Moral Hazard (8 page)

Bailey was a bolter. Even with his unsteady legs, he could find his way to the elevator and down to the lobby. He now wore an electronic monitor on his ankle.

“Where’s he going?” I asked Evangeline, the Filipina nurse in charge of the floor.

“To find you.”

For the first three months, when I arrived after work, he was always sitting on the edge of his bed waiting for me, his clothes in a neat bundle, his walking stick resting on top. I replaced his clothes on hangers, talking softly about my day, until he calmed down. He would tell me about all the work
he
had done, the phone calls, the new projects. He drifted in time and geography. I repressed the impulse to correct him and let him go wherever his mind took him. Bailey down the rabbit hole. His world had turned into one of his collages: swatches of memories, scraps of facts, found fears, discarded desires.

To get to Bailey’s room, I had to pass a whiskered, pursy woman in a wheelchair. I always hurried by, averting my eyes. She passed the days knitting from a ball of twine the size of a cantaloupe and squawking like a macaw. “You bitch cunt niggers, get your dirty hands off me,” she shrieked at the aides, none of whom was white. Accustomed to disinhibition—to use the clinical term—they ignored her. “Lace-curtain Irish,” one told me, eyebrows raised a fraction.

Bailey refused to communicate with the staff, except to inform them that I was coming to get him, that this was all a mistake. Or, alternately, I had abandoned, divorced him. He began to panhandle, approaching visitors to ask them for money for food. I would find dollar bills squirreled away in his shoes or under his pillow and heartbreaking notes written in his deteriorating hand:
Cath? My wife!!! Where are you? Please! Where are you?

To my relief, he made a friend on the floor. Her name was Dolly, and she also had Alzheimer’s. Her husband had preceded her at the home, in the same room, although nobody reminded Dolly of the fact. She favored peacock colors and black patent leather shoes and loved to dance. She talked to herself: an unceasing susurrus of complaint.

The friendship started because Bailey somehow discovered that Dolly had a pair of nail scissors and was willing to cut off his electronic monitor. He didn’t know the monitor’s purpose, just hated having a plastic gewgaw biting into his ankle. When I rounded the corner one day and caught them red-handed—she with the scissors, he with the hacked-off monitor—they turned their faces up at me, pretending innocence. What,
us
!

They began having meals together in the small dining room on their floor, Dolly giddy and Bailey adopting the pose of the long-suffering male. They both ate the same way, tiny portions, examining each mouthful and then chewing intently, as if they were discovering food. Around them, aides spoon-fed other residents, wiped chins.

Dolly invited Bailey to events in the home, singalongs and theme parties. I sometimes tagged along. The Hawaiian evening has stayed with me because the nuns wore hula skirts over their habits. The band, three men with shirts open to their waists, played Elvis Presley covers, and everyone in the room, helped along by stiff drinks—the nuns were not ones to deny their charges this pleasure—raucously crooned “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” and “It’s Now or Never” along with them. In the middle of the last tune, Dolly dragged Bailey to his feet, begged him to dance, unaware that his legs weren’t up to it. He stood in place, wobbly and dazed, while she waltzed around him, her movements elaborate, exaggerated.

Soon Bailey and Dolly were fixtures on the floor, sitting on chairs in the hallway, heads close together.

“What do they talk about?” I asked Evangeline.

“The home. The staff. Other residents.”

I listened in whenever I could. In their minds, the home was a fancy hotel owned by a wealthy woman. Most of the guests did not belong there. Most of the staff, likewise.

“She has a big crush on Bailey,” said Evangeline.

Dolly had indeed fallen in love with Bailey. “I don’t care if he has a wife,” she told anyone who would listen. “I love him. I will always love him.”

Now, whenever she saw me, she scuttled away, blushing and angry. Bailey treated her importuning with grand indifference: a king getting his due.

Christmas at the nursing home was a big event. Decorations, trees, caroling, gifts, church services. I bought a scarf in brilliant blues for Bailey to give to Dolly. “Christmas? It’s Christmas?” said Bailey. I called Dolly into Bailey’s room and nudged him to hand over the present.

Dolly refused to take the scarf off. She wore it to bed. It became soiled, lost its flounce. No matter. She paraded down the hall, flinging it this way and that over her shoulder, as if she were a model.

