Excerpt from my second novel.
(This particular chapter is about bankers, but the novel is about Atlantic City. Lots of Tool references here. KG)
Note to readers: I’m finishing my second novel, ‘Euclid Alone’, that is set in Atlantic City. It’s about the city’s demise, which is really a backdrop for the human saga of people trying to save it.
CHAPTER 7: LACHRYMOLOGY
For any investment idea, whether a loan or an acquisition or a bespoke deal, Nelson came to rely on Bobbi’s analysis. Bobbi liked to examine things on the ground first-hand, and she often flew across the country to compare the glossy prospectus description of the underlying property to the real thing. She’d often come back with an insight that was missing from the official term sheet. Sometimes she threw so much cold water on the rosy financials and projected cashflows of the prospectus, that Nelson had to smooth things over with his clients. Her research style was eclectic: beyond the numbers, that she collected and attended to with a precision of a surgeon, she assessed the location, the foot traffic, the adjacent businesses or residentials, the make and the quality of cars parked on the street, even the menu of the nearby restaurants. Once Nelson had to reject a commercial loan for a large luxury apartment complex because Bobbi had discovered––merely by standing at the planned construction site and smelling the air––a meat-processing facility three hundred yards away. It was this unquantifiable angle, this ability to sense the unpredictable, this almost fatalistic caution––prevalent, in his opinion, among women and the people born on the edges of society––that he valued the most about Bobbi.
That Roberta Cheyenne LaBrea was born on the edges of society was clear to Nelson from the moment her resume landed in his hands ten years ago. It stated that she graduated from University of Alabama, and in her cover letter she mentioned that she was the first in her family to go to college. Nelson, driven by ideas of expediency rather than inclusion, passed her resume around the office, making wagers with other cackling bankers about her ethnicity. He won the bet when a white girl showed up for an interview. “A cracker,” some whispered with giddy delight as Bobbi walked, clutching her cheap purse, toward the conference room. During the interview she displayed the demeanor of a striver, but there was expectation in her eyes, already too weary for a twenty-two year old, of a feint, of some pernicious ploy coming at her from all sides. Hers was a distrust borne out of poverty and powerlessness. It was the same distrust that held back her neighbors, her school mates, her relatives back in Dirthole, Alabama––the same relatives who burdened her with that ridiculous name––and it could’ve held her back, too, if the chips fell differently. This distrust was at the foundation of her kin’s intemperance, their short fuse, their default militancy, their superstitions and addictions. It’s what made them to reflexively and gleefully buck anything unpleasant and inconvenient, and to indulge in affected performance directed at society at large––in order to show that no one was the boss of them, that they were free.
At the interview Nelson gave Bobbi a generic, ground-testing quiz, that he himself designed to quickly assess how a person’s mind works, a foolproof sifter that dispensed with about ninety-five percent of contestants right out of the gate. The quiz was about a bakery that hires additional bakers and the effect it has on the output.
“A second baker doubles the output,” Nelson gave a simple parameter. “What happens if the bakery hires four more bakers?”
Bobbi, whose grandmother was a part-time short order cook at a roadside diner, could extrapolate from Nelson’s question back to that three-tables-and-a-counter greasy spoon decades ago, where four more short order cooks would bring the entire operation to a halt.
“It’s… non-linear,” Bobbi probed.
Nelson nodded silently, hiding his delight. He wrapped the interview quickly with a casual ‘You’ll be hearing from us.’
