(10:07 a.m.) they called you the blackwater of finance
(10:10 a.m.) Dramatic.
(10:12 a.m.) they call into question your relationships with treasury officials
(10:12 a.m.) and your influence on EESA in ’08
(10:13 a.m.) and how the hell china is letting you launch the onshore mutual fund
(10:15 a.m.) I didn’t realize you were interested in a career in journalism.
“What are you smiling at?” Amina whispers across their shared table; she’s making a rare appearance on campus today. Although she’s taking it half as seriously—more focused on her art career than school—Amina also needs to make headway on her own graduate thesis: Latin American studies, the evolution of power, protest, and progressivism in Vargas Llosa’s work as a reflection of broader ideological polarization and disappointments of democracy within the region.
“Just something on Twitter,” Lili replies, setting her phone face down.
As the day goes on, she tells herself to stop texting him. It’s just that not many people get the hilarity that is Chomsky calling Rawls a personal friend, then proceeding to eviscerate his entire theory of justice, or the ridiculous choke hold that Rumsfeld’s offhand construct of knowns and unknowns still has on poli-sci undergrads—(7:07 p.m.) I’m just saying, what about unknown knowns(7:13 p.m.) Lili, you’re entirely missing the point. Each time her phone buzzes, she forces back her fast smile.
There are so many reasons she shouldn’t see him again.
He’s older than her. Much older—forty-five to her almost twenty-three. As Amina disappears into the stacks, long black hair gleaming in the library sunlight, Lili sneaks another look at his birth chart, still saved on her phone: January 3, 1977. A birth chart full of red flags.
He represents everything she finds reprehensible. His entire industry propagates Western hegemony, exploiting people for profit, letting the world burn as long as the S&P 500 ticks up.
Fuck, he could be a libertarian. A wholly unironic libertarian, with dog-eared copies ofThe Fountainhead. Brings up the state of nature in casual conversation, abhors the welfare state that kept her from falling through the cracks after her parents died.
Or worse, he could be a conservative. God, what if he’s a neocon? Aggressive globalization, the American empire, honest-to-God, earnest quoting of Huntington and Fukuyama—fuck, Hobbes. So much Hobbes. Trillions into the military, a Leviathan twisting into every corner of the world, force and fraud as virtues in any war that drives the global spread of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism.
He was a functioning, coherent adult during 9/11, older than she isnow. Christ, BlackRiver even has an ownership stake in Halliburton; has a stake in almost every major listed company globally. She’s written entire papers attacking circular ownership in asset management, with BlackRiver one of the worst offenders.
As they keep texting, she grasps for reasons to stay away, create safe distance from the memory of that night with him. It’s just—it’s like her mind dissolved. Fell open, and fell silent.
She knows nothing good can come of someone meeting a need that deeply.
But Lili does stupid things sometimes.
It’s a messy blur at The Flower Shop later that week: Friday night, her birthday. Clamor and spilt drinks, salt under her nails, stickiness of lime juice smeared across the back of her hand. A bright, buoyant buzz of alcohol grabs Lili strong and early, blurring the night into grins, loud music, spontaneous hugs. Inside the packed bar—wood-paneled walls, kitschy floral seats, atrocious art and tchotchkes from the seventies—everyone crowds into one booth: their closest friends from undergrad, a bunch of Jackie’s modeling crew, Amina’s downtown art, publishing, and fashion friends, currently paying their dues at Gagosian, FSG, and Helmut Lang, Jamie’s old college roommates just off their restaurant shifts, smelling like browned butter and fresh thyme from prepping dinner service. Someone kicks off a bar-wide rendition of “Happy Birthday,” and Lili flushes, embarrassed and delighted. Cheers of “happy birthday,” and where did Amina get a kazoo? Jackie drops shots onto the table, hollow clatter of glass, bright orange-red nails, and it’sgoodtequila, now. Gathering clutter of cocktails, crumpled napkins, dying batteries on phones, and Lili shimmies out of the booth, unsteady feet, dark and noisy, babble of conversations, the glint of the tiny nazar bracelet, golden on her wrist, that Amina just gave her as a birthday gift, from her own grandparents in Iran. Squeezing into the tiny bathroom with her friends, Lili takes a strong gulp of her drink, and taps through her contacts:Finance Guy, Don’t Text.Music thuds through the walls as Jackie narrates some recent dating app story, trying to fluff her red curls in the mirror, while Amina checks the sharp line of her eyeliner.
She only needs to get him out of her system. That’s all. The thought of it will fester, otherwise—
A text alert buzzes in her foster family group chat.
Jane Remnick(11:47 p.m.) Hi Lili. Sorry, it isn’t a good time to have you visit. Busy with work.
Lili stares at the text. The laughter of her friends feels distant.
A simple response, no recognition of her birthday.
She clutches the cold sink.
It hits her, like a blow: how much she’d wanted them to say yes; how badly she’d been wanting to revisit places she’d once called home and see if they still felt warm to her. Not just Marin, but San Francisco—places with her parents, memories of her childhood.
She looks in the grimy mirror. She sees the features of her parents, caught between her own face and fading memories of them: her mother’s brown eyes, her father’s cheekbones; and her own building fear, as she’d neared another birthday, that every step she takes further into the rest of her life is another step away from them. That one day, it will be too distant to recall: mornings in their small kitchen, the give of orange peel under her mother’s thumb, how she’d sleepily hidden in her mother’s warm black hair, listening to her delighted laugh on the phone with relatives back home in Beirut, while her father cooked breakfast: runny eggs in fresh shakshuka, the growing San Francisco sunlight, fog breaking.
Worlds away, now.
Lili grips the sink tighter.
You’re supposed to be here,she thinks.You’re supposed to be here.
