Page 4 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Oliver
Oliver Jones was having a fantastic day.
No one had talked to him all afternoon—no “friendly” knocks on his office door to invite him to lunch, no inane chatter in the break room, and no team-building gatherings to celebrate the birthday of someone who worked on an entirely different floor and with whom he’d never cross paths again.
Instead, Oliver had been able to shut himself in his office and enjoy the rapid-fire click-clacking as his fingers flew over the keyboard, working out the complex math behind his latest financial model.
Until recently, Oliver had worked in hedge funds at Goldman Sachs, but three months ago, Hawthorne Drake had poached him to help them revamp their quantitative analysis program.
Complex mathematical models and data science were becoming increasingly important in the world of finance, and people with Oliver’s combination of having a PhD in mathematics and investment experience were rare.
To add to the great day, Oliver had just received final confirmation for the talk he’d be giving at the Neo Fintech Conference next month.
It was an incredible opportunity to get in front of the VIPs of the financial industry.
Besides playing with numbers, Oliver’s favorite thing was talking about math, and conferences like Neo Fintech were full of his intellectual brethren.
It was also quite a coup that someone as young as he was—only thirty-two last month—would be giving a talk on his own, rather than being one of several on a panel.
In light of the massive success of this Friday, Oliver decided to wrap things up at the office early. He saved his work and shut down his computer, grabbed his suit jacket off the hook on the back of the door, and headed to the elevator.
The doors were about to close when someone shouted in a British accent, “Hold it, please!”
Oliver jabbed at the “close” button several times, but Zac Billings stuck his briefcase in between the doors and slipped inside.
They were a study in contrasts. While Oliver was broad-shouldered and over six feet with auburn hair, Zac was blond, a few inches shorter, and built like a marathon runner, all lean muscle that seemed unthreatening at first, until you realized he could probably out-endure you in any contest that involved stamina.
Which, unfortunately, office politics was.
As usual, Zac was impeccable in a three-piece suit without a speck of lint in sight.
He probably even woke up looking like a GQ model, or whatever the British equivalent was.
Unlike Oliver, who still bought clothes off the rack at Men’s Wearhouse.
He’d spent too many years without money and it was still hard for him to spend it now, even though he had plenty.
“Oh, hello, Tolly ,” Zac said.
Oliver made a noise in the back of his throat that was as close to a growl as professionally permissible. “I have asked you several times not to call me that.” Tolly was a nickname for little boys, not grown men. Which was precisely why Zac had chosen it.
Most people found Zac charming, because he was the kind of person who invited higher-ups to lunch (and then paid for it personally, without charging it to the firm), while simultaneously dazzling those ranked below him with generous holiday gifts because he knew they were the gatekeepers to the executive suite.
But anyone who was Zac’s equal—like Oliver—was deemed a mortal enemy.
“Leaving the office already?” Zac asked. “Isn’t it a touch early to be abandoning your post?”
“You’re getting in the elevator at the exact same time,” Oliver pointed out.
Zac smirked. “Indeed, but I’ve got a client dinner with the Steinbrenners.”
Oliver was not impressed by name-droppers. His mother had been one.
“I heard about your Neo Fintech invitation,” Zac said. “Congrats. It’s not as big as Finovate, but you’ll get there. Neo Fintech is a great start.”
Oliver tried to suppress another growl. Zac had given a talk at Finovate-Europe in London in February and FinovateSpring in San Diego in May, and he mentioned the prestigious conferences whenever he could.
The elevator stopped and a few more people got on. When it began its descent again, Zac said, “Well, aren’t you going to congratulate me ?”
Oliver’s eyes narrowed. “For what?”
“You didn’t hear? Puja tapped me to cochair the efforts to redesign our quantitative analysis program.”
“What?” Oliver’s voice was sharp enough that several people in the elevator jumped.
Puja Nagaswaran was the partner in charge of their division. And rebuilding the quant program was supposed to be Oliver’s job.
Zac shrugged. “Over lunch today, I mentioned to Puja that we really need something to present to the shareholders in the annual report to show significant improvements in the quant program. But, Tolly, you’ve already been here for three months…
While your progress may be good from the perspective of a Goldman Sachs researcher, the pacing here at Hawthorne Drake is much more demanding. ”
“I have made significant improvements already, and there are more—” Oliver scowled. “No. Why am I justifying this to you? Besides, cochairing is a nonstarter. I can’t work with you, and I won’t.”
