COME TOGETHER - Interlude A: Number 4
Jul. 31st, 2007 06:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dethoratsTitle: New York, New York
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2550
Nine forty-two pm. Snow fell, grey-tinged and sooty instead of the clean white flakes he remembered from his midwestern childhood. Charles Foster Ofdensen spared another glance at the tastefully expensive watch on his wrist and cautiously quickened his steps. Slush covered the sidewalks, a dirty and dangerous mass of half-melted, half-frozen snow pockmarked by countless heels, sneakers, and no-longer-shiny wingtips. The last thing he needed was to slip and fall. At the least he would make a fool of himself and spend a delayed, damp ride back to his apartment all the while facing the prospect of developing a cold. At the worst he would injure himself badly enough to sustain a concussion or broken bone and, in New York City at least, it was unlikely anyone would spare the time to help him to the hospital. Still, as long as he was careful, he could probably make the nine forty-five.
The market had closed a while ago but as the youngest member of his firm, Charles had of course remained on the floor taking notes of the after-hours wheeling and dealing and filling out much of the tedious paperwork that seemed to compose his days. At least the Exchange was pretty much on top of the station and catching a train at this time of night was more a matter of remembering the revised evening schedule than having to fight through the crowds like in the morning. He spared another glance at the brushed gold Concord, a bonus of sorts from his employer when he was hired that carried a weighty expectation of punctuality, and grabbed the chilled rail of the stairs that led beneath the level of the street. Usually he tried not to touch the germ-covered metal but haste was as necessary as injury wasn’t and besides it was cold enough that most of the nasty microscopic bugs would be long dead.
The battered, welcome form of the subway train was waiting as he trotted across the platform, briefcase tucked up under one arm to keep it out of the way, and Charles slipped through the open doors and onto a hard plastic seat with a small sigh of relief. Under the harsh glow of the lights he quickly rearranged himself; tugging the sleeves of his black trench coat down over his wrists and popping up the collar to somewhat lessen his buttoned-up appearance. No one of the five people in the car with him struck him as dangerous but he’d already dealt with one attempted mugging that winter and he was fairly sure luck would see to it that the next time he was a victim his attacker would have more than just a cheap butterfly knife. New York was in the very early stages of transforming itself, the clean up of Times Square was in full swing, but for the moment it still had a reputation as a dangerous town and Charles knew firsthand that its notoriety was deserved. So he took his precautions and kept his guard up; even though he settled back against the seat, briefcase in his lap and to all appearances close to dozing off, he kept his eyes cracked open behind his glasses and watched the tiny enclosed world around him intently as the subway car lurched and began to pick up speed.
Almost directly across from him was an older woman, ash blond hair swept up into a bun at the nape of her neck and a too-thin coat wrapped around her. She carried a smart black briefcase and a small purse that was positively hideous and likely outrageously expensive. Her feet were subtly eased out of her pumps, nylon-covered heels resting on the back edges rather than inside of the shoes. At this late hour the makeup that would have covered the crow’s feet around her eyes and the deepening lines around her mouth was largely wiped away, revealing a tired woman who worried too much and laughed infrequently. She looked vaguely familiar and Charles could only assume she worked the floor as well.
To his right was businessman, probably late thirties, with dark hair to match his standard black suit. He had a brightly colored scarf around his neck though, and red earmuffs perched on top of his head. Charles spared a quick glance at the man’s hands. They were ungloved and a gold band wrapped around the proper ring finger. As he’d assumed, the man was married, and he was muttering to himself as he dug around inside a hard-sided briefcase. He let out a small triumphant noise moments later that made Charles smile when the be-ringed hand briefly came up to his lips as he realized what he’d done. The card he fished out was large and pink and the businessman studied it intently before finally attacking it with a pen.
Farther down in the car was an elderly couple. They were both bundled up against the cold, coats bulking them up like birds with fluffed out feathers. The woman had on a floral printed headscarf beneath some bright pink earmuffs and her presumptive husband had a Russian-style fur hat perched over his wisps of white hair. They were holding hands, a pair of knitted mittens closed inside leather gloves, and murmuring quietly to each other. Behind them, facing down the expanse of the car and riding backwards, was a young man who couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Charles’ own twenty-four years. He was fidgeting and kept glancing anxiously at his watch, sliding a thin wrist out of the stretched elastic of his navy sweatshirt. A somewhat wilted bouquet of flowers rested next to him, a dozen red roses that had seen more cold than they should have interspersed with the standard white clusters of baby’s breath, and it struck Charles suddenly that he had failed largely in his observations games because it wasn’t just Monday, February 14, 1995. It was also Valentine’s Day.
