The Underwriting (32 page)

Beau laughed. “Why would she go home?” He looked at the girl. “The party's just getting started, right, babe?”

The girl nodded. Juan stared at Beau: he couldn't be serious. She was totally gone.

“You're joking, right?” Juan said.

“What?” Beau tapped his ear and shouted, “Sorry—the music's really loud.”

Juan sat down next to the girl, opposite Beau. “What's your name?”

“Fiona.” The girl smiled. She fell forward and kissed Juan. He pushed her back upright. “Where do you live, Fiona?”

“Stop,” Beau said, pushing Juan out of the way. His friendly blue eyes had changed with the booze. “She's coming with me.” Beau pulled the girl up and they went out the door.

“What are you doing?” Juan said, following him outside.

“Quit being such a Boy Scout.” Beau turned, returning to his confident ease. “Have you never gone out before?”

“She's drunk, Beau,” Juan said, calm but firm. “She has no idea what's going on.”

“Of course she does.” Beau brushed it off. “She's been into it all night.”

Juan held the girl's shoulders. “Fiona, are you okay?”

“Yeah!” she said, slapping his shoulder playfully. “I'm greeeeat!”

“See? Chill out,” Beau said, pushing him away.

“Does this seriously get you off?”

“Mind your own business, man.” Beau laughed at him, stumbling, drunk himself, as he opened the car door and Fiona fell inside.

“You think because you're rich you're just entitled to everything, don't you?” Juan felt anger boiling up, and knew it wasn't just because of Fiona. It was anger at Beau's casual attitude. At the casual attitude of the rich white men at dinner, the rich white men in the club, the rich white men like Todd and Nick and Beau, who dicked over girls like Fiona and Julie while they lived on the backs of those who couldn't afford to be so unconcerned.

“Says the guy about to make two hundred million bucks,” Beau retorted, looking around for the driver.

“I'm not like that,” Juan said. “I'm not like you.”

“You will be.” Beau smiled.

“I've worked my ass off. You've never done anything,” Juan said.

“You don't know that.”

“You only got where you are because of your parents,” Juan pressed.

“And you only got where you are because of affirmative action.”

“What did you say?” Juan felt his face drain, the blood rushing to his flexing muscles.

“Your education, your job—it's not because you worked hard any more than my having a job at L.Cecil is because I worked hard. It's because you're a poor Mexican from the projects and everyone felt sorry for you. They gave you shit to clear their own conscience, just like people gave me shit to win favors with my dad,” Beau said. “I'm not saying it's your fault, I'm just saying that's what happened to you, and to me. We're not that different, Juan.”

Juan's fist curled and shot out, landing squarely on Beau's jaw. Beau lifted his hand to his lip, looked at the blood on his finger, and then laughed. “Except you've still got that Latino temper, don't you?”

The driver emerged. “You boys okay?”

“Fine,” Beau said, his eyes still on Juan. “I was just heading back inside.” He brushed past, patting Juan on the shoulder. “I'll let you have her if you really want. Easy to find another, thanks to your fine app. See you in the morning, buddy.”

Juan stood for a moment, fuming.

“You okay?” the driver asked.

His voice brought Juan back to reality. “Yeah,” he said. “We need to take this girl home,” Juan told him, “and then go back to the hotel.”

“You sure you want to leave her alone?” The driver looked at Fiona, passed out in the backseat.

Juan hesitated, then shook his head. “Back to the Four Seasons, then,” he said. “She can stay with me.”

It started to drizzle as the car crossed London's empty streets and Juan looked out the window, aware of his separation from the world outside. He hadn't seen the city, hadn't gotten to know anyone here: did it even count to say he'd been to London?

They got back to the hotel and Juan helped Fiona out of the car, wrapping her arm around him and guiding her long legs to the elevator.

“Almost there,” he told the girl, who nodded and smiled.

“Suuuuuuch a fun night,” she slurred, rocking on her feet. “Where did—” she started, then closed her eyes again, dropping her head on Juan's shoulder.

