Hotel Living (23 page)

From: Andrea Farrugia

To: Stathis Rakis

Date: Wed, Apr 4, 2007, 3:14 p.m.

Subject: BioProt video conf.

               
Statis, I believe our Strategic Alternatives are solid. Please set up one-on-ones with the steering committee to walk them through Strategy III (Cosmeceuticals).

                     
Good client facilitation today, but you responded to my action items at 3 p.m. EST. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. I need turnarounds before noon my time. This is not negotiable!

               
Andrea Farrugia

               
Senior Vice President

               
Command Consulting

               
* I am in the business of impact *

From: Teresa BangBang

To: Stathis Rakis

Date: Sun, Apr 8, 2007, 11:52 p.m.

Subject:

               
How are you, lover? I haven't spoken to Tati since I talked to you on the phone. She never picks up. She cut me out of her life after she moved to France, after she had the proce
dure . . . Her father, the asshole, doesn't pick up either. I'm in Paris shooting, and I can't concentrate, I can't perform. I know that you talk to her. PLEASE PLEASE tell her that I want to see her. Please, tell her to call me. Is Ray behaving back home?

               
I love you. Always.

               
Teresa.

From: Andrea Farrugia

To: Stathis Rakis

Date: Thu, Apr 12, 2007, 1:12 a.m.

Subject: BOUZOUKIA

               
You looked like you arrived straight from a Greek bouzoukia at the video conference today. If you want to have impact, you should button your jacket when you walk into a meeting, and make sure the pink sticker from the dry cleaner is REMOVED from your shirt! Not looking after your looks is telling BioProt that you have no discipline, and that will hurt their appetite for risk.

                     
I couldn't care less about “innovation fatigue.” Impact, impact, impact!

               
Andrea Farrugia

               
Senior Vice President

               
Command Consulting

               
* I am in the business of impact *

From: Tatiana SmartFuck

To: Stathis Rakis

Date: Fri, Apr 13, 2007, 9:38 a.m.

Subject: Get to France.

               
      
My love, Aix is a paradise. The garden is amazing. I read books and go to the fruit market. I'm working on my relationship with my father. Come see us. Je t'adore.

               
Emotionally and physically available, Tati.

From: Paul deBerg

To: Stathis Rakis

Date: Sat, Apr 14, 2007, 1:06 p.m.

Subject: AccostingTV Gallery opening invitation

               
A Game Changer—attached

From: Stathis Rakis

To: Paul deBerg

Date: Sat, Apr 14, 2007, 1:10 p.m.

Subject: RE: AccostingTV Gallery opening invitation

               
I never subscribed to your list.

From: Stathis Rakis

To: Andrea Farrugia

Cc: Kirk Davies

Date: Fri, Apr 20, 2007, 3:14 p.m.

Subject: Rethink, redesign, redevelop

               
Andrea—

               
The majority of the metrics we picked favor Strategy III (Cosmeceuticals). What is the purpose of a full-blown portfolio exercise if our model is structured in a way that predetermines where to invest? It is conceptually messy and confusing to the client. We are about to transform BioProt into a consumer products company. There's still time to rethink our approach.

               
Stathis.

From: Andrea Farrugia

To: Stathis Rakis

Date: Sat, Apr 21, 2007, 1:12 a.m.

Subject: RE: Rethink, redesign, redevelop

               
REDRESS!!!

               
Andrea Farrugia

               
Senior Vice President

               
Command Consulting

               
* I am in the business of impact *

From: Kirk Davies

To: Stathis Rakis

Date: Sun, Apr 22, 2007, 10:08 p.m.

Subject: RE: Rethink, redesign, redevelop

               
Dear Stathis:

               
I celebrate our culture of debate. These are the types of questions that we welcome. At Command everyone is equal. We speak freely and we don't smooth out our differences.

                     
Andrea loves merging science with commerce—she loves hybrids. She lives in a condo hotel. How is that for real (estate) options?

                     
I hear that the BioProt people trust you, which is important. Yet your dress code has come to my attention. Andrea is not asking you to wear a three-piece suit. Do what I do: bespoke dress down when on the West Coast.

