by Charlie Fish

“Good evening, Mr. Citrone, please sit down.”

The man sat on the other side of the desk was dressed in a suit so sharp it could cut a diamond. This was Robin Murgatroyd – the Robin Murgatroyd – agitator, seer, demigod. He looked at me with such intensity, such authority, I don’t think I could have resisted any command he gave. I want that, I thought. I want to be able to have such presence, to own a room so completely.

I sat. Studied his posture, his micro-expressions, his movements, mirroring him, learning.

“Lambert?” he said. “Am I pronouncing it correctly? Or is it Lam-bear?”

“The French way. My parents are French.”

“Your CV is impressive. You won the Banker last year. Yours was the second highest investment banking portfolio performance in Europe.”

“Yes.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Second best. We only employ the best.”

“You employ connections. You employ routes to industry. You employ people who can make money. I can make money.”

He nodded. “So you’re smart. Why not stay in investment banking? Why go into VC?”

“Because investment banking is too conservative.”

Murgatroyd laughed. A hearty laugh, full and free. I wasn’t sure if he was mocking me. But he wouldn’t dismiss me. The fact that he was seeing me at all meant he was interested. I’d cracked the first layer of his façade, now I just needed to navigate the fault line.

His questions came quickfire: about my breakthrough investments, my approach to market divination, my inside tracks. I told him everything he wanted to hear.

“Ok, ok,” he said, at last. “You’ve convinced me. Almost.”

I felt a surge of adrenalin. The home stretch. I could taste victory. Control. Concentrate.

Murgatroyd leaned forward. “Tell me. What’s your weakness?”

“I cannot stand being second place.”

“Second place.” Murgatroyd smirked. “You’d better get used to it if you want to work with us.”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t met Sadie Carmine.”

*

Working for Murgatroyd was relentless. It was a small team, only fourteen partners and about fifty so-called principals with a limited investment portfolio. I started as a principal, on a six-month probation, with £500,000 to spend and no vote on the board.

I worked my butt off, schmoozing with anyone I could get access to in the day, researching and reading late into the night. There was an office, which I used occasionally, but there was so much angst between the partners it was a pretty toxic environment. Every week Murgatroyd called a team meeting and fired one of us. Often the principals didn’t last more than a couple of months. Occasionally a new batch would come in. We were like a bunch of teenage girls in a catfight over the affections of Robin Murgatroyd.

In the middle of the office was a white porcelain bowl, which was always kept stocked with what looked like breath mints. But they weren’t breath mints, they were some kind of amphetamine. I never partook, but it bothered me that they were so brazenly out in the open. It was like a statement, that we were better than the petty rules and regulations that governed the outside world. Distasteful.

The breath mints were popular with most of the employees, though. None more so than the intriguing Sadie Carmine. She took handfuls of them like candy. I watched her closely. Murgatroyd had said she was the best, so naturally she was the one to beat.

But I couldn’t understand it. She was a partner, of course, but she seemed to treat work like a joke. She would turn up an hour late for board meetings. She would dance through the office flirting with the data monkeys as if she was drunk, wearing last night’s evening gown with her hair mussed up like she’d just got out of bed.

She got away with it, somehow. Or, rather, she didn’t just get away with it, she exuded a kind of pied piper magnetism that made you feel like you should be behaving the same way. Like you were taking life too seriously and should lighten up. There was something magic about her.

Almost from the first day she noticed I was paying her attention. I mean, all of the heterosexual men she came within ten metres of paid her attention, but I was taking notes. She teased me. Not directly, but every time she saw me she made a show of coming over and speaking to the person sitting next to me. Or she watched me watching her from across the room, waiting until I lost the game of chicken and looked away.

From what I could gather, she was into energy. Graphene batteries, solar cells, wearable kinetics, remote power. But then I’d see her having some deeply technical conversation about the manufacturing processes of synthetic oil, or the stochastics of forex arbitrage, or the long-term prospects of the pod hotel industry. Basically she seemed to know everything.

Meanwhile, I put my £500,000 into a kind of executive lifestyle rental company – they were targeting wealthy young jetsetters whose main residence was usually in a desirable city centre, and usually empty. Airbnb for people too rich and busy to condescend to using Airbnb.

Putting all my portfolio money into one company was a gamble, but I was looking for a short-term win. I wanted to prove my worth irrefutably before my probation was up. I reckoned I could get the app completed and sold for triple the money within four months. I did it in three.

