The Underwriting Read online

  TARA: No.

  Best to deny these things.

  TARA: Once.

  She could trust Terrence.

  TARA: Fine, twice. But it was college. It didn’t mean anything.

  It had, of course, meant something then, when she’d lost her virginity to him at SAE and then he’d never called. But it didn’t matter now—not ten years later when they were both adult professionals.

  TERRENCE: Right.

  “Tara, my office. Now.”

  Tara looked up from her screen at Lillian Dumas, who swept by in knee-high boots that gapped around her hyper-skinny legs, a bold test of business formal attire that senior management let slide because the boots were clearly expensive.

  Tara slipped her shoes back on, suddenly self-conscious of their last-seasonness, and followed Lillian to the glass-enclosed office. They reported to the same group head, but Lillian was a managing director five years Tara’s senior in the Equity Capital Markets Group, and so liked to consider herself Tara’s boss.

  “Close the door.” Lillian’s voice was shaking. Tara did as told and moved toward a chair. “Don’t sit down.”

  Lillian’s skeletal collarbone heaved as she breathed heavily through her firmly set jaw. She crossed her arms in a stance she’d lately adopted to show off the four-and-a-half-carat diamond the hedge fund manager she’d been dating for three years had finally conceded to give her.

  “I don’t know who you slept with,” Lillian spat, “but I hope you realize who you’re stealing from.”

  Tara felt her stomach knot in instinctive dislike of being in trouble. “Wha—”

  “Hook has decided to go public and they want you to be the ECM.”

  “What?” Tara’s brain and heart raced. “Who—” she started, but Lillian wasn’t listening.

  “I’m a managing director at this firm and you just got promoted to VP. And you know I’ve been working on a Silicon Valley strategy. Josh Hart has been in the system under my name for the past year.” One of Lillian’s favorite pastimes was putting every executive or potential executive in the business universe in the internal database as someone she knew so that she could get credit if and when they became clients of the firm. “I was supposed to meet him next month,” she lied. “This deal should be mine.”

  “Lillian, I—”

  “You must have slept with someone. Who was it?”

  “Lillian, how do you even know—”

  “Steve got a call from Harvey Tate saying you’re supposed to be one hundred percent on this and I have to pick up your other work.” She made a face. “How does Harvey Tate even know who you are? Eww, did you seduce him? He’s like seventy.” Lillian’s face went white and her painted lips parted. “Oh my god, did you fuck Todd?”

  Lillian had infamously thrown herself at Todd Kent at a holiday party three years ago, only to be rejected in favor of a girl in IR, whom Lillian had been instrumental in edging out of the firm six months later. Despite filling her present calendar with wedding planning, Lillian still felt Todd was her territory.

  “No, Lillian.” Tara shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is the first I’ve heard of any of this.”

  Lillian’s green eyes lasered into Tara’s. Lillian was legitimately gorgeous: silky chestnut hair framed her perfectly symmetrical face, and her petite features looked handcrafted. Tara could feel Lillian thinking about whether Todd, the man who had rejected her in all her physical perfection, would actually be seduced by Tara’s plain frame and last-season shoes. Lillian squinted her eyes at her junior colleague’s imperfections until she regained her cool and turned to her computer, apparently satisfied that it was out of the question.

  “Well,” she said to Tara flippantly, looking at the screen, “whatever happened, you’re not getting any help from me on this. And you haven’t made any friends.” She turned to face Tara one last time. “And everyone is going to think you slept your way into it. There’s no other explanation.”

  Tara ignored the remark. “So is Todd Kent the—”

  “I said no help from me,” Lillian snapped.

  “Okay.” Tara put her hands up defensively and turned to leave the office.

  As she closed the door behind her, anxiety gave way to adrenaline. She was going to be on Hook’s IPO deal team? Flying solo, with no one else from ECM? Was that really possible?

  The thought made her brain clear, as if she were waking up after a groggy nap, as if that thing that might make the static routine more exciting wasn’t just happening—it was happening to her.

