“Rosa’s not going anywhere, either. I guess we just have to be hopeful that everything’s going to be all right, as ugly as it seems.”
Cindy agreed. That was what Clark had said, too, she said. When she’d asked him that night if the impending bankruptcy was going to hurt the economy, he’d said that yes, he believed the economy was going to get really bad; everything was about to change, one way or another, for everyone in the country, at least for some time. When a powerful house like Lehman falls, he’d told her, people start questioning if indeed there is power in the other houses. There was going to be panic in the market. Portfolios losing up to half of their values. Lots of crazy stuff that could destroy the investments and livelihood of millions of good, innocent people. It could be very bad. But they were going to be okay. The likes of them were going to lose money in the short term but they were going to be okay, sooner rather than later, unlike those poor devils on the streets.
“I hope he’s right,” Cheri said. “And I really hope he’s going to be okay soon.”
“I don’t know,” Cindy said, after a pause. “We haven’t spoken much since that night—he’s so stressed out and short-fused I’m almost afraid of saying anything. I went three days without seeing him last week.”
“He’s got to be very busy transitioning to Barclays.”
“I know … that’s what he says. But … you never know. I hope it’s only that and not also because …”
“Come on, Cindy.”
“It’s at times like this, Cher,” Cindy whispered. “This is when they start turning to those …” She cut herself short, perhaps realizing Jende might be listening, which he was, intently.
“You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself,” Cheri said. “Everything’s going to be fine. He’s not the only one dealing with the crisis. We’re not the only ones. There’s a long road ahead, but everyone’s going to be all right. Clark will be all right.”
Jende smiled to himself when Cheri said this, hoping so, too, fervently wishing Mr. Edwards would find his way out of the despondency he’d been enveloped in for months.
The previous night, after work, Clark had called his friend Frank to ponder if it was time for him to get away from the Street. It wasn’t worthwhile anymore, he’d said, and he was getting tired of the bullshit that came with everything else. He’d never cared about what people thought of him but, all of a sudden, he did—he was watching those assholes on MSNBC and agreeing with them, and the fact that the whole country had turned against the likes of him was completely justifiable. He couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible for the shit that was happening, he told Frank, not because he had personally done anything to hurt anyone but because he was part of the system, and no matter how much he hated to admit it or how much he wished Lehman hadn’t lost its principles or how badly he wished there was more conscience on the Street, he was part of it, and because of his involvement in lots of bullshit he didn’t even agree with, however small his involvement had been, this had happened. He wasn’t sure about a future at Barclays; it wasn’t anything about the bank, it was him. Maybe he was just getting old. Maybe he was beginning to question the meaning of his life. Why was he all of a sudden sounding like Vince?
Hearing Vince’s name had made Jende wonder how the young man was faring in India. He thought about Vince whenever he saw a mention of India in the newspaper, but didn’t think it right to ask Clark about him and open up whatever wounds were still healing.
He thought about Leah, too, in the days after Lehman fell, but had no way of reaching her besides through the number at Lehman. The thought of calling it left him with an eerie feeling, as if doing so would be akin to calling a dead friend at a cemetery. But he worried about her, about her high blood pressure and her swelling feet, and so a few days after returning to work he had called the work number, hoping for a recorded message that would direct him to her.
“Leah!” he said, shocked and elated when she answered the phone. “What are you doing there? I thought … I was afraid …”
“Oh yeah, honey,” she said. “I was canned, too. My last day’s tomorrow. They want me to clean up some things before I leave. Otherwise, I don’t need to be here for one more minute.”
“I am so sorry, Leah.”
“I am, too … but what’re you going to do? Sometimes it’s better when it happens, you know? You spend months losing sleep, fearing for what’s ahead. At least now it’s happened and it’s over and … I don’t know … I can finally sleep well and get the hell out of this shitty place.”
“It’s the fear that kills us, Leah,” Jende said. “Sometimes it happens and it is not even as bad as the fear. That is what I have learned in this life. It is the fear.”
Leah agreed but said she couldn’t talk much at the moment. She gave Jende her home number to call later, which Jende did that night.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked her.
“Something really great,” she said, sounding more upbeat than she had in the morning. “I’ve got over twenty years of experience, honey. I’m not worried. I’m going to take a month and relax before I start a job search.”
“You should do that.”
“I will, maybe go see my sister in Florida. That’s the good thing about a life with no husband or children—no one to hold me back, make me feel as if I can’t go where I want, whenever I want, do what I want. I’m going to enjoy myself in Sarasota, and when I come back, I’ll dust off the old résumé.”
“You will get a new job very fast when you return,” Jende said. “Mr. Edwards will surely tell everyone that you were a good secretary.”
“He better.”
“When you come back, call me, please? You are going to let me know you are all right?”
Leah promised she would, and Jende wished her a good time in Florida.
The next day, as he drove to drop off and pick up the Edwardses, Jende thought about Leah and the ex–Lehman employees. He thought about the state of the city and the state of the country. He thought about how strange and sad and scary it was that Americans were talking about an “economic crisis,” a phrase Cameroonians heard on the radio and TV virtually every day in the late eighties, when the country entered a prolonged financial downturn. Few people in Limbe understood the origin of the slump, or what the government was doing to get the country out of it and prevent a recurrence, but everyone knew that it made buying food and other necessities beyond difficult, thanks to the evaporation of large amounts of money. Now it was happening in America. And it was bad. Very bad. No one could tell how long it would take before this avoidable pandemonium that Lehman’s fall had caused would end. It could take years, the experts on TV said. Maybe up to five years, some said, especially now that the crisis was spreading around the world and people were losing secure jobs, losing life’s savings, losing families, losing sanities.
But him … thank God, he still had a job.
His gratitude overflowed every time he picked up the car from the garage, knowing he could be jobless like many all over the country. He read of job losses daily in Clark’s discarded Journal and watched news segments about layoffs on CNN after work.
Every night he went to bed hoping it would get better soon, but it would only get worse in the coming weeks.