I was constantly exhausted. Exhilarated. And, increasingly, as I learned more about Sadie Carmine, enthralled. It took me the full six months to muster the courage to ask her if she wanted to join me for a drink. I didn’t want to ask until I was sure she’d say yes.

*

She took me to a pub on a council estate. From the outside it looked like the kind of place British National Party members could talk shop with white supremacists. I figured she was trying to set me on edge, keep me on my toes. But inside the place was surprising. A kind of hipster heaven, with retro memorabilia glued to every surface, bearded graphic designers getting passionate about David McCandless, and twelve craft beers on tap.

We sat in a quiet corner and ordered halloumi burgers.

“How did you discover this place?” I asked. We were drinking Cokes, but hers had two shots of rum.

“One of my boyfriends. Film student. I like that this place is full of arty types; I find it charming.”

“You’re about as far from an arty type as I’ve ever seen.”

She pouted. “I went to art school. The Royal Academy.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, for six months. Wasn’t really a student there, I just showed up at lectures. I submitted a piece for the final exhibition. They were impressed, until they figured out I wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“You are something else.”

Sadie smiled. She finished her rum and coke and signaled to the bar staff to bring two more.

“I don’t drink,” I said.

“I don’t hang out with men who take themselves so seriously. Let’s be adventurous.”

Our food arrived, and the drinks shortly after. She clinked my glass. Hesitantly, I drank. We made small talk while we ate. I nervously sipped at the rum and coke until it was all gone, but then another appeared in its place.

“Tell me your story,” I said, feeling bolder.

“Most boring story in the world.”

“Tell it.”

“Only child. Born in Stoke-on-Trent to parents that wanted a boy. Dad ran his own factory making tiny plastic bits on contract for Jaguar Land Rover. He was pretty mad when he realised I had no interest in taking over from him. I played truant at school a lot, read voraciously, ran away to London when I was sixteen. Been drifting from job to job ever since. You know, the usual.”

“You are like no one I’ve ever met.”

“You, however, Monsieur Citrone, are entirely predictable.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were born to wealthy French landowners. A middle child. Brought up with discipline and privilege, and a huge chip on your shoulder. Studied law at Oxford because your daddy did, topped it up with an FCA. You got in with a bunch of wannabe Warren Buffets, made some lucky calls, and now you’re on the fast track to become partner in the most prestigious VC firm in Europe.”

“I studied at Cambridge.”

“Same diff.”

“You Googled me.”

Sadie shrugged and smiled coyly.

“Were you really born in Stoke-on-Trent?” I asked.

“One of the benefits of being a committed nihilist is I have no reason to lie. I don’t think I’ve lied since I was four. It doesn’t suit me.”

“How did you end up in venture capital?”

“I cheated.”

“What? Did you sleep with Murgatroyd?”

“Give me more credit. I fuck a lot of men, but not men like him.”

“He’s a god.”

“He’s a crook.”

“I don’t buy it. You woke up one day and decided to weasel your way into being a partner at a leading VC firm? What really made you want to do this?”

“Someone said I couldn’t do it.”

I leaned back in my chair. I’d lost track of whether this was my third rum and coke or my fourth – and she seemed to be drinking two for every one of mine. My brain dilated from the alcohol, my hands started gently trembling from the caffeine. At that moment Sadie seemed to me like a column of certitude in a sea of madness. Bold and unwavering. I wanted to cling on and watch the world revolve from her steadfast perspective. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

Sadie shook her head.

“I bet I can beat you at something.” I looked around the bar, hunting for inspiration. I found a tatty old chess board in a stack of 80s kids’ games. “I was Vichy chess champion in my teenage years.”

“OK,” said Sadie, sizing me up. “If you win, I get to fuck you. If not, I fuck that guy.” She pointed to a stubble-faced young beatnik sitting at the far end of the bar typing on a chromebook.

“Who’s he?”

“Don’t know.”

So we played. She took white. She made thoughtless, infuriating moves that messed with my opening strategies, but I couldn’t see how to refute them. After a couple of exchanges she was down on material, and I was battling against the fog of drunkenness to focus on finishing her off. She played so damn fast, and even though she showed no signs of impatience I felt like I had to play fast too.

I ended up with a king and a knight against her king. A stalemate position. She shrugged her shoulders and went to chat up the beatnik, leaving me with the dregs of my last rum and coke. I don’t know what she said to him, but it must have been pretty blunt, because within two minutes they’d left together.

The fire in my belly crackled and roared.

