The opening of Gamblers
Photo by Rosemary
This morning he could believe the gods dwelt on Mt. Olympus. The peak was slowly emerging from dawn’s shadows as if Zeus was conjuring it from the melting fog. Then Olympus abruptly flared, its glaciers dazzling in the early sunbeams. In another place he might’ve exclaimed at the metamorphosis, from dark to brilliant, quotidian though it was, but not here, not here. He imagined the mountains rotating on the North American Plate toward the sun, as light gradually flooded the snows of the lesser peaks. Luminous above the fog that clung to the lowlands and inlets of Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains appeared to float in the sky, miraculous, a startling vision of another world. He could almost believe them supernatural.
But realizing the distance from here, the rift, Kevin sobered, his wonder deflated.
The mountains were so remote from his world here, his drab suit, his damn wingtips. Not far in direct miles, maybe fifty, and even shorter from home, which lay between the two worlds. But the real distance between the two worlds was far by any metaphysical metric. That didn’t usually bother him, but today it did. He had to remind himself of his standard palliative: they lived near Seattle so they could get to that other world easily.
He wished that other world had more influence on this allegedly civilized one. Some cultures successfully managed that. But what went on here dominated that natural world, driven by free-market evangelists like most of the folks in this room, and it was as ugly as the savaged clear-cuts on the far side of the Olympics.
The Olympics were a fitting place for his personal gods to preside. A few hours into a backpack in the wilderness and he wouldn’t find what he hated in this world: exploitation, celebrities, mediated experience, schlock for sale. He’d only find what a secular consciousness could conceive of as transcendence.
But because of who he’d become, his work, his ambition, the technology he deployed to feed the kids, it wasn’t the right day to be in the Olympics. He accepted his urban world morally and pragmatically, and was comfortable with his life as it grew further from the hippie he’d been twenty-five years ago. Maybe that wouldn’t have been true, if he didn’t like his job. But he loved his job. It challenged his intellect and his facility to operate politically. Management was all about people, which was fun, and discipline, which was easy. He enjoyed what he did day-to-day, enough of the time. The job gave his family a lot. It was a very good fit for him.
He even liked the people in this room, sixty-three stories up, and enjoyed how they worked as a team for common goals, though they were nothing like the friends he and Jill still had from their younger days. So was his absurdly high anxiety this morning coming only from that compelling, disquieting sunrise? Or, a surer bet, from what would happen here next?
He and Andy had caught an earlier boat today, and now he could see their 6:35 Winslow ferry round the point and chug across the Sound, bearing coffee-guzzlers, folks starting work an hour before reaching their desks, news junkies, dreamers. It was one of his communities, people he knew in a fashion that didn’t feel superficial, though it probably was.
Another ferry blew its plangent bass as it churned away from the dock. Some people said that water divided places, the way it took forever to drive to the Olympic Peninsula because of the intervening Sound. But in his view, water connected places. He went to the peninsula maybe twice a year, but thanks to the Sound, he could see it on every clear day. And his daily ferry gave him a natural transition to and from the city.
He couldn’t see the freeways, but by now they’d be vile. In this impeccably tailored gathering on the 63rd floor, the faint braying of auto horns wafted up from downtown streets.
Click. Grey curtains slid evenly, with a low, mechanical hum, across the panel of windows next to him on the side of the conference room. Bye-bye mountains and waters. Click. Overhead fluorescents turned on as the room darkened. Without the view, it could be a room anywhere. Silence, a smothered cough; everyone else probably anxious too. Click. On the screen in front, an ascending graph appeared.
“Stock price. It’s all about WANT. I don’t have to tell you that, but you should remind your people.”
Kevin shifted his attention to Cabot Whitney, his bank’s CEO. Cabot stood on a dais behind a lectern emblazoned with a forest green Washington National logo, facing a hundred seated, suited people. A handful stood with Kevin against the back wall. Grey of cloth, grey of temple, corporate pin on his lapel, even taller on the dais, Cabot commanded the room as comfortably as he might head his family. There was no ice-breaking chit-chat. He plunged in, his assured baritone sullied only by a slight hesitation.
“Tell them to focus on WANT, the measure of our success. Remind them of this graph and how that long, rising slope had been ours.” Had been, oh shit. “Of course they can’t directly affect the price. But they can boost our earnings by how hard and how smart they work.
“Stock price is the official score on America’s scoreboard. Each of you cares about winning as much as I do, otherwise you’d never have reached your level of responsibility. You hundred people run this bank.” Cabot held continual eye contact with the audience, who looked as motionless as deer that smelled hunters upwind and close. Kevin stood pretty still himself.
