John and the team closed the healthcare deal two weeks after Rob left. The next day, Thurston sent an email to senior management lauding its success: 

"Yesterday, the Principle Finance Team within Mergers and Acquisitions closed its first transaction under my leadership, acquiring Wellco Ltd, the owner of 12 hospitals and three medical centers in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. The relationship of the bank proved to be instrumental in this friendly takeover of the target, who went briefly into Chapter 11. Special recognition should therefore go to Geoffrey Black, Wellco’s relationship manager, based in our Chicago office. The financing of the transaction was run out of New York by John Smith and Frank Reubens."

John couldn’t believe the relationship manager was mentioned. He’d done nothing!

He tried not to let King Howell’s proclamation get to him; but suppressed anger is still anger.

Having just made the firm in the vicinity of $20 million, John took the team out for champagne at four p.m. By six, with barely any sleep all week, his eyelids threatened to close and he sent himself home, promising the team they would do it properly next week.

Opening the apartment door, John found boxes everywhere.They were piled up to three high. He knew it was happening and probably should have taken the day off to help, but he needed to be at work. 

He found Barbara in his walk-in closet moving things around.

“How’s the unpacking going?”

“Oh, fine,” she said and gave him a half smile. They kissed and John took off his tie

“You want a drink?” he said with a yawn, wanting bed more than additional alcohol.

“I’d kill for one.”

“Let me get out of these clothes, grab a quick shower, and I’ll open a bottle of something.”

John stripped off, hung his suit up, threw his shirt a yard short of the hamper and walked into the bathroom. Female crap was everywhere. Perfumes, exfoliators, soaps, shampoos, oils, candles, Tampax, pads, cotton tips, makeup remover, an industrial-sized hairdryer, and two hair straighteners. Raising the toilet seat, he also discovered another toilet brush and pint sized bathroom trash can.

Where is all this shit going to go?

John got into the shower and let the water stream over him, waking him up.

The last thing he felt like doing was helping unpack. He’d silently wished they deferred moving until things had settled down at work, but it felt like they’d be sucked through a jet stream as soon as they’d decided to move in together.

John got out, dried himself, and went to the closet for jeans and a T-shirt. Where his jeans hung this morning, he found dresses. Rather than T-shirts in the third drawer, he found bras and underwear.

“Hey Babe, what have you done with my things?”

“What things?”

“What do you mean, ‘What things?’ My clothes.”

“There all in there somewhere. We’re just a bit short on closet space.”

John searched. His jeans were crammed in next to his suits. His T-shirts had disappeared altogether. He grabbed a polo shirt off a hanger, which was sandwiched in between his business shirts.

“We already need a bigger place,” he yelled out to her.

“What?”

Frustration shot through him and while he was tempted to respond, he bit his tongue.

John walked into the kitchen to find pots and pans on the counters. He picked them up. Cheap aluminum shit. It didn’t compare to his titanium non-stick pans and copper bonded stainless steel pots from Denmark.

He opened the fridge and found the stem of a bottle of white wine sticking out from under a fridge full of food. It was a sharp contrast to the take out boxes, a collection of sauces and some booze that had previously resided in there in spacious comfort.

He poured two glasses of wine and sighed.

He turned around to find Barbara lying on the couch, wearing black silk lingerie that barely covered her pubic region and breasts. He focused on her smooth toned legs and the way her upper thigh emerged from the silk, leading the way toward her tiny feet, which sat delicately on the arm rest.

“Something to help make up for the clutter,” she said.

The clutter was instantly forgotten.

* * *

In the beginning of a relationship, guys are like electrical engineers sitting in manholes with a jumble of wires. A man has to sort through the cords slowly to understand the wiring of his girlfriend’s personality. John had been in two serious relationships to this point, so he knew that jumping in and cutting any old wire was liable to blow up on him. With time he would learn which cables were sensitive, those that were highly charged, and which were safe.

In the months following the move-in, John became familiar with all of Barbara’s sparks—her distaste for greediness, the way she saw creativity in everything from setting the table to arranging the flowers, her fierce loyalty to her family and those she considered close friends. She loved classical music, which relaxed her when nothing else worked. She was mostly direct and without pretense, which she assured him was typical of Bostonians. And she needed order: from the way she packed or repacked a grocery shopping bag to cutting fruit into square pieces for fruit salad at breakfast. The middle child of three, she felt a certain loss of affection from her parents vis a vis the first child, who received all the attention until she was born, and the baby of the family who, according to Barbara, was still, at 27, molly coddled by her parents. As he built up this knowledge, John came to understand who Barbara really was and with a degree of predictability, what she liked and what annoyed her.

