The Amateurs

After all, tonight was the night. He’d made up his mind that he was going to take the plunge with Je

He ran lines until his stop, but couldn’t find the right one. Maybe he’d wing it.

Rossi’s was one of those identity-crisis places, a bar-slash-restaurant that drew families for di

After the heat of the bus, walking into the air-conditioning felt wonderful. Mitch nodded at the hostess, moved past the dining room, with its rich smell of bolognese and carbonara, and into the bar. The postwork crowd was thi

Dammit. Other than Alex pulling drinks, he was the first one there. He should have showered.

“THAT PRICK,” Alex was saying as she walked up. “He should be, I don’t know. Drawn and quartered.”

“Who should?” Je

“Tasty,” Alex said, “right on time, as usual.” He smiled back at her, his eyes warm. Normally she wouldn’t have liked the nickname, Tasty-sort-of-rhymes-with-Lacie, but he had a way of saying it that sounded warm instead of dirty. “Hot date?”

“Kickboxing class. Who should be drawn and quartered?”

“That Cayne guy.”

“Who?”

“James Cayne. He was the CEO of Bear Stearns,” Ian said. “It’s a securities firm, the one the Fed just bailed out. They’ve had a lot of trouble lately. The whole subprime mortgage collapse? Started with their hedge funds.”

“Apparently,” Alex said, “while the company was tanking, he was playing in a bridge tournament. Guy’s company is responsible for half of America losing their houses, he’s playing cards.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.” Ian gave that sharp-edged grin. “There were market forces in play.”

“Hi, Je

“He should be killed,” Alex said again, pouring a martini from a stainless steel shaker and setting it in front of her. He stabbed three olives with a toothpick shaped like a sword and balanced it across the top. “Line him and that Enron guy, Ken Lay, and the rest of them up against a wall and shoot them.”

“Ken Lay is already dead. Heart attack.”

“OK, well, everybody else from Enron.”

Je

Her mother found it strange, the way her closest friends were guys. She was always asking unsubtle questions about which one Je

Je

Which was fine, and she wished them luck. They just made for lousy friends, whereas the boys kept things easy. Which was how she ended up here every week, all four of them at the end of the bar. She, Alex, Ian, and Mitch, the Thursday Night Drinking Club. “Which game tonight?”

“Tonight,” Ian said, “is clearly a Ready-Go night.”

“Why?”

“I’m feeling hypothetical.”

“I feel that way all the time,” she said. “OK. In the spirit of the evening: If you had half a million dollars. Ready, go.”

“Only half?” Ian cocked his eyebrow.

“I’d buy a house,” Alex said. “Nothing fancy, just something with a spare bedroom for Cassie. I think she’d stay with me more often if she had a room of her own. In Lincoln Park so she could walk to the shops, the lake.”

“Somebody hasn’t looked at real-estate prices in a while,” Ian said.

“What?”

“A house in Lincoln Park for a half million?”

“No?” Alex looked genuinely wounded, as though the neighborhood pricing was all that was holding him back. “Huh. All right, a condo. Whatever. How about you?”

“I’d quit the firm. Work from home. Day trade. I could turn that into ten million in no time.”

Alex snorted. “You’d be broke in a week.”

Ian smiled that thin smile again. “Je

She sipped at her martini, pulled off an olive, chewed it slowly. “Travel.”

“Where would you go?” Mitch leaned forward.

“Everywhere. All the places I book trips for other people. Paris. St. Petersburg. The islands. I’d like to spend a while in the islands. A little cabin on the beach, someplace with screens for walls, where you could hear the ocean day and night. Drink coconut drinks. Live in a bathing suit.” It was strange hearing the words come out of her mouth, like this was a long-held fantasy. Truth was, she hadn’t known what she was going to say until she’d started.

“Sounds nice,” Mitch said.

“Sounds boring,” Ian said. “I’d be out of my head in a week.”

“Then you’re not invited. Alex, Mitch, you guys want to come to the islands with me?”

“And leave all this?” Alex laughed and picked up a cloth, started buffing the bar. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and the muscles of his forearms were knotted ropes. “At this rate, in just twenty short years, I’ll be full manager. At which point if one of you wanted to shoot me, I’d thank you for the favor.”

“Why don’t you quit?” Mitch said.

“Why don’t you?”

“I-well, I mean, it’s a job, right?”

Alex nodded slowly. “Yes. It’s a job, all right.” He glanced down the line, where a plump, ta

For a moment, silence fell. Then Ian raised his glass said, “Fuck work.”

Laughing, they clinked glasses. Je

MITCH WASN’T DRUNK. Tipsy, OK, but not drunk. He’d had a couple of shots with Alex before the others arrived, and three or four beers since, a fair bit for two hours, but it had been a long day.