Games

Leverage

“Get dressed,” Jackie announces, leaning against her open bedroom door. “We’re going out.”

Lili glances at the time on her computer screen.

Catching the look, her roommate groans. “Come on, it’s barely nine. We haven’t seen you in days, it’s never fun without you.”

Lili fidgets with her septum piercing, calculating hours of productive work left tonight. “Kerr wants this draft soon.”

It hurts to refuse. She wants to go out; she so badly wants the familiar freedom and exhilaration of a night out: summer in

the city, the rasp of mezcal, cigarette smoke on crowded sidewalks, shared laughter with her friends, relief of responsibility

lifted for a few hours. She wants to step away from work, set aside her phone that she keeps checking—still no response. She’d

like to take a deep inhale, push aside the restless burn of ambition and insufficiency that eats at her as she writes, the

tension of striving. But she’s so close—one more good look, then it’d be done: a full first draft of her thesis, ready for

her adviser’s review. The ground will be steady underneath her for a moment.

Jackie doesn’t let up. “Come on,” she insists.

She’s still wearing makeup from work today, a lookbook shoot.

Her bright red hair is freshly washed, and she looks beautiful.

Behind her, Lili can hear their friend Amina talking on the phone, the clack of her heels in their tiny Williamsburg kitchen.

“We can go out, drink, dance, and have you back by midnight—”

Lili snorts, toying with her phone. “When have you ever gotten home by midnight?”

“Look who’s talking—”

“One hour,” Amina implores, joining in. There is dried oil paint on her hands, burnt burgundy; Lili wonders what painting

she was working on today. “One hour, please. Consider this an intervention—Jesus, we miss you!”

“Tell her I’m dying,” says a distant male voice, insistent on Amina’s phone. “Tell her it’s terminal.”

Lili rolls her eyes. It’s James: one of her best friends since undergrad, and Amina’s boyfriend. “Jamie, you want me to go

out in FiDi,” she retorts, loud enough that he can hear. “It’s almost June, it’ll be crawling with finance interns.”

“You’re telling me? I’m going to be here at the office all night, bloody babysitting them. Did you hear about that Goldman

analyst who died from sheer overwork? That’s going to be me, unless I get an hour’s respite with alcohol and pretty girls—”

“Watch yourself,” Amina warns him.

“Isn’t this your socialist praxis?” Jackie teases Lili. “Rejecting labor’s dominance over leisure?”

Lili laughs, shaking her head. “Go, have fun. Next week, I promise.”

Amina sighs. “Fine,” she says, pressing a quick kiss to Lili’s forehead. “But I’m going to drink enough for both of us.”

“What if I meet my husband tonight?” Jackie demands. “What if I meet him, and you aren’t there to see it?”

Lili suppresses a smile. “I say this with affection, but I highly doubt that.”

Her phone buzzes. With overwhelming relief, she grabs it; but it’s only a notification from their group chat with the rest

of their friends. Her heart sinks.

In the hall, she hears Jackie chattering, grabbing keys as Amina checks Uber prices.

Gnawing on a hangnail, Lili taps open the text message she sent to her foster parents that morning.

(10:37 a.m.) Hi, hope all’s well! If it’s alright with you, I was thinking I could come home to Marin to visit for a week

or so this summer?

Nothing else. No response.

A hot lick of shame rises up her throat. She rarely texts them; she tries so hard not to be a burden.

She glances across her room: stacks of books, dog-eared; her small suitcase peeking out of her closet, in anticipation of

maybe visiting home, for the first time in years; disassembled thesis drafts on her desk, cold coffee mugs; her half-full

laundry basket, overalls dirty from her morning shift at the urban farm by the East River; the plants overspilling on her

windowsill, remnants of incense; the frantic sticky note slapped to her calendar, reminding her to withdraw savings—dwindling

life insurance from her parents, carefully rationed money she’s loath to ever use—for rent, her own money running dry before

her teaching assistantship starts again in the fall.

Their apartment door screeches open. Jackie laughs at something Amina says.

Lili feels a sudden, clear snap of pain: how easily her foster parents forget her presence, how quickly her friends move past

her absence.

If she isn’t needed, at least she can feel wanted, tonight.

Lili slaps her computer shut. “Wait!” she shouts. “Fuck it, I’m coming.”

“No, yeah, my favorite movie is The Wolf of Wall Street, it’s such a blunt, unflinching portrayal—Scorsese really just looks into the American soul, you know?”

Wincing, Lili drains her drink.

If she has to start her Friday night listening to second-year analysts mansplain derivatives and trading options, she’s within

her rights to fleece them of outrageously expensive cocktails and consider it retributive justice for the subprime mortgage

crisis and credit discrimination on behalf of the proletariat.