Last year he’d taken Julia to dinner at one of the most exclusive restaurants in Boston. The food had been excellent and they had had a lovely time made even better by the knowledge that Julia’s mother was anxiously waiting to see if she’d come back home with a diamond on her finger. Of course that was never going to happen, at least not between the two of them, and they’d spent Valentine’s Day talking about his job offers and her nervous anticipation as she waited to hear from various graduate schools rather than romantic plans for the future. They’d ended up driving for a while afterwards, just digesting the rich meal and enjoying each other’s company and, as it always seemed to happen, Snakes ‘N’ Barrels had ended up on the stereo. Pickles and company didn’t sing about love quite the same way as any of the other late 80s hair bands that had been their pale competition. Their love was raunchy, certainly, but in SnB’s world it was also either intense and fleeting or forever – forever because one or both parties was dead and gone. Julia had gone off on a tangent about what must have happened to the red-haired singer to make him write songs about tragic love and Charles had been content to let her talk. Love was something that he didn’t think about very often and even when he did it was largely as an abstract concept rather than as something that could be related to himself.
They had both graduated in May and Julia had gone to sunny California and the foreign land of Berkeley on a scholarship much to her parents’ dismay. He’d seen her off, slipped a farewell present of a Freud biography and an alleged tell-all about Snakes ‘N’ Barrels written by Bullets onto the passenger seat next to her map with its notes and suggested stops. She was free and he was happy for her but in truth he had been surprised at how much he had missed her too. Other than his roommate, Julia had been his closest friend at Harvard and then, with his summer packed with law classes and his move to New York City at the end of August to start his job, he hadn’t had time to meet new people outside of workplace and classroom interactions. Loneliness was nothing new but he had grown accustomed to their Friday nights and Julia’s intelligent conversation and interests that were often so different from his own. His life seemed smaller without her in it.
The move hadn’t helped alleviate that feeling. Boston had been big but it had nothing on New York. Charles felt anonymous among the great echoing concrete caverns, another wheel in the always-ticking clock of life that beat steadily in the city. Time marched by with little but the gradual change in weather to mark its passage and he’d been in New York for half a year already as he sat there reflecting on the subway and those six months had passed in the blink of an eye. Valentine’s Day. It was hard to believe the holiday was already over. He’d spent Thanksgiving and Christmas busy with work and more law classes and New Year’s Day he had wisely remained in his apartment rather than brave the out of town crowds. Charles’ gaze flitted across the subway car to study the older woman again. She looked as if the engineered ‘day of love’ had passed her by as well. That could be him in another twenty or thirty years and the mental image that presented itself wasn’t pretty. This life, the one he’d worked so hard for, was turning out to be one he didn’t really want.
Potentia Investments was a small but powerful hedge fund. It counted several independent European investors among its clients along with about ten corporations. Hedge funds were something of the frontier of Wall Street, the wild and wooly fringe of investing where the real action took place. The lack of oversight was wonderful but the consequences of failure were severe. Charles knew he had the guts to stomach risky investments without developing an ulcer but at present he was the lowest man on the totem pole and his taste of the action had largely involved filling out forms and speaking with investors’ secretaries’ secretaries. His employers had him researching and conducting what was dangerously close to insider trading as well, learning about potential investments and then finding out as much dirt on each prospect as he could regardless of the ethicality of his methods. He didn’t mind the gray legality he was dealing in – it was educational and exciting – but having his recommendations ignored was grating. It was probably the height of hubris to feel that way so early into his career but Charles frankly didn’t care. Right was right after all.
Wall Street itself was turning out to be far more stodgy than the press surrounding it suggested. It was all work of the tedious sort coupled with mathematically precise gambling and a marketer’s need to sell. Charles had nothing against work but he liked to see, and reap, the rewards of his labor fairly frequently. With the market, returns could happen in a minute or it could take years and he wasn’t sure he had enough patience to help manipulate the global economy one security at a time. About the only positive aside from the vast amount of information he was collecting and his decent salary was the distraction of law school. Law was exciting the way he remembered economics being back when he was an undergrad. So many possibilities and it was all so very exploitable if one only knew enough. Mutable, in the right hands the law could become anything. If he hadn’t agreed, and signed a VERY binding contract – he’d checked it out from every angle and it was damningly ironclad – to work for Potentia for one whole year before seeking other employment, Charles would have left the world of high finance to devote himself to law school and preparing for the bar exam full time. As it was, his part time attendance had become the highlight of his life and there was probably something truly sad about that fact. He needed to get out more, as Julia would say, and live a little.
