First Chamber: Living in the World Today First Chamber LIVING IN THE WORLD TODAY Monday, November 9 The figurative bloodbath turned literal when my cubemate Keith, prone to stress-induced nosebleeds, sneezed on my monitor. To our horror, visible through the viscous, bloody splotches was a sea of red digits. The Dow, the S&P, and the Nasdaq had plunged by historic, inconceivable levels, conjuring the ghosts of meltdowns past. Keith apologized between gentle sobs, blood streaking down his doughy face and pooling on the collar of his Patagonia. The numbers 1929, 1987, and 2008 buffeted my beleaguered brain as I grabbed a handful of napkins from my stash and tended to the mess. The market, and the daily, frenetic cacophony that accompanied it, had mercifully closed, leaving an eerie silence. Our polished and pristine offices, situated on the outskirts of San Francisco's Financial District, had morphed into a neoliberalist hellscape on par with the trenches of Verdun, replete with battered balance sheets and shell-shocked stares. Keith plugged his pointy nose with gauze and curled into the fetal position. Dennis drowned his meatheaded sorrows in Red Bull, Reese's Pieces, and Adderall XR. Karen, ever the opportunist, whipped her dirty-blond hair and brilliant blue eyes around the battlefield, snapping countless photos of the carnage and documenting in real time the aftermath from inside Prism Capital--the world's most prestigious hedge fund--for her burgeoning Instagram account. I ran my hands through my hair, then cupped my mouth and nose, inhaling deeply. I am completely fucked . Surely I'd found rock bottom, which meant it was probably time to do the rational thing and kill myself. Then again, my entire existence--from abandoned bastard baby to patronized token minority to Wall Street whipping boy--had been a carousel of catastrophe, and I was nothing if not a glutton for punishment. While debating the relative merits of a 9 millimeter to the temple or a bottle of Oxy to the gut, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Jennie. My one-sided soulmate. Everything about her was perfect--everything except the Cheez-It-size diamond dangling off her ring finger. Was I okay? she wondered. "I'm definitely getting fired today," I said. "You won't be the only one," she said. " Half our gains for the year were wiped out. If it wasn't for those Biogen and Celgene shorts you recommended, we'd be totally effed." "Sounds like you guys made out well." She scrunched her nose and adjusted her designer glasses. "How bad's your damage?" "VICE is completely in the red." Jennie gasped and covered her mouth, as if I told her I'd been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. " Holy shit . You really think you'll get axed?" I didn't respond. We looked up at the wall of windshield-size LCD screens hovering above the cubicles. They were all muted, all littered with inaccurate closed captioning, all bearing bad news. Farthest left was Bloomberg TV, featuring live, on-site coverage of the business story of the day, month, year, decade, hell, maybe even century. A payday lender called Icarus Management--beloved by Wall Street traders for the 500 to 5,000 percent interest rates it charged struggling Americans of color, which had fueled its sevenfold share price increase--was in immediate need of a new CEO, CFO, and corporate headquarters. According to rubbernecking reporter Rachel Richards, around 10 a.m. local time, a mob of angry demonstrators had gathered outside the company's Baltimore-based offices to protest its (allegedly) exploitative business practices. The otherwise peaceful gathering took a fateful turn when the building's lead security guard, an Afro-Latino man named Eduardo Vazquez--himself trapped beneath an insurmountable Icarus-issued loan--escorted the crowd to the company's executive offices on the top floor. "Shortly thereafter," Rachel said, "the rampaging thugs tossed CEO Jeffrey Bull and CFO Douglas Ferentz to their deaths and set fire to Icarus's corporate offices. Police quickly contained the crime scene, although more than twenty Icarus employees remain unaccounted for. Approximately one hundred insurgents, including Mister Vazquez, have been neutralized." Firefighters subdued the blaze by the start of rush hour. The company's stock had plunged 81 percent before Nasdaq management halted it indefinitely "due to extraordinary trading activity." "I mean, what were the odds?" I asked Jennie. "Of people finally being fed up enough with capitalism to murder a CEO? That you were unlucky enough to own the murdered CEO's stock? Or that the murdered CEO's company was named after the guy who flew too close to the sun?" Touché , I thought, then wondered if I was truly shocked by the unfolding chaos. Volatile protests had been cropping up at corporate offices around the country for years, and like a lemming, I'd bought into the wisdom of the crowd and discounted the all-too-obvious risk of calamity. I snapped out of my daze and shifted my eyes to a different nightmare. Jim Cramer was examining Wall Street's autopsy report in gory detail. Commodities finished low. Bonds finished lower. Stocks finished lowest. Every asset class known to