Greedy Heart, page 21
Dear Ms. Mulcahy,
Hermes Fund LLC has reached an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and with the Attorney General of the State of New York regarding allegations of improper trading practices at Hermes including, but not limited to, insider trading, dealing on advance information, commonly known as front-running, and other illegal activities. The agreement, which requires acceptance of its terms by Hermes Management and senior trading staff, contains the following stipulations:
• That managers Robert M. Goodman and Mitchell J. Mitchell each pay a fine of $2 million dollars.
• That all senior staff members known to be implicated in the alleged activities, Rafael X. Acosta, Tyler D. Broadhead, Athina G. Brooks, Jan W. Feltre, David L. Greer, Brigid M.C. Mulcahy, and Matthew P. Preston accept 2-year bans on trading and other financial-advisory and financial-management activities.
The agreement is attached for your signature. Our office may be contacted for questions.
Angela put her hand over the letter. “You’re not listening to me, Dee.” I could feel my color returning and my body flooding with heat as my heart sped up. “I’m afraid if you don’t agree, they’ll lose interest and go looking for a sublet somewhere else. Lots of Wall Street people can’t afford their apartments now.”
I looked at Angela and felt as if the rotation of the earth had stopped. “Tell them yes.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.”
“You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe.”
—Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
I went to Number N that very afternoon, wandering over blindly from the Grandhope. In my panic and confusion, I couldn’t think what else to do. Alone in Aunt Kathleen’s apartment, trying to calm myself, I sat on kitchen floor looking for animal shapes in the linoleum. My mind spooled through thoughts, like a computer cron job run amok. There would be no Vista Equities job in January. There wouldn’t be any finance job in January. Or the next.
In on ten. Out on ten.
I used the contact number for Drucker & Garrett. An associate seemed prepared for my call. The SEC investigators, she said, had subpoenaed emails and trading records. There was incontrovertible evidence of insider trading. Hermes management immediately offered to make a deal. Negotiations were swift. I could, of course, engage my own attorney and try to strike my own independent agreement.
Sure, I thought. With what non-existent money?
I remembered Bert telling me about his buddy in white-collar crimes who was under pressure to get indictments. I thought of all the insider-information emails I’d seen and the ones I’d sent—like the one to Mitchell telling him that Bear was going under. Of course, there was incontrovertible evidence. We had done everything alleged and worse. The associate said the feds weren’t going after the big banks, because they were in bed with the government. She told me I was lucky. There could have been a lifetime ban, or fines for the traders, or jail time. She seemed proud of the work they had done to negotiate this “favorable” settlement.
I was sure she was right.
But what would I do for two years? How would my money hold out? I needed to go back to my spreadsheet, which I hadn’t looked at since my visit with Priest. How far under water was my apartment? Would I have to declare bankruptcy? What would that do to future job prospects? The media was reporting companies now required a credit check before hiring you.
My breath growing shallow, I opened my laptop to do financial projections.
The crash wiped out the half million dollars in bonus money I had in Hermes when the hedge fund went under. I went down to twenty-three thousand stashed in savings. Then I sold my car, which brought me back up to thirty five. Which was all I had to ride out the storm. Subletting my apartment would slow the bleeding but would not stop it.
The math was inexorable. The subletters were covering ten grand of the Grandhope expenses, leaving another four thousand. There was $419 a month in Number-N rent, a couple hundred in electricity, the same in food. That meant my total monthly burn was just under $5,000. As for income, after a bit of poking around, I signed up on eLance for some helpdesk and website gigs at $27 an hour. My calculations suggested I might piece together freelance income of about $1200 a month.
I clicked the button to graph what the future would hold.
I would be dead broke by Labor Day 2009.
I tapped away, working the numbers. What if I got more freelance work? On the income side, I factored in another $300 a month. This squeezed a few additional weeks out of my resources, not the years I needed for my trading ban to expire.
I picked up the phone to call Sarah, feeling nauseated.
