“I haven’t even shown you the roof!” the landlord said, after shoving the fat lease application into her hand. “Even more impressive than the tub.”
“That’s all right,” Rae said, anticipating how cluttered Manhattan would appear from the Financial District’s skyscraper vantage point compared to Williamsburg’s river-rimmed panoramic. “I don’t need to see the roof.”
“Whatcha working on?” Rae’s new colleague asked, spying on her from the desk next to hers.
It was a weekday at the end of September, and TB’s old seat had finally been filled by a bland white man, whom Rae thought of as her co-wannabe boss.
Co-wannabe had been assigned to a window seat but decided it had too much of a glare so had moved himself to this desk instead, cluttering up the space with Nerf footballs and trophies called “tombstones” to commemorate deals they’d worked on. The men in the office collected and compared tombstones withDid you know I was varsity captain in high school?energy.
“I’m doing a WAAC sensitivity analysis for a DCF,” Rae answered, fingers darting across the keyboard in a winless race.
“Damn,” Co-wannabe said, as he set about rearranging his tombstones from a V formation to a horseshoe. “Never seen a girl crunch numbers like that before.”
Rae shot him a scowl, but Co-wannabe was too busy lusting over his trophies. “I have more tombstones than you, though,” he said.
It wasn’t true. Rae had counted as he’d lined them up his first day. She just kept most of hers in her bottom drawer, so her peripheral vision wouldn’t snag on them and start associating them with success.
“Congratulations,” she deadpanned, then stood up to seek refuge in her banker bunker.
Her stall was occupied, and laughter leaked from under the gap in the door—that attempted muffling sound that only doubled the output.
It must be the junior analyst Kelly, catching up on a group text with friends, venting about wannabe bosses or sharing screenshots of dating app prospects for collective analysis.
Rae’s prick of annoyance directed at Kelly was trailed by another prick, directed at herself, for being one of those people who was annoyed by the sound of joy.
Locking herself two doors down, Rae took out the Stall Street Journal from her blazer pocket. She’d decided to keep the journal—a visible symbol of emotional growth—to show that she no longer needed to discard the past in dramatic tantrums.
She’d hoped a creative surge might be the breakup’s silver lining, but the numbness had left her infuriatingly unproductive, refusing to let pain be harvested for poetic profits. Now she tried again to summon a creative phrase to describe heartbreak, but the page remained blank and smug.
Kelly’s toilet flushed, followed by another giggle that haunted Rae like her own early-twenties ghost.
Closing her eyes, she tried to take a nap, but she wasn’t tired. Her body had finally figured out how to function normally on reduced rest. She wondered if this might imply that love, like sleep, was something you could train yourself not to need.
“Cell C43 should link to B256, not 255,” Rae said, standing over Kelly’s desk as she reviewed a full-screen Excel model Kelly had put together for a deal they were working on.
The company was an HR software platform, and Rae was having Kelly prepare a pitch book to show why the company should acquire a project management business to diversify its products—and more importantly, bring in more revenue. Having only received the financial statements earlier today, they were scrambling for a client meeting tomorrow.
They were the only two left in the office at tenP.M.on an October Tuesday, which happened to be Rae’s twenty-eighth birthday. No one at the office knew, and Rae hadn’t wanted them to. She didn’t need more reasons to analyze why she felt even more lost at twenty-eight than she had at twenty-five, or admit that she didn’t have any plans to celebrate other than taking a bubble bath in her small but spotless tub across the street.
Ellen had abruptly flown back to be with her family in Washington, DC, over the weekend after her dad had sustained a minor heart attack. He was recovering, but it had deeply shaken Ellen, and Rae too.
When Rae’s dad had texted her happy birthday today—before noon—Rae had includedI love you, Dad!in her response and even asked when he was planning to be in New York next. He hadn’t replied yet, but Rae let herself acknowledge how much she wanted him to.
Her dad had iced her out for a bit after she hadn’t been able to connect him with anyone at her bank after all because it was a perceived conflict of interest. She was glad he’d reappeared.
With Ellen’s dad’s health scare, Rae had started picturing her own dad’s funeral and the speech she’d give, if she was asked to give a speech at all. The words were soft and nostalgic, and she didn’t want to wait until he was gone to share them.
“Sorry about that,” Kelly said, relinking the formula in the massive grid.
Rae brought her attention back to the computer screen in front of them. “Save ‘sorry’ for when you knock over someone’s coffee,” she said, recalling how often she used to apologize to her wannabe bosses, and how none of the guys ever had. “For work stuff, just say, ‘Thanks for explaining’ or ‘I’ll incorporate that going forward.’”
“I’ll incorporate that going forward,” Kelly said, nodding with a sternness that didn’t come naturally.
Rae felt a punch of remorse as she realized she was telling this girl to harden herself, but the best way—the only way—to survive Wall Street with your soul intact was by playing a rigid character, the armor so thick that none of the criticism or shallow values corrupted the core. That’s how Rae had done it, though increasingly she wondered how much had seeped through the shell. The lines weren’t as clear as they’d once been.
The motion-sensitive overhead lights turned off. The office was dark except for the false glow of the computers and the skyline lights right outside the window—worlds away.
Rae waved her hands until the bulbs lurched alert, then continued coaching Kelly. “And for the EBITDA calculation in row thirty-two, add back the marketing costs in row eighty-four.”