Months passed, and she wouldn’t part with the scarf, not even to have it washed. I bought her a new one, brilliant greens this time, but the ploy didn’t work. The new scarf was stowed away in a bottom drawer.

The air in the home was hot and often foul. Despite the staff’s best efforts, it smelled of full diapers and moldering laundry, creased flesh and overcooked food. On the way home, unable to clear the stench from my mouth and nose, I would stop between parked cars and retch into the gutter.

Horace wore his suits lightly; his colleagues came bubble-wrapped in their pinstripes. But on the day he had to give a speech to the firm’s Women’s Network, his tailoring was no help. He looked as uncomfortable, as unhappy, as a wet cat.

Fretting about the speech, he had enlisted me to come up with ideas. This was a problem. I kept my distance from diversity issues. I admired the people who put energy into the task, but they were Penelopes, always weaving, their work unraveling during the night. No matter how many speeches were given, targets announced, and initiatives launched, the numbers of African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians at the firm kept filling, with women making only the tiniest of gains. And, to be honest, I found young women bankers off-putting. They seemed to have perfected—indeed, made into an art form—the kind of hand gestures that showed off large diamond rings to maximum effect. And they could be more obnoxious, more condescending, than their male counterparts. While I marveled at their astonishing self-confidence, I also couldn’t help but think,
For this my generation of feminists fought the good fight
? (The answer:
Yes.
)

Horace was of the opinion that minorities had the bank by the short hairs. (No, not his words.) I pointed out that Niedecker had yet to appoint a woman to its executive management team, par for the Street.

“They’re in the pipeline,” he replied. Ah, the fabled pipeline, invoked at moments like this. “And we have two women on our board.” Miffed, defensive.

“Good for Niedecker! But two swallows do
not
a summer make.” Trying hard to keep insolence out of my voice.

“You never miss a trick, do you?” And we turned back to his speech.

I warned Horace against repeating the CEO’s mistake in front of the same group. Our Big Toe—so white, so male, so advantaged—had earnestly put himself forward as an example of diversity. If he, a Midwesterner, plucked from architectural studies at Princeton, could succeed at Niedecker, anyone could, prompting head-ducking, teeth-gritting embarrassment. (“My favorite honky,” commented one black woman to another, sotto voce.) I suggested instead to Horace that he empathize with the women by saying that being female in financial services was like playing tennis with the wind against you. One had to be careful using sports metaphors with career women, but I thought this might make the grade.

Horace forged into the meeting and spoke his piece. Polite applause. Then a panel of midlevel women took over. It became apparent that none of them thought that the wind was against them. Instead, to hear them tell it, they were making their way unaided except by their own talent and determination, vanquishing doubt by the excellence of their work. No mistake about it, these gals were fast-tracking to the top. For them, the pipeline was a greased waterslide at an amusement park. Bravado? All the same, standing there, at the back of the room, I felt like the Ancient Mariner.

Niedecker had two dining rooms. One was on the top floor, a soaring space with a maître d’, attentive waitresses, exquisite art, and sweeping views of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Here executives and managing directors dined with one another or with clients. When so disposed, MDs invited subordinates to accompany them, in the name of mentoring.
De haut en bas
occasions, to be endured. The other dining area was a cafeteria in the sub-basement, where everyone below MD level amiably congregated to dissect the latest gossip. The food was awful, a notch above nursing home fare, but it was free.

I was lunching in the firm’s cafeteria with Richard, the Human Resources officer who kept tabs on our department, when Mike walked by our table with one of his underlings in tow and nodded in my direction. Although he was executive management, he sometimes came down here, as did the head of Emerging Markets, which earned them points with the rest of us. Rumor had it that Horace had once eaten in the cafeteria and pronounced the food excellent. It was also rumored that he’d noticed someone picking through the lettuce at the salad bar for the best bits and remarked that such behavior was a sign that Niedecker was not what it used to be.

“Friend of yours?” asked Richard, an owlish fellow who could be counted on to be amusing about the antics of Chuck, Bart, and Hanny. A Niedecker lifer, he had married his high-school sweetheart and still lived in the same Long Island town where he grew up.