               
Regards,

               
Kirk C. Davies III

               
Senior Vice President

               
Command Consulting

August 2007

I
BARELY SEE THE SUN IN
LA
.
I live between BioProt conference rooms, tinted-windowed SUVs, and the hills at dusk. They all contribute to a summer that makes everything seem surreally seamless—BioProt's cement campus melds into God's hangar house, God's black sofas into Sunset lounges where I hang out with Ray, and his oversize white T-shirts into BioProt lab outfits. As work and play merge—I manage biotech models and Teresa's bank accounts—God, Ray, and Andrea become the different faces of a trinity. I have to accept that either the world around me is mad or that I am, and I choose the former, accusing LA of making me manipulate science via commerce and cocaine via Xanax.

“How're you doing, man?” A forty-year-old guy in a skateboarder outfit taps my shoulder as I search for beer at a convenience store on Sunset. I've no idea who the dude is. Have we partied? Fucked? Is he a client?

“I'm good,” I say. “How are you?”

“Press on!” He smiles, and his crow's-feet turn upward. “Do they still have you up there?”

“Up?” I say.

“At the Chateau.”

“Basically,” I say. I need a six-pack, and Ray is waiting outside in the car. I can barely stand up straight because of my insomnia, but this dude here in skate shorts won't stop chatting me up.

I look around for an excuse, anything. Middle-aged guys in Abercrombie & Fitch outfits browse the Raw–Organic–Vegan aisle. “Who am I to judge?” says Teresa from the cover of a tabloid on the bottom shelf, and I flash back to scoring in her garden, having three-ways with Ray in Tatiana's childhood bedroom, watching Ray peeing into the kitchen sink at the Chateau and on a nineteen-year-old, going to coke-for-sex parties in half-built houses, editing BioProt slides with God. So why shouldn't forty-year-olds resist aging? Why not the Andrea doctrine? What's the difference between God's celebrity-for-an-hour virtual-reality game and Andrea's BioProt scheme for face-toning vibrating machines? If culture is driving science, then biotechs will become the new establishment, heading for the pharmacos' heyday of the nineties, oversaturated with cash, blockbusters, and denial about research and patent expirations. “I'd rather reinvent than invent,” God says. What if we go Andrea, and give up on hard innovation? Let drug pipelines get acquired and then turn novelty to lifestyle and marketing instead. “You know that you're irrelevant, that you're extinct, when you follow the trend. And that's when it gets interesting,” God taught me.

“I'm double-parked,” I tell the dude. “Do you want to come to a formwork party?”

MY CELL PHONE IS RINGING
nonstop, but some girl's torso blocks me from going for it. As I roll over, my hand gets wet from come or piss on Ray's shark. I see my phone under Teresa's kabbalah bendels on her nightstand.

“Hello,” I groan.

“Are you sleeping?” Alkis asks.

“No. Sore throat.”

“Right.”

“What's up?” I hear office chaos in the background. I've no clue what time it is in London, or here.

“Listen, mate.” Alkis sounds serious. He takes a second. “They found your Greek pal Constantine, I mean, Zemar, er, in Peshawar.”

“What?” I rub my itching eyes. “Oh . . .”

“They don't know if it was an overdose or murder. It's news today. I mean, it's
part
of the news today. I thought you should know.”

“What was it? Like . . . what did he take?”

“Heroin. They found him with a syringe in his arm. Channel Four said they'll do an autopsy in Pakistan. Hey, mate, everything's bananas today. BNP suspended withdrawals. They tell me they can't move their subprime bonds. I have to go. I'll talk to you later.”

I pull myself out of bed, holding my phone tightly, and walk through Teresa's balcony door. I sit on the garden steps, and the mist that clouds Laurel Canyon sends a chill over my naked body. It's the first time that I feel cold in LA. There's too much in the garden, trees growing under trees, everything mishmashed to form a jungle just two miles from Sunset. The sound of the birds conflicts with the hum from the city. Nothing makes sense in Southern California. I dial my sister.

“Oh my God! Where are you?” she cries. “What time is it?” I can hear her sobbing.

“I want to come back,” I say.

