Page 31 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
He rolled his eyes, although he was alone. “It’s like cell mitosis—you leave one and a second later, there are two, then four, then a billion.” He swiped it off and tossed it onto the table.
Jess, one of the admins, came into the room then to help set up the interview’s video feed. “You ready for this?”
Suddenly, the fact that he was going to be on a TV show—one that had millions of viewers—slammed into him like a jiu jitsu takedown he should have seen coming, but hadn’t. Back when he was a grad student, Oliver had been used to standing in front of large halls as a teaching assistant and giving lectures to hundreds of students at a time. But being alone in a room for a TV interview was ironically a much more nerve-wracking thing. His pulse roared so loudly in his ears, he had to ask “What?” twice when Jess tried to tell him what to do.
She set up the camera and lighting, pinned a lapel mic on Oliver, andblotted his face with some kind of rice paper that would “take away any shine.” At least one of them knew what they were doing.
At ten minutes before the interview, the CNBC producer popped onto the tablet screen facing Oliver, next to the camera.
“Oliver Jones?”
He tried to answer, but his throat seemed to have closed up. Jess handed him a glass of water.
“Y-yes,” he managed after a hefty sip. “I’m Oliver.”
“Great, great,” the producer said. “Your sound is coming through nice and clear. Video looks good, too… Actually, the lighting is slightly uneven. Could you have your assistant shift the angle on the left lamp about fifteen degrees to your right?”
Jess did as told, and the producer nodded. “Better. Yeah, that’s perfect, thanks. Okay, just hang tight for a few, Oliver, and then Marissa will be on shortly for the interview.”
“When will this segment air?” Oliver asked. His dad would want to tune in.
“Oh, you’re going to be live. Didn’t you know?”
“What?” Oliver’s throat started closing again. “You’re not going to edit it?”
“Nah, we prefer most financial pieces to be live because the markets are moving, and we want our guests’ commentary to be timely. Okay, I’m signing off now. Marissa will be on in ninety seconds.”
Ninety seconds?Oliver gulped some more water.
“You’re gonna do fine,” Jess said. This was obviously not her first rodeo with a nervous person in the TV hot seat. “You’re an expert and that’s why they’re interviewing you. Focus on what you know, and you’ll do great. Oh, and don’t forget to smile.”
On the tablet screen, a countdown had begun.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…
Marissa Wilson, host of CNBC’sSavvy Investor, appeared on the tablet screen. She’d first made her name by educating and empowering millennial Black women on the stock market, and now she was one of the most recognizable faces in all of financial cable TV.
She smiled and said, “Now we’re joined by Oliver Jones, director of quantitative analysis at Hawthorne Drake. Good afternoon, Oliver.”
“Good afternoon,” he parroted, because his nerves seemed to have short-circuited his brain and he wasn’t able to think of anything more original.
Behind the tablet screen, Jess mouthed,Thanks for having me,and she pointed at her dimples.
“Thanks for having me,” Oliver said. He smiled. At least, he hoped it looked like a smile.
“Oliver, Hawthorne Drake recently announced a huge investment in their quant program,” Marissa said. “Of course, banking firms have been no stranger to financial modeling in the past, but this has become more and more important in recent years and will continue to be. You were poached from Goldman Sachs to help Hawthorne Drake take their quant program to the next level. For viewers who are new to this, can you explain what you do and what it means for them?”
“Of course,” Oliver said, and this time, his smile was easier. Because this was a lob, a question completely in his wheelhouse. He could talk all day about numbers and how useful they were. Oliver’s brain shifted into grad student TA gear—the mode where he could take complex mathematical concepts and distill them into explanations that made sense to freshmen or, in this case, investors who had never heard of quantitative analysis before.
Marissa nodded along, interjecting every now and then with insightful questions. The ten-minute segment flew by.
“Well, unfortunately we’re about out of time,” Marissa said. “But before you go, I’m curious about one more thing.”
“Fire away,” Oliver said.
“You’re in New York, where everyone seems to be talking about these origami flowers. How lucky do you feel to be right here in the heart of all this inspiration?”
The non-math-related question threw him for a loop, and whatever composure Oliver had found earlier now evaporated. He could feel his throat tightening again, and his heartbeat boomed too loudly in his head.
