TB laughed, and the sound ricocheted in the elevator like it was trying to break through the metal walls. “I decided I’d been saying one more year for one too many years.”
The sentence struck a depressing chord. “What’re you doing next?”
“Middle-market private equity. And GQ’s doing late-stage venture capital.”
Both these jobs were an extension of the same rat race, just with slightly better hours and slightly higher pay, but Rae didn’t point that out. She was too busy feeling disappointed in herself. She’d always thought she’d be the first to quit, and yet here she was, the last one standing. “I need to start recruiting for a new job.”
“It’s okay if you don’t, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s okay if you want to stay,” TB said. “You’ve gotten really good, EE. And now with GQ and me leaving, you have more leverage. They can’t lose all their diversity hires at once.”
Rae deferred the thought, something to contemplate in the long hours without her two allies beside her. “So how did the wannabe bosses respond to your announcement?”
“Drunk yelling, lots ofFuck yous. But David, or maybe it was Darren, bought me a fireball shot and said it was good I was getting out while I could.”
They walked into Starbucks and joined the line of white men in white collared shirts, faces pinched with proud and perpetual discontent.
Rae took out her wallet to pay, but TB waved her aside. “Coffee’s on me. Private equity pays more than investment banking. And besides, you and GQ are the only reasons I’m escaping this place partially sane.”
He pulled Rae into a hug, an awkwardly emotional divergence from their handshake status quo.
“One more lap around the building, for old time’s sake?” TB suggested after they got their coffees.
Back as interns, before their legs had learned to abandon their restlessness and their eyes had grown accustomed to lightbulb suns, they’d sneaked out to take walks around the building while waiting for more work from the wannabe bosses. At the first buzz of their phones, they’d sprint back inside.
“I hereby appoint you president of the COTWSM,” TB said. “It’s up to you to carry the coup forward. Don’t let them win.”
“I won’t.” But as she said it, she wondered at what point she’d become one ofthem. How long until the diversity of her gender was overshadowed by the homogeny of her thought?
TB held his middle finger high, pointing it up at their forty-second-story window.
“How’s it feel?” Rae asked, envy rivaling respect. In a symbolic kind of way, it almost felt like TB and GQ were getting married,moving on to a new life stage and leaving her in the dust, like everyone else in her life.
“Like a fucking dream,” TB said.
That was what most dreams on Wall Street were, Rae realized—fantasies of leaving. There were far more wishes made about walking out of doors than into them.
“One more lap?” TB asked, as they approached the entrance again. The lap didn’t feel as big as it used to.
Rae felt emails buzzing in her pocket, one arbitrarily urgent request after another. “I’ve got to get back,” she said. TB kept walking as Rae stood in the skyscraper shade and took a couple deep breaths before going back into her pen.
The security guard outside the building looked into her eyes with a touching combination of concern and compassion. “You all right there, Rae?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, as convincingly as she could. “I’m all right.” She forced a smile before letting her face sag as she walked through the revolving door alone.
“Trying to break up with a Wall Street job is like trying to break up with a toxic boyfriend,” Ellen told Rae. “They give you a nice present—aka a massive bonus—right before Valentine’s Day, and it makes you overlook all the glaring problems in the relationship.”
Rae, Ellen, and Mina were getting coffee on a Saturday afternoon in the West Village. None of them had time for brunch. They were at Partners Coffee, an old 1920s artist studio converted into a bougie haunt for slurping down five-dollar cold brews and posting photos on social media of heart-shaped latte art. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out onto the yellow cab circus of Seventh Avenue and down toward the distant Freedom Tower at the south end of the island. Triangular in shape, with white exposed brick and wooden ceiling beams, Partners was wedged into a crowded street corner, andRae didn’t like how it felt as if the corners had been sawed off just so it would fit in.
“And you say you want a new job, but something keeps you holding on to the old one, justifying why he’ll get better this year,” Mina added, holding her iced almond-milk latte in one hand as she swiped through a dating app with the other.
“And he’s so clingy and expects you to be there for him twenty-four seven,” Ellen added. “And when you do finally get another offer, you get cold feet because you can’t even remember who you were without Mr. Wall Street in your life.”
“You’ve got to get out,” Mina said, tilting her head to evaluate a digital suitor on her phone.
“It’s time,” Ellen agreed. “Sarah agrees with us.”