October 2007

A
T SOME POINT THIS FALL
(though I never did figure out what fall meant in LA), my feelings of apathy soured into defeat. Constantine was dead at thirty-eight, Erik was long gone, Andrea had gotten her way with BioProt, and Tatiana was not picking up in France. A postcard I'd sent to Jeevan (addressed: “Jeevan, Moonhole, Bequia”) was returned to the front desk at the Chateau.

The morning after our final presentation at BioProt, I'm up and packed before the sun rises. I want to catch the first flight to New York, as the prospect of traveling with Andrea later in the day is unbearable.

“I'm sorry that you are leaving us,” Josh at the front desk tells me, handing me my final bill and the returned postcard.

“Thank you,” I murmur, staring at the “Return to Sender” stamp from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I look up and see Josh smiling. I'm thrown by how young he looks compared to how old I feel. “Thank you for everything you did for me,” I say, and shake his hand.

On my ride to LAX, I keep telling myself that I need to text Ray; we never had a proper good-bye, not that we ever had a proper anything. But I can't get myself to type a single word. Flying back east, I try to understand this. I try to comprehend LA. The place where I gave up and stopped caring. Just like Ray, I got sucked into Hollywood culture and turned into a pig in the process, giving hand jobs to strangers and supporting Andrea. I ask for some vodka, hoping it will help me accept that no one can play the game without whoring themselves a bit. But the drink doesn't do it; I don't feel any better. I try to distract myself with
The Bourne Ultimatum
. I'm too tired to follow the plot, but I still get that Matt Damon is way conscientious. So I flip to
Ocean's Thirteen
, which seems closer to home.

BACK IN NEW YORK, I
keep a low profile. I have to; I have no friends in the city anymore. I'm supposed to do some follow-up work for BioProt, but it's just support, remote work, and I don't need to be in the office. So I'm back to my old Sant Ambroeus habits. Once again I live and work on my barstool in the restaurant; once again regulars edge away from me at the bar; once again AAers and
Sex and the City
tourists roam around Perry and West Fourth; once again I try to ignore my phone. It's like I never left.

“Mate!” Alkis says when I pick up on his third try.

He's been in New York for a week, he says. He knows that I'm at Sant Ambroeus.

“I see” is all I say.

He is in town with Cristina. They are back together, sorting things out. Would I like to have dinner with them in the Village?

I have to think about this. We haven't spoken since LA except for a couple of generic messages—“Paul's e-trash empire made the
Huff Post
,” “The Chinese to save Bear”—nothing on Tati, Erik, BioProt, or anything important whatsoever. Dinner with Cristina, before a proper catch-up, seems funny.

“Fine, here is the catch,” Alkis says, after my long pause. “Kevin booked the table. I know he is Erik's brother, but he is the one who suggested I call you. Do we have a problem?”

“How come you are having dinner with Kevin?” I ask, thinking of Constantine, and I am grateful at the realization that Erik wasn't my first thought.

“We ran the London marathon together,” Alkis says sarcastically. “You spent too much time in LA, mate. Think East Coast, think
smart
! The guy runs his own fund and we are on our third round of layoffs, with two fifty-points cuts this month. Our CFO's on the move. I
need
you tonight.”

“Your CFO said the worst of the credit shit was over,” I say, and Alkis hangs up on me.

I dial him back.

ALMOST FIVE YEARS TO THE
day that I met Erik, I walk down my block to have dinner with his brother. I step into the low-
ceilinged restaurant and pick up on a free-floating anxiety in its bar.

“This is Larry, the maître d',” Alkis says, introducing me to a man who's obsessing over a touch screen built into a podium. “Stathis is my favorite ex-colleague,” Alkis adds.

Larry pivots his head between screens. He's cornered by a guy in a leather racing jacket and a Partner from McKinsey I've seen around the biopharma conference circuit. Alkis touches Larry's shoulder, and I understand the drama: everyone waiting is in desperate competition for a table.

Kevin, six-four, stands by the fireplace at the end of the bar. He has a martini in his hand and is talking to Helen, a brunette who's been hanging on to him since before I met him three years ago. His gray suit, his black turtleneck, and the circles under his eyes project success and unhappiness.

“I'll get us a drink,” I tell Alkis, and make my way toward them.

“Captain Stathis!” Kevin tries to hug me, but Helen stops him and takes his martini out of his hand. The moment gone, we shake hands. He has Erik's curved-down eyes.