The elevator doors opened on 4 and Juan blinked when he saw Neha, in sweatpants and a T-shirt, getting on.

“Oh,” the analyst said. “I'll—” She looked down at the floor. “I'll wait for the next one.”

“No.” Juan put his hand out to keep the doors from closing. “It's not what it looks like. She . . .” He looked at the girl on his arm. “It's a long story. I'm just putting her to bed.”

“Right,” Neha said, unconvinced, but she stepped onto the elevator.

“What are you doing up?” he asked.

“Couldn't sleep,” she said. “There's a lounge on four. I've just been doing some work.”

The doors opened and they both got off.

“Can I help?” Neha looked at the girl.

“I think I've got it,” Juan said, then added, realizing it was true, “but I'd love the company.”

“Sure,” she said. “Not like I'm going to sleep anyway.”

They went back to Juan's room and he sat Fiona on the bed, where she fell sideways onto the pillow. Juan pulled her up and made her drink water before she slid under the covers.

“Guess I'm on the couch,” he said to Neha with a shrug. He'd been looking forward to that bed—he'd never stayed in a hotel remotely this nice before.

“What happened?”

“Beau just kept giving her shots.”

“Yikes,” Neha said.

“Do you trust Beau?” Juan asked.

“He's not so bad,” Neha said. “I mean, he doesn't work much, but I think he means well.”

Juan studied Neha. How did a girl like her stand being around guys like Beau and Todd all the time? How did they treat her?

“Do you ever wonder whether we're contributing to something bad?” he asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“Just,” he said, “tonight.” He hesitated. “All those men we're working to make rich. It just made me wonder whether we're not feeding into a bad system.”

“You just have to remember that wealth trickles down,” Neha said. “You may not like those men, but they invest, and that grows the economy, and a bigger economy helps everyone. It gives people like you and me opportunities like this.” She gestured around to remind him where they were: two kids of immigrants who'd grown up poor, now in a Four Seasons in London.

“But do you think maybe there are other consequences,” he said, “besides the money?”

“I think capital markets are efficient, so they'll address any consequences over time.”

“What does that even mean?” Juan asked, no longer feigning to understand the financial lingo.

“It means that markets always move to address supply and demand. So if a consequence emerges, eventually, if demand is sufficient to confront it, someone will move to take advantage of that opportunity and profit from correcting the inefficiency.”

“Where does morality fit in?” Juan asked.

“If there's enough demand for what's right, the market will create an opportunity that actually rewards the person who does it.”

“I don't think that happens,” he said, shaking his head. “Doing what's right is so small, and so individual, it'll never create enough collective demand to force action. I mean, there is no reward to me for bringing this girl home, and Beau isn't going to have any consequences for not giving a damn.” Juan felt his cheeks burn. “Do you know he actually had the nerve to say we're the same? Like I would ever just leave someone out to fend for themselves when I—”

Juan stopped. Robby Goodman's face flashed in front of him. “Fuck,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I have to show you something,” he heard himself say, moving to his computer.
What are you doing?
his brain screamed at him.
You decided not to say anything to anyone
.

“What is this?” Her cheeks paled when she saw the screen, where line after line of user information loaded from the database Juan had never erased.

“I found a database that matches users' private information with the activity we collect. It's all here—everyone's data from the moment they signed up.”

“You're not supposed to do that,” Neha said. “Per the privacy policy, you have to keep identities masked and—”

“I know, but that's not the point,” Juan said, typing in Kelly's name. “You know that girl Kelly Jacobson?”

“Yes,” Neha said cautiously.

“She was on it when she died.” He pointed to her profile on the screen. “And Robby Goodman,” he said, pointing to the three dots on the map of their dorm from the night Kelly overdosed, “was on it, too. But he wasn't with her. He was next door.”

Neha's chest rose and fell, and she turned her face from the screen to look at Juan.