“Two million,” I said after a few preliminaries. “I’ll sell it for that.” I had paid $2.2 million. But, in my situation, I had to lowball right out of the gate. This amount would pay off my outstanding mortgage and I’d be out from under the apartment.
“I might get you one-point-eight,” she answered.
“Oh my God.” If I was only getting one-point-eight million for the apartment, I was two hundred thousand dollars under water. Where would I ever come up with that money? “But I can’t sell at one-point-eight. That doesn’t cover my outstanding mortgage.”
“Welcome to today’s real estate market.”
“Everybody’s saying New York real estate has held up well,” I objected.
“It’s frozen up like the Arctic.” Sarah’s once-chipper voice had the tone of a burnt-out emergency room nurse. “And it’s gonna stay that way for a good long time. Buyers won’t pay prerecession prices when houses in Florida are going for ten grand. Sellers are insulted at the offers so they won’t sell. People will just sit and wait. Of course, if you’ve got an apartment for twenty million, things are great. There are still bidding wars.”
“What do I do?”
“Try foreclosure.”
“But if I went into foreclosure, the bank would probably only get one-point-eight at auction anyway. It’s the same.”
“Doesn’t make sense, now does it?”
“Isn’t there any other option?”
“Join a protest.” Sarah paused. “Listen, Delia,” she said, tone changing. “Understand one thing: you will not get the two-point-two million you paid for that apartment. You will not get two million. Maybe—maybe—I could get you one-point-nine if someone, for some crazy reason, wants that specific apartment. Someone in that situation might pay a little more.” It was a bit of the old Sarah, the one who had been so italic about everything. “I’m not sure who would pay above market or why, but you did.”
I felt the sting of that. “Yeah.”
“All I’m saying is I’ll keep my eyes open.”
I hung up. The bird in his window box gave me two mechanical blinks.
My next call was to Telefony, the call center outfit in Minneapolis. The HR woman, sounding beleaguered, told me their VC funds had dried up and the thirty-something CEO was working on a plan to reinvent the firm. She advised me to check back, maybe next summer.
My thoughts swirling, I moved from the floor of the kitchen to the floor in the living room and numbly read spines on the bookcase, landing on The Lives of the Saints. This uplifting anthology was full of martyrs who were stoned, crucified, bound to moving wheels, flayed, immolated, scourged, branded, dismembered, disemboweled, de-toothed, buried alive, and boiled in oil.
There was also the thin chartreuse volume, the saint’s story I’d liked as a child.
On top of the bookcase Aunt Kathleen’s Francis statues paraded as if mocking me. Francis was heir to a family fortune, but he’d given it all up for a life conversing with birds. Unlike me, Francis had done it voluntarily. The avatars were small, cheap, and uncanny-valley, as if made by Madame Tussaud. One of them looked like a drag queen.
The blinds of my across-the-alley neighbor, Viviane the Hoarder, were closed tight. She was clearly hating the fact that I would now be in residence. With Mom “living” here (quotes stet), there was no need for Viviane to guard her privacy. As I watched, fingers appeared around the edge of the blinds, and a section of pale face, hazel iris and dark hair peeked out. Our eyes met. She disappeared.
I sat there as dark descended. I didn’t turn on the lights. After a while, I heard a rustling at my door. I opened it and looked right and left. Then I saw there was a piece of notebook paper taped to the peephole. It was scrawled in Magic Marker and said, “Eat the Rich.”
So, it began. On top of everything else, while at Number N, I was to be the poster child for the 1 percent. The author of the note could have been any of the tenants. Viviane the Hoarder, the yoga instructor on six, the former soap opera star on seven, the second-floor Korean woman from the nearby dry cleaner’s, or one of the fifth-floor Brazilian dog walkers.
But it was probably Norah.
I lay on Aunt Kathleen’s single bed, with its cream chenille bedspread, the sort I last saw on a Catholic school retreat. The bedroom window had views into the garden where Aunt Kathleen landed.