Something else Julia had said to him in her most recent letter, a fairly long missive for a change that had been mailed over the winter break, struck him as he continued to covertly study the worn-looking woman across from him. There was no point in having power that wasn’t wanted, she had written. Being able to make secret financial decisions for billionaires and multinational corporations had sounded exciting three years ago but now Charles was finding it more of a chore. He couldn’t really DO anything besides fatten his wallet and those of his employers and he wanted more than that. He wanted to exert REAL power, the kind that made his bosses quake in their boots when they heard about certain plans leaked by the corporations they worked for. He wanted to BE that multinational corporation, but with the kind of freedom Potentia exercised as an unregulated hedge fund. Going into politics he had dismissed as too confining, having too much oversight and responsibility. He wanted unfettered opportunities, the ability to create a world in the image that HE saw. But that kind of thing only happened in the movies and Hollywood was too fake for his tastes.
Charles sighed and watched the subway car slowly empty around him as his fellow passengers got off at their stops. His presumptive fellow Wall Street worker was the last to leave, getting off only four stops before his, and he watched her stooped form slowly climb the stairs until the train resumed moving and carried him out of sight. He rode the FIVE line all the way out into Brooklyn and got out at the last stop available at that hour. The Church Avenue station was about seven blocks from his apartment and he headed out into the still-falling, still-dirty snow on careful feet. He didn’t have any answers yet but there were six more months of his contract to go and he was sure he would think of something. If nothing else, he had law school to tide him over and perhaps he really should get around to exploring his new city.
Charles stopped at the local People’s Drug, still open even though it was after ten thirty at night and conveniently located only half a block from his building. Under the lights and the blast of forced hot air, he took in the picked over remains of their holiday selection. They had all their left over Valentine’s Day candy marked down to half price and he bought a small red heart-shaped box of chocolate cordials for three dollars and fifty cents and juggled it with his briefcase and the day’s mail while he unlocked the door to his apartment. Charles ate the entire box while he did some homework and readied material he thought he’d need for the next day of trading and was in bed by one am, his alarm set to wake him after just four short hours of blessed sleep.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2550
Nine forty-two pm. Snow fell, grey-tinged and sooty instead of the clean white flakes he remembered from his midwestern childhood. Charles Foster Ofdensen spared another glance at the tastefully expensive watch on his wrist and cautiously quickened his steps. Slush covered the sidewalks, a dirty and dangerous mass of half-melted, half-frozen snow pockmarked by countless heels, sneakers, and no-longer-shiny wingtips. The last thing he needed was to slip and fall. At the least he would make a fool of himself and spend a delayed, damp ride back to his apartment all the while facing the prospect of developing a cold. At the worst he would injure himself badly enough to sustain a concussion or broken bone and, in New York City at least, it was unlikely anyone would spare the time to help him to the hospital. Still, as long as he was careful, he could probably make the nine forty-five.
The market had closed a while ago but as the youngest member of his firm, Charles had of course remained on the floor taking notes of the after-hours wheeling and dealing and filling out much of the tedious paperwork that seemed to compose his days. At least the Exchange was pretty much on top of the station and catching a train at this time of night was more a matter of remembering the revised evening schedule than having to fight through the crowds like in the morning. He spared another glance at the brushed gold Concord, a bonus of sorts from his employer when he was hired that carried a weighty expectation of punctuality, and grabbed the chilled rail of the stairs that led beneath the level of the street. Usually he tried not to touch the germ-covered metal but haste was as necessary as injury wasn’t and besides it was cold enough that most of the nasty microscopic bugs would be long dead.
The battered, welcome form of the subway train was waiting as he trotted across the platform, briefcase tucked up under one arm to keep it out of the way, and Charles slipped through the open doors and onto a hard plastic seat with a small sigh of relief. Under the harsh glow of the lights he quickly rearranged himself; tugging the sleeves of his black trench coat down over his wrists and popping up the collar to somewhat lessen his buttoned-up appearance. No one of the five people in the car with him struck him as dangerous but he’d already dealt with one attempted mugging that winter and he was fairly sure luck would see to it that the next time he was a victim his attacker would have more than just a cheap butterfly knife. New York was in the very early stages of transforming itself, the clean up of Times Square was in full swing, but for the moment it still had a reputation as a dangerous town and Charles knew firsthand that its notoriety was deserved. So he took his precautions and kept his guard up; even though he settled back against the seat, briefcase in his lap and to all appearances close to dozing off, he kept his eyes cracked open behind his glasses and watched the tiny enclosed world around him intently as the subway car lurched and began to pick up speed.
