Overseas (7 page)

5.

May 2008

I decided to head home early and go for a run in Central Park. Of course, around here, going home early meant something like eight o’clock, but the long hours were no longer something I resented about life at Sterling Bates. Busy was good.

“Hey, Kate. Free for coffee?” The voice, bright and cheerful like a ray of freaking sunshine, belonged to Alicia. She leaned over the wall of my cubicle, smiling down at me with her small mouth in its large round face. She was growing her hair out, and it hung listlessly in an in-between stage that suited her even less than the pixie cut.

“Actually, I was thinking of going running this evening,” I said, trying to sound as cheerful as she did. Rumors had swarmed around Sterling Bates all winter, and everyone was watching breathlessly for my inevitable breakdown. According to Charlie, people were convinced I’d had a one-night stand with Julian Laurence on Paul Banner’s orders, and then been turned out the next morning like a whore on the streets, never to hear from him again. Embellishments had evolved into the story over the months—apparently I’d gone in for an abortion in early February and submitted the charge on my expense sheet—but the basic theme hadn’t changed, and my only weapon against the gossip was a fierce and unrelenting good mood. Especially with Alicia.

It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

“Have some coffee first,” she insisted. “It’ll rev you up.”

I bared my teeth in a smile. “Sure. Why not?”

A week after Christmas, I’d received an e-mail from Alicia, apologizing for her rude behavior and asking if we could start fresh. Strangely enough, she seemed to mean it. She’d taken me under her wing, bought me coffee, dragged me to lunch, even brought me out drinking with some of her witchy friends. I’d gone along with her—it was something to do, after all, something to keep my brain from looping back to its preoccupations—until it became an expected habit. I was almost growing to like her.

Going to Starbucks meant taking about ten steps outdoors, from the revolving-door entrance of Sterling Bates to the storefront next to it. On this particular afternoon, they were easy steps to make: it was beautiful outside, that brief period in Manhattan between the fitful bluster of spring and the sticky breathless heat of summer. The warmth of daytime still lingered around us; the sun had only just begun to disappear behind the towers to the west. I drew in the limpid air. The urge to run pulsed through my muscles. Spring fever.

“So has Banner talked to you about the gala thing at MoMA tomorrow night?” Alicia asked, taking a drink of her latte.

“Banner doesn’t talk to me much lately.”

“Oh yeah.” Her mouth twitched. “Well, I spoke to him about it this afternoon, and we agreed you should go.”

I wrapped my lips around my straw and drew in my Frappuccino before replying. “Hmm. What is it, exactly?”

“Just a fund-raiser for some big charity. Capital Markets always buys a table, and Banner has his jollies picking which of us should go.”

I fell silent. If memory served, last year’s gala had been the venue for Julian Laurence’s sole appearance in the gossip columns. “I’m not sure I have anything to wear,” I said, drawing out my words with care.

“Perfect. We can go shopping. You can ditch after lunch tomorrow; there’s not much work anyway right now.”

“Well…”

“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. You could use a little fun. It’s why I made Banner put you on the list.”

“No, no. I’m looking forward to it.” I pushed out another false smile. “I haven’t gotten dressed up like that since the Sigma Nu formal, freshman year.”

She shuddered. “Yuck. We are
definitely
going shopping.”

“So who else is going?” I asked casually.

“Well, Banner, of course. Me. Two VPs. You. Then a few clients.”

“You should ask Charlie. He’s been working hard. He deserves a night out.”

She tilted her head at me and lifted her latte to her lips. “Yeah,” she said thoughtfully, “you’re right. He can be, like, your wing man.”

“Why would I need a wing man?”

“Come on, Kate. These things are full of rich guys.” She winked. “You can totally get laid.”

T
HE GOLDEN WEATHER
had beckoned all the runners out tonight, the regulars and the stragglers, but most had started earlier and began to drop off, one by one, as the sky grew purple and twilight wrapped around the horizon. Alicia had been right; the coffee did rev me up. I bounded up the hill toward the main drive and settled into an effortless pace, taking pleasure in the rhythm of my feet striking the pavement, in the feeling of grace that overtook me after the first half-mile or so, deep and meditative.

Of course, meditation was a dangerous thing for me these days. Inevitably I began to think of Julian, and it took effort to turn that around, to force my brain to pursue some piece of busywork: calculating how I was going to pay for business school next fall, for example, or how long my savings would last at various rates of cash burn. Tidy puzzles to solve.

