Chapter 1

April 28

"Huh?" Rob said, although he sensed immediately this answer would be insufficient. "I mean uh--Christ, I don't know. Aren't there any other questions? Any easier questions?"
 Rob was a little nervous. That was obvious even to me, and I was just listening in from the hall. The guys asking Rob the questions were likely to pick up on the other subtle clues--the pouring sweat, the unfortunate facial tick--that Rob was not in his element. His troubles began with his neckwear. The act of donning a tie made Rob feel as though he was choking, a phobia that, oddly, extended to clip-ons.
 "You want an easier question than 'Why do you want to work for Johnston Brothers?'"
 "Yea, you know, something more like the first question." Rob said.
 Rob's inquisitor--clean cut, 28 years old, and smartly dressed in a gray pinstripe suit--exchanged a quick glance with his colleague, the equally clean-cut, equally 28-year-old individual occupying the office chair and gray pinstripe suit immediately to his left. I feel confident in saying that neither of these men ever had felt the slightest bit uncomfortable in a necktie, even as children in church when it was very hot and their shirt collars itched. I've gotten to know many of their sort since that day, and truth be told, they tend to feel a bit squeamish when they're without their ties, unless it's a casual Friday, which is, of course, completely different.  
"Something more like 'How are you this morning?'"
 "Yea. I was ready for that one. I figured you'd ask something like that one."
 "And you didn't figure that you'd be asked to explain why you want to come work for our company?"
 "Well, no, actually. My dad said just to show up and you'd give me the job…I mean, he is on the board."
 "Good point," the gray-pinstripe-suit occupants conceded in unison.
 It was, in fact, a hell of a point. Largely on the strength of this single point, the minutes that followed were destined to be Rob's best interview to date. Easily his best. The only one that didn't end with either childish name calling or ill-fated bribery attempts--or on one particularly disastrous occasion, both. After those tense early moments, today's conversation centered mostly on how much Rob would be paid (plenty) and whether he might be willing to put in a good word with his father on the interviewers' behalf (he was). 
 Fifteen minutes later Rob strode from room 210 of Founders' Hall a confident man. His pores had stopped sweating; his face had stopped twitching. And if the continued presence of a tie on his person caused a certain lingering restiveness, then so be it. Rob Johnston's future was secure. 
Very few of my fellow classmates could say the same. Like all good college students, we had studiously avoided news of the outside world for nearly four years, particularly when it came to news of that sub-sector of the outside world in charge of making money and offering employment. Instead, we had concentrated on such weighty issues as fraternity pledge hazing and campus liquor policy. But as the spring of senior year approached, a troubling detail had caught our attention: for some reason, none of us had jobs. 
We knew what jobs we wanted, of course. We wanted challenging, interesting, exciting jobs. We wanted inspiring, fulfilling, life-changing jobs. But since these didn't seem to exist, more than a few of us were willing to settle for Wall Street jobs. We would have been particularly willing to settle for Johnston Brothers jobs, since Johnston Brothers paid some of the highest salaries a graduating college senior could hope to earn through any legal endeavor, and most illegal ones besides. At the time, a first year Johnston Brothers associate could expect to receive a base salary in the neighborhood of $70,000, plus a year-end bonus that could have, in a pinch, passed for an annual income on its own. And although it has been shown scientifically that this is more money than any 22-year old who can neither dunk a basketball nor program a computer deserves, it was only the beginning. Second- and third-year Johnston Brothers employees were considered failures if their compensation didn't reach well into six figures. After that the real money would start to roll in, with real in this context meaning "in amounts that any impartial observer would consider unreal."
Yes, we decided, we would be willing to take such jobs. That was when a second troubling detail entered our consciousness: such jobs were not being offered to us. Much to our surprise, times were tough. Not 1930's tough, maybe, but tougher than the average coddled college student with enough toughness left over to floor Gerry Cooney in six. It was a poor time to be an investment banker, and a downright lousy time to be a would-be investment banker. If Wall Street was uneasy, economics grads were scared witless. 
By late April, most of us Bucklin College seniors had endured our fair share of interviews--and more than a few had endured an equal number of rejections. Rejection, at least of the non-sexual sort, was something new to our group. And most of us agreed that we didn't much care for it. We were beginning to suspect that our future lives might look less like something out of The Great Gatsby, and more like something out of that last bit of The Great Gatsby where Gatsby takes a bullet he doesn't deserve. But we plowed on. Whatever slim chance we had of landing truly plum jobs would soon be gone altogether. After all, students about to graduate from top colleges are attractive candidates to many fine employers. Students already graduated from college without jobs lined up are damaged goods. The logic is inescapable: if we were such attractive employees, why hadn't anyone else employed us? 
 So a month earlier, when the Bucklin College career services office announced that Johnston Brothers would be interviewing students right there in room 210 of Founders Hall, everyone and his English major roommate had submitted a resume. We all knew what we were up against. In a good year Johnston Brothers might have hired three or four candidates from a school the caliber of Bucklin College. This year, they certainly wouldn't take more than one. But however dim our prospects, we all wanted the interview. Hope, like a tenured professor, tends to cling to life much longer than it should. 
Yes, I remember that very moment. I remember I saw Rob Johnston exit the interview room not fidgeting, not itching, not even fighting to remove his tie. I was right there on a bench in the corridor waiting my turn, and catching a word or two of Rob's interview through the door--unintentionally, of course. The picture came into focus rather quickly. I suppose I should have seen it coming, considering Rob's last name, the company's name, and a piece of information about Rob's pedigree that had been kicking around somewhere in the back of my mind for the past few years.  
 You see, Bucklin is a small school; students tend to know scraps of information about most of their classmates, even those who are not the closest of friends. Usually these tid-bits have to do with academic majors, perceived intelligence, common acquaintances, or, most often, past romantic encounters. One might, for example, speak to a classmate for the very first time and already know that, say, she majored in English, she spoke intelligently in class, she hung out with that Sally DiCostella that no one else could stand, and she had gone down on half of Delta Psi. 
 In the case of Rob Johnston, I found that I knew something that at that moment seemed even more important than sex. The implications were obvious, and while there were details of Rob's interview that I had not picked up through the door with total clarity, I was able to review the relevant facts before Rob crossed the ten feet to my bench: 
(1) There was no longer one job available. 
(2) There was in fact no job available.
(3) Fuck.
 That was the moment my hope truly died. In retrospect, that also was the moment that first drew me into a rather unusual series of events, a few elements of which you might have seen mentioned here and there in the press, although the articles never mentioned my name, Bob Gwafin.  
 My goal here is to set the record straight on everything that summer. I've done my best to retell the story exactly as it occurred. Some of the scenes, you will note, took place outside of my presence. Those events have been recreated through a painstaking series of interviews with the other parties involved. 
 Where that was not possible, I've made stuff up.

