Zephyr Dorsey

Icarus at Zenith

The woman who hired me at the stock brokerage was about my age, but her hard-angles, thin mouth, and conservative business-attire made her seem older. She looked me up and down as I entered the room, skepticism and concern circling behind her silver hornrims like incompatible fish in too small a tank.

Damn. I knew I should have worn the tie.

She introduced herself as Jill and lightly pinched my palm between her small thumb and spiderleg fingers and turned toward the conference table. When she did, I saw that her dull brown hair, styled high on top and feathered over her small ears, was cut short like a man’s in the back, exposing her pale, narrow neck.

After seating ourselves at the long table’s corner, she began asking me about my work experience, which at that time consisted only of the restaurant and retail jobs I had held while putting myself through college. I tried to make special mention of my job at the university bookstore, thinking it sounded like the sort of soft, college-connected job that a kid from a good family might take just to make his dad feel like the fruit of his loins hadn’t fallen off the tree completely rotten.

I had inquired at the brokerage a week earlier, and someone, probably the woman sitting in front of me, had called me back and asked me to come in for an interview. I was looking to put my freshly acquired economics degree to use and start making some real money for the first time in my life, determined to be the first in a family full of bad pennies to flip over into a silver dollar.

In spite of her professional appearance and attitude, I knew right away Jill was also from a lower-class background. People who grow up rich don’t have to try so hard to put up a professional front. The banners and manners of success effortlessly adhere to the genealogically entitled. They don’t need to pretend they belong. They just do. Their place is secure, complete with the backstops and safety nets provided by their trust funds and familial connections. I guess that’s why they’re so often the first ones to flaunt the rules, having little fear of being shoved down the steep slopes of Olympus for some petty offense—a worry that fills us pretenders with constant dread and gives even our most polished demeanors a whiff of desperation.

During the interview, I made sure to radiate my best nice-boy manners, trying not to come off as too intelligent or too ambitious. I knew how it was to don the wings of Icarus in the attempt to outfly your fate; one glareful stare from a suspicious true blood, and your knees melt like hot wax. A battler like Jill would want to keep her flanks protected. She wouldn’t want to risk being outshone or disrespected by a new hire. She needed someone who would readily take direction from her, no pushback, no questions asked.

No problem. I had been doing what women told me my whole life. From my widowed mother to my aunts and grandmothers to a long line of mostly female teachers. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been more comfortable working for women than men.

As Jill shifted into the part of her spiel detailing the responsibilities of the open position, I realized I wasn’t being considered for a broker’s position at all, but for the role of administrative assistant. Although disappointed, I managed to park a smile on my face for the rest of the interview. Hers was the only firm that had responded to my rain of resumes, and I wasn’t in a place to be choosy.

In truth, I was underqualified even for the admin position. Luckily, Jill was equally underqualified to hire for it. If she hadn’t’ve been, she would have never called me back a day later and offered me the job.

Jill and I worked side-by-side at a large, semi-circular desk located in the brokerage’s outer room, the offices of our six brokers wrapping around us. Our desk was the hub of the firm’s activity, brokers stopping by throughout the day to pass us their handwritten stock-order tickets—except, that is, for Isaac, who would often call Jill into his office to pick up his tickets directly, which she did with subservient alacrity. Unless she was on the phone. Then, after Isaac’s second bellow, she would lean over our desk, make an annoyed face, and point grandiosely at the phone in her hand as if playing to the backrows of a large theater. Isaac, joining in on the mime act, would raise his hands as if to say, What? I didn’t know! and smile his boyish grin and get up from his desk and bring his ticket over himself.

Jill obviously adored Isaac. Probably in his early thirties, he was a handsome enough guy, average-size, with a trim build and dark hair in the early stages of a receding. Emotionally, he was what my aunts and grandmothers would have called “high-strung.” Each day would find him worked up over something.

Beyond the obligatory office small talk, I noticed the other brokers kept their distance from Isaac, or he from them. Of course, being a half-dozen carnivorous competitors who just happened to share the same copier, none of them were truly friends. But Isaac stood especially apart. Over time, I gleaned from the reports I filed that he was significantly more successful than the rest. And nothing drives a wedge deeper between ambitious, avaricious types than unequal success. I began to wonder if such disparity might one day lead to some juicy office drama. I didn’t have to wonder long.

