“?‘Alice, he’s Or-i-en-tal,’ Mr. Director told me.”
Alice holds an imaginary phone away from her, staring at the receiver quizzically. Her focus came back to the women at the table.
“Ladies, I swear, I thought I was being set up.”
She puts the phone back to her ear, pretending again to speak with the assistant director. “?‘I believe the term is Asian American,’?” she says softly.
“?‘They’re different from us,’ I was then told.”
“?‘Different how?’?”
“?‘Well, he’ll drink tea and stuff, and keep food in his desk,’?” the director told me.
“?‘Sook is the most talented person I interviewed and I’m hiring him,’ I said. Then just as I was hanging up he said, ‘Between the fags and chinks in this place, how do I make any progress in the Institutional Investor research rankings?’ Then, ladies, he hung up.”
We all pause, hanging midmovement while the music in the background seems to get louder.
The other research member at our table is a Julia Roberts look-alike: Nancy Hogan, who was begged to join Feagin with an enormous contract. Her drive and natural intelligence were Street-famous. Nancy gave her boss days and nights for two years, tirelessly completing tasks that she’d drop everything for. One day, however, she shared too much information with her boss, Thomas Toff.
She had a boyfriend and then she didn’t. The fact that she was in New York and he was in London had prolonged what should have been a two-week fling into a six-month relationship. But due to some Russian roulette version of birth control, she was expecting his child. When she could no longer walk around with her skirts open in the back, her blouses hanging over them to camouflage her new girth, she went into Toff’s office.
“I went in there expecting to be congratulated. I mean, he’s a family guy and loves kids. Instead he said to me,” and here she took an enormous swallow of beer, “?‘I know a place where you can get that taken care of.’?”
“Take care of what?” asked Alice, someone I knew was desperate to have a baby.
“Have an abortion.”
“Wait. You were six months pregnant,” Amy said.
“Thomas was upset at the potential disruption of his own work. He started openly complaining about me, telling people that I kept running off for sonograms.”
I remember Toff telling me Nancy’s timing couldn’t be worse, so I asked him if his own wife got sonograms with their children. “My wife had a husband with a job,” Toff had told me.
Nancy now tells the table something I knew was coming.
“I’m leaving right after bonuses this year,” she says.
Another very educated talent will walk out the door, leaving no record anywhere of what went on. Nancy, like many before her, will simply evaporate.
“I want to go home to Minnesota,” she tells the table. “Minds are more open there.”
It was Amy’s idea to get us together tonight but it is Amanda Mandelbaum who makes things happen. Amanda is like the aunt who remembers everyone’s birthday, who always has something in the refrigerator, who gets truly concerned if you’re sick, who says the things you think but would never dare say out loud. She has an ambitious side that enabled her to claw her way from sales assistant status to some purgatorial state of almost vice president. She’s made the numbers yet hasn’t gotten the title due to her rough exterior. Simon, my boss, told me to “get her to quit acting like a dude.” She’s five feet two inches of dynamic energy that gets easily irritated.
“So my career is going nowhere if the culture doesn’t change, and we’re the only ones who can do something about that,” Amanda says.
“What exactly do you have in mind?” Alice says, pursing her lips together.
“We meet regularly. We do some things to change the culture. Not with lawsuits but with words. We use the right words at the right moments along with purposeful acts that draw attention to men behaving badly.”
This all sounds almost sweet to me. Sweet and na?ve. Still, if I were to bet on any change coming our way, Amanda would be the one to make something happen.
“We should meet once a month,” she says.
“At least,” someone responds.
“I’ll send out meeting notifications by email, with ‘GCC’ under the subject line. They will be from an unknown ISP so look in your spam frequently.”
Heads nod. Mine does not.
“Meetings will rotate from restaurant to restaurant and not be in Midtown. It would look strange for us all to be seen together.”
I finally speak. “What’s with the ‘GCC’?” A harmless enough question.