“The stock price drives what matters most to all of us. Jobs. Your job, my job, your people’s jobs. If WANT stays up, we remain independent. The fate of our jobs is within our control. And we keep buying weaker banks.”
Cabot clicked the remote. A starkly different graph. His voice deepened a fourth, but it also sped up a beat, as if to distance himself from what he had gathered them to say. “Ancient history, team. Earnings are hemorrhaging. The board met yesterday and approved a press release, going out on the wire as I speak, changing our second-quarter guidance. That plummeting red line. Earnings will not be what we promised. Not even close.”
Kevin’s tongue suddenly felt parched. So much for Whitney’s corporate platitudes. The foul rumors circulating since yesterday, when this meeting had been called, might be true.
Cabot seemed to stand more erect, as if physically larger, as if by willpower alone he could steer the red line north with the same ease that he might once have used to correct a younger brother’s values. “When we reported first quarter, we hoped we could salvage this year’s earnings. We wanted to believe we could continue our twenty-year unbroken record of year-over-year earnings increases. That was a fantasy. A fantasy, do you understand? We will have a terrible year. We just told Wall Street that. We’re not the first Fortune 500 franchise to announce earnings problems lately, but you saw what happened to their stocks.”
Cabot switched to another graph, a dozen overlapping lines mostly trending up. “Stock prices again. The green one is WANT, before today. Many other regionals are doing well. Some have valuable currency to go shopping. If WANT plunges, we’ll be a fat target for a bank that can offer a terrific premium in a stock swap.”
God, that can’t happen! He’d lose his job! Kevin felt as though he’d been elbowed in the gut by a guy six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier, who wanted him to understand that he didn’t belong anywhere near the backboards.
“So while we still control our fate, I’m taking drastic actions to keep control. We need to do things differently. Very differently.”
Cabot removed his horn-rims and held them over the front of the lectern. He spoke firmly, evenly. “We will immediately act to stop the earnings erosion. To convince Wall Street that we’re capable of that, I’m announcing a downsizing of two thousand jobs by year-end.”
The hundred managers gasped. Cabot stared at his people, like a suited, beardless Yahweh making sure Adam and Eve got the eviction notice. “Normally about eight hundred would be lost through attrition in that period. So the bottom line is twelve hundred layoffs.”
10% laid-off. Kevin winced; he’d discounted the rumors. He never believed alarmist shit, but this time it was true. His own job may be safe for now, but 1,200 people would get screwed. Damn. He calculated his share. Fifty. Who? Where would 1,200 people find jobs?
But realizing the distance from here, the rift, Kevin sobered, his wonder deflated.
The mountains were so remote from his world here, his drab suit, his damn wingtips. Not far in direct miles, maybe fifty, and even shorter from home, which lay between the two worlds. But the real distance between the two worlds was far by any metaphysical metric. That didn’t usually bother him, but today it did. He had to remind himself of his standard palliative: they lived near Seattle so they could get to that other world easily.
He wished that other world had more influence on this allegedly civilized one. Some cultures successfully managed that. But what went on here dominated that natural world, driven by free-market evangelists like most of the folks in this room, and it was as ugly as the savaged clear-cuts on the far side of the Olympics.
The Olympics were a fitting place for his personal gods to preside. A few hours into a backpack in the wilderness and he wouldn’t find what he hated in this world: exploitation, celebrities, mediated experience, schlock for sale. He’d only find what a secular consciousness could conceive of as transcendence.
But because of who he’d become, his work, his ambition, the technology he deployed to feed the kids, it wasn’t the right day to be in the Olympics. He accepted his urban world morally and pragmatically, and was comfortable with his life as it grew further from the hippie he’d been twenty-five years ago. Maybe that wouldn’t have been true, if he didn’t like his job. But he loved his job. It challenged his intellect and his facility to operate politically. Management was all about people, which was fun, and discipline, which was easy. He enjoyed what he did day-to-day, enough of the time. The job gave his family a lot. It was a very good fit for him.
He even liked the people in this room, sixty-three stories up, and enjoyed how they worked as a team for common goals, though they were nothing like the friends he and Jill still had from their younger days. So was his absurdly high anxiety this morning coming only from that compelling, disquieting sunrise? Or, a surer bet, from what would happen here next?
He and Andy had caught an earlier boat today, and now he could see their 6:35 Winslow ferry round the point and chug across the Sound, bearing coffee-guzzlers, folks starting work an hour before reaching their desks, news junkies, dreamers. It was one of his communities, people he knew in a fashion that didn’t feel superficial, though it probably was.