But this particularly Saturday afternoon, Barbara was sick. It was a shame, because the sun was out and warm, and John wanted to get out of the apartment. Lunch outside, or he even would have considered a picnic in the park. Barbara was in bed reading, barely having gotten out.

“How are you feeling, Babe?” he asked, sticking his head in their room.

“I’m on the phone to my mom, give me a sec.”

More like 20 minutes, John thought. Barbara called her mom everyday it seemed, almost as soon as she got home from work. He walked back to the kitchen, deciding to rummage through the Times again to find something new of interest. Five minutes later she called for him with a raspy yell of his name.

“Hey, do you feel like getting out in the sunshine. It might be good for your head?”

“Arggghh. I’m pretty cozy here. What did you have in mind?”

“Lunch, somewhere relaxing in the sun.”

She blew her nose with a phlegmy rumble.

“Sure,” she said, trying to smile. “Give me some time to try and make myself look presentable.”

“Take your time.”

“But let’s go somewhere local, like Moroc.”

“Okay”

Barbara waved the sheets off her and limbered out toward the ensuite in her striped cotton pajamas.

John went back to the lounge area feeling fidgety. He’d had his mind on doing something different, even a little more upmarket than his local breakfast spot. What he really needed to do was go for a run, to help calm his mind from work. I should have suggested that before I got her out of bed!

He sat back down at the kitchen table to the paper.

* * *

Things in the office had changed as fast as his apartment. Guys left their suit jackets on their chairs if they left before nine p.m. to give the impression that they were still milling around instead of taking off early—if you could call nine o’clock that. Penny had become the ringleader of office gossip, chatting about how on edge everyone was with Rob gone and Thurston expanding the team and filling positions with his cronies from Structured Finance. The first new face was a V.P., followed by his business school peers. Thurston charged John and other senior members of the team with training the new analysts. One was a graduate named Graham; he was smart, but also a kiss-ass. John lost interest in showing him how things worked pretty quickly. Learning the ropes was one thing; begging and grabbing for them was another.

As John learned Barbara’s ways at home, he was also becoming familiar with someone else’s: King Howell’s. From day one, Thurston made John’s business his business. He often caught him looking over his shoulder when he was working, usually when he was on a call with a client. The rest of the team would try to look busy, but a few would always give furtive glances over his head. John usually noticed the warnings before turning around. He didn’t want to give Thurston’s power trip any more authority than necessary, so he initially tried to act nonchalant.

One morning, three months after King Howell had taken power, while John was on a heated call concerning a potential new deal, eyes repeatedly glanced over his forehead. John instantly knew Thurston was lingering somewhere behind him. The longer the call went, the more John felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

When he finally hung up, he swung around his chair to find Thurston standing there, as expected, with his arms crossed. John met his gaze, but his stare was so rude he was forced to cut his eyes away.

“So, where are we with the airport deal?”

John eyed him, feeling his disgust. “They still don’t agree with our valuation and aren’t budging. It doesn’t feel right to me, I’m not sure this one is going to fly.”

“Very funny.” Thurston stared straight at John without laughing. “You go get them comfortable with the valuation and then get them over the line. That’s your job.”

John churned as the team witnessed the exchange.

“I know what my job is,” John reacted, albeit was smart enough to keep his voice down.

Thurston grinned and raised his eyebrows. “Do you?”

The anger sparked in him. “If I ever need you to spell out my duties, I’ll ask.”

“Your job, John,” said King Howell forcefully, “is to do what’s best for the firm, and I define for you what that is, which includes for every member of my team to treat their superiors with respect. Need I spell out who your superior is?” Thurston crossed his arms. “The players might have changed, but we’re still in the same ballgame.”

“As far as I’m concerned, different players, different game,” John responded, trying to remain in control while his adrenalin ran rampant. “And although I can’t speak for the rest of the people here, I know that what’s important to me is to be playing for the right team.” He stood up, jerked his suit jacket from the back of his chair and walked out. He expected Thurston to say something after him, but equally, wasn’t that surprised when he didn’t. It was the most blatant confrontation they’d had.