“I hear you,” Rae said, pacing the white-gold beach of Turks and Caicos, where she and Dustin were spending a long weekend. “I’ll connect with Kelly and circle back with an updated model ASAP.”
She felt the other beach chair loungers judging her for being one of those New Yorkers who taints vacation with deal talk. It bothered her, but not as much as it would have a year or two ago. There was a certain thrill that came from feeling so needed, even if it was only by her boss.
“Sounds good,” her boss said. “Hope you’re enjoying your getaway.”
“Yes,” Rae said, looking out at the turquoise water, willing her boss to hear the irony in his words. “Very relaxing.”
After hanging up, she texted Kelly, the junior analyst who’d recently joined the firm—a younger, cheaper replacement for TB andGQ. They’d hired only one person rather than two, because entry-level salary costs were apparently too much of a drain on billion-dollar profits.
Rae had pushed hard for the new hire to be female, and she felt like her voice might have been heard. Maybe that was why she was taking work calls on vacation, or maybe she was just more invested in winning this deal than she wanted to admit.
Rae had helped present the pitch book at the client meeting, meaning she’d walked through two slides and half of a third with only a handful of interruptions from the higher-ups. The conversation had then slid over to football and golf, the true linchpins of Wall Street deals, but she still hoped this might be a turning point in her career fromcog in wheeltochain in wheel.
Hi Kelly—pls increase EBITDA margins for year 3 and step up 0.25% after that. Need as soon as possible. Thanks!
Rae proudly evaluated the way she’d spelled out “as soon as possible” rather than using the aggressive acronym and how she’d thanked Kelly, even punctuating her gratitude with an exclamation point. She was clearly a much better wannabe boss than the ones who’d hazed her through her early years.
Kelly replied instantaneously.Of course. Will do ASAP. Thanks!
Picturing Kelly hurrying out from brunch with her friends—her only social excursion of the week—to head back to the office, Rae nearly felt guilty before recalling how many Scramblette brunches she’d bailed on for work, and how even now she was working during a romantic weekend away. That was just how investment banking was. Kelly knew what she’d been signing up for.
As Rae walked back to rejoin Dustin on their beach chairs, her phone buzzed with an incoming call. Anticipating her boss calling back, Rae picked up and said, with disguised displeasure, “Hi again.”
“Kiddo!”
Rae stopped walking, bare feet slipping in the shifting sand. “Dad?”
“Any chance you’re free for dinner tonight?” her dad asked, as if they’d last seen each other weeks ago rather than years ago. “I’m in New York for a conference through tomorrow morning.”
The normalcy shocked her nearly as much as it soothed her.
“I’m on vacation,” Rae said in a thin voice, the kind that gave cringeworthy flashbacks to her first year of work, when she’d shriveled up anytime she’d been asked a question. “Turks and Caicos with my boyfriend,” she added, though he hadn’t asked.
Her dad made a cough-humph sound, as if Rae wasn’t old enough to have a boyfriend, let alone be flying to a tropical island with him. “Ah,” he said. “Too bad. I’m reporting directly to the CFO now. We’re putting together our growth plan to expand across the country, and I’ve told everyone that my daughter is one of Wall Street’s rising stars and could help us out. Think you could hook us up with some funds?”
Rae felt the letdown as quickly as she’d felt the lift. He was calling with an ulterior motive. Still, there was a certain triumph that came with picturing him bragging about her and believing she might be valuable. It made her feel like she might be gaining points against his stepdaughters.
The manufacturing company he worked for was too small to gain Wall Street’s interest, but she didn’t want to disappoint him. “I’d help you if I had any power,” she said. “But I’m not exactly running the place.”
There was a silence, filled by squawking sea gulls on her side and city sirens on his.
“I could probably make an introduction, though,” Rae heard herself say. “To the capital markets team.”
“Knew I could count on you,” her dad said, in his resonant voice that reminded Rae of thebeforetimes, the years of shooting baskets together in the driveway and celebrating her straight-A report cards with double-scoop ice cream cones from the dairy farm down the road. “I’ve got to run to the next meeting now,” he said. “But I’ll circle back with a text with more info.”
“Sounds good.”
“I love you, kiddo,” her dad said, and Rae thought she might’ve detected some self-awareness in the way he said it, like he might be shuffling his feet a bit realizing that he shouldn’t just be telling her that he loved her now, when he needed something, but that he should be reminding her of this on a regular basis—that unconditional love was, in fact, supposed to be the core gift a father gave his child. And maybe he was acknowledging also that Rae wasn’t a kiddo anymore, but he wanted to cling to the past as much as she did, to that undamaged era when Rae had assumed that dads always stayed and her dad had assumed daughters always forgave.
“Love you too,” she gritted out, attempting detachment by excludingIand tacking ontoo, which made it more of a reply than a declaration. But she still felt the truth of the phrase all the way down to her toes, where sand stuck to un-rubbed-in sunscreen like glitter to Elmer’s glue.
Her dad hung up first, and Rae walked back to the chairs she and Dustin had staked out earlier this morning, when the beach had been shaded with elongated palm tree patterns.
Dustin lay shirtless in a bathing suit, a blue-and-white towel draped over his head to block the sun. On the table beside his chair was a bottle of sunscreen, the Stall Street Journal—newly filled with a few tropical fragments—and two iced teas rimmed with lemon wedges.
Dustin had been showing some improvement since seeing Kim, the therapist who advocated physical movement. It had been Kim’s idea for them to take a long weekend and change up Dustin’s environment. Rae had converted this into action by immediately booking flights.
Rae tapped the top of his towel-draped head, like she was knocking on a door. “Can I come into your cabana, sir?”