His brow relaxed for the first time in weeks, the confession lifting a weight from his brain. He wasn't like Beau: he cared about what happened to people.

“Why did you show me this?” Neha suddenly snapped. Her voice was angry and hurt.

“I thought—” he started, caught off guard by her reaction.

She started to back away from the computer, shaking her head at it as if she could make it go away. “You have to delete it,” she said decisively. “No one can know. You shouldn't have told me.”

“But—”

“It'll ruin everything, Juan. You've got to delete it,” she said with more conviction.

“But what about Robby?” Juan said. “What if he—”

“What about
you
?” she interrupted. “If this comes out and the IPO doesn't go through, you're back to being a nobody.”

“But I'm not the only one who—”

“There are too many people depending on this, Juan,” Neha said. “Let the legal system work out whether Robby's guilty: it isn't worth the deal.”

“Neha,” Juan said, “we have information that could—”

“Ruin you,” she said. “And you”—she looked for the words—“you have to make it,” she said with determination. “If you make two hundred million and build a community center, you'll change so many lives, Juan. That's an opportunity you have that no one else does.”

She searched his eyes and he knew she was right, but it felt wrong.

“But Robby—”

“It's him or you, Juan. And unlike Robby, if you make it, then you've won over guys like Beau and Todd and Nick and all those men at dinner,” she said. “I know you don't like this system, but you can't change it by saving Robby. Just play it a little longer, and then you'll be in a position to set new rules.”

TODD

F
RIDAY
, M
AY
9; N
EW
Y
ORK
, N
EW
Y
ORK

What the fuck was Callum Rees doing here?

The lunch meeting was by invite only, and Callum had definitely not been invited. It made Todd sick the way men like Callum acted like they were above the rules.

Todd was working his ass off for this deal, and Callum was just using it as some platform to get laid. What a loser. Callum was a billionaire. If he was going to cheat on Louisa LeMay, he could at least be doing it with supermodels on a beach in Ibiza instead of following a girl like Tara across the Atlantic to an investor meeting. It made Todd angry: he would make so much better use of Callum's wealth and status if he had the chance.

When
he had the chance, Todd coached himself. The European road show had been a runaway success. They'd flown back from Geneva last night to begin the American tour, which meant they had one more week before Hook went public and Todd solidified his status as a Big Fucking Deal.

Antony van Leeuwen interrupted Todd's drifting. Antony was a big-A Analyst, meaning he researched companies and issued opinions about whether or not investors should buy their stock. Unlike little-a analysts like Neha, who were entry-level data monkeys, big-A Analysts' opinions mattered, especially if they had a reputation for being right, like Antony did.

“Nick, can we be serious for a second about the risks on this thing?” Antony's brow was furrowed and his voice arrogant. Todd shifted in his chair.

“Sure,” Nick said, flipping through the PowerPoint projected on the screen. “As you'll remember from slide seventeen, the greatest risks to our business are—”

“I'm not talking about the business risks, I'm talking about the security risks,” Antony said. “One thing I've never understood about these companies is why there's not more discussion about the location tracking ability. Your servers must have an incredible amount of personal information—where people have been and with whom. What do you do with that data?”

“First of all, we track activity in an unidentifiable manner so that users can feel secure in their privacy. Even so, we erase all activity logs after collecting what analytics we deem necessary for the improvement of the app's functionality and overall user experience.”

“It's got to be tempting to keep it, though,” Antony said. “That information would be valuable to advertisers, vendors, the government, a lot of people with deep pockets. Your privacy policy is fairly ambiguous: How are users to feel confident that their actions remain unidentifiable? How do they know you won't start selling that data, especially after this deal, when your still-unprofitable model is under the pressure of public earnings expectations?”

Todd's jaw unhinged. What was Antony doing? Showing off?

“I'm perfectly capable of handling pressure without—” Nick started.

“Don't be hypocritical, Antony,” Tara interrupted from where she sat next to Todd at the table. Her voice was disparaging. “You're bullish on Facebook and they have exactly the same capacity. Every app does—Uber and Foursquare and Google Maps could all do the same thing, and that hasn't kept users from downloading them or investors from buying their stock.”