*

It took me nine more months to make partner. I thought about Sadie a lot during that time. Relished every opportunity to spend time with her. She was playful with me, indulged my attention, but never opened up. I longed to understand her, but she remained a tantalising mystery. A puzzle that resisted my most determined efforts to solve.

I never slept with her, as much as I wanted to. She used her sexuality to manipulate anyone that wasn’t sufficiently intimidated by her frightening intellect – but I wanted to stay on even terms.

By the time I finally made it into the boardroom, I was second place in the performance rankings. Guess who was in the number one slot. It was galling how little effort it seemed to take her to stay on top.

I accompanied her out of work a few times. Inevitably, she would go to a bar or nightclub to get high, involve herself in ridiculous political debates with drunken young men, and end up taking one of them to the toilets for a more intimate encounter. It hurt to watch her debase herself like that, but sometimes I got the impression she was more aware of me than she let on, and she was doing it to tease me.

Once, just once, I saw beyond her façade. On the way to a client one morning, I went to the city library to look up some obscure piece of tax law. I wouldn’t have noticed her, except that she sprinted away when she saw me. She’d been pretending to read a book, but I could swear she’d been crying. I called her name, looked for her, but she was gone. When I asked her about it later, she changed the subject.

Her behaviour at work, never conventional in the first place, became increasingly erratic. Most days she wasn’t turning up at all, and when she did she’d have a black eye, or she’d fall asleep in the board meeting and wake up with a random outburst, or she’d vomit in the rubber tree pot.

When she came in and saw that she’d dropped from first to seventh on the performance rankings, she turned and left without a word. We never saw her in the office again. Seeing my name at the top of the rankings at last should have been cause for celebration, but it was a hollow victory.

I was still working my butt off for Murgatroyd, but I couldn’t let Sadie go. In the snatches of spare time I had, I scoured the city for her. I searched the bars, the clubs, the libraries. I looked for someone who had known her at the Royal College of Art, and all the other crazy places she said she’d worked or studied. I got her address from Murgatroyd’s secretary, but she wasn’t living there anymore.

My work suffered. I wanted to do well, but I wanted even more to find Sadie. I tracked down her parents. There aren’t many Carmines living in Stoke-on-Trent. They were angry, said she was a hopeless drug addict and she’d stolen from them. She was wanted by the police in two cities. They had no idea where she was and didn’t care anymore.

I started searching the morgues.

After weeks of this, hope had all but burned out. And, then, when I’d almost given up, there she was. In an alley, huddled in a covered nook with a whacked out junkie asleep on her lap.

She was barely recognisable, wearing men’s clothes that were tatty and stained, her skin patchy and wan, her hair cut short. She looked up at me with dull eyes. Her beauty still radiated from behind the mask of wretchedness.

“Sadie,” I said.

She looked away, saying nothing. I knelt down and offered her the bottle of mineral water I was holding. She took it and drank it all.

“Sadie?”

“Go away. I don’t need you, I’m fine,” she said through cracked lips.

My heart beat in my throat. “You can’t tell me you’re happy here.”

“I’m no less happy than I’ve ever been.”

I saw then that she spoke the truth. The puzzle pieces started falling into place. She had never been happy. She was scared. I thought about how hard she’d had to fight to prove herself against the men in her life constantly trying to exploit her or put her down. And by trying to better her, I’d been one of them. My cheeks prickled with shame.

“I love you Sadie. I’m sorry I never told you that before. I never realised it. I’ve been as bad as all the others. I want to help you.”

“Go away, Lambert,” she said. I looked down at my feet. Nodded, trying to hide the pain that was building inside me. I took off my jacket and gave it to her. Gave her all the cash in my wallet, too. She looked at me with contempt, but she took it.

I wanted to give her more. To talk with her. To ask her where I could see her again. To tell her where to find me. But it all felt futile. I turned to leave, but I couldn’t bear to.

“You weren’t as bad as all the others,” she said.

My heart fluttered. I sensed a crack of hope return. The impossible suddenly seemed worth a try. Maybe even if it cost everything.

I sat on the filthy pavement across from her. Just sat, and waited for her to forgive me.

*

It was a difficult time. But I’d never been surer that I was doing the right thing. Back when my life was all about striving to be the best, if you’d asked me why it was so important I don’t think I would have been able to tell you. Surprisingly, I didn’t miss that life very much.

Sadie tried to shake me off at first. She ran; I followed. She disappeared into shady clubs into which I was not allowed to enter; I waited for her. She ordered a pair of thugs to hurt me; I took the beating.