  But what did Todd Kent have to do with it?

  She turned the corner and saw Todd himself sitting at her desk.

  “Hello again,” he said merrily, swiveling the chair. He gestured to the desk drawer where she kept her vitamins; he’d opened it. “You’re quite the pill popper, Miss Taylor.”

  She moved to shut the drawer, but he held it open. “Gingko, vitamin B, biotin, milk thistle.” He lifted one of the bottles. “What is milk thistle for?”

  “It helps with hangovers.” Tara grabbed the bottle and shut the drawer before he found the Celexa. She wasn’t ashamed of being on the antidepressant—she’d been on it since she was fourteen—but she didn’t need Todd Kent to know and get the wrong idea.

  “Really? See? I knew you were going to come in handy on this deal.”

  “Glad I’m already adding value,” she said. “Now, can you explain what’s going on?”

  “I’d be delighted. Have a seat,” he said, forgetting he had taken her chair. She turned her hips to face him and propped back against the desk.

  “So Josh Hart e-mailed me this morning”—he started the story with the familiarity of having told it many times already—“and told me he wants to take Hook public. He wants a 14-billion-dollar valuation and a 1.8-billion-dollar raise. Doesn’t want to do a bake-off, and insisted on a small team with no douchebags.”

  “And he picked you?”

  “Yep,” he said proudly, missing her sarcasm. “And I, in turn, picked you.”

  Her cheeks flushed: it was because of Todd that she was on the deal. “Why?” she blurted. “I mean, I’m thrilled—you know this is huge for me—but I’ve never done one of these deals solo, and Lillian thinks—”

  “Screw Lillian. You’re smart and unintimidating and you know how to deal with nerds. And it’s not like your piece is rocket science anyway.”

  She paused, not sure which part of his analysis of the situation was most insulting.

  “Plus it’ll be fun to work together,” he said. “Like a little Stanford reunion. Did you know Nick Winthrop?”

  “Student body president Nick Winthrop?” she asked. Nick had been three years ahead of her at Stanford and had once shown up at Pi Phi drunk, with a bunch of flowers he’d plucked from the sorority’s rose garden, to serenade Tara with a song he’d written, asking her to be his date for a Sigma Nu formal. She’d declined.

  “Yeah, super dweeb. We cut him day one of rush.”

  “Yeah, I remember him.” She didn’t mention how.

  “He’s Hook’s CFO.” Todd laughed at the thought. “The last time I saw him he was trying to get SAE on alcohol probation because we planned a kegger the same night as his a cappella concert and no one was there to listen to his cover of ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’”

  “I hope he doesn’t still hold a grudge,” Tara said.

  “Nah.” Todd brushed it off. “Who holds on to things from college?”

  She studied him for a moment to make sure he wasn’t implying anything. Todd was right. There was no need to hang on to the fact that they’d slept together in college. She’d slept with lots of guys since then. Well, seven. Eight if you counted that one time with . . . Whatever. Sleeping with Todd didn’t mean anything, and it wouldn’t happen again, and it had nothing to do with why Todd had picked he
r to be on the deal.

  “Anyway,” he said, finally moving to stand, “we fly Friday morning to meet with Josh, Nick and Phil Dalton, their big VC.”

  “Who else is on our team?”

  “You, me, Beau Buckley and Neha Patel.”

  “Beau Buckley?” She’d worked with Beau last summer on a recruiting event—he was great company, but worthless when it came to actual work. “Did you need a party buddy?”

  “It was Harvey Tate’s idea.” He rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry. Neha’s got enough horsepower for both of them.”

  He turned to leave and Tara pulled her legs out of the way, standing to let him pass. Their bodies were close in the cubicle and she could feel his heat meet her own. He paused for a moment, letting it linger.

  “I’ll have Neha send the deck and meet you in the lobby at seven on Friday,” he said, breaking the moment and moving past her to the elevator bank.

  “Hey, Todd.” He turned back. “Thanks,” she said.

