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“A real gourmet feast,” I said, sliding onto the barstool next to her. I lifted the sparking water bottle and clinked it with hers. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” She laughed. “Sparking water. I should have guessed.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
She sipped some, put the drink on the counter, and pulled a piece of pizza from the round. “It's just very New York of you.”
“People don’t drink sparkling water here?”
“Not with that kind of panache.”
“I guess the Big Apple rubbed off on me.” I took my own slice, and the toppings were piled so high that a few fell onto the box liner as I moved it to the plate. “This is the first time I’ve had Papa’s since I moved back. Didn’t realize how much I craved it.”
“One of the best things about New Burlington.”
We ate a few bites in silence, and I savored the explosion of salty meat, cheese, dough, and sauce. It really did taste like home. Papa’s Pizza was present in so many of my early memories. Celebrations after big T-ball wins. Every class’s Christmas party in elementary school. Grub we grabbed during high school football games from the concession stand, which stocked towers of it next to the popcorn. So much of that came out in every bite, to the point that I wasn’t sure Papa’s wasgood. It didn’t have to be. It was just... cozy.
After the last few years in New York, that mattered the most. I craved comfort, and so far, I’d found it.
“I’m never doing that again,” I said to myself.
“Never doing what?”
I looked up from my bite, surprised I’d said that aloud. “The things I did before. When I lived in the city.”
“And what was that?” Anya was further along than I was, her slice of pizza more than halfway gone. She placed what remained on the paper plate and stared at me, waiting for an answer.
“Just stuff.”
It wasn’t an answer, and I knew it, but I also wasn’t ready to tell her all those details. In fact, I wasn’t ready to tell anyone the sordid shit I went through that prompted my move back to New Burlington. Even my Mom didn’t know everything. When I called to say I resigned from my job, my mom had been dumbfounded. I’d been so burned-out, ready to leave. Nothing could have kept me there anymore.
“You’ve done so well at Kane Capital,” she said on the phone from Sarasota six months ago. She lived there almost nine months out of the year now, and it wouldn’t be long before she sold the house on Green Court in New Burlington and made Florida their permanent home. So far this year, they hadn’t been back, finding a plethora of excuses to explain why they remained in the Sunshine State. “Another year or two, and you’ll be a principal there.”
I was at the tail end of another eighty-hour work week when she made this comment. I slept in my office most of those days, terrified I would miss movement on the Asian markets. Every line on my computer spreadsheets mattered, and every investment call I took was one more chance for me to squeeze a dollar from people who expected big profits and returns on their sizable accounts.
They were never happy, and neither were my bosses. And not so slowly, I became allergic to being happy too.
Plus, there was the little problem of what I’d discovered clicking around on the company intranet. I tried to ignore it. Tried to unsee the reality. Tried to make it go away. If I had been the only one who had noticed, would that mean I might have gotten it wrong?
But I hadn’t. I knew that. I’d seen something undeniable, and that had changed everything.
“Wall Street isn’t what you think it is,” I replied to my mom, hoping she wouldn’t press me too much more. I didn’t want to tell her what I’d seen, and I didn’t want to expose her to any liability. “And you know my dream was to work at a VC firm, not a hedge fund.”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
I laughed. “No. The salary is great, sure, but that’s about it.”
“But New Burlington?”
“It’s nothing like that,” I replied. “And that matters.”
“It got to where I had a choice to make,” I said now to Anya. “My professional life was at a huge crossroads. I could extract myself from the situation, and leave with my dignity intact, or ignore what I knew and risk everything.”
Her jaw went slack. “What? Like criminal stuff?”
I shrugged. “Will you be shocked if I say yes?”
“Of course.”