“Not exactly. We meet outside on ciggie breaks. He talks, I listen. He’s got interesting views.” I tracked Mike as he went through the routine of pouncing on a table before anyone else claimed it. He was unkempt, stooped.

“Have you heard what he said at the last executive meeting?”

“What?”

“Traders are maggots on the meat of capitalism.”

I stopped hacking at the gray beef on my plate and poked instead at a clump of watery string beans. “Golly. Why’d he say that?”

“He was arguing against some proprietary trading strategy and getting nowhere. Lost it, I guess.” Proprietary trading, the name given to the in-house hedge fund activities of Wall Street banks, is a hot potato because, as with regular hedge funds, big money could be made—or thrown to the winds. Shareholders prefer steady fee-based earnings.

“What was the reaction?”

“Oh, I think they’re used to it. These guys know each other pretty well. He’s an odd duck, though. Good at his job, so they put up with his idiosyncrasies. Like Hanny.”

Several weeks later, Chuck invited me to dine upstairs. As it happened, Mike again walked by, this time with the head of Private Banking, a tubby, disdainful Latin American. Jack Spratt and his wife. Mike nodded in Chuck’s direction and then in mine.

“You know him?” asked Chuck. Casual. Ostensibly paying more attention to shaking out his napkin than his question.

I shrugged. “I interviewed him for a speech.”

“Hmmm,” he responded, imparting layers of corporate meaning with that one sound. “Bright guy. A quant’s quant.” He took a moment to enjoy his witticism. Chuck and Mike weren’t buddies—Chuck was a Republican Party operative until he followed the money to Niedecker—but they had recently shared a fiftieth-birthday celebration on the executive floor; it had been my job to come up with jokes for the toasts.

“I hear he’s been getting up noses.”

Chuck grinned. “Yes. He has.” Pause. “You’ve heard about that?”

“Just the bare outlines.” As if anything of interest didn’t make its way down through the ranks fleshed out,
replete
, with detail. Trickle-down gossip was much more efficient than trickle-down economics.

“Oh, he gets carried away sometimes. Probably going through a midlife crisis,” said Chuck. Large smile, eyes periscoping the room. Chuck should know. He was divorcing his wife not for someone younger, blonder, and more adoring, as was usually the case, but for a sharp-tongued woman who’d had at least one facelift. Certain sections of the cafeteria had been humming like a high-tension wire with this news for months.

“How’re things working out with Horace?”
Loaded
question.

“Fine.”

“Cath, I know you are astute. But be careful. Complex character. Horace can’t always, ah, be taken at his word.”
Sheesh.
This was awkward. Like many people of charm, Horace was given to making promises. Anything to have you feel warmly about him at that moment. Promises that were not so much broken as allowed to slip from his mind as if they had never been made in the first place. But Chuck was that way inclined himself; his promises exited his mind backward, like tottering geishas.

“Uh-huh.”

Chuck knew next to nothing about me, much less my capacity for astuteness, although he had been told I was “literary,” which prompted his next remark. “You know, I’ve always wanted to write a novel about the financial world.”

“Really!”

“A thriller. All the investment banks have CIA or State Department guys working for them. Filled with spooks! Being a banker is a good cover. The stories I’ve heard.” True enthusiasm in his voice.

“Something along the lines of Michael Crichton? John Grisham?”

“Yes, that’s it, exactly. I’m a big fan of those writers. Not that I get much time to read.”

“Great idea!”

“Wouldn’t mind having their bank accounts, either.”

“Go for it!”

Chuck wagged his head, grinned goofily. I glanced across at Mike, engaged in intense conversation with his companion. In unison, they consulted their watches. Mike wore a plastic digital watch, the head of Private Banking something heavy and gold. A Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso, if I wasn’t mistaken. Showy.

I turned my attention back to Chuck. Observing him was as entertaining as watching Horace because he had an array of mannerisms, developed after he stopped smoking and drinking. Once, when he was having a conversation on speaker phone, I saw him whip out his comb and pull it through his hair, poke around in his ear with a pen, hitch up his pants, and then repeat the exercise, all the while laughing, doodling, gnawing on candy, consulting his computer. A marvel of multitasking.