“Kevin!” I say. “You found your way downtown.”

“For
you
, Captain, anywhere. You remember my girlfriend, Helen?”

Helen smiles coldly. I haven't seen her since Kevin's party, the night Erik and I broke up. She looks aged, in a forced, Stepford-wife way.

“Helen and I are old friends,” I say, trying to break the ice.

She is in a printed horsehair suit, and her necklace looks like the Dow Jones Index of the last ten years, engraved on a bar of gold. Could I be seeing things? I haven't even had a drink yet.

“Alkis mentioned that you live in the neighborhood,” Helen says.

“I live down the street,” I say, still stupefied by her necklace. “But I've been out of town for quite a while. This is my first time at the Waverly Inn, actually.”

“We love it,” Helen says. “John is a genius. His food is so hearty, so winter! You'll become a regular.”

“I'm sorry, but is your necklace, ah, what I think it is?” I ask.

“You better believe it!” Kevin jumps in. “US equities! Helen recently changed jobs. She is now the senior VP of public relations for—”

“
And
communications,” Helen corrects him.

“And communications,” Kevin echoes, “for a fashion house.” He touches his gray suit. “Easy tailoring,” he says, showing it off to me.

Helen rolls her eyes.

“What are you drinking?” Kevin asks me.

“Vodka dirty, up. And let's get Alkis whatever he was having.”

Kevin turns to the bar.

“Are you celebrating Tuesday's rally?” I ask Helen, nodding at her necklace.

“Excuse me?” she says.

“Last Tuesday, we had the biggest market gain since 2002.”

“Oh, no!” She laughs. “It's just conversation jewelry.”

“It worked,” I say, but she opens a malachite-embellished clutch and checks her cell phone.

Fuck you and your iPhone; we used to trade notes on the brothers.

The Disney girl walks in. She is flanked by two guys in rap-boxing outfits, and there's an androgynous creature behind her. She must have lost ten pounds since I last saw her. She's barely standing. Her lips, bigger, injected, match the color of her red-hooded dress. Larry takes them right into the main room.

“Stathis, here.” Kevin hands me a martini.

“Thank you.” I point at Alkis, who's now stalking the new person behind the podium. “I thought we had a reservation,” I say.

“We do, but Alkis likes to drive,” Kevin explains. “He's a New Yorker that way. Plus, I think he's been a bit jumpy since he's gotten back with Cristina.”

“Where
is
Cristina?” I ask.

“Oh, she's on her way,” Helen says with a dismissive gesture. “Something came up with the Four Seasons nanny.”

“I never met Alkis's ex, but I've heard stories,” Kevin says, raising his eyebrows. “She was a friend of yours, right?”

“Still is,” I say, almost proudly. “Though I haven't seen her for a while. She moved to France.”

“Alkis was pretty shaken by all that,” Kevin continues. “She was a troublemaker.”

“Who isn't?” I say, ready to bring up Constantine, but I see some connection in Kevin's eyes, and I let it slide. “She is just young,” I say, and notice Alkis leading Cristina our way.

“Cristina!” Helen shouts.

“I don't believe we are here for a second time this week,” Cristina complains. “I'm a vegetarian,” she says, explaining herself, and kisses us. Same big smile and teeth. She still sounds, looks, and smells like Italy.

“Have you settled up at the bar?” Alkis asks Kevin.

Kevin nods and hands Alkis a whiskey, neat, and we follow the maître d' into the main room's glow. Candlelike lights reflect on fruit-red banquettes and an autumn-colored mural, filled with caricatures of bohemians turned household names. I recognize Dylan, Pollock, Kerouac, and Brando, all of them doing their signature unhealthy but sainted activities, drinking and writing or smoking and drawing. I'm fixated on them—they make me feel better about the coke I have with me—and I stumble on a table in the middle of the floor. A tall waiter grabs me before I land on a plate of truffled mac and cheese.

“Thank you, John,” Alkis says.

“Thank you, John,” I repeat, dazed.

People clap and cheer as John politely bows.

Our table is a room with a view—a banquette walled between the main room and the bathroom, with an internal window on the central tables. I sit at the edge of the bench, close to the bathroom, which is handy. Helen shares
the far end with Cristina, Alkis sits next to me, and Kevin is directly across.

