Opening Belle Read online

  When we get to the golf cart, a uniformed waiter comes over to make sure we don’t get too thirsty from the bottom of the driveway to the house. He offers us some rosé champagne. I take one and, still standing, empty the contents in two suffocating gulps. Bruce passes on his so I take his and gulp that too. I put both empty glasses back on the tray. The waiter looks impressed with me as I turn back to the cart.

  “Let’s go,” I say to the driver, jumping in the seat next to him and not beside Bruce.

  Bruce sees him cradling a walkie-talkie. “I need you to preorder me a cold one, man,” he says like some demanding toddler in the backseat. “Tell them you have a desperate guest.” He does this while he texts on his phone, as if he has something important to take care of.

  The driver doesn’t even crack a smile. He lifts the walkie-talkie, eyes on the road, and inquires about the type of beer being served. A voice on the other end relays the fact that while it’s a top-shelf bar, Mr. McPherson isn’t serving beer tonight. Bruce digests the beer part of this answer while I digest the name part. McPherson? King? Amy is in a house share with King and his family? Kevin’s belt seems to be strangling my middle.

  The cart stops at the perfect place to inhale the ocean’s magnificence and the modern art sculptures. The statue on the front lawn appears to be a bodacious woman holding a giant earth on her head. She’s made of shiny metal.

  “Looks like you,” says Bruce, and I can’t answer him nor pull my eyes away from Amy. My world is upside down and I’m being sliced in two by a belt I borrowed from my eight-year-old. Boy.

  Amy stands in a floor-length maxi dress that makes her look like some dewy-eyed trophy wife instead of the smart, brash managing director she is. King stands next to her, hand on her ass, greeting a guy I recognize as the latest Internet bazillionaire in caveman fashion. They chest-bump. Two middle-aged white men chest-bumping just looks stupid and I hear Bruce snort under his breath. Amy sees me and waves and I can’t figure out how to get myself out of the cart and up those few steps. I hate being bulldozed. I never saw this coming.

  Amy breaks from King’s grip and comes over to Bruce and me. We appear to be two random people removed from the beach and placed here as a joke. She plants a kiss on my cheek and giggles through her whisper.

  “There are several ways to get ahead, girlfriend. Welcome to our coming-out party.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Better Offer

  BY SEPTEMBER, Amy is living with King and he has left his family behind, like a shoe style he tired of. Amy has no intention of marrying him; she’s just enjoying the elevation of her career, the changed status of her social life, and King’s intense attraction to a woman with no domestic ambition. She will not be begging him for babies. Marcus informs me that Amy is capable of pole dance–worthy gymnastics in the bedroom and though King is almost twelve years her senior, he manages to keep up with her through pharmaceutical encouragement. There may be fewer of us but still we have no secrets.

  I remember the holiday party, nine months ago, when Amy was appalled by the women flirting at bonus time in the hopes of a bigger paycheck. It’s hard to recognize her at the moment.

  I mention this vignette to Marcus, who shrugs and says, “She wasn’t beating them so she joined them. Where’s the surprise in that?” He seems defeated these days. Besides taking a terrible financial hit from the markets, he’s also contending with a harassment charge launched by Naked Girl. She was going to be one of the fired employees, one that Manchester realized they didn’t need, so she beat them to it by plopping harassment charges into the human resources in-box and leaving. Naked Girl maintains she was not promoted because she was having sex with him, that Marcus held her non-career back in order to maintain control over her as his girlfriend. My stomach churns when I hear of women like Tiffany who never had much career ambition yet opportunistically yank the inequity card.

  The purchase of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase closed in June but it will be early 2010 before their trading platforms are fully merged. Manchester will take a full year to merge with us. Like the Bear employees, we too sit in isolation where remnants of fired employees—family photos, deal mementos, and the bulletin board of chopped Hermès ties (whenever a huge trade was executed, the trader would be tackled, held down while someone chopped his tie off before pinning it to the board) now look like roadside grave markers. What happened to my career is a question that jumps out at me each day when I lean against or sit at the desk of someone who used to work here but has since vaporized.