And here was a chance at a real life experiment. Nelson believed that the nature of investment banking expanded well beyond business. It was a social institution. And here was the opportunity to examine the transformative power of this institution. Any unwashed exposed to its influence could undergo an almost religious conversion. Despite being a highly-paid field, investment banking was an ascetic order that nurtured and celebrated the abnegation of self, for it is through that abnegation, he believed, that one could rise above their primitive ways. The structures and the rituals of this world could arrest the rebellious tendencies of any aimless, fallow youth, and channel those tendencies to productive use. With this young hick, Nelson could test his theory about the disciplinary effect of the industry. He could watch Bobbi’s inbred class resentments be tamed by her nemesis of nemeses––a financial institution, a cabal of bloodsucking elites. He could watch her distrust of this big bad world dissipate on contact once she realized what it was all about. She would find no malice. She would encounter serious people who mastered their moods, whose seriousness could not be derailed by a distraction or a setback. She would see the people who had all their needs met so that they can only concern themselves with the one thing that matters, and she would want to be part of that seriousness, she would want to be concerned with that one thing, with that business of adults. That business would become her compass, her safety capsule to cross the chaos of life.
She would also discover that rebels, subjects to raging, unexamined passions, wouldn’t survive a day at the world’s cockpit, a Midtown office tower; and that even if they could have scored one short glorious moment in their sorry lives, they’d end up back working at Chuck-E-Cheese once the revolution was over and the dust settled.
Did she understand this? With anthropological curiosity Nelson searched for those rebellious strains in Bobbi and he detected that all of those resentments indeed existed there, bubbling close to the surface, but were held in check with much effort and sometimes with labored displays of indifference. He loved to watch how Bobbi dealt with it. Her struggles affirmed his thesis.
There was a promise of authenticity, of a real-life brokenness in Bobbi, that was missing in most of the all-male personnel in Nelson’s office. She was a diversity hire without the self-righteous baggage, a real clay-eater who has already been humbled by life, but who could become a power broker, if she played her hand right.
She excelled at the business and the quantitative part of the trade. She became a numbers maven and a pitchbook ninja and, when on the phone, she handled irate clients with a Nurse Ratchet calmness, giving reassuring answers, and gaining their trust.
In public gatherings, at cocktails and client dinners and other informal, festive settings, however, she came across as stiff and unsure. When, after a drink or two, the collective banter inevitably veered away from finance, away from the yield curve and price levels and loan covenants, Bobbi was slow to detect the shift in the mood, and struggled to keep up with the niche humor and the references thrown around. Smooth social skills was an area still in need of further cultivation, Nelson admitted; it was, likely, a residue of her rough beginnings, but certainly malleable with time and the exposure to the right culture.
Her public persona was that of an introvert who didn’t want to be known as one. Her clumsy attempts at vivacity and chumminess that she thought she had to display as part of the job, were ill-timed, and came in uneven bursts, and were often loaded with odd mentions that no one understood. Some veteran portfolio manager would bring up California’s Orange County debt default, and, in response, Bobbi would say something about Bill Hicks, an obscure comedian, long dead, and about L.A. submerging into the Pacific ocean, and then mumble something about ‘enema’ before falling silent, blushing and contrite and leaving Nelson to dig out of the resulting conversational dead end with some quick, juicy industry gossip.
Nelson asked her later what the hell she was talking about, to which she replied, apologetically, that it was too long to explain and that she was just trying to be funny.
“If you’re not sure what to say, just don’t say anything,” Nelson said sternly.
Another time, at a small invitation-only event, he caught her talking to some random guy whom no one knew and who turned out to be a party crasher. After the person was escorted out by security, Nelson asked her what was she doing talking to the guy. “He came over and started talking and I was just trying to be polite,” she replied.
Nelson rolled his eyes. “You can’t just be polite with everybody. You have to learn to differentiate randos from real people.”
She needed to develop a sharp situational radar, a good discerning mechanism, to acquire a social polish, and Nelson resolved to help her achieve all of the above by bringing her along to more industry events. He instructed her to just stand and watch the people and let him do the talking. “Watch the flow, watch the dynamic, listen to the conversations. I’ll quiz you later on who said what and what was important and what was garbage.”
