Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

“You know what I’m realizing now?” he said to her.

“What?” she asked, looking at him adoringly.

“We are sitting in the center of the world.”

She laughed. “You’re so funny.”

“No, think about it,” he said. “Columbus Circle is the center of Manhattan. Manhattan is the center of New York. New York is the center of America, and America is the center of the world. So we are sitting in the center of the world, right?”

ON THE WAY TO THE GOLF COURSE IN WESTCHESTER, CLARK COMPLAINED about his stiff neck, grumbled about Phil inviting a bunch of other people to join them and thus making it hard for him to pull out, griped about spending his afternoon doing an activity he didn’t care for when he could be in the office. Jende listened and nodded, as always, agreeing with everything he said.

“Golf’s not my thing,” Clark said. “A lot of people like to pretend it’s their thing, but I couldn’t care less about going today, if it wasn’t for a chance to spend time with the guys outside of work.”

“It looks like a very hard game, sir.”

“It really isn’t. You should try it sometime.”

“I will, sir,” Jende said, though he had no idea why or where he would ever go to golf.

Halfway to the course in Rye, Clark’s mother called to check on him, and he put her on speakerphone, saying he didn’t want to stiffen his neck any further. His mother thanked him for the anniversary gift and was about to tell him a funny story about bumping into an old neighbor from Evanston when another call came in. Clark told her he had to go and promised he would call her back after taking the incoming call from his boss.

“You’re heading to join Phil and the others?” Tom asked. His voice over the speaker sounded far less powerful than Jende had expected the voice of a CEO to sound. It was genial, but lacked the authority that Clark’s possessed.

“Yeah, you’re coming, right?”

“No, can’t make it. Michelle’s not feeling too well.”

“Sorry to hear.”

“How’s Cindy?” Tom said after a few seconds. “She looked great on Thursday.”

“Yeah, she knows how to take care of herself.”

“Heard a couple of guys at the bar wondering whose trophy she was.”

Clark chuckled. “I’ll take whatever compliments I can get these days,” he said.

Jende cleared his throat, not because it needed clearing but because he could tell Tom wanted to say something important and he wanted to alert Clark of his presence so Clark could switch his phone off speaker mode. He knew enough about Lehman as it was and didn’t care to hear anything else, especially something he would be tempted to tell Leah, since she’d been hounding him for details about Clark’s conversations so she could know how bad things really were. He always told her he knew nothing, but the woman didn’t know how to give up.

“So,” Tom said, finally ready to get to his point, “I imagine you know why I’m calling.”

“I’m guessing you spoke to Donald,” Clark said. “I was hoping to—”

“You have no right to go to a board member behind my back, Clark.”

“It wasn’t my intention. I bumped into him rushing to get to my son’s hockey game, quickly told him that I’ve been trying to get a meeting with you to talk about—”

“About what?” Tom said, his voice rising. “About your bullshit about coming clean? Changing strategy? What do you think we’re doing here? Playing patty-cake?”

“I think we need to rethink our long-term strategy, Tom,” Clark said, raising his voice, too. “I’ve been saying it, and I’ll keep on saying it. We’re sitting here acting as if we’re dealing with forces out of our control when we’re not. It’s merely a matter of looking at other angles, considering other models. Back in August I came to you when it was crystal-clear that ABS performance was never going to really pick up and the damage was quickly spreading past subprime to Alt-A. Remember we had that talk and I suggested we change course?”

“What’s your point?”

“When you and Danny laughed off the Chinese, I pushed for us to take whatever infusion they were throwing at us, get us out of this mess as soon as—”

“And tell the world we’re drowning? Sure! Let’s become laughingstocks!”

“BS didn’t want to become a laughingstock!”

“We’re not BS! We’re Lehman, and if you don’t know that, if you don’t know that we’re The Brothers and that we always win, then I really can’t help you, Clark! If you don’t believe in what we’re doing here, then you’ve been wasting your time for the past twenty-two years.”

Jende heard Clark scoff, and imagined he was shaking his head as well.

“Why are you scoffing?” Tom asked.

“All I’m trying to say is that we need to change our approach a bit, maybe get more aggressive on raising capital. Everyone else on the Street’s been running around raising capital, and we’re sitting here deceiving shareholders that we’re strongly capitalized. If we could so much as even—”

“You will not circumvent me and talk to a board member again, do you understand?”

Clark exhaled deeply, but did not respond.

“Do we have an agreement?”

Clark ignored the question.

“As for coming clean—”

“How long do you think before the world finds out about the leverage ratio?” Clark said. “Are you going to sit in front of Congress and say you knew nothing about Repo 105? ’Cause there’s just how long we can sustain this, and at some point we’re going to have to—”

“So you think airing our dirty laundry is what’s going to get us back in the right direction? You think we should listen to you because you decided to grow a damn conscience?”

“This has got nothing to do with a conscience! You know I love the game. You know I love winning as much as the next guy, and I’m all for doing what we need to do to win. But there’s a level where we’ve got to admit that we’ve gone too far, and if we keep on going at this rate …”

“Really?” Tom said derisively. “How far back should we go so we’re not too far ahead of the curve? Back to the seventies? Why don’t we all jump into a ’75 Buick while everyone is passing us by in ’08 models? That’s what you’re asking for, right? Because we’ve become so ruthless, let’s try and be sweet and nice.”

“I’m not—”

“I really can’t help you, you know?” Tom said almost sympathetically. “Whatever crisis you’re going through, I can’t do anything to help you, and frankly, this isn’t the best time to be dealing with it.”

“I’m simply saying that we should show we stand for something better than everyone else, Tom. That could be our salvation. If we quit pulling the tricks, place the blame on someone else if we must — auditors, rogue accountants, whoever — give ourselves a chance to get straight before it gets worse. Because right now we’re pulling these tricks and the SEC’s playing dumb, but you know as well as I do that if this shit falls apart and the chaos starts spreading they’re going to throw us out for the public to crucify by claiming they didn’t know a damn thing, and we all know it’s a lie.”

“And you think the board’s going to love your suggestion?”

“Donald wasn’t exactly opposed.”

“What gives you that idea? Donald thought you’d gone crazy!”

“What’s crazy is thinking we’re going to survive doing business this way!” Clark shouted, apparently unaware of how much his voice had risen. “We’ve made a ton of mistakes already. We’re in this shit because we haven’t shown great foresight! We’ve got to think far beyond Lehman. We’ve got to think about the next generation taking over the Street after we’re gone, about how they’re going to judge us. About how history’s going to judge us!”