I fell asleep eventually, slept fitfully, then woke easily in the early morning.
A frantic restlessness enveloped me before I was even fully awake. It’s like the day after you are fired, when you decide to call up everyone you know. Or how, on getting a dire diagnosis, you visit doctor after doctor, just to feel like you are doing something about the situation when, really, there is nothing you can do at all.
I opened eLance and put in some bids on some jobs. Then, rather than stare at the screen, I went to the Grandhope to pack.
As I was packing, I had an idea.
*
An arrow pointed up to Viviane’s Consignment. I carried the sartorial bounty of my now-past hedge-fund days: six pairs of shoes, each costing over a thousand dollars; a suit from Barneys that originally retailed for thirty-five hundred; a cocktail dress, designed by a favorite of Kate Middleton, which set me back six grand; and the $1,800 Prada handbag. Since Viviane was my new neighbor, consigning my clothes with her was a way of raising some much-needed cash and extending an olive branch at the same time.
Elena, the proprietress of the dead-quiet ground-floor boutique, stood in the back among racks of clothes; she wore an expression that simultaneously conveyed both boredom and terror. Customers were lacking in all the street-level Madison Avenue shops, even as the holidays approached. In contrast, the upper-floor consignment shops were thriving, as post-crash Wall Street wives consigned their practically new Hermès handbags and consorts of Russian oligarchs snapped them up. I clambered up the stairway, lugging my shopping bags. A bell tinkled my entrance. Carousels arranged by color created spectra of skirts, dresses, blouses, blazers and slacks. White tags with handwritten prices dangled from sleeves.
“Be right there!” Viviane called from the clothing thicket.
I looked around, wondering what the consignment price was for size-nine Christian Louboutin boots. At least, with consignment, I could get some money back for my clothes. Not so for all those thirty-five-dollar bagels, leased show horses ($35,000), car-garage expenses ($875/month), and sushi takeout ($183—just for me).
She of the hazel eyes, dark hair, and mountain range of boxes emerged between the clothes racks, a tagging gun in hand.
“Oh!” Viviane stopped short. “Hi.” The greeting landed with the splat of a sodden tennis ball.
“Gucci, Prada, and Loro Piana.” I removed ostrich skin loafers, a calfskin satchel in scarlet, and a cashmere sweater-coat so creamy you could eat it.
“Sorry. I’m not buying Italian just now,” Viviane said.
The racks around me were dripping with Milanese wares. Viviane must have received the memo from Norah that I was persona non grata. “It appears you are,” I countered.
“Last year.” Viviane smiled steadily.
“I must have something you’re in the market for.”
“I don’t think so.” Viviane squeezed the grip of the label gun, and a plastic strand pierced a blouse cuff.
I folded the sweater-coat. My skin remembered the lush nap. Thousand-dollar clothes really did feel different from mid-priced togs. “Just so you know, I’m wiped out, too.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“You’re supposed to run a business.” People’s hypocrisy amazed me. “Everything in here was bought with Wall Street money.”
“Wives.” Viviane wrote $300.00 on the label for a silk blouse with Bergdorf Goodman inside its collar.
I guessed everyone had to make a stand somewhere, drawing an arbitrary, uncrossable line. I left for her competitor down the street.
*
Back at Aunt Kathleen’s apartment, I plugged $1,450 into my spreadsheet—what I would receive for my clothes if they sold. The consignment shop down from Viviane seemed optimistic about the handbag and textiles, less so about the shoes.
Next, I scanned my eLance dashboard. A physical therapist had a website contact form that needed debugging. I claimed the job and spent the next ninety minutes picking through bad phone, address, and email validation code. After that, the physical therapist wanted me to update their appointment sign-up form. Four hours later, I had made $108.
As the day waned, I looked out the window. The bird huddled in a corner of the window box, head tucked deeply into his wing. It was November now, with temperatures in the forties. He looked cold. That was sad.
As the apartment darkened, my frenzied energy began to drain away, as I knew it would, leaving behind a dull apathy laced with fear. There was nothing to do but wait and wait some more. Ironically, that’s what I thought last summer, before the crash. Back then, I was anticipating a huge triumph and the restoration of my fortune.
Now?
I had no idea what the future held. How bad would the recession be? Would Telefony have a job for me next summer? At the moment, the call center was my only prospect—my best-case scenario. I would leave New York and move to Minneapolis. It would be as if I’d wound the clock back to when I was living in Florida, in bed with Eric, planning to take the Telefony job in the first place. Except now, I was two million dollars in debt and had utterly failed at redeeming my past.
What if my finances gave out and my apartment went into foreclosure? With that on my credit record, any and all job prospects would evaporate. Would the Telefony opportunity come through before that happened?
My breath started to shorten again. I controlled it more easily now, like a passenger on a thrashing ship who gradually becomes immune to seasickness. My cell phone rang. I was so focused in my bodily restraint efforts, I answered it without checking the number.
Eugene.
Shit.
Right after my meeting with Peter Priest, I’d planned to call him up and tell him the good news. With a job in January, I could take over Whitey’s board! Now, I had nothing to offer.
Eugene sounded at the end of his rope. Since the crash, his wife had started divorce proceedings. “Whitey’s all I’ve got,” he said. “But I have to sell him.”
“I’m broke too, Eugene.” I told him about the trading ban.
“I wouldn’t even want any money for him.”
“Eugene, you’re not listening. I can’t.”
He paused. “You know so much about horses, Delia. Do you have any ideas on how I can make money with him?”
“Eugene…”
“I was thinking how you were teaching him to drive.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“It’s just I can’t bear…” His sentence trailed off. But I knew what he couldn’t bear. The headlines in equine websites were grim. Horses, from fancy show mounts to backyard ponies, were being dumped on federal land to starve. If these animals were being abandoned, Whitey had no chance. He was gelded and had homicidal tendencies. The most humane thing to do would be to euthanize him. If I had come to this conclusion, so had all the other horse people around Eugene, and they had told him so.
“I’m sorry, Eugene. I have to go.”
I hung up the phone and let my head sink into my hands. The Hungarian effort I’d put into redeeming that cursed beast—it seemed like the only thing I’d done in the last two years that mattered. But magnificent Whitey would soon be put down. This was the thought that broke me. I shattered into tears.
I sobbed and sobbed, crying myself to sleep in a way I hadn’t since Sorrows.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It’s no use crying over spilt milk; it only makes it salty for the cat.
—Anonymous
The Super Pioneer grocery store on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx was running a special on chicken. The round trip took me three hours, rolling my wire cart through the slushy March streets and onto two different trains, but it saved me thirty-five dollars.
Walking from the subway toward my block, I heard hubbub on 81st Street. A movie shoot. New York was a perpetual film set, and spring TV production was in full swing. White trailers lined both sides of the street. Each week from now until summer, they would clog up streets and avenues at night, taking up parking spaces, and filling the sidewalks with long buffets of fruit, kale, and quinoa for the cast, crew, and nimble-fingered Number N-ers.
I stopped to see if I could recognize any stars. I saw a woman who sometimes played the mother of murder victims. Other times she was the perpetrator.
I collected my Number-N mail and got on the elevator. The thirteenth floor clunked into view. Another message dangled from my door. It had the cut-out lettering TV shows use for ransom notes. It said,
WHeRe’$ mY bAiLouT
Norah was still at it. I ripped off the note. Inside, I threw the envelopes down on the kitchen counter, a freckled Formica surface with a metal edge. I shrugged out of my coat and pulled off my boots.
Four months had passed since I moved to Number N. I was calmer now. What choice did I have? I could only put one foot in front of the other and get used to the new normal, a day-to-day pattern of low-level freelance programming punctuated with abuse from my Number-N neighbors.