Another ferry blew its plangent bass as it churned away from the dock. Some people said that water divided places, the way it took forever to drive to the Olympic Peninsula because of the intervening Sound. But in his view, water connected places. He went to the peninsula maybe twice a year, but thanks to the Sound, he could see it on every clear day. And his daily ferry gave him a natural transition to and from the city.
He couldn’t see the freeways, but by now they’d be vile. In this impeccably tailored gathering on the 63rd floor, the faint braying of auto horns wafted up from downtown streets.
Click. Grey curtains slid evenly, with a low, mechanical hum, across the panel of windows next to him on the side of the conference room. Bye-bye mountains and waters. Click. Overhead fluorescents turned on as the room darkened. Without the view, it could be a room anywhere. Silence, a smothered cough; everyone else probably anxious too. Click. On the screen in front, an ascending graph appeared.
“Stock price. It’s all about WANT. I don’t have to tell you that, but you should remind your people.”
Kevin shifted his attention to Cabot Whitney, his bank’s CEO. Cabot stood on a dais behind a lectern emblazoned with a forest green Washington National logo, facing a hundred seated, suited people. A handful stood with Kevin against the back wall. Grey of cloth, grey of temple, corporate pin on his lapel, even taller on the dais, Cabot commanded the room as comfortably as he might head his family. There was no ice-breaking chit-chat. He plunged in, his assured baritone sullied only by a slight hesitation.
“Tell them to focus on WANT, the measure of our success. Remind them of this graph and how that long, rising slope had been ours.” Had been, oh shit. “Of course they can’t directly affect the price. But they can boost our earnings by how hard and how smart they work.
“Stock price is the official score on America’s scoreboard. Each of you cares about winning as much as I do, otherwise you’d never have reached your level of responsibility. You hundred people run this bank.” Cabot held continual eye contact with the audience, who looked as motionless as deer that smelled hunters upwind and close. Kevin stood pretty still himself.
“The stock price drives what matters most to all of us. Jobs. Your job, my job, your people’s jobs. If WANT stays up, we remain independent. The fate of our jobs is within our control. And we keep buying weaker banks.”
Cabot clicked the remote. A starkly different graph. His voice deepened a fourth, but it also sped up a beat, as if to distance himself from what he had gathered them to say. “Ancient history, team. Earnings are hemorrhaging. The board met yesterday and approved a press release, going out on the wire as I speak, changing our second-quarter guidance. That plummeting red line. Earnings will not be what we promised. Not even close.”
Kevin’s tongue suddenly felt parched. So much for Whitney’s corporate platitudes. The foul rumors circulating since yesterday, when this meeting had been called, might be true.
Cabot seemed to stand more erect, as if physically larger, as if by willpower alone he could steer the red line north with the same ease that he might once have used to correct a younger brother’s values. “When we reported first quarter, we hoped we could salvage this year’s earnings. We wanted to believe we could continue our twenty-year unbroken record of year-over-year earnings increases. That was a fantasy. A fantasy, do you understand? We will have a terrible year. We just told Wall Street that. We’re not the first Fortune 500 franchise to announce earnings problems lately, but you saw what happened to their stocks.”
Cabot switched to another graph, a dozen overlapping lines mostly trending up. “Stock prices again. The green one is WANT, before today. Many other regionals are doing well. Some have valuable currency to go shopping. If WANT plunges, we’ll be a fat target for a bank that can offer a terrific premium in a stock swap.”
God, that can’t happen! He’d lose his job! Kevin felt as though he’d been elbowed in the gut by a guy six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier, who wanted him to understand that he didn’t belong anywhere near the backboards.
“So while we still control our fate, I’m taking drastic actions to keep control. We need to do things differently. Very differently.”
Cabot removed his horn-rims and held them over the front of the lectern. He spoke firmly, evenly. “We will immediately act to stop the earnings erosion. To convince Wall Street that we’re capable of that, I’m announcing a downsizing of two thousand jobs by year-end.”
The hundred managers gasped. Cabot stared at his people, like a suited, beardless Yahweh making sure Adam and Eve got the eviction notice. “Normally about eight hundred would be lost through attrition in that period. So the bottom line is twelve hundred layoffs.”
10% laid-off. Kevin winced; he’d discounted the rumors. He never believed alarmist shit, but this time it was true. His own job may be safe for now, but 1,200 people would get screwed. Damn. He calculated his share. Fifty. Who? Where would 1,200 people find jobs?
