Page 32 of Analysing Her Assets

I’m Taking A Raincheck

(54 days to end of year finish line, 28 days to new position)

17. Tamar

Her phone chirped with a summons to an impromptu meeting that was scheduled for 10:00 am. All personnel from the Research and Investment departments were invited to the large meeting hall.

Gideon was already there, leaning against the wall. He looked fresh in a crisp beige button down, his hands tucked into his dark blue pants. She walked past him toward the place Marina saved for her, resisting the urge to look back and see how he was.

When Gideon left yesterday, it was still quite early, and she was pumped with adrenalin. She gathered the scattered pages, putting everything back in order, and read Naomi Negev’s first few chapters, jotting down her comments and questions. Naomi established basic assumptions in her story, and Tamar had treated them the same way she accepted a company’s Non-GAAP practices (Non-Generally Accepted Accounting Principles): humans can become wolves, mates recognized each other by smell, fortune tellers could tell the future, etc.

She liked the heroine, Eva, and related to her struggle to make ends meet. Eva held her own in the face of five men. Eva understood where Aleph was coming from, that he was concerned for her safety, and so the men had to sniff her essence. She didn’t allow Aleph to sleep with her, since that would chain her to him for life, and Aleph was an arrogant prick. Up till now, Naomi hadn’t given Eva, or Tamar, any real reason to like him.

She and Gideon had declared to each other that they weren’t mating for life. Quite the opposite. But they had more conversation in one evening than Eva and Aleph in several chapters. They established honesty. Gideon’s behavior was a revelation. The way he touched her, looked at her, the restraint in the end, sensing that the session had ended perfectly for her. It was so much more manly than Aleph’s domineering behavior. Naomi raised her son one way—then wrote another way.

She gave in to her wishes and surreptitiously checked on Gideon. He was still standing next to the main entrance, talking animatedly to Omri and Guy. He sensed her stare, and their eyes locked, only for a brief moment, but there was a hint of a smile there. It was enough to quiet her worries that it would feel odd seeing him today. She was okay, and he was too.

“Hey Noga!” Marina leaned forward and spoke over Tamar, to her friend, an investment manager named Noga, who landed decisively on Tamar’s other side. “Thanks for joining the team.”

“You’re welcome. Hi Tamar.”

Noga had black eyes and lush straight black hair, like Tamar’s, but her skin was much darker, and she was way skinnier than both Tamar and Marina. She wasn’t pretty, per se, but she had a decisive way about her, a confidence that was attractive.

A hush fell as Nathanela entered the hall and stood behind the small dais from where a presenter would habitually deliver his macro review.

“Good morning everyone. I’ll make this short. After seventeen marvelous years, being a part of Peaks and growing with it, I decided to leave and embark on a new path.”

The room erupted into buzzing whispers.

“Shit. She should have been the CEO, not Keynan,” Noga said.

“Totally,” Marina agreed. “It was a difference of one vote only at the board meeting. Danny from brokerage told me his father voted for Keynan. He said N had hardly done any groundwork. If N had worked harder on the board members, she would have gotten it. She was naïve thinking she had it in the bag.”

Tamar vowed it wouldn’t happen to her.

“I wonder what her plans are,” Noga said.

“I got the impression she didn’t have anything definite,” she answered. Maybe N got tired of the big boss. It was a part of the job that she certainly didn’t look forward to, reporting to Keynan.

“There will be a bidding for my position both internal and external. In four weeks, we’ll announce who replaces me. That will leave me a month for an orderly handover. Yehuda as the CEO, Ada as the head of HR, and myself will be the committee that handles the screening and choosing of the applicants for my job. The two internal candidates from Peaks are Tamar Feynman and Gideon Sela. That’s it. Please go back to work.”

The room exploded with noise. Tamar was surrounded with well-wishers. People shook her hand and clapped her on the shoulder.

“Tamar, we need to strategize,” Marina ordered. “Noga, don’t go anywhere!”

Finally, the large room emptied.

“So?” Noga asked. “What’s the plan?”

“I told Marina that I need an IT person. I promised Danny a system!” Tamar said.

“Yes, I thought about Yelena from compliance,” Marina replied. “She is perfect. I texted her to come here now.”

Yelena arrived pretty quickly and was introduced to Noga and Tamar and told why they were meeting.

“Yelena, I need to propose to Danny, ouch, that sounded terrible. I want to pitch Danny a system of analyst valuations and recommendations for stock prices. Are you familiar with IT in brokerage?”

“Yes. They have something, but it’s slow.” Unlike Marina, Yelena had a pronounced Russian accent. “Right now, because it’s so slow, they all export stuff to ‘hot’ excels, you know, spreadsheets that get refreshed automatically when stock prices change. But it is risky. Compliance hates it because it can’t be monitored properly.”

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