“Well, no offense—and Puja agrees—you need some help on how to present things to the C-suite. Talking to our CEO and CFO is different than to other math geeks.”
Oliver clenched his fists. Partly because he wanted to punch Zac in his too-handsome face, and partly because he knew Zac was right.
Oliver’s taciturn, antisocial tendencies had worked fine in the back offices of Goldman Sachs where the quant nerds and data scientists worked, but he could come off as prickly and stuck-up in the garrulous offices of Hawthorne Drake.
(See: previously referenced lunch invitations from colleagues, cross-departmental birthday celebrations, et cetera.)
They reached the first floor, and everyone spilled out of the elevator. Zac strode out ahead of Oliver but turned back to smile over his shoulder. “Just trying to help, Tolly. But if you really don’t want to work with me, all you have to do is tell Puja. I’m happy to chair the committee alone.”
It had been a perfectly good day at the office until those last few minutes, and now Oliver needed to cleanse his palate of the bad taste Zac had left behind.
So Oliver headed to Constantinides Family Taverna, a small restaurant in the heart of Little Greece in Astoria.
Native New Yorkers didn’t often venture from their own neighborhoods to eat, but Oliver wasn’t originally from here.
Besides, his secretary from his last job had lived in Astoria and she swore by this restaurant; she’d found out about it from her neighbor who knew the high school guidance counselor for Xander Constantinides, the restaurant owners’ son.
(That was a long string of acquaintances, but no matter; Oliver had eaten there a dozen times now, and his secretary had been right—the food was excellent.)
Right as Oliver arrived, a couple vacated one of the few tables on the sidewalk and opted to sit inside.
He slid into one of the still-warm chairs and pulled out some of the napkins from the dispenser to quickly wipe down the aluminum table.
It wasn’t bad, just some crumbs and water rings left over from the complimentary basket of pita bread and glasses they’d taken with them indoors.
It had been a hot day but had now cooled enough to be pleasant, which was a nice surprise in New York because the summers tended to be muggy.
Oliver wondered why the couple had given up this prime table.
Sure, there was traffic a few yards away in the street, but anyone who lived in the city was used to that.
He sat back and took a deep breath, trying to leave Zac and the office behind.
It was another reason he’d come out to Astoria for dinner—here, surrounded by brick buildings with varied shop fronts and friendly chatter as people walked by him on the sidewalk, it felt like a world away from the skyscrapers and suit-clad bankers and cookie-cutter Starbucks on every corner in Manhattan.
While Oliver usually liked the anonymity that Manhattan afforded him, he occasionally craved the reminder that neighborhoods like this existed.
Even if they were still part of the huge metropolis of New York, they grounded him, tied him to the Boy from Small-Town Kansas that he used to be.
Soon after, Xander approached with a familiar wave.
“Good evening, Mr. Jones,” Xander said as he brought over a fresh glass of water. “It’s nice to see you again.” Xander knew not to ask if anyone would be joining him for dinner; Oliver always ate alone. “Would you like to hear our specials tonight?”
“Just my usual. Please.”
“Okay,” Xander said. “Spanakopita, souvlaki, and a glass of the house white, it is. It’s good to know what you want in life, right?”
“Mmph.” Oliver was, as a general rule, economical with his words. And he’d already used up too much effort on Zac back at the office.
Xander scampered away. Oliver did feel a little guilty about his gruffness.
Maybe Zac was right that his social skills were a little…
jagged around the edges. And Xander reminded Oliver of his own brother, Ben, who’d known from the time he could talk that he wanted to own a restaurant one day.
As soon as he was old enough, Ben got himself a job as a dishwasher, then slowly worked his way up the ranks.
When he was promoted to the waitstaff, Oliver and their dad, Richard, had shown up for dinner the very first night Ben was on the schedule as a server.
The number of times Ben spilled their water or confused the food orders that evening still made Oliver laugh fondly, and that was a big deal, because Oliver rarely laughed these days.