The Black & The White (3 page)

“
The strippers know the
numbers before the wives do,” Kim explained about men at her firm.
“December is a busy month for everyone.”

It seemed strange to me that strip
clubs made their money from these educated, rich, young
professionals. I had always imagined strip clubs to be frequented
by perverse alcoholics sneaking in through back alleys with brown
paper bags of cheap beer.

I called Dani from the telephone on
the top of her end table to let him know that I had arrived safely.
I missed Dani. I got off the phone a bit emotionally spent. I laid
my head on Kim’s soft pillow to consider my decision. I wondered if
leaving Dani had been a wise choice. I missed my best friend. Dani
had always taken care of my life’s minutiae and me. He had been my
rock. I now doubted my capacity to survive New York. I was tortured
about having had to choose between advancing my career and staying
with my boyfriend.

When Kim got home at around 7:30,
which she said was earlier than normal, she ran in and gave me
another hug.

“
Love, I am so happy that
you are here. I hope you took a siesta. Tonight should be fun!”
With Kim, I knew where ever she would take me would be fun. “It’s
Zach’s farewell party. You will adore him.” I didn’t know who Zach
was.

She headed to the shower. Peering out
from the door with a towel wrapped around her, she asked, “You
think you can get ready by 8:30?”

I nodded as I flipped through the Time
Out magazine I had purchased earlier. The only things I noticed
were Middle Eastern restaurants, Middle Eastern concerts, and
Middle Eastern teahouses.

Kim got out of the shower and walked
in bare-breasted, wearing a black-lace thong. Her almost-nakedness
made me uncomfortable. She did not seem to notice my discomfort. It
then made me wonder if it was normal in New York to walk around in
your underwear in front of friends. I forced myself to say
something.

“
Wow, you’ve been working
out,” I said as I picked up a copy of Vogue.

“
Thanks, baby!” she said,
patting her flat, toned stomach. “Pilates rocks. It works the core
muscles,” she said. I had no idea what she was talking
about.

“
That’s cool. You’ll have to
teach me so I can get a nice body too,” I said.

“
Oh, sweetie! Working out is
not the only thing I’ll teach you. New York is the best, and you’ve
got so much to learn. By the time you go to B-school, you’ll know
everything you need to know to be fierce.” She laughed, walking
back into the bathroom.

The concept of going back to business
school for another two years after having just finished college was
the last thing on my mind. Yet, I knew it was the natural
progression up the corporate ladder in Wall Street.

Kim was always thinking ahead. She was
already in the process of researching top-tier schools. Wall Street
collected Ivy League grads.

“
Okay, but maybe we can just
start with this Pee-lay-tees, or Poo-latte, or whatever it is you
just said,” I said.

“
Oh, boy. It’s Pilates,” she
said, laughing. “You and I have a lot of learning ahead of
us.”

Growing up, I had never seen myself as
pretty. I too was Malaysian. I was awkwardly taller than most of my
friends in school, in addition to being skinny and nerdy. I had
never received any compliments on how I looked. I wasn’t used to
praise of any kind—my parents had never given any. “It’s bad luck,”
my mother would say.

Seeing Kim get ready for the evening,
I realized that going out to dinner in New York was a production, a
semi-glamorous affair. It was certainly different from the dining
hall culture I had been used to in school where getting out of
pajamas was an event in itself

After almost an hour, Kim exited the
bathroom with perfectly sculpted hair. She twirled in place,
looking very urban, chic, and sexy in her all-black outfit, much
different from the way she looked in her suit. Then she went to her
bureau and opened a Tiffany box. Inside it were two diamond studs
that were even larger than the ones I’d seen her wearing earlier in
the day.

“
And these are a girl’s best
friend. It’s my bling,” Kim said.

“
What’s bling?” I
asked.

“
Lesson number one. Bling is
your bedazzle,” she said.

“
Wow, you look great! Bling
and all!”