“Do you not think it's different for Hook, given the extremely personal nature of the information you have?”

“How many men do you know thinking about privacy policies when they're trying to get laid?” Tara asked. The room smirked. “If anything, I think people are willing to risk far more in their pursuit of the opposite sex.”

Todd glanced at Callum, whose lips curled into a proud smile, but Tara's eyes were serious and locked on Antony's, putting him in his place.

“I'll keep that in mind,” the Analyst said sternly, his nostrils flaring just slightly.

Nick fielded a few more questions before the men in the room started to clear back to their offices. They had a three-hour break before a cocktail reception and another dinner meeting with more of New York's top investors. From there, it was back to the office to catch up on e-mails and make updates to the model before tomorrow's flight to Boston, followed by more of the same in Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and Palo Alto.

“You ready to go?” Tara said, picking up her things.

“You're not going to flirt with your boyfriend?” Todd mocked.

“No,” she said, and walked to the door.

Todd glanced over at Callum, in conversation with another investor, then back at Tara, but she was already gone.

“He told you?” he asked as they stepped onto the elevator, suddenly realizing she might know about Louisa.

“What?” She looked at him and shook her head. “I don't want to talk about it.”

They rode the elevator in silence.

“Why didn't we ever date?” he asked, not sure why.

“What?” She looked up.

The surprise on her face made him recognize his own, and he felt his cheeks burn. “I really liked you,” he said, adding quickly, “back in college, I mean.”

“That was a long time ago,” she said. “And it never would have worked.”

Todd felt his spine straighten defensively. “It could have.”

“Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes as the elevator doors opened.

“I mean it,” he said, walking quickly to keep up with her pace as they pushed outside to Fifth Avenue. “I would have been a great boyfriend.”

“In what sense?” She laughed.

“Tara!” Callum's voice interrupted. “Tara, wait.”

She kept walking. Callum followed quickly and grabbed her arm.

“What?” she snapped, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Can we please talk?”

“There's nothing to talk about.”

“Oh, I very much disagree with that,” his British voice demanded. Todd saw a cab pull up to let a passenger off and lifted his hand to hail it.

“If you haven't noticed, I'm a little busy,” she said.

“Tara, you ready?” Todd interrupted, holding the cab door open for her.

“I flew all the way here. Can we just talk?”

“Tara?” Todd asked, ignoring Callum. What a prick.

Tara kept her attention on the older man, looking at him with a mix of anger and affection.

“Tara?” Todd repeated.

“I'll meet you at the office,” she said, finally acknowledging him.

“But we've got—”

“I'll meet you at the office,” she repeated firmly.

Todd's jaw opened to protest, but he scoffed instead, ducking into the cab. “Whatever.”

—

H
E
GOT
BACK
to L.Cecil, but he couldn't concentrate. “Fuck it,” he finally said to his Excel spreadsheet.

Ten minutes later Todd opened the doors at Equinox, but for once he didn't look at the people watching him go up the stairs.

“I thought you'd found someone new,” Morgan said, greeting him at the reception desk. She sighed when Todd didn't respond to the joke. “What's wrong?”

“What?” he asked. “Oh, nothing. Are you free?”

She checked her watch. “I've got an hour.”

“Me too,” he said, heading to the locker room to change.

She put him on the treadmill and he ran hard, the sweat coming quickly to his brow.

He attacked the bench, pressing twenty pounds more than usual as if it was nothing, grunting with each press as Morgan encouraged him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Morgan finally asked.

“About what?”

“Whatever's bothering you.”

“Why do you think something's bothering me?”

“You're not counting how many girls are checking you out.”

Todd held the bar up and grimaced. “I don't do that.” Had she really noticed him doing that before?

“Right,” she said. “Just like nothing's bothering you.”

“Why are you a lesbian?” He wasn't sure why he asked.

