Sernovitz - The Contrarians

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Contents

To Rick Greenberg, Liam Garland,

Brian Eyster, and Alex Krulic,

friends and influences

BOOK ONE

They argued there, from the first. The men who had built that institution had perfected their disputation in the alcoves of city colleges where sectarian rages bloomed, where truth and beauty and wit were weapons, and woe to those who compromisedthey did not take their integrity seriously. The men had learned their disputation from their fathers and grandfathers, on Delancey, in Brownsville, who had argued about God and, later, God knows what. Freshler Feld had turned gray and agnostic and important in the eighty years since it was founded. The arguments, the arguers had become less shrill, the sport overtaking the subject (good-bye beauty), and the wavy coal-colored hair had passed through a polyglot prism; all hairs and skins and sexes filled the institution now. Yet a fume of the old spirit remained, hazed into inhabitant by inhabitant, an air that was a stone to sharpen your knife.

Or maybe it was just science, atomic mechanics. Fill a room with punchers and hoodlums, and eventually youll have a fistfight. Fill a cafeteria with straight-Aers and valedictorians, self-assured whiz kids and unsecured strivers, and eventually, always, uninterruptedly, youll produce an argument.

The basement cafeteria of the previous headquarters had further and unintentionally encouraged the contrarians: its fluorescent ceiling, famously low, dampened most sounds. You could hear a colleague accuse you of delusion from across the table, but you couldnt hear the same dart ten feet away. When the company moved four years ago to its new headquarters, halfway between the Exchange and one of its main rivals, the new cafeteria produced the same end from different architecture. A proud advance over the rest of Broad Streets cream stone and aquatint glass, Freshler Felds new headquarters was enskinned and stuffed in international high-tech. In the cafeteria (floors four and five), across from the outside windows, thirty televisions silently broadcast market reports and business news. Two screens each were embedded between fifteen tapered buttresses that formed the wall side of a series of thin triumphal arches and half-shielded one table from the next. A lucite walkway, midnight blue and bulb-speckled, ran through the center of the cafeteria and scored the footsteps into a human ticker tape.

Three were sitting at one of the little-prized tables, on the television side. Nathanson insistedhe only knew how to insistthat it had to have been Kelch, but David Kim refused to accept it. Nathanson drew in his lips, glared, and reached for his spoon. He flipped his necktie, bought that season, aggressive orange with navy dots, over his shoulder to protect his investment from the soup. Kim and Einstadt watched him steadily spoon in the soup and clearly heard his message: shrimp bisque (even from the cafeteria) supplies a better conversation than you two. Nathanson forgave Einstadt: he had been at Freshler for only two months. And, granted, Kim was Kim and had been Kim since they had started at the firm together six years agoa jungle herbivore, an amiable bystander, often a butt, whose soul had never absorbed the need for unconditional surrender. Nathanson finished his spoonful. Now, Kim, act rationally for once and dont, dont start an argument for the sake of arguing.

Above a sandwich entering his mouth, Einstadts blue eyes, incongruous with his skins sandy coloring, smiled. Nathanson, who did not notice this, decided, exasperated by Kim, to cellophane-wrap his half sandwich and finish it at his desk. He ate there more and more these days, with his and Torvils and Kelchs and Kims schedules never synchronized, all of them on the road a fifth of the year. Even when they were all in town, their lunchtime discussions tended toward the pale and bloodless, not like those old battles when their faces seemed colored by warpaint shadows cast by a cafeteria arch. But except for himself, Nathanson mourned, all the decent warriors were gone: gone to lesser rivals for on-the-cheap promotions, gone to upstart foreign banks for double the salary, to asset managers or private equity firms for a better lifestyle, to London or Hong Kong for an acceleration, two years of rocket fuel, on their ascent through Equity Strategy and Research. And in the last two years, as the boom turned exponential, a few of his peers had gone to technology firms, most of them Freshler clients, for the indiscriminately ladled options. Even the ones who stayed told Nathanson, You dont owe Freshler anything. If anyone offers you a dollar more, take it and go. And so most of his friends, his work friends, had left the Broad Street nursery, and he was stuck arguing the obvious with David Kim. He would have claimed his ribbon of victory already, but the current issue was important. Kim, did you even read the article? Late last night, Nathanson had called Kim at home and ordered him to buy the magazine and read it. And no, it couldnt wait until tomorrow.

We all read it, okay, Kim answered, looking to Einstadt, who didnt catch the shift in Kims eyes. Kim then turned his entire head to Einstadt, and Nathanson followed. Einstadt, good-mannered, flickered his finger between chin and nose. I read it. But my mouths full.

If you read itNathanson spoke louder, his rising volume not slowed by his clenched teethhow can you then possibly, possibly believe its not him?

Come on. Can you really see Kelch talking to some guy that long?

It was a good point, Nathanson allowed, to himself. He picked at the meat in his sandwich and sneered. Thats completely irrelevant.

I just didnt see it, Nathanson.

Then you didnt read it closely enough.

I read it as closely as you did. Kim had circled the I and you in a field of emphasis, and separation.

You didnt. Trust me.

What do you want me to say? Kim leaned nearer the table, his mouth open, willing to receive Nathansons sermon, its sustaining truth. Abruptly, he sat at attentionthe man approaching said, Mr. Kimand nodded his head. Nathanson turned, looked, and received Mr. Nathanson. Once the greeter had passed through three arches, Nathanson turned to the others. In a singsong mock: Mr. Asshole.

As Kimand Nathansonchuckled, Einstadt asked, Who was that?

This guy in Institutional Sales, Lumquist or Humquist

Holmquist, Kim corrected by routine. Nathanson would forget his own mothers name if it served a moments purpose.

Yes, yes, yes. Holm quist. Anyway, this asshole comes out of business school last year, and like the rest of these morons, no offenseEinstadt: none takenhe can barely wrap his puny mind around such difficult concepts as the P/E ratio. The guy must have majored in power networking because he comes up to Torvil out of the blue and asks him out to dinner and tells him to invite some other rising star analysts. So Kim, Torvil, Kelch, and I go

To Padisons, Kim contributed.

Right, Pad isons, Nathanson drew the clich out of the first syllable. This guy turns out to be the European grand champion of ass kissing. He was laying it on so thick that I was almost incapable of eating my food. Grade-A crap like The part of my job that Im most excited about is becoming close to the young superstars of the firm. And what was it? Oh, yes: I really think that absorbing fundamental research will be my strength as a salesman. He said that, absorbing, like hes a roll of fucking paper towels. And then this schmuck asks us for ideas, and after I give him my best one at the time, TLBIll never forget thishe responds in this completely ingratiating Euro-accent, Great, great but too long-term. Again and again, with Kelch and Torvil, the same line, Great, great but too long-term. Eventually, he interrupts Mr. Kim so he can recite his private theory on the New Economy, which he probably read in Sports Illustrated or on a box of Raisin Bran. Kim continued to nod enthusiastically. He was making absolutely no sense, but that didnt stop him from babbling on. And the sum total of this dissertation was some pig with a cockamamie ticker, BQFD, BQ