“
You think I’ll get laid
like this?” She winked. “M.D won’t be able to keep his naughty paws
off me.”

“
M.D is?”

“
The Boy. Don’t worry.
You’ll meet him tonight. He’s the one that keeps my fire burning
and my temperature on high.”

I was taken aback. I never even talked
about sex with Dani.

I was excited that I was going to meet
M.D, the mystery man that had captured Kim’s attention. Suddenly, I
felt underdressed and inadequate in jeans, casual sneakers, and the
blazer I’d bought at Banana Republic several weeks earlier in an
attempt to update my style.

“
Should I borrow something?”
I asked. “Could I?”

Kim, who was placing a second coat of
black mascara on her short lashes, muttered a response without
looking at me. “No, you look fine, we’re just running a bit late
now, love.”

M.D lived in a rich suburb in New
Jersey, a town called Rumsen, but kept a pied-a-terre in the city,
where Kim spent most of her nights. Kim had begun dating him after
she and her first boyfriend had broken up right after college. M.D
also worked at Morgan Stanley—he was her boss’s boss. I had never
met him.

We scurried out the door and onto the
streets, racing to catch a cab, Kim as competent in her high heels
as I was in my sneakers. In the cab, she gave me the rundown of
everyone we were expected to meet, all coworkers of
M.D’s.

Outside the restaurant, our group was
standing in a semi-huddled circle. It was easy to spot Zach on the
basis of Kim’s description of him: “tall, lanky with kinky curly
red-hair. He epitomizes nerd.”

Zach, a Russian immigrant, has a
master’s in Computer Engineering from Harvard. He spoke five
languages and had traveled extensively throughout Africa, Asia, and
the Middle East. He had also worked as a humanitarian volunteer in
Qatar after college before coming to Wall Street. Zach had risen
through the ranks at Morgan Stanley to become one of Wall Street’s
wunderkinds. The dinner was a bon voyage for him. He was leaving
for a year to Brazil to learn Portuguese before starting his own
hedge fund on the West Coast.

The all-male group of four broke into
a U formation.

“
Hey Kimmie! Is this the
lovely lady you have been bragging about?” Zach asked.

I wondered how Kim had described me to
her friends. I was flattered that she had even mentioned
me.

“
You two look alike,” Raj
said.

Raj had an ambiguously Indian look—he
could have easily been mistaken for Latin American or Middle
Eastern. Raj and Zach worked together on the same foreign exchange
desk. He was Indian by heritage but had been raised in
London.

Zach told Kim that Eric was caught up
at a meeting and wouldn’t be able to make it to dinner until
later.

“
Who is Eric?” I asked. Kim
laughed.

“
Eric is M.D.” She patted me
on the shoulder as though I should have known. I had forgotten
M.D’s name was Eric.

The Moroccan restaurant was
impressive. Large white mosquito nets hung down to the floor,
covering several dinner tables. The tables were alluringly sexy and
mysterious. It was hard to see through the netting but the shadows
confirmed there were people behind. Periodically, the bar staff
would clap their hands and scream to the loud Arabic music that was
playing.

The place was packed with young
hipsters sipping cocktails. I grew increasingly uncomfortable with
the sneakers I had on. I couldn’t help but notice every woman’s
high-heeled shoes. Not until I was slapped by a branch from the
shrub-like flower décor on the vase atop the bar did I start to pay
attention to where I was headed.

The hostess was a tall African woman,
with a shaved head and a lean, jaguar-like body. She was beautiful
enough to have been a model.

“
Wow, Kim, our hostess is so
pretty,” I said.

“
Yup. Probably a MAW,” she
explained.

“
What’s a MAW?” I
asked.

“
Lesson Numero Dos. MAW is
an acronym, Love. Model, Actress, Whatever. If she’s cute and
working in a restaurant, she’s probably a struggling model or
actress and will work here until she finds a sugar daddy. Until
then, she serves us.”