  Without the anxiety of selling mortgages, my job has gotten easier. I look at balance sheets with real numbers on them of companies I believe in. The clients I have left are nice to me, and our trades are more long-term ideas we both want to see grow. Cheetah Global has begun trading with me as a Manchester Bank employee but at a fraction of the volume we once created. Henry has promoted a woman named Ariane Thanik to do much of his work and she has negated the need for Henry and me to speak. He called me once, just to tell me that he would no longer be the daily contact for investment banks, that Ariane would be that person who made more of the trading decisions for Cheetah. He told me that because of our Glass Ceiling Club discussions he specifically wanted a woman for the job. It wasn’t because he felt an inequity he wanted to address, but rather because he agreed a woman could be more levelheaded, risk-averse, and representative of fifty percent of the population. Henry was being groomed to take over for Tim and would eventually run all of Cheetah. He never mentioned our terrible time in that apartment.

  I felt a thrill for Henry, a genuine happiness for someone I used to care about. I missed the mental challenge of him forcing me to learn new things but I would find that somewhere else. Whenever I feel a wave of sadness about our really not knowing each other for the rest of our lives, I smack it down and wait for the healing power of time to wipe it away. A few times I wanted to reach for the phone just to update him on everything: the end of Feagin Dixon as we knew it, the evaporating markets, the scattering of GCC—but it just isn’t possible. We had been something else that existed in a different place and time.

  My only real professional friendship, if one could call it that, is with Kathryn Peterson. Kathryn was made a partner at Manchester Bank. These days she is Kathryn’s version of happy, which looks a lot like Kathryn’s version of unhappy, but I have a sense of her now, and there’s a sincerity about her that I like.

  Visiting with her is like a trip to the could-have-been-me museum. Kathryn is wealthier than me in the bank account but empty in everything else. I visit her at her trading turret almost daily, to get a sense of which toxic positions are left and what we’re doing to get ourselves out of them. Nobody wants to buy the bonds we hold in inventory. Each night we mark the stuff to market, meaning we pick a shot-in-the-dark value of what it’s worth and every day, with no buyers in sight, it becomes worth less. Manchester stock trades down accordingly, day after day. The McElroy net worth is less than it was three years ago and I sometimes imagine all the time I could have been with my children, been with Bruce, instead of my sleep-deprived, overeating, overdrinking, almost celibate lifestyle. To end up with this much in the bank, I could’ve done real things and still had a job, just a regular type of job.

  On September 10 I went upstairs to speak with Kathryn when CNN announced that Lehman reported a $3.9 billion loss and was selling a majority stake in their investment management business. I sighed with relief, expecting the stock to rebound. It slid 7 percent. I wondered when this thing would find a bottom. The former CFO of the bank, Erin Callan, possibly the most senior woman on Wall Street, was asked to step down in June and she did. Now every discussion about the company comes from the CEO himself, Dick Fuld.

  On September 13 I sat with Kathryn to listen to Tim Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, make a televised announcement. Tim admitted we were looking at a possible emergency liquidation of Lehman assets. All the financial stocks traded off again, lowe
r than I ever thought possible. On September 15, before the market opened, Dick Fuld told the world that Lehman Brothers was filing for bankruptcy protection. Chapter 11. The market dropped over five hundred points, the most since September 11, 2001. It dropped like the world had lost its floor and I filled sell orders like a concession stand attendant filling orders for French fries.

  My daily visits to Kathryn become therapy sessions, knowing that as long as one of us doesn’t crack, we both are okay. On September 20, there are rumors now of Korean buyers willing to buy portions of the ailing banks, there are southern banks rumored to be stepping up too. The discount window is open from the Fed, meaning investment banks can now borrow money from the government. Feagin Dixon wouldn’t have fallen had we been allowed to do this but even with this change of law, nothing seems to calm the markets.

