The Amateurs

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

DUTTON
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P
2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,
London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road,
Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd);
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110
017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New
Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd,
24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First printing, August 2009

Copyright © 2009 by Marcus Sakey

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

 

Sakey, Marcus.
The amateurs : a novel / by Marcus Sakey.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-13340-8

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

 

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

The Players

—Ian McEwan,
Amsterdam

I
AN WAS AWARE OF THE CLICHÉ. That’s what made it OK. It was one thing to be the trader wearing a suit that belied your debt, sitting in the company men’s room at almost eight at night, blasting coke from the hinge of your thumb, and believing you were Gordon Gekko. It was another to see it for the sordid little scene it was. As long as you knew that, you were still running the show.

Screw it,
he thought, then bent forward and snorted hard.

It was good stuff, coating the inside of his skull with ice, a moment of brain freeze that released slow and sweet into a glorious warmth. He poured a bump for his other nostril—had to be democratic—and blew that one too. Then he leaned against the toilet tank, the porcelain cool and hard and kind of pleasant through the starched cotton of his oxford.

There we go. There it is.

His toe wanted to tap, but he fought the urge, glanced at his watch instead: 7:58 in the p.m. Almost there. He’d worked here for years, noticed it only subliminally at first. The kind of pattern the human brain catches a bit at a time. Part of him wanted to count the seconds down, but that would have been cheating.

When the air-conditioning shut off at 8:00 exactly, a sudden absence of sound that had measured the whole of his day, he smiled.

Silly, he knew. But if eighty percent of his waking life was going to be spent sitting in a gray corporate office—which, by the way, he didn’t remember voting on, thanks very much—he’d seize his little triumphs where he could. He arrived most days before six, in time to hear the fans turn on, and worked the same day over and over in a blur of predatory action, the headset so much a part of his body that he sometimes forgot to take it off when he stood up from his desk, got jerked back by the cord. Maneuver after maneuver, each the one that might get him out from under, might return him to wunderkind status, the guy who had cracked Hudson-Pollom Biolabs and made a quick half-mil instead of the also-ran everyone was starting to suspect he might be. Lunch at his desk, stolen in bites. A bathroom break midmorning and midafternoon, two quick white blurs to keep his energy kicking. Staying after the phones went quiet to read the blogs, make his plans for tomorrow, and try, in an amiable, distracted way, to figure out how to make up what he’d lost.

And finally, the retreat here, to his porcelain palace, to blow a good-night kiss to work and start the evening properly.

He pinched his nostrils, then rattled the toilet-paper dispenser like he’d been using the john. There was no one in the bathroom, but habits were important for the day he didn’t hear his boss come in. He flushed, stepped out, washed his hands, then checked himself in the mirror. Nose clean, tie straight. Ready for the world.

He smiled, made guns of his fists and shot the mirror, an intentionally cheesy joke meant only for himself—it seemed like most of his jokes were—and then headed for the door.

It was Thursday night, and his friends would be waiting. Alex behind the bar in a bleach-worn shirt, the cuffs spotted with old stains. Jenn sipping a vodka martini, never a cosmo, not since
Sex and the City
. Mitch rocking his stool on two legs, trying not to get caught looking sidelong at Jenn. The Thursday Night Crew. Thinking of them made him smile again. Funny how their unlikely foursome had remained friends when all the folks he’d grown up with, the ones who signed yearbooks and made pledges of eternity, had all fallen quietly away. Moved to New York or the suburbs, gotten married and had children. That might be sad if he let it.

But why would he? He was young, secretly high, and his friends were waiting.

 

 

WHEN MITCH CLIMBED ON THE BUS, there was only one seat open, next to a black guy wearing a puffy Looney Tunes jacket and loose jeans, his leg thrown across the open seat. Mitch walked over, stood looking down at the guy. “Excuse me.”

For a long moment, the man ignored him. Then, drawing the gesture out slow, he swiveled his head to look up at Mitch. His eyes pitched half open, a toothpick stuck to wet lips. Nothing in his expression at all. After a moment of staring, he turned back to the window. He didn’t move his leg.

Asshole
, Mitch thought and moved back a couple of rows, stood gripping the hand bar, swaying with the motion of the bus. His heels felt like someone was cranking wood screws into them, and the steady ache in his back that began around noon had stretched up to his shoulders and neck. Occupational hazard of spending all day standing up, smiling on cue as he opened and closed the heavy glass doors of the Continental Hotel.