I went into the dining area and sat in a Formica booth watching some soccer team scarf down food and grab fries from each other’s pile, chattering over each other’s words. I could see Leonardo playing some sort of Simon Says game with a group of kids inside a glassed-in room. It seemed everyone around me was speaking but I couldn’t understand anyone’s words.
I rose and went outside to find the wind had picked up on this early spring evening. I peered in the car window and took inventory of what was inside: my work computer, packets of deal material for an IPO, an HP calculator, and a cold cup of coffee. Then I looked at what I had with me outside the car: my wallet and my phone. Really I had everything I needed. A police car pulled into the parking lot and I thought about asking them to jimmy open the door but everything in my car appeared to be so bulky, so heavy, my car was full of quicksand. Instead I asked them if there was a bus to New York City.
The young officers looked curiously at my suit and boots not designed for walking, but they pointed and said it’s about three miles from there and that was good enough for me. The road rose about one hundred yards away from that Burger King and I stopped for a moment to look back at the car and all I was leaving behind. The hill offered just enough pitch for me to catch the final moment of daylight reflecting off the darkened Taurus’s window. It was there I said good-bye to the Glass Ceiling Club, which, while well-meaning, represented nothing in the end, good-bye to obsessing about Bruce screwing his flexible friend, good-bye to that white car with its load of papers and the suck of the money inside it. I said good-bye to it all on a hill in New Jersey as a last flash of sunlight hit the driver’s window at just the right angle. For a moment I could have sworn I saw that car wink right back at me.
CHAPTER 41
Rational Exuberance
September 2015
THE GLASS DOORS of our offices at Arbella Financial are propped open, letting the spring ocean breeze fill the trading room. If it weren’t littered with LCD screens, the place would look like some trendy downtown showroom, rather than a boutique investment bank. Colorful boxes, all framed in white plastic, contain the few papers we deal with each day. Amy designed and Bruce built out the trading turrets. As a single man he’s become a fantastically talented carpenter and the result is stunningly beautiful.
Once you grab your egg crate of possessions each morning, you pick your favorite colored cushion and go find yourself a seat—not unlike a preschool class where each kid chooses her circle spot. We make ourselves sit next to someone different each day, to help us share ideas and to avoid planting the seeds of clique-gossip that exists in most offices. Our mission is far too important to play the games of the past years.
We have a Ping-Pong room, which makes us look like a hip technology start-up, which we are not. We aren’t very cool and we haven’t overextended our adolescence; we have a playroom because we have kids. We are a boutique investment firm, predominately run by women. While we have a tiny office in Manhattan to make us seem more legitimate, our headquarters are here in Hampton Bays, New York, about two miles from the Atlantic Ocean and ninety miles from New York City. It’s a town with simple ranch houses and no celebrity visits. A yellow school bus stops outside our door each afternoon and deposits five of my employees’ children, plus my three, whom I now get to see while a bit of sunlight still is present. I like just about everything going on in my life right now, here in September 2015.
We started this place with settlement money the GCC received. Manchester Bank set aside money for pending Feagin Dixon lawsuits. Once they got to know the firm they bought, they foresaw litigation raining from the sky regarding shady mortgages, extreme financial instruments, and, where the GCC came in, harassment and unfair pay practices.
An accrual or reserve was set up to hash this stuff out before the banks became one. For a brief while, the management of Feagin Dixon still ran the firm and settled these smaller issues before the deal closed. While a small rounding error in the face of the mortgage crisis numbers was to come, the GCC was handed $27 million. It was a lot of money with not one cent for me. I was too puzzled to sue and was unclear what exactly I was suing for. But my friends, yes friends, from the GCC were rich. They combined their settlement money to start this firm, and they chose me as their leader at a nice salary, which rocked my pride button more than any promotion I’ve ever received. We manage our own money and provide seed money to small, promising companies. We help them to grow and one of them has even come public. We aren’t making millions but we’re doing really well.