It was hard to hear her through the
DJ’s loud music.

I nodded. “Ah, what do you call people
like you who are pretty and work in finance?”

Without a pause, Kim responded,
“Rare.” She winked.

The hostess led all six of us
gracefully through the barrage of people to our table at the far
end of the restaurant. We then sat at the table waiting to hear
from M.D, whose client meeting was taking a while, I
wondered.

Nervous and uncomfortable, I began to
fidget with my silverware, arranging it perfectly straight. I
started to arrange Zach’s place setting before I remembered Dani
lecturing me about my nervous habit. I forced myself to stop and
concentrate on making conversation.

I asked Zach, who sat across from me,
about what it was like for him taking language classes in
America.

“
The best way to learn a
language is to immerse yourself in it,” he explained then changed
the topic. “There were hardly any pretty girls in school. All we
had were the analytical cold fish. Now we have the honor of two
lovelies at our table. I must have done something right in my
previous life,” he said.

“
Yeah, but you’re making up
for it in this life. You’re going to come back as a louse in the
next one, you know,” Raj said with a chuckle. Zach gave Raj his
middle finger and everyone burst out laughing.

“
A louse on your ass, so I
can bother you in the next life,” Zach retorted.

“
That’s right, Zach. So you
can eat my shit like you do now!” Raj said back.

Later on, John, sitting at the other
end of the table, heard Zach flirting with me. “Smooth, Zach. Give
us all a chance at the unjaded newbie.”

Zach smirked. “Get ‘em when they first
come to town, when they’re all still nice and don’t know better.
That’s the only fucking virgin I can get these days.”

They all laughed.

What a jerk, I thought.

“
Touch her, you die,” Kim
said. She had a way of sounding flirty even when she was talking
about ordinary things.

Zach ordered two more bottles of
wine.

“
Château Lafite Rothschild
1996, please,” he said, and then turned to me. “We’re celebrating
tonight. The best for our Kim here.”

I had thought they were celebrating
Zach’s departure.

“
Fuck Zach! We’re all
goddamn happy to see your ass leave so we all can get some rest
around here,” Raj said, laughing.

“
Here, here! To the
Crawler!” Everyone raised their glasses to toast. The Crawler, I
was told, was the nickname given to Zach for his obvious nighttime
habits.

I gestured to Kim, asking her where
M.D was. She shrugged and gulped her wine. It was only moments
later that she her phone rang. She left the table.

“
He won’t come,” Raj said. I
figured they were referencing M.D.

“
Love kills. Which is
probably why I’m still alive,” Zach said.

Kim arrived back to the table
noticeably upset. “He can’t make it. Something’s come up,” she
said. “Again.” Kim sighed.

“
Fuck him. It’s my night and
we’re going to have fun,” Zach said as he raised his glass and gave
Kim a toast. Kim feigned a smile.

The food arrived. I wasn’t even sure
what I had ordered. I had never had such exotic dishes:
oven-steamed lamb roulade; tilapia drizzled with coriander sauce
and a splash of harrisa; rack of lamb with mint and rosemary sauce;
couscous with merguez sausage with a tomato tapenade. The flavors
exploded in my mouth. This was nothing like the Middle Eastern food
Dani and I had eaten nearly every day. I contained my excitement as
everyone around me ate as though it was no big deal.

The bill totaled $1,050 for six people
without tip. I was shocked. This was two months’ rent in
Philadelphia.

Nonchalantly, Zach pulled out his
credit card to pay for the meal while he continued with his
conversation.

“
Ah, pulling out the black
card to impress the ladies already, eh, Zach?” Kim said.

I tugged at Zach’s shirt. I handed him
my credit card. “I feel bad. Let me at least pay for my
portion.”

“
Welcome to New York, my
fair fraulein. Don’t worry about it. Bitches don’t pay,” he said,
rubbing my back to reassure me. “I got it this time. Plus, I can
afford it. I’m rich. Enjoy!”