“Stathis, if this is your first time here you
must
try the tuna tartare,” Helen says. “It's the strongest of the small plates.”

I pick up the preview menu in front of me, which is odd; I'm pretty sure Alkis and Tatiana called me from here when I was in LA. “Preview? Didn't they open last year?” I ask Alkis.

“They opened in the 1920s,” Alkis says, wolfing down a biscuit. He is stress-eating.

I browse the menu and waver between a line-appetizer-line combo and a quick entrée followed by a couple of lines. But the plates are described in pie-and-mash words—Amish chicken, clam chowder, lardons—which means large sizes, which means it could be tricky to choke it down fast.

“There is only one vegetarian plate . . .” Cristina sighs.

“How long have you been a vegetarian?” Helen asks her.

“Since I saw
War of the Worlds
,” Cristina replies, and we all look at her oddly.

“Why?” Kevin asks.

“It made me aware of speciesism,” Cristina says.

“Who wants wine?” Alkis asks, grabbing a second biscuit, but everybody stays with Cristina.

“What if aliens came to Earth and treated us like stock, like fuel?” Cristina says. “We would go: ‘
No!
'” She shakes a finger. “We would be like: ‘You can't do that!' And the aliens would say: ‘But we are only treating you the way you treat less intelligent species.' What if
that
happened?”

“Oh, totally,” someone spurts, and I have bite my lip so I don't burst out laughing.

“Cristina is taking a class on voluntary social systems in London,” Alkis says quickly, and people nod. “Where's the bloody sommelier?” he murmurs.

“John the Savior,” I say to the waiter who spared me from the macaroni crash.

“My pleasure, sir,” John says.

“Actually, it is the savior and the sinner from John,” Kevin says contentedly.

What if I fucked you harder than I fucked your brother? Made you scream my name while I screamed: Fuck
you
, Erik.

“May I briefly interrupt to tell you about our specials tonight?” John says.

“I'm good to go, John. Tuna tartare and a burger. Medium rare,” I say, getting up and heading to the men's room.

Ten minutes later, everyone is talking.

“This trend for compulsory fun at work is becoming
ridiculous
,” Helen tells Alkis. “We are a step from having departments of fun.”

“Paul's website says that people go from one inn to the other,” Cristina says.

“Is there another Waverly Inn?” Kevin asks.

“Oh, no!” Cristina laughs. “They go from the Waverly Inn to the Beatrice Inn.”

“I haven't been there,” Kevin says. He turns to me and asks slyly, “Have you been to the Beatrice Inn, Stathis?”

I stare back and lie: “I have not.”

Alkis gives me a knowing look. Whatever. I owe him nothing; I owe them nothing. I'm only here 'cause I fell for someone five years ago.

“So, what's up with you guys?” Kevin asks Alkis. “What's Lehman's story? What's up with O'Meara? Why is he moving to risk management?”

“It's just internal. Reshuffling. No blame game attached. If anything, it shows that we can deal with a storm,” Alkis says, playing with his glass. “How are things on the buy side?”

“We're living in a Harry Potter movie. Don't say Voldemort. Don't say the R-word.
Recession!
Boo!” Kevin makes the stop sign with his hands. “It's a
joke
. You can bag a recession just by fetishizing it.”

A bottle of red arrives, but I sip my second dirty martini—they come cloudy and strong. I look through our window to the main floor. The waiters, all men, attend editors, High Line heavyweights, writers, and painters seated in the central banquettes. They dine in tracksuits and pajamas, and scold their children for playing with their gadgets and food. People at peripheral tables do not gawk but are not oblivious to them either. Rather, they seem to have mastered the art of quick, semicontemptuous scans. Food here is an aside, an accessory. A woman in a man's tuxedo at the main banquette lights a cigarette. She sits under her very own image in the mural behind her: also portrayed in a tux smoking. I watch this weird person-mural, theater-Inn scene, and God's Ceauşescu
footage pops into my mind: everyone dancing in a collective paranoia, transforming a whole country into an inane stage. “You know you're close to the end when theater becomes life,” Demosthenes preached to the ancient Athenians.