Almost directly across from him was an older woman, ash blond hair swept up into a bun at the nape of her neck and a too-thin coat wrapped around her. She carried a smart black briefcase and a small purse that was positively hideous and likely outrageously expensive. Her feet were subtly eased out of her pumps, nylon-covered heels resting on the back edges rather than inside of the shoes. At this late hour the makeup that would have covered the crow’s feet around her eyes and the deepening lines around her mouth was largely wiped away, revealing a tired woman who worried too much and laughed infrequently. She looked vaguely familiar and Charles could only assume she worked the floor as well.
To his right was businessman, probably late thirties, with dark hair to match his standard black suit. He had a brightly colored scarf around his neck though, and red earmuffs perched on top of his head. Charles spared a quick glance at the man’s hands. They were ungloved and a gold band wrapped around the proper ring finger. As he’d assumed, the man was married, and he was muttering to himself as he dug around inside a hard-sided briefcase. He let out a small triumphant noise moments later that made Charles smile when the be-ringed hand briefly came up to his lips as he realized what he’d done. The card he fished out was large and pink and the businessman studied it intently before finally attacking it with a pen.
Farther down in the car was an elderly couple. They were both bundled up against the cold, coats bulking them up like birds with fluffed out feathers. The woman had on a floral printed headscarf beneath some bright pink earmuffs and her presumptive husband had a Russian-style fur hat perched over his wisps of white hair. They were holding hands, a pair of knitted mittens closed inside leather gloves, and murmuring quietly to each other. Behind them, facing down the expanse of the car and riding backwards, was a young man who couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Charles’ own twenty-four years. He was fidgeting and kept glancing anxiously at his watch, sliding a thin wrist out of the stretched elastic of his navy sweatshirt. A somewhat wilted bouquet of flowers rested next to him, a dozen red roses that had seen more cold than they should have interspersed with the standard white clusters of baby’s breath, and it struck Charles suddenly that he had failed largely in his observations games because it wasn’t just Monday, February 14, 1995. It was also Valentine’s Day.
Last year he’d taken Julia to dinner at one of the most exclusive restaurants in Boston. The food had been excellent and they had had a lovely time made even better by the knowledge that Julia’s mother was anxiously waiting to see if she’d come back home with a diamond on her finger. Of course that was never going to happen, at least not between the two of them, and they’d spent Valentine’s Day talking about his job offers and her nervous anticipation as she waited to hear from various graduate schools rather than romantic plans for the future. They’d ended up driving for a while afterwards, just digesting the rich meal and enjoying each other’s company and, as it always seemed to happen, Snakes ‘N’ Barrels had ended up on the stereo. Pickles and company didn’t sing about love quite the same way as any of the other late 80s hair bands that had been their pale competition. Their love was raunchy, certainly, but in SnB’s world it was also either intense and fleeting or forever – forever because one or both parties was dead and gone. Julia had gone off on a tangent about what must have happened to the red-haired singer to make him write songs about tragic love and Charles had been content to let her talk. Love was something that he didn’t think about very often and even when he did it was largely as an abstract concept rather than as something that could be related to himself.
They had both graduated in May and Julia had gone to sunny California and the foreign land of Berkeley on a scholarship much to her parents’ dismay. He’d seen her off, slipped a farewell present of a Freud biography and an alleged tell-all about Snakes ‘N’ Barrels written by Bullets onto the passenger seat next to her map with its notes and suggested stops. She was free and he was happy for her but in truth he had been surprised at how much he had missed her too. Other than his roommate, Julia had been his closest friend at Harvard and then, with his summer packed with law classes and his move to New York City at the end of August to start his job, he hadn’t had time to meet new people outside of workplace and classroom interactions. Loneliness was nothing new but he had grown accustomed to their Friday nights and Julia’s intelligent conversation and interests that were often so different from his own. His life seemed smaller without her in it.