  On September 29, the market is plunging and I visit Kathryn because she isn’t as rattled as the other people on my floor. She isn’t throwing phones or punching screens or swearing about horses’ backsides. She is staring at her screen and watching everything turn red, and the only thing turning green is the price of gold. Investors are running for anything safe, safer than stocks or bonds or the U.S. dollar, and that’s why only gold is trading up.

  I notice Australian currencies swing higher and I smile and think of Henry and how he was buying everything Aussie six months ago. Henry is so sad and so rich.

  Without looking at me Kathryn keeps typing and starts talking.

  “I like you well enough, Isabelle,” she says. “And you know I’m not interested in being part of movements or change or anything like that and I’m sorry I didn’t help you and your friends out.”

  I let out a short laugh. “Yes, well that didn’t go as planned,” I say. “You know those venture capital firms are the same; the technology start-ups are the same. Anywhere the culture is loose and lucrative, the same thing exists. Maybe our mistake was thinking Wall Street was unique when it comes to the advancement of women.” I can’t believe I’ve quoted the things Elizabeth said to me at brunch eight months ago.

  She doesn’t seem to hear me. “And I like you well enough to not allow you to be made a fool of.”

  “Kathryn. It’s not a problem. The guys don’t bother me and I’m done with thinking I’m going to be a partner here. I see things for what they are now. Don’t you worry about me.” I wink.

  Kathryn lifts an eyebrow and turns back to her turret. “You see, that’s what’s so maddening to me. You’re too nice. You just don’t see people for who they are. People like you get taken advantage of.”

  “I don’t feel taken advantage of, I just wanted a fair shake, but a lot of life is luck. Maybe at a different bank, things would have been different for me,” I say with no enthusiasm.

  Kathryn seems glazed, like she isn’t even listening.

  “You aren’t hearing me. This isn’t about Feagin Dixon, it’s about your husband, Bruce. He’s no good.”

  I watch her expertly manicured, not pink, not beige, not white fingernails stop tapping on her keyboard. I watch as she takes one of those hands that the fingers are on and she places it on my thigh. I stare at the hand like it’s some repulsive insect.

  “You have no right to speak of someone you don’t know like that,” I say crisply. She’s never even met Bruce.

  Then she places both hands on either arm of my chair and swings me to look right at her. I don’t think I’ve ever made full-on eye contact with her. It’s unnerving.

  “He cheats on you, does yoga with someone I know and has sex with her.”

  When I look at her it’s as if some ugly reptile has attached itself to her tongue. Everything I thought about her was wrong. Kathryn is certifiable.

  “You do not know my husband. He may not have a great job and maybe your yogi friend sees him at the gym, but he is not a cheater. And besides, I’m your only real friend. Bitch.”

  She looks startled. I look startled. Whose words are coming out of my mouth?

  Kathryn wants to try again.

  “How do I put this? He’s into tantric. Some of my yoga associates practice this with a partner, and the extended sexual revelation is intense. He’s partnered with a friend of mine, someone he met at a baby playdate at your apartment. He spends money on her, little stuff—bicycles, hotel rooms, and private coaching. But I’m bothered by this for you because I wasn’t sure you knew and you seem like the kind of person who wants the full picture. You’re the one making the money. You’ve been all in at this place, and all in with your family. I just thought you should know.”

  “Tantric what? Don’t you think if my husband were into anything beyond laundry and chicken nuggets I’d know about it? It’s not like he’s going to an office every day. He’s home.”

  “Not at nine p.m. he’s not.”

  “Because it’s a yoga relaxation class. It helps him sleep.”

  “But my friend—”

  “What friend of yours? You don’t have friends. You have people you pay to be nice to you, to try and keep you on this side of sane. I had no idea you were such a calculating bullshitter to say something so hurtful to me. Do I intimidate you? Is this some psycho head game of yours? Are you worried Manchester Bank will assign Cheetah to just me? Is that what this is about?” I say, while a part of my brain begins listing the clues; Bruce’s constant texting, his new love of social media, him being online during vacation, and his obsession with his body. He checked every cliché box, and I never even noticed.