personkind had hemorrhaged cash. And, big surprise, according to Jim, it was the buying opportunity of a lifetime . My gaze drifted farther afield, past screens displaying various global terrorist organizations--the Taliban, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the McDonald's Corporation--and fixated on an unexpected appearance from the Weather Channel. Hurricane Consuela was swirling inexorably toward Miami and expected to make landfall by evening. She was "The Big One." Category 5. Tornado-strength winds. Flash flooding. Flying projectiles. Power outages. Stay inside . "I need to check on my mom," I said. "Not gonna lie, Al," Jennie said, "your birthday's off to an epically shitty start." I wanted to tell her the shittiness started twenty-seven years and nine-odd months ago, when a middle-aged, Green Card-seeking Pakistani immigrant deflowered his sixteen-year-old direct report in a Burger King bathroom stall. "Each year is better than the next," I said. Jennie flashed her Crest-commercial smile, patted me on the shoulder, told me to hang in there, and said she and Preston would buy my first drink later. Fucking Preston . With his inherited colonial wealth, cleft chin, wavy blond hair, and dreamy blue eyes--recessive mutations inbred to perfection over millennia. God was definitely real, and He was definitely a lacrosse-playing frat bro with a kinesiology degree from Duke. Nobody else could stomach being such an asshole. I shook the thought and ducked into the adjacent hallway to text my mom. I felt little affinity yet loads of responsibility for this woman, who was an abused child burdened with adult responsibilities. Kids weren't supposed to raise their parents, but my childhood home was about to be leveled, and one of us needed to pretend to be a grown-up. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEEETIE!!!! she texted back. How's the storm? Powers out tree across street knocked down lines im okay tho Do you have enough dry goods and fresh water? Did you board up the windows? Karl dropped off care package Jimmy did windows Are either of them with you? An absurd thumbs-down materialized on my last message. Her rotating cast of booty calls would keep her alive, but they wouldn't be caught dead with her during the apocalypse. Hang in there. Text/call in case of emergency. Okey dokey Marcia and Will said theyd checkin later I added an absurd thumbs-up to her message and returned to my own disaster scene. Brad would come looking for me any minute. I darted down the corridor, past the Klimt and the Monet and around the elevators, then slipped into the men's room on the far side of the office, opposite the Industrials and Internet teams. Industrials had been whittled down to two people and the Internet group was entirely composed of women. This made the men's lavatory on their side of the building solid gold real estate: the perfect place to do your business, mentally regroup, or both. Sitting fully clothed in my favorite stall, I inserted my headphones, shuffle-played GZA's Liquid Swords , and scrolled through my inbox, mindlessly deleting anodyne press releases and breaking news alerts. The writing was all over the wall, bold and colorful like graffiti. A trip to the unemployment line was imminent. But far worse, I'd proved them right. I wasn't good enough. I didn't belong. The past four years had been luck. Luck that'd just run out. Fifteen minutes later my thoughts were calmer, clearer, resigned. I went to the sink and dabbed my face with a wet paper towel. I'd been sweating profusely, and my favorite lilac Brioni dress shirt, which accented my silky-smooth, light-roast-colored skin, clung to my damp body like a glow-in-the-dark condom. I cut the music, fanned myself, doused my head with water, pulled out my trusty switchblade comb--the best tenth-birthday present a boy could ever receive--and slicked back my undercut like Michael Corleone. The face in the mirror told me it was time to see the hangman. But the magical thinker in my brain told me maybe-- just maybe --this entire day had been one long, awful dream. I simply needed to escape the office, head home, and sleep it off. When I awoke, I'd still be the top-performing analyst at the top-performing firm on Wall Street. Still be the first member of my family to go to college. Still be the guy who told the socioeconomic statistics to go fuck themselves. Brad greeted me when I opened the men's room door. "Aladdin--there you are! I've been looking all over for you." "I wasn't, uh, feeling well." "Given the state of my portfolio, that's not surprising," Brad said. "Dad wants to see you in his office. Now ." "Should I, like, pack my things first?" He sneered his dolphin teeth into a sinister smile. "Where would be the fun in that?" My guts twisted. That was exactly what he'd told Harold. Poor Harold. I stared through Brad. Willing him to disappear. Forcing this entire day--my entire life--to have been some kind of cosmic misunderstanding. It didn't work. Brad extended a chivalrous arm in the direction of the boss's office. In the direction of a new fresh hell. Excerpted from Leverage: A Novel by Amran Gowani All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