The bar is bustling with its usual type. Company-branded Patagonia vests, vodka sodas, too-shiny Hublots, and “I’ve got a table at Tao later, you should come with.”

While Amina stalled their Uber back at the apartment, Lili had slipped into a tiny black dress, all loose silk, that she’d

found thrift shopping last month, tucked away her septum piercing, and slid her feet into strappy heels. You can’t wear combat boots, Jackie protested. You’ll terrify the poor boys.

Now, her friends are somewhere in the packed crowd. She’d come over to the bar to get another drink, predictably finding men

more than willing to pay for it.

“—it’s really an art, shorting stocks. Balancing the right intel with the right leverage.” It’s the blond guy of the group

of analysts clustered around her. Charlie? Christopher?

“Wow,” Lili says. She scrunches up her nose. “But, like, how does that even work? Can you ‘long’ a stock, too?” Adds a giggle

for emphasis: silly girl, empty head, no master’s degree in economics in sight. It’s easy, almost embarrassingly so. Stroking

their egos, biting her lip when they explain a particularly difficult-to-grasp concept.

“Actually, yeah. It’s tricky to understand,” one of the taller ones cuts in—John? Josh? “Essentially, if I borrow apples from

you at a dollar, then I sell them to Matt—”

As he regales her with an explanation she’d use for kindergartners, she glances at the time on her phone. A little longer,

until James returns to work. Then they can flee this finance crowd and meet the rest of their friends.

She’d like to get fucked tonight, she thinks, looking over the bar.

She’d like to be forced hard into her body and out of her mind. She’d like to struggle, pinned down until the relentless buzz

of her thoughts is smothered away: the unanswered text, her thesis work, the horizon past graduation next year inching closer,

uncertainty and instability rushing in again, as always. She wants it all to stop for a moment; she wants silence that gives

her breathing room. But she knows she’ll likely only be disappointed by what she finds tonight.

When the boy hasn’t spoken for a beat, Lili screws up her face into a practiced pout of confusion. “But how do you know the

stock price is going to go down?”

Behind her, a dark huff of laughter. She frowns, looking sharply over her shoulder.

“Is there an issue?” she asks the man standing at the bar behind her.

Fuck.

He’s—gorgeous.

Tall, broad shouldered, and lithe, with thick black hair and patrician features: high cheekbones and an elegant, straight

nose. Strong jaw, close-cropped beard, and lips tugged into the hint of a smile, with intelligent, dark eyes. He’s wearing

a black suit, no tie, shirt collar crisp and starched against his neck. The first few buttons of his shirt are undone.

“The ‘explain short selling to me’ bit is played out, no?”

British. Clear, educated syllables. A hint of warmth, roughness polished underneath.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Lili snaps.

It’s a busy bar, but the man gestures at the bartender—a gleam of cuff links—who’s over in a second. “It was overused in my

day, but I’m glad to see it’s still proving profitable. Cognac, over ice,” he tells the bartender.

“Right, if you’re done,” she says, turning back to the analysts and finding them gone. They’ve slunk into the crowd. One of

them shoots a furtive look at—not her, but the man beside her.

She frowns.

Another low laugh. The ice in his drink clinks against the glass. It makes her stomach tense.

“Probably for the best. I didn’t think you wanted to go home with someone living in a flex space in Murray Hill, anyway. Let

me buy you a drink.”

“One drink,” she says, willing stern warning into her voice. Unsure if it’s directed at herself or him. “Are you going to

try and explain shorting to me?”

He grins, teeth gleaming in the dim light.

“Only if you ask nicely.”

It is not one drink.

Because Aleksandr—that’s his name, voice lowering to a deeper register for a moment, with harsher, richer tones under the Oxbridge polish; continental, Eastern, gilded icons—doesn’t look aghast or uncomfortable when she starts to tear into how EBITDA allows unviable venture-funded companies to continue exploiting the working class by promising the ever-retreating prospect of long-term growth potential to all-white Sand Hill Road boardrooms, or rails into how private equity firms are glorified corporate raiders cannibalizing America in partnership with management consultants, or eviscerates the disgusting hypocrisy of hedge funds handling the pensions of teachers and firefighters.

Rather, he smiles, an expression that flirts with a smirk—and yes, it veers condescending, but she supposes he is older, although

she isn’t sure by how much; perhaps a decade, maybe more—and he gives as good as he gets. He pushes her about her vehemence

around the negative impacts of multinationals’ investment in developing nations—“Christ, we don’t say third world anymore,”