  Kathryn is silent and puts her hands to her sides. “People who enjoy tantric sex as part of their yoga practice don’t always consider it cheating. They justify it because of the revealing nature of the practice. To truly achieve enlightenment and extended sexual pleasure the mind has to be so centered and yet adrift. It’s like tripping on drugs except there are no drugs save for the limits of your own mind.”

  I let this garbled woo woo language swirl around for a full ten seconds before I respond, “What the WHAT???”

  Nothing I can say right now will make sense and I feel jittery and sick to my stomach, like one of those ticker symbols in front of me, blinking around in value, not knowing which direction to trade. I’m living in a world where everything and everybody in it is make-believe.

  CHAPTER 39

  Dead Cat Bounce

  THE CHINESE consider the number 7 to be lucky. I’m staring at my illuminated screen, black background, everything else red, like spilt blood. My screen is full of 7s and none of them are lucky. The Dow has lost 777 points, or over 7 percent of its value in one day, one terrible day, this terrible day. Bruce and I have been married for nine years and my husband evidently has a seven-year itch.

  I search the Internet for tantric yoga enlightenment and I learn that it’s wonderful for channeling the mind/body/spirit connection and leads to improved sexual health. With the sex Bruce and I haven’t been having he certainly isn’t getting much home-tutoring. My mind whirls and I read on. Tantric yoga is great for people who have lost their soul connection in the mundane world. What the hell? Belle McElroy is apparently the mundane world that my husband suffers within.

  I imagine Bruce being stretched into fantastic positions by what I picture to be a lithe, tattooed young mom he met in my living room, the living room that I paid for, that came with the apartment that I bought.

  I know that the first step of grief is denial. Why am I not denying this news? How do I know that Kathryn is right? Maybe the denial stage was the constant throb I’ve had in the back of my head for months. Maybe it started in that golf cart in Southampton where it was apparent that everything between us was wrong. Why have I always defended Bruce and his non-contributing life?

  I think about how easy it’s been for Bruce to sit back and justify his low efforts while getting to point a finger at the wife who does everything for him, who enables each new idea that pops into his head, and who gives him the chance to navel-gaze and decide he isn’t being sexually fulfilled. How simplistic
for him to get to pretend I’m a bad person because I work on what he considers the evil Wall Street.

  People began packing to leave for the day, wiped out by the markets. I want to plead to any of them, these Dicks of the Dais, women of Glass Ceilings, to stay with me, to please, please stay and hold me close in this terrible time. Don’t leave me alone on this giant floor of this broken-down company.

  I’ve been watching people file out one by one, to be with their own families, to be comforted by someone else, people willing to love them, flaws and all. I wonder how welcome they’ll all be now that they’re worth so much less money? I think of how Bruce enjoyed dropping $20 tips for $5 beers with the wink of “plenty more where that came from” to assorted waitresses. I thought he was just generous. Part of me had applauded Bruce and the way he acted, but really, he was mocking me. Maybe when he acted supportive of me on a big trade, he was also clapping himself on the back for his choice of mate and her ability to sow and reap while he performed sun salutations.

  By 11 p.m. there are only three humans left on the trading floor, three men I hardly know who work in the risk arbitration department.

  I should call a friend right now, a Carron or an Elizabeth. What do regular people do at times like this? I’ve had bad things happen to me before but I always fixed things on my own. I’m a fixer, I remind myself, and I need to resolve this. But I don’t know where to start and I catch myself for one weak moment wishing I could call Henry.

  I want to see my kids right now but I’m not going home. I’m afraid of what I’ll say. I have to be sure of the outcome I want before I enter a room with Bruce in it. If I get sidetracked with drama and tears and rebuttals, I’ll lose the resolve that has brought me to the decision that I have already made. It’s interesting that Bruce hasn’t called once today. He doesn’t miss anything about me.