1:37 PM SAME DAY
I sat in a middle layer between the Mikes and the Investment Committee. Not quite with them, not quite with the senior men. Alone.
The Mikes worked more hours than I did most weeks, bent over screens long after I went home. But they worked together. That bond mattered. I had something like that once. The industry kept spinning people out of their homes, their teams, because of promotions and poaches and buyouts. Anyone left behind eventually found themselves in silence.
The Mikes had met on the same analyst desk at one of the big banks. A securitized products group always in the top three in the league tables, feeding itself fresh graduates every summer. The desks loved hiring bright kids, but none of their universities had prepared them for what they’d walked into. Everyone started equally ignorant. Everyone learned the same way: by bleeding through endless nights.
This was not the glossy M&A side of the house, where bankers shifted logos in PowerPoint to flatter CEOs into billion-dollar mergers. Securitization was another universe. Cashflows chopped, bundled, sold. Acronyms stacked on acronyms. Waterfalls and triggers, with phrases like prepay curves and inverse floaters, instruments so opaque even regulators squinted. In the Crisis, a single galaxy of that universe, the single-family mortgage world, had dragged down banks and nearly entire nations. Bailouts and backstops replaced trillions in evaporated wealth. But when the smoke cleared, the structuring game marched on. Anything with cashflow could be packaged. Even things that barely had one.
I used to love it. Or thought I did.
The Mikes had cut their teeth together in that world, bonded by first-year humiliations and small triumphs. They’d seen deals move from primary issuance to secondary trading, learned best practices from veterans, and absorbed the rituals of a desk where speed mattered more than sleep. By the time they joined Waypoint, they were more than friends. They were a unit.
We split them up at first, according to team needs - Acquisitions, Asset Management, Dispositions. But offices reshuffle, and gravity pulled them to me. Half a year later, all three were in Acquisitions under my watch. I had been promoted to Director. And the unit was back together, at my side. A ready-made team. A trio of bright sons.
And now they were with me on Granite.
Mike D had the data tape up. Mike C worked on the draft memo, with all my charts and tables. Mike S had the model open, ready to bend numbers at my direction. They flanked me like a living machine.
I walked them through my doubts. Headline metrics looked perfect for us. Suspicious, because perfection doesn’t exist. The asset-level detail was a mess. Gaps, errors, missing disclosures. Almost as if someone had erased the fingerprints on purpose.
Mike D cracked a grin. “It doesn’t look that egregious. You sure you just didn’t want to rebuild the model from scratch, old man?”
Six years older, maybe seven. But in this business that gap felt like a canyon. His jest stung because he wasn’t wrong. I felt aged. Weathered.
Mike S leaned back, calm as always, his tone soft. “There’s a lot of exception-handling here. Adjustments and assumptions everywhere. You’re sure you’re comfortable with this?”
Not an accusation. Just careful doubt. A sharper knife than anger.
I smiled thinly, pretending it didn’t rattle me. He couldn’t know how late Sunday I’d been hunched alone in the guest room, reworking tabs instead of watching television with Jessica. Couldn’t know I was spooked. I’d modeled the mezzanine and equity side structures myself because the usual third-party diligence wasn’t going to happen on our given timeline.
Mike C filled the silence. “Outputs look great, chief. Cleaner than before. Faster to use next time.”
Good kid. Always generous.
But Mike D scrolled, frowning. “What’s with these relationship columns? All the covenants mapped? Do we even have the agreements?”
Not all of them. Not yet. I had asked Jeff for more. He wasn’t delivering.
Mike S spoke again, voice steady. “You added three new tabs just for sub-debt. You know we usually outsource this. Even they don’t try to replicate the economics.”
He was right. But something inside me had cracked open and demanded it. Radioactive half-life moving on its own.
Mike C offered to stratify the missing data, hunt for patterns. I nodded quickly, grateful.
I answered all their questions smoothly. Professional tone. But my stomach twisted. Granite looked like a bag of leftovers from other deals. Scraps someone swept together. My job was to pretend it was coherent.
They kept working. I kept my mask in place. For a while. Until Mike C glanced over, concern in his eyes.
“You okay, chief?”
The words carried across the aisle. Colleagues looked up.
I forced a crooked smile, a half-joke, a poor one. Then retreated into a chair. My jaw clenched.
Fuck.
The Mikes didn’t see how I was unraveling. I wouldn’t let them. They thought I was steady. The anchor. They didn’t know what Jessica had said to me last week. That something had changed inside me. That I wasn’t myself anymore.
I spun my wedding band without realizing. Mike S noticed. He asked about Jessica.
I muttered the same phrase everyone used when they didn’t want to say the truth. She’s good.
She wasn’t. We lived like ghosts in the same apartment. Two ships passing. Her perfume lingered on the kitchen counter more than she did. This morning, I saw her coffee cup half-drunk, already cold. That was all.
I remembered when laughter had filled the rooms. When we had cooked together. The silence now was heavier than any fight. Still I went to the office each day. To Granite. To numbers that blurred in front of my eyes.
I looked at Mike S’s desk. He kept a silver frame - photos of his parents smiling on a ski trip, his sister with her dog, a graduation shot of him with fraternity brothers. Evidence of a life he still carried proudly. My desk held no such things. Just binders, models, and the hum of fluorescent lights.
I envied him. Envied all three of them. Their youth, their laughter, the way they still showed each other affection without fear. They were what I had once been.
I loved them, though the word frightened me. To say it felt like tempting fate. Like the universe would punish me by corrupting them. If they got too close, my sickness would spread. Radiation doesn’t stay contained.
The 21st floor was our cage. Carpets, ergonomic chairs, neutral walls. A cell block with bonuses instead of rations. We convinced ourselves the pay was freedom, but it was only a plea deal. We’d traded years of life for access to the yard.
I sighed at my own melodrama. Jessica was right. I was ungrateful.
But the fluorescent hum above me wouldn’t stop. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was counting down.
The Mikes kept me tethered. Mike D joked. Mike C built charts. Mike S laughed with a small snort that was pure and unguarded. They turned to me, welcoming me into their warmth. I wanted to step in. I smiled back, a true grin for once.
But I couldn’t. I knew I had to keep distance. MDs did not become friends with analysts. That cushion was survival.
My phone buzzed. The screen lit with a name. Brian Haverford. Senior Managing Director - Originations.
My chest tightened. The mirth drained. I stared at it for one frozen second, imagining the ways he could destroy me with a single call. Then I answered.
“Luke,” he said. Calm. Controlled. “We’re moving forward. Faster than expected. IC pressed me all lunch about Granite. Move quickly this afternoon. Be ready to brief me by end of day.”
He hung up.
The leash tightened.
Later, I called Jeff again. Second time that day. Brokers can sense pressure. I kept my voice level. Asked him the price again, though I already had it written in my notebook. Needed to be sure my memory wasn’t failing.
Same price.
I asked about the source of the assets. Who originated them. Why now.
He laughed, oily. “Leftovers, baby. You know how it is.”
Disgust rose in me. His tone was half car salesman, half strip club.
“Luke, you’re one of my top clients. I’m not making a spread here, just clearing the books.”
Leftovers. Clearing the books.
I hung up, bile in my throat.
Maybe he meant Granite. Maybe something inside me needed clearing too.