10 | MATT NORTHWAY
December 6, 2005
MY APPROACH AT WORK HAS ALWAYS BEEN TO KEEP MY head down and sell bonds. I never get political, but now, getting involved with Freddie, I think I’ve just agreed to start a political game where people tell me they’ll just teach me the rules as we play the first round. I wouldn’t say I’m worried yet, but I feel uncomfortable and I want to be with someone away from work. I’d like that to be Julia, but she’s the source of another stress right now. I call my college roommate, Matt.
I always look forward to seeing my friend Matt because everything I associate with him has nothing to do with anything else. I’m reminded of a time when I had a more rounded profile and could move between different types of people. Matt knew me back when I was still a dependent for tax purposes and before I had let a job define more of me than it should.
Matt’s a coffee barista and sometimes actor, and between off-Broadway plays and bit parts on Law & Order and other television shows, he’s managed to keep on with his craft. And he’s happy. It feels good to be with someone who doesn’t have the same set of worries and who doesn’t think that my worries are life-threatening or even much of a worry at all when put in perspective, and that helps me forget. He sometimes helps me to get away for a moment the way vacationing to a different language and currency can feel exotic.
Matt’s already on a bar stool with a beer when I walk into Cedar Tavern. We’ve been friends since freshman year and our reunions are always familiar and comfortable. I pat him on the shoulder as I sit next to him and see there’s a beer already waiting for me.
“Good to see you.” He clinks my glass.
“Very good.” My load feels lighter already.
Since college we’ve had a window into each other’s lives like following a character in a novel we can only barely find relatable. While most people would be resentful of the life of a Wall Street trader, Matt is fascinated and amused and sometimes stupefied.
“You look like crap, Nick. You look exhausted.”
I feel exhausted and in a way that is worse than hungover or tired. I feel almost defeated. “I am. It’s been a rough few weeks.”
A girl at the end of the bar is looking over at us, probably considering whether or not we’re gay. Girls always liked Matt in college and they like him much more now. Like George Clooney, he started out handsome and a little goofy-looking and got a bit less goofy-looking with each year.
He’s about my height, which seems too tall for an actor, with a thick beard that can’t be completely shaved away and seems to stain his skin dark. His features are broad and friendly with strong bones but nothing too angular.
“I know you don’t work too hard, so you’ve either been drinking too hard or it’s something with Julia.”
“I’ve been drinking too hard and it’s something with Julia, both.”
“I guess that would follow.”
I make an uh-huh noise and the girl is still watching us.
“I thought by now you two would have settled into a routine that you’ve both accepted and made work.”
“I think she’s been accepting a routine for a while now and is reaching her limit.”
“How bad?”
“I don’t know, but we’re getting older, and the routine has to change somehow. It isn’t just her. I want it too.”
“What does she want?”
“For me to quit my job, maybe leave New York. Things I can’t really even put on the table.”
He nods. I notice the girl again but I don’t think Matt has. He’s a better listener than I am.
“Anyway, the trouble is once you make your mind up that a thing makes you unhappy, you can’t stop thinking about it. So now I sit at work obsessing about what a load of crap it is. I just try to get through it and take it day to day.” Day to day like a soldier deployed to war, I want to say, but I don’t want to sound like an ass.
Now I’m self-conscious about looking at the girl, so I drink my beer and order another round for us.
I ask Matt about his career and he tells me about some auditions for Broadway productions and a pilot he did in L.A. that he hopes gets picked up and some actresses in their twenties that he’s dated or slept with. He tells it in a way that shows he’s happy with it. He’s not trying to convince himself that it’s more than it is, nor does he dress it up in a way that is trying to prove something to me. He has a quality that is selfish and uncompromising but is not about harming anyone.
I think about mentioning Oliver Bennett or that I met Rebecca James but decide not to. He doesn’t know them and they shouldn’t matter to me.
The conversation comes back around to my work because my misery is like a third person sitting with us whom we’ve been ignoring and whom we can’t ignore any longer.
“What specifically is it about your job that’s so bad?” Matt blurts this out without any connection to the conversation, which shows it has still been on his mind the whole time.
I think for a moment, trying to identify the one main thing at the heart of it. The word comes to me and I hate it and so I know that it’s right. “The hypocrisy.”
Matt seems not to want to press until he knows what I mean. He’s listening.
“The difference between what people think about a person like me and what a person like me is really like is bigger than in any other job. People think I have a sharp mind for economics, and the reality is that I’m a sales guy who doesn’t know much about economics and I don’t really even read financial statements. People think we make a pretty good wage, and the reality is we have twenty-eight-year-old traders making so much they have running jokes about chump CEOs slaving away for one-fifth the salary we make. People think we’re sharp-dressed bankers working long hours, and the reality is we’re eight to five and the rest of the time the suit is draped over the back of some ratty chair while we get an X-rated massage.” I’m reveling in self-loathing, which I also find repulsive.
“Sounds like a dream come true. You don’t have to know anything, you get paid enormous money, and you get to screw off most of the time.”
“Exactly. You can’t blame anyone for doing it. When we have young kids out of college start up in trading, they’re shocked. For the first few years they can’t believe they get to do this for money. The trouble starts later when that’s how you live your life and you’re not shocked anymore.”
“God, you’re miserable, Nick. No wonder Julia’s sick of your job.”
“I know. I’m spiraling down, and I’m taking her with me. I was one of those kids, and she was duped more than anyone because she couldn’t understand the hypocrisy until long after I did.”
“Do you want it to work with Julia? Is that important to you?”
“Of course.”
“Then get out. Of the job. You obviously hate it. Make a commitment to something else. You must have some money saved up after these years.”
With every January bonus I calculate how far we could stretch our savings. “We have some. We’ve had some lifestyle creep over the years too, but we could cut back. We have savings and a house in Sag Harbor we could sell and try to make the money last. Not long enough, though. I need more years in.”
“It won’t be the last paycheck you get. Go do something else. Joe Kennedy said he wanted to give his kids enough that they could choose a career based on what they wanted to do, not what they needed to do. You have that much money. Look, there are plenty of people who came out of college and took a job in a ski town or teaching at their high school thinking it would be for only two or three years, and a decade later they’re still there. This isn’t much different. Part of the problem is you guys on Wall Street are the only people who make two million dollars a year and don’t think you’re rich.”
He’s right but only because we’re surrounded by other Wall Street guys making ten million or twenty million a year and living lives we can never afford. The bartender steps in front of us. “The lady at the end of the bar bought you a drink.” He puts a single beer in front of Matt. Matt shrugs and tips his glass to the girl and says to the bartender, “In a minute please get her another of what she’s having.”
I think she must go in for the artistic-looking type or maybe just the not-miserable-looking type. Anyway, she seems to have decided we’re not gay and I guess that’s something.
I have a sense of how uncomplicated his life is and I’m envious. It could be just that the grass is greener but I don’t think so. “If you got married at twenty-two, do you think you’d still be married?”
“I don’t think I’m the best test for that. I’ve never even been close to getting married.” He seems to be weighing this for a moment, so I know I’ll get a real answer and not a snap response. “Probably not. I’m such a different person than I was at twenty-two and I’m motivated by different things than I was then. Big changes that were unpredictable. The chances that the right person back then could change in a compatible way and still be the right person now have to be less than fifty percent.” He pauses the way a person will before walking into a strange house. “Are you thinking about having an affair?”
“No.” I say this right away and I have the image of Rebecca James walking into Starbucks. “No,” I say again, as though the first time wasn’t real and I was just trying it on for size. “I’m not.”
“Good. People go through unhappy periods and they recover. There are always ups and downs, with everything. You and Julia have a good thing.”