In the meantime, Jill continued jumping at Isaac’s beck and call, while also, from time to time, scolding him like an exasperating child, which he sorta was. On occasion, she would even argue with him, arguments she almost always won—except for the ones ending with Isaac turning away and mumbling, “Just do it, Jill.” This chastened and subdued her instantly. Embarrassed for her, I would pretend to have overheard nothing and keep my eyes glued to my work.

My deskmate was not a chatty type, at least with me, and several weeks passed before I learned she was a single mother. No wonder, despite our closeness in age, she was so much more serious than me!

As the weeks turned to months, I grew to respect her more and more. She had smarts, she had grit, and she carried a heavy load of responsibility on her bony shoulders with poise and dignity and without complaint. I was beginning to think maybe it was a good thing I had started at the firm under her tutelage. She was turning out to be an excellent mentor.

Then, suddenly, she quit.

I came into the office one morning and found the place in a panic. Isaac had announced his sudden departure from the company. A “headhunter” from the competing firm of Merrill Lynch had hired him away after a few clandestine lunches.

I learned that day that whenever a broker from an investment house quits, all Hell breaks loose. This is because everyone shifts into full, unvarnished, self-as-center-of-the-universe mode. The departing broker tries to take all his clients with him out the door, while the other brokers just as desperately attempt to snatch those clients away from him and keep them with the firm.

As tawdry and dramatic as all that is, there was more. Isaac had not only shockingly declared his departure—but he had invited Jill to go with him as his personal assistant. Like the rest of us, she had had no advance warning of his decision. Yet, someone was apparently pressuring her to make her decision quickly, almost instantly. I’m not sure if it was Isaac or if the other brokers were afraid that, if she stayed, she could act as spy for Isaac until ultimately joining him at Merrill anyway.

Isaac probably hadn’t informed Jill of his departure before because he couldn’t risk the information leaking out early. And, of course, as a stockbroker, he trusted no one. Not even Jill, his number one fan. But I also wondered if taking Jill from us could have been a spur-of-the-moment idea, with Isaac realizing only at the last minute how much he had come to depend on her capable support and mothering care.

I was astonished to find Jill in tears as I sat down at our shared desk area. I had never seen this tough, shrewd woman show the first hint of tender emotion, and now here she was breaking down entirely.

Meanwhile, Isaac, in his office, was running back and forth packing things one-handedly, the phone in his other hand never leaving his ear.

I was attempting to settle into my workday despite the hubbub when Jill walked back to the conference room to call her father for advice. When she came out, she was more composed, but still looked a mess. She walked straight past me and into the manager’s office, shutting the door behind her. When she re-emerged several minutes later, she was in tears again, but not so badly as before.

All this time, the brokers, to a man, had remained hunkered down inside their offices. The manager had split Isaac’s client list between them, and they were dialing down it as fast as their soft little fingers would go.

When Jill began collecting her personal things, I knew what she had decided. A moment later, Isaac sprung from his office carrying a cardboard box full of items. When Jill forced eye contact with him, he froze in place like a racoon caught in the act of some campground thievery.

“Coming?” he said, flashing that deceptively innocent smile of his.

Jill, expressionless, nodded, and Isaac continued forward.

Taking a deep breath, Jill turned to me and said through a tight smile, “Well, I guess I’m leaving.” Then she followed Isaac out the door.

“Good luck,” I managed to call out just as I lost sight of her.

I stayed at the brokerage only a few more months myself. Like I said, I hadn’t really been looking for secretarial work to begin with. As it turned out, my job behind the rounded, two-person desk would be the highest position I ever held in the financial world. My next job was as an overnight auditor at a dingy hotel, and things only got worse for me after that. I never again made it back to the slopes of Olympus.

I really hadn’t thought much about Jill until sitting down to write this recollection. I hope things worked out for her. Her daughter would now be about the age I was when Jill trained me. I wonder if, like her mother and me, she, too, has been cursed with Icarus wings.

[THE END]