugged, trying to play it cool. “I don't really give a shit.”

“You know they're at the Crosby Street Hotel.”

“What?” Todd's head snapped up. Pretending a downtown meeting was innocent was one thing, but drinks at the man's hotel?

“Ugh,” Neha said judgmentally from her corner. Todd had forgotten she was there.

Beau slid his phone across the table to show Todd a map with a blue dot floating over the Crosby Street Hotel.

“How do you know that's where she is?”

“Tracking her on Hook.” He grinned, pleased with himself.

“You can't do that.” Todd shook his head. He used Hook all the time: you could find out what girls were within a quarter mile of you, but not their exact locations.

“You can if you change a user's settings.” Beau shrugged, looking back at the phone. So that's what Beau had been doing when he took Tara's phone.

“How did you figure that out?”

“I was a computer science minor at Georgetown,” he said. “Anyway, Harvey's going to be so pissed if she runs off with him.”

“What?”

“He gets cranky when the firm invests all this money to train smart girls, and then they quit and go be wives before they generate any real value for the firm.”

“Why would she do that?”

Beau looked around. “Wouldn't you rather be the wife of a billionaire than a VP in ECM?”

“Callum's like fifty.”

Beau shrugged.

“I wish she would leave,” Neha said without looking up. “She doesn't do anything anyway.”

“I'm sorry?” Todd turned, not sure what to make of the analyst's outburst.

“Sorry,” she said, “I know you picked her for the team and all, but she doesn't know how to do anything. She just asked me to reformat an entire PowerPoint deck, as if I don't have better things to do.”

“You are an analyst,” Beau pointed out.

“I'm
Todd's
analyst. If I'd wanted to be an ECM analyst, I would have been,” Neha said. “Maybe if she spent less time curling her hair she could do the work herself.”

Todd laughed. “What's got you so wound up?”

“Tara!” she said. “I was supposed to work on my statement for my promotion tonight, and now I've got to do this because she wanted to go have drinks.” Neha pushed her glasses up on her nose, staring back at her computer.

“What promotion?” Todd asked. “Aren't you a second-year?” Analysts didn't move on to the associate role until year three.

“Yeah, but they're promoting two of us early since Matt and Rohit quit.”

Todd considered that. If Neha was gunning for a promotion, she'd work even harder on this deal.
Score
.

“She's on the move,” Beau said, noticing the phone on the table, watching the blue dot move across town, stopping on Greenwich Avenue. “Does she live in the West Village?”

Todd shrugged.

“I think we're safe,” Beau said. “If I were going to bone an old-balls billionaire, I'd stay at the hotel. I hear the suites at the Crosby are sick.”

Now Todd was annoyed. She
was
trying to hook up with Callum. And going home at ten forty-five when they had a deal to get done. Maybe Lillian would have been a better choice. Or one of those gay guys from ECM who Todd knew had a crush on him.

“Hey, do you—” Todd started to address Beau, but then remembered Neha panicking beside him and sent Beau an instant message instead:

TODD:
Drink?

BEAU:
Thought you'd never ask.

TODD:
Campbell Apartment?

BEAU:
I'll go first.

TODD:
Be right behind you.

Beau took a deep exhale, and closed his computer. “I am beat,” he said. “I'm going to go take a little power nap and get back to it at home, if it's all right with you.”

Neha's jaw dropped. “You're joking,” she said. “We're not even halfway through, and we're supposed to—”

Beau lifted a hand. “I know my limits, Neha. I'll be more productive if I can just get a quick snooze in, do a little midnight workout, get back to it.”

Neha looked at Todd, expecting him to do something about it. “Perks of being an associate,” Todd explained. “Work hard on this deal and I really think you'll get that promotion, though, and then you can do the same.”

Her chest rose and fell and she went back to her computer, looking irritated but motivated. Good girl. Beau packed up his stuff and left the room.

Ten minutes later, Todd shut down his computer. “So I've done all I can do until you finish that model. I'm going to go get some shut-eye. When do you think you'll be done?”

Neha looked at her computer, concerned. “I'll have it to you by six, I think. Six thirty at the latest. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” Todd said. “Should be fine.”

“Okay,” she said, refocusing on the screen.

“I'll talk to Tara about all the work she's throwing at you,” Todd said as he stood up, “but for now, finish what I sent you, then work on your app, okay? Her stuff can wait.”

“Thanks.” Neha looked up at him, grateful.

“Sure thing,” Todd said.

Todd headed downstairs. A break would do more good than sitting there getting riled up over Tara. He braced himself for the cold as he powered against the wind and the snow that had just started to fall on Park Avenue. When he got to Campbell Apartment, the swanky bar in Grand Central Terminal, he found Beau already chatting up two girls.

There were two great things about Campbell Apartment: (1) it was a known banker hang, and therefore attracted a crop of women primed to fuck anyone with an L.Cecil business card; and (2) it closed at midnight, creating a natural opportunity to invite a girl back for sex and still get six hours of sleep, as opposed to a club or two a.m. bar where girls always wanted to stay for one more song. Todd checked his watch: eleven fifteen, just enough time to close the deal with one of these girls. He hadn't had sex since the weekend and could use a midweek boost.

“I see you've met the second biggest deal at L.Cecil,” Todd told the girls as he strolled up to the bar.

A petite blonde wearing a short black skirt and four-inch patent heels turned her enormous breasts to him. “And who's the first biggest deal?” She pursed her lips around her straw.

“Me.” He grinned, turning casually to the bar to get a drink. He could feel her eyes lusting after him. This wouldn't even take forty-five minutes. They had mindless conversation for ten minutes, while Todd continued to think about Tara and Callum and get more and more irritated.

“I have to be honest with you,” Todd said, interrupting something the girl was saying about fashion week. He'd already forgotten her name. “I had the longest day and am seriously so beat. I was just going to come for a quick drink with Beau and then go hit the sack.”

Her chest fell, disappointed.

“But then I met you,” he said, “and I'm having such a conflict right now, because I'm so tired, but I don't want this to end.”