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“What do you think?” Despite this being the fourth office suite they’d visited in just two hours, Georgia managed to sound as excited as though she’d never turned a key before. They stood just inside the main area of the third office space to which she’d brought him. Light poured in through wall-length windows, wavy glass showing the age of the building, along with the scuffed floors. No problem. Wood could be buffed and shined. He paced the large room, figuring that fifteen desks would fit, making a trading floor possible.
Jake liked the look of the place immediately. “I think this.” He pulled Georgia in for a long kiss. “You did good.”
He crossed his arms and took a walk around. For the Club office, he pegged a room well away from what would be the brokerage. Halls separated the space from the other areas. An arched window with multiple diamond-shaped panes dominated the rectangle; he pictured Gita-Rae holding court.
Four private offices would be sufficient for now. Furniture left behind by former tenants helped—the pieces were good enough to use, at least in other people’s areas. He’d take the largest office, an oversized square with built-in bookcases—he liked that classy touch. A good paint job would cover the apartment-house beige on the walls. He stood at the bank of windows and gazed out.
This might actually work.
Georgia wandered in. “Impressive, right?” She sat on the massive oak desktop, resembling a teacher’s desk in a school for giants.
“Not bad.”
“You’re gonna take it, right?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. I’m gonna take it.” Jake crossed the room as he spoke.
She leaned back, tossing her hair over one shoulder.
He unbuttoned her dress, pulling down the soft fabric until her arms were trapped in the sleeves. Then he pushed her back on the sun-warmed wood.
Yes. This would work.
He pulled up her silk slip. Thank God for the private bathroom off his office-to-be. Phoebe’s nose worked like a hound dog. Soon after meeting Georgia, Jake had bought Pheebs the largest bottle of Joy perfume made and told her to set aside the Muguet des Bois. Having your women wear the same scent made life easier.
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Weeks after moving, unpacked cartons were driving Jake nuts, though Gita-Rae prevented the place from resembling a gypsy bazaar by hiding them in the Club zone, where nobody but the authorized went.
Only Charlie could carry out boxes without question, though he sometimes brought Vic, another Gita-Rae guy from the neighborhood, to help him. Vic had made his way, like Sol and Jake, through college and became a broker—but where Sol had traded a Brooklyn state of mind for Manhattan, Vic still conveyed a cocky hood aura. Vic and Charlie would always be Brooklyn guys. Neither minded hauling a few boxes.
Charlie was shrewd, but Vic had real brains along with street smarts. When Gita-Rae had difficulty figuring out the price for backdating a sales figure—making it look as though the buy had been made at a certain value, or even that it had been made at all—Charlie approached Vic, and he never asked shit about the why. Everyone understood cash flow, especially someone like Vic.
The four of them were his pipeline from one end of JPE to the other: Sol to Vic to Charlie to Gita-Rae and back again. And Jake paid them well, handing out fat checks weekly along with the occasional thick envelope holding a few hundred-dollar bills.
Now Jake entered the Club offices in search of particular books for his built-in bookcases. Gita-Rae crouched, pushing boxes to one side or the other, instructing Charlie how to rearrange the remaining ones.
Gita-Rae, his office queen; he’d genuflect before her if she asked.
Phoebe, in short, wasn’t as thrilled with her.
“She wasn’t exactly a star in school,” she had reminded him when they first moved to Greenwich—when post-baby lack of sleep and leaving Brooklyn conspired to make her a real bitch. Finding things to pick at became her new hobby during those months. She’d been rocking Katie when she’d taken the swipe at Gita-Rae. The disparity of Phoebe’s Madonna-like appearance and her hard-edged observation repelled him. Jake didn’t expect or want a shrinking violet—he appreciated Phoebe’s sharp wit—but bitchiness reminded him of Lola.
“Gita-Rae grew up where I did. I need a reminder to keep me in check,” he’d said. “And bottom line: she might seem a bit crude, but she’s in the back room. The important thing is she’s a hell of a smart gal.”
Real bottom line? Gita-Rae might be clever and cunning, but those qualities rolled around Wall Street like cigarette butts. Knowing how to keep her mouth shut made her number one. Sure, she’d been a fuckup at school, stuck not even in the commercial track but in what they called “general”—the New York City Public School system’s way of labeling you a loser. Idiots. Gita-Rae was as shrewd as they came, but books didn’t float her boat the way they did Phoebe’s.
It was money that made Gita-Rae smile.
The New York schools had also labeled Charlie an underachiever. Perhaps his square edges couldn’t be filed down to fit into the system’s circles, but he knew how to obey upward when it suited him—and how to snap the necks of those who needed a reminder that Jake ruled this place.
“Ready for a break from decorating?” Jake asked, looking down at Gita-Rae.
She put out her hand. Jake pulled her up in one swift motion. “Funny guy,” she said.
“Hey, I’m not the one rearranging boxes.”
“No. You’re the one who throws hissy fits like a little girl when things aren’t perfect,” she wisecracked.
“Ah, who else could boost my ego like you?”
“What can we do for you, boss?” Charlie asked.
“I need the box with the Encyclopedia of Economic Models. Find both sets: part one and part two. Leather bound.”
“Beautification project?” Gita-Rae asked.
“Not the point,” Charlie said. “What you show is who you are. Who you become.”
“Suck-up. Watch out. Jake will measure the inches our chairs are from our desks if we let him.” Gita-Rae used a garish orange letter opener pockmarked with fake rhinestones to open a box marked “Jake’s Books.”
“I leave you alone, don’t I?” Jake said.
“Only because our space is off-limits to anyone and everyone.”
True. No way he’d allow that ugly thing that she held to be seen in the brokerage area. After putting up with the dust, overflowing trash and filthy bathroom at Gus’s, along with the subway soot floating in, Jake’s offices would be a showplace. Only deep black and pure white would be allowed, mixing in some steel grey like Phoebe wanted. As much as Jake hated to admit it, her eye was sharper than his.