"Hey Gwaf, you've got the next interview, right?" Rob asked. "They told me to give them a minute then send you in."
 "Thanks, Rob. How'd your interview go?" I asked, more to be polite than because I wanted to hear the answer.
 "Good…Better than my last one."
 "I figured as much when the cops didn't show up."
 Rob's smile flickered for a moment. He considered pointing out that it had been, in fact, only campus security, not the actual police, but decided this observation would not help his case much. "Yea," he said instead. "You'd better head in."
 I nearly chucked the whole futile, humiliating experience right then, but thought better of it. Maybe there were two jobs. None of the other investment banks had hired two, but Johnston Brothers was one of the largest. Or maybe Rob had screwed up his interview so badly that even nepotism couldn't bail him out. Or maybe Rob's death could be arranged somehow. Anyway, what was one more humiliating interview?
 "You have quite a resume for an undergrad, Mr. Gwafin," one of the matched set of interviewers allowed some minutes into the session, after the usual back-and-forth had concluded. "Summa Cum Laude, President of the Campus Economics Society, a summer interning at an investment bank--oh, at a branch of our investment bank--I have just one last question for you: 'Why do you want to work on Wall Street?'"
 "That's a question I've had to answer more than once in the past four years," I began. "As I'm sure you know, life on a college campus has little to do with the real world. Most of my fellow students are more interested in ancient literature and abstract theories than the workings of the financial sector. But the markets appeal to me. It's the logic, the rationality. On Wall Street, success is rewarded; good ideas profit. Fools are found out. I want to join a world where things make that kind of sense."
 I'd aced the interview. I knew it. The interviewers knew it. That guy with the next interview and the prematurely receding hairline eavesdropping from the hall knew it. I had expounded intelligently on economic theory, subtly mentioned each of my qualifications, and even managed to work in a pithy quote from Johnston Brothers' founder--in its original Latin. Okay, looking back on it, maybe that last bit was slightly over the top. But it was still a great interview.
 "Well, thanks for coming in and meeting with us. You're certainly an attractive candidate."
 I got up to leave. But after a semester's worth of disappointments, I just had to know. Against protocol though it was, I asked the big question. "So what do you say? Do I have a shot?"
 The interviewers shuffled the papers in front of them for a few moments, uncomfortable. Perhaps, I thought, asking had been a mistake. But in a fit of honesty, the suit occupant on the left decided to give it to me straight. "No, I'm afraid not. It's nothing personal. But we only have enough openings for relatives of board members this year."
 "Then why the hell did you come to campus and make us go through this?"
 "Are you kidding?" asked the suit occupant on the right. "If we stopped doing interviews, they might lay off the whole personnel department."
 "Actually, we were wondering if you'd be willing to come down to New York for a second interview," said the left. "You'd have to pay your own travel expenses, but it sure would help us out down in personnel."

I saw Jack Howell on the waiting-room bench when I left the interview room. Three months ago Jack and I hardly had known each other. But as we'd both been interviewing for the same non-existent jobs of late, a certain bond had developed between us, albeit one tempered by competition. It was the sort of relationship two people stranded on the same desert island might enjoy--happy to have a fellow lost soul with whom to commiserate, but well aware that each would be more than willing to kill and eat his opposite number when the coconuts ran out.
 "Hey, Jack, are you up next? They want you to give them a minute then head in." I checked Jack's hairline. You could almost see the damn thing moving.
 "Right. How'd your interview go?" Jack of course knew the answer to this, having listened to most of it through the transom.
 "Better than last time, anyway."
 "You mean there's actually a job available?"
 "No. But at least these guys didn't laugh when they told me."
 "Yea, I'd heard this was a class outfit," said Howell, actually meaning it.
 "Tell me about it. I still can't believe I got an interview. Well see you later."
 Howell and I moved for our respective doors, but he called after me. "Hey, Gwaf, what are you doing later?"
 "I got a paper to write."
 "A paper? You know, I can't believe they still expect us to do school work now that we're in the middle of something as important as Wall Street interviews."
 "I know what you mean. Hey, you better head in."
 "Right. Wish me luck."
 I did. And I meant it. More or less.