Page 27 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper

Oliver

The damn roses were everywhere, and Oliver couldn’t avoid them. There was one on the subway turnstile when he went through it over the weekend. Another in the break room this morning when he went in to grab coffee. And it seemed like every admin and analyst had one in their cubicles.

After lunch, he had an interview on CNBC.

Appearances on financial cable shows by Hawthorne Drake employees were a common enough occurrence that there was a conference room in the office dedicated to the video calls, including a bookcase in the background, aesthetically filled with investment tomes and potted plants that were supposedly confidence-inspiring yet calming at the same time.

When Oliver arrived in the conference room twenty minutes before his interview, there was a yellow paper rose on the bookshelf.

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, and blotted 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’s Savvy 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.

“I think the paper roses are illogical and naive,” Oliver said, babbling whatever came to mind first. “We’d all fare better if we put our faith in solid, immutable concepts like math.

Er… I’m actually going to D.C. for the Neo Fintech Conference, and I’m honestly relieved I’ll be able to get away from the circus of origami roses that everyone’s obsessed with.

Perfectly intelligent people have been reduced to the equivalent of horoscope believers, and it’s embarrassing. ”

Marissa’s mouth dropped open.

Behind the camera, Jess cringed.

Fuck, Oliver thought.

On the screen, Marissa recovered with a laugh.

“Well, Oliver, it makes sense that you prefer math. You are the director of quantitative analysis.” Then she segued back to addressing her audience.

“After the break, we’ll take a look at today’s market movement and what the surge in tech stocks means for your portfolio. ”

The show cut for commercial break.

“Sorry about that last bit,” Oliver said to Marissa. “I got nervous. I didn’t mean to come across that harsh.”

She waved off his concern. “Don’t worry about it. Most of my viewers are only looking for stock tips, anyway. They don’t really care about the interview fillers; those are just transitions. Your explanation of the quant program was great. Thanks for being on the show with me, Oliver.”

He started to say, “Thank—” but the connection cut him off and the tablet screen went blank. Marissa and the CNBC team had to prep for the next segment, so they were done with him.

“How bad was it?” he asked Jess, as he detached his lapel mic and handed it to her.

“Hard truth?” she said.

“Please.”

“You’re not that important. No one’s going to care about a talking head’s opinion about paper roses.”

“I’m more than a talking head—” But then the indignation passed and was quickly replaced by relief at what Jess had said. Oliver was a finance wonk. No one who believed in the damn origami would be paying any attention to him .

He let out a long exhale and leaned back in the chair. Competition against Zac notwithstanding, in this moment, Oliver was glad to be insignificant.

When he returned to his office, there was a stack of mail on his desk.

It was the usual stuff—offers to join this investment organization or that financial association, catalogs for continuing education, and, for some reason, glossy high-end travel brochures.

Actually, that made sense. Most bankers at Hawthorne Drake were wealthy and liked spending their money.

Oliver was the odd one out, hoarding his savings out of fear that the lean days of his youth would come back for him again.

Besides, he knew firsthand that showing off your wealth made you a more likely target.

His mother—always with a con and on the hunt for new marks—had taught him that.

However, sandwiched between an application for a Sapphire Titanium Elite credit card and a brochure for a river cruise down the Danube River, was a yellow paper rose.

Not just any paper rose, though.

The gold-foil-striped one Oliver had previously crumpled and thrown away.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. How the hell did this get here?”

He immediately looked into his trash bin, which was empty, of course, because the janitorial crew had been by.

Oliver frowned at the origami flower. Maybe it wasn’t the same one?

But even as he unfolded it, he knew that it was. The paper had a thousand tiny creases in it from when he’d previously squashed it in his fist.

Inside, though, the rose contained more than how he’d left it.

Sometimes wishing can make a dream come true.

I guarantee it ABSOLUTELY does not.

I respectfully disagree, and I’m willing to bet you on it.

It was signed off again with the same tiny rosebud heart as last time.

Irritation quickly simmered into anger, and Oliver could feel it building hot beneath his skin. He was still recovering from his flower-related gaffe during the CNBC interview. And this was one piece of origami too far.