The move hadn’t helped alleviate that feeling. Boston had been big but it had nothing on New York. Charles felt anonymous among the great echoing concrete caverns, another wheel in the always-ticking clock of life that beat steadily in the city. Time marched by with little but the gradual change in weather to mark its passage and he’d been in New York for half a year already as he sat there reflecting on the subway and those six months had passed in the blink of an eye. Valentine’s Day. It was hard to believe the holiday was already over. He’d spent Thanksgiving and Christmas busy with work and more law classes and New Year’s Day he had wisely remained in his apartment rather than brave the out of town crowds. Charles’ gaze flitted across the subway car to study the older woman again. She looked as if the engineered ‘day of love’ had passed her by as well. That could be him in another twenty or thirty years and the mental image that presented itself wasn’t pretty. This life, the one he’d worked so hard for, was turning out to be one he didn’t really want.
Potentia Investments was a small but powerful hedge fund. It counted several independent European investors among its clients along with about ten corporations. Hedge funds were something of the frontier of Wall Street, the wild and wooly fringe of investing where the real action took place. The lack of oversight was wonderful but the consequences of failure were severe. Charles knew he had the guts to stomach risky investments without developing an ulcer but at present he was the lowest man on the totem pole and his taste of the action had largely involved filling out forms and speaking with investors’ secretaries’ secretaries. His employers had him researching and conducting what was dangerously close to insider trading as well, learning about potential investments and then finding out as much dirt on each prospect as he could regardless of the ethicality of his methods. He didn’t mind the gray legality he was dealing in – it was educational and exciting – but having his recommendations ignored was grating. It was probably the height of hubris to feel that way so early into his career but Charles frankly didn’t care. Right was right after all.
Wall Street itself was turning out to be far more stodgy than the press surrounding it suggested. It was all work of the tedious sort coupled with mathematically precise gambling and a marketer’s need to sell. Charles had nothing against work but he liked to see, and reap, the rewards of his labor fairly frequently. With the market, returns could happen in a minute or it could take years and he wasn’t sure he had enough patience to help manipulate the global economy one security at a time. About the only positive aside from the vast amount of information he was collecting and his decent salary was the distraction of law school. Law was exciting the way he remembered economics being back when he was an undergrad. So many possibilities and it was all so very exploitable if one only knew enough. Mutable, in the right hands the law could become anything. If he hadn’t agreed, and signed a VERY binding contract – he’d checked it out from every angle and it was damningly ironclad – to work for Potentia for one whole year before seeking other employment, Charles would have left the world of high finance to devote himself to law school and preparing for the bar exam full time. As it was, his part time attendance had become the highlight of his life and there was probably something truly sad about that fact. He needed to get out more, as Julia would say, and live a little.
Something else Julia had said to him in her most recent letter, a fairly long missive for a change that had been mailed over the winter break, struck him as he continued to covertly study the worn-looking woman across from him. There was no point in having power that wasn’t wanted, she had written. Being able to make secret financial decisions for billionaires and multinational corporations had sounded exciting three years ago but now Charles was finding it more of a chore. He couldn’t really DO anything besides fatten his wallet and those of his employers and he wanted more than that. He wanted to exert REAL power, the kind that made his bosses quake in their boots when they heard about certain plans leaked by the corporations they worked for. He wanted to BE that multinational corporation, but with the kind of freedom Potentia exercised as an unregulated hedge fund. Going into politics he had dismissed as too confining, having too much oversight and responsibility. He wanted unfettered opportunities, the ability to create a world in the image that HE saw. But that kind of thing only happened in the movies and Hollywood was too fake for his tastes.
Charles sighed and watched the subway car slowly empty around him as his fellow passengers got off at their stops. His presumptive fellow Wall Street worker was the last to leave, getting off only four stops before his, and he watched her stooped form slowly climb the stairs until the train resumed moving and carried him out of sight. He rode the FIVE line all the way out into Brooklyn and got out at the last stop available at that hour. The Church Avenue station was about seven blocks from his apartment and he headed out into the still-falling, still-dirty snow on careful feet. He didn’t have any answers yet but there were six more months of his contract to go and he was sure he would think of something. If nothing else, he had law school to tide him over and perhaps he really should get around to exploring his new city.
Charles stopped at the local People’s Drug, still open even though it was after ten thirty at night and conveniently located only half a block from his building. Under the lights and the blast of forced hot air, he took in the picked over remains of their holiday selection. They had all their left over Valentine’s Day candy marked down to half price and he bought a small red heart-shaped box of chocolate cordials for three dollars and fifty cents and juggled it with his briefcase and the day’s mail while he unlocked the door to his apartment. Charles ate the entire box while he did some homework and readied material he thought he’d need for the next day of trading and was in bed by one am, his alarm set to wake him after just four short hours of blessed sleep.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 06:05 pm (UTC)