“Because I love my girlfriend.”

“Do you seriously not like men at all?”

“No, I like men a lot. I'm bisexual.”

“Why a girlfriend then? If you're attracted to both, wouldn't it make life easier to be with a guy?”

“Societally easier, sure,” she said. “But easier to live with?” She shook her head. “I couldn't find any guys who had what I needed.”

“Which was?”

“I guess I wanted someone to take care of me,” she said carefully.

“You're hot. You could find a man to take care of you.”

“I don't mean money,” she said. “I mean emotionally. I wanted to feel emotionally secure, and I never found that with a guy in New York.”

“Did you date a lot?”

“Yeah,” she said. “And everything always came back to sex, back to status, back to work. And all of it had to do with this constant wondering whether there was something better,” she said, “which I get—I was there for a while, too—but there comes a point where you just want”—she looked for the word—“a real partner.”

Todd followed her to the mat and sat, seriously considering it. Morgan picked up a medicine ball and tossed it to Todd, who crunched up to catch it.

“I could be a good partner,” he said, crunching back, then forward, and throwing the ball to her. He took care of all the women he slept with; he didn't lie to them, or pretend he was something he wasn't. He was always honest, and bought their drinks, and made sure they got home the next day. Except the ones he met drunk in bars, but that was different.

Morgan laughed, throwing the ball back to him.

“What?” He caught the ball. Why were she and Tara so dismissive of him?

“You'd make it about a week,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Because I know guys like you.”

“And what are guys like me like?”

“You're obsessed with one muscle group,” she said. “You're like the guy at the gym who falls in love with his abs so he just does crunches until he gets a six-pack.”

“Thank you.” Todd stopped mid-crunch, grinning at the compliment as he tossed her back the ball.

“Except that it's the only muscle group you ever work.” She threw the ball back toward him. “You let every other muscle get weak, and one day you realize your shoelaces are untied, but you don't have the necessary muscles to bend over and tie them because all you've ever done is work your abs. And then you trip and get hurt and think it's because you shouldn't have bent over, when really it's just that you need to stop spending all your time on crunches and stretch a little.”

Todd looked at her, studying her face.

“Sorry,” she said, “long analogy.”

“But what you're trying to say is that I'm too obsessed with my job. That I just work all the time and miss relationships.”

“No,” she said. “You're obsessed with your sexual dominance.”

“Go on,” he said proudly.

“You're obsessed with your own ability to attract and have sex with women,” she said. “So it's all you do, just play that game, working that muscle over and over and over again without ever developing any of the strengths or flexibility it takes to be a good partner. They're different sports.”

“That's just biology,” Todd said. “Humans are sexual creatures. I can't help how I'm wired.”

“Then you're not evolved enough for a relationship,” she said firmly.

He shrugged. “Does it matter? If I'm not evolved to do it, maybe I'm not evolved to need it. I can just be happy doing my crunches.” He threw the ball back at her.

“Nah, at some point your muscles will become so desensitized you won't get any satisfaction out of crunching,” she said.

“You're going to have to put that one in English.”

“You won't be able to climax,” she said casually. “No sex will be gratifying.”

“What?” Todd caught the ball, his face flushed.

“First you'll think it's because you get bored with the same woman, so you'll only sleep with each one once.” She caught the ball and returned it. “Then you'll start thinking about porn during sex so you can come”—throw-catch-crunch—“then you'll try threesomes, and then anal sex, and then it'll all stop working and you'll be lying on the mat, watching everyone else working out and you'll think maybe you should do what they're doing, but you won't know how. And then you'll either swallow your pride and start building your other muscles, or you'll just get really bitter.” She shrugged. “Whatever girl is rejecting you is grown up enough to recognize that: she either doesn't think you have the stamina it takes to develop those new muscles, or doesn't have the patience to watch you try.” She threw the ball and he caught it without throwing it back.

He could feel his abs burning as he gripped the medicine ball in his hands. “I didn't say anything about a girl.”