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the other firsties. No, David was better off risking suspicion by sneaking off to the library every few hours on some bullshit “research” excuse than getting himself fired by making these calls from his cubicle.
    He leaned back in his chair, twirling the phone in front of him. The library office was small and stark—just a wooden desk, a few bookshelves, a pair of IBM workstations, and the phone. Still, David would have died for an office like this, somewhere he could just go and think, away from the constant noise of the banking floors. The other first-years were okay guys, he guessed; a few of them he knew from HBS, and the rest were pretty much carbon copies from Wharton, Stanford, MIT—wherever they were churning out kids like him, poor saps who’d entered business school at exactly the wrong moment in history. David often wondered where he’d have ended up if those fuckers hadn’t chosen to crash those planes right at the start of his final year at HBS. Certainly he wouldn’t have been at Merrill making seventy-five thousand per annum the hard way.
    Pushing papers and making cold calls would have been heaven compared to what his job had actually turned out to be. By theend of the first day, he had been shifted from investment analysis to private banking. When he’d first heard the words, he’d thought maybe he was getting a break. Maybe he’d be meeting with celebrities and professional athletes and rich CEOs, discussing their investments. But he’d been dead wrong. His boss had him visiting old-age homes, sitting down with ninety-year-olds talking about retirement funds. He was spending his evenings reading up on IRAs and estate planning, and his days trucking across town to places he could only describe as death’s waiting rooms. It was quite literally the worst job he could have imagined.
    The only bright light in his professional life was that robin’s-egg-blue card taped to the underside of his cubicle. Every morning at 6:00 A.M. , a full hour before the other first-years arrived, he took the card out, stared at the name and number, and hurried to the library to make that first phone call. And every morning it had gone the same way. Mr. Giovanni’s in meetings all day today, he won’t be able to fit you in. Mr. Giovanni’s on his way to Chicago for a lunch. He won’t be back in the city until tomorrow. Mr. Giovanni is playing racquetball this afternoon. He won’t be getting any messages from some punk-ass kid he met at some dinner, a kid he’s probably already forgotten about….
    David closed his eyes, put the phone back in its cradle, and lowered his head to the desk. The wood felt cold against his cheek, and he could hear the quiet whir of the IBMs through the bones in his skull. He was at a loss for what to try next. More flowers? Maybe some jewelry? Fuck, he’d already won Harriet over. She’d probably go on a date with him by now if he were single—and maybe a decade or two older. How was he going to get past her to that bastard in the big office—
    A high-pitched ring reverberated through the desk and nearly made David cough up that morning’s coffee. He lurched back, almost overturning his chair in the process. Then he stared at the phone. In seven days, the hunk of plastic had never rung. David hadn’t even realized that the thing could take incoming calls. For a moment, he wondered if he should answer it. He looked backover his shoulder, at the closed door. He hadn’t seen anyone else in the library as he’d made his way to the office. He shrugged and reached for the receiver.
    “David? Did I find you?”
    David felt his eyes roll back in his head. Just what he needed.
    “Mom, how the hell did you get this number?”
    “A nice young man forwarded me over here when I called the number you gave me last week. Do you have two offices? That’s great, honey, you’re a real Manhattan big-shot now, two offices in one building—”
    “I don’t have two offices. This is the