  “My pleasure.” He winked, heading out the door.

  Tara felt her skin tingling, like the atmosphere had shifted to something intoxicating to breathe. Her phone rang, interrupting her reverie.

  “Shit,” Tara said, looking at the clock on her computer and realizing she was late for her call.

  “Kelly!” she said, picking up the phone. “How are you?”

  “I’m good! Do you still have time to talk?”

  “Yes, of course,” Tara said, sitting back down. “How is the decision coming? I know the deadline is approaching, so I just wanted to see how you’re feeling.”

  “I’m like ninety-nine percent there,” Kelly launched in, more honest than she probably should be. “I loved the summer and I know I’d learn a lot but I just—well, honestly, people keep saying that investment banks are really hierarchical and I know I have a lot to learn but I also want to, you know, feel like I’m contributing and not have to wait until I’m forty or whatever to be empowered.”

  Terrence approached Tara’s cubicle and she put up a finger to tell him to hold on.

  “I definitely know what you mean, Kelly. But it really isn’t true that young people don’t get opportunities.” She felt the statement’s personal truth as she said it. “You have to be patient, but there are amazing opportunities here if you work hard. In fact, I just got appointed to be the ECM point person on a major IPO . . . and I’m twenty-eight.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Tara looked up at Terrence, who was making a face at her. She batted him away, laughing, feeling spirited for the first time in a year.

  “Yeah,” Tara said. “And I promise that’s more impact than you’ll get as a non-engineer at Google.”

  “That’s awesome!” Kelly sounded more excited than Tara. “You’re totally going to be the next Catherine Wiley.”

  “I wish!” Tara laughed, but let the thought linger all the same, thinking about the investment bank’s wildly successful female president. “But if you come here, I want to help you however I can, okay? I’m excited to have another Stanford girl around.”

  She looked at Terrence’s gagging face and threw a pen at him.

  “You mean you’d be my mentor?”

  Tara paused: she’d never thought of herself that way before. Was she old enough to be a mentor?

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  “I think that just made my decision.”

  “Amazing, Kelly. I can’t wait to see you here this fall.”

  “You are so going to hell,” Terrence said as she hung up the phone.

  “What?” She looked up innocently at Terrence’s cocked eyebrow. “She thinks I’m going to be the next Catherine Wiley. Maybe she’s right?”

  “I’m just glad you’re going to get laid.”

  “I am not getting laid. Todd is so not interested,” she said, then added, “And neither, for the record, am I.”

  “Right.”

  Tara scoffed: she wasn’t. Todd was a player. Thinking about how many girls he’d probably slept with since her made her nauseous.

  “Not like there’s going to be time anyway—you know how intense these deals are, and there are only four of us on the team.”

  “I’ll give it till the road show.”

  “Thank you for your confidence in me,” she said.

  His eyes softened and he smiled. “You know I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thanks, T.”

  “Now get to work.” He came around the cube and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m already late to SoulCycle.”

  Tara watched him leave, followed shortly by the rest of the floor clearing out for the evening. She turned back to her computer, her workday just beginning, but not at all upset by that fact.

  KELLY

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5–THURSDAY, MARCH 6; PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

  Kelly hung up the phone and looked at the two letters on her dorm room desk one last time: the first, an offer letter from L.Cecil investment bank; the other, an offer letter from Google.

  The L.Cecil letter was beige with an embossed, traditional font. It felt heavy and important. The Google letter was bright white with the company’s multicolored logo across the top. It had been hand-signed by the recruiting manager, who inserted a smiley face next to his note. It was playful and not at all intimidating.

  “Okay,” she said, picking up a pen. “Moment of truth.”