I lasted longer than usual. I ran north, counterclockwise, and had gone around the far end of the park for the steady climb toward Ninety-sixth
Street before my mind began to slip its ropes and wander away. Desperately I tried to haul it back in, but it was no use. Julian’s face began to appear before me, that impossibly handsome face; his glowing eyes, his expressive smile. I thought of our e-mail exchange on Christmas Eve, so tender and funny and then so abruptly cold; that last Dear Kate, so exquisitely phrased, with its odd formality at the end, like he’d copied it from one of those old model-letter books. As if I could ever think of calling on him for help.
Hi, Julian. Kate here. Could you write me a recommendation for my summer internship? Thanks a
bunch!

It would have been easier, in a way, if something
had
happened; if there had been anything between us other than a few words, a few intense looks, a sense of dawning understanding. I could be angry with him then. I could wallow in self-righteous bitterness, label him a heartless bastard, throw a few darts at his photograph, and move on. It was infinitely more difficult to have no one to blame. He had behaved impeccably, really. After that graceful good-bye, he hadn’t tried to reach me again, not even after the ChemoDerma deal fell apart in February. Humiliating, of course, but better than having the agony drawn out with sporadic impersonal contact. All communication between the two firms had gone instead through Geoff Warwick and Banner.

I’d heard a rumor, a few days ago, that Southfield was winding down its remaining positions, cashing out, and even closing down. Rumors like that were running about Wall Street like frightened rabbits these days. A feeling had seeped into the air, the faint frisson of a market on the point of turning, if you listened to the whispers. Housing market, mortgage-backed securities, write-downs, bank capital ratios. Not stuff you really wanted to think about, but looming there in the background, hard to ignore completely.

Twilight had settled in by the time I crested the hill and began descending through the shadowed woods, green sunk into black. The busy swarm of runners around the Met had thinned out into almost nothing; I heard only a hint of movement from behind, someone pounding against the
asphalt like me, breathing hard and steady with the effort of climbing the hill. A bicycle swept by, and another.

The transept approached through the trees on my left, and a man flashed into view between the branches, running hard into the merge with the West Drive. He was big and lean, radiating belligerence. Manhattan was bursting with them: aggressive animals who took out their frustrations on the park loop, creating impromptu competitions that might last fifty yards or five miles. I hung back, not wanting to take up any fresh challenges at the moment, but then changed my mind and drove on. I was in good form. I could handle it. A blowout would do me some good: push myself just a little too hard, crash the barrier.

He reached the merge just before me, but instead of banking left onto the drive, he made a hard right, without even looking. His heavy arm smashed into my shoulder, knocking me sideways into the pavement.

I felt the hard thud of impact with shock. I’d been running fast, and so had he. He still was. He hadn’t even slowed down to see if I was okay.

“Watch it, jerk!” I yelled after him, without thinking. I could feel pain begin to gather in my limbs. Definitely needing Band-Aids. Crap. And then I began to shake with rage. “I said
watch
it, jerk!” I yelled again recklessly, as the adrenaline hit my blood.

All this happened in about three seconds. In the next, he turned around.

“What the fuck, bitch!” he shouted. “What the fuck!”

“You knocked me down!”

“You got in my fucking way!”

“Asshole,” I muttered, picking myself up.

He rushed me.

I braced myself an instant before the crash, closing my eyes and twisting to spare my soft underbelly. This was going to hurt. This was ambulance time. Stupid, stupid Kate.
Sorry,
Mom
.

But the impact, when it came, glanced right off me. I staggered backward a few paces, astonished to find myself still standing up, and opened my eyes.

Two men were rolling on the pavement in front of me. The runner, I remembered. The runner behind me. Or maybe a passing bicyclist. Some freaking hero.

The rolling stopped. One of them straddled the other, throwing punches like a machine, swift and expert. Something dark splattered against my leg. “Oh my God!” I choked out. “Stop it! Somebody help!”

Nobody came. A bicyclist flashed by without stopping; maybe he didn’t see us in the shadows, maybe he just thought we were a bunch of drunk teenagers. Maybe he just didn’t care.

“Stop it!” I screamed again, louder, frantic. “Stop it! You’re killing him!”

Suddenly the man on top jumped off, wiping his right hand on his shorts. The man on the bottom lay still.

“Oh crap,” I whispered.

The victor turned to me. “Are you okay?” he asked urgently, holding out his arms.

I couldn’t discern his face in the near-darkness, but I knew his voice.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Julian?”

“Christ, Kate.” His hands were running down my arms, my legs, checking for injuries. “Does anything hurt?”

“Everything hurts,” I said, and then my nose crashed against his clavicle, and his arms bound like steel around my body.

We said nothing, only breathing against each other, shuddering, until he pushed me away suddenly, gently.

“You’re shaking. You’re in shock.”

“I’m all right.”

“No, you need a blanket. Some kind of… hell.” He ran his hand through his hair.