After two days I was thirsty and hungry and cold to my bones, and she took pity on me. She let me into one of the iniquitous dens that made up her new home, and she tried new ways to get rid of me. She tried to shock me with her incautious drug taking and depraved sexual antics. She insulted me to her fellow junkies, saying that I was a worthless stalker. That I was obsessed with winning, and had the affront to think I could win her, as if she was a lifeless chattel. I hated myself then, but I persisted.

Finally, she agreed to come back to my place. She ate everything in my fridge and fell asleep on the sofa. I spent an hour in the shower before I felt clean again. I threw out the stinking suit I’d been wearing for days, laid out clothes for her, and went to bed.

In the morning I felt refreshed and ravenously hungry. Sadie still slept, looking unconscious. I went out to buy food. Stopped by the office on the way to confirm what I suspected: that I’d been fired in my absence. Never mind, I thought, I had more than enough money to get by for a while.

When I returned, laden with supermarket shopping bags, my flat had been trashed. She had stolen money, clothes, even my passport. I ate my breakfast among the ruins, and then set out to find her again.

I knew her regular haunts by then, but I didn’t expect to find her as easily as I did. It frightened me; if she was still just trying to put me off she’d have gone into hiding again, but no – this time she’d really lost control.

She was lost in a heroin haze, conscious but unaware of her surroundings. I picked up her stick-like frame and carried her all the way back to the flat. I threw away her clothes, bathed her, gave her food and water, and then called for help. We took a taxi to a rehab clinic in Surrey, and by the time she was coming round she was signed up for a six-week residential treatment plan.

I spent a few hours with her every day. After the first week, I stopped going home. We slept next to each other in her queen bed in the clinic. She clung on to me like a startled child. My heart swelled and enveloped her, and at last, she took me in.

When the six weeks was up she turned herself in to the police. She was given an eight month suspended sentence, conditional on staying clean and sober. She moved in with me and made the place her own.

It was soon clear we both needed to find jobs again. She needed a period of routine and stability, something to keep herself occupied and intellectually stimulated. And I needed to get back into the game – not to mention the fact that money was running low.

So I went begging back to Murgatroyd. Despite my insistence that she stay away, Sadie came with me. Once again, I found myself in Murgatroyd’s office, adrenalin pumping, facing down his searing gaze.

“Mr. Citrone, Miss Carmine, please have a seat,” he said.

“Mr. Murgatroyd,” I said, “I’ll level with you. I’d like my job back.”

“Certainly not.” The three of us sat in silence for a moment. “Did you have anything else you wanted to ask me, or can I get on with my day?”

“I was your number one performer. Start me as a principal again if you have to.”

“Is Sadie asking for a job too?”

Sadie shook her head and spoke. “You need him, Murgatroyd. He can walk into any VC job in the world right now, and he’ll make so much money people will start talking about him instead of you.”

“The answer is no.” Murgatroyd addressed me. “I need people who are willing to put everything else aside to succeed. But now you’ve gone and fallen for this jailbird, and you’ve already proven you’ll put her before this company. You’ll want to spend time with her, soon you’ll want to start a family. I don’t need that.”

Murgatroyd turned to Sadie. “You’re different. Being distracted doesn’t seem to hold you back. But without guzzling speed by the fistful to enable your prodigiously carnal networking methods and your all-night library sessions, I don’t think you’ll be able to keep up.”

Sadie smiled. “You’re still as charming as ever, Murgatroyd.”

“As are you. I can offer you a job as personal assistant, at half your previous salary. Take it or leave.”

Sadie leant back, folded her arms across her chest.

“You aren’t seriously considering this?” I asked. “This is a toxic environment. He’s poison.”

She nodded at Murgatroyd. “I’ll take your crummy job.”

As soon as we had left the office, I chastised Sadie. “Are you insane?”

She shrugged. “It’ll buy us time for you to get back on your feet.”

“I don’t buy it. What really made you accept that job?”

She looked me in the eye. “You told me I shouldn’t.”

I stopped in my tracks. I knew then that she was bigger than me, and always would be. My stomach churned with a terrible cocktail of selfless love and anxious self-doubt, swirling against each other and refusing to reconcile, like oil and water.

All my life, I wanted to be the best. I needed to be in control. But this woman – this reckless, broken, infuriating tramp-savant – had turned my world upside-down. I loved her so hard it felt like fear, and it was at that moment I finally realized what that meant. Maybe love was always this way and I’d been too self-centered to notice:

To be with her, I would always have to come in second place.