  Kelly bit her lip, taking a minute to observe the significance of the fact that she was even here, in this dorm room on Stanford’s campus, making this decision. She’d grown up in the not-cool part of Brooklyn, the accidental (but well-loved) second child of a public school teacher mother and an accountant father whose professional promise was tempered by his on-again, off-again alcoholism. Kelly was the product of one stroke of luck after another—the right third-grade teacher who encouraged her to skip a grade; the right seventh-grade teacher who encouraged her to apply to Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan; the right college counselor who told her a school like Stanford wasn’t out of her reach; the right freshman RA who encouraged her to rush Pi Phi, where she met her best friend, Renee, whose Wall Street executive father helped Kelly get last summer’s internship at L.Cecil.

  Yes, Kelly knew, she was so lucky it was almost unfair. Which is why she couldn’t treat the opportunities life had given her lightly.

  She moved the pen to the L.Cecil letter and signed her name.

  Kelly went down the stairs of Xanadu, the old three-story house on Mayfield Avenue that Stanford had converted into a student residence. She took a deep breath before slipping the envelope into the mail slot at the bottom of the stairs.

  “What’re you mailing?”

  Kelly turned to see Robby Goodman, her RA, coming in through the main door with a case of Bud Light under either arm. Robby was tall and big but in an athletic way, equal parts rugby player and teddy bear. She was glad Robby was the first person she could tell the news to because she knew he’d be happy for her.

  “My offer letter for L.Cecil,” she said. “I just accepted.”

  “Whoa, seriously?” Robby’s shoulders dropped. “Does that mean you’re moving to New York?”

  “Yeah!” Kelly said. “I can’t wait.”

  He was quiet. She indicated the beer in his hands. “Big party tonight?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The new rugby recruits are in. We’re going to get schmammered. Actually, there’s an after-party at Theta Delt if you want to come? I’ll be blacked out, but it should be fun.”

  “I’m going to this concert at Shoreline, but maybe we’ll swing by when we’re back?” she offered, knowing Renee wouldn’t be caught dead at a rugby party at Theta Delt.

  “Cool,” he said, but didn’t make any effort to move, like there was something else. “Hey, do you—”

/>   The sound of a Skype ring interrupted him and Kelly looked at her watch. “Oh crap—that’s my brother”—she ran up the stairs to catch the call—“Have fun tonight!”

  She got to her room just in time to open the laptop and see Charlie’s face on the screen. Charlie was eleven years older and an international correspondent for the Associated Press. She knew that his rugged tan skin, shaggy hair and green eyes that captured the intensity of his intellect must be attractive but intimidating to other girls. She assumed that, along with his constant movement, was why he’d never had a serious girlfriend. But she saw through his serious demeanor. To her, Charlie was the goofy older brother who let her put makeup on him when she was seven, the one who taught her how to raise just one eyebrow and, when she got older, sneak down the fire escape at night without anyone hearing.

  He was her best friend, her number-one confidant and fan. Which is what made it so hard to know she was about to let him down.

  “What did you decide?” he asked as soon as she came on the screen.

  “Hey,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Istanbul,” he said. “What did you decide?”

  “I’m going with L.Cecil,” she said. “I just signed my offer letter.”

  Charlie didn’t say anything. He hated Wall Street.

  “And I’m happy with my decision.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  They’d already been through this when she accepted the banking internship last summer: was he really going to make her do it again? “Because I’ll learn a lot. And I’ll be around smart people. And it’ll open a lot of doors. And I’ll do things that matter.”

  As soon as the words came out of her mouth she regretted them.

  “Do things that matter?” His eyes flared up on the screen. “Helping rich corporations get richer? That matters to you?”

  “I don’t want to go work in Syria, Charlie. I’m sorry if you think that makes me a bad person.”

  “I don’t want you to work in Syria, either. I just want you to do something that’s meaningful.”

  “It can be meaningful,” she said. “Corporations need money to—” She stopped herself, knowing she’d never win that argument. “It’s not like I’m doing it forever,” she said instead. “A lot of people only stay for a couple of years, then go do other things. And at L.Cecil I’ll get good training, and meet influential people, and then if I don’t feel like I’m making a difference, I can go to Africa or whatever and have more impact than I could now anyway.”