Nelson’s own knowledge of any social gathering on the other hand, was so deep and vast that, if asked, he could lecture a course on the topic, or write a beat-by-beat script. He knew that every party would always proceed in the same predictable fashion. He would stand with a tumbler glass filled with water and ice cubes––a trick he deployed to maintain his sobriety, while letting others think that it was vodka on the rocks, and watch the human currents pulsate and swirl around him. The currents were made of fluid junior professionals, resume peddlers, schmoozers, and service personnel, and as the party progressed, those currents dwindled into clusters. The formation of a cluster would begin with a generic, ground-testing ‘what are you focusing on these days?’ probe to assess the rank, the risk appetite, and the size of the portfolio of the fellow partygoer. It was then followed by a cautious lament about the Fed and the interest rates in order to assess each other’s standing on monetary policy, then––at this point over the second or third drink––by finding gleeful common ground in dissecting other industry players’ bad calls, and finally, after all the ballast––the vendors, the compliance analysts, the unattractive women––fell off, and the valence of all those remaining has been vetted, a ‘care to join us’ call was issued to the core group to relocate to a ritzier, more secluded venue to solidify the newfound friendships with a more memorable, more exclusive and, ultimately, more profitable bonding experience.
Nelson observed all these motions with an expression of mournful parental benevolence. These hapless revelers sought to amuse themselves, to ingratiate themselves with the superiors, to sniff out an angle, they were getting drunk and making fool of themselves and acted on a strange mix of ennui and invincibility, and, as Nelson watched them, he felt a quiet empathy for them, as if they were lost children. They were laughing, but he knew that laughter came from a place of pain and dread, and his heart cried for them. He concluded that whatever afflicted these laborious in their merriment partygoers had no name and likely no cure, that boredom and vanity were eternal, ingrained drivers of human action, and that he was placed in this unique position by a divine force to mitigate the journey for them, to make it bearable.
Bobbi’s verdict was less nuanced, and less merciful.
“These people mostly talk about some bullshit,” she told him crudely. “They make millions but all they talk about is how they’re scrappy kids from Brooklyn.”
“You gotta learn to rein in your proletarian rage,” Nelson admonished her.
Nelson learned more about her lingering pedestrian sentiments during a business trip to Phoenix. Bobbi put out her best presentation that day, making a well-developed pitch with slides and print-outs, and answering all the clients’ questions, after which she asked Nelson if she could skip the clients’ dinner. She explained that she was meeting an old college friend for drinks. Nelson thought it was a lame excuse and that it was probably a booty call, but he allowed it, winking at her as he said ‘sure.’ It’s good for her to unwind, he thought.
The next morning at the airport, when they were about to board a plane back to New York, Nelson noticed a purple ink stamp on the back of Bobbi’s hand, the kind people get at nightclubs or rock concerts. Huh, so it wasn’t a booty call. Discreetly, he peeked at the faded image, trying not to draw Bobbi’s attention. It was a logo of a wrench fashioned into a penis. Damn. Did she attend some kind of orgy? Just as he was about to interrogate Bobbi on her nighttime proclivities, a young man sat in the empty row in front of them, tossing his duffel bag on the next seat. The man’s bearing was jumpy, brimming with barely contained annoyance at the airport tedium, at the fellow passengers, and at the world at large. He twitched his foot and ground his teeth as if he struggled to rein in some suppressed emotional coil that was on the brink of a violent eruption. His muscular trunk and biceps bulged from under the tight black T-shirt that sported the exact same logo of a phallic wrench as the one on Bobbi’s wrist, with the word ‘Tool’ written in psychedelic colors across his chest.
Tool! She skipped a client dinner for some metal band concert. She preferred a dark, loud gathering of sweaty, smelly degenerates, like this one before them here, over a nice cocktail in a company of fine––and some of them single––gentlemen.
Bobbi caught Nelson’s befuddled gaze that was shifting between the guy’s T-shirt and her wrist.
“Yeah. I saw Tool last night,” she spilled. She rubbed on the stamp.
“Huh. With your friend, I hope.”
She grimaced and shook her head. Alone! She went there alone.
Seeing Nelson’s near-apoplexy, Bobbi hurried to reassure him.
“I’ve seen them many times. It’s pretty safe. I don’t go near mosh-pit.”
With the intention of offering a caustic critique of Bobbi’s musical tastes, Nelson scrolled through iTunes on his phone. Bobbi saw him do it and informed him that he will not find Tool on iTunes. “They’re commerce-averse,” she said.
“Here.” She took out her own phone. She went through the pictures and videos in her media app. She clicked on one clip and passed the phone to Nelson. “From last night. Put the headphones on.”
On the phone screen Nelson saw a mostly dark stage, except for the psychedelic art projected on the back wall. The acid-colored, throbbing, shape-shifting visuals were bizarre, verging on disturbing. The loud, heavy sound tore at his eardrums, but it wasn’t the ghoulish trash metal noise that he thought he was going to hear. He heard a melody that was complex, intelligent, with changing pace and time signatures, and there was an unexpected harmony, even poetry in it. Intrigued, he watched on.
The lead singer stood in the deep end of the stage, almost hidden from the view, and if it wasn’t for a quick zoom in, Nelson would’ve missed his arresting, freakish pageantry. Half-bent, wigged, his torso bare, the frontman convulsed as if in pain, as if overcome by a violent purging.
“That’s MJK,” Bobbi said with breathless reverence. “Maynard James Keenan.”
Maynard’s voice hypnotized. It had a convincing, forceful clarity of a cantor. It oscillated between mercy and wrath. It murmured like a pristine forest brook, then broke into screeching, anguished rant of a street preacher. It could cleanse and heal the lepers one moment and smash merchants’ tables in a Jerusalem temple the next.
Nelson watched the clip to the end.
“I mean… okay… some pimply twenty-year-old degenerate might find it cool,” he said, giving her back the phone. “But what do you see in this?”
Bobbi paused, weighing an answer that Nelson would find plausible.
“The performance. The vocals. The artistry,” she said.
Nelson nodded at each of the listed reasons, but she felt that he remained unconvinced. “It’s really more of a sermon than a concert,” she added.
“Huh. I see. I think I know what it is. That’s your Pentecostal past manifesting.”
“I’m not religious.”
“Yeah. That’s why you’re at a Tool concert and not at a tent revival. You replaced one rite with another.”
She puffed like a teenager and rolled her eyes.
“That’s it, yeah. Your dad, he spoke in tongues, didn’t he? Convulsed and shook and rolled on the stage, like this guy?”
“Stepdad.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Nelson giggled. “Still, same theatrics, same delusional flock. Your interest here is the interest of someone who can’t help but peek at the festering wound. It reminds you of the depravity you left behind.”
“Enough with the psychobabble.”
Bobbi sniffed and again nervously rubbed the purple stamp on her wrist.
“Those people, the fanbase, they are consumed with anger that they can’t understand and don’t know where to direct. He tells them to channel it inward, at the self. To embrace their anima,” she said and glanced at Nelson. “That is, their softer side… It’s Jungian… Never mind.”
Their flight got called.
“Look. It is fascinating to observe people at niche events, I get it,” Nelson said on the plane after they took off. “And I think it’s great that you have this inclination. But can you find a less unsanitary venue?”
He ordered a glass of wine from a flight attendant.
“Like, industry events are, too, microcosms of depravity,” he said to Bobbi who was sitting motionless, enthralled by the vast red desert that drifted slowly underneath the plane’s wing. “No less grotesque than a Tool concert.”
“I doubt it,” she replied. “One is a herd of office lemmings. The other… a lethal force.” She turned back to her window.
The flight attendant brought him a glass of white wine. He sipped it and reclined in his seat.
“A dark worldview you have, girlfriend. Don’t worry. You’re safe in Manhattan. Those degens, they can’t afford to pay the tunnel fee.”
Nelson giggled at his own wit. He popped a Xanax, washed it down with the wine